Sleeping Beauty (31 page)

“Are you angry?” Dora asked, looking up. “I shouldn't have talked to you that way; I'll never do it again. I'm really not like that. Please forgive me, Anne. Tell me you won't . . . fire me, or whatever. You're still my lawyer, aren't you? I can't go looking for another one! The first one didn't understand me and I know you do, and in a month the trial starts and
you can't leave me now!”

“I won't leave you,” Anne said quietly. “But I meant what I said about the truth. You'll have to think about what you're saying and make sure you're not telling me what you think is true, or what you'd like to believe is true. Do you understand that?”

Dora's face was bright again. “Yes, yes, of course. I won't ever lie to you.”

Anne sighed. Of course you will, she thought. But we'll do the best we can. She turned to another page of her notepad. Just four weeks to their court date. They had a lot of work to do.

*   *   *

Vince telephoned Dora twice a month. He liked to think she would rather talk to him than to her mother, and he always made sure he had a collection of Washington gossip with which to spice his calls. He also made sure others knew about those regular calls; they were important to his image.

“I'm about to call my daughter,” he said when Ray Beloit showed up at his apartment one night at ten o'clock. “I'll be a while; we always have a lot to talk about.”

“I think you'd rather hear this.” Beloit walked around Vince with confident familiarity, loosening his tie as he led
the way to the study. “I've been down at party headquarters. Your name came up.”

Annoyed, Vince followed at his own pace. When he reached the study, Beloit was pouring himself a drink. “Want one?”

“I'll take care of it.”

“It's a big night, Vince. Don't get tight-assed just 'cause I made my own drink. I've spent enough time here to feel right at home; I'll be spending a lot more. Aren't you interested in what I said?”

“My name came up. What about it? There's an election next year.”

“And there's a bonzo out there in the boondocks who has a real shot at beating you.”

“Is that what they're saying downtown?”

“Some of 'em. They're getting nervous. So are you.”

“They're a bunch of old women.” Vince poured Scotch into his glass and added ice cubes. “It might be close, but there's no way he can win.”

Beloit pulled a newspaper clipping from his pocket. “The
Rocky Mountain News
took a poll yesterday—”

“I saw it. What the hell is wrong with you, Ray? This is July; the primary is next April. It's been a quiet summer; the paper's trying to sell a few copies. They may have fudged the percentages; I wouldn't put it past them. Anyway, an election poll nine months before the primary is for wrapping fish and not a damn thing else; you know that; you knew it before I did. What's got into you, anyway?”

“Uh-huh.” Beloit sprawled on Vince's black leather couch, balancing his drink on the ample mound of his stomach and staring at it as if willing it to remain vertical. “Your name came up a lot. Not just for next year's race. But you gotta win that one. That's the first thing.”

Vince's eyes narrowed. “And the second?”

“Well, there was all this talk about the White House. Three years downstream. Not a lot of time, with primaries and all.”

A long silence fell. Vince walked to the curved wall of
windows and gazed at the fountain playing in lighted arcs in the plaza below, and the brightly lit outdoor café beyond it. Over the years, he and Beloit had talked about the presidency and had sounded out other politicians and major donors to the party. But it had always been in the future; Vince knew that a Western senator from a sparsely populated state would need an even more powerful base than candidates from the East. But if the party insiders were talking about three years from now . . .

He turned and let his gaze travel over the heavy black furniture of his study, the books on the walls, the photographs of Dora that were everywhere. He liked visitors to see them. They would help; Dora would help. It would be best if he were married. He'd have to take care of that, and soon. Not too good: three wives. But over the years the country had elected single presidents, presidents with mistresses, presidents with illegitimate kids, even a president who had been divorced and remarried. There were ways around anything in the past.

“So you gotta get reelected next year,” Beloit said. “And by a landslide.”

Vince glanced at him. “I told you I'm not worried.”

“You said it might be close.” Beloit took a long drink. “I've been watching this hick, reading up on him and so on. He's saying nasty things about you, and he's got a following. Not a big one in Denver, yet, but he's working the back roads and picking up endorsements like he's flypaper. But shit, you're not worried, right? You're not interested that we could make sure he's out of it before the primary.”

“I wouldn't veto it,” Vince said after a moment. “You've got enough to do it?”

“Just enough. He's almost a Boy Scout. But we found a couple things that oughta do it. If we have to, we'll use his brother; God, what a ditz. You wouldn't believe it; a few years ago he—”

“I don't want to know. Take care of it and don't talk about it.”

“I don't talk, and you fucking well know it.” Still lying down, Beloit held out his glass. Vince gave it a quick, cold
glance and turned away to refill his own. Beloit's breathing was heavy in the silence. At last he swung his legs over the side of the couch. “I didn't finish. There's a few other things to talk about. One major one.” He poured Scotch to the top of his glass and bent to sip the first mouthful. Straightening up, he groaned and held a hand to the small of his back. “Getting old. Okay, this is where we're at. I can take care of the hick, make sure you get your landslide. I can push the fellas downtown to stay behind you and not go looking for a different glamour puss for whatever crazy reason they might think up. There's a lot of work to do, but we can pull it off; my bottom line opinion is we can get you the nomination. But there's gotta be something in all this for me.”

“Secretary of state?” Vince asked with a smile. “Ambassador to the Court of St. James?”

“Those aren't for me,” said Beloit seriously. “I would've liked either one, but I never went to college and I don't always talk right and I look lousy in a tux. Besides, I'd never get past the background check; there's stuff that'd blow me out of the water. Stuff I've never told you about, or my wife, or nobody. Funny: you get involved in things, you don't know what's gonna come back fifteen, twenty, thirty years later, maybe more, and it's like you've been carrying this bomb around in your pocket all those years, not knowing it's there, and then all of a sudden you get this warning and you know it'll go off if you do one particular thing, and it's always the thing you fucking most
want
to do, only now there's no way you can do it. Ever. You know?”

