by Ridge King
She’d almost forgotten about her own party. She even considered canceling it and had even gone so far as to call the printer to have the cancellations engraved, but when he answered she told him she dialed the wrong number. She thought of the party now as useless, stupid, purposeless, but only because she too now felt the same way about herself. She almost called Neil once, but didn’t and knew she could never call him again. How could she act all night at the party, especially with Annie and Neil Scott there? She didn’t know if she could bring it off so that everyone would leave thinking she’d given a marvelous party, as usual. The most interesting people in Washington answered her invitations—almost no one “couldn’t” come. Senator Thurston even accepted, and without any persuasion at all. She expected St. Clair would come, too. She’d actually not invited a good many senators so she could make room for more congressmen.
The only refusal she received, in fact, came from the freshman congressman from Wyoming, Matt Hawkins, someone she wasn’t concerned with and didn’t even know. Over three hundred would attend. She decided finally that she’d go on with the party. If she called it off she’d attract more attention than if she just went ahead and slogged her way through it.
Chapter 8
Boxing in the Governor
At seven that evening, Phil Slanetti entered the Thomas Jefferson Suite. St. Clair thought when he saw Slanetti that he might have expected him to be prompt. He looked like the prompt type. Of course he would be, working for the White House, and yet the man somehow unnerved St. Clair. Slanetti seemed almost too efficient. He was not very formal with St. Clair, but correct and frank. As St. Clair shook Slanetti’s hand and introduced him to Jack, the man he chose to sit in with him while talking to Slanetti, he smelled the unmistakable scent of an old fashioned hair cream in the aide’s hair and wondered that they still made the stuff, and further, that anyone really used it these days.
“How exactly can the White House help us, Phil?” asked St. Clair when the three of them were alone. He almost decided to have Sofia sit in with him but he thought that would look weak to Slanetti. So he picked Jack.
“In more ways than you may think, Governor,” said Slanetti.
“Well,” said Jack, looking at St. Clair and smiling, “we’re glad to hear it. We haven’t been too ecstatic over here since the President’s speech.”
“I can understand that,” said Slanetti, putting his briefcase beside his chair. He didn’t intend to open it. He needed it for later business. He looked at their anxious faces and was sorry (because, after all, they were all on the same side) that he couldn’t go ahead and tell them everything that Keystone implied, or even that Keystone existed.
“This will seem strange to you, but I’m afraid it’ll have to be this way,” he said, leaning forward, elbows on knees and hands clasped together. “The President wants me to let you know that the White House intends to act, and that it will be the eventual source of your victory in the House. We believe that we have a very good chance to win even though you may not think so from your own analysis of the membership.” He paused to look at them closely. They were both frowning.
“Unfortunately, the ways in which we are going to help are of such a delicate nature that we don’t even want to expose you to them.”
Jack interrupted him.
“What exactly do you intend to do, Phil?”
Slanetti smiled.
“That, Jack, is just what I can’t be too specific about.”
“Are any of your plans illegal?” asked St. Clair.
Slanetti quickly considered the definition of blackmail.
“It depends on your opinion in some cases, not all,” he said quickly, trying to reassure them.
“But what can we do to help from here?” asked St. Clair.
“Plenty. Just as much as Thurston will be doing to win on his side. You’ll make the rounds just as he will. Make them, talk to people, go on trying to convince them using whatever methods you’ve thought of previously. Promise them what you think you have to to get their votes. They’ll be expecting it and who knows? You might get some interesting switches, but conventional techniques in this matter will make it harder because so many members are already convinced one way or the other.”
“I wish you could tell us what you’ll be doing, Phil. We’re not children, you know,” said Jack, obviously annoyed. He and St. Clair both expected something more immediately tangible in the way of help than a vague promise to be “effective.”
“I wish I could, too, Jack, but the President’s thinking on this is that the less the Governor and those close to him know about it the better it will be later in case something goes wrong.” He saved this for last, thinking this was the best way to put it.
“I can see that,” St. Clair nodded.
“I would still like to know what’s being done on behalf of my dad,” Jack persisted.
“Surely you see how difficult it will be to get a majority of states, Jack,” said Slanetti calmly. “It’s not going to be an afternoon picnic. The White House is perfectly willing to withdraw entirely from the conflict if the Governor decides he doesn’t want the White House to help. The President will not interfere if Sam doesn’t want us to. If he does, we must insist on the terms I’ve spelled out to you.”
He saved that for the finish. Speaking in the President’s name almost always worked because only the immediate White House staff could do it and get away with it, even when they weren’t precisely speaking for the President.
Jack sat up a little more soberly. He didn’t like ultimatums. St. Clair reacted immediately, cutting off any retort Jack might have made.
“Jack didn’t mean that, Phil. You can understand how we feel when you won’t tell us what you’re doing in my name, but if the President condones it, I’ll go along with it. You tell him that for me.”
