Sharky's Machine

Chapter Sixteen

The sleek white Grebe cabin cruiser rolled gently on a quiet sea, protected by a womb of warm fog that had drifted in from the Gulf Stream just after midnight, a fog so thick that it now obscured the crow’s nest over the cabin. Hotchins slipped on a pair of faded corduroys and a yellow slicker and went out on the afterdeck where he sat quietly massaging the calf of his imperfect leg. Occasionally, when tension and weariness weighed on him, he could almost feel the missing foot cramping up on him, the pain spreading slowly up to his knee, the artificial foot becoming a dead weight. It was a discomfort he endured alone, never mentioning it to others.

He had anchored in a cove on the inland side of the island, an unnamed hump of sand and sea grass he remembered from the early days when he worked the shallows off the Georgia and South Carolina coasts with his father. He rarely thought about those days anymore. Time had eased all that, erasing memories of the harsh work and bitter loneliness that were the realities of a shrimper’s life. Now he regarded the sea with affection, a friend providing tiny islands along the coast from Brunswick to Charleston that had become his private hideaways.

He sat in the stern, rubbing the leg, drawing strength from the artificial foot, which had become a constant reminder of the humiliation of defeat, of the common weakness he saw in all people who failed, who dreamed too small, and would not pay the price for even their little dreams. His utter contempt for those who simply endured had started in Korea. There were prices to be paid and the greater the prize, the higher the price.

In the prison camp, where he lay nursing his shattered foot for almost a year before it was amputated, Hotchins had learned about survival. He needed a goal, something more than just day-by-day grovelling to stay alive. His goal, his single driving obsession to be president of the United States, was born in morphine-crazed hallucinations, but it became his goal for living. He invented methods for keeping his mind alert. He tried to think like a president, act like a president, adopt the attitude of a president.

When he was released from the hospital into the prison population, he was shocked at what he found — a motley, demoralized, filthy group who reflected their senior officer, a colonel named Sacks who was a weak and disheartened shell, tormented by fear and sickness and destroyed by his own nightmares. Hotchins watched as Sacks encouraged the weak to submit to the North Koreans, to collaborate, sign confessions, to do anything to stay alive. He hated Sacks, not because he was weak, but because he had created an atmosphere that eventually would enervate Hotchins himself.

If Hotchins were to survive, he had to destroy Sacks. His became a constant and subtle voice hammering at the colonel’s conscience, eroding the last vestige of Sacks’s self- respect. It was an insidious and ruthless campaign, so carefully carried out that when Sacks eventually hanged himself, he did not realize he had been driven to the act by the man who assumed his position of command.

For the next two years Hotchins ruled the camp, hand- picking a small coterie of the toughest men left and establishing his own harsh rules and regulations. He restored military discipline to the prison, demanded that the men practise personal hygiene, that they exercise to keep their morale up. Twice he secretly ordered the execution of men on the verge of confessing to war crimes. He was both a frightening martinet and an inspiration to his fellow prisoners. They survived because he needed them to, and in the end he endured his humiliation with dignity and walked out of the camp a hero.

When he did, he was convinced that he would someday

be president, regardless of the price. It was a passion which

DeLaroza had eased to life, nurtured, encouraged and fed.

And now it was happening. Nothing could stop it. In

Hotchins’s mind, it was destiny.

He sat in the fog, preparing himself for the tough ten months ahead, for the exhausting personal toll he knew the campaign would exact, contemplating the price he would have to pay.

He had already paid dearly by ending his affair with Domino. DeLaroza had been right, she represented a constant danger and a foolish one. Besides, she had served her purpose. Domino had awakened new passions in Hotchins, arousing a latent need that had been smothered by ambition. She had fired his carnal desires ‘with her incredible sensuality and given him a new vitality. Losing her was just the first of many personal sacrifices he knew he would have to make.

The decision to give her up had come quickly once he faced it. Hotchins had trained himself to make fast decisions. He simply programmed the pluses and minuses into his brain, a trick he had learned from Victor. Emotion had nothing to do with it.

