Sleeping Beauty (81 page)

In his bedroom, dressing for his news conference, Vince watched himself on the program, which had been taped that afternoon, and smiled thinly. Not many people would have been so crude as to ask that, but if it hadn't been asked, he would have brought it up himself. People were always
suspicious of anyone with $60 million and this had given him the chance to take care of that.

On the television screen, he lowered his eyes briefly. “I've been very fortunate. My father was one of the greatest builders this country has ever seen. He gave me my start. I wouldn't be here without his help and his confidence in me, and his love. He died last year, and not a day goes by that I don't thank him, and miss him. I had some money from him and I used it to start a company of my own in Denver, building shopping malls and office buildings. Denver is one of the greatest cities in the country—healthy, spacious, rich in resources, and even richer in its people, real achievers, like their pioneer ancestors—and I got there at what you'd call a boom time, and Denver was very good to me. I made a lot of money and invested it, mostly in Colorado, and now a lot of it is going to stay there.”

“In Tamarack,” the host said eagerly. “Now this part you folks out there may not know,” he said to the camera. “Tamarack means glamour and glitter and celebrities to a lot of people, but lately it's been in a little trouble, and it looked like it might have to be sold. So the senator . . . well, Senator, you take it from here.”

“There's not much to add, except that my family owns The Tamarack Company, and all of us love that town more than we can say. It's our true home; our spiritual home you might say. My father discovered it when it was a little ghost town hidden in the mountains, and he built it up to a place known all over the world. And The Tamarack Company, which my father founded, is deeply rooted in the life of the town and its people. But all companies have their ups and downs, and for a while now the company's had a series of problems that worried the family to the point that they thought they had no other choice than to sell.”

“And then we know what would have happened,” the host said, “but let's remind our audience. Folks, what the senator did was save that mountain town from the kind of development that environmentalists are fighting every day on our behalf. You tell 'em, Senator.”

“Development of itself is not a bad thing,” Vince corrected
gently. “But it has to be controlled, because it's like a child whose eyes are bigger than its stomach. We should never pave over the land, or build on it, without the most careful study and for the best reasons. I opposed the sale of The Tamarack Company, and I gave the money to keep it in our family, because the people who wanted to buy it had no respect for the land or the history of the town. They wanted to cram it with high rises and parking structures; they wanted to build a four-lane highway the length of the valley, with overpasses and underpasses that would have increased pollution and destroyed the natural beauty that brought all of us there in the first place. They had no plan for protecting the elk and the birds and the purity of the streams; they had no concern for the children who live there, the families who thrive there, the values we all hold dear—”

“Senator,” the butler said, standing in the doorway, “the reporters are downstairs.”

Vince turned off the television set and walked through the living room, tightening his tie. Clara was still in Denver. He had told her to stay there; everything was under control. She might have stood at his side for the press conference, but it was not necessary. Not yet. The man of the decade. Well, why not? There would be many ways to use that. And that was when he would want Clara at his side.

He paused at the door to the conference room on the lower level of his building, counting the reporters sitting on folding chairs, waiting for him. He had expected a hundred; he'd gotten about thirty. Someone hadn't done his job. Mentally Vince reviewed the members of his staff to think of who it might have been. He'd told them how he wanted this pushed, blown up far beyond what would otherwise have been a nice little story no bigger than the stories about someone's donation of a private art collection or the funding of a new hospital. It had been easy with television talk shows; this was the kind of human interest story they hungered for, and a few phone calls and letters had put him on screens all over the country. But the press was tougher; he'd have to work on making sure the press gave him the kind of coverage he wanted.

He stood behind a podium on a small raised platform at one end of the room and glowed like a benevolent preacher as camera flashes burst around him like fireworks. “What can I tell you that you don't already know?”

“What are you going to live on now?” someone called.

There was laughter, but Vince answered seriously, “I have a little of my own money left.”

“How much?”

“What's your salary?” Vince shot back. The room filled with laughter again; he saw them all smile at him, admiring him, and he knew that most of them envied him. It was a lie; he had millions still hidden in real estate and land trusts, but no one would know that. “A little,” he repeated firmly, “and my salary as a senator. And if my family wants to take care of me in my old age”—he chuckled—“I may not be in a position to say no. But we're a family. We'll always help each other; we'll always be part of each other. That's what this is all about.”

At the back of the room, Vince saw a rapt face, heart shaped, framed by short blond hair. Sara, he thought. Her green eyes watched him worshipfully. Little Sara—what was her last name?—from the
Rocky Mountain News.
Come all the way from Denver, to see him.

“Senator,” a reporter said, “there's a problem with taxes here that nobody's talked about yet. Your office said you were
giving
your family this sixty million dollars. You're not really doing that, are you?”

“Not literally,” Vince said with a smile. “You're absolutely right; if I handed that money to my brother, who's president of Chatham Development, he'd have to pay gift tax; if I gave it to the company, they'd owe corporate tax. In either case it would run about fifty percent. Now you know I'm not in the business of taking revenue away from my government, but if I clean out my bank account to help my family, I want them to be able to use every penny of it. So it won't be an outright gift. My brother and the company lawyers have worked it out that they're creating a special category of preferred stock in Chatham Development Corporation, and selling it to me for sixty million dollars. The
stock has no voting rights, it doesn't pay dividends, it won't appreciate in value, and I can't sell or transfer it without the approval of the Chatham Development Board. In my vocabulary, that's a gift.”

“Not bad,” a reporter said approvingly. “Must have been hard to give all that up, though. No rights at all in sixty million dollars' worth of stock?”

