A year before, even six months earlier, Cassie would have had a hard time attending a party on her own, let alone attempting to meet new people and make friends at one. It was proof of how much more self-confident she’d become that she drifted that night from group to group with apparent ease. Shaking hands, introducing herself, she slowly made herself a part of whatever circle she chose to enter. In each, she’d manage to innocently ask: “Have you all known the Senator long? My network’s doing a segment on him. We’d love to hear any stories or memories you might have…”
And though Cassie pretended to seem most interested in those who eagerly responded with their various anecdotes, it was really those who closed up suddenly, who moved quickly away whom she mentally marked down. Around eleven, the relentlessly upbeat Dixieland combo was replaced by a louder, electrified band. People’s high heels and ties came off. Cassie, unable to hear herself speak, was working her way back toward the house when she felt someone touch her elbow.
“Care to dance?” It was Geoffrey Mellon. His red bow tie hung loose at his neck, and his white dress shirt accentuated the deep tan of his face and neck.
“Not my kind of music,” Cassie replied.
“Good. I really wanted a chance to talk to you, anyway,” he said genially. “Let’s go in.” He propelled her in front of him; his grip firm on her elbow.
“Great party,” Cassie said when they’d reached the back hall. “Too bad our crew wasn’t around to film it. Would have made terrific footage.”
“Doubtful,” Geoffrey replied, opening up a door, flicking on a light, and talking over his shoulder as he led her down a flight of carpeted steps. “No taxpayer likes to see his money hard at work drinking and dancing.”
“You’ve got a point,” Cassie said. “But that begs the question why Channel 5 is out in the front yard.”
“I was afraid you might notice,” Geoffrey replied, opening a door at the bottom of the steps and turning on another light. He pushed the door wider and stood aside for Cassie to enter. It was a large, pleasantly masculine room with wood-beamed ceiling and an enormous flagstone fireplace that took up one entire wall. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered another wall, hundreds of photographs of the Senator with the influential and famous covered the third, the fourth was taken up by eight metallic-gray four-drawer filing cabinets. At the far corner of the room a door opened to a short flight of stone steps that led up to the backyard.
“That’s why I wanted the chance to see you alone. Relax, Cassie,” he said, gesturing to one of the comfortably worn Strickey chairs in front of the fireplace. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Only if you’re having something.”
“Don’t touch the stuff,” he said, leaning on the arm of the chair next to hers. She sensed he’d taken a standing pose in order to—literally—get the upper hand. He folded his arms across the pleated white fabric at his chest, and added, “I’ve seen what alcohol can do to people.”
“Anyone in particular?” Cassie asked as she stood up—deciding two could play at power dynamics—and walked over to the wall of photographs. The framed shots covered the wall, depicting Haas over more than three decades in Washington: standing beside Kennedy in the Oval Office, as a freshman congressman with an almost military crew cut and a wide, optimistic smile. Next to that, taken fifteen years later, there was a gold-framed photo of Haas—with sideburns and slightly thinning though stylishly long hair—shaking hands with a dazed-looking Jimmy Carter in the Rose Garden. Alongside the shots of other political Washington celebrities were those of politicized Hollywood: Haas with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden in the seventies, flanked by Meryl Streep and Debra Winger in the late eighties.
“I think we can talk frankly, Cassie,” Geoffrey replied, watching her across the room. “It’s clear Tony overindulges from time to time. He’s under a great deal of pressure, especially now with all the endless demands of his reelection campaign.”
“Don’t worry. We don’t have an incriminating tape of Haas dancing with a lampshade on or anything.”
“I’m sure you don’t,” Geoffrey replied pleasantly. “Believe me, I’m well aware what you do—and don’t have—on the Senator.”
“And by that you mean?”
“We run a tight ship, as I think you’re beginning to notice. I imagine you’re getting a bit frustrated by it as well. Believe me, it’s necessary. You’re aware that rumors are circulating—ugly, partisan mud-slinging ones—about illegal contributions for Tony’s campaign.”
