by D. W. Buffa
“No, he doesn’t know what it’s about,” he said, pulling himself together. “If you talk to him, tell him it’s about what we talked about before—The Four Sisters—only that there’s more, a great deal more, to it than what I had thought then.”
Allen knew that, whatever it was, it was serious. He picked up the telephone and called Hart’s private number.
“He has it turned off. He’ll call me back as soon as he is finished with whatever he is doing. I’ll ask him to call you right away.”
Burdick thanked him and started to leave, but Allen did not want him to go.
“Let’s talk a little—not about what you’re working on, what you want to talk to Bobby about—about what’s going on this week.”
Burdick sank back in this chair, glad for the chance to think about something else, to have a reprieve, as it were, from what had been weighing so heavily on his mind.
“There are a lot of rumors,” continued Allen, as he put his feet up on the corner of his cluttered desk.
His shirtsleeves were rolled up almost to the elbow and the striped tie he wore almost every day was pulled down from an open collar. The lamplight glistened on his round, balding head. As he started to talk, his eyes took on the manic quality of the player who loves the game, the political insider who can never stop talking about things that have not happened and might never come about, a future formed by speculation that changes with the hour. Who was in, who was out; who was up, who was down; and all of it conditioned by the certain knowledge, which made a principle of uncertainty, that if the future was like the past, nothing would turn out even close to the way everyone was convinced it would. Where else but politics could you gain a reputation for wisdom by talking about things that did not yet exist?
“Rumors that Russell is going to try to get the nomination; rumors that he is going to step aside; rumors that Hillary Constable is going to run and no one, least of all Irwin Russell, can beat her; rumors that even if she doesn’t run there are others he couldn’t beat either.”
He started to list them, the other potential candidates to succeed Irwin Russell in the office to which no one had ever seriously thought him qualified. Burdick stopped him.
“Have you talked to anyone in the White House? What are they saying? Do they think Russell is going to run?”
Burdick’s expression had changed. In place of the nervous anxiety, the palpable sense as of something gone terribly wrong, there was now an intense interest, a single-minded concentration on the issue at hand. Noticing the difference, Allen wondered at the cause.
“I’ve had a few conversations,” he replied, guardedly. “But those were all with Constable’s people. Whatever they really think about her, and some of them—this is off the record, right?—have, to put it charitably, never liked her; but they’re all part of the Constable machine. They worked in that first campaign; that’s how they got their jobs in the White House. Everything they have, everything they want, has always depended on the Constables staying on top. They have no loyalty to Irwin Russell. Hell, most of them thought it was a mistake to put him on the ticket. They thought—”
“Why was he put on the ticket?” interjected Burdick, sliding forward until he was close enough to put his forearm on the desk. “I know the reason that was given: that Russell brought Ohio into play; I know that the real reason was that they wanted someone who didn’t have ambition, someone who wouldn’t challenge Hillary for the nomination when Constable finished out his term. But there were others who could have served the same purpose—why Russell in particular?”
Allen pulled his legs off the desk and sat up. Pondering the question, he thought back four years to when it happened, remembering what he could about the backstairs intrigue that had had everyone in Washington talking. It had proven, as if any more proof had been needed, that Robert Constable had a genius for the game, the way he had replaced one vice president with another and made it seem, publicly at least, that he was doing both of them a favor. Anyone could be ruthless with their enemies, once they had them in their power; Robert Constable could be ruthless with his friends.
“He knew Russell better than he knew the others. Remember, Russell was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. He always did what the president wanted him to do. And that’s what he wanted on the ticket: someone he could trust.”
Burdick nodded thoughtfully.
“That’s always been Russell’s strength: he knows as much about the federal budget—about money—as anyone in Washington.”
“Sure. The only person who might have known as much was Frank Morris, who chaired Ways and Means.”
Burdick crossed one leg over the other and sat sideways in the chair. A look of puzzlement and doubt spread slowly across his long, angular face.
“So you take someone who as chairman of the Finance Committee can do more than anyone else to help you get through Congress what you need and make him vice president because he doesn’t have any ambition for higher office? Why would Constable have done that? And why did Russell go along with it? It seems to me that, on the surface anyway, both of them gave up something they wouldn’t have wanted to lose: the president, automatic support on the committee; Russell, control of one of the two or three most important committees in the Senate.”
Allen was surprised. No one in the press had written more thoughtfully about what made Robert Constable different from most of the other men who had had become president. How could he have forgotten this? He felt almost a fool, quoting back to the man who first wrote the sentence that had become the conventional wisdom about the failure of the administration to measure up to what had seemed its promise.
“Constable was always more concerned with politics than with legislation.”
Allen paused, expecting some reaction, but Burdick was too impatient, too caught up in the conversation, to notice, or, if he noticed, to care, about the origin of words. He was only interested in what Allen thought.
“He wanted someone on the ticket he knew would not try to challenge his wife, and in Russell, he got it.”
