Mean Woman Blues (15 page)

“I’m looking into funding sources now.”

Carol Ann cast her eyes down, probably hoping not to be tapped for a donation. But that wasn’t at all what Karen had in mind. She wasn’t going to family and friends for money; she was going to do this right: learn to write grant proposals, make formal calls on potential donors. She wasn’t about to hit up an aunt and uncle at a dinner party. But all that seemed a bit too much to explain at the moment. Perhaps she’d jumped the gun by mentioning it.

She gave Carol Ann a reassuring smile. “Actually, about all I’ve done so far is rent and furnish a little office. I’ve only been working on the foundation proper for a couple of weeks.”

Carol Ann’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh! You’re actually working on it.”

Lovely family
, Karen thought to herself, suddenly realizing that Carol Ann thought her too stupid to run a foundation. But she was determined not to let her aunt dampen her spirits. She shrugged. “I’m pretty serious about it.”

Her aunt changed the subject abruptly. “You mentioned having children.”

“Oh, yes. That’s very much in our plans. The sooner the better.”

Carol Ann didn’t pause for a second. “Are you pregnant?” she asked avidly, as if pregnancy wasn’t quite respectable.

Or so Karen thought at first. Actually, she realized later, it was probably the opposite, probably a lot safer and more interesting and comprehensible to her than any foundation.

“I wish,” Karen said. “So far no luck, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.”

Carol Ann gave her an older sister kind of smile. “Well. Dinner’s ready.”

Despite the formal clothes and the elegant surroundings, dinner was on the simple side, as Karen had predicted earlier when she told David what to expect. These people were old-fashioned Texans, and they didn’t bold with foreign cuisines outside of a restaurant.

The first course was a potato soup, followed by perfectly prepared pork chops and fresh vegetables, with strawberry shortcake for dessert.

During dinner, the conversation was mostly about sports and David’s show, with a sprinkling of current events, but afterward the talk turned to politics: whether Guy would run again and against whom. It happened so fast Karen wasn’t sure who had initiated it, her husband or her uncle. But it was clear to her that this was the subject the two of them had wanted to meet to discuss, each for his own reasons.

As David had predicted, Guy wanted to move up: He wanted to run for governor. Karen gushed as if she were surprised, “Oh, Uncle Guy, that’s wonderful. I know we’d… I know we’d love to…”

Her uncle wasn’t even looking at her; he was staring straight at David. Karen was used to that kind of thing. In a family of powerful men, if you didn’t have a penis, you hardly ever got to finish a sentence. She didn’t now.

Her husband gave her a sharp look— a
shut-up
look— and cut in on her. “Why, Guy, I’m delighted to hear that. I was just telling Karen here I was hoping you were going to come up with that. Fact is, I was going to suggest it if you hadn’t thought of it first.”

They all laughed at the absurdity of Guy’s not thinking of it first. Karen was all puffed up about her husband; he really knew how to make people like him. He kept going, as if the words were tumbling spontaneously out of his heart. “I want you to know I’m with you a thousand percent, Guy. Karen and I will do whatever it takes to help you financially, and… well… any way you can think of.”

Uncle Guy made a stab at modesty— not his natural state. “Well, David, I really appreciate that. It sure means a lot to Carol Ann and me.”

“There’s so much I’d like to do,” David said. “Really. So much.”

Karen hid a giggle.
There sure is
, she thought.
Uncle Guy doesn’t even have a clue
. She now understood why her husband, the world’s staunchest Democrat, read everything he could get his hands on about Ronald Reagan, a man logic would tell you he had every reason to hate. In fact, Reagan was his hero. Reagan had done what David Wright wanted to do and believed he could do and intended to do: He had gained a popular following through the world of entertainment and parlayed it into the presidency.

This was the amazing fact her husband had shared with her in the closet, and in an instant she’d grasped how easy it was going to be for him. People loved him. They were drawn to him. And he had a lot more than show biz going for him: He was on the side of the people; he was already changing the world, showing what could be done with the tiniest bit of effort. He not only had a following, he had a track record, and he’d never even run for anything.

