Liars & Thieves

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

On Wednesday amid much pomp and circumstance the convention nominated the president to run as their party’s candidate in the election that fall. Actually they nominated three men, the president and two favorite sons, then dragged the speeches out for most of the afternoon and didn’t get around to the voting until prime time, when the proceedings were televised. Surprise, the president received most of the votes to be the standard-bearer, then someone moved that the convention make the nomination unanimous, which was done by yeas and nays.

Throughout the afternoon Royston hung out in his suite and received a steady stream of visitors — governors, senators, congresspersons, cabinet secretaries, big party donors, and people who wanted to be governors, senators, congresspersons, and foreign ambassadors. It was quite a parade and boring as hell to listen to. And difficult. The rooms where Royston was not receiving visitors were full of people; to select individual conversations from that hubbub, you had to use the computer and zero in on a voice print. Willie did it a few times with my coaching, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. All the talk was about a woman VP candidate. The fact that the president’s selection would be female was a foregone conclusion with that crowd, most of whom assumed that the soccer moms and working mothers of America would flock to the banner of the party with a woman on the ticket; the only question was which woman. Zooey Sonnenberg seemed to have the most supporters.

The president called Royston once, and he called the big guy twice to report on the visitors and what they said about the chances of the party carrying their states. I could only hear Royston’s side of the conversation, and it wasn’t anything earth-shattering. I became convinced these two knew the local politics of every county and hamlet in America.

Royston made no big promises, and neither did the president. Apparently they didn’t think this was the time or place for promises — they didn’t need them. Not yet, anyway.

There was some opposition to Zooey for the vice-presidential spot on the ticket, an undercurrent, but how significant it was I didn’t know. To the best of my knowledge neither did Royston, because I didn’t hear anyone give him actual polls of state delegations.

I was listening to this pablum while contemplating my navel when the telephone rang. Thinking it was probably Sarah or Jake Grafton, I clicked it on.

“Tommy, this is Dorsey.”

I almost dropped the telephone. “Just a second while I turn off the television.”

I frantically turned the volume knobs as far down as they would go. Silence filled the van, and Willie stared at me while I took several deep breaths.

“Hey, Dorsey, how you doing?”

“Fine. Where are you, Tommy?”

“Working. By the way, how did you get this telephone number?”

“Oh, I turned on your phone and got it while you were asleep Monday night. You don’t mind, do you? I realized that I didn’t know how to get in touch with you, and that seemed like an easy way.”

Sleeping around can get you in trouble — I learned that in high school. “Enjoying New York?” I asked brightly.

“Oh, yes. I was wondering if you would like to go to dinner?”

“This evening?” I kicked the brain into gear. Did she just want a repeat of Monday night? Was she going to try to wheedle information from me? Or was something else on her mind?

“I’m pretty busy right now, Dorsey. If this is social I probably should work.”

“It’s important to us.”

“Us?”

“You and me.”

Willie couldn’t hear what Dorsey was saying, but he heard enough of my side to get the drift. He winked and leered lasciviously. I shut my eyes so I could concentrate.

“Could we discuss it over a hamburger?”

“That’s not the venue I would choose, but if you only have a little time…”

“If it’s important, let’s wait until after the convention. I’ll have several days free then.”

“It can’t wait.”

“Okay. Ten o’clock in the hotel café. They do salads, too, I suspect.” Dorsey O’Shea might munch a burger on her way to hell, but not otherwise.

“Ten o’clock,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”

“’Bye.”

“Good-bye, Tommy,” and she hung up.

As I folded up the phone, Willie chortled. “She can’t get enough.”

“You think?”

“What else could it be?”

Indeed. If only I knew how Dorsey was mixed up in this, maybe I could guess. What I did know for certain was that she wouldn’t tell me. No way.

“Was she in her suite when she called?”

“No. I checked while you were talking. No audio from the bugs there.”

I opened the phone and checked the number of the last call received, then wrote it down. I called Sarah and asked her to find out where the phone was. Almost an hour passed before she called back. The delay she blamed on a lack of a high-speed Internet connection. As if I cared.

“So where is it?”

“It’s a cell phone belonging to one Dorsey O’Shea.”

“Thanks.” Well, no help there.

“So how is everything with you two?”

“Really, Sarah, I’m not in the mood.”

“Never mind. I’ll ask Willie.”

Jake Grafton wandered aimlessly through the beach house looking at everything and seeing nothing. He was engaged in the most noxious task known to modern man — waiting on a telephone call. From time to time he flipped through his sectional charts, read his airport directory again, measured distances and calculated flying times. Occasionally he looked up from his task and watched a few minutes of convention coverage. Then he went back to wandering.

