Gone Girl(113)

‘Why not tell Sharon Schieber, then? About Amy framing me?’

‘Reason one. You come clean about Andie, you beg forgiveness, the nation is primed to forgive you, they’ll feel sorry for you – Americans love to see sinners apologize. But you can reveal nothing to make your wife look bad; no one wants to see the cheating husband blame the wife for anything. Let someone else do it sometime the next day: Sources close to the police reveal that Nick’s wife – the one he swore he loved with all his heart – is framing him! It’s great TV.’

‘What’s reason two?’

‘It’s too complicated to explain exactly how Amy is framing you. You can’t do it in a sound bite. It’s bad TV.’

‘I feel sick,’ I said.

‘Nick, it’s—’ Go started.

‘I know, I know, it has to be done. But can you imagine, your biggest secret and you have to tell the world about it? I know I have to do it. And it works for us, ultimately, I think. It’s the only way Amy might come back,’ I said. ‘She wants me to be publicly humiliated—’

‘Chastened,’ Tanner interrupted. ‘Humiliated makes it sound like you feel sorry for yourself.’

‘—and to publicly apologize,’ I continued. ‘But it’s going to be f*cking awful.’

‘Before we go forward, I want to be honest here,’ Tanner said. ‘Telling the police the whole story – Amy’s framing Nick – it is a risk. Most cops, they decide on a suspect and they don’t want to veer at all. They’re not open to any other options. So there’s the risk that we tell them and they laugh us out of the station and they arrest you – and then theoretically we’ve just given them a preview of our defense. So they can plan exactly how to destroy it at trial.’

‘Okay, wait, that sounds really, really bad, Tanner,’ Go said. ‘Like, bad, inadvisable bad.’

‘Let me finish,’ Tanner said. ‘One, I think you’re right, Nick. I think Boney isn’t convinced you’re a killer. I think she would be open to an alternate theory. She has a good reputation as a cop who’s actually fair. As a cop who has good instincts. I talked with her. I got a good vibe. I think the evidence is leading her in your direction, but I think her gut is telling her something’s off. More important, if we do go to trial, I wouldn’t use the Amy frame-up as your defense, anyway.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like I said, it’s too complicated, a jury wouldn’t be able to follow. If it’s not good TV, believe me, it’s not for a jury. We’d go with more of an O.J. thing. A simple story line: The cops are incompetent and out to get you, it’s all circumstantial, if the glove doesn’t fit, blah blah, blah.’

‘Blah blah blah, that gives me a lot of confidence,’ I said.

Tanner flashed a smile. ‘Juries love me, Nick. I’m one of them.’

‘You’re the opposite of one of them, Tanner.’

‘Reverse that: They’d like to think they’re one of me.’

Everything we did now, we did in front of small brambles of flashing paparazzi, so Go, Tanner, and I left the house under pops of light and pings of noise (‘Don’t look down,’ Tanner advised, ‘don’t smile, but don’t look ashamed. Don’t rush either, just walk, let them take their shots, and shut the door before you call them names. Then you can call them whatever you want.’) We were headed down to St. Louis, where the interview would take place, so I could prep with Tanner’s wife, Betsy, a former TV news anchor turned lawyer. She was the other Bolt in Bolt & Bolt.

It was a creepy tailgate party: Tanner and I, followed by Go, followed by a half-dozen news vans, but by the time the Arch crept over the skyline, I was no longer thinking of the paparazzi.

By the time we reached Tanner’s penthouse hotel suite, I was ready to do the work I needed to nail the interview. Again I longed for my own theme music: the montage of me getting ready for the big fight.

What’s the mental equivalent of a speed bag?

A gorgeous six-foot-tall black woman answered the door.

‘Hi, Nick, I’m Betsy Bolt.’

In my mind Betsy Bolt was a diminutive blond Southern-belle white girl.

‘Don’t worry, everyone is surprised when they meet me.’ Betsy laughed, catching my look, shaking my hand. ‘Tanner and Betsy, we sound like we should be on the cover of The Official Preppy Guide, right?’

‘Preppy Handbook,’ Tanner corrected as he kissed her on the cheek.

‘See? He actually knows,’ she said.

She ushered us into an impressive penthouse suite – a living room sunlit by wall-to-wall windows, with bedrooms shooting off each side. Tanner had sworn he couldn’t stay in Carthage, at the Days Inn, out of respect for Amy’s parents, but Go and I both suspected he couldn’t stay in Carthage because the closest five-star hotel was in St. Louis.

We engaged in the preliminaries: small talk about Betsy’s family, college, career (all stellar, A-list, awesome), and drinks dispersed for everyone (soda pops and Clamato, which Go and I had come to believe was an affectation of Tanner’s, a quirk he thought would give him character, like my wearing fake glasses in college). Then Go and I sank down into the leather sofa, Betsy sitting across from us, her legs pressed together to one side, like a slash mark. Pretty/professional. Tanner paced behind us, listening.