American Quartet

by Warren Adler

  The line moved slowly. Many of the guests were already known to the President. They were a mixture of cabinet officers, senators, congressmen, ambassadors, businessmen, actors and actresses, and those who, like Remington, had helped in the campaign. Remington’s date, Cordelia Blaine, a stately woman magazine editor from New York, could not quite conceal her nervousness, despite her frozen air of nonchalance. For most of the guests the ambiance was awesome. This was the pinnacle of social success. A state dinner. Guests had flown in from all parts of the country and their names would appear in many of the nation’s papers tomorrow morning.

  “What should I say?” the Blaine woman whispered.

  “Tell him how nice it is to be here,” Remington soothed. Most people were tongue-tied in the imposing presence. He was, after all, the President. The man.

  “I mean something substantive. Something important.”

  “Say something about his being right about the Russians?”

  “Not that important.”

  The line moved. They were getting closer to the President. He noted that most of the guests tried to hide their fawning. But it was futile. They knew where they were.

  All doubts had been dissipated. All tests passed. He had, he was certain, run the gauntlet. The events of his inaugural party were proof positive. Providence again had intervened. The cosmic force had manipulated events, strewn his path with dangers. The Padgett woman. Congressman Rosen and his detective girl friend. A suicide in his home and the resultant scandal-mongering in the press would have been a clear signal to abort his plans. And he had practically confessed or, at the very least, broadly hinted to the woman detective. Now she, too, had become further proof of his divine protection.

  The Padgett woman had been embarrassed and contrite, and he had sent her home the next morning. Once again, she had served a useful purpose. Nothing on earth could stop him now. Even the invitation to this state dinner had offered him confirmation. It was happening according to a preconceived plan. All he had to do was to keep his senses open for each fresh signal.

  He had been in the White House many times before, especially in those halcyon days of the golden President. The image of that office had been badly tarnished since then.

  Suddenly the President’s blue eyes focused on him. His slightly crooked smile flashed as he grabbed Remington’s upper arm.

  “I won’t forget what you did for me, Tad.” The President turned to his wife. “This man helped me out during the campaign,” he said. “I owe him.”

  “I believed in you,” Remington said as the President continued to pump his hand. He felt the strong grip, the connection of the living flesh, the transfer of energy between them.

  “And I won’t let you down.”

  Insincere platitudes. Detestable locker room braggadocio. Jock talk. It was another hint of the decline of standards, another of his mother’s predictions come true.

  “A flint-hard decision must come out of a highly civilized sensibility. We need another Thomas Jefferson. You could be that man, Tad.” Her later theme would always be “serves them right.”

  They moved into the state dining room, dominated by a huge fireplace over which hung a giant portrait of Abraham Lincoln. The tables had a fruit theme, a social secretary’s idea to usher in the spring. It was, Remington observed wryly, the first day of that season. March 20. Another special day was irrevocably approaching. Less than four weeks. The final addition to the American quartet. He looked at the face of the reflective Lincoln. Their eyes met. Soon, he nodded.

  He was seated between a television star and a newly elected senator’s wife. The senator had been swept into office on the President’s landslide.

  “Somehow I expected more,” the television star whispered. He shared his conversation between the two ladies, although concentrated on watching the President, who sat two tables from him, in the democratic fashion of eschewing a head table. The man was animated, charming, every inch the President, certain of the glow of power that radiated from within him, splashing its illumination over the others. Surely he was well aware that he was the center of this universe, the absolute apogee of mortal man. At the thought, Remington’s stomach curdled and he quietly laid down his fork beside his half-eaten filet mignon.

  “Why does everybody seem so ordinary?” the television star asked.

  “Reality is never any match for fantasy.”

  “Who should know that better than me?” she said coquettishly.

  “This is my first one,” the senator’s wife said, unable to hide her childlike wonder. Her husband sat across the table. He was from Idaho and had the unfinished look of a state politician.

  “Think you would enjoy the role?” he asked the senator’s wife.

  “Who wouldn’t? Wouldn’t you?” He was taken off guard. It wasn’t simply rhetorical. She was waiting for an answer.

  “For this”—his hand flashed out in a sweeping gesture—“I’d kill.” It was entirely spontaneous. The words had gushed out. The woman seemed mildly stunned.

  “Kill who?” the television lady asked, misunderstanding.

  “A figure of speech,” he quickly replied.

  “Not me,” the television lady shot back. “Look at all those people watching.” She nodded toward the cadre of Secret Servicemen who ringed the room, little colored buttons on their lapels, tiny microphones in their ears. “All that security. The poor man has no privacy.” She bent over and put her lips close to his ear. He caught a sour whiff of alcohol. “Anyone of us could get him if we wanted to.”

  He felt the heat of a rising flush. For a moment, he wondered if he was throwing off vibrations.

  “But how many of us really want to?”

  The tinkle of glass aborted his train of thought and suddenly the President was standing, holding his champagne glass, making a toast to his honored guest, the Italian President. His words floated in the air, mellifluous, reassuring.

