“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You know he was big pals with my husband. Football heroes together.” She took a drink of her martini and I swear I could see her glow a little. “My ex-husband, that is,” she clarified.
I took a long drink from the martini in front of me. It was icy and delicious. I felt lightheaded almost instantly. It made me want to drink all of it at once.
“Good, huh?” she said, catching my reaction. “It’s what we do best in this town. Make and consume high-quality alcoholic beverages.” She said this as if reading from a chamber of commerce brochure. “Wayne Thibodeaux went into alcohol rehab, you know.”
I wondered if it was possible to get drunk from only a quarter of a martini.
“My ex. Don’t tell me you don’t remember Wayne Thibodeaux? God, that would kill him. It was what he was always afraid of, that people would forget him.”
“I think I might be drunk,” I said.
“No excuse. Wayne Thibodeaux? The football player? He played with your brother.”
“Sure. I remember.”
“No you don’t.”
“Well, I’m sorry about the rehab thing, anyway.”
“Me too. If he hadn’t quit drinking, we’d still be married. Drinking together was the best thing we had going for us.”
She smiled broadly and took another deep sip of her martini.
“Jessie,” I said evenly, or at least I thought I said it evenly, “what I’m going to do is take another sip of this drink, and then I’m going to get up and leave and go back to my sad little life of trying to get somebody elected president. Okay? But tell me first, off the record, was it Lisa Henderson who told you the FBI had called me in?”
“Lisa Henderson?”
Behind her sunglasses, it was impossible to tell if she was lying.
“A woman who doesn’t like me.” I paused. Was it possible that there was a human alive who didn’t know who Lisa Henderson was? It was a very pleasing idea. “She’s also Hilda Smith’s chief of staff.”
“And she’s trying to screw you over? Great. I love stuff like that. How come she’s after you?” She leaned forward seductively. She was good at this, getting people to tell her secrets. It was how she made her living.
Except this wasn’t a secret.
“Sure. Hilda Smith hired me and fired her as campaign manager after Hilda lost Iowa. Lisa went back to the White House as chief of staff. She hates me.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. I mean, being in the White House.”
I shrugged. “It was humiliating, I’m sure.”
“A subject you know something about,” Jessie offered.
I stood up. It seemed to me that everybody in the room was watching me. This was nuts, absolutely crazy, to agree to meet this woman in a place like Galatoire’s. I might as well have held a press conference.
“Well, J.D.,” she said, watching me stand, calm as could be, “if you tell me there isn’t a story, I believe you. It was really just an excuse to see you. Come on, I’ll walk with you.”
I pulled out my wallet but she waved it away. “They put it on my account,” she said with gravity. “It is my one remaining perk as a writer in this town. I have an eating expense account.”
When we emerged from Galatoire’s, a man standing in line yelled out, “Hey, J.D., come here for a second.” He stepped out of line and motioned for me. He was handsome and tanned and looked vaguely familiar. But everyone was looking vaguely familiar to me these days.
“Bobby Simmons,” the man said, with some annoyance in his voice, when he realized I didn’t recognize him. “Saw you in the elevator over at the Windsor Court. Talked to you about my daughter, Ricki.”
I nodded. “Of course. Yeah. Great.”
A short, dark-haired girl emerged from the line and held out her hand. “Ricki,” she said, grasping my hand in a terrifically strong grip. “Thanks for your help.” She was pretty, in a sleeveless dress with a small tiger tattoo on her biceps. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to help, but I was glad I had. “Somebody from your shop called and got me that floor pass. I hope I’ll see you on the floor.”
“Ricki is a poli-sci major,” the father chimed in. “Dean’s list, Stanford.” She looked embarrassed but pleased.
“Sure,” I told her. “Have to show you our war room.”
“I’d love that. I can’t believe how you brought Hilda back after she lost Iowa. Your New Hampshire campaign was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”
Behind me, I thought I heard Jessie snort. Or maybe she was clearing her throat. “Got to run,” I said. “See you on the floor.”