“I will, sir. Let me reassure you that no one we deal with will think we are coming from you. They will all know it’s the White House alone.”
“When will you get back to us, Phil?” asked St. Clair.
“I’ll get back periodically to report our progress. You’ll need to know the votes that have switched over, mainly so you know to leave them alone.”
“All right,” said St. Clair.
“The party caucuses tomorrow will only be the beginning. Those we get to switch over we’ll want to acknowledge their change publicly, so we’ll need subsequent caucuses, maybe one a week, until the new Congress convenes. I’ll speak to Dunc about that and if we do it the Democrats will do the same.”
The conversation went on for a few more minutes, Slanetti discussing with the two men various details pertaining to the Governor’s schedule for the next few weeks.
“You’ve probably received an invitation from Patricia Vaughan to attend her Thanksgiving party. I suggest you accept it. Since most hostesses haven’t come back to Washington yet, there won’t be as many parties as there ordinarily would be until the first week in December or so. Hers will be an important one. A lot of members will be there and so will I, and you should be there, too.”
“All right, Phil. We’ll be there.”
After Slanetti left, St. Clair turned to Jack.
“What the hell do you make of that?”
Jack just shook his head and shrugged.
“I don’t know what to make of it. But one thing we do know.”
“What’s that?”
“Why Norwalk called the special session.”
Chapter 9
Client Relations
Jack took Sean Walsh’s call after his dad went down the hall to meet with some staffers and Walsh brought Jack up to speed on the meeting at Enriquetta’s. It had taken him a day of working his contacts—and a couple of lower level DEA operatives whose name he got from Jack—to find out exactly who this Laurencio Duarte character really was.
“So that’s who the guy is,” said Jack. “Looks like you’re onto something, Sean. Something big.”
“Yeah.
Thing is, Derek’s going off in so many directions, how much of it do you give back to the client?”
“Yeah,” Jack said, mulling over this very subject. “She just wants to know what he’s doing with the banker at DIB and how that impacts the law firm. Whatever Derek was doing with these two guys, part of it involved the money laundering for Rothman and DIB, but this other part is something entirely different.”
“That’s right.”
“All this other stuff—the money in the sub—isn’t what she cares about.”
“So, what do you tell her?”
“I need to think about it.”
“And what do you do about Flores and Duarte when they go after that money?”
“I need to think about that, too,” said Jack. “Sean, tell Adela I want you to put a couple of your best freelancers on the payroll. Time to follow Derek and Flores and when we pick him up, Duarte as well.”
“OK.”
“We might be going to the Keys with these jokers.”
“OK.”
Jack hung up, looked at his Submariner and dialed Babe.
“Hey, Babe!”
“I’ll be there in a few. Your driver just picked me up.”
“Sorry I couldn’t be there to pick you up personally. A big meeting I had to sit in on with Dad.”
“There’ll be a lot of those over the next couple of months. Where do I meet you?”
“Lobby bar as soon as you get here.”
Jack made his way down to the Round Robin off the lobby and found a stool at the far end of the heavily polished wood bar. They had a great selection of single malts, so he ordered a Dalwhinnie 15-year-old with a couple of cubes of ice.
He didn’t see any need to tell Ramona anything about Laurencio Duarte. Question was, what should he do about Duarte?
Four people left their seats next to him at the bar, so he was almost isolated at the far end. He dialed his brother.
“Hey, Jack!” said Rafael. “Great to hear from you.”
“You coming up this way anytime soon?”
“I just got back to Miami. Got three days off. Thought I’d run up there for a day or so before going back to sea.”
“Good. I want to talk to you.”
“What’s up?”
“It’s delicate.”
“Yeah?”
“You know that guy you picked up at Fort Jefferson, Laurencio Duarte?”
There was a noticeable pause on Rafael’s end of the line.
“How do you know about him?”
“I know enough about him. DEA, the sunken narco-sub, the whole thing. Well, part of it.”
“That’s impossible. This was just a couple of days ago. He’s super undercover, that guy.”
“I know about the blood in the Zodiac.”
“You do get around,” said Rafael, an edge creeping into his voice.
“I need to fill you in on some of the background, so when you come up, make some time for me, OK?”
“You got it, bro. See you soon.”
He hung up and called Ramona.
“Hi, Jack. Has Babe gotten there yet?”
“No. She’ll be here in a few minutes.”
“I dropped her off at the airport. She’s bubbling with excitement to visit you with everything going on.”
“I can’t wait to see her.”
“You’re calling about Derek?”
“Yes. I’d say based on our surveillance so far that there’s definitely something going on between him and Howard Rothman at Dade International.”
“But what it is you don’t know.”
“That’s right. There’s plenty we don’t know.”
“And the next step?”
“I want you to sign off on the transactions he’s been after you about. But I want to work with someone who can help us follow the money trail.”