  “Civilization owes so much to your peninsula. Our friendship is not simply one of convenience. It is part of our heritage. The sons and daughters you have sent us have helped build America . . .” The meaning faded. Only the sounds filtered through his consciousness. It didn’t matter what he said. The mere utterance gave the words a touch of the oracle; every syllable would be recorded, preserved, permanently engraved in this historical record of their time. Perhaps hundreds of years from now someone would have the means to connect with this man, simply because he was the President.

  And he, Thaddeus Remington . . . what legacy would he leave for future generations to ponder? Who would know that he too had lived a life, thought thoughts, dreamed dreams? For a moment, his courage flagged. He needed another sign, needed it badly. He began to sweat and when he lifted his water glass, his hands shook and a few drops spilled on the table.

  “There is no point in ever being second,” his mother had said.

  “Everybody goes to the same place,” he had countered. It was a theme of his then, to ward off the pressure of her frustration.

  “No, they don’t,” she had said firmly.

  “They’ll remember me, mama. Us.” The toasts were over. The guests moved toward the East Room for the entertainment.

  Cordelia Blaine took his arm as he moved. He passed the President, who winked a greeting.

  “I must say, Tad. I’m damned impressed.” She squeezed his arm. “I think it makes you very sexy.”

  The implied promise revolted him. She was there only because she was attractive, youngish and appropriate for the evening. An interchangeable face and body. This immersion in the warm bath of reflected power could titillate, stimulate desire. That was not real power. He knew real power.

  A small stage had been prepared in the East Room and the guests sat about in a semicircle of folding chairs. Somehow, he found himself two rows behind the President, who sat with his wife and honored guests in the first row. Remington opened the program. They would be presenting Hands Across the Sea, one of three works by Noël Coward alw
ays presented as Tonight at Eight-Thirty. He had seen it years ago and remembered reading that it was now in rehearsal for a revival at the Kennedy Center.

  Of course. There it was, he told himself, feeling his mounting excitement as the players began to recite Coward’s lines. Coward! The name itself had its own intrinsic message. Waves of laughter reverberated in the room. The President chuckled. The message was pristine. He was not a “coward.” The lines from My American Cousin rolled across his memory, those fatal lines that masked the shot:

  “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, old gal, you sock-dologizing old man trap. Heh. Heh. Heh.”

  He watched the President’s head bob back and forth with laughter, concentrating on that vulnerable spot behind the left ear destined to offer itself in replication.

  Hands Across the Sea.

  Like My American Cousin, the play presented on that fateful night, the setting was England, both authors English. The humorous character foil was also a colonial. How wonderfully it all fit together. He was transfixed, searching now for moment of laughter that could mask his own shot.

  The character of Piggie says: “How’s your daughter?” Mrs. Wadhurst responds: “She’s a little better, thank you.” Piggie retorts: “Oh. Has she been ill? I’m so sorry.” Mrs. Wadhurst replies: “She’s been ill for five years.” The audience roars. In his mind, he could see the shot enter the President’s skull, clean, not a trace of blood.

  “Wilkes,” Remington whispered.

  “What?” Cordelia said beside him, as the laughs subsided.

  “Nothing.” He avoided her eyes. He was Wilkes now, the handsome poseur, obsessed beyond endurance, determined, whatever the consequences, to meet his rendezvous with destiny.

  The applause thundered through the East Room. The actors took repeated bows. The President’s wife blew them kisses. Then the President stepped up to the stage and shook hands with the principal actors. With a gesture, he hushed the audience.

  “Let no man say that the influence of the British is not as profound as ever,” he said. “You know, I used to do what these folks do. And I promise you this. My wife and I will be at the theater to see the rest of it.”

  The audience responded with more applause. Remington slapped his hands together with special enthusiasm. The road ahead was clearly marked.

  24

  SHE waited for him in Tiberio’s taproom, ignoring the bartender who had mixed her martini and had tried to strike up a conversation. No, she had told Julio, she didn’t want to be seated just yet, not until the congressman arrived. The truth was that crowded rooms made her feel claustrophobic. She was also a mass of new sensations, edgy, nervous, unable to sleep.

  “What’s with you?”

  Bruce asked the question repeatedly. Her evasions were growing less creative. Her mind as well. Her brain seemed unable to absorb another piece of information. Jefferson, too, was showing the strain.

  At first, they had carefully examined the scene of the sniping. It told them nothing they had not previously deduced. They traced the original investigation, burrowed into Pringle’s background, again interviewed the lady who was with him in the car at the time. Surprisingly, the original investigatory team had done a superb job. They carefully sifted through everything that they could learn about Officer Temple. They interviewed his wife, his children, the one eyewitness. It was pure drudgery, but both she and Jefferson agreed that it had to be done, had to be discounted irrevocably. Finally, they conceded the point to their full satisfaction. They were both random victims.

  As she had promised, she kept the eggplant informed in a series of whispered, clandestine meetings in empty corridors, police cars and street corners. The duty roster had them still checking out naturals, but even the slowest of their colleagues were beginning to sense that they were working on something unusual. It had been the eggplant himself who decided against meeting in his office. It was out of character to have too many meetings with her. Everyone knew that their relationship drew sparks.