I nodded and started walking away. Jessie fell in beside me and said, in an overly loud voice, “God, does she want to fuck you.”
“I wish,” I said, without thinking. Was I crazy? She was a reporter. Had I told her we were off the record? Of course we were off the record. We were talking about sex. How can sex be on the record? I had to be drunk.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “It was a compliment.” Jessie took my arm. “So why does the FBI think you are up to something?” she asked.
“I don’t think it’s really the FBI. It’s more like just one moron at the FBI.”
“There’s a difference?” She was smiling.
“Yeah, there’s a difference. This was just some idiot—”
“Joey Francis,” she said.
I looked at her. A woman like this—a reporter who was good—was incredibly dangerous. You never understood what she knew and didn’t know, so you never knew when to lie or tell the truth. This was a disaster for somebody like me, who always skated between truth, almost truth, might be true, and downright lie. She was playing with me. She had been playing with me for days, since she wrote that article about me. That was the set-up. Draw me in. Now what did she want?
“A renowned moron.” She giggled. “He’s been trying to get the Kennedy assassination reopened. The Garrison connection.”
“You know this guy?” No good could come from this. None.
“I know everybody connected to the dead. That’s what I do. I drink, I meet people, I write about murders. Let me tell you, this Joey Francis moron must be the happiest guy in the world. We’ve got murders, carjackings, drive-bys, we’ve got gambling, a little mob, but hardly ever a real-life bomber. He’s thrilled. I promise you.”
“You write about murders?”
She stopped and looked at me, pushing up her sunglasses for the first time. Her eyes were large and piercingly blue.
“You haven’t read anything I’ve written, have you.”
“I read your column yesterday,” I told her.
“But that’s it.” She sighed. “It’s the New Orleans curse. I’m the Dickens of Death in this town. I write about murders. They love me. But nobody beyond the Causeway has ever heard of me. You’re lucky, J.D., you escaped. How’d you do it, huh, J.D.? How’d you slip away?”
“Went to the airport.” She was following me down the street. I needed to get away from her, focus on my other problems. It had been a mistake to meet her.
“And you don’t miss what everybody else in this town can’t live without? That New Orleans lifestyle thing. The parties. The food. The way nobody really works and that’s okay?”
“I love to work. It’s all I do. I don’t really drink. I think the restaurants are overrated. I hate parties. It was easy.” God, if only she knew. I would have ridden my bike all the way to Washington, if that’s what it took to get away from the little house of horrors that was my family.
“Is that how the skinny kid into bikes and guitars took famous?”
“You think I’m famous? We lose this nomination and if I’m lucky nobody will remember me. I’m a domestique, that’s all.”
“You lost me.”
“It’s what they call a bike rider who will never be a star but rides his goddamn heart out so that the team star can win. That’s me. I set the pace, I block, I’ll crash the other guys if that helps. But that’
s it. At the end of the day, I’m not the one who’s up there on the podium.” I didn’t really believe this, but it was a line I had used before with a reporter and it seemed to work. It was just offbeat enough to seem genuine, self-deprecating but believable, since it was a subtle reference to something most reporters didn’t remotely understand—bike racing.
“You know why you escaped?” she said. “Because this town never knew what to do with you. Not like your brother. They loved your brother because he made Tiger Stadium rock. And they loved me, because I was the pretty girl who married the football star and gave great parties. But you—”
“I was the skinny guy on a bike. Yeah, I know. And you know what? I just don’t care anymore. I really just don’t give a shit.” She was annoying me now. I wanted to be somewhere else.
“Maybe,” she said, looking so hard at me I had to turn away. “Maybe. I’m not sure.” She leaned toward me. “So did you get somebody to plant the bomb?”
“Jesus Christ.” I turned and stared at her. “You don’t get it. This hurts us. It helps Armstrong George. Bombs are anarchy and he’s the answer to anarchy. You guys never get the real story line.”
“You guys?”