“Even granting that,” remarked Burdick, “it doesn’t explain why Russell did it, gave up all that power and prestige to hold an office that if you don’t want to be president, doesn’t mean a thing. The only one who stood to gain from that arrangement was the president’s wife. Or so she must have thought.”
“Must have thought?” asked Allen as Burdick got to his feet. “What do you mean?”
Burdick tapped his fingers on the package he held in his other arm.
“There is a reason why Russell ran for vice president, and it isn’t what anyone thinks. Russell did not have a choice. I’m afraid I can’t tell you any more than that; not yet, before I check a few things first. Would you tell the senator when he calls that I’ll be back in New York sometime late tonight and that I need to see him right away?”
All the way to the airport, all the way on the flight to New York, Quentin Burdick kept hold of the package. The only time he let go of it was when he passed through security at the airport, and then he held his breath, afraid that if he took his eyes off it even for a moment it might disappear. He was still holding onto it on the cab ride into Manhattan when Bobby Hart finally called.
“We keep missing each other,” said Hart. “Where are you? David said you were coming back to New York tonight.”
“I just got in. I’m in a cab, just a few blocks from the apartment.”
“You’re not going back there, are you?” asked Hart, worried. “After your place was broken into, I thought you were staying in a hotel.”
“I did, for a couple of days, but I couldn’t stay there forever. I have to see you. I know it’s late, but is it possible tonight? I’ve just gotten something—I was in D.C. and…well, never mind, I’ll explain later. But it changes everything, all of it, The Four Sisters—the whole story about what happened that night. Look, can you come now, right away—my place on Sixty-third? You’ve been there before. Half an hour? P
erfect. I’ll see you then.”
Burdick began to relax. He had his story, the story of a lifetime, and as for the rest of it, Bobby Hart would know what to do, how to stop what had started from going any further. He paid the cab driver and got out in front of the pre-war building on East Sixty-third where he had lived for the better part of the last twenty years. He was home, and even if, unlike California, the heat was almost as bad late at night as it was during the day, he could not imagine living anywhere other than Manhattan. Though he could not sing a note, the words “I like New York in June,” ran through his eager mind as if he were sitting somewhere in a jazz joint listening to some kid, some bright new talent, play a riff of it on the piano.
“Hello, Mr. Burdick,” said a woman with a soft, breathless voice.
He was just at the entrance, on the first of the three short steps that led to the door. He turned and saw a late-night apparition, a gorgeous young woman in a blue silk dress. She had that expensive New York look, a woman who was used to money.
“Good evening,” said Burdick, smiling to himself at how much she reminded him of the endless, priceless vanity of things, the way the city drew everyone to it, the promise of what was just waiting for you to take it, if you were young and ambitious and beautiful and rich.
“I love reading the things you write,” she said, sliding closer.
She had the brightest, most entrancing smile Burdick thought he had ever seen. She was still smiling at him, looking right in his eyes, when he realized that he had seen her before, seen her in photographs, six of them.
“You—!” he cried out, and then he felt it, the gun pressed hard against his stomach, and then, an instant later, everything went black and he did not feel anything.
Several people passed by on the sidewalk while Quentin Burdick’s dead body lay on the landing, three steps up, but if any of them noticed, none of them stopped. He lay there in a pool of blood, his eyes frozen in a vacant stare, until a cab pulled up and Bobby Hart arrived. Before Hart was halfway across the sidewalk, he knew that Burdick was dead. He bent down beside him to make sure, and then called 911. He did not think that it was a robbery, but he checked for Burdick’s wallet just to make sure. It was still in his jacket pocket and Burdick’s watch was still on his wrist. David Allen had told him something about a package that Burdick had treated as if it were the most valuable thing he owned. Hart glanced around, but there was nothing there; if Burdick had had it with him, it was gone.
He wanted to close Quentin Burdick’s eyes, to give him that much peace, but he reminded himself that this was now a murder scene and he had better not do anything more than he already had. So he sat down on the step and in the humid summer heat waited for the police, promising himself, and promising his friend Quentin Burdick, that this was going to be one New York murder that did not go unsolved. Then he pulled out his cell phone and called Austin Pearce.
“Quentin Burdick has been murdered. We better leave tonight.”
Chapter Sixteen
Laura tried to make a joke of it, teasing him about flying off to Paris with Austin Pearce instead of her, when he called from the airport to tell her where he was going, but he did not laugh, and she knew that something serious had happened.
“What is it, Bobby?—Tell me.”
“Quentin Burdick—he’s been murdered.”
“Murdered, like the others, like the president, like…?”
“I found him on the steps to his building.” He did not add any of the details. He did not want to tell her, and she did not want to know. “It’s all connected somehow: what happened to Constable, what happened to Frank Morris…and now Quentin Burdick. I have to find out. Whatever is going on, someone has to stop it.”