She was going to be First Lady. Oh, and that was going to be delicious! Unbeknownst to her male relatives, Karen had causes that went far beyond her modest foundation idea. They had to do not only with women but with children. And education. And the IRS. She didn’t want girls to make the same mistakes she’d made; she wanted tax reform on a scale nobody’d ever even talked about. For openers. In the last two hours, she’d barely listened to Aunt Carol Ann prattle on about her children. She couldn’t wait till she had some influence, a voice of her own.

David put a hand on her leg in the car going home. “You did well tonight.”

She was thrilled with the praise. “It all worked out just like you said.”

“We’re going all the way, baby. We’re going all the way!” He was yelling like a football fan, something she’d never expected of her generally reserved husband. “We’re going to do it, you know that?”

Karen was staring up at him, beaming, in a state of dreamy adoration, so rapt she didn’t hear him unzip his pants till he had guided her hand to him. “Suck me, baby. Come on, suck me. Let’s celebrate.”

She felt confused. “But I thought you said…”

“You thought I said what?” He shouted, flashing furious eyes at her.

She felt like crying. This was no way to have a baby. If she did what he wanted, he wouldn’t want to make love for days. “I thought we were going to start working on the baby.”

“Karen, for God’s sake, you act like tonight was nothing. You know what I accomplished in there? That was big, what happened in there. Don’t I deserve a little recreation? Give me what I want, Goddammit.” He pushed her head toward his crotch and, despite her plans for motherhood, she felt herself becoming aroused.

The day after, sated with good conversation and good sex, David was in his slate-blue home study, door shut, cigar lit, looking out the window at his wife doing laps in the pool— his gorgeous, young, luscious wife with the unfashionable figure of a latter-day Marilyn Monroe.

Not the face, though. Monroe had a fuck-me face; Karen had the face of an angel, of a well-brought-up girl from a good family. It was a WASPy face, a high-school-sweetheart, Peggy Sue kind of face. And a sweetheart she most assuredly was. A beautiful, blonde, sweet-tempered, well-connected sweetheart, whom God had caused to fight with her family just so David could get them all back together again.

It might have seemed amazing luck to anyone else, but, though David would never again be able to work as a minister, there was still enough preacher in him to know how his luck had come about. God had done amazing things for him over the years, and the partnership continued.

What David had realized, watching TV back in that squalid Gulf Coast motel room, was that he really could be another Ronald Reagan. By putting his many talents to use— and he had some Reagan didn’t— he could go all the way. All it took was that sudden flash of divine inspiration to show him how.

He was well on the way already. He had the show, which meant access to increasing numbers of followers. He had Karen and her politically influential family. And he had Rosemarie’s money. The problem was, he didn’t have enough of it.

After his makeover, she’d given him a substantial little grubstake, but most of that was gone. Gone, granted, to good causes, but undeniably gone. Causes like getting a complete new identity in place. If he was going to run for office, things would be checked out. He couldn’t get by with the minimum kit: a professionally forged driver’s license and passport.

Rosemarie could fabricate— for free— a complete employment record at companies owned by the Owens empire, but there were little things. His story involved lifelong friendship with Rosemarie’s late husband, a tale that required manipulated photos showing the two of them together, cash gifts to people who’d swear the two men were inseparable, even an ex-wife and child who couldn’t be traced to any organization with which Errol Jacomine had ever been associated.

That kind of thing. There had to be records at universities he’d never even seen, much less graduated from. There were even newspaper stories to explain how his fingerprints were altered— about a burning building from which he’d rescued a four-year-old child, resulting in severe burns on his hands. Coming out of nowhere was both labor- and cash-intensive.

Not only did the past have to be created, so did the present: His current identity as David Wright required current affluence and not just the appearance of it. He really did have to own a house in University Park and a BMW. He couldn’t just rent, lease, or lie. These things would all be checked. They all had to be perfect. And it was now abundantly obvious that, without them, he’d never have attracted a woman like Karen. (Odd about Karen: Rosemarie hadn’t balked at all, had seemed to find it a grand joke, in fact, his marrying into the McLean family.)

