A Hideous Beauty

by Jack Cavanaugh

Beneath the graphic, Christina had written: “Call Dr. about birth control pills.”

  Tearing off the top sheet of the scratch pad, I turned it facedown and placed it at the far side of the table.

  “I’m ready,” I said to Sue, my mind on Christina.

  Birth control pills?

  The coffee grinder buzzed to life. I had to wait for the grinding to stop before I could hear what Sue had said.

  “You’ll need to repeat that,” I told her.

  “Go to chapter one,” Sue said.

  I opened the cover and saw my autograph and inscription to Christina: “My light . . . my inspiration . . . my ever-present help. With love, Grant.”

  “Are you at chapter one?”

  “Almost. All right. There.”

  “First word.”

  “First word? Don’t tell me you’re going to review my book word by word?”

  “Just write it down.”

  I wrote it down. “All right, now what?”

  “Chapter two. Second word. Write it down.”

  I flipped the pages to chapter 2. “None of this is making any sense,” I said.

  “You’ll see. Chapter—”

  “Three,” I said. “Third word.”

  “Correct.”

  “I’m sensing a pattern here.”

  “Smart boy. Keep working your way through the book.”

  “How far?”

  “You’ll know.”

  As I turned from chapter to chapter, a growing sense of horror came over me.

  “I don’t believe this!” I cried.

  Coffeepot in hand, Christina looked over at me.

  “Are you saying you didn’t write it?” Sue asked.

  I stared at the words on the scratch pad. My words.

  “Of course I wrote it,” I said. “But I didn’t mean it. I mean, not like this. I’m going to have to check my manuscript.”

  “It’s hard to believe the wording is mere coincidence,” Sue said.

  “You took the words right out of the prosecuting attorney’s mouth,” I replied.

  Christina set the coffeepot down, her fear having been resuscitated.

  “What do you want me to tell the professor?” Sue asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s the one who instructed me to review the book. He’s going to want to know your response.”

  “My response? Tell him I didn’t write it! That I wrote it, but didn’t know I’d written it, because I never would have written this. Tell him I’m going to check my original manuscript.”

  My emotions were getting the best of me. I fought for control. I told myself not to panic, to attack the problem. “How did you find this?” I asked her.

  “I’m good at recognizing patterns,” she said.

  I sighed. “I wonder how many other people who are good at recognizing patterns will recognize this one?”

  “I have to go,” Sue said. “Someone else is calling me. It’s Jana. Is her phone call going to make me angry?”

  “You mean you haven’t talked with her today?”

  “Did you make her cry?”

  “No! Everything’s fine. We talked earlier, it’s fine. But you haven’t talked with Jana already today?”

  She hung up. I closed my phone.

  “Who’s Jana?” Christina asked. “And Sue? My, you were a busy little boy while you were in California, weren’t you?”

  “Not now, Christina.”

  “Not now? Not now? You stalk me for two days, then force your way into my house—”

  “I didn’t force my way into your house!” I protested.

  “That’s exactly what the police report is going to say unless you start talking. And here’s a news flash for you, buster: I know we agreed to cool things off for a while, but taking calls from your girlfriends while you’re with me in my apartment is beyond rude, it’s mean.”

  I handed her the piece of paper. It was the only way I could think to shut her up.

  Her eyes grew wide. “Grant, this isn’t funny.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You shouldn’t write things like this, not even on a notepad . . . my notepad!”

  “How would you feel if I told you I not only wrote it, I published it?”

  “Grant!”

  I patted the open book. “A sequential pattern. One word per chapter.”

  “Why would you—”

  “I didn’t! Someone is messing with me!”

  She stared in disbelief at the note. “Well, whoever they are, they’re doing an outstanding job.”

  CHAPTER 13

  On most nights it takes me ten minutes to drive home from Christina’s apartment. Tonight it took longer because I had to walk the first two blocks to get to my car.

  My apartment is a cozy one bedroom on Thirty-fourth Street within walking distance of Georgetown University. Call me nerdy, but I like the atmosphere of a university neighborhood, and it’s only ten minutes to the White House and fifteen minutes to the Library of Congress.

  Christina was waiting for me when I arrived at my apartment. She insisted on taking separate cars. She said that if an army of Feds jumped out of the trees and bushes she wanted to be able to put her Toyota into gear and drive away as though she didn’t know me.

  When no army appeared, she sprang out of her car and shoved me into the apartment faster than I could unlock the door, which resulted in collision.

  While my laptop booted up, I searched for the printed copies of the manuscript. There were two: an early first draft and the final draft. They were somewhere in the back of my bedroom closet buried beneath empty printer boxes, worn-out pairs of shoes, and stacks of clothes that no longer fit.

  While I was rummaging, my computer played the Hallelujah Chorus, signaling it had booted up. I used to have Robin Williams shout, “Good morning, Vietnam!” but after a while, that got annoying.

  “It’s ready,” Christina said, in case I hadn’t heard Mr. Handel. She hovered in front of the computer, nervously working the page from the scratch pad between her thumb and forefinger. The hearts floating between the cartoon mice were taking a beating.