“See where it goes, you mean?”
“That’s right. When I get back to Miami, we’ll sit down and work this out. So stall Derek till I get back down and we’ll set it up.”
“All right, Jack. Thanks for the follow-through. You and Babe have a great time.”
“We will. And we’re getting together when you come up next week, yes?”
“Yes.”
Five minutes after Jack hung up, Babe came swooshing into the Round Robin, tossing her bountiful dark brown hair—as richly brown as the polished mahogany beneath Jack’s Dalwhinnie 15—over her shoulder, throwing off a beaming smile as she rushed up to Jack and circled his neck with her arms.
Every head in the bar—male and female—turned to look at her.
“Finally,” she said in a husky whisper as she nuzzled his neck. “I can’t wait to get you into bed tonight.”
Jack laughed and sat back down, patting the stool next to him.
“Hold your horses, sweetie. My dad says you’re having dinner with him and Sofia, so those are our immediate plans tonight.”
“I’m not talking about dinner. I’m talking about after dinner.”
Chapter 10
Two Couples
Rafael parked on the tree-lined street on South Beach where he lived in a modest Art Deco duplex built in the late 1930s. After getting his commission as first officer aboard Fearless, he moved out of Flagler Hall quite frankly because he didn’t want to live “at home,” even though “home” had over fifty rooms in it. It didn’t look right for him to be living in the lap of luxury while his father was the governor and he was a lowly lieutenant.
He saw Antonia’s car parked in the little driveway. A couple of years ago, he’d found this quaint little building on the west side of Miami Beach, away from the marauding revelers that surged into the east side of South Beach every weekend, bought it with his mom and dad’s help, fixed the place up by putting a green fence around it fronted by a lush ficus hedge. Those two touches along with a lot of landscaping gave the place a Coconut Grove / Key West feeling, lots of privacy behind a wall of tropical foliage.
He rented the other side of the duplex to an Italian make-up artist who worked for French Vogue, so she was usually in Paris or New York, and spent no more than a month a year on South Beach, so it was as if Rafael had the whole place to himself.
He dashed into his little compound, secured the gate behind him and ran into the house just in time to see Antonia put down a bottle of Champagne she was about to open.
She ran into his arms and he was overpowered by the warmth of her body tight against his. He’d only been at sea for a few days, but it felt like an eternity.
Rafael hugged Antonia hard and fast. She kissed his neck, licking his sweaty skin, rich and tangy with sea salt.
“I’m going to jump in the shower and then we’re jumping into bed, OK?” he said, holding her back.
“As soon as you have a glass of this with me.”
He took the bottle of Taittinger and popped it, pouring it out into the two flutes she pulled from a kitchen cabinet.
They both drank, kissed again, drank and kissed again.
“I don’t want this. I want you,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt to reveal his fine, sculpted body.
“OK, hurry.”
“Be out in five minutes.”
She watched him stroll across the living room toward the bedroom and the bath beyond, pausing only to pet his cat, named Henry (after Henry Flagler).
She shook her head, thinking she must be crazy. She knew that with Jack’s involvement with Raven and now Babe, it seemed like a crazy idea for her to get into an affair with Rafael, but she didn’t give a damn. They’d been friends of course, for years, since childhood, and spent a lot of time together at the St. Clair Island Club.
But then one day about six months ago, simply while swimming in the pool there, he’d suggested they go for a dip in the Bay. She was game. They’d left the pool and run across a golf course green to get to the only beach on St. Clair Island. (The island had sea walls everywhere but this little patch on the northwest corner.) They’d run down the beach and
into the water and swum around for ten or fifteen minutes before returning to the tiny beach where they sat and caught their breath. They’d turned to look at each other, saying nothing, their breathing labored, the water streaming down through their hair onto their faces, and then, his eyes dancing with desire, he leaned over and kissed her. Just like that, without a word, he kissed her like she’d never been kissed before.
How often was it you were friends with a man before you kissed him? Usually you kissed him (and did a whole lot more besides) before you even knew the guy. Not so with Rafael. She knew growing up what a great guy he was, what a gentleman he was, what a wonderful, caring person he was. The fact that he was also the handsomest hunk in the United States Coast Guard and maybe even the world? Icing on the cake. Or as they said in the Master Card ads: priceless.
Till that moment, she’d never had any thought of sleeping with him, of anything possibly developing between them.
How blissfully wrong she’d been!
And though the match didn’t look good on paper—he was a St. Clair after all and she was a Fuentes—she knew this:
What felt this good had to be good?
Antonia took another glass of the Taittinger and moved into the bedroom where she took off her clothes and crawled into bed. It was late afternoon and the sun was low in the west. She switched on the ceiling fan over the bed and opened a couple of windows so the southeast breeze would drift in over their bodies while they made love. She loved the smell of the outdoors inside a house, the sound of a breeze working through the palm trees and bushes outside.
