by D. W. Buffa
Chapter Twenty-Four
David Allen had barely slept in three days. He tried to relax, he tried to tell himself that every crisis had an end, he even tried sleeping pills, but nothing worked; nothing could stop the frenzied, thousand thoughts a minute movement of his mind, the compulsion to try to find answers to questions he did not know how to ask. His blood pressure, always high, was off the charts; the thumping in his chest was loud enough to hear. He began to have a nervous tic at the corner of his mouth. Without warning, a quick incessant blinking would suddenly take possession of his tired eyes. Like the world around him, everything was going to extremes.
For three days, Bobby Hart’s administrative assistant had been forced to answer accusations, each one more damaging than the last, about the senator’s part in the conspiracy to murder the president. Allen had started with an angry denial, outraged that anyone would suggest such a thing was even possible, but then, as more and more evidence was produced, when documents were discovered proving Hart had paid the assassin, he found himself on the defensive, arguing that despite what all this seemed to prove, it was not true. Then, when Hart escaped arrest at the embassy and disappeared somewhere in France, even that became impossible and he was reduced to mumbling the obligatory “no comment” each time he had to pass through a phalanx of shouting reporters in the hallway outside the Senate office.
By this time, there were not more than a dozen people in Washington who did not believe what everyone else believed, that Bobby Hart was behind the murder of Robert Constable, and probably less than half that number who were still willing to say so. David Allen was one of them; Charlie Finnegan was another. Both of them knew Hart too well, knew too much about what he had gone through with his wife, to think that the case against him was anything other than a deliberate fabrication, part of a conspiracy that had started with the murder of the president and had perhaps always been intended to end with the blame fixed on someone else. In the hours after Hart had gone missing in Paris, Charlie Finnegan met secretly with David Allen to decide what they should do.
An unmarked door just off one of the main corridors in the Capitol opened on to a narrow hallway in which certain members of the Senate had private rooms where they could spend time alone, or sometimes not alone, away from the prying eyes of reporters and the constant demands of staff, a place where they could, if they wanted, actually think.
“Atwood is lying through his teeth!” exclaimed Finnegan, shaking his head in angry disbelief.
He gestured toward a brown sofa which, along with a matching leather chair and a coffee table, made up the furnishings of the room. Allen sat down, but Finnegan was too agitated even to stand still. He kept moving, a few slow, hesitant steps in one direction, a few steps back, an awkward, sliding motion in which he would suddenly dip his shoulder and turn to the side, stop, stare down at the carpet, and then, shaking his head again at the enormity of what had happened, start off on another short, distracted journey.
“It’s that goddamn Atwood! He’s at the center of this. He’s lied about everything. When Bobby went to see him—did he tell you this? He said that he had told the FBI, that they had started an investigation, and that the CIA was aware of it as well. Then we have the director of the CIA in front of the committee and Bobby asks him and he doesn’t know anything about it! And now this—announces that Constable was murdered and that the Secret Service—the Secret Service, for Christ sake!—was investigating, and they find the assassin, the woman who was in the room with him that night, and she died trying to escape, but they found all the evidence they needed in her apartment. In her apartment, for Christ sake!”
Finnegan took one more step and wheeled around.
“Her apartment! This professional killer, so good at what she does she gets Constable to take her to bed so she can put a needle in him; so good at what she does that she gets that poor bastard, the agent who was supposed to be guarding Constable, to help her get away; so good at what she does that no one seems to know who the hell she is—keeps records in her apartment like she was some tax accountant afraid of losing even one receipt? Notice, by the way, that the only records they found were about this one job; not a shred of evidence about any of the other murders she must have done! It’s Atwood. He’s in the middle of this. The only question is who he is working for. He wouldn’t have had any reason to do this, go to these lengths, get rid of this many people and then frame Bobby for it, on his own.”
While he listened, Allen thought back to the last time he talked to Hart, when Hart was in New York meeting with Austin Pearce. He remembered the reason why he had tried to reach him.
“Quentin Burdick came to see Bobby the same day he died, that afternoon. Bobby was in New York. He had gone up to see Austin Pearce. I’m not sure why Burdick was here, but he must have come to see someone. He said he had to talk to Bobby. It seemed quite urgent. He said Bobby would know what it was about, but then he said that he wouldn’t, that he would think he did, but he wouldn’t. It was all very mysterious. He said to tell Bobby that it was what they talked about before—The Four Sisters—only that there was a lot more to it than what he had thought then.”
“Bobby told me about that—Burdick had asked me about it once—The Four Sisters.”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“He couldn’t. He only told me because he thought I might be able to help. Did Burdick say anything else?”
“Not really. He had a package with him. I don’t know what was in it, but it must have been important the way he held onto it.”
“He didn’t talk about anything else? Nothing?”