  I fell into the chair in front of my corner desk. Most of the biography had been written on the road or at a desk at the White House. But a good number of late-night hours were spent here in this corner polishing the manuscript.

  I put the cursor through its paces, opening folders to get to the master manuscript file.

  “I can’t believe you wrote this,” Christina reiterated.

  “No matter what we find in the file,” I replied, “I didn’t write that sentence intentionally.”

  “Are you saying your subconscious wrote it?”

  Is that your defense, Mr. Austin? That your subconscious wrote that sentence?

  “I’m saying I didn’t write it,” I said to the prosecuting attorney in my head, loud enough for Christina to hear.

  “Maybe you did it as a joke or a dare and forgot to fix it before it went to press.”

  “I think I’d remember something like that.”

  “Maybe it’s a prank and only a limited number of copies are printed with these words, have you thought of that? Do you know anyone in the White House or at the publishers who would play a prank on you?”

  “It’s not a prank, Christina.”

  I clicked on the manuscript file. “Here we go,” I said.

  Christina bent over my shoulder, her cheek close to my cheek. It seemed to take the file forever to open.

  The title page appeared.

  I clicked an icon at the top of the window and a list of chapter headings appeared to the left of the text. By clicking on each heading I could navigate from chapter to chapter.

  “Here we go,” I said, the mouse hovering over the link that would take me to chapter 1. “The first word of the first chapter in the published book is when, correct?”

  Christina consulted the scratch paper. “Correct.”

  “We don’t want to see the
word when.”

  “That’s right,” she said.

  I took a deep breath.

  Click.

  Chapter 1 appeared on the screen.

  “Yes!” I shouted, thrusting my fists into the air.

  The first word of chapter 1 was it.

  Christina’s voice trembled. “Chapter two, try chapter two! We don’t want the word to be he.”

  I positioned the cursor on the chapter 2 link.

  Click.

  My heart fell to my stomach.

  “What?” Christina cried. “Does it say he?”

  All the exuberance had drained from me. “Second word . . . he,” I said.

  A new fear was born. What if most of the words of the condemning sentence were present in my text?

  Christina motioned me to continue. “That could be just a coincidence. Go to chapter three. Chapter three.”

  I positioned the cursor on chapter 3. “What is the word we don’t want?”

  “Is.”

  My hopes sank. Such a common verb.

  Click.

  “Yes! Third chapter, third word . . . Senate!” My hopes revived.

  Momentum picked up from there. We found no matches in chapters 4 through 13.

  Christina stepped back and dropped onto the edge of the bed. “Oh Grant, I’m so glad you didn’t write this!”

  “I’m not out of the woods yet,” I said.

  Inserting the backup CD into the computer, I checked it against the file on the hard drive. They were identical. Then I unearthed the two hard-copy printouts from the bottom of my closet. Neither of them condemned me. “Which means the text was changed during editing,” I concluded.

  “So you’re in the clear!” Christina said.

  “Not completely. I could have made the changes during editing.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “And then there’s the proofs, the typeset printout I get from the publisher after it’s gone through editorial. It’s my last look at the manuscript, my last chance to make any corrections. I could have altered it then.”

  “But you have your copy of the proofs to prove you didn’t do that, don’t you?”

  I winced.

  “Tell me you made copies.”

  “I’d like to tell you that. But I didn’t make copies.”

  “Why not?”

  “Christina, it’s over five hundred pages. It would cost me a small fortune, and for what? A changed phrase here, a sentence there. During the proof stage changes are largely cosmetic.”

  She shoved the mice and hearts in my face. “This is not a cosmetic change,” she said.

  “But it is, that’s the beauty of the deception. Editors, copy editors make word changes here and there all the time without affecting the meaning of the sentence.”

  “You’re the author!” she cried. “You didn’t notice the changes when the book was released?”

  “I haven’t read it.”

  “Haven’t read it? Your own book?”

  I shook my head. “Why would I? I already know what’s in it, or at least I thought I did.”

  “That’s why!” she replied.

  In retrospect, she had a point.

  “Which leaves us where?” Christina said. “First thing in the morning you contact the publisher?”

  “First thing we do is get our hands on a copy of the proofs.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I’m not the only one who approved the proofs.”

  “Yes! Yes!” Christina shouted. “No! Oh no!”

  “What?”

  “Margaret . . . she threw them away! I remember now. Ms. Irwin . . .”

  “Ms. Irwin . . . the president’s personal secretary?”

  “Yes. She sent a memo to Margaret saying she was making a copy of the proofs for the president and wanted to know if the chief of staff wanted a copy, since he’d made comments on it. Margaret told her it wasn’t necessary. The next day, a runner delivers a copy of the proofs to Margaret’s desk anyway. I remember Margaret sniping that Ms. Irwin was the most annoying, pushy busybody she’d ever worked with, always telling people how to do their jobs.”

  “What did Margaret do with the copy?”

  “She put it in the shredder bin.”

  “All right, disappointing, but that means Ms. Irwin still has a copy. If we can get our hands on it we can find out who made the corrections before it was sent to the publisher.”