Callie and Mikhail Goncharov chatted from time to time, ate, and napped. Callie managed to read a few chapters in her current novel. Goncharov had nothing in Russian to read, so he, too, paced, but he did his pacing upstairs.

“He’s a kind, gentle human being,” Callie told her husband at one point.

“Who is?” he asked distractedly.

“Mikhail.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’m trying to imagine how I would have managed to get from day to day if I had been in his place, trapped in a bureaucracy I loathed, one engaged in subversion, murder, framing innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, all to prop up a criminal regime. I think I would have just quit. Would have gotten a manual labor job to eat.”

Her husband gave her a long look, yet said nothing.

“On the other hand,” she mused, “quitting would have been a cop-out. If you don’t fight evil, you become evil.”

“That’s a platitude,” her husband murmured.

“Every deep human truth is a platitude,” his wife shot back. She was no shrinking violet, which Jake Grafton well knew.

“You would have done what he did,” Jake said. “If fate had put you in that place, you, too, would have written down the secrets, hoping that someday you could find a way to make the truth known. That choice took courage and commitment. Goncharov may be a kind, gentle man, but he’s got guts. So do you. That’s one reason I married you.”

He squeezed her hand and wandered out into the yard to look at the grass.

Ten o’clock came all too quickly. I left the van fifteen minutes early and walked completely around the hotel so that I would approach the main entrance from the side opposite the van. I had on my sports coat and tie.

Dorsey was fashionably late, arriving in the café at six after the hour. She saw me at a table in the corner and joined me.

She bussed me on the cheek and squeezed my hand before she sat down. “Thank you for coming.”

“You look ravishing this evening, Ms. O’Shea.”

Actually she looked like she was under a lot of stress. I had seen her in that condition before — chasing the porno tapes, and after she shot the intruder in her house — and knew the signs.

The waitress came, and Dorsey ordered a salad, as I had predicted. I ordered a sandwich and a glass of wine. Dorsey also thought a glass of wine would be good.

“Do you think I look old?” she asked.

Of course I denied it. She was in her early thirties and looked maybe twenty-five.

“I feel as if life is passing me by,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “I am wasting my life.”

This was a new Dorsey, introspective. I’ve always believed that the idle rich should avoid introspection. “What do you want out of life?” I asked politely, trying to guess where this gambit was going.

“I want to be happy,” she said flatly. “I want a man who loves me, and I want kids.”

This was the first I’d heard about kids. That comment jarred me. Dorsey wasn’t my idea of the maternal type.

“What is happiness?” I offered, just to keep her talking.

“I’m not sure,” she mused. She began playing with that idea and was still chattering when our drinks came. The wine was cool and delicious. As I sipped it and listened to Dorsey the thought occurred to me that maybe I should have ordered something stronger. I was beginning to suspect that Dorsey was on her way to a destination I wasn’t going to like.

And by God, damn if she didn’t go there!

“Tommy, you’re the only man I ever met who didn’t want something from me.”

“I don’t do platonic relationships,” I muttered.

“I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about money. Every single man and half the married men who meet me have dollar signs in their eyes. I’ve heard every investment opportunity and charitable scheme you can imagine. I hear a new one almost every day.”

“You need to find a better class of people to hang with.”

“I need a man who wants me, not my checkbook.”

“They’re out there. You’ll meet one.”

“Why not the two of us, Tommy? You and me. Is that so crazy?”

So there it was. I was being proposed to. And I had no idea how to handle it.

The waitress arrived with our food, which gave me a few seconds to think. When she disappeared I sat watching Dorsey toy with a little tomato with her fork. Finally she put the fork down.

“Dorsey, I don’t think you’re in love with me.”

“I don’t know. Perhaps I am. But I think we could love each other. I like you so much… Oh, Tommy, can’t you see us together? We could travel all we wanted, see the world, enjoy the people and places and find a perfect spot for us. And we could have children. Two, I think, a boy and a girl. You and I living life together could be so perfect.”

Wandering aimlessly through life on an eternal vacation was not my idea of how I wanted to spend my days. “I’m not going through life with a woman paying the bills,” I said as gently as I could.

“We could do a prenuptial agreement,” she said earnestly. “I’ll give you half of everything I have when we’re married. Then you can pay the bills.”

I took a healthy gulp of wine. I was right — I should have ordered whiskey.

“If we were married we couldn’t have any secrets from each other,” I stated, trying to turn this ship to a different heading.

“That’s true.” She was watching me like a hawk, her salad and wine untouched.

I took a bite of my sandwich, chewed it and washed it down with wine while I waited in vain for her to take another step on the subject of secrets. She wasn’t going to, I concluded.

