The Last Virginia Gentleman

by Michael Kilian

  “Why, David? Why do you have to do that?”

  “Family. My father …”

  “He’s dead. You told me he almost lost the farm, with the way he spent money. What do you want to do? I’m not talking about your family, your father’s ghost. I’m talking about you. What do you want, David?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “David, by the time I was a teenager my father was a very wealthy man. All he wanted for me was respectability—the very best schools and the very best marriage I could get. Someone like you, perhaps, but with money, as much money as we had.

  “That’s not what I wanted. I tried to be something more than the highly marriageable daughter of this superachiever. I wanted to achieve something myself. I wanted my mother to be as proud of me as she was of my father. I had been in plays all through boarding school, and loved it. My father raised hell about it but I applied at Juilliard, and they took me. I was cast in my first Actors Equity New York play before I even graduated. David. Is there anything like that, that you really want? To look out over these hills, and dream on?”

  “I forgot about your play,” he said. “You’re supposed to start rehearsals soon. And you’re stuck here with me.”

  “To hell with the play. There’ll be another. I’ve learned that much.”

  He was staring off at the eastern horizon, frowning.

  “Let’s go back,” she said.

  When they returned, the bay was standing up—and eating.

  Twenty

  The news that the Japanese had at last ratified the Earth Treaty reached the White House by State Department communiqué some twenty minutes before it hit the news wires. Moody received it in his office, where he was waiting with a very edgy Deena. The president had scheduled a news conference on Moody’s appointment as well as a following private luncheon in the White House family quarters. He’d never raised the possibility that he might cancel both events if the Japanese were not forthcoming, but Moody could only wonder. It would have been utterly humiliating for that to happen in front of Deena. It was humiliating enough watching her sit and fidget and seethe. The first lady was said to loathe Deena. The luncheon would be a uniquely hellish experience, however punctiliously correct. And here was Deena being made to squirm, waiting to find out whether she would be honored with the privilege of being allowed to endure it.

  Deena would have to steel herself somehow. This was what life was going to be like, if he succeeded in joining the cabinet.

  “Well, they did it,” Moody said from behind his desk, waving the copy of the communiqué his secretary had just brought him.

  “The Japanese?”

  “Yes.”

  Deena stood up. “Hallelujah.” She said it like a dirty word.

  “Sit down, please, Deena. Now we have to wait for the president’s call.”

  “Shit.”

  “Please.”

  “I don’t know how you put up with this all the time, Robert.”

  “Right. You thought it was all inaugural balls.”

  He turned away. He was surprised by how cheerless he felt. He was still tormented by his conversation with Bloch—by his still having had no word from or about May.

  Moody had trusted Bloch nearly all his adult life—trusted him with his money, with his political career, with carrying out special favors that could have gotten them both in important trouble if not carried out just right.

  He’d never asked Bernie for anything to do with May before. Now he was trusting him with her life.

  His secretary came in quite breathless with excitement. “Mr. Moody, sir. The president would like you to join him in the Oval Office.”

  The announcement press conference was anticlimactic. Reports of Moody’s probable nomination had been leaking out of the State Department and the Capitol for days, and a piece predicting it had appeared on the Post’s federal page that morning—adding greatly to Moody’s fears, as though its publication would cause the president to change his mind.

  There were a few barbed questions from reporters, and the president pushed Moody forward to take them. At this, Moody was supremely competent. He turned his every answer into a polemic on behalf of the Earth Treaty.

  The last question he took threw him for a moment. “Mr. Moody, there are reports some of your business friends back in Baltimore are working against the treaty. Is that going to hinder you in your new role?”

  Who the hell was the man talking about? Moody stepped closer to the microphone. “Anyone who opposes this treaty is no friend of mine.”

  “No room for honest differences, Mr. Moody?”

  “No sir. As the president says, it’s the fate of the earth.”

