The Race (46 page)

Corey fell quiet as, one after another, a gallery of faces filled his thoughts: Clay, Lexie, Larkin, Marotta, and, finally, Joe Fitts. Then his cell phone rang and, as he answered, Spencer's.

"Hey." It was Dakin Ford. "No time to explain, but I've made headway with Mary Ella Ware—most particularly, her lawyer.

"Boy's begun to worry about his law license, maybe spending time in a prison cell with a 'special friend' named Bubba." Ford gave a sardonic laugh. "Busy night for me—in a few minutes, I've gotta second your nomination with a deeply moving speech. But I'm meeting this shyster right after. Whatever you can do to survive the first ballot, do it."

When Corey looked up, Spencer was holding out his cell phone, his expression grim. "It's Marotta."

Corey took the phone, "Hello, Rob. Looking for Super Bowl tickets?"

Marotta did not laugh. "It's time to talk," he said. "Just the two of us, in person."

WHEN MAROTTA OPENED THE DOOR OF THEIR MEETING PLACE, THE television was tuned to the convention.

The two men did not shake hands. Waving Corey to a leather couch, Marotta sat on the edge of a wing chair, his posture alert, his face composed but expressionless. Corey decided to wait him out; the course of the conversation, he guessed, would be dictated by whether Blair had warned Marotta that Corey knew his secret.

"This has been hard," Marotta began. "Politics for stakes like this are brutal."

Corey shook his head. "Not everything is politics, Rob. Nor is politics an excuse for doing anything to win."

As Marotta considered him, Dakin Ford's voice issued from the television. "In a time of war," Ford told the convention, "there is no substitute for character, and no surrogate for courage."

Angling his head toward the television, Marotta said softly, "No one can take those from you."

"Perhaps not. But people can try. You certainly tried in South Carolina."

Marotta frowned. "You don't mean to make this easy, do you?"

Corey shrugged. "What reason would I have?"

A cacophony of shouts and cheers caused Marotta to glance toward the television. When his gaze remained there, Corey followed it.

Grinning, Ford waved to someone in the convention hall, and then the camera panned to a smiling Lexie Hart waving back from the VIP box. More delegates turned to watch as cameramen scrambled toward her—all at once, the business of the convention simply stopped, given over to the full-throated roar of excitement from Corey's delegates after suffering through three nights of choreographed adoration for Mary Rose Marotta. In that electric moment, Lexie, appearing entirely at ease in this new role, looked transcendently like the First Lady of a country filled with promise.

The applause kindled a demonstration, Corey's supporters filling the aisles. From the Ohio delegation, and then from the delegates around them, a chant rose amid the outcries. "_Lexie,_ Lexie, Lexie ..."

Ford propped his arms on the podium, still grinning, a spectator deeply enjoying the scene before him. Then Lexie sat, breaking her connection with the crowd, allowing the convention to refocus on the daunting task before it.

"A nice moment," Marotta commented matter-of-factly. "But you're about to lose."

Edgy, Corey turned to him. "You still think that?"

"I
know
that. The only question is what you gain by playing this out." Leaning forward, Marotta spoke over the ebbing tumult broadcast from the convention floor. "If you withdraw tonight and give me your support, you'll gain the party's gratitude, and perhaps a great deal more."

Corey hesitated, left to guess at Marotta's motives; if Marotta knew that Corey had learned about Blair, his air of calm bespoke an iron nerve. "And what might that be?" Corey asked.

"Your choice of cabinet positions," Marotta said evenly. "State or Defense."

He doesn't know
. Corey was suddenly sure. Several realizations flowed from this: that Blair was more afraid of Marotta and Price than of Corey; that Blair meant to gut out the first ballot as Marotta had demanded; and that his own chances of surviving to a second ballot rested on whether the anonymous leaker—Sam Larkin, in Corey's guess—exposed Blair within the hour. As if Marotta's offer was of little moment, Corey turned to the television.

For a moment, the two men watched a conservative black congressman—a former football star chosen to nominate Marotta—succeed Ford at the podium. Casually, Corey asked Marotta, "You really think Blair can hold Illinois?"

Though he repressed the temptation to study Marotta's expression, Corey could feel a new tautness in the room. In a dismissive tone, Marotta said, "Why wouldn't he?"

