“I’m not sure we can,” Milton admitted.

“So where does that leave us? You ask me, Madison was in there.” He stabbed his finger angrily against the window three times, indicating Brady’s house.

“I don’t know. But we need to find out.”

14

One of the Campaign boosters was a big wine grower, exporting his bottles all over the world for millions of dollars a year, and one of the benefits of that largesse was an executive box at Candlestick Park. Arlen Crawford could take it or leave it when it came to sports but his boss was an avid fan. The 49ers were his team, too, and so the prospect of taking in the game against Dallas was something that had kept him fired up as they approached the end of the week. It wasn’t all pleasure, Crawford reminded him as they walked through the busy stadium to the level that held the luxury suites. Plenty of potential donors had been invited, too, not all of them on board with the campaign yet. They needed to be impressed. Robinson needed to deploy that beguiling grin and his charisma needed to be at its most magnetic.

They reached the door and Robinson opened it and stepped through into the box beyond. There was a long table laden with cold cuts, beers and snacks and, beyond that, an outside seating area. The Governor’s smile was immediate and infectious; he set to work on the other guests, working his way through the room, reaching out to take hands, sometimes pressing them between both of his, rewarding those who were already on the team with jovial backslaps or, for the lucky few, a powerful hug. It took him fifteen minutes to reach the front of the box and the open French doors that allowed access to the outside seats. Crawford stepped down to the front of the enclosure and allowed himself a moment to breathe. The field was brilliant green, perfectly lush, the gridiron markings standing out in vivid white paint. The stadium PA picked up the intensity as the teams made their way out through an inflatable tunnel in the corner of the stadium. Fireworks shot into the air, flamethrowers breathed tendrils of fire that reached up to the upper decks, music thumped, cheerleaders shimmied in formation. The 49ers’ offense was introduced by the hyperbolic announcer, each armoured player sprinting through a gauntlet fashioned by the defense, chest-bumping those that had made the procession before him.

Crawford turned away from the noise and the pageantry to watch the Governor deep in conversation with the multi-millionaire who owned cattle ranches all the way across the south. Two good old boys, Crawford thought to himself. Winning him over would be a slam-dunk for Robinson. They would be drinking buddies by the end of the afternoon and a cheque with a lot of zeroes would be on its way to them first thing in the morning.

Suddenly tired, he slid down into a seat and closed his eyes. He thought about the sacrifices he had made to get them as far as this. Robinson was the main draw, the focus, but without Crawford and the work that he did for him he would just be another talker, high on star-power but low on substance, and destined for the level he was at right now. If Robinson was the circus, Crawford was the ringmaster. You couldn’t have one without the other. It just wouldn’t work.

He opened his eyes as the home team kicked off, the kicker putting his foot through the ball and sending it high into the air, spinning it on its axis all the way to the back of the end zone. The return man fielded it and dropped to one knee. Touchback.

The others settled into their seats. Robinson saw Crawford, grinned and gave him a wink.

He hoped that all this effort was going to be worth it.

15

Tuesday night’s A.A. meeting was Milton’s favourite. He stopped at a 7-11 and bought two jars of instant coffee and three different types of cookies. Yet more mist had risen from the ocean and was beginning its slow drift across the town. It was a soft, heavy night, too cloudy for a moon. The streetlights were dim, opalescent in the mist; there was a slight neon buzzing from the signage of a bar on the opposite side of the street from the church. Milton parked and left the engine idling for a moment, the golden beams of the headlights glowing and fading against the banked fog. He killed the engine, got out and locked the door and crossed the street. He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door and descended into the basement of the church.

It was a tired room, with peeling beige paint and cracked half-windows that were set far up towards the ceiling, revealing the shoes and ankles of the pedestrians passing by. Milton filled the urn with water and set it to boil. He took the coffee from the cupboard and then arranged the biscuits that he had brought on a plate, a series of neat concentric circles. The mugs hadn’t been washed from the last meeting that had used the room and so he filled the basin and attended to them, drying them with a dishcloth and stacking them on the table next to the urn.

Milton had been coming to meetings for more than three years. London, all the way through South America, then here. He still found the thought of it counter-intuitive, but then the complete honesty that the program demanded would always be a difficult concept for a man who had worked in the shadows for most of his adult life. He did his best. It had been more difficult at the start, in that church hall in West London. There was the Official Secrets Act, for a start, and what would happen to him if it came out that he had a problem. He had hidden at the back, near the door, and it had taken him a month to sit all the way through a meeting without turning tail and fleeing. He had gradually asked a regular with plenty of years of sobriety and a quiet attitude if he would be his first sponsor. He was called Dave Goulding, a musician in his late forties, a man who had been successful when he was younger and then drank his money and his talent away. Despite a life of bitter disappointment he had managed to get his head screwed on straight and, with his guidance, Milton had started to make progress.

The first thing he insisted upon was that he attend ninety meetings in ninety days. He had given him a spiral-bound notebook and a pen and told him that if he wanted him to remain as his sponsor, he had to record every meeting he attended in that notebook. Milton did that. After that, a little trust between them developed and they worked on his participation in the meetings. He wasn’t ready to speak at that point — that wouldn’t come for more than a year — but he had been persuaded to at least give the impression that he was engaged in what was going on. Dave called the back row at meetings the Denial Aisle, and had drummed into him that sick people who wanted to get well sat in the front. Milton wasn’t quite ready for that, either, but he had gradually moved forwards. Each month he moved forward again until he was in the middle of the action, stoic and thoughtful amidst the thicket of raised arms as the other alcoholics jostled to speak.

He had found this meeting on his first night in ‘Frisco. It was a lucky find: there was something about it that made it special. The room, the regulars, the atmosphere; there was a little magic about it. Milton had volunteered to serve the drinks on the second night when the grizzled ex-army vet who had held the post before him had fallen off the wagon and been spotted unconscious in the parking lot of the 7-11 near Fisherman’s Wharf. Milton always remembered Dave explaining that service was the keystone of A.A. and since taking care of the refreshments was something he could do without opening himself up to the others it was an excellent way to make himself known while avoiding the conversations that he still found awkward.