Samson was put off by the suggestion. Not that he didn’t appreciate the perk; more that he was getting a free ride because of his companion. He told the proprietor the generosity was noted but not necessary, that he was happy to pick up the tab even if he was lucky enough to be on a date with the FKS.
“That has nothing to do with it, hombre,” Saar replied sincerely. “We’re just celebrating your new position. Congratulations.”
Taken aback, he reminded himself: Secretary of Finance, Roman Catholic Church.
After the wine steward delivered the bucket, expertly corking the bottle with a pair of silver pliers, a man and a woman Samson recognized but didn’t know stopped on their way past and excused themselves into the ceremony, congratulating him on his promotion.
After the champagne was poured, Mary Beth lifted her flute and said, “Mr. Secretary.”
“Ms. Kid Sister.”
“I get to be the FKS every day. But it’s not every day you get to be a member of the Cabinet.”
“True,” he replied, taking a sip.
“So you ought to enjoy it.”
Her eyes shimmered. It struck him that despite what she’d been through, Mary Beth looked pretty good. As if she’d just returned from a long respite: tanned and relaxed, more like a 35 year-old socialite rather than a recent widow of the same age. Her movements and bearing were confident, attitude sure. He was happy to see her this way, Ken’s death apparently not taking the toll that Kim’s had taken on him.
“You look great, Ter,” she said as she set down her glass and picked up the menu, scanning it briefly. “You just got back from vacation?”
“Funny you should say that. I was just thinking that about you.”
She set it aside. “I guess I’ve sort of been on vacation, at least the past few months. Haven’t been doing much of anything except… except much of anything. I’ve been reading a lot. I sit out in the backyard. I’ve been doing a lot of running. A lot of thinking.”
“About what?”
“About what to do with the rest of my life.”
United Airlines had made her life as comfortable as possible after the accident, including a settlement even her attorneys admitted was extremely generous, more than they ever could have sold to a jury had the matter gone to trial. She hadn’t gone back to work, hadn’t even looked for a job despite the fact she knew she could—with her background working for Archie Knight and her family connections—do almost anything that struck her fancy.
She didn’t feel she should spend the rest of her life in mourning and to be frank, had done the proper amount already. She’d loved Ken, true, but had always felt there was a business relationship aspect to the whole thing that left her cold, some blank spots leaving the vacant feeling of a bride in a brokered marriage.
“You know how it was,” she sighed.
Samson nodded. He’d guessed that she wasn’t head-over-heels crazy about the guy and that if a few things had shaken out differently, that if they’d both been slightly different people with slightly different circumstances at slightly different times in their lives, he and Mary Beth could have ended up together. Maybe have even married. Taking into account Peter’s theory that everything changes everything, the two of them might have been living in the townhouse. Or maybe they’d have been living somewhere far away from the Creek, dropping in occasionally to visit her brother. Perhaps they’d have had children. Even both been happy.
But that was then, this was now. Her friendship he gladly accepted. Beyond that…
“Peter said to me last night that he thought maybe the two of us have more in common than we used to.”
“At least I don’t throw away the flowers anymore.”
They both chose the shrimp pate. They both chose the chicken dish. They finished the bottle and ordered another. The conversation waterfell, neither able to let a sentence pass without filling in more details about what they’d both been up to since the last phone call. They talked about death, how it had a way of putting things into perspective, a cleansing way of making sense and nonsense out of everyday enterprises. They talked about life, how it had a way of often being different than one expected, sometimes better, sometimes worse. They talked about children, how neither had ever had one, agreeing it must be like their friends told them: The worst thing and the best thing one could ever experience. They talked about dating, Samson saying it hadn’t intrigued him much since Kim’s death that he never seemed to meet anyone who held much promise for the future. Mary Beth agreed, adding that the presence of the occasional bodyguard often dampened spontaneity.
“Bodyguard?”
“Bodyguard,” she replied, motioning with her head over his right shoulder.
His eyes met those of Jeremy, one of the more relaxed of the Swiss Boys.
“We need supervision?”
“I can let him take the rest of the night off. It wasn’t my idea.”
“I’ll protect you.”
She gestured and the guard joined them. “I’ve got a volunteer to protect me. Why don’t you take the rest of the night off and let Mr. Samson see me home?”
“Delighted, Ms. Rehmer. Thanks, Mr. Secretary.” And he left.
“You know something, Terry? I know Pete wants the best for both of us… and I don’t know what you think about our… but a few minutes ago when I caught your eye… “
“What?”
She cocked her head. Leaned in. “We’re not a match made in heaven. Pete could say a thousand novenas and nothing would change. Especially us.” She paused. “How about… how about we promise each other invitations to our next weddings… “
“Assuming there’ll be those weddings… “
“… assuming there’ll be those weddings, which from my point of view aren’t on the near horizon. And leave it at that.”
The hesitation lasted a beat. They laughed. Shook on the deal. Then the conversation continued. Unguarded.