She wanted to tell him that someone else could do it, she wanted to tell him to come home, tell him that she could not survive if anything happened to him, but she knew that if stayed home safe he would think himself a coward, and so she did not tell him anything except that she loved him and wished he did not have to go.
“Go home tomorrow,” he told her; “go home to Santa Barbara. I’ll fly out as soon as I get back.”
There was a long pause. There was something he did not want to tell her, something that she had already heard in his voice.
“You don’t think it’s safe here; you think that the same people who murdered Quentin Burdick might be coming after you! That’s why you don’t want me to stay, why you want me to leave.”
“Promise me—you’ll go tomorrow, first thing.”
“I’ll need to phone the airline, I’ll need—”
“It’s been taken care of. You’re on a ten o’clock flight. Now try to get some sleep. I’ll be back before you know it.”
Laura slept, but only for a few minutes at a time, and even then she might as well have been awake, the only difference whether what she feared the most darkened her imagination or came to her in dreams. Bobby slept, but only for the last two hours of the flight, and only then because he knew he needed it to get through what he knew was waiting for him in Paris. After five minutes with the American ambassador he began to wonder if any amount of rest would have helped him keep his eyes open. Andrew Malreaux was among the most profoundly dull-witted men he had ever met.
“France is a really interesting country,” remarked the ambassador as if he were sharing a fact that not many people knew or could be expected to know. “Interesting people, interesting buildings, interesting food—interesting language, too, once you get the hang of it.” He said this with a bright, confidential look, as of one who has, after some effort, achieved the competence required to make a considered judgment.
In response, Austin Pearce spoke to him in near perfect French. The ambassador squinted and nervously scratched his chin.
“I got some of that,” he said, confirming with a silent nod of his head that he had indeed understood at least a few of the words.
Pearce beamed approval.
“Your French lessons are coming along, then? You’ve certainly improved.”
“Yes, well, I work hard at it. One of these days, I might even catch up with you, Austin. You never know.”
“That’s true, Andrew: You never do. We don’t want to take up any more of your time. Did you have a chance to arrange to have…?”
The ambassador stared at him, waiting to be reminded what it was he was supposed to have done.
“You were going to have someone brief us on someone. I’m sure you didn’t forget.”
“No, of course not. That was…?”
“Jean de la Valette, the head of a banking firm that the senator wants to know more about.”
“Valette! Yes, of course. Follow me.” He turned and led his two visitors down a long hallway. “The head of our political section—Aaron Wolfe, very intelligent fellow: Yale, Yale Law—has put something together.” He stopped in front of the second door from the end. “Poor Robert Constable! He had it all, and then, just like that, he’s gone. Tell me, are the rumors true: Was there a woman with him that night—is that how he died? I imagine that’s the way he would have wanted to go. He always did like a good piece of ass.” Malreaux started to smile at the thought of it, but the smile died on his lips. “I have to admit, though, I didn’t much like it when he made a pass at my wife.”
“Angelique?” asked Pearce, rather surprised. Malreaux had only married her the year before.
“No, the one before—Alexis. Remember her? Not sure that was the only pass he ever made at her, either. Not sure, to tell the plain truth about it, that the son-of-a-bitch wasn’t successful.”
The memory of a former wife’s possible deceit was now just that—a memory—and if Malreaux knew how to do anything, it was how to forget. His former wife was gone, and now so was the president who might have taken more than just his money.
“What’s going to happen now, with Russell, I mean? Do you think he’ll run, or will she?”
Pearce seemed to ponder the question, to take seriously what th
e ambassador wanted to know. He put his hand on his shoulder and looked him straight in the eye.
“Chances are that one of them will.”
“Yes, I think you’re probably right,” said the ambassador, after thinking about it a moment. “In fact, I’m almost sure of it.”
Suddenly, he remembered who he was with. His face reddened slightly as he turned to Hart.
“I’m not sure I should tell you this, but I suppose it can’t do any harm now. The Constables thought you might run when his second term was over. They were worried about it. Those of us who had raised money for him were being asked to get ready to do the same thing for her. They thought that if she had all the money locked up, you’d have to think twice about getting into it.”
He said this with a look that suggested he did not think it would have worked, and that he would not have minded if it had not; a look that said his relationship with the Constables was as transitory, as dependent on immediate need, as any other type of investment. Malreaux may not have known anything of history or culture, or anything else of lasting importance, but he had, like other men of business, an instinct for his own advantage.
“Any chance you might do it, run this time?” he asked point blank. “She’ll beat Russell, if he tries to run, but you can beat her. You’re the only one who can.”
“I didn’t have any plans to run before,” replied Hart, an oblique reference to the calculation, bordering on paranoia, with which the Constables had planned their campaigns. “I certainly don’t have any now.”
It was exactly what someone who was planning to run would say. No one shut the door on the chance to be president.
“If things change,” said Malreaux with a knowing smile, “there may be some things I can do.”
