Clark whistled. “I don’t know if the Senate can move that fast.”
“The Senate’s not my problem, but it’ll move fast if you do the same as I’m doing: simplify. What we’ve both got to do is seize the initiative, cut down on the bullshit, and get this damn thing over with before the jackasses on both sides of the aisle run away with it. We’ve got to get the country back to normal, Sam. Got to. Can’t go on much longer with things the way they are.”
“Even if that means making Franklin Mallory President?”
“That doesn’t necessarily have to happen, but even if it does, it’s better than burning down the barn to get the rattlesnake out of the haymow.”
Attenborough coughed, a deep phlegmy sound, and automatically covered his mouth with his bandaged hand. Clark had not seen the bandages before; when he had arrived on the stroke of seven, Attenborough was already seated at the table with his hand in his lap.
Clark said, “What happened to your hand?”
“Cut it on a piece of broken glass,” Attenborough replied. “How’re your ham and eggs? That’s genuine Virginia ham, not that damn gummy store-bought crap, given to me by the mountain farmer down on the Tennessee line that cured it, a good Democrat.”
“You can tell the difference,” Clark said. “What about Ibn Awad?”
Attenborough coughed again, then trembled violently, as if having a racking malarial chill. In his new, strangled voice, he said, “Did you say ‘Ibn Awad’?” Clark nodded. Attenborough said, “That’s funny. The other day, over at my house with those two lawyers Frosty sent over, I got the impression you didn’t want to talk about him.”
“That was then, and we weren’t all by ourselves. This is now and it’s just you and me. Tucker, I won’t be party to what I think you’re talking about.”
“Then you don’t know what I’m talking about, Sam. I’m talking about the destruction of our party. I’m talking about the end. If the Lockwood liberals go down in flames, the rest of us go with them. We can lose it—I mean all of it. We’ll go the way of the Whigs and the Wobblies. We’re damn near there already, thanks to the Hubbards and Hammetts and Busbys of this world.”
“That, and screwing the law.”
“Sam, I’ve never laid a finger on the law, and I ain’t going to start now. But that Olmedo fellow told us what we both already knew: Lockwood is innocent of the charge of stealing the election.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t stolen.”
“That’s a whole different question, and we can argue about it after the impeachment trial is over. This is a one-question case, just like every other case: Did one Bedford Forrest Lockwood, President of the United States and reincarnation of the original rail-splitter, personally have anything to do with stealing the election that put him back in the White House? The answer is no. Establish that and we’re all right.”
“Maybe.”
“No maybe about it.”
“What about the succession?”
“That’s in the hands of the Lord.”
“And you’re first in line.”
Attenborough laughed loudly. “That’s pretty damn funny.” He opened his mouth to quote a verse from the Bible, but once again could not remember the words immediately. “Damn!” he said. “What the hell is this?”
Clark was staring at him; Attenborough realized that his mouth had been ajar for some time. For the blinking of an eye, Clark’s face had turned into Lockwood’s; Attenborough ignored this transformation, though he found it peculiar. He said, “That’s what Lockwood keeps saying, that I’m setting myself up to take his job, but what he knows about that particular subject begins with Z.” His laugh turned into another coughing fit. When it subsided, he said, “Sam, you see what I’m trying to do.”
“Tucker, to be honest, I’m not sure I do.”
“Jesus Christ, Sam, open your eyes! I’m railroading this like I am because I don’t want Lockwood charged with a crime he’s guilty of, like killing an Ay-rab.”
“There’s no proof that he’s guilty of any crime.”
“Not yet.”
“But he went on television last fall and told the country the whole story.”
“That’s not what Lockwood’s slick big-time New York lawyer thinks. He thinks Frosty left something out. And we know that’s sure as hell not what Franklin Mallory thinks. He probably knows what Frosty left out. And you can be damn sure that’s not what Lockwood thinks, or he wouldn’t be skulking inside the White House like he is, worrying about what he left out. So we’ve got to get this damn thing wrapped up. And like I said, quick.”