“Dorsey, I’m flattered. I have never been proposed to before. I’ve never had a woman care that much for me. I don’t know what to say. I care very much for you and don’t want to hurt your feelings. Yet I doubt that we would work as a couple. We tried dating regularly once, and that didn’t work so well. You are you and I’m me, and that’s sort of an unchangeable fact. Maybe we should accept that. Make love when it suits us, go to dinner when we can fit it in, now and then a play or party, and each of us go on with our lives.”

Her eyes were glued on me. I had never seen her so intense. “Tommy, I’m offering you me and half of everything I own. I want you as a husband. And a friend who trusts me. I am trying to do the right thing for both of us. Do you trust me?”

Oh, boy! “I believe you are trying to do what you think best. But I am not convinced it would work.”

“If we want it badly enough, we can make it work.”

The divorce courts were full of people who once thought that. I did not make this comment to Dorsey O’Shea. What I said was this: “I need time to think. I confess, I haven’t been thinking of marriage. I need some time to get a handle on where I’m at.”

She reached for my hand. “Spend the night with me. Let’s go up to my room. I need you now, this evening.”

A roll in the hay with hot, wanton Dorsey pulling out all the stops while Willie Varner listened to the action was the last thing on earth I needed that night. I told her I had to go back to work. I signaled for the check, stood, and dropped money on the table.

“I’ll put the tab on my room,” she said distractedly.

Truthfully, she was a very beautiful woman. And she wasn’t the woman for me.

“No, Dorsey. You won’t.” I bent, kissed her on the lips, and headed for the door.

It was raining when I came out of the hotel. I was in no mood for Willie Varner, so I went walking. Bought another umbrella and I didn’t even have an expense account. There was a little bar on Ninth Avenue at about Fifty-seventh, and I dropped in. Quiet. Two drunks at a little table in the back of the room. Tending bar was a defrocked priest or a disbarred lawyer — I didn’t ask which. The place reeked of old wood and wasted lives. High at one end of the bar was a television with a Yankees game going, with no sound. They were playing someplace with sunshine. I wished I were there.

I ordered a double Scotch, the oldest stuff they had, and sat at the end of the bar by the window and watched the rain and the traffic and the people hurrying by.

Dorsey wasn’t a bad person. Oh, she was a poor little rich girl, and I believed her when she said every man in her life wanted money. Still, I wasn’t the guy to rescue her. I didn’t want her money. I didn’t want the frantic indolence, the eternal vacation, the doomed-to-failure effort to stay young and trendy and with it. I wanted to look my age, to keep busy with things worth doing, and to find a woman who loved me.

Dorsey didn’t.

At least, I didn’t think she did.

So why in hell did she ask me to marry her?

Didn’t she know that wasn’t done in middle-class circles? Any woman worth her salt could maneuver the object of her affections into getting on his knee and popping the question. Or maybe, being a hip young modern, Dorsey didn’t give a damn.

Wonder if I was the first man Dorsey ever asked to wed.

Can a husband testify against a wife in New York? Maryland? Why did I have this suspicion eating on me that she was somehow involved in this mess with Royston? She knew everyone in Washington; she admitted she’d been to the White House. Why not Royston? Or the president?

Naw — she was no Monica.

I sipped the Scotch as slowly as I could, but it went down way too fast, so I ordered another.

I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and laid it on the bar beside my drink. After a while I picked it up and dialed a number I had memorized.

He got it on the second ring. “Grafton.”

“Tommy. Been a hell of an evening. Dorsey proposed.”

“Proposed what?”

“What the hell you think? Marriage, goddamn it!”

“How much is she worth, anyway?”

“My guess is about four hundred million. Give or take.”

“Why didn’t you get the number?”

“She was proposing marriage, not a merger.” That wasn’t strictly true, but I was in no mood to get into the messy details with Jake Grafton. I had all the respect in the world for him, but there is a limit.

“Girls that rich don’t come along every day,” he observed tactlessly. “My old man always told me that I should marry the first time for love, the second time for money.”

“If you and Callie ever split the blanket, I’ll give you Dorsey’s telephone number.”

“He also said it’s as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one, although I don’t think he had any experience to back that up. It was a naked assumption on his part.”

“Terrific.”

“So did you say yes?”

“I called because I think it’s time for you to tell me what is going on. Everything you know.”

“Don’t know much,” the admiral muttered, “and that’s a fact.”

“Everything you suspect.”

“All of it?”

“All of it. Who, what, where, when, why.”

“It’ll take a little bit.”

“Believe me, I’ve got nothing but time.”

So he told it. Dumped the whole load on me. When I hung up thirty minutes later I tossed the phone on the bar and sat watching the rain through the window. When the barman came around I asked if he had coffee. He said he could make a pot. And he did.