“Ruthie Nester’s a liberal Democrat,” Cassie replied, turning to look at Geoffrey. “I somehow don’t think of her as particularly partisan.”
“Then you’re far more naive than I thought. Nester’s getting ready to run herself in another four years. I don’t intend to let her get carried into the Senate on the broken back of Anthony Haas.”
“You don’t?” Cassie turned back to the wall of photos. There was a shot of Senator Haas surrounded by the Mets at the end of their 1986 World Series championship. He wore a baseball cap and was smiling, but the photo showed how time and drink had finally blurred and broadened his once handsome features. “Sometimes, Geoffrey, you sound just a little bit like a one-man political band. It must be tough, having to stake all your hard work on the fate of another man. What will you do if the Senator doesn’t win? Or if he decides to retire?”
“Neither possibility gives me the least concern, actually. Tony’s only in his mid-sixties. I know him well. I’ll wager he’ll be in there fighting twenty years from now.” His tone was so patently false that Cassie found herself staring at him with open surprise, but Geoffrey’s expression was as bland and unreadable as always.
“And where will you be? I wonder. You strike me as someone who wouldn’t make a bad candidate yourself.”
“You flatter me,” Geoffrey said, rising and walking over to stand beside her. “I’m second string, Cassie. The prompter in the wings. I like to work behind the scenes. Helping draft legislation, cut deals, work out compromises.”
“Some people would call that being the power behind the throne,” Cassie said, turning to a photograph of Senator Haas, with his mid-seventies sideburns, flanked by two men Cassie recognized, but couldn’t immediately place. Geoffrey glanced from her to the framed picture.
“That’s Vance Magnus,” Geoffrey told her, pointing to the tall, bronzed, smiling man on Haas’s left dressed in an expensive three-piece suit. Like Haas, his hair was longer; but unlike the Senator, Magnus had the kind of patrician good looks that could carry off any style—however faddish—with graceful elegance.
“Who’s that?” Cassie asked, pointing to the bearded man with intense dark eyes on Haas’s right. There was something so penetrating and knowing in the man’s look; Cassie felt he was looking right at her, now, in this room.
“You don’t know?” Geoffrey asked with an amused laugh. “That’s your brother-in-law. Jason Darin. Apparently those three were really tight back in the early seventies. Thick as thieves, you might say.”
Twenty-seven
“When was the picture taken?” Cassie asked, stepping closer to examine the shot. Haas had his right arm around Magnus’s shoulders, his left hand wrapped around a neck of a champagne bottle; there was something about the way he was standing that made Cassie think Magnus was helping to hold Haas upright. Jason, hands thrust deep in his pockets, looked angry and uncomfortable, as though someone had forced him to pose for the picture against his will. There was a banner behind the three men, though the words running across it were cut off by the top of the frame.
“‘Magnus for Mayor,’” Geoffrey told her. “Don’t you remember? Back in the mid-seventies sometime?”
“I had no idea Magnus was ever in politics.”
“It was a very brief stint from what I understand. It was way before my time, but my impression is that he got his feet wet, then decided he didn’t want to take the final plunge. He never made the ballot. Just an
other businessman getting in a bit over his head.”
“In what way was Jason involved? I wonder.”
“At the time I know he owned the hotel where they held a few of Magnus’s fund-raisers. The Savoy in midtown. Those were the days when you could pick up Manhattan real estate for a song, the way Jason did. He was even smarter to sell most of it off in the late eighties. Too bad he lost interest in politics. We could use someone with his connections on our reelection committee.”
“I get the feeling that it was more than just his losing interest,” Cassie said. “Somewhere along the line I think he lost respect for Haas. Do you know what happened?”
Geoffrey gave her a look, then a smile. “You’re fishing in the wrong river, Cassie. Tony’s as tight-mouthed about Jason Darin as I’ve ever known him to be about any subject. They had a sort of father-son thing going there for a long time, I know. Something happened, and their relationship ended. That’s about the best I can do, I’m afraid.”