They talked about the upcoming elections, the Diaries, Rosalita, Jeremy and the helicopter crash. Samson recounted in dramatic fashion his encounters with drawn guns and Zitzer. Mary Beth waxed long and hard about her concern for how Peter had been carrying himself the past weeks, how difficult it must be to do what he did each day. How the job was taking its toll. She wondered how the loss of Castro would impact on her brother’s emotional well being.
When the waitress returned for a second time with suggestions for dessert, Mary Beth considered the options then abruptly proposed: “How about walking me home, Mr. Secretary?”
He stood, pulled two $20 from his pocket and set them in the center of the table. They’d only taken a few steps away when realization crossed her face. “Can’t insult a good friend twice,” she grinned, returning to fetch the daisy.
The walk back to the mansion found them detouring when they didn’t have to, the topics they’d discussed resurfacing for elaboration, correction or closure. She kept bringing the daisy to her nose, inhaling its fragrance even though it didn’t have one to write home about. As they neared Compound, she took his arm and eased her head to his shoulder. When they reached the front of Peter’s house, the female of the pair guarding the portal was pulled away by the male component to leave the visitors alone. A delicate breeze drifted around them. Mary Beth’s arms rose slowly, softly encircling Samson’s neck.
“Thank you for an absolutely wonderful evening,” she smiled. “And for understanding that… that… “
“That we’ve both gotta wait for that big flash in the sky? Nah. We’ll find Mr. and Mrs. Right when the time comes. Well, I’m sure you will, anyway.”
“If ever,” she agreed, touching her lips to his cheek then after swirling the daisy like a whirligig, back-stepping to the door.
Instead of returning the way he’d come, Samson cut through Compound to Knight Lake then circled around the southern edge to a smaller bridge close to the residences. A young couple oblivious to his presence, leaning against a tree at the top of the Terrace, were the onl
y persons he encountered. Not a Vatican Guard to be seen, not another neighbor enjoying the crisp, gorgeous night.
He decided a nightcap was in order, maybe a Baileys or a Kahlua. As he walked toward the kitchen, he heard a single note from the piano in the living room. Had to be his imagination. Then he heard three more. Had to be Angelique.
He moved toward the fading phrase. Saw her stock still, apparently staring back. He thought to flick the switch to his left but instead waited for the latest explanation. She gave none. He was about to ask when he sneezed.
“God bless you.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said as he retreated to the kitchen.
“Are you okay?” she called.
“Just getting… would you like a Baileys?”
“Thank you.”
“How did you get in? I know I locked the door when I left,” he queried as he flipped the toggle on the wall, Angelique raising the back of one hand to protect her eyes from the light.
“Turn it off,” she said. “You didn’t lock the back door.”
“This is my house,” he replied. Pissed that she’d once again invited herself into his life. Reminding him that what was left of his future was hanging by a slender thread she could snip without difficulty.
“Please?” she asked, lowering her hand to reveal smeared makeup and bloodshot eyes. He turned off the light then made his way to the piano, sitting next to her on the bench and setting the aperitifs on the keyboard. She wrapped her arms around him then began to sob, burying her face into his neck. “You’ve got to help me.”
“What happened?”
“He’s crazy,” she moaned, gripping him tighter. “He’s just doing this to hurt us.”
“Who?”
“He’s crazy. He wants to hurt us. Maybe kill us.”
“Kill us?”
Then it hit him. He’d killed Kim. Not with a knife or a gun or a vial of poison. But the result was the same. He’d murdered with inattention, by not loving her as fiercely or fluidly as she had him. He’d sensed that as soon as she was buried, as soon as he’d returned to the townhouse the day of the funeral. A couple days late and a drawer full of diamonds short. Nobody: not Peter, not God, could forgive him for what he’d done or not done. Maybe the time had finally come to learn a very expensive lesson.
He took her hand and led her to the couch, the sobbing subsiding, the tears ending. But before he could get her situated, she excused herself to use the powder room. He sat down to await the encore, to get the news that one of his lesser crimes had come home to roost. He gazed at the Lionne-Demilunes, focusing on the stenciled, prominent RISK in the center of the lithograph.
Everything changes everything.
Angelique returned, her makeup in better shape but her demeanor worse for the wear. She dropped onto the couch and folded her hands in her lap. He thought out a few preliminary questions to pose before getting to the tough one, but decided to hand over his ticket to the main event.
“So why is he trying to hurt us? The banquet?”
She looked at him, perplexed. “What?”
“The balcony scene?”
“What?”
“Peter found out. You told him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You said he was trying to hurt us.”
“Hurt us? No, no,” she pled. “When I said us I didn’t mean you. I meant me and Peter. Tommy’s trying to hurt us.”
“Your husband?”
“Yeah.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.” Then paused. “You poor thing. I guess I was doing a little mental shorthand.” She took a deep breath and settled into the cushions. “But he is crazy. And I do need your help.”
He’d gotten the break he was wishing for. Whatever Angelique wanted him to do, he’d be happy to oblige.
“What’s the story?” he asked, hoping his fears wouldn’t spill out like a river breaking its banks.
“The story is,” she said, stepping to retrieve the Baileys. “I need to put all of this into the proper perspective. I’m probably modulating up about a fifth beyond my highest note.” She cocked her head.
