“How is she?”
“So-so, she’s hanging in there. I may have to go down. The doctor’s with her right now. I’ll know more later.”
Phil settled down on the leather couch.
“Tell me more about the whole sex thing with Bill.”
“When the sex with Bill stopped, it just—stopped,” she said with no emotion. “We didn’t have a fight. There were no scenes. He just poured himself into his work so completely that there wasn’t much spirit left in him when he got home from the Hill.”
“So he basically just—”
“That’s right—lost interest. And I don’t think it was that he lost interest in me; he just lost interest in sex, period.”
“What about you?”
“Well, I like a healthy sex life,” she looked at him and smiled.
“I can attest to that,” he smirked back.
“And I tried for a while. I tried to get him on Viagra, whatever I could get him to try, but I think he just lost interest. So after a while, a woman gets the message and I backed off. Let him alone.”
“You don’t think there were other women.”
“No.” She caught herself. “Or not that I know of.”
“And boys?”
“No,” she said with some exaggeration. “Tim’s got to be the first. He’s got to. I can’t be that blind, can I?”
“So something happened with Tim that… triggered a response in Bill that turned him into this homo sex fiend. Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what it looks like to me,” she said.
“What about you?”
“What about me?”
“How did you handle his—lack of interest?”
She paused and smiled, reached over and put her hand on his knee, then leaned over and kissed him on the lips.
“Let’s just say you’re not the first, okay, Phil?”
“Well, I certainly hope I’m the last!”
“Oh, you’re the last, all right. You’ve made me so happy, Phil,” she said, getting up and walking over to look out the window at the freezing drizzle coming down. “All my life I’ve wanted to be First Lady. I married Bill because I thought he would get me there. And, he has. By hook or by crook, and thank God Douglas Mowbray died on us. But now that I’ve got what I always wanted, I only want it to be over so you and I can get together.”
He came up behind her and put his arms around her, resting his chin on her neck.
“You mean that?”
She turned to him.
“I never thought I’d say it, but I do. The minute we’re out of office, I’m leaving Bill for you. We’ll have a grand life.”
Phil looked over her shoulder out the window and down the driveway through the increasingly heavy drizzle, now turning to snow.
“They’re coming back. Let’s get outta here.”
* * *
CHAPTER 78
A few days later, December 29, Washington’s power elite gathered in the East Room for what had all the trappings of a state funeral for Douglas Mowbray.
When Mowbray died, Gloria decided to bury him at Arlington National Cemetery, since Mowbray had been in the Army (four years), and the Government was likely to do a better job with the funeral than she could do.
She was right.
Jack suggested to his dad that he offer the East Room where the body could lie in state and visitors could pass through to pay their respects.
It wasn’t appropriate for Mowbray to lie in state in the Capitol Rotunda, as he’d never actually held any Federal office; he’d just been elected to one.
St. Clair thought Jack had a good idea, so the White House made all the arrangements and Gloria was very pleased with all the Government did to honor her husband.
To lie in state in the East Room was a high honor, indeed, for a man who’d never held any Federal office.
And, just as Jack had predicted, the national response was overwhelmingly positive, with St. Clair getting high marks for such a magnanimous gesture to an old campaign foe and his efforts to “heal the nation.”
“Jack, you read the public so well, you ought to go into politics,” St. Clair said to his older son while they were in the Oval Office waiting for Dumaine to drop by for coffee before heading over to the East Room for the final ceremony before Mowbray’s body was taken to Arlington.
“That’ll be the day,” Jack laughed.
Lonnie came out with cups of café con leche.
“Great timing I’ve got,” said the President. “Just as Lonnie’s learned how to make the perfect café con leche, I lose the election and have to go back to Miami.”
“So, Lonnie?” asked Jack. “You taking the President up on his offer to move to Miami?”
The old black man smiled and scratched his ear.
“My wife really likes the idea, sir, but can’t figure out why the President would want a broken down old man to work for him down there in Miami.”
“Tell her because I’m a broken down old man myself and I’d like to have another one around to make me feel not so bad.”
They all laughed.
Not far away, the President’s appointments secretary walked Dumaine and Phil Thuris down the hallway to the Oval Office.
“So, Phil, I want Tim to supervise all the work the Secret Service does up at Hawk’s Landing. You know how much the place means to me and Bianca, and I don’t want them to ruin it with all that new construction and the fences and security bullshit they have to install.”
“I understand.”
“I’d rather be up there to handle it myself, but there’s just no way.”
“I understand. Tim can handle it.”
“You coordinate his travel schedule with me around the Secret Service work up at Hawk’s Landing.”