It was done. Time to move on.

He started thinking about his own political machine. The nucleus was there, although he recognized that in its strength there was danger. DeLaroza, Roan, Lowenthal, each a shrewd and powerful strategist but each with his own needs to fulfil. It would not be easy, balancing their egoes, keeping the machine oiled and moving.

He did not hear her open the hatchway behind him.

‘Composing your acceptance speech?’ she said.

He turned, startled by her voice, ignoring the remark or perhaps not hearing it. Instead he was staring at her as she stood in the hatchway, huddled in a green jacket which she held shut with both hands, her magical features framed by tousled black hair, her blue eyes still filled with sleep, her long, perfect legs bare below the jacket.

‘God you’re something,’ he said. You are really something.’

She laughed. ‘Changing your mind?’

His face grew sombre again and he turned away from her, staring back into the fog when he shook his head.

‘You’re making it sad,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t have to be sad. There are still a couple of very good hours left before the sun comes up.’

Without thinking he began stroking his leg. She came out and stood near him, putting her head gently on the back of his neck and moving her fingers lightly in his hair.

‘Want me to do that for you?’

‘No. It’s nothing.’

‘Did you hear what I said? It doesn’t have to be sad. That’s for the songwriters.’

‘It got to me a little, seeing you there. A little nudge, that’s all. What is it the French say? “To say goodbye is to die a little.”’

She sighed. ‘You’re going to get emotional on me. I can tell.’

‘Well, my mother always said I was emotional. “Donald,” she’d say, “don’t be so dramatic.”’

She sat down beside him and nestled against him. He put his arm around her.

‘Well, don’t go getting dramatic on me. Save that for the tax-payers.’

Hotchins laughed. ‘You’ve noticed that too, hunh?’

‘Come on. When that voice begins to tremble and those eyes fire up, I just have to marvel at you.’ Then, a moment later: ‘You’re going to win, Hotch. You’re a straight-line guy and people like that.’

‘What do you mean, “straight-line guy”? That sounds stuffy.’

‘Not at all. It’s one of your. . . charms. You get right to it, no fussing around. Now most men would have brought me out here, wined me, had a little dinner catered in a pretty picnic basket, made love to me all night, then made their little farewell speech two minutes before we docked. You gave it to me before we even got out of the harbour. And I like that about you. The only problem is, you’ve been acting like a little boy who did something wrong ever since.’

‘Well I —,

‘It’s not guilt. Guilt is not one of your problems.’

‘I guess I figured, when you close the door it isn’t fair to climb back in the window.’

‘How about me? How about the way I feel?’

He drew her closer to him, his fingers searching the jacket, feeling her nakedness under it. He remembered a time in Virginia, one of the first times she stirred feelings in him he thought he had lost forever. His hand moved around her and up until he felt the curve of her breast and she turned slightly so it rested against his palm.

Out beyond the cove a foghorn sounded, its mournful tune going sour at the end of the bleat.

‘That’s old Jerry Stiliman’s tugboat,’ Hotchins said. ‘That foghorn’s had a frog in its throat since I was a kid.’

‘You know what, Hotch? I knew you were going to be a good lay the first time I ever saw you.’

‘Oh?

The remark startled him. Her uninhibited observations always caught him off-guard. He laughed and said, ‘You mean, you thought about bedding me down the first thing? Right in the middle of a cocktail party?’

She thought about that night. She had seen his picture in the newspaper, seen him on television, and had wondered about him the way any woman wonders about a man of prominence. It was Victor who had introduced them.

‘Want to meet the next president?’ he had asked her.

‘Of what?’

‘The United States.’

Now who could turn down an invitation like that? Of course she wanted to meet him. There had been a fund- raising dinner to save the historic old Fox Theatre, with a private cocktail party beforehand.

‘He is a lonely man,’ DeLaroza had told her casually.

‘Does it show?’

‘Only to those who know him. The public sees only what he wants it to see.’

‘Bad marriage?’