Clark started to reply, but stopped when he saw a look of horror and fear come over Attenborough’s saffron face. Suddenly, shouting a wordless warning, the Speaker leaped to his feet, overturning the folding table on which their breakfast had been laid. Coffee flew from the cups, crockery crashed to the floor.
“Watch out, Sam!” Attenborough cried. “It’s the same son of a bitch that killed Mallory’s girl!”
Clark turned around. Albert Tyler (Lockwood had always called him Ablert), an aged black waiter and boyhood friend of Attenborough’s from West Texas who had worked in the House for thirty years, had come into the room on the stroke of 8:57 A.M., just as he always did, to let the Majority Leader and the Speaker know by his presence that the breakfast was three minutes from being over in case they had lost track of time.
Ross Macalaster was standing right behind Albert in the doorway. “That’s him, the one behind Albert!” Attenborough cried, pointing at Macalaster, who held a cellular phone in his hand.
“He’s got a gun!” Attenborough shouted, staggering backward with bandaged hand upraised.
Albert, advancing into the room, said, “Now, now, Mr. Speaker.” To Macalaster he said, “Put the phone away. Go on out now. Everything going to be all right.”
Clark, his suit spattered with the remains of the breakfast, stood where he was, jaw dropping. Albert shot him a look of warning.
“That was a good one, Mr. Speaker,” Albert said. “But look what you done to the Majority Leader’s brand-new pin-striped suit.”
Attenborough was fumbling with the telephone. Somehow he struck his injured hand and howled in pain.
Albert put his body between the Speaker and his visitors. He said, “Mr. Macalaster, Mr. Majority Leader, I think you both ought to withdraw now. Shall I send over and get you a different suit, Senator?”
Clark’s eyes were fixed on Attenborough. Without moving them he shook his head. Albert handed him a clean napkin. Whispering, he said, “Go on now; I’ll look after him.”
Attenborough, eyes wide with alarm, was still fumbling with the telephone. Clark said, “What’s the matter with him?”
“It’s his malaria, Senator.”
“It’s the D.T.’s. You’d better get him to a hospital.”
“He’d never go,” Albert said. “This’ll pass. You go on. And Mr. Macalaster, I’m asking you nicely for the last time. You’ve got no call to be here. This is a private moment.”
Macalaster nodded. He and Clark left. After locking the door behind them Albert said, “The man is gone now, Mr. Speaker. They took him away.”
Attenborough had subsided into the tall-backed chair behind his imposing mahogany desk, but he was still breathing heavily and sweating, and his eyes were wild.
“What you need, Mr. Speaker, is a nice glass of spring water,” Albert said. “You just sit there and I’ll get you some out of the place where we keep it.”
Attenborough nodded dully. “Appreciate it, Albert.”
Albert disappeared into the private bathroom. Attenborough heard the distinctive hollow clunk of the porcelain cover being removed from the toilet tank, then the rattle of an ice cube tray being emptied into the sink. Homely noises. He relaxed a little as he waited. And when the tall clinking glass of hundred-proof vodka was put into his hand, he suddenly remembered the Bible verse that had escaped him earlier and knew he was going to be all right
. He always was when his brain was working right. He drank deeply, using both hands to lift the glass. Then he said in the powerful voice that the alcohol had miraculously restored to him, “ ‘Ye defiled my land, and made mine heritage an abomination.’ Book of Jeremiah, Albert, chapter the second, verse the seventh.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Speaker,” said Albert, righting the overturned table and surveying the broken dishes, the cold fried eggs, and the half-eaten slices of buttered toast scattered over the Great Seal of the United States that was woven into the bright blue carpet. “Mighty fine passage.”
10
Apart from calling Albert later in the day to inquire about Attenborough’s condition (“He’s just fine now; the fever takes him real sudden like that, but then it goes away just as quick”), Macalaster did nothing with what he had observed in Attenborough’s office. He had lived with a drunk for twenty years and he understood that what he had observed was an episode of delirium tremens. Like other reporters in town, he had known for a long time that Attenborough was drinking himself to death, but he had never mentioned this in print and neither had any other journalist. The fact was irrelevant, not worth publishing. Besides, Attenborough was a unique and incorruptible source, and who knew what his successor might be? He had left a message with Albert, the most reliable back-channel of communication with Attenborough, asking for an appointment at the earliest possible moment. Attenborough had not yet called back, but Macalaster knew that he would, sooner or later.