“We just talked about the rumors going around. What Russell was going to do: whether he would try for the nomination, and whether he would have any chance against Hillary Constable if he did.” Allen narrowed his eyes and tried to remember. “There was something. It was odd. Burdick wanted to talk about the reasons why Russell had gone on the ticket with Constable, why he didn’t stay chairman of Senate Finance instead. He went through all the things that had been said at the time, but then he said that the real reason was because Russell did not have a choice.”
“Didn’t have a choice?”
“I don’t know what he meant. I asked, but all he would say was that he couldn’t tell me yet. Whatever it was, he seemed pretty damn certain of what he knew.”
“Didn’t have a choice,” repeated Finnegan in a pensive voice. “Constable would have done that, used something he had, something he knew about Russell, to force him to do what he wanted, run for vice president. If that’s true, you could see why Russell might decide that…. And now Constable is dead, and Russell does not have to worry about whatever Constable had on him and he becomes president in the bargain.”
Almost immediately, Finnegan changed his mind. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand.
“But if Russell wanted Constable dead, why wait until now when he has only a few months to establish himself in the office, and when the public’s sympathy is all for Constable’s wife? He knew from the day he agreed to run for vice president that she was only waiting for the end of her husband’s second term to run for her first.”
“Unless something happened,” said Allen, “something that made him think he was going to be in real trouble if Constable lived.”
Finnegan put his hand on the back of his neck and twisted his head from side to side. He remembered things now in a different way than he had remembered them before. Everything had a new importance.
“The story Burdick was working on, the connection between Constable and The Four Sisters. Bobby was convinced that was what got Constable killed. The story would have destroyed Constable and any chance Hillary had to become president. Maybe they were all in on it, Constable, Frank Morris, and Russell, too. Maybe. I don’t know. I still think it had to be Hillary. Russell doesn’t strike me as ruthless enough to do something like this. And Atwood—where do you think his loyalties are? Who would he trust enough to do something like this:
organize an assassination and then arrange the murders of everyone who started to get close to the truth? It had to be Hillary Constable.”
Allen bit his lip and thought hard. He had never trusted Robert Constable and had never liked his wife, but facts were facts and all of them seemed to suggest that Finnegan was wrong.
“She would have to be a fool. She had to know that as soon as Constable was dead all the power would be in Russell’s hands and that everything would change. It’s one thing to have a weak vice president, someone who can’t win the presidency on his own, someone who could not mount a serious challenge to a woman as popular as she is. It’s something else again to defeat an incumbent president of your own party, a man the whole country wants to succeed after he has taken over for the victim of an assassination. I don’t know if Russell is behind this, maybe it was Hillary—it has to be one of them—but if Russell wanted it done, Atwood would have done it.”
Instead of a reply, Finnegan sat down on the edge of the chair and lapsed into a long silence. Finally, he stood up and with his hands behind his back started shuffling back and forth. A moment later, he stopped abruptly and looked straight at Allen.
“What if it were both of them? What if Russell and Hillary Constable were in it together? What if they decided Constable had to die—because it was the only way to stop the story about The Four Sisters coming out—and they made a deal. You’ve heard the rumor; you know what is going to happen: she’s going to take his place as vice president. What if this was part of the deal?”
There was a certain clear logic in the murderous precision of the scheme. It was political calculation carried to a Machiavellian extreme: the removal of an obstacle to ambition, and done in a way that by blaming it on someone else makes you the object of universal sympathy and good will. Allen saw at once how each part fit.
“Russell serves out the remainder of Constable’s term and then has a term of his own. Hillary is vice president and then has the chance to run for two terms on her own. A devil’s bargain that gives them both what they want and that gets rid of the only threat they face, Bobby Hart, by blaming it all on him. And they won’t have to worry about him defending himself, because—”
“Because he’ll be dead, killed while he was trying to get away!”
“What can we do?” asked Allen. But for the moment, Finnegan had no answers.
If Allen had barely been able to sleep before, now he could not sleep at all. He lay awake all night, wondering what was going to happen, not just to his friend of twenty years, but to the country. It had been bad enough, the nearly eight years of Robert Constable’s lying, ineffectiveness, and treachery, but four, eight, twelve years of government by a band of assassins? The killing would not stop once the two of them, Constable’s wife and vice president, had what they wanted. If history proved anything, it proved that no one was more suspicious than the man or woman who had come to power through an act of violence. Anyone thought to be a threat, whether a political rival or someone who might discover what they had done, would have to be dealt with, eliminated, made to disappear; and every time it happened, every time they were forced to commit another murder, another violent act, there would be another cover-up, and another set of secrets that would have to be protected. The circle would keep widening, spreading death and destruction, until, finally, the circle, as always happened, would be driven back on itself, and the ones who had started everything in motion would themselves become the victims of some new aspirant to power.