“Reporters.” I sighed. This was stupid. Never tell reporters how little they know, even when it’s mostly true. It never pays off. Because after you tell them…they are still reporters.
She reached out and touched my face. I pulled back. “You’re pretty,” she said. “I never realized it but you’re pretty.”
“I think you’re a little drunk.”
She smiled. “You’re onstage now, J.D. This is your moment. Take it. Don’t be like those girls who never realized they were actually good-looking until it was too late. You’re the man now. Take the spotlight and enjoy it.”
Then she walked away, leaving me standing on Bourbon Street wondering what she would look like without any clothes on and annoyed at how much the notion intrigued me. Jesus, I was as bad as my old man, just with more predictable tastes.
Chapter Six
“MY FELLOW AMERICANS, I come before you with a heavy heart.”
The president sat behind his desk in the Oval Office, dark circles under his eyes. In the months since he had announced he was not running for reelection, any expected positive change had not occurred in the president’s appearance.
“He looks like crap,” said Kim Grunfeld. “The guy is broken.”
We were in our war room at the Windsor Court, which felt far too nice to be a real war room.
“He’s gonna screw us,” Dick Shenkoph said good-naturedly.
“Why would he screw us?” asked Kim, who was smoking a small cigar. “He picked Hilda as his VP. It helps him when we win.”
“He’s too broken. The possibility of her success haunts him,” Shenkoph said.
“What is that, some kind of quote?” Kim shot back. “You turning into some kind of poet?”
“Trust me, Grunfeld. I know more about failure than you do.”
“Give her time,” Eddie Basha said, then smiled at Kim.
“God, why am I always the only woman?” Kim moaned.
“We haven’t noticed. Honest,” Dick Shenkoph mumbled, staring at the screen. “I had sex once in the White House, a little basement alcove near the Situation Room,” he said.
“Bullshit, you’ve never had sex,” Eddie Basha countered.
“I’m talking a long time ago,” Shenkoph assured him.
I watched all this with a certain detachment, my mind somewhere between Tyler’s strip club and Jessie’s questions. Walking back to the Windsor Court from that aborted dinner with Jessie, I’d convinced myself that she knew all about Tyler, and if she knew about Tyler, she probably knew all about Powell Callahan and his own, well, predilections and problems. It was the only way to look at it—assume the worst. Hadn’t I drummed that into every client of mine over the last fifteen years?
I knew what I’d do if I was advising a client—I’d tell ’em to get everything out in the open right away, dump it all, smother the press with information. That was the creed I’d lived by for years, and whenever a client with a problem resisted, I’d made it clear to them how much worse it would be trying to keep secrets hidden. It was so easy giving the advice. But right now, the idea of watching some reporter—say, Sandra Juarez—announce to the world in a breathless newsbreak that new revelations about the family of Vice President Hilda Smith’s campaign manager, J. D. Callahan, had the Republican convention talking, just the thought of that, made me want to throw up. I knew how it would play out: “The implications for Vice President Smith’s campaign are unclear, but the vice president released a statement just moments ago clarifying that J. D. Callahan has left her campaign. Let me repeat, J. D. Callahan has resigned as Vice President Smith’s campaign manager. Her former campaign manager, Lisa Henderson, who has been serving as chief of staff, will return as campaign manager.”
God, I would cut my wrist with a rusty cat food lid before I let that happen. Forget what it would mean for my budding television career—like flush it forever—it was the sheer, well, humiliation. I couldn’t take it.
The president continued: “This violence at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans shall not dissuade us from our purpose. We will find the individual or individuals responsible for this act and bring them to justice. These have been troubling times in America and I understand that many of you are looking for reassurances that our great American values are still alive and well.”
“Danger, danger, danger,” Dick Shenkoph squawked. “Don’t like this.”
“That’s straight out of Armstrong George,” Kim Grunfeld muttered. “Come on, baby,” she spoke urgently to the president on television. “Don’t screw your own veep.”