  The president was pleased by his performance, and showed it at lunch by cutting his wife short when she began sniping at Deena about the need to maintain the dignity of the office while representing the United States abroad. For the rest of the meal, the first lady was mostly silent, letting her husband carry the burden of conversation. All were relieved when the ordeal came to an end with the last perfunctory sip of coffee.

  When they were back in the sanctuary of Moody’s office, Deena headed for the wall cabinet where she knew he always kept a bottle of Jack Daniel’s Black.

  “I gotta have a drink, Robert. You want one?”

  He shook his head. “You know damn well I never drink on duty. But you go ahead. I guess you earned it.”

  “Earned it? I just earned a hell of a lot more than a lousy goddamned glass of bourbon.”

  Moody, putting her out of his mind, went to his phone and his messages. The call he had his secretary return first was to Senate Leader Reidy.

  “Mister Secretary,” said Reidy, pronouncing the words as though he were the Senate doorkeeper. “Sounds good, doesn’t it? You’re going to be getting nothing but congratulations the rest of the day. Let me just say that I never had the slightest doubt you’d pull this off. You’re a goddamn magician, Bobby. A winner.”

  “It’s not a matter of magic now, Senator. It’s down to grubby votes. What are my chances?”

  “You haven’t a worry, Bobby. You’re as much a cinch as the treaty itself, and I’ve shown you my nose counts on that. It’s just a matter of when you want the coronation. If you like, I can have the confirmation hearings set for this month.”

  “You’re in recess until after Labor Day.”

  “Oh, I can always find a poor soul or two to show up for a committee hearing. Your friends on the committee will want to be there no matter what, I’m sure. In fact, I’d be surprised indeed if we couldn’t get a floor vote on your nomination and on treaty ratification the same week.”

  “Treaty first.”

  “Naturally. How does the week of September ninth sound?”

  “You’re an optimist.”

  “No, Bobby, I’m a realist. I leave optimism to people like the president.”

  “September ninth? Really?”

  “I’m not a kidder, Bobby.”

  “Well, your efforts are damn appreciated. You’ll never know how much.”

  “Oh, I suppose that sometime in the future you might find a way to give me a little hint.” He laughed.

  “Thanks again, Senator.” Moody hung up. One great joy of being secretary of state would be that he wouldn’t have to deal with Reidy so much.

  All manner of calls were coming in—from Richmond, Wally Sadinauskas, General St. Angelo, the treasury secretary, the director of the FBI, the British ambassador, a producer at the “Today” show. Moody scanned the list impatiently. He couldn’t call them all back. He wanted to get the hell out of there.

  He sat up sharply, staring at one of the names, then quickly buzzed his secretary.

  “Did this Mr. Kearny leave a number?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Get him.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Hal Kearny had been Moody’s first law partner; his best man at his first wedding; for years, his best friend. They hadn’t spoken since Mood
y’s divorce. He wouldn’t be calling now just because it seemed likely his old associate was about to become secretary of state.

  Kearny was still living in Cumberland. Some people never changed.

  “Bobby?”

  “Sorry I missed your call, Hal. Busy day.”

  “I understand. It’s quite an honor.”

  “Someday you good citizens of Cumberland can name a street after me. Maybe an alley.”

  Kearny did not joke back. “I told your secretary this was important, Bobby. It’s about May.”

  Moody froze. Deena, pacing the room with her drink, noticed the change in his expression.

  “What about her?”

  “She doesn’t want you to worry about her. She asked me to let you know that she’s safe. She’s fine. She’ll get back to Washington as soon as she can. But you’re not to worry. You’re not to do anything about her. She wanted me to tell you that.”

  “Where the hell is she, Hal? In Cumberland? Where?” Moody was standing up behind his desk. Deena was watching him intently.

  “She’s not here, Bobby. She doesn’t want it known where she is. She’ll call you when she can. She’s sorry she didn’t talk to you before this. That’s all she wanted me to tell you.”

  “Hal! For God’s sake! We’re friends. Where is she?”