“Okay.”
“Here we are, gentlemen,” said the appointments secretary, a bright young woman with very nice teeth, thought Phil, as she opened the door to the Oval Office.
“Thanks,” said Dumaine.
St. Clair rose as Dumaine and Phil came into the room and came around the desk to shake hands.
“Hello, Mr. President, Jack.”
“Hello,” said Jack. “Phil.”
“Hi, there,” said Phil. “Mr. President.”
“Hello, Phil,” said the President, returning to his seat behind the desk. “I really sorry Bianca couldn’t be here. How’s her mother?”
“Not getting any better, sorry to say,” Dumaine said as he sat down.
Lonnie served the new arrivals with American coffee from a sterling coffee service set up next to the President’s desk.
“She’s been ill for a while now,” said Jack.
“Yes, respiratory problems. Long history of smoking.”
“Where is she exactly in Fort Lauderdale?” asked Jack.
“Lighthouse Point, actually,” said Dumaine.
“Just north of Fort Lauderdale,” said the President.
“That’s right.”
“Very nice up there. Quiet. Used to do a lot of sailing and fishing out of Lighthouse Point with an old friend of mine used to live there.”
“Her mother is doing everything she can to get better,” said Phil.
“Doesn’t want to miss the Inaugural,” Jack said.
Dumaine laughed.
“That’s exactly right.”
“Well, it’s a shame Bianca’s not here, though there won’t be a whole lot of fun today.”
“No,” said Dumaine.
“You know,” said the President, suddenly leaning forward in his chair, “why don’t you bring the girls and your top staff down to St. Clair Island and spend a few days after New Year’s—you know?—before the Inaugural?” He turned to Lonnie. “Let me’n Jack have another café con leche, will you, Lonnie.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“That way, you’d be close to Bianca and her mother. And get outta this lousy weather,” said the President, gesturing over his shoulder at the
windswept—and now very roseless—Rose Garden.
“Well—” Dumaine began.
“Doug was coming down, remember? After you got back from St. Barts? That was the plan, anyway.”
“That’s true,” said Phil, his eye taking on a little glint no one noticed as his mind went to work.
“Good idea,” said Jack. “We can put most of your top people up in the President’s house.”
“It’s got twenty bedrooms,” said the President.
“And one bathroom!” said Jack.
Everybody broke out laughing. Even Lonnie cracked a smile.
Thirty minutes later, these same jocular men, laughing it up behind the closed doors of the Oval Office, took on a sober demeanor as they participated in the funeral ceremony for Douglas Mowbray.
When it became apparent the weather would be awful, Gloria agreed to hold the more elaborate funeral here in the East Room so the great number of people expected wouldn’t have to endure the hostile, freezing conditions prevailing over in Arlington.
At the rear of the East Room, where Phil stood by one of the ceremonial guards as the Navy Band played a dirge, Phil texted Bianca:
Good news. Fill you in later.
* * *
CHAPTER 79
New Year’s Eve in Washington dawned—or barely dawned: no one had seen the sun, or remembered seeing it anyway, for weeks.
After working out schedules internally with the Dumaine camp and the Transition team, the White House Press Office announced that the President would host President-elect Dumaine and his family and top aides at his estate on St. Clair Island in Miami.
The President would travel aboard Air Force One accompanied by Dumaine, his wife and two little girls on January 11 and return to Washington January 16.
Bianca returned to Washington New Year’s Eve afternoon from Fort Lauderdale, but her mother was not getting any better. She had a lot of things to take care of in Washington, but wanted to go back to be with her ailing mother as soon as possible.
Bill was off at Transition headquarters, so she was able to meet with Phil that afternoon in Bill’s study.
“What did that text mean?” was the first thing she said after kissing him and giving him a tight hug.
“It could have meant anything, which is why I used those words. I didn’t want to talk on the phone.”
“So? What’s the good news?”
“The President is taking all of you to Miami on the eleventh, right?”
“I know that.”
“Bill has me coordinating the Secret Service survey of Hawk’s Landing, and he’s been very insistent that Tim be the liaison with the Secret Service on this.”
“I knew that.”
Phil was at the bar, mixing drinks.
“Based on what the Secret Service has given me, and Tim’s own schedule, I’ll be able to arrange for him to fly to Wellfleet on the ninth, and that’s when he will leave our lives forever.”
“How do you mean that?”
Phil came close to her, bringing her a Ketel One on the rocks. He took a strong sip from his Appleton 21.
“His plane will take off, Bianca, but it will never land.”
“You have people who can arrange that?”
