“Why are you coming forward now?” the reporter asked.
Max shook his head. “Because I couldn’t take it anymore. I’m just disgusted how that woman has turned the White House, the people’s house, into her own personal whore house. It sickens me to think that I was so duped by her.”
And then the TV screen went black. The end of the snippet.
Gina, LaLa, and Crader looked at Dutch. Max was his best friend since forever. How could he not believe Max?
Dutch stood up, walked from around the Resolute Desk, and headed for the exit. He didn’t look at his wife, he didn’t so much as look where he was going. He just went.
Gina moved to follow him, but Crader stopped her. “Not a good idea, ma’am,” he said. And then he followed Dutch himself.
Gina looked at LaLa. LaLa hugged her. And she sobbed in the arms of her friend.
“But why are you leaving?” Allison asked Max as Max stood behind his desk putting his personal items into a box.
“I’m not wanted here anymore.”
“What are you talking about? Of course you’re wanted, Max. Just because Dutch asked Liz Sinclair to come back here has nothing to do with your service to him. He loves and values your job as his chief of staff and you know it.”
“I told you I talked to a reporter last night.”
“So?” Allison said, completely ignorant to what the taped interview Dutch and Gina had just watched. “It can’t be that bad. Not to where you have to quit.”
“It’s complicated, Ally, all right?”
“But how could you leave the president at a time like this? He needs you, Max.”
“I know he does. But he . . . It’s complicated, Ally.”
“What if the president doesn’t accept your resignation?”
The door to Max’s office flew open so wide that it nearly bounced back close. The president entered, with Crader behind him.
“Mr. President, maybe you can talk some sense into Max,” Allison said as Dutch made his way toward Max. Only Dutch didn’t appear to be in any mood to talk sense into anyone.
He went behind the desk and, without hesitation, fist punched Max so hard in his face that it knocked Max back and completely over his desk chair. Dutch, too, nearly fell over the chair.
Allison was so amazed by the unfolding scene that she was speechless. She then moved to help Max, but Crader pulled her back.
“Not a good idea,” he said. Mainly because his instincts told him that Dutch wasn’t finished with his “best friend” yet. Because if he were Dutch, he wouldn’t be finished either.
And Crader was right. Dutch grabbed Max up by the catch of his coat lapel and dragged him, literally dragged his now bleeding chief of staff out of his office, along the West Wing corridor, all the way to the exit.
The Secret Service followed them, talking feverishly into their ear pieces, unsure what they were supposed to do when it appeared that the president himself was the perpetrator, rather than the victim, of the attack.
So they simply held back and followed. Crader had grabbed Max’s box of personal items and was following too. When Dutch made it to the exit, the Marine at the door immediately opened it for the president, as was his duty.
The president, still singularly focused, took Max, took his best friend, and threw him with a hard heave, out of the White House. Crader then threw the box out too, the few personal items crumbling around the disgraced chief.
Dutch stared at his friend for another moment, smooth down the wrinkles in his tailored suit, and then headed, with tears in his eyes, back to the office of the Oval.
TWELVE
When Max’s interview hit the airwaves it created a firestorm of controversy that traveled from the East Coast to the West, from the living rooms of London to the outback of Australia. Every talking head on TV was commenting, from the usually unbiased evening news anchors to the completely biased conservative activists, with all prefacing their comments the same way: how could it not be true when the president’s own chief of staff, his best friend no less, was saying that it was true?
Congress also got into the act, with the Congressional Oversight Committee immediately launching an investigation into whether or not laws had been broken, and the Ethics committee was already planning hearings. Speaker of the House Brightman held a joint press conference with the Senate Majority Leader where they both agreed that the president needed to urgently address the American people and explain just what he planned to do about his wayward wife.
By midday, however, there were a flurry of press conferences, including one from Roman Wilkes who vehemently denied Max’s allegations and made clear that he was pressing forward immediately with a law suit.
“He has defamed my good name,” Roman said, “and I will not let him get away with that.” Then he added: “He picked the wrong one, baby.”
But even Roman’s bluster could not slow the tide. Nobody was willing to believe his report. He was just protecting the First Lady, they proclaimed. He was just trying to save his own hide, others shouted.
But no press conference caught fire until a little known Democratic strategist stepped to the podium just before five pm and asserted that he, too, was the First Lady’s lover.
The president and First Lady were in the Nursery playing with Little Walt when Allison came into the room informing them that Paul Davenport was jumping on the bandwagon too.
“Who’s Paul Davenport?” Gina asked as the president turned on the TV.
“I have no idea,” Dutch said as he took a seat on the ottoman to watch the story unfold.
“He’s a strategist who works mainly for the locals around Michigan,” Allison said. “We worked the Governor’s race out there once. I though he was a pretty good guy. Very charming as I recall.”
Gina, with Little Walt in her arms, sat next to Dutch on the ottoman. It broke Allison’s heart to see them sitting together on that one seat waiting to witness yet another assassination attempt on their good character. They were two of the most decent people she’d ever met, and they didn’t deserve any of this, and if she could find Max and knock some sense into him she would. She wiped a tear away as she, like the Harbers, waited to hear the lies.