  “Sorry, Bobby. I promised.”

  “Damn it, Hal!”

  “Sorry.” He hung up.

  Moody slumped back into his chair, his fingers drumming a staccato on his desk.

  “What is it, Robert?” Deena asked. “Is it about May?”

  Moody ignored her, thinking. It had to be Geneva’s doing, Geneva’s way of playing it safe. May would never have sought out Hal Kearny. Probably hadn’t the faintest idea he was still in Cumberland. He’d been like a brother to Geneva. He probably still was.

  May was with Geneva. Had to be. Best place she could go. Smart girl, May. You could hide a million horses in those hills in West Virginia.

  He placed the call himself, the number returning to mind as though he dialed it every day.

  It rang for the longest time. A man finally answered, his accent a shock to Moody—so familiar, yet from so long ago.

  “Who is this?” Moody demanded.

  “This is Tyrone. Is that you, Mr. Moody?”

  “Yes, goddammit. Is my wife there? Geneva?”

  “No sir. She’s not here. She’s away during the day, don’t you know, Mr. Moody? Over in Wingo. If you want to wait a minute, I’ll find the number for you.”

  “Never mind that, Tyrone! Put May on. Let me speak to my daughter.”

  “Jenny Mae? She’s not here, Mr. Moody. The house is empty. That’s why Mrs. Moody has me come by and check up on it.”

  May had to be there. She was just being really smart, not talking to anyone. He ought to just leave her be, at least until he could think this through. He still hadn’t figured out what he was going to do about this. “All right, Tyrone. I get the picture. But if either one of them wants to call me—needs to call me—I can be reached at these numbers.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Moody,” he said, after Moody had rattled them off. “Now if you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll go see if I can find a pencil here and write them down.”

  “Who was that, Robert?” Deena asked, when he had finally finished with the call.

  “Believe it or not, a town constable in West Virginia, the dumb sonofabitch.”

  “Have they found May? Is she all right?”

  “What? No, it’s nothing. Just someone I thought might know where she is. Come on, let’s get out of here. I’m giving myself the rest of the day off. We’ll go sit by the pool or something.”

  He thought of Deena in a bathing suit—and out of one. She could do that much for him on this supposed day of days. She’d sure as hell been no geisha during their Asian trip. Not much of one since then, either. He needed a little interlude, a little time for his brain to work at a more natural speed, for his memory to serve up a little history and guidance. He’d been going through these last few weeks as frantically as if he were a company commander in Vietnam again. Hell, Napoleon used to take naps right in the middle of battles.

  A couple of hours in the sun by the Watergate pool would be perfect. Just him and Deena. And his cellular phone.

  Spencer’s bureau chief was perplexed by his story on the horse country car bombing. True, Spencer hadn’t exactly loaded it with information, but he’d stuck to all the basic rules of Journalism 101, and even managed to work in the fact that his own cousin was wanted for murder, though he’d left out his conviction that bomb victim Becky Bonning had herself murdered two human beings. His writing job, he thought, was worthy at least of Dick Francis, if not William Faulkner.

  “But there’s nothing in here about the Japanese, or that guy Napier,” the chief said, glowering at his computer terminal screen.

  “Sorry. They’re not charged with anything. No one out there mentioned them even once.”

  “But there’s got to be an angle like that. State Department heavy. Resigns under mysterious circumstances after pissing off the White House about the Japanese. His car gets blown up. Come on. Don’t you know anyone at the Agency? Or the Bureau?

  The chief’s first rule of journalism was, whenever in doubt, no matter what about, find someone to whisper with over at the CIA or the FBI.

  “I don’t have a source there who knows anything about horses. They don’t spend a lot of time at the track, those fellows.”

  The bureau chief shook his head in exasperation. “Come on, Jack. They’ve got to be working this.” He glanced over his desk in frustration. One of his favorite possessions had been a metal spike dating back to the eyeshade and sleeve garter days of newspapers. He’d kept it around long after they’d switched from teletypes to computers, going to great lengths to print out stories rather than simply electronically erasing them so he could enjoy the satisfaction of impaling paper on spike.