On Manal’s advice—the fathers of her schoolfriends were beginning to have heart attacks and she worried continually about his health—and because his attraction to Zarah Christopher had made him conscious of his own physical appearance for the first time in years, Macalaster had begun a regimen of twice-weekly exercise. He chose weight lifting because he could not bear the thought of running through the streets or bicycling along the C&O Canal dressed in a thousand dollars’ worth of costuming. To join that crowd would be a betrayal of his father, his grandfather, and every other Macalaster before them who had broken a sweat every day of their lives not for the sake of fashion but in order to put bread on the table. Hard labor in the open air had shortened their lives. Maybe, Macalaster thought, those asshole runners will die young too.
On the morning after Attenborough’s outbreak of paranoia, Macalaster watched Newsdown with Patrick Graham on a snowy television screen suspended from the ceiling of ye gods, a weight-lifting establishment on upper Wisconsin Avenue. A blond interviewer named Morgan Pike was putting hostile questions to Attenborough. Pike had been hired twenty-five years before for her looks, and even at fifty, though she hid her corrugated neck from the remorseless eye of the camera with a designer scarf, she retained the flowing hair, long coltish legs, and gamine style of a pre-Movement coed. She was, however, a committed person, solemn in thought and manner.
On-screen, Attenborough was enjoying himself. Earlier that morning, at a sunrise news conference, an innovation unappreciated by sleepy-eyed Capitol Hill reporters used to getting to work at ten, he had announced, as he had informed Sam Clark he would, that the House would begin hearings on the impeachment of President Lockwood the following day.
Frowning suspiciously, Morgan Pike said, “Mr. Speaker, why are you making such a drama out of this process?”
“Well, it’s a pretty dramatic situation when the results of a presidential election are challenged,” Attenborough said.
He moved closer to the lissome Pike, or tried to, but radiating unreceptivity, she shifted positions, extending her arm at full length to hold the microphone to his lips in order to keep him at a safe distance. Pumping iron, Macalaster smiled sardonically. Clearly, perky Morgan Pike, like most of the rest of the Washington press corps, had heard about Attenborough’s encounter with Slim and was wigwagging her knowledge to others in the know.
Morgan frowned slightly as her anchorman, Patrick Graham, fed her a new question through her earpiece. “But why are you acting with so little warning?” she demanded. “Why have you bypassed the Judiciary Committee? Why are you moving so fast?”
Attenborough, who not only knew where these hard questions were really coming from but also seemed to understand what her skittishness signified, and to be amused by it, replied, “That’s a whole lot of questions, but there’s just one answer. The American people want to know for absolute certain who they really elected President, and we can’t go on until we have the right answer to that fundamental question.”
Pike did not hear the Speaker’s words because she was busy listening to the next question, which Patrick Graham, back in the studio, was booming into her ear. Now she repeated it: “Some say you’re ramming this thing through the House without proper notice or debate because the President has something to hide and you know it.”
Why was Patrick Graham sending this signal? What was in the wind? Attenborough shook his head in disbelief. “Morgan, Morgan. I’m surprised at you. That dog won’t hunt.” He lifted a hand as if to lay it on the interviewer’s shoulder as a way of reassuring her that he did not hold the question against her personally. Pike flinched, taking a brisk backward step, and compressed her lips into a parody of a smile.
“There you have it, Patrick—open deliberations, openly arrived at, and as they say down Texas way, a dog that won’t hunt. This is Morgan Pike on Capitol Hill.”
Macalaster finished his workout, mentally composing sentences for his next column as he did so. At this time of day most of the customers at ye gods were women. He wondered if any of them had chosen this establishment on the basis of its name. If so, they would be disappointed in the figure he cut in his shorts and T-shirt. Some were lifting heavier weights than he was. Most were extremely lean, but none seemed to be in the least muscular. A trainer was going from customer to customer with a pair of calipers and a clipboard, measuring body-fat percentages in a pinch of skin: in bodybuilding theory, the more you worked out, the more muscular, and therefore the less fatty, you became. He measured Macalaster’s body fat and marked it down in sober professional silence.