Allen did not know what to do. There was no use telling anyone that Bobby Hart was innocent. There were some on the senator’s own staff who did not believe that. Several of them had resigned immediately, afraid of the damage that might be done to their own careers; others, Allen knew, would follow shortly. If even people on Hart’s own staff thought he had done what everyone said he did, no one was going to believe that Russell and Hillary Constable were guilty instead. Whatever the charges, whatever the risk, Bobby had to come back. Allen knew that he would try, that he would never leave his wife here alone, but why had he not at least tried to call, to somehow get a message to him that he was all right; let him know something—anything—that might help put his mind at ease? Hart had not even called Laura, though strangely enough, she did not seem much worried about it.
Allen, who lived for politics, had never felt entirely comfortable around Laura Hart. She was not quite like anyone he knew; she certainly was not like most of the other wives of successful politicians. She was in love with her husband, which in Washington was rare enough, but she was in love with him not because, but in spite, of who he was. Allen had for a long time resented her, convinced that Hart would have run for president if he had been married to a woman who, like most political wives, dreamed of being first lady instead of living alone, just the two of them, somewhere in the seclusion of the Santa Barbara hills. He did not change his mind about that, but he did change his mind about her. He realized that the reason he felt such a distance in her presence was because her world was made up of only two people, she and Bobby, and that while she could be a good and trusted friend to others, all her thoughts were about him. Beneath the surface, that fragile exterior that had nearly shattered, down deep in her soul there was a kind of strength that in the days of changeable attachments and replaceable relationships was not seen so much anymore. She believed in her husband, but more than that, she believed in them, the two of them together. David Allen envied them a little for that.
“You look awful, David,” she said when she opened the door.
Allen stood in the doorway of the small apartment the Harts had taken in northwest Washington. He was breathing hard, worn out from all the restless days and sleepless nights. Laura led him into the living room and insisted he take off his jacket.
“Really, David, you can’t take all this on yourself. You’re not going to do Bobby any good if you kill yourself from worry and overwork.”
Allen sank into an easy chair and wrapped his hands around a cool glass of lemonade. Laura sat on the edge of the sofa just a few feet away. Her eyes were clear and a faint smile played on her lips.
“Yours is the first friendly face I’ve seen in days. Except for Charlie, of course. He came by as soon as I got back.”
“Why did you come back? Wouldn’t Bobby have wanted you to stay at home, in Santa Barbara, while all this is going on?”
“Yes, you’re right, he would have. But as soon as I heard—I had just gotten home—I knew I had to come back. I wasn’t going to hide, try to run away. I wanted these people to know that I wasn’t afraid of what they were saying, that all these accusations were false.”
Without makeup, her hair pulled back in a ponytail, dressed in a black turtleneck, she had the clean, well-scrubbed look of a woman who never lived too far from the drifting white sand of an ocean beach. Allen felt a desire to offer her what assurances he could, a need to tell her that things were not as bad as they seemed.
“No one who knows you, no one who knows both of you, believes any of it. You have to know that.”
Her smile seemed to forgive the lie, and, more than that, thank him for what she knew he was trying to do.
“You know us, and Charlie knows us. There aren’t many others, though, are there—people who know us well enough to believe that we aren’t what other people say we are? But that only makes what you and Charlie have done more honorable.” She got up, walked over to the window, and looked down at the street. “The reporters got all they needed. They seemed surprised by what I told them.”
Allen rubbed his chin. His eyes began to blink.
“Surprised? Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
Laura folded her arms and leaned back against the window sill. There was a strange, wistful look in her eyes.
“Shocked, I suppose. I’m not sure why. They accuse me of infidelity and adultery, of having an affair with Robert Constable, but think I’m too fragile—a woman who may or may not have had a breakdown—to respond
the way I did? I told them the truth, and did it in a way I hoped they might understand.”
“Oh, I think they understood,” said Allen, shaking his head at the effect it had. “I think everyone understood.”
“And who knows, there might even have been a few of them who believed me when I said it.” She looked down at the empty street again, remembering the crowd and the stunned reaction when she finished telling them exactly what she thought. She hoped that when he heard about it, Bobby would understand why she had thought she had to do it.
“All I said was that I’d never slept with anyone except my husband,” she explained, turning away from the window. “And that even if I had been single, I never would have slept with anyone who had slept with as many women as Robert Constable. Then I told them that if they were going to run a picture of me and Robert Constable, taken at some event I don’t remember, to suggest that we had an affair, they might want to run a picture of Robert Constable and Bobby Hart to show that I would have had to have been not only a fool, but blind, to have done what they said I did. And then I told them that if they were going to accuse someone of murder because the president was screwing his wife, they better include in their list of suspects half the married men in Washington, to say nothing of the married women in all the other places he had been.”
Tilting her head to the side, Laura fixed Allen with a look that seemed to defy him or anyone else to tell her that she should not have done what she did. But almost immediately, she relented, drew back as if none of it mattered. There were more important things to think about.
“Bobby left a message on the telephone in Santa Barbara. He told me—he didn’t need to, but he told me—that none of it was true, that he was going to prove it, and that he was going to be okay. I haven’t heard anything since. But don’t worry, David. Bobby will be fine. I’d know it if he wasn’t.”