“But Magnus and Haas have stayed good friends,” Cassie said, turning back to the wall of photographs.
“Yes,” Geoffrey answered, his voice suddenly taking on the slick, slightly insincere tenor of the efficient aide. “Vance Magnus is one of the Senator’s most influential supporters.”
“I suppose that works both ways,” Cassie replied. “Influence, I mean. Vance needs something done in Washington, I guess he just calls you guys for the favor.”
“In its broadest sense, it’s called lobbying, Cassie,” Geoffrey replied smoothly. “It’s probably the one growth industry in the capital right now. Totally legal. In fact, absolutely necessary.”
“I stand reproved.”
“Not really. Just better informed, I hope. I can’t help but feel that you’re looking for something in the Senator that simply isn’t there. And I don’t necessarily mean anything negative,” Geoffrey continued quickly as he turned back to the fireplace. He massaged the base of his neck, sighed, and relaxed into the chair Cassie had vacated. “There’s no room left in Washington for the kind of idealized politics Tony once preached. It’s far more complicated now—subcommittees, special interest groups. Bureaucracy—rather than rhetoric—rules the roost.”
“And that’s all it was before,” Cassie asked, “rhetoric?”
“Don’t get semantic on me,” Geoffrey told her. “I’m just trying to help. I know you probably feel that the Senator’s schedule is a bit overorganized, his speeches perhaps too calculated. It’s true, we currently have more people on staff doing P.R. than constituency liaison. But that’s how the game’s played these days. It used to be that a Senator like Haas would take his message to the people. Now we take it to the media. In the long run—it’s more or less the same thing. Except voters can now watch a speech in the comfort of their own living rooms, rather than at a rally.”
“Which makes a relationship like Magnus and the Senator’s all that much more important. And the Breaking News segment pretty crucial.”
“You’ve got it.” Geoffrey smiled across at her. “That’s why I wanted to make sure we—your team and mine—are all still on the same wavelength. I sometimes get—how should I say this?—funny vibes from you. As I said, like you’re looking for something that isn’t there.”
“Well, one thing we had been trying to locate,” Cassie replied lightly, tapping the wall, “were some good photos—old ones, in good condition—to use as background. Could we get our crew down here sometime during the next week or two, maybe? To shoot this wall?”
Geoffrey glanced briefly around the room, his gaze hesitating at the filing cabinets, then back at Cassie. “I think that can be arranged. But just the photos, of course. The rest of the house is off-limits. Understood?”
“Oh, absolutely.”
By the time Cassie and Geoffrey had made their way back upstairs again, the party had started to wind down. Haas, flanked by Rita Kirbie and another aide, was saying good night to guests at the front door. Swathed in a black tuxedo that could not quite conceal his girth, the Senator looked unhappily sober, and it seemed likely to Cassie that Rita and her colleague had been designated watchdogs.
“Where’ve you been?” Sheila materialized at Cassie’s side and took her arm. “I’ve been looking all the hell over the place for you. Magnus has offered to drive us back. He’s waiting outside in his limousine.” From the emphasis Sheila put on the last word, Cassie knew that her friend was not as immune as she pretended to be to the trappings of wealth and power. There was also a look in her eye, an intensified energy about her smile, that made Cassie realize she was still far from cured of the charms of Vance Magnus.
“I’ve some interesting news about our new chauffeur,” Cassie told Sheila once they’d shaken hands with Haas and started down the front steps. “And I think I know where Haas keeps his personal papers.”
“In the basement,” Sheila told her as they stood at the curb looking for Magnus’s black stretch Mercedes. “I’ve been busy, too, making nice with a disgruntled housekeeper.”
During the drive along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, Magnus, seated in the middle of the plush backseat, chatted mostly to Sheila on his right while Cassie stared out the window at the massive glittering shell of lower Manhattan across the river. But if Sheila had hopes that Magnus’s interest was more than transitory, it was surely dashed when he leaned forward to instruct the driver to drop Sheila off first.
“You’ve been very quiet,” Magnus said as he climbed back into the car after seeing Sheila to her door.
