Ghost Image (5 page)

We reached the enormous wrought-iron Renwick Gates at the entrance to the Castle, and David Arista gestured for me to walk through them, ladies first. Inside, the Victorian Enid Haupt Garden was planted in geometric floral patterns that changed with the seasons. Today yellow and violet pansies formed interlocking diamonds across a pale green lawn and more pansies and spiky ferns spilled out of urns on each corner.

Something in David Arista's voice when he mentioned Olivia
made me think of Yasmin Gilberti nearly spilling her drink when she realized he was watching her. Olivia was young, blond, and lovely, a beauty just like Yasmin. And if you believed all the rumors, Washington was more notorious than Hollywood for infidelity and people who worked together sleeping around. Somehow it wouldn't surprise me if David mixed business with pleasure.

“So what brought you down here today?” I asked. “A meeting with Yasmin?”

He shot me a quick surprised look. “Nothing like that. I met a client at the Chihuly exhibit at the Hirshhorn. We both wanted to see it before it left town.”

“Really?” I would not have pegged him as an arty guy, certainly not someone who liked Dale Chihuly's fabulous glass sculptures.

That easy, self-deprecating laugh again. “Yeah, I know. You took me for some chump who wouldn't know a Chihuly from a Chihuahua.”

I blushed. “I did not.”

“I guess I'm what you'd call a museum nerd. Plus I know a lot of the folks who work at the Smithsonian museums since many of them have been clients.”

We walked toward the Gothic turrets and towers of the Smithsonian Castle. In the somber light, the lozenge-shaped panes in the leaded-glass windows glittered like black diamonds.

At the entrance, I stuck out my hand. “It was nice to meet you.”

He shook it, smiling, and I knew what was coming next. “You never gave me your card. And we ought to get together sometime. Coffee or a drink, maybe.”

“That would be great, but I'm awfully busy right now.” I laid my left hand over his.

He looked down at the antique diamond and white gold braided wedding ring that had been my grandmother's, and
grinned. I knew he'd gotten the message. “Ah, the old brush-off.” He let go of my hand.

“No . . . I really am busy.”

“Look, I have a feeling we're going to be running into each other if you're working with Olivia. And Yasmin. You and I might be able to do business together, especially if you're involved with the Smithsonian.” He was still smiling. “Give me a call sometime and maybe we can get a cup of coffee.”

I pulled my wallet out of my camera bag and gave him my business card.

“Thanks,” he said. “I'll call you. Coffee. Just coffee.”

He left, walking in the direction of the Mall and whistling something cheery and tuneless. Even after he disappeared around the other side of the Castle, I still felt uneasy at the thought of David Arista calling me.

There was more to him than met the eye.

4

I
took the cramped elevator near the guard's desk to the second floor of the Castle and walked down a corridor with a sloping worn tile floor to Olivia Upshaw's office. Her door was partially open and she had her back to me, doing something at her computer.

For all the splendor of the public rooms downstairs with their soaring columns, vaulted ceilings, gold-leaf moldings, and other beautiful embellishments, her office was a nondescript, windowless room with greenish-beige walls, metal furniture, and the kind of overhead fluorescent lighting that sucks the life out of every government building in D.C. Books, manuscripts, and folders were stacked on her desk and piled on a long, low bookcase. A mural of pale yellow Post-its festooned with her familiar loopy handwriting decorated the wall above her computer. Three posters of past Smithsonian exhibitions were the only decorations in the room. One of them had been askew the last time I'd been here, and it still was.

Olivia had sought me out for this job through the usual way
things get done in Washington: She knew somebody who knew me. In this case, it was my landlady, India Ferrer, who had met Olivia's parents when they had been overseas together in the Foreign Service. India had filled me in about Olivia, a smart twenty-five-year-old Yale grad who majored in art history and grew up mostly in Southeast Asia and Africa, finishing high school in Switzerland. She was a blue-eyed blonde, attractive in a tanned, lean, outdoorsy way with a habit of reaching around with one hand and pulling her long hair so it fell against her shoulder as if she couldn't stand the weight of it on her neck.

I knocked on her door, and she said, “It's open, come on in,” without turning around.

A manuscript bristling with neon flags and Post-its sat on the corner of her desk. I read the title upside down, “No Little Plans.” It was part of a quote by Daniel Burnham, a Chicago architect and urban designer who had lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. More of the quote, I knew, was on the dedication page:
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood.

Olivia chose it as the title for a book on the history of the Mall because Burnham, who played an important role in designing the master plans for several major American cities, had served on a Senate commission that took a hard look at Washington at the beginning of the twentieth century and was appalled by what it saw. A mediocre town with nondescript architecture and poorly planned public spaces, nothing that could hold a candle to London, Paris, or Rome. The commission resurrected the original grand plan of Pierre L'Enfant, the French architect hired by George Washington in 1791 to design the city, after it had been scrapped for more than a century. They razed the hodge-podge collection of buildings, a Victorian park, and even a train station that had overrun the Mall, and started over. Since this was Washington and Congress had been involved, it had taken decades.