Corey shrugged again, still watching as Marotta's advocate warmed to his task. "We cannot," the man proclaimed, "and
will not
turn this party over to those who would protect neither innocent life nor the sanctity of marriage."

"Forget the party," Corey said conversationally. "How could any president turn the Defense Department over to a guy like that?"

Marotta did not answer. "_Who,_" the congressman cried out, "will stop the gay agenda from unraveling the moral fabric of America?"

With fleeting and bitter amusement, Corey tried to imagine Marotta's discomfiture, trapped with a rival he was trying to co-opt as his surrogate denounced him. "_Who,_" the congressman demanded, "will speak out against those who personify the degraded Hollywood culture that schools our young in promiscuity and violence?"

As a guttural outcry came from Marotta's delegates, some turned to stare up at Lexie. His voice level, Corey said, "You could have stopped this in South Carolina, Rob. You could have stopped it anytime you wanted to."

He heard Marotta stir, and then the congressman's lips began silently moving above the word "mute." Only then did Corey turn to Marotta, remarking, "Beginning to wish that hatred made no sound?"

Marotta's expression evinced sincerity, even regret. "I wish a lot of things, Corey. But whoever you blame for whatever's happened, it'll take both of us to stop this now. If we don't, the party may be torn apart, the nomination not worth having. Then both of us will bear the blame."

Not for the first time, Corey marveled at the complexity of humans, and of
this
human, the beloved son of a hardworking family, by all accounts as good a husband and father as his ambition allowed, and yet so ambitious that, in the end, his strivings to achieve his most cherished goal robbed him of the decency that would give this achievement meaning. "We both are who we are," Corey told him. "The race has taken us too far."

Marotta shook his head, offering a small smile of demurral. "Even for the sake of the country? Who we both
are,
I hope, is men who believe that some things are bigger than ourselves."

Watching Marotta, Corey felt goose bumps on his skin. "What are you suggesting, Rob?"

"That you hear me out." Marotta seemed to will his body into stillness, his expression into a semblance of calm. "I'm offering you the vice presidency. Not just the nomination—the office. If we run as a ticket, no one can beat us."

For all his readiness, hearing this from Marotta stunned Corey. "After all that's happened," he said softly.

"Yes." Marotta leaned forward. "Is it really so astounding? We both want to be president. After eight years as my vice president, it'll be your turn."

Caught between ambition and revulsion, Corey saw them as two men about to define themselves forever. "So Blair is willing to step aside."

Slowly Marotta nodded, his eyes still fixed on Corey. "For the good of the party, yes. But only for you, Corey."

Corey felt a quiet laugh escape him. "After the Gulf War," he said, "I never thought another man could make my skin crawl. But I should never underestimate you, Rob."

Anger and confusion surfaced in Marotta's eyes. "I
know
Blair's gay," Corey told him. "I know you're blackmailing him to hold his delegates. I know you've offered his spot to Costas. And now you've offered it to me.

"If you were me, Rob, and knew all
that,
what would you do?"

In the silence that followed, Marotta's face turned ashen. "But then we both know the answer," Corey said. "You'd take me down by destroying Blair. That gives you the next hour or so to wonder whether I've become like you."

Marotta stood. "What do you want, dammit?"

Corey rose to face him. "We'll both have to see. But there's one thing you shouldn't worry about. I won't ask you to be vice president."

Turning, Corey left the room.

RIDING BACK TO the Essex House, Corey watched CNN and talked to Spencer. "Tully can't crack Illinois," Spencer reported.

"Hear any rumors about Blair?"

"Not yet—he's still holding the delegation by a single vote. What the hell did Marotta want?"

"Me for a running mate."

"You're joking."

"No. By the end I could almost smell his desperation. He's like us—worried about Illinois. Except that he doesn't know what we're going to do."

Spencer was silent for a moment, and then said sourly, "Or not do. If Blair holds on, I think we'll lose on the first ballot."

On CNN, Jeff Greenfield told Wolf Blitzer, "To clinch the nomination, Senator Marotta needs the votes of one thousand and fifty-one delegates. According to our count, Senator Marotta is within five or six delegates of that. Even should Governor Larkin hew to his favorite-son status, if Christy breaks for Marotta, the game's over."

"What about Christy?" Corey asked Spencer.