“This is not the time to turn the other cheek. There is a season for everything, and today it is the season for righteousness and justice. I believe that it is time for Congress to act to give law enforcement new tools to find crime and terrorism. I will work with Congress to ensure the passage of additional effective and powerful legislation to protect the homeland. Enough is enough. It is time for action.”
“Jesus Christ,” Kim Grunfeld moaned. “Son of a bitch.”
“Told you,” Dick Shenkoph said, smiling. “He screwed us.”
“Shit, he did,” Eddie Basha said, surprised. “Christ, how did you know he was going to do that?” he asked Shenkoph.
“In my experience,” Shenkoph said, “weak leaders will do just about anything if they think it makes them look stronger. In my experience.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Kim said. “The president of the United States might as well have just endorsed Armstrong George.”
“Wasn’t that bad,” Eddie insisted, not very convincingly. “He didn’t say he was supporting Protect the Homeland. Just new legislation. We’ve got to get every one of our whips on the line fast. Squash this down. Tell everybody it’s not a big deal. What’s our spin?”
“How about the president is a lying piece of shit who can’t be trusted?” Kim Grunfeld suggested.
“What do you think, J.D.?” Eddie asked, and suddenly they were all looking at me.
“I like Kim’s spin,” I told them. “I can work with that.”
—
The telephone calls first broke at the press conference to announce South Dakota delegate Bruce Dent’s support for the vice president. It went down perfectly, I have to admit. A perfect little moment of duplicity, so satisfying in its treachery. The only negative was that I decided to leak it to Paul Hendricks, which let him cover himself in a bit of glory. This was troubling, in that Hendricks was not only a jerk but also a looming competitor of mine in my soon-to-be-launched television career, but it was important that the story break with somebody who had enough credibility to make it an Instant Big Deal and not anyone seen as close to me. People knew I didn’t like Hendricks, so that made him a safer choice to leak. Like all leaks, it was easy: I just tipped off Hendricks to talk
to a few people who had received the calls. This all had to happen fast. We were in hyper mode now, when the day was one rolling news cycle.
“Mrs. Vice President,” Hendricks boomed in his best “I’m a serious reporter” voice, “there are reports circulating that Governor Armstrong George’s campaign is engaged in what is known as push polling.”
“Yes?” Hilda Smith answered, looking not at all bothered by the question. This was also perfect. If she seemed outraged from the start, it would have looked like she was overreacting, that the whole thing had been a set-up. For the last six months, she and Armstrong George had been beating each other’s brains out with every means possible, from television ads to phone calls. What were a few more negative phone calls? “We’ve been down that road before,” she said with a sigh.
I had counted on her reaction being genuine, since, of course, she didn’t have the slightest idea what Hendricks was talking about.
“Yes, but these calls are of a particularly personal and some might say vicious nature,” Hendricks continued. He had a way of raising his voice and tilting his accent when he was driving home a point that made him sound almost English. Not bad for a kid who went to Holy Cross.
Hilda Smith shrugged. Who could blame her for looking disinterested? She’d had about four hours of sleep; she’d been ambushed by the press at the hospital; the president of the United States, who had appointed her, had just all but endorsed her opponent on national television; and she had just held a press conference to express her deep, eternal gratitude for the support of a young man who had the makings of a totally repugnant human being. A few negative phone calls were not the most troubling element in her life.
When she failed to respond, Hendricks pressed on. “I have confirmed sources, Mrs. Vice President”—here he paused for dramatic effect, turning slightly so that his cameraman would catch him in his best profile—“that these calls made reference to a supposed abortion procedure you had undergone.”
For a long moment, the other press members, who had been grousing restlessly at Hendricks for taking them off the juicy subject of presidential betrayal, were shocked into a rare stunned silence. Had they heard right? Did he just say abortion procedure? Then everyone started yelling, none louder than Sandra Juarez: “Is that true, Mrs. Vice President? Did you terminate a pregnancy through surgical means?”
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