“How am I doing?” Macalaster asked.
“We’ll begin to see more progress soon.” The trainer, nearly all muscle himself, smiled encouragingly. “Anybody can do it,” he said.
“Except the women,” Macalaster said. “They don’t seem to get muscles. Any reason for that? Do they lift in a different way, or what?”
“Women don’t get muscles unless they take steroids,” the trainer said.
“And if they do take steroids?”
“Then they get biceps, just like us.” He lowered his voice, imparting secrets. “They also get bitchy. Even men get aggressive when they take steroids, so women usually stay away from them. Besides, their hair can fall out.”
“Does it last in women?”
“The bitchiness?” The trainer rolled his eyes.
“The muscles.”
“Not if they go off steroids. A woman can get a hell of a set of muscles in just a few months if she works at it, taking anabolics and working out with the right program. But when she stops, she goes back to normal real quick.”
“How quick?”
“A month or two.”
“That fast?” Macalaster was surprised.
The trainer snapped his fingers. “Nature calls and they’re all girl again.”
More interested in the political metaphors suggested by what the trainer had told him than in real muscular women, Macalaster was still thinking about the conversation as he walked across the parking lot after finishing his workout. As he got out his car keys, a scrawny, balding, middle-aged male in brand-new Harvard sweats bumped into him at jogging speed. It was a hard collision, sharp knees and elbows, and it knocked off his glasses and caused him to stagger. The runner, panting breathlessly as if unable to speak, steadied Macalaster, shaking his head and slapping him on the shoulder in mute apology and grinning with deliberate foolishness. Then he ran off, taking long, fluid strides on his corded legs. The whole encounter
had lasted no more than five seconds.
It wasn’t until Macalaster unlocked the door of his Jaguar and saw himself reflected in the smoked glass of the window that he realized that a small plastic bag was dangling from the lapel of the tweed jacket he was wearing. It was tied to a plastic fishing line. He removed it with difficulty, tearing a hole in his jacket. Cursing—the jacket was almost new—he saw that the bag had been attached to his clothing with the tiny barbed hook of a yellow-and-red trout fly. He looked inside. The bag contained a Radio Shack sixty-minute minitape resting inside its tiny transparent box.
Obviously the runner had been waiting for him and had stalked him for the purpose of hooking this package to the fabric of his jacket. It was crazy. Macalaster knew that no one who communicated with him in this demented way could be trusted. Nevertheless, he got into the car, and after fumbling one of the several miniature tape recorders he owned out of the glove compartment, listened to the tape.
It was a recording of a conversation, taped four years before, in the first months of the Lockwood administration, between Jack Philindros and Lockwood, in which the President, in his own unmistakable voice, ordered Philindros, as head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, to assassinate Ibn Awad.
Macalaster’s heart pounded. He locked the doors of his car and listened to the tape a second time. Although he knew that technology could produce forgeries, knew that men who specialized in such forgeries were involved in this case, and knew that he lived in a place and time in which it was unwise to trust anything or anybody, he had little doubt that the tape was genuine. He knew the voices and he knew all the other things that he knew. He was in possession of facts that could bring down another President who was loved by the left. He would never be forgiven. He had no choice but to pursue this matter, to question the owners of the voices, to try to confirm what was on the tape or disprove it. Yet he also knew with complete certainty that in the end it would be impossible to do either. He had not been present at the event in question, and those who had been there would remember the details in different ways. Or they would lie. When all was said and done, he would have to rely, as he always had, as all outsiders like himself must always do, on what people told him, and on how willing he was to believe what they said. He was not in the business of establishing truth, or even of seeking it. It was his job to report what others said, what others thought had happened, what others were prepared to admit. All he had to do was satisfy the world that they had said what they had said, not that they had spoken the truth. In his business attribution was reality, even if the witnesses were anonymous.
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