"He's still holding out. But he's under pressure to pledge his delegates to Marotta. Why be on the sidelines when Marotta hits a thousand fifty-one?"

Corey thanked him, and called Drew Tully.

WHEN COREY PHONED, Tully was in the middle of the Illinois delegation, his forehead covered with sweat, watching Blair give a hasty pep talk to a cluster of delegates Tully was pursuing. Blair's frenetic attentiveness suggested desperation, and his gaze darted from one face to another as though he were a playground monitor among a gaggle of fractious children. The atmosphere of antagonism within the delegation was exacerbated by the heat and the claustrophobic anger of rival delegates packed too close together. As he answered, Tully scrolled his BlackBerry for fresh intelligence. "Anything new?" Corey asked.

"Nothing," Tully said, and then a text message from his friend Sean Gilligan appeared: "Urgent—check out the Gage Report ASAP."

"Call you back," he told Corey.

BY THE TIME Corey reached his suite Dana Harrison and Jack Walters had gathered to watch the balloting, and Spencer was calling on his cell phone. "Tell Dana to get the Gage Report on her laptop," Spencer said hurriedly.

For an instant, Corey wondered why Spencer was bothering with that rabid right-wing blog and then, as swiftly, understood. "Someone fed Blair to David Gage."

"Everything but the pictures," Spencer replied.

ON THE FLOOR, Drew Tully grabbed Blair by the arm, wresting him from a huddle with two supporters. In a shrill voice, Blair snapped at Tully, "I've got no time for you."

The delegates—a paunchy state senator and a well-coifed teacher, the substitute for Walter Riggs—gaped in astonishment as Tully clapped his hand behind Blair's neck and pressed his face inches from his own. "Make time," Tully whispered roughly. "I just opened your closet door."

He watched Blair's eyes turn glassy. From the podium, the chair of the convention proclaimed, "The roll call of the states will begin ..."

"You're all over the Gage Report," Tully told Blair under his breath. "So here's what you're going to do. We're having our own caucus, right here on the floor, and you're going to enlighten us as to your 'status.' It's not kosher to make people vote without them knowing that you're finished."

IN THE SKYBOX, Spencer called Christy's manager, Dan Hansen. "Crunch time, Dan. What you boys gonna do?"

"Hold out, if we can. But Louisiana's crumbling—we may have an uprising on our hands."

Spencer gazed down at the Louisiana delegation and saw two delegates face-to-face, their posture and gesticulations betraying bitter conflict. "They got a laptop over there?"

"Sure."

"Then tell them to check out the Gage Report. That may be all you'll need."

AT THE ESSEX House, Corey and Jack Walters watched the balloting begin as Dana Harrison scanned the screen of her laptop. Turning, she looked at Corey in wonder. "Blair's gay. The Gage Report just outed him."

Torn between pity and relief, Corey imagined the scene in the Illinois delegation and then, in the hours to follow, the swift and terrible unraveling of Blair's entire life. "I know," he said softly. "Blair's done."

"But that's
good
for us. The man sold you down the river."

"Alabama,"
the chair called out on CNN.

The head of the delegation, a silver-haired ex-congressman, proclaimed, "It is with much pride that, on behalf of the great state of Alabama, I cast all forty-eight votes for the next president of the United States, Senator Corey Grace."

As the crowd erupted, the camera panned to Lexie Hart, smiling as Dakin Ford's wife, Christie, whispered in her ear. But amid the Alaska delegation, the next to vote, a tall man in an Uncle Sam costume screamed, "Traitors!" at the delegates from Alabama.

"Alaska,"
the chair called out.

THE ROLL CALL proceeded, with each delegation hewing to its expected vote.

"Idaho."

Impatient, Corey waited for Idaho to follow the script. "The great state of Idaho," its governor shouted back, "home of Boise State, the new football power of America, proudly casts all thirty-two votes for Senator Rob Marotta."

"Illinois."

As the camera panned to Illinois, Corey saw that the delegation had pressed around Blair and Tully in a disorderly scrum, straining to see and hear. No one acknowledged the call of the roll.

"Illinois,"
the chair repeated shrilly.

Sitting beside Corey, Jack Walters mumbled, "Come on, Drew." On the screen, Tully spoke rapidly to Blair, his expression venomous, as a rumble of confusion spread across the convention floor. Then Tully thrust a microphone in Blair's face.