  A few months before, someone had stolen it.

  The chief pushed a button on the keyboard dumping Spencer’s story into a computer storage queue.

  “Do better,” he said.

  Spencer took that as a license for another trip to Dandytown, which he’d been planning on making anyway. Alixe Percy was improving, though the hospital still wasn’t allowing visitors. Showers had managed to send Spencer an Express Mail package containing a lot of snapshots of the bay horse and a brief note that he was to forward them at once to the Canadian horseman Ryan, with a request that the man come out to Virginia as soon as possible if he was satisfied the animal in the pictures was his. Prosecutor Bensinger had called, suggesting that they meet late that afternoon at the Dandytown Inn—while urging Spencer to stay away from the courthouse and Dandytown proper.

  Just before he left, Spencer’s computer analyst friend called. He’d taken to this project like a kid with a new video game, and now had a new theory on the scratches he wanted Spencer to check out as soon as possible. And there’d been an anonymous note in Spencer’s mailbox threatening him in vulgarly descriptive fashion with death and dismemberment. He’d received a number of letters in similar vein from lunatic readers over the years, but never one deposited directly in his mailbox without the apparent assistance of the Postal Service.

  All part of the typical Washington correspondent’s day.

  Happily, his car did not explode when he started it. He was very pleased to be getting out of Washington. The August heat was beginning to build in with a vengeance, and it didn’t go well with attempts at organized thought.

  Among the horse pictures Showers had sent was one showing him and that knockout actress May Moody standing close together by the horse, with a ramshackle barn in the unfocused background. They all looked wonderfully content. Before sending the rest of the pictures on to the Canadian, Spencer stuck that photo in his pocket. He wanted to think of them like that—wherever they were.

  He arrived at the Dandytown Inn shortly after three
. Bensinger wasn’t in the bar or the restaurant, and the bartender said he hadn’t seen him at all that day.

  A gin and tonic quickly quenched Spencer’s thirst. A second provided a means of idling away a half hour or so, but by four o’clock, he began to get a little irritable. Finally, he shoved back his stool and went to the pay phone, calling Bensinger’s office. A receptionist said he’d been away from the courthouse all afternoon. Spencer left no message.

  Returning to the bar, he ordered a third drink, and immediately wished he hadn’t. The room was largely empty, but a young man, walking with the aid of a crutch, had come in a few minutes before, taking a seat at the far end. Now he was coming toward Spencer’s stool, clumpity thump, his glass in his free hand.

  Spencer had been approached by enough people in enough bars all over the world to recognize each type in an instant—hookers, lonely housewives, party girls, junkies, lushes, traveling salesmen, confidence men, spies, bored businessmen, cops, barroom brawlers, weirdos, gays.

  It appeared he’d just been caught by one of the latter. The man was young, with a tanned and rosy face; soft, delicate features; long eyelashes; and dark, curly hair worn overlong. Except for the crutch, he looked straight off the cover of a polo magazine—not that Spencer subscribed to many.

  The young man eased himself clumsily onto the stool next to Spencer’s, his injured leg brushing uncomfortably near.

  “There are other places to sit, friend,” Spencer growled.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to intrude. Are you Mr. Spencer? Jack Spencer? The newspaperman who’s writing a story about steeple-chasing?”

  “Who are you?” He’d heard there was a wide variety of sexual preference among some of the professional riders out here.

  “You’re Captain Showers’ cousin? Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Spencer said. “And you’re who?”

  “My name’s Jimmy Kipp,” he said, extending his hand. Spencer shook it limply. “I used to ride with the captain, until my accident. He saved my life.”

  Showers was always saving lives, rescuing damsels, healing injured animals, setting things right, saving the day. Even in his sailing days as a young man, Spencer had never once saved anyone’s life—or given the possibility much thought.