“It’s all done. All arranged. I just didn’t have the timing worked out. But St. Clair did it for me. And so did Bill, insisting on Tim handling the Hawk’s Landing renovations with the Secret Service.”
“There’s no way this can come back to us, you’re sure?” she said urgently, knocking back half the Ketel One.
“Come back to bite us in the ass? No way, baby.”
She raised her glass, along with an eyebrow and a thin-lipped smile.
“Then here’s to a Happy New Year.”
“To the First Lady,” said Phil, raising his glass.
“And to my First Man,” she said with a laugh.
* * *
Up in New York, in the safe house in Murray Hill, Shahzad was looking forward to the New Year as much as everyone else.
As soon as the White House announced the President’s travel plans, he called his team together.
“We are going to Miami,” he said.
“The team with us here in New York,” said Gilani, “and who else? We have people in seven cities.”
“Get them all down there. We leave here today, all of us… each one on a different flight.”
* * *
CHAPTER 80
On January 4, sixteen days before the Inaugural, Phil had a regularly scheduled meeting with Tim and the Secret Service detail handling Hawk’s Landing.
The final thing on the agenda was choosing a date for Tim to go up to check out what had already been done.
“Well, I ought to be here when Dumaine goes down with the President on the eleventh,” said Tim, going over his notes. “He doesn’t mind being here without a Body Man, but he doesn’t like traveling without one,” he added. He looked up at Agent Rodriguez. “How long you think it’ll take me to go over everything up in Wellfleet?”
“A day, day and a half at most,” said Rodriguez.
“All right, then,” Tim held the end of his pen up to his lips as he thought. “I’ll go up on the ninth, coming back on the tenth or morning of the eleventh and easily be here when they leave on Air Force One at two that afternoon.”
“Fine,” said Rodriguez. “I’ll arrange the plane and everything else.”
Phil circled the ninth on a little calendar he always kept on him.
“Sounds good to me,” he said.
* * *
CHAPTER 81
That evening, after the meeting with Tim and Agent Rodriguez, Phil was on his way home. As Dumaine’s interim chief of staff, he rated a car and driver. They were now moving down a rain-soaked street on the way to Phil’s apartment in the Watergate complex. Rain was falling and a blustery wind whipped through the trees.
“Think this weather will ever clear?” Charlie the driver was saying.
“Who knows?” said Phil, distracted. I don’t give a flying fuck about the weather.
“Long day today, huh?” said Charlie.
“Yeah.”
“They’re all long lately, Mr. Thuris.”
“Yeah.”
“But you like ’em that way, right, Mr. Thuris?”
“I like ’em anyway I can get ’em, Charlie.”
Charlie pulled up to the Watergate, and Phil got out.
“Take care, Mr. Thuris.”
“You, too, Charlie.”
“And stay dry,” Charlie said good-naturedly.
“You, too, Charlie.”
Jesus! Stop with the fuckin’ chitchat already, thought Phil.
He went into the sprawling lobby and headed directly to a side exit where he left the building, pulling up his overcoat collar. Out here, there was a taxi stand, thankfully covered by a portico. He kept his collar high around him so no one would notice him and dodged into a cab.
“Where to, mister?” said the driver.
“The Hay-Adams.”
The driver took off and didn’t say a single word the whole trip. Not even a word about the shitty weather, thought Phil. Wish I had this guy instead of that fuckin’ Charlie.
He hopped out of the cab at the Hay-Adams Hotel and entered the lobby, veering straight toward the bar off to the right side. He went up to the bar, sat down and ordered an Appleton 21 on the rocks.
“Sorry,” said the bartender after looking for it. “We only have the standard Appleton rum.”
“Whatever, fine.”
The bartender left to pour the Appleton and Phil made a call.
“Five minutes,” said the guy on the other end. He had a high nasal whine and he suddenly let out with an AHHHHH-CHOO as big as Montana. “Sorry, Phil. Got a murderous cold going on here. Like I said, five minutes, maybe six.”
“Right, I heard you. Five minutes.”
“Maybe six.”
“Yeah.”
“The way you put ’em away
, that’s just enough for two glasses of that shitty ass rum you drink, Phil.”
“You know me well, Wally.”
“It’s my job to know people well, Phil. Five minutes. Maybe six minutes. Two drinks.”
“Yeah, yeah—”
Phil never got the third “yeah” out before he heard:
Click.
In six minutes, after two drinks, Phil pulled up his collar again and went out the front door of the Hay-Adams where he saw a familiar black Town Car. He went over and got in the back seat.
The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller) Page 28
