The Fresco

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The phone rang eight times before she answered. “By?”

  “Yes, Janet. What’s the problem?” He knew his voice was cold, but it had to be. Let her get anywhere near him and she’d start shedding tiny dead flakes of herself all over him, like emotional dandruff.

  “Oh, By, don’t sound like that.”

  He held the phone away from his ear, waiting for the whine to run down. Make me happy. Make me mean something. Make me satisfied. He’d married her because she came from a well-known political family and he needed the support. He got the support, but he’d paid a high price for it. During all but the first two years they’d been married, Janet had been neither enjoyable at home nor fit to be seen in public. He’d ended up staying away from home, going stag too many times, making passes he shouldn’t have made, a definite error in judgment. Luckily, the press hadn’t picked up on any of it. Back then, people’s personal lives had been off limits to the media. He’d been damned lucky. The only dangerous lapse had happened here in Washington, before he’d run for the senate. Mouthy bitch! It took two years to wear that story out. Now, of course, the shoe was on the other foot. That same mouthy bitch would deeply regret her remarks by the time he was through with her.

  The gnat-voice faded. He put the receiver back to his ear.

  “Janet, if you have something to tell me, do it.”

  “Timothy. He’s in the hospital.”

  His breath caught, but he forced his voice to remain calm. “What’s the matter with him?”

  “He broke his leg. Poor baby, those skates are just murderous, murderous, I don’t know why they all think they have to have those terrible skates…”

  “How bad is the break?”

  “He’s in a cast!”

  “How bad is the break?!”

  “He’s…he’s coming home tomorrow.”

  “He’s not in traction or on antibiotics?”

  Another sob. “No.”

  “Then there’s probably nothing to worry about. I’ll FedEx him a get-well card and call him once he’s home. Okay?” He started to hang up, then said quickly, “What’s his doctor’s name? And what hospital?”

  She told him and he wrote it down. Timothy wasn’t a poor baby. He was sixteen, born the second year of his first senate term. Steven had been born a year earlier. Before that there had been miscarriages, one after another, year after year. Janet had wanted to quit trying, but By disliked failure. One of the two things he’d wanted out of marriage was a son. He’d sent Janet to clinics and paid for her doctors, by the dozen. She, of course, said it could be his fault, which was ridiculous, as it had proved to be in the end. He had succeeded, just as he always did. Two boys in a little over a year. An heir and a spare, wasn’t that what the nobility said?

  After Tim’s birth, Janet no longer had any excuse for her appearance, and he’d given her the ultimatum. Lose fifty pounds, change her hairstyle, take a course in public speaking, and learn how to dress. She’d gaped at him like a halfwit, thirty-three to his thirty-seven, and looking fifty. All she could do was whine about his using her as a brood mare, not caring anything about her as a person. He’d said fine, he didn’t care about her as a person, but he was willing to take care of the brood mare and the colts.

  He gave her very generous terms and no battle over custody. So long as the boys were children, let her deal with measles and chicken pox and ear infections and schoolwork. He intended to found a dynasty, but he’d do his part later on, when the time came for the right schools and meeting the right people. He wanted no gossip, no imputations of being unfair. Out and out feminists would never vote for him anyhow, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to lose the sympathy of conservative women by mistreating his ex-wife. A lot of them lived on alimony, too.

  Janet’s lawyer had suggested she take the offer and not make waves. By had given her no cause for a countersuit; except for that one semipublic embarrassment, he had been careful and extremely discreet. After the divorce, he’d stayed discreet, but when he began thinking about the presidency, his advisors said a Hispanic wife might draw the voters. He had just the girl in mind: Guadalupe Roybal, descendent of first settlers of New Mexico, someone to help him court the state’s La-Raza-proud Hispanics right along with its Anglo aristocracy. She had flawless light olive skin and a wealth of curly brown hair; she spoke fluent Southwest Spanish, and usually unaccented English.

