Insatiable Appetites

20

Ann woke him at five AM and attacked him. Stone submitted gracefully. Done with him, she jumped into a shower, pulled a change of clothes from her large handbag, replacing them with those worn, spent half an hour doing something with a hair dryer in the bathroom, then woke up Stone again.

“There’s a car waiting for me downstairs. I can’t stay for breakfast.”

“Look in the dumbwaiter,” Stone said, pointing.

Ann looked and found a brown paper bag. “What’s in it?”

“Some of Helene’s pastries and coffee. You can enjoy it on the way to the Carlyle. Will I ever see you again short of the inauguration?”

“Of course,” she said, kissing him, “but as Rodgers and Hart once said, ‘Who knows where or when?’”

“I’ll wait with bated breath.”

She kissed him and ran from the room.

Stone fell asleep again.

Stone was working in his office with Herbie after lunch when his cell phone buzzed on his belt. “Hello?”

“It’s Carla Fontana,” she said.

“Good afternoon, Carla. I hope you’re well.”

“I am, thank you, and better than ever, thanks to your referral.”

“Did he prove cooperative?”

“I met him an hour ago in the rear office of an antiques shop on Pennsylvania Avenue, in Georgetown.”

“And?”

“He was very cooperative. He told me his name, and he said I could tell you.”

“Who is he?”

“He is Evan Hills, a first-term Republican congressman from Pennsylvania, and he was very brave. He knows that if his leadership ever finds out he spoke to me, he’ll be gutted and hung out to dry, and I think he actually believes they’ll have him killed.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Some dark figure or other. Who knows?”

“Is it a story?”

“Is it ever! Evan has an excellent memory, and he was able to give me a verbatim account of who said what. He made notes as soon as he got home.”

“Whose house was the meeting held at?”

“Ready for this? Harley David, oil billionaire who’s backed a dozen right-wing organizations. He has a son, Junior, who’s known as Harley Davidson — get it?”

“The poor kid.”

“No, he’s a rotten little bully. He drives around Dallas and D.C. in a Ferrari, mowing down pedestrians. He’s had two hit-and-runs in Texas while drinking and has walked away from both, leaving a trail of his daddy’s money in his wake.”

“He sounds like a charmer.”

“Not only that, but his daddy is clearing the way for a congressional seat for him next time.”

“Was H. David Senior at the meeting?”

“He was.”

“When will your story run?”

“A few days, maybe.”

“Maybe?”

“I’ve got some checking around to do. I want to be sure that I — and you — are not being set up. This has been a little too easy. I have a list of who was at the meeting, and there’s one other guy I might be able to get to cop to being there. I need a second source.”

“You would know better about that than I.”

“I’ve talked to my executive editor in New York, and he’s excited, but, like me, he thinks that it may be too good to be true. The Gray Lady doesn’t want her tit caught in a wringer, and Harley David would like nothing better than for that to happen. Also, I want to see what else I can get out of our man Evan Hills.”

“What’s Hills’s background?”

“Deerfield Academy, Penn, Yale Law School, practiced with a Philadelphia white shoe firm, very Republican.”

“What are his motives in all this?”

“Well you may ask. If he’s for real, I think he has a conscience, and he’s put off by the right-wing tilt in his party. Also, I have nothing to back this up but intuition, but I think he’s gay and afraid the Republicans will shun him if he comes out.”

“Does he have money?”

“He certainly appears to. His father is a big-time commodities trader, and that means he’s either very rich or very poor. Evan was married once, to a girl from a very Main Line family, not the sort that would have a pauper or a Democrat for a son-in-law. They were divorced, amicably, after a couple of years.”

“Well, I hope he turns out to be real. I can’t wait to read the story in the Times.”

“Neither can I. Are we ever going to have that dinner we talked about in Paris?”

“Just as soon as you come to New York.”

“I’ll be there the day after tomorrow.”

“Where are you staying?”

“With friends at One Fifth Avenue, in the Village.”

“I’ll have you picked up at six-thirty and brought here for a drink, then we’ll go on from there.” He gave her the address.

“You’re on.”

“So are you.” They hung up. Stone buzzed Joan and asked her to have Fred collect Carla.

“That sounded interesting,” Herbie said. “Who was it?”

Stone swore him to secrecy and told him the story, minus Hills’s identity.

“I think it’s going to be fun, following this story.”

“We can only hope.”