“We don't ask for rights when we give gifts, unless they come with strings,” Vince said softly. “I don't attach strings where my family is concerned.”

“Hearts and flowers,” muttered a reporter to her neighbor. “Do you really believe all this?”

“Senator, what happened to Chatham Development?” someone asked. “Your father started it, right? And it was one of the Fortune 500—”

“Yes, and it will be again. All companies have their ups and downs; Chatham Development will be up there at the top again, where it belongs.”

“Right, you said the same thing about The Tamarack Company, but what
happened?”

“Well, I'm afraid I'm going to have to disappoint you on that question; I'm just not going into it. When companies run into trouble, a lot of factors are at work: management, customers, supplies, the economy, even the United States government, with all its regulations. It's not helpful to single out any one of those; it's all in the past, and now that they've got the money, they're going to come back and be a fine, strong company again. They've promised me that and I believe them.”

“A little too nice,” a reporter murmured to the cameraman next to him. “What do you want to bet we're hearing about a tenth of the real story?”

“But what do you think about the management up there?” someone else asked. “Isn't it true that when a company gets in trouble, the first thing you do is look at management? Could you talk about that a little more?”

“Absolutely not,” Vince said firmly.

“Well, could you tell us something about the buyer? Who was it? In an article in yesterday's
New York Times
you were
quoted on all the things that would have happened to the town if the company'd been sold, but you didn't say who was going to buy it. Who was it?”

“Various investors were interested, from as far away as Egypt,” Vince said, “but since nothing came of any of those offers, I don't think it would be appropriate for me to name them. After all,” he chuckled, “I've been a little harsh in my criticism of them.”

“Was it anybody you knew?”

Vince hesitated. “Some of them.” He smiled. “I won't be spending much time with them anymore.”

“Senator, can't you give us some names?”

“Not if I can help it.” He was still smiling. “The curse of the politician is he has to keep his mouth shut. Especially around you people.”

He watched them laugh again. “How about the White House?” someone asked. “Anything to tell us about that, Senator?”

“Well, yes.” Vince watched them lean forward on a collective breath. He gave them a boyish smile, but behind the podium rage was locked inside him, the rage he woke with each day and went to bed with each night so that it was becoming a permanent part of him. But the only one who caught a glimpse of it was Sara, who looked puzzled. “I've been honored by the number of people—top-notch, patriotic people—who've urged me to run for president. And because they've been people I admire and respect, I've given the idea serious thought. As you know, we even commissioned a couple of polls that turned out to be very favorable. But I've decided I am not going to run.”

The room burst into activity. Cameras began flashing again, reporters sat straight. “How come, Senator?” “What happened?” “Are you going to—” “What will you—” “Just a week ago you—” “Did the president have anything to do with—”

“If you'll let me,” Vince said, his voice riding over the uproar. His hand was raised, and the questions died away. “The people of Colorado, the best people in the world when you come right down to it, sent me here to do a job for them
and I promised them I'd do it as completely as I could. I like doing it, and I think they like what I'm doing. So I'm staying right here, in the Senate. That is, if they tell me I can, in November. If they don't, I'll go back to being a builder, nothing to be ashamed of, but not as satisfying as working for the good of one's state and one's country. So, if it's all right with the voters of that great state, you'll see me here for a long time. That's all I'm going to say about it. Are there any more questions about the gift to my family?”

“Senator, have you talked to the president? Did he have anything to do with—”

“I said I wouldn't talk about that.”

“But Senator, that last poll, candidates would give their eye teeth for a poll like—”

Vince shook his head. His rage pulsed inside him.

“Senator, couldn't you tell us what changed your mind? You knew you were representing the people of Colorado last week, too, but there was still a lot of talk about the White House from some of your staff.”

“They hadn't cleared that with me,” Vince said. “Sara,” he said as her hand went up.

Her voice was small but clear. “Did your family ask you to give up the idea?”

“What?
Sara, I'll say it once more: I won't talk about my decision. I will say that no one in my family would ask such a thing; they trust me at least as much as the voters of Colorado do.” A low ripple of laughter met his chuckle. “And I trust them, which is why I'm making a gift of sixty million dollars to get them back on their feet.”

“Well, okay, let's go back to that,” another reporter said. “How do you feel about being without that money? You'll have to change your whole lifestyle, won't you?”

Vince answered with a humorous anecdote about his father teaching him to be self-reliant when he was a boy by taking him hunting in Tamarack. He had never hunted, and neither had Ethan, but the reporters wrote it down; it was good human interest. He answered their questions for exactly thirty minutes, then turned toward the door. “Come on, now, that's enough. I can't talk about myself anymore.
Unless you want to ask me about my committee work, or the bills I'm sponsoring.”

“But this is a tough act for anybody else to follow, Senator. If you change your mind about the White House, you'd have a head start it'd be tough to beat.”

“I didn't do it to have a head start on anything. I did it because my family needed help and thank God I was able to give it. That's what makes me feel good right now. Though I confess I never object to a friendly press.” He smiled as they laughed appreciatively, and then he stood on the platform as if in a halo of sunlight, watching them leave. It was his greatest triumph, and he wore it like a crown while rage gnawed inside him and the glittering image of the White House mocked him from a distance, like the lights of the harbor he had seen through his window and mistakenly thought of as stars.

Some of the reporters came to him on their way out of the room, and he stepped down from the platform and shook their hands. “Good to see you,” he said to them. “I look forward to seeing a lot of you between now and November.”

“I hope you change your mind about the White House,” said the last reporter, a columnist for the
Denver Post.
“We need men like you. One thing: you're a sure thing for reelection this fall; everybody knows it.”