  Moreover, she knew what was expected of her. Being married to Janet had taught him an invaluable lesson: finding a wife was just like filling any other staff position, it required a detailed job description. There would be no children. Since he was twenty-five years older than she, she balked at a tubal, but said she would “handle the matter herself.” Within her generous allowance she was to stay healthy, elegant and well dressed. She was to bone up on Hispanic issues, use the name Roybal-Morse, stay out of any situation that could look even faintly compromising, and stick with him at public functions, keeping him out of any hint of trouble with the female kind. It was all agreed to, written down, signed and witnessed.

  His part of the agreement committed him to treating her with unfailing courtesy and deference whenever they were in the public eye. He’d picked this up from a Southern senator so long in office he’d grown moss. “Whup ’em in the bedroom, By,” the white-haired old lecher had confided, “but treat ’em like queens where the world can see. They’ll forgive you the one out of gratitude for the other.”

  Also, for every year of service, Lupé got a generous payment deposited into an account in the Cayman Islands. If she lasted ten years, she’d have well over a million, but she had to stay until he said leave in order to collect. Which could be during or after his second term in the White House. Fulfillment of that ambition would begin when he utterly destroyed the incumbent as well as the reputations of the incumbent’s family, friends, and acquaintances! He smiled secretly to himself, relishing the battle plan.

  “Trouble, By?” Lupé said in the open doorway, two drinks in her hands. She held one of them out to him.

  He shook his head as he took it. “Tempest in a teakettle, like always. Any little thing, she comes unglued.”

  “Was Tim hurt?” Lupé liked Tim, despite his brave attempts to hate her on his mother’s behalf. Poor kid. He didn’t get much fun at home. Lupé believed in fun. When By was too busy to enjoy it, she had fun elsewhere, though carefully. There was always fun available.

  “Broken leg, not serious. Is there something in the gift closet?” Lupé kept gifts and cards on hand for all conceivable occasions. Whenever Byron needed to mark an occasion, she had something suitable. She made a virtue out of shopping.

  “Oh, lemme think. I bought two new computer games last week. He can have fun with those, sitting down. And a book on astronomy.”

  “Astronomy?”

  “He was reading articles on it, last time he was here. It’s written for nonscientists, but it isn’t childish.”

  “I’ll sign the book tonight. Send the stuff FedEx, okay?”

  “Sure thing. Tomorrow morning.”

  He grunted assent. “I expected a call.”

  “A man did call. ‘Mr. Jones.’ He said you wanted to see him this evening before dinner, and he’ll be here in half an hour. I told Cally to hold dinner until eight.”

  “Fine.” He gulped at the drink, feeling the taste all the way down.

  “Cally put some tapas out in the den, and unless you need something else, I’m going down to Edwina’s until about seven-thirty.”

  He nodded, not bothering to respond, merely registering that she was going down the stairs and out. He heard her car leaving the driveway. Just for the hell of it, he wandered back to her nido and picked up the daily diary by her phone. Tuesday, noon. Lunch with DeeDee McIntyre, shopping. Five pm—cocktails with Edwina Taylor-Lopez, re the Hispanic Caucus. Very nice. She was absent, her absence was documented, leaving her blameless. She knew Mr. Jones had called, and that’s all. When she returned home, her husband would be alone
. Their relationship depended, he thought, in large part on what he did not tell her. He would have been surprised to learn that Lupé thought it depended as much on the things she didn’t tell him.

  He heard the door chimes and Cally’s voice in the hall. When he arrived at the door of the den, the two of them were at the bar cabinet and ice was clinking into glasses while very expensive single malt was poured over them. They had ignored the good but much less pricey stuff Lupé had put at the front of the cabinet.

  “Senator,” said the larger man: “Dink” Dinklemier, all six foot five, two hundred thirty or forty odd pounds of him, ex-college football star, ex-mercenary, smarter than he looked and a current employee of the Select Committee on Intelligence that Morse chaired.

  “