Presidents' Day

by Seth Margolis

  Julian got up and walked to the gallery door. He looked into a small lens, which scanned his left retina and compared it to scanned images in a database of authorized visitors. There was, of course, just one authorized visitor in the database. The steel-reinforced pocket doors slid open.

  Slowly, he strolled up and down the long, narrow gallery, feeling a sense of security return in the presence of old friends. Back then, when Zach still worked for him and Matthew was still alive, people often intimated that Zach was his surrogate son, and he’d always hated that. He had a son, albeit a son who chose not to work for his father, at least directly, which was hardly a sin. It was true that Zach had been an extension of him, in a way, scouting acquisition targets, evaluating offering documents and prospectuses—a second pair of legs and eyes. Perhaps a second brain. And Zach’s parents were both dead, which added to the appearance of a father-son relationship. Zach hadn’t ever been truly indispensable, though he may have thought so, but it was undeniable that Julian couldn’t have risen so far, so fast without him. Still, he hadn’t hesitated to frame him for the Finnegan scandal. It had to be done. Someone needed to take the fall, and it certainly wasn’t going to be Julian.

  He hadn’t really known himself until the Finnegan scandal. Before that, his life and career had been all about making the right decisions, hiring the right people, buying the right companies, making the right exits at the right time. Then he’d done something stupid, bought a pitiful six million dollars in Finnegan stock, acting on nonpublic information and the petulant desire for revenge, and suddenly the skills and habits that had made him a success were irrelevant. Judgment, financial acumen, psychological insight, timing—they would not keep him out of jail. So he’d turned on Zach and realized, to his complete but not unhappy surprise, that he had another useful skill: the ability to disengage from relationships, cut people free, even destroy another person without self-recrimination. It was a skill he doubted he’d ever use again—he rarely got personally involved with people in the first case—and then Matthew had been killed and he’d had to draw on it once more.

  So he hadn’t given Zach Springer a moment’s thought since that time, not a single moment, until the call from Verbraski, whom he hadn’t thought of since transferring five hundred thousand dollars to a numbered Swiss account. It seemed to violate some fundamental law of nature—his nature, at least—that Zach should have resurfaced. He’d obliterated him from his mind—and in some absurd but quite real way it seemed wrong that he hadn’t been obliterated from the world as well.

  Julian considered Memling’s Italian nobleman, part of a diptych; the other panel, showing his wife, was in the Metropolitan Museum, which he could see from his office window. His half of the diptych was thought to have been destroyed a century ago in a fire in a manor outside Bruges, and in fact there was evidence of charring on the back of the panel. It pleased him, knowing that the nobleman was alive and well while the art world continued to mourn his passing.

  He left the gallery, picked up the phone and dialed Billy Sandifer.

  “Write down this name,” he told him. “Zach Springer. Here’s what I want you to do.”

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 27

  Chapter 24

  Marcella Lightstone dialed Fred Moran’s number from the jet that was flying her back to New York from Concord, New Hampshire. The ten-year-old Falcon 50 EX felt cramped and a tad jittery, so she decided to focus on business, which then, as always, meant Harry’s political life.

  “It’s Marcella,” she said to the young-sounding woman who answered at Lightstone headquarters in Pittsburgh, no doubt a volunteer. “Get Fred.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Lightstone, wow, that was a really excellent appearance in Concord, we were all watching it on C-SPAN, and we all thought—”

  “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Oh, right, okay, hold on.”

  The line went dead. Furious, she pressed redial. “Please put Fred on the line.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Lightstone, I’m sooo sorry, I thought I had pushed—”

  “Please?”

  This time she managed to put the call through.

  “Hello, Marcella.”

  “Concord was a disaster,” she greeted him. “I counted twenty-nine people there, Fred. Including the reporter. From the University of New Hampshire Gazette or whatever the hell it’s called.”