Although Paul Davenport’s allegation of sleeping with Gina was a bombshell of a revelation in and of itself, he didn’t stop there. He was outside a local restaurant, surrounded by a cauldron of people nobody particularly knew, as he gave an account of getting clearance to enter the White House by the First Lady on numerous occasions.
“And on two, maybe three of those occasions,” he said, “I looked on as the First Lady sat in the White House Residence and smoke crack cocaine.”
As soon as the word crack left Davenport’s mouth, the reporters at the presser went haywire. They hurled questions so fast that they could hardly contain their giddiness. This story was just getting bigger and bigger and so historic in its scope that visions of Watergate began to dance in their heads. Now a criminal act was being alleged. Now they, every reporter assembled, had the chance to make a name for themselves just as Woodward and Bernstein did during Watergate. And the Harber administration, they were convinced, would not be able to dismiss these allegations now.
Gina was so floored by Davenport’s contention that her mouth literally gaped open. She looked at Dutch. “Did he just say that I smoked crack cocaine?” she asked her husband.
Dutch was actually smiling. “That’s exactly what that fool said,” he said.
Gina smiled too. She couldn’t help it. “So I’m a crack head now?” she asked.
“You’re a crack head, girl,” Dutch said and burst into laughter. And it was contagious, as Gina, then Allison, and then even Little Walt began laughing too.
Although the assembled press seemed to view his allegations as among the most serious yet, Dutch and Gina and even their little baby boy decided to take the opposite view.
Yet deep down, as their laughter began to slowly dissolve into sorrow and anger, they kn
ew it was just the beginning now. A little joke that was quickly becoming the scandal of the century was trying to either kill them, or make them stronger, and their participation was now completely and utterly out of their hands.
Liz Sinclair saw the Davenport presser too and she wanted in. This was why people came to work in Washington: there was never a dull moment. But she wasn’t in the loop on this one, not even near the loop. She tried to inject herself into the conversations, but was roundly rejected. Mainly because all of the meetings related to the scandal were taking place in the Oval Office, and when she attempted to contact Dutch, to offer any assistance he may need, his secretary wouldn’t even put her call through.
“He’s not accepting any calls right now,” Belle said.
“But if you could tell him it’s me?”
“He’s not accepting any calls right now.”
“Then I’ll just come on over to the West Wing and simply go into the Oval office,” Liz threatened. “And the president will blame no one but me.”
“The president has authorized the First Lady and the First Lady only to enter the Oval Office without prior permission,” Belle made clear. “You can come over here all you want, but you will not be allowed anywhere near the Oval.”
They were closing ranks around the First Lady, Liz thought as she hung up the phone, and they didn’t want her in those ranks. Although, Liz thought as she leaned back in the chair behind her desk, what Max had done to the First Lady was a lot like what he had done to her. And she, perhaps unlike most all of the people closing those ranks, knew exactly how Gina must feel.
Caroline Parker, however, didn’t know how Gina felt and didn’t want to know. She was in her aunt’s small home, watching and re-watching Max’s and Davenport’s interviews and every cable news channel that was discussing the sordid affair, and she could not believe her good fortune. Talk about everything going her way. And the way Max described how disgusted he was with the First Lady, how Davenport described her drug use, made it perfect.
Just perfect, she thought, as she washed the dishes and continued to watch cable news. Everybody, it seemed, except for the Congressional Black Caucus and few other diehard Democrats, were taking Max especially, given his relationship to the First Family, at his word.
Caroline, however, didn’t share their confidence. She knew Max was lying. She, after all, was the person who originally planted the story about Roman possibly being the Harber child’s father. But Max, with no beforehand notice to her, just knocked it out of the ball park. She even grinned from ear to ear when he said he actually caught Wilkes and the First Lady making love. And making love in the Lincoln bedroom! Now that was a gem. That inbreed’s a better liar than even me, Caroline thought at the time.
But she had to be smart, she also thought as she took a break and sat at the kitchen table. Not impulsive or emotional. If she jumped too soon it could ruin everything. She had to do it right, at the peak of the crisis, when Dutch and Gina would be so riveted by events that they won’t even see it coming. But if not, she wasn’t going to get this wrong. Timing was everything in this case. And her time would come. Just as surely as there was such a thing as sweet revenge, it was going to come.
After meeting with legal and political advisors all evening long, and every one of them giving them contradictory advice, Dutch and Gina gave up and retired to the president’s bedroom. Dutch had been urging Gina to go to bed long before this ten o clock hour, and let him handle the meetings, but Gina refused. This was about her now, and it was more personal than it could have ever been, and she wasn’t about to outsource her defense.
“I still don’t see why I can’t talk to him on a telephone,” Gina was complaining as they entered the bedroom. “He, after all, is being accused to.”
“Roman can take care of himself,” Dutch said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “We can’t add to this craziness by contacting him right now.”
“But it’s all lies!”
“I know that. And that’s why I want you to stay away from him until I can get this sorted out.”