Olivia spun around in her chair and smiled when she saw me. “Sophie, sorry I kept you waiting. There's always so much work here. Please sit down. I've got the manuscript ready for you, as you can see. The Post-its and flags mark the places where I want photos. I've also made notes in the margins.”

I realized when we started working together that she was going to be a hands-on editor. What I didn't know was whether she would feel the need to change “puppies” to “young dogs” just to have her imprimatur stamped all over this project. She stood and handed me the manuscript. Then she picked up a book that had been sitting on top of her bookcase.

“I think you should read this. It's a biography of Pierre L'Enfant.”

“Thank you, but I know who Pierre L'Enfant is.”

A look of annoyance crossed her face, and I knew that she was a “young dogs” editor.

“Everyone studied Pierre L'Enfant in high school,” she said in a cool, firm voice, “for about fifteen minutes. This is probably the best book I've read on his life, why he wanted Washington to become a grand capital like Paris and London, and the problems that caused him with Thomas Jefferson, who hated that idea.” She held it out. “And why George Washington finally fired him.”

“Olivia, I'm taking photos of what's here now, not what should have been or didn't get built. You're getting those pictures, the historical photos, from the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian.”

She held the book out to me. “I think it's important for you to understand L'Enfant's vision for Washington. It's important for this book.”

I didn't take it. Long ago I learned to pick the battles worth fighting and let the other ones go. She was trying to do my job, or at least get me to do it the way she wanted. At some point she needed to trust me, or this wasn't going to work.

“And why do you believe I don't?”

“Would you please at least look at it? As a favor to me?”

“I'll make you a deal,” I said. “Let me go through your manuscript first. You've got a lot of notes here. Then we can talk about the book.”

She set it on her desk and gave a little one-shoulder shrug. “Fine. I know you're busy. You're the photographer for the royal wedding.” She sat down and avoided my eyes. “Everyone's talking about it around here. I heard about the party last night at the Austrian ambassador's residence.”

She hadn't been at the party. “Do you know Yasmin?”

Her smile was brittle. “Oh, sure. Everyone here knows her. And her mother. Senator Gilberti's on the Smithsonian board.”

It sounded like a dig at Yasmin, implying Ursula pulled strings to get her daughter a job at the museum.

“I didn't know that.”

She nodded. “How did you end up with the job, if you don't mind my asking? I didn't know you photographed weddings.”

“I don't. A mutual friend introduced me to Victor. He liked my photographs, so he asked me if I'd do it as a personal favor.”

“I should have guessed it was Victor. I heard Yasmin was looking for a celebrity photographer, no disrespect to you.”

“Olivia,” I said, “they're my clients.”

She leaned toward me, elbows on her desk, fingers interlaced. “I wish you the best of luck. Yasmin went after Victor because she wanted his title and all the glamour and wealth that come with who his family is. That's all there is to it. She wants to appear on the cover of magazines because she's such a fashion icon or she went skiing in Gstaad or vacationed on Richard Branson's private island or partied with some rock star after his concert.” She sat back in her chair and folded her arms. There were two bright pink spots in her cheeks. “I wonder how long it will be before she finds a lover.”

Teddy Roosevelt's daughter Alice Roosevelt Longworth, a flamboyant woman who had been known as “the other Washington monument” because of her sharp-tongued political zing
ers, owned a needlepointed pillow that read, “If you can't say something good about someone, sit right here by me.”

“I think we ought to change the subject,” I said. “I'm meeting Yasmin and her mother at the Franciscan Monastery at five o'clock. This is more information than I want to know.”

She looked embarrassed. “I apologize. I shouldn't have said anything, though all of it is an open secret around here. I met Victor last year at a Smithsonian lecture. He's a doll.” She stood up. “Be in touch if you have questions about my notes. And let's get together again when you're done. Maybe the end of next week? I need your spring photos and all the interior shots by the last week of May, by the way.”

I nodded. “I'm still waiting to hear from someone about taking photographs inside the Arts and Industries Building. Though I met a friend of yours who said he could cut the red tape. David Arista.”

Her eyes flashed when I mentioned his name, but she said in a cool voice, “David? Really? How did you meet him?”

“At the party last night and then I ran into him walking through the Ripley Garden.”

She straightened a pile of already tidy papers. “Last year right after Museum Press hired me, we worked together on publicity for a book on the history of the National Portrait Gallery.” She fiddled with the pages until the edges were aligned. “Now he works with Yasmin. They're very close.”

The pink color had returned to her cheeks. “Tell me,” she said, “did he invite you for coffee or a drink?”

I smiled. “He did.”

She didn't smile. “Want some advice about David Arista?”

“Sure.”