  “It’s the Eagle, and a lot of its readers are first-time voters, many who—”

  “To hell with first-time voters. Do you have any idea what it was like to give a prepared speech to what amounted to a cocktail party?”

  “Harry gave the speech, Marcella.”

  “I was up there with him, at your insistence.”

  Fred Moran had been Harry’s choice to lead the campaign. The universally acknowledged number-one manager, Alonzo Maddigan, had been scooped up by Gabe Rooney nearly a year earlier, with predictably stellar results. She hated settling for second best. But Harry had liked Fred. Harry always opted for the unthreatening alternative, and Moran—late fifties, avuncular, soft-spoken—was anything but threatening. Which, she found herself thinking, made Harry’s taste for Amazonian women all the more puzzling.

  “Marcella, did you want something?”

  “How about a strategy, a plan? Rooney is destroying us.”

  “We’re in second place, which isn’t bad considering our late start and the field includes four candidates.”

  “Second out of four—is that your definition of success? And we’re third if you count undecideds. We’re behind undecideds! We need to win New Hampshire or at least come in a very close second, which is not happening. Without that momentum we don’t have a prayer in South Carolina, we won’t even make it to Super Tuesday.”

  “I’m doing the best I can. Everybody is.”

  She thought of Julian Mellow. Everything she knew about the man told her he would never bet on a losing proposition. Would he allow Harry to fail in New Hampshire? Was it within his power to affect the outcome? He couldn’t very well hand out cash to likely voters, like Rockefeller distributing dimes to children, though he could afford to. It seemed hopeless.

  “How could you let Stephen Delsiner slip through your fingers?” she said, and then, before Moran could answer, she added, “Who are we going with for VP?”

  “You’ll have to ask your husband,” he said. When people referred to Harry as her husband they always did so with a slightly ironic edge.

  “He looks to you for political advice.” She added in a drier voice, “We both do.”

  “Choosing a running mate is a very complicated process. Each candidate has to be extensively vetted, which can take months. We’ve only been in this race a few months. Choose the wrong guy, a guy who turns out to have a skeleton in his closet—drugs, women, boys—and you look like an incompetent, a man who’ll put the future of the country in the hands of a junkie or adulterer or pederast.”

  The New York skyline came into view out the port side of the jet. She had climbed to the top of that skyline, figuratively speaking, of course, salting a dozen top-drawer charities with her father’s money, befriending the right people (which also involved money, more often than not), joining the right boards and committees (also a question of money). Now, thanks to Julian Mellow, she was having to shimmy up another slope, this one leading to the White House, a far steeper incline. There’d never been a Jewish president. She doubted she’d live to see that. But a Jewish First Lady…the first Jewish First Lady, that would be a climb worth making. Still, the White House wasn’t the Upper East Side. There were limits to what she could spend in the campaign, and spending limits represented a new and unwelcome concept.

  “We’re landing any minute,” she told Moran midway through his boring and condescending lecture on the vice presidential selection process. She hung up.

  “We’ll be experiencing some minor turbulence on the way down, Mrs. Lightstone,” the pilot twanged over the intercom.

  Well of course we will, given the tin c
rate they were flying in, not nearly as sturdy as her own, larger and newer jet, which the campaign had forbidden her to use. Bad optics. She tightened her seatbelt and wondered if there weren’t some way to neutralize Stephen Delsiner and his Missouri influence, or perhaps bring him over to their side.