“I suppose it's money,” Vince said as if Beloit had not spoken. “How much?”

“Fuck off, Vince, I'm not talking about money. I'm talking about something classy, something like being an ambassador, but better because nobody'll give a damn about what I used to be.”

Vince looked at him as if he were a child. “You can't buy class.”

“Some people do. I probably couldn't. But I can
own
class. That's what I want out of all this. Listen, Vince. I want to own The Tamarack Company.”

Vince stared at him. “You what?”

“Why not? It's as classy as you can get. And I need something like that. I miss Lake Forest Development; it was the glitziest thing I ever had going for me. Lorraine says I gotta find something to do, get me out of the house, make me perk up. But it's gotta be fun, Vince, and classy, and that's Tamarack. 'Course they could be having a big problem with the EPA wanting to take soil samples on the old mine dumps—the whole east end of town, right? If they decide there's dangerous minerals leaking out there, the town's got a pile of trouble. I know; I looked into it. The homeowners have to pay for the cleanup in their own backyards and they don't like that. And there's gonna be all kinds of folks who all of a sudden have shivers and shakes and they blame the pollution from the mine dumps, which means the company that owns them, and that's your family. So you'd have to move people to other parts of town and clean up the land and redevelop it . . . lots of trouble, lots of money. Who the hell sicced the EPA on your family? Somebody got a grudge against them? Or some Boy Scout in the government decided to set an example and picked a fancy resort to do it in. Well, whatever, I still want it. You say the name Tamarack just about anywhere in the world and people's ears prick up. They start thinking about movie stars, TV stars, ex-kings—what the hell, real kings, too—all that money and glamour and excitement. They think it's a hell of a place. And it is. And I want it. And your brother Charles wants to sell. He fucked up royally in Illinois and he needs the money. I'm not telling you anything you don't know.”

“If my brother wants to sell, call him up and make an offer.”

“No, you still don't get it. This is what you can do while I'm busy greasing your wheels for the White House. You can take care of this one little deal for me; it's all I want. Talk your family into selling; some of 'em don't want to. And talk 'em into selling low. I don't want to overpay; I've done that a few times and I don't like it, it makes me feel like people are laughing at me. This is a cinch for you, Vince; you've got
influence there. The big senator, fame, influence, television; the whole bit. Families eat it up. So that's where we're at. I get to buy The Tamarack Company for a sweet price, and I do it real soon; I don't want to wait. And you get a red carpet to the White House. You got my word on that, Vince; you're gonna be president. President Vincent Chatham of the United States of America. We have got one great time ahead of us, guaranteed.”

Vince poured another drink. “I'll think about it.”

“No, no, I need to know you'll do it, Vince. You wanted to know about my meetings today; I told you right off the bat. Which is what I want from—”

The telephone rang. Vince picked it up from his desk and heard Dora's voice. “It's my daughter,” he said to Beloit. “We'll go on with this tomorrow.”

“We should settle it now.”

“Seven-thirty. Breakfast. And bring whoever knows the most about where we go from here. Not a gang; just one or two people who talk sense, not campaign slogans.”

“You could call her back, five minutes max.”

“Damn it, I want to talk to my daughter! Nothing interferes with that!”

Beloit finally got it. “What devotion,” he said with a sigh. “A good family man, a good father, a loyal, caring,
trustworthy
man. Women especially can appreciate that. I'll see you tomorrow.”

“My campaign manager,” Vince said into the telephone. He waited until he heard the closing of the front door. “I'll be needing a new one, though; he's not big enough for what's coming up. Listen: this should please you—”

“Daddy,” said Dora, “I finally met my cousin Anne.”

Vince dropped into his desk chair. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“My cousin. Come on, Daddy, I know you never talk about her, but that doesn't mean she doesn't exist. I met her last week. She calls herself Anne Garnett now; she changed it when she took off, when she was fifteen. Why didn't anybody ever talk about her? I asked her, but I can't get a straight answer.”

Garnett, Vince thought. Her mother's name. That never occurred to Ethan and Charles, or those half-assed detectives they hired. “How do you know all that?”

“She told me. I met her at Gail's house in Tamarack. She was at the funeral; you saw her; remember I pointed her out and said everybody was looking at her?”

“She was at Gail's house?”

“I just said she was.”

“Charles called there. So did some other people. Gail said she didn't know where she was.”

“I don't know anything about that. Gail knew where she was when I got there; she was sitting on the deck, having lunch. Was there some scandal about her or something? Why else wouldn't anybody talk about her? She's an interesting woman—not your type, though; she's very strong and positive; she doesn't lean. Very sharp, too, and she doesn't bullshit. That's why I hired her.”

“Hired
her?”

“She's my lawyer. I told you I fired the other—”

“God damn it!” Vince leaped from his chair, pulling the telephone with him. “What the fuck is the matter with you? I told you—”

“Don't talk to me like that, Daddy
. I'll hang up.”

He let his breath out. “I told you to drop that suit. I thought you did.”

“Of course not. Why would I?”

“When you fired that idiot lawyer, you weren't dropping it?”

“No, only him. He wasn't on my side. I need somebody who sympathizes with me. I should have had a woman from the beginning. Men don't understand these things. Look at you; you don't really care whether I get justice or not. You didn't like Josh, either. You never like the things I do.”

“Don't whine; you know I hate it. Wait a minute.” Vince switched the call to his portable telephone and began to pace the length of the room. The overhead light glared in his eyes and he turned it off and stood still while his eyes adjusted to the dark. A trial. And Anne.

A trial. Sex and money.

And Anne.

You got my word on that; you're gonna be president, Vince. President Vincent Chatham of the United States of America
.