“Your perspective is my perspective.”
She’d finally gotten an audience with Peter: a 20 minute chat held in the den of the mansion, the one room in the house where Samson knew Peter delivered nothing but bad news. For some reason only using it when he wanted to take somebody apart then rearrange the pieces in the image he preferred. He knew Gayle had gotten the Riot Act read there one afternoon and that Cardinal Dooling, the Pope’s first Secretary of Internal Affairs, had spent an hour in the cherry wood cubbyhole the day before he announced his resignation from his post to return to “pastoral pursuits.”
All she’d gone to speak to “His Pontiffship” about was her pending annulment from Carnes, a final release from her vows that had been filed 14 months previous, but not granted. All she wanted was to put it behind her despite the fact Carnes had raised numerous objections to the proceedings, not the least of which was his position that the grounds she was claiming—Emotional Immaturity—were absurd in the extreme.
EmIm had long been a sanctioned catch-all reason, its civil counterpart “irreconcilable differences.” It was a fiction employed to allow Catholics to shed their UDDWP promises when there were no valid reasons otherwise existent. It was invented in the 1960’s to provide a trap door for marriages that otherwise couldn’t withstand the normally stringent scrutiny employed by the Matrimonial Tribunal. While MT had been reined back by Nicholas, and even more by Julius IV, it still remained one of the most powerful of the Pope’s divisions dealing strictly with souls. Everyone knew MT could be capricious, could be generous, and could be bought for a price. And somebody with Angelique’s pull looking for a break, how could there be such a problem?
She was an Acer. She was one of them. But them didn’t mean the same thing at the Vatican as it did at the Creek. Peter had attempted to pull the Tribunal away from Rome but the Council wouldn’t stand for it, Primovich even strongly objecting to its transfer in one of the few times he’d supposedly voted against his mentor. MT was one of the last bastions of influence for Cardinals. One of the last remaining on the books where they could throw their weight around. Get problems solved. Take care of friends or those they wanted for friends. Get tough with enemies.
Despite the facts the Matrimonial Tribunal remained in Rome, that the Curia kept control of its administration and that the Vatican could speed the process up or grind it to a halt, the ultimate decisions on who got the nod and who didn’t remained in Peter’s hands. And the Black Stars made his choices easier. Every waiver of vows, be they matrimonial or religious, had to get the Pope’s autograph to take effect. In the wide majority of cases, this was accomplished by running them through the signature machines in the mansion, Peter never seeing them. But those requests that Bishop Cerracini—his operative inside MT—thought merited a look, were flagged with a BS before they were shipped. Angelique’s was one of them.
“So we talk for a couple minutes, you know, about nothing,” she said, taking a sip. “And then I say ‘By the way, I’ve been waiting for this annulment to go through so my husband and I can get on with our lives’ and he looks right at me and says ‘Don’t make any plans because it might not be granted.’”
“Did he tell you why?”
“That’s about the time I started figuring something was a little strange about the whole situation.” She thought a moment. “He had my file right there. It was sitting on the coffee table. So he picks it up, starts to page through it and then he asks me this really off-the-wall question.”
“What?”
“He asks me why the line for who my father was was blank.”
“And?”
“And I told him it was blank because I didn’t know.”
“And?”
“And he asked did I ever try to find out.”
“And?”
“And I said I
really didn’t give a shit.” She shook her head. “I didn’t say it in those words, but he got the point.”
“So?”
“So he tosses the file back onto the table and tells me that he’s been thinking lately that emotional immaturity is a pretty poor excuse to suspend a vow that’s been taken for a lifetime, then tells me that maybe he isn’t going to allow it any more, then says maybe he’ll use me as an example to let people know he’s serious.”
She began to pace, her hand tugging once at her braid. Then she raised the black bow at its base. “And then he starts in on this famous porn movie I supposedly starred in, asking me what that was all about. I tell him it’s all crap for one, and for two, that what I did or didn’t do’s got nothing to do with the annulment I’ve applied for. Now what kind of shit is that, Terry? I mean, fine, I’m an Acer. That doesn’t make me evil. I’m still a good Catholic. I still play by the rules.”
“I can’t believe he’d eliminate that as grounds. Nicholas specifically kept it on the books, even went out of his way to do so when your crowd was calling for it to be struck.”
“My crowd? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I just meant…”
“Listen, honey,” she cautioned. “You Sancters might be on top of the heap right now but that doesn’t make you better or holier than everyone else. All of us make mistakes. And don’t you forget it.”
He cleared his throat. “I won’t. So what else?”
She folded her arms. “Then we got into a discussion about a couple of projects I might be interested in doing for the Church, some non-partisan stuff, and he says he’d like to talk about it a little more but that he’s got a bunch of other stuff he has to attend to before he hits the sack, then starts rambling about how maybe it wouldn’t be fair to eliminate emotional immaturity as a grounds for people who applied before it was eliminated. And then he says it’s been a very trying week for him and that maybe he ought to give my case a little more thought. And then let’s go with one out of left field.”
“What?”
Sanctuary Creek Page 16