  Chapter 25

  Senator Stephen Delsiner left the Equinox Sports Club on 22nd Street off M Street at eight forty-five, right about when he always did. Delsiner was a man of rigidly kept schedules, a fact that was well known not just among members of his staff and family but to members of the press, several of whom had had interviews canceled as punishment for arriving a scant minute or two late. Voters in Missouri liked the fact that they could depend on Delsiner not just for punctuality but for a predictable, if rather unexciting, overall performance. He was a centrist Republican, popular on both sides of the aisle, as he never failed to point out in speeches and mailings, a happily married father of four, and a regular at the Equinox, where he exercised most evenings from seven thirty to eight forty-five. Workouts were among the few times he had to himself; on the Hill he was surrounded by aides and colleagues, and since he’d been picked as Gabe Rooney’s running mate, at least one reporter accompanied him wherever he went in New Hampshire, where he was spending most of his time. But when in DC, where he’d returned the night before for a key budget vote, his trips to the gym had so far been undiscovered. If he and Rooney nailed the Republican nomination, which seemed likely, given the latest New Hampshire polls and strong momentum elsewhere, he’d have Secret Service protection around the clock, which would include gym time. So he relished his remaining moments of privacy.

  Carrying a small gym bag, the senator walked to his car, a politically correct white Ford Fusion. He had just unlocked the door with the remote button on his key chain when a figure stepped toward him. Delsiner moved back, shoulders hunching instinctively in a protective shrug.

  “Hey man, ’sup?” said the stranger. He was several inches shorter than the senator, which put him at about five nine. Delsiner, in a suit jacket, body molded by regular gym visits, looked bigger in every way than the stranger, who even in the darkness seemed gaunt. In one hand he carried a large envelope, badly wrinkled.

  “Excuse me,” Delsiner said as he tried to step around the man to get to the front door of his car.

  “Look, man, I could use some cash,” the stranger said without budging.

  “Find an ATM.”

  “’S’funny. ’S’really funny.” The man’s voice was full of cigarettes and sarcasm. “I mean it, I need money.”

  “There are numerous programs in this city for homeless people where you can get a bed and a warm meal.”

  “Did I ask you for a bed?”

  “Step aside, please.”

  “Anyway, who says I’m homeless?”

  “Am I going to have to call the police?” Delsiner took a cell phone from his coat pocket.

  “You don’t want to do that, Senator.”

  Delsiner lurched backward, as if shoved. Being recognized added a new level of menace to the situation. “The District police will be here in a flash if I call them,” he said, a bit of a tremor evident in his voice.

  “Well of course, you’re a big shot in this town. I’m well known too, in my own way.”

  Delsiner squinted at the man. “I doubt that very much.”

  “Sure you don’t recognize me?” After a beat the senator shook his head. “’S’great, just great. See, whenever I see you on the news, or in the papers, about your perfect family and your perfect career in politics and your perfect credentials for vice president, I always figure you for a big phony, major league bullshitter, ya know? I mean, at heart I figured you were a drug-addicted scumbag, same as always, only you just pretended not to be. But maybe you really have changed, if you don’t remember me for real.”

  “My substance abuse issues are well known. If you think you can extort money from me for—”

  “Substance abuse issues…that’s good. You were a fucking oxy freak, Senator. Hillbilly heroin.”

  “Voters understand what I went through, beginning with my back injury, and they appreciate that I have reformed my ways.”

  “The straightest arrow in Washington.” His voice dripped sarcasm. “Only, what did a bad back have to do with cocaine, Senator? Did you rub it into your spine?”

  “One addiction leads to another, it’s well documented.”

  “You took to coke like a fucking duck to water.”

  “Get out of my way.” Delsiner pushed the man to the side.

  “You weren’t exactly eager to get rid of me back then. Don’t you remember, Senator?”

  Delsiner turned and edged toward the man. He stared at him for a second or two, then stepped back. “You’re Cody.”

  “Kobe, like the Laker, but close enough.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Funny, hearing that from you. Used to be I was the one asking what you wanted. Week’s supply, two weeks.”

  “That was a long time ago. And in Saint Louis. What are you doing here?”

  “I get around.”

  “Well, continue traveling. I need to get home.” He opened the back door of the Ford and tossed in his gym bag.

  “A man of regular habits now, isn’t that right?”

  “Get out of my way.” He started to shut the door, but Kobe stopped him.