However, having found another man herself, she could hardly complain. But she hadn’t exactly remarried. Knowing Rosemarie, you could bet she wouldn’t compromise so much as a penny of her considerable and hard-won fortune (and David was in a position to know exactly
how
hard-won it was). But getting the million or so he needed might require a little maneuvering, and he wasn’t sure how to go about it.

Because right now, he needed an army. He watched Karen towel off and disappear inside.

All of a sudden he was furious. He realized that watching her was the only thing keeping him calm, and once more he stopped to thank God for her, as he did a dozen times a day. But with his view of her gone, his thoughts turned once more to his immediate needs: 1. To eliminate the Devil-Woman and 2. To raise an army.

Dammit, why couldn’t he have a goddamn army? He’d had one before, and, true, Bettina still seemed to have a few people to call on, but he couldn’t have any connection with them. Ever. Even Bettina couldn’t know about his transformation. No one could.

He got up and paced. The problem was this: How to recruit people to kill the Devil-Spawn? It was hard to recruit when you had a reputation as a multiple murderer. Thus, he couldn’t. His ragtag army would have to consist only of those who already knew him (working far behind the scenes) and those money could buy.

He stopped in his tracks, hit between the eyes with a strange idea. Would money buy Langdon?

No. Hell, no. The thing was personal between them. If he didn’t kill her first, she’d bring him down no matter what it cost her.

He wished it weren’t so damn hard to get good help, what with his son and his trusted lieutenants in prison, nobody was left to run things except Bettina. Bettina was as loyal as a poodle, but she also had the brains of one.

David had to really, really think about Bettina, ask himself a hard question: Could she be trusted to head up a mercenary army?

Joan of Arc she ain’t
, he thought, and the vision of her in armor, riding a horse to victory was so funny be had to laugh.

Hell, she had organizational skills. She’d run two or three of the programs back in the church— a children’s soup kitchen and a sort of labor pool the church had for people down on their luck, folks who needed temporary jobs. She’d even run an event for a campaign once or twice. She just didn’t have a lot of imagination. She couldn’t think on her feet or, for that matter, at all. She had to be given direct orders.

But here was his problem: Except for a couple of contacts in California, she was all he had. And she was certainly the only soldier he had whose loyalty couldn’t be questioned. So she was it— general of the army, chief of staff, and head latrine digger. There wasn’t a choice.

He took a big puff of his cigar, inhaling even though he knew you weren’t supposed to. Maybe it was the sudden lightheadedness, or maybe he was just inspired. Because his mind hared off in a whole new direction.

Maybe there was another way to get Langdon. If he couldn’t kill her, maybe he could disable her. Bring her down big time. There was sure as hell more than one way to skin a cat.

* * *

These days, as May got hotter and hotter, Terri’s life was all about the show, all about her vindication and the new life she was about to lead as a crusader for the rights of innocent citizens beset by evil banks.

She’d even said those very words ironically to Isaac, who had laughed at her. Okay, it was a fantasy— she was having a lot of those these days— but it was something to live for, something to get her mind off her court case. She’d called up Tiffie and run
Mr. Right
by her.

“You’re what?” Tiffie’s voice was scathing, as if Terri’d just announced a detailed plan to kill her grandmother. “You’re going to be on
television
?” Like a TV studio was an opium den.

Terri tried not to let it bother her. She bubbled on like some merry little fountain. “Yeah, it’s this great show about… uh… righting wrongs. I know it sounds corny, I mean, kind of unbelievable, but that’s what they actually do. See, they had this woman…”

“Terri, I really can’t continue to represent you if you do that.”

Terri didn’t even hesitate. “Oh. Well, okay then. Thanks for everything, Tiffie.” And she hung up before Tiffie could say another word. That was the way she fired her lawyer— as if she wasn’t doing it at all. She didn’t look back, either. She might need another lawyer, but she wasn’t going to think about that for a while. She was feeling better, and she didn’t want anything bumming her out.

She was still smoking, but that was by choice. She’d quit stuffing her face with junk food, and now she had to take off the five pounds she’d gained— fast before her TV debut. Cigarettes would help with that.