‘Typical. He married a small-town glr1 when he was quite young. She has not kept up. She is uncomfortable in the political arena.’

‘Suicide,’ she had said. ‘She better get used to it.’

‘Too late.’

She had been overwhelmed by his personal charm, a charisma that television never adequately captured. He was commanding, charming, friendly but formal, and she had watched him from across the room. Several times she had caught him staring back at her.

Thinking back on it, she knew now that it had been more than just Hotch. She had known commanding, charming, friendly, and formal men before, but never one who was going to run for president. It had been a challenge, no question about it. Yes, there had definitely been a challenge there.

What had Victor said? ‘ You are attracted by power.’ No, she thought, not really. She had known from the beginning that the benefits of power would be denied to her. From the beginning she had been a closet mistress. Nothing would ever have changed that. And there had been affection. But love? No, that was the delusion.

And so she too was relieved that it was over.

‘Hey,’ he said, snapping her back to the present.

‘Hey yourself.’

‘I said, did you really think about bedding me down right there in the middle of that cocktail party?’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Didn’t I what?’

‘Think about laying me the first thing?’

‘Jib no, but —,

‘But you would now?’

‘I’ve got prior knowledge now.’

‘Hotch, if you met me in a restaurant right now, for the first time, what is the first thing that would go through your mind?’

‘You win.’

‘Thank you. Now you understand. I looked across the room at you and I said to myself “He’s going to be great in bed.”’

‘Why did you think that?’

‘I saw your hunger. Not for me, not for any other woman in the room. But you were hungry. And a powerful, hungry man is a powerfully good lay.’

He turned and looked down at her. The jacket had fallen open and he could see her breasts swelling against the cloth.

‘Did I disappoint you?’

‘Of course not. It was fun, like waking up a sleeping tiger. Oh, you were a little shy at first, but...’

She smiled and let the sentence drift away in the fog, then after a few moments she said, ‘You’ve been a very good lover.’

More silence. She moved again, this time against him, and he could feel the heat from her body through the jacket.

‘How long have we been lovers?’ he said.

‘Seven months this Thursday.’

‘Have you been marking the calendar?’

‘I never forget good things. It’s a lesson I learned from my dad. If you don’t expect anything from the world, everything you get is a surprise. And that makes the really good things that much better.’

‘He must’ve been a very wise man.’

‘Nope, he never kept a promise in his life. But . . he made some beauties, so he also taught me the value of dreaming.’

‘That’s a very generous way of putting it. What was he like?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘You know, we’ve known each other for seven months and I don’t know a damn thing about your life away from me? I don’t even know your real name.’

‘You don’t like Domino?’

‘Well it always struck me as a bit melodramatic.’

‘Intriguing. I like intriguing. It’s a much better word.’

‘Okay, intriguing.’

‘Good. And that’s the way we’ll keep it.’

‘1, uh, I feel . . .‘

She sensed the awkwardness in his voice and held a finger to his lips.

‘Shh,’ she said. And then: ‘I want to make love to you. Right now. Because it’s something we both enjoy and because I find you most appealing out here like this and because I’m horny as hell.’

She made a sound in her throat and moved a hand up his leg, sliding her fingers down the inside of his thigh. He turned towards her and kissed her arid she reached up between their mouths with two fingers and squeezed his lips very lightly between them, and his mouth opened and their tongues touched, flirted with each other, and she moved against him, very lightly, so he could feel the fullness of her. She slid one leg up over his lap, drew her mouth away from his, and lay her head against his chest. Then she took the zipper of his jacket between her teeth and very slowly moved her head down, unzipping it almost to the waist. Then, raising her head, she kissed him again and this time both their jackets were open and as they kissed she moved her breasts lightly against him and he felt her hard nipples caressing his chest.

He was totally captivated by her, the thought of having her was dizzying to him. He felt her hand touch him and felt himself responding. He reached up, stroked her face and throat, gradually widening the circle his hand was making until it brushed her nipple. And then he knew she was already starting the build-up and at that moment Hotchins realized fully what his obsession to become president had cost him.