  “Look, I took a shitload of heat once you got clean and made yourself into some kind of born-again virgin, reporters all over me, trying to get me to rat you out.”

  “I made no secret of my past.”

  “Yeah, well, that didn’t stop the press vultures from wanting shit on you. I gave them squat, you might recall.”

  “It wouldn’t have mattered. I was honest with the public about my painkiller addiction and the steps I took to get beyond it. So if you want to get paid all of a sudden, forget it.”

  “I don’t want a lot. In here…” He held up the big envelope. “Photos of you and me doing business. Clear as day.”

  “Are you blackmailing me?”

  “Whatever. Hundred bucks and they’re yours.”

  “No deal. As I said, everyone knows what I went through back then.”

  “But they don’t have pictures, Senator.”

  “You followed me here, from Saint Louis, to sell me pictures for a hundred dollars?”

  “Like I said, I travel a lot. I could use the help.”

  “You don’t look strung out.” The senator considered him closely. “You don’t look like you’re on anything.”

  “Times are tough. Look, all I want is a hundred bucks for this and you’ll never see me again.”

  The senator hesitated, then reached for his wallet. “Something about this isn’t right. I don’t recall anyone taking photos. And your being here, wanting a hundred dollars, you’re positive that’s it?”

  “Never been more sure of anything in my life.”

  “Here.” Delsiner counted out all the cash in his wallet and handed it to him. “Eighty-five, it’s all I have,” he said.

  Kobe hesitated, took the money, then handed him the envelope and gave the senator a thumbs-up with a big, phony grin. “Give me a thumbs-up, Senator.” When Delsiner looked puzzled and started to get into his car, Kobe grabbed the door. “Thumbs-up, Senator,” he said.

  The senator sighed and gave him the high-sign, then got into his car.

  • • •

  Kobe watched the senator drive off, then walked to the edge of the lot. “How’d I do?” he asked.

  “You did fine,” Billy Sandifer said as he reviewed the video on his phone. “I’ll have to do some editing, but it’s all there.”

  “I delivered the money shot, right? I mean, he bought the whole photo thing. Like I actually had someone taking pictures back then.”

  “You’re Marlon Brando. The thumbs-up was a nice touch. Here.” He handed Billy a wad of hundred-dollar bills through the passenger window. “Get in,” he said. “You
don’t want to miss your plane.” He put the car in gear. “Oh, I almost forgot. I brought along something to celebrate with.” With his right hand he opened a small plastic bag and removed two bottles of Corona.

  “Awesome,” Kobe said as Billy handed him a bottle.

  “I even have an opener.” Billy handed him his Swiss Army knife and focused on the road as they left the Equinox parking lot.

  Billy knew Washington well, having spent countless weeks in the capital during the nineties, mostly organizing protests, knocking off the random convenience store or townhouse when no one was looking. As long as you hitched your wagon to a cause you could get away with almost anything on the side.

  Kobe had already chugged half the Corona before Billy turned off Massachusetts Avenue onto a sunken bypass that traversed Rock Creek Park, connecting the lush, elegant, embassy-studded northern section of the District with downtown.

  “Don’t you want any?” Kobe asked, his voice slurred, the Anectine in the beer already working. He guzzled most of the remaining beer. “Hey, this don’t feel like the way to the airport.”

  Billy pulled off the main road onto a dark service road.

  “Why are we stopping? This isn’t…shit, I don’t feel so…something in my throat.”

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28

  Chapter 26

  It took Zach just under three hours to bicycle from the Upper West Side to the Newman Center in Tenafly, New Jersey. Combining his exercise routine with his pursuit of Julian Mellow made the day seem less of a waste of time, one activity giving cover, in a sense, for the other. The winter air was unusually warm for January but still chilly, the wind biting into his face as he sped northward along Route 9. He turned off at Closter Dock Road and followed the directions he’d memorized. In the parking lot of the Newman home he put on a pair of jeans and an oxford shirt he’d brought with him.