  “You suspect someone in the White House? Who?”

  “Ingraham.”

  “Oh Grant, do you really think so? You don’t want Ingraham as an enemy.”

  “A man can’t always choose his enemies. I have a feeling he’s behind all this, which means it’s imperative we get a look at those proofs.”

  “But how? Are you just going to walk in and ask her?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of asking her.”

  Christina laughed derisively. “I suppose you’re going to waltz into her office while nobody is looking and search through her files.”

  “Not me. I can’t even get in the door.”

  “Then who?”

  I folded my arms and stared at her.

  “Oh no . . . oh no . . . Margaret is keeping close tabs on everyone. She knows exactly how long it takes to perform every task, and if you take a minute longer, she demands an explanation.”

  “Only when she’s there. How about when she’s not there? How about . . . oh, I don’t know . . . now?”

  “No, Grant. Absolutely not. Out of the question.”

  “People work through the night in the West Wing all the time. It’s not that unusual. No one will suspect you.”

  “But if someone asks, what do I tell them?”

  “The truth. Tell them it’s imperative you find some papers by morning.”

  Christina backed away from me. She shook her head emphatically. “No, Grant. No. I can’t do it. Rummage around Ms. Irwin’s office? What if I get caught?”

  “You’re my only hope.”

  “I don’t care what you say, Grant. It’s too much to ask. I’m not going to do it.”

  As Christina made her way through the empty halls of the West Wing she couldn’t get Watergate out of her mind—the second-rate office burglary that culminated in the first presidential resignation in history. It was the ripple effect that intrigued her. A small pebble tossed into political waters creating an ever-expanding ripple that led to the downfall of a president of the United States.

  Tonight, she was the pebble. For all she knew, the proofs she was after would reveal nothing of consequence and tomorrow morning Grant would begin making inquiries at the publisher’s office to determine who there had implicated him. But Christina’s political instincts argued that the answers were in Washington, not New York. Intrigue of this nature was the heart and soul of D.C.

  Christina was certain the White House copy of the proofs would be the smoking gun. The question that remained was, Who fired the shot? In whose handwriting were the changes made?

  There were three primary suspects: the president, Chief of Staff Ingraham, and Ms. Irwin, acting on the president’s behalf. There were other possibilities; other aides or writers could have been hired to review the proofs, but until she eliminated the primary suspects, they were inconsequential.

  Getting into Ms. Irwin’s office would be no problem; her office was rarely locked, the door rarely closed. Restricted access to the heart of the White House made it unnecessary. The hard part would come once she was inside the office. The cabinets were undoubtedly locked. But there were a few places she knew to look and she hoped that publishing proofs would not be a matter of tight security.

  Christina strode into her own office and flipped the light switch. Overhead fluorescents sputtered to life as though she’d awakened them.

  What surprised her was that she was enjoying this.

  At first, when Grant suggested she do this she thought he was out of his mind. Finally caving to his pleas, she formulated a plan whi
le driving to the White House and not only did she realize she could do this, she had to admit she was good at the planning phase.

  Getting past security was no trouble. This wasn’t the first time West Wing staff was called to work in the middle of the night.

  “If I don’t have that environmental report on Ms. Irwin’s desk by morning, it’ll be my head,” she quipped to the guard at the security checkpoint.

  He was a new guy. She hadn’t seen him before. Average size. Crooked teeth.

  She noticed his teeth in particular because of the way he grinned at her. It was more of a leer. Either manning security at the White House was lonelier than she thought, or the guy was hitting on her. It was hard to tell because if he was making a pass at her, he wasn’t very good at it.

  The security guard laughed a little too loud at her quip, and when she glanced back while turning a corner, he was still looking at her, still leering.

  Now that she was in her office, she focused on the task at hand. She searched her desk for her copy of the environmental report. It was the key to her plan. Earlier in the day Margaret had instructed her to deliver a copy of the report—which outlined the long-range impact of offshore oil drilling on California’s coastline—to Ms. Irwin for the president. Just as she was walking out the door, Margaret had called her back. Chief of Staff Ingraham was screaming for follow-up phone calls to the Hill regarding a vote on an upcoming minimum wage bill. Working the phones was Christina’s strength.

  She didn’t know who Margaret had sent to deliver the report, but if anyone were to ask her, Christina could say in all good conscience that she’d been instructed to deliver the report and at the last minute got sidetracked, so it was either come early to work in the morning and deliver the report or do it tonight.

  “There you are,” she said, spying the report buried under a landslide of fiscal graphs.

  “Found it, did you?”

  The voice startled her, nearly sending her heart through the ceiling. She swung around to see the guard with crooked teeth. He leaned casually against the doorjamb, his thumbs hooked in his belt. “Would hate to see you lose that pretty head,” he said, making a guttural sound while dragging a thumb across his neck execution style.

  Charming, Christina thought.

  “I’ll walk you down,” he said.

  Smiling as sweetly as she could, Christina said, “Oh, that won’t be necessary. I’m sure you have more important things to do.”