“Tired,” Cassie told him. “It’s been a long couple of weeks.”
“Haas told me tonight that you’ve been tracking him like a bloodhound.”
“That may be so, but we haven’t yet picked up much of his real scent. Haas’s staff has him so sanitized, he’s barely human. He can’t open his mouth without a prepared speech in hand.”
“These days politicians have to be so careful,” Magnus told her. “Appearances are everything unfortunately. It used to be that certain things—a candidate’s home life, his financial history—were off bounds to the press. Would Kennedy have ever been elected, for instance, if people knew how much he played around? But since Gary Hart, the thing’s a free-for-all.”
“You sound as if you don’t approve,” Cassie said. “But I distinctly remember Magnus Media joining in on the Hart feeding frenzy.”
“Still playing Little Miss Morality, are we?” Magnus laughed and turned to her, his arm moving along the back of the seat, grazing her hair lightly. “Well, you’re quite right. I’m constantly having to employ a double standard: what’s best for the corporation as opposed to what I really believe. In the case of your piece on Tony, I feel we have the opportunity to right a few of the wrongs I see at work out there. The man deserves a better break from the media—some respect and acknowledgment. I’m delighted we can give him that.”
“And if the piece comes out looking totally orchestrated and rehearsed, you don’t care?”
“In this case, my dear, no,” Magnus said, his arm dropping to settle against her back, his left hand curling around her shoulder. “I know you’ll do your best. A positive segment is never as interesting as a negative one. Oldest rule in my book.”
“I’ve some rules, too,” Cassie said, sitting forward suddenly, breaking his embrace.
“I understand.”
“I’m not sure you do,” Cassie said, turning toward him. “Would you like to come in to talk about them?”
“I’d love to, but I somehow doubt Jason would second the invitation.”
“Jason has nothing to do with this, and besides, he’s not here,” she replied as the limousine pulled up to the curb. A light was on in the front hall for her, though Cassie knew that both Charles and Henrietta had left hours before. Since Jason and Heather had decamped for the Berkshires, the town house felt ridiculously large and suddenly empty to Cassie. She had had no idea that she would miss Heather’s high, demanding voic
e so much, the sound of her footsteps pounding down the front stairs to breakfast. But far more fiercely and painfully she missed Jason. His smile. His touch. His rare laughter. The far-off sound of his voice on the phone in his study, all the indistinguishable background noises of people living together.
Now, essentially, Cassie lived alone again. And though her nonstop working hours kept her from facing it, she was deeply lonely. More than the house, her heart was empty.
“Armagnac? Brandy?” Cassie asked Magnus as she switched on the lights in the library.
“No, I won’t keep you. I just want to know what you meant … about me not understanding.” He was leaning against the fireplace, looking down at the immaculately clean marble hearth: a tall, impeccably dressed man with silver hair and a thin smile. His attraction, Cassie had long ago decided, was the aura of compressed power that he wore as easily as his custom-made suits.
“I’m not unaware how much you’ve done for me,” Cassie said, pouring herself a splash of brandy from the small bar unit built into the wall of bookcases. She was nervous, and the balloon glass acted as a handy prop. She rolled the base back and forth between her palms as she walked across the room to join him at the fireplace. She knew that in the low light her dress shimmered seductively. She shook her bangs back and looked up at him. “I’m also not unappreciative.”
“You make me sound like some rusty old professor who’s given you a good mark.”
“And what would you rather be … for me?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“I want to take you into my care. I want to make you into a media star—first as a host of Breaking News, then eventually in the role Miranda had wanted, as the first woman to anchor the news alone. I’ve been watching you, Cassie. You have all the raw abilities to do it: you’re smart, creative, you’ve good reporter instincts. You’ve also got something Miranda never had: a way with people. I’ve seen how you and Sheila work together, how hard the crew was pulling for you on the Bronx segment. I could help you become the first woman megastar in network news. Like Rather and Cronkite, only a hell of a lot prettier.”
Heart and Soul Page 20