Gina frowned. “Get it sorted out? What are you talking about? This can’t be sorted out. It’s no different than all of the other tall tales they have told about me, so I don’t see why you think Max’s lies are any different.”
“Because these allegations aren’t coming from just anybody, Gina. Max was my chief of staff. He was my best friend. And it’s also different because I’m not in the crossfire this time, you are. Because Congress had never before turned their knives on you. Because Congress wants to drag my wife before their sorry asses and explain to them why they shouldn’t brand her a whore!”
This was the crust of it for Dutch. This was why Max’s allegations shook him to his core. Forget Max’s betrayal. Forget that many of his political allies were now turning on him. Forget that Davenport character who was obviously paid to tell his lies. It was the level of disrespect that Dutch couldn’t stomach. It was the way they were treating Gina as if she was everything vile and evil that they could imagine. And he was beginning to hate them for it.
Tears were attempting to come. But he caught himself, took back control of his emotions, and ran his hand across his tired eyes. “Let’s just. . . Let me worry about it, all right?” He looked up at her. “I’ll sort it all out, I promise you.”
Gina was doubtful that even he could sort out this mess, but she nodded anyway. She’d never seen him so unhinged. And it was unhinging her even more.
She went into the bathroom, undressed, and got into the shower.
Her entire body relaxed as the warm water careened all over her. For the longest time she just stood there and allowed every muscle in her body to find a way to relax; to find a way to forget the remains of what had turned out to be one of the worst days of her life.
And just as she was thinking how badly she needed her husband right now, how badly she needed to be with him so that she could really forget, she heard movement, and the shower door opening. And Dutch, naked too, his hand fondling his penis to expansion, stepped into the stall with her. As if, as she often suspected, he could read her heart.
Penelope Riley couldn’t read anybody’s heart, but she could hear Dutch and Gina at it. Little Walt had already been put down to bed, and she was preparing to leave herself, but the noise became too animated.
She walked around, to the back side corridor that led to the presidential bathroom, and listened at the side door. It was obvious what was going on, and she couldn’t tear away from it.
And neither could Gina, as Dutch had her pinned against the stall and was fucking her from the back. It was a pounding because they both needed a pounding and all that could be heard was the slapping sounds of his hard, frenetic thrusts into her. Gina’s hands were stretched out flat against the shower tile as he fucked her, and all she could do was beg for more, was hope he didn’t even think about easing up.
This was no love connection for them. This was no sweet little make out session for them. This was pure emotion and nothing else. This was anger release, bitterness release, that hatred that they both were beginning to feel for their fellow man releasing like a torrent of rain. Pouring out of them, draining through every inch of their bodies.
And when Dutch could find no more energy, when his thrusts slowed and his penis dipped so deep inside his wife that he felt welded to her, they climaxed. Only Gina’s orgasm was not like Dutch’s. Dutch let out a long, satisfied sigh as he dripped the last ounce of juice he had left in him.
But Gina let out a sob as she realized, with this last, sensual feeling lifting up, tightening, and then draining out, as his penis slowly compressed inside of her, that that filthy fishbowl still awaited their return.
And she knew for the first time since her marriage to Dutch, since her arrival to live in DC, why so many once-spirited fish, that could outswim any other fish in the bowl, seem to curl up and die in that very same bowl.
But that fishbowl only became deadlier when Gina a
nd Dutch woke up the next morning, only to be slapped with a summons.
The chairman of the committee, a short, stout man who seemed barely able to contain his glee, stood at the lectern on Capitol Hill and made the announcement to the American public.
“At eight o five this morning,” he announced, “the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform issued a formal request to the White House for the First Lady of the United States to come before Congress and give answer to the accusations alleged, and so alleged by more than one individual, that she engaged in illegal and immoral activities inside and around the people’s house; that she engaged in these activities while still serving in her official capacity as the nation’s First Lady; and if she, as we, believe that such behavior is inconsistent with the role to which she freely and voluntarily serves. If she does not comply with our request, she will leave us with no alternative but to issue a subpoena. To which,” he added, “we would hope would be avoided and avoided at all cost.”
THIRTEEN
It took nearly two weeks and everything short of an actual subpoena, but the day of the hearing finally arrived. Cable news and even network news channels were billing it as the trial of the century, although it wasn’t a trial at all and they knew it. But given the circus-like atmosphere, given that the hearing room was jam-packed with reporters and activists and even a few regular citizens fortunate enough to get in, a trial, maybe even a trial by fire as the Congressional Black Caucus was calling it, seemed the appropriate term.
Caroline Parker sat with Penelope Riley in Riley’s livingroom, glued to the television set. Liz Sinclair at the White House, and Roman Wilkes at his office in Newark, and even Max Brennan, drinking alone at a bar, were glued to theirs.
The White House had been cagey all week about what degree of cooperation the First Lady would actually give, causing many to wonder if she would simply show up and plead the Fifth, or, less likely, show up and notify the committee that executive privilege would be invoked, but those unanswered questions still didn’t stop the networks from interrupting their morning shows and soap operas to give this historic hearing its full attention.
DUTCH AND GINA: A SCANDAL IS BORN Page 11