  They continued to comb through the archives. Under the Freedom of Information Act, all information and evidence about the Kennedy assassination was open to the public. The material was infinite, and the evidence itself, the bullets that killed, the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle and 38 S. and W. Victory revolver were slowly being destroyed by use. From the condition of the material, one would have thought it had long ago given up its secrets.

  She had asked Bruce to get her materials from the Library of Congress. Cartons of books were delivered to her apartment as well as reams of bound testimony.

  “What is it all for?” he asked. “They think my office is investigating the Kennedy assassination.”

  “I can’t say. Please. Don’t press.”

  It only piqued his curiosity.

  “Some new evidence?”

  “Please.”

  The material kept coming. Stacks of books lay helter-skelter over her apartment. She had to clear a path from her front door to the kitchen and bedroom.

  “The answer is in there somewhere,” she told Jefferson.

  She read until her eyes burned. Everything fit and nothing fit. Millions had been spent on investigations that spawned more and more theories. The army of private investigations had multiplied geometrically. A list of inquiries into the archive materials had reached the multi-thousands. Scholars, students, housewives, ex-cops, lawyers, doctors, from almost every country of the world, had sifted through the material. What were they all looking for?

  Had she stumbled upon something that would, once and for all, put the matter to rest? One could, she decided as she pored over the material, make a reasonable case for Oswald not being the killer of Kennedy. In custody, he had denied it vehemently. Ruby had killed him in front of millions of TV viewers. The testimony at the Ruby trial left the motives unclear. Why did Ruby kill Oswald?

  Then there was the trial of Clay L. Shaw, accused of fostering a conspiracy that was not even remotely proven by his accuser, Big Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney. He was looking for his own piece of immortality. It seemed that everyone who touched the case, however remotely, was looking for that.

  Pursuing the information, she felt like a dog running perpetually one length behind the mechanical rabbit. It was maddening. Soon she could hardly distinguish between history and the present. Who was she pursuing? Kennedy’s killer or Pringle’s? It bedeviled her.

  She could see how others had gotten swept up. Theories piled on theories and not a single year had passed since the assassination that did not bring forth new theories, new books, new demands for investigations, new authoritative sources.

  “I can’t compete with this,” Bruce told her one night. He had stopped by after a long session of the House, looking tired and drawn. As usual, she was combing through the material. He grabbed a volume of the Warren Commission report which she had been reading and flung it across the room.

  “You’re killing yourself. And it’s not fair to me.”

  Obviously, all was not going well for him. She sensed that in passing. But it did not move her. Nothing moved her. He kicked over a pile of books.

  “I’d like to know where we’re going.”

  “I’m involved in something big, Bruce.”

  “So am I. This Senate thing is not as sure a shot as I figured. I’ve got lots of competition.”

  “You’ll figure out a way, Bruce. You always do.”

  Her encouragement was perfunctory. She just wasn’t interested.

  “How long do I have to wait for your attention?”

  “I wish I knew,” she said in an abstracted voice.

  “Maybe we should split?”

  “Maybe. I’m just wound up in this. A little patience. Please.”

  He sat down heavily on the couch, pushing aside a pile of books.

  “I’ve tried to be supportive, Fi. But you’ve got to admit this is beyond the pale.”

  “I know.”

  Still she wasn’t moved.
But she sat next to him anyway and stroked his arm distractedly. “I’ve got this tiger by the tail . . .”

  “What about this tail?” he said, as he put her hand there. She had been neglectful of that as well. Somehow it triggered a programmed sense of duty and she opened his pants and began her ministrations. It was, she admitted, purely mechanical.

  “I love you, dammit,” he whispered.

  “I know.”

  “What do I have to do to flag you down?”

  She had to search herself for a reaction; it alarmed her when she could not find it. Her body, too, held back. She forced it, feeling pain as she pressed her weight, straddling him as he sat there.

  “I wish you’d join me,” he whispered, responding. His breath came in short gasps as she pumped him to climax.

  “Even when it’s bad, it’s good.” He felt used, manipulated.

  “I’m not myself,” she said lamely.

  “You could at least try to share it.”

  She shrugged, her mind elsewhere.

  “This is Bruce here,” he pressed. “We’re supposed to be lovers. We’re supposed to share secrets. Nobody does what you’re doing without one helluva reason,” he argued, waving his hand around the room.

  She forced herself to comprehend.

  “Maybe I’ve exaggerated it out of all proportion?”

  “Now that’s no exaggeration.”

  “Shit,” she said, getting up. “Look at this. It’s an earthquake of uncertainty. There’s a whole army out there, still looking for Kennedy’s killer.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m beginning to believe I’ve found him.”

  Saying it out loud gave the comment a credibility it didn’t deserve. She quickly qualified it. The dam of restraint broke.

  “It nags at you as you press on . . . and on and on. Did Oswald kill Kennedy? And did he do it alone? The evidence is there. But pieces of the logic are missing, and nothing wraps it up with a ribbon. That’s why it continues forever. All the elements for doubt are present. A stay in the Soviet Union. A Russian wife. A tough-moving target. How many bullets? How many shots? How many guns? Why does Tippet . . .”