She pointed to the corridor outside her door. “Walk down that hall. There are a couple of women who could give it to you.”

I thought about what Thea Stavros had said to me last night:
Get in line, darling.

“I'm not interested in anything except speeding up my request to get into the Arts and Industries Building.”

She reached around and flipped her hair off her neck again. “I wouldn't ask him. Then you'd owe him a favor. And David always collects.” Her phone rang and she glanced down at it. “Sorry, I need to take this. Good luck.”

I left and wondered if she had been talking about the book or David Arista. And if Olivia Upshaw was also one of the women who could give me firsthand advice about the danger of getting involved with him.

• • •

I left the Smithsonian by the Mall entrance and stood under the portico. Across from me, the enormous green dome of the Natural History Museum rose behind a line of bare trees. The rain had come and gone during my meeting with Olivia, and the frigate-sized clouds piled overhead now streamed west toward the river, leaving a swath of bright sky behind. But the streets were still wet and slick, and the slant of the rain had made dark-ringed stains on the curves of the sand-colored American Indian Museum at the far end of the Mall.

As predicted, it took half an hour to find a legal parking place on Capitol Hill and then pass through security in the Russell Senate Office Building. Ursula Gilberti had an office in the Capitol as a member of the Senate leadership, but her secretary had told me I was expected in her private office on the fourth floor of Russell.

It was the oldest of the three Senate office buildings, and to me the two other buildings—Dirksen and Hart—lacked its character, history, and elegance. They also didn't have the magnificent two-story columned Rotunda or the grand Kennedy Caucus Room, where the sinking of the
Titanic
had been investigated and the Watergate hearings had unfolded.

I made a point of detouring through the Rotunda, which was
silent and empty except for a security guard. Daylight flooding through the oculus in the dome softened the severity of the gray-and-white-hued marble, and I stopped to take photographs of the arches and columns and the carvings in the coffered ceiling while the guard watched me. Then I took an elevator to the fourth floor.

Ursula's state flag, the flag of West Virginia, hung from a stand in an alcove in the corridor outside her suite of offices; bright colors against more gray-and-white marble. One of the young female receptionists in the visitors' room took me back outside and walked me to a door that led to the secretary's office, where she handed me over to a white-haired no-nonsense woman. She, in turn, led me into Ursula's office.

The large room was furnished with a quirky mix of modern and antique furniture, the walls painted a buttery yellow and covered with art, mostly avant-garde modern, which surprised me, along with numerous awards and rows of photographs of Ursula with the good and the great, which did not. On the mantel of her carved marble fireplace next to a modern sculpture of what looked like a bronze elephant was my framed engagement photograph of Yasmin and Victor.

She got up from a paper-strewn desk and shook my hand.

“Can I get you and Ms. Medina a cup of coffee, Senator? Tea?” the secretary asked.

Ursula gave me a quizzical look and I shook my head. “Not just now, thanks. Can you buzz me when my two o'clock arrives?”

I glanced at my watch. One fifty. Whatever Ursula had to say wasn't going to take long.

“Sophie, please have a seat.” She gestured to a pair of leather mission-style armchairs across from her desk and I slid into one of them. “Thank you for coming by.”

Last night, the golden light of the candelabras that graced the dining room table and the glittering chandeliers in the formal rooms of the Austrian ambassador's residence had somewhat softened Ursula Gilberti's hard-shell demeanor. She had been a
proud mother at a family celebration, not the tough get-the-deal-done woman she was known as on the Hill. Today she wore a severe black suit with a white blouse and a pearl choker, and any softness I'd seen at that party was gone.

“I have a proposal for you.” She smiled, but it lacked warmth, and already I knew I didn't like where this was going.

She put on a pair of thick-framed reading glasses and picked up a piece of paper from her desk. Though I couldn't see through it, I thought it looked a lot like my contract. “It concerns the fee you're charging.”

It was the fee we'd agreed on after a round of horse trading. I gave her a tight-lipped smile and waited for her to go on. She wanted more sessions for the same price or something like that.

“I'd like you to do this job pro bono.”

“Pardon me?”

“Pro bono. It means you wouldn't charge me for it.”

“I know what pro bono means, Senator.”

“In return, I will recommend you to everyone I know, and believe me, I know a lot of people.”

She had somehow managed to make it sound like she was doing me a favor.

“Thank you for the offer, but I'd prefer to stick to the agreement we have.”

Ursula took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. “I'm not sure you understand. Do you realize how much publicity you're going to get just from being chosen as the photographer for this wedding? A royal wedding in Washington? You couldn't pay for that kind of exposure. Already the guest list includes royalty from just about every European country, senators, cabinet secretaries, a Supreme Court justice . . . not to mention that we're juggling publicists from a couple of rather big names in Hollywood whom I've met over the years and would like to be here.” She folded her hands. “The president and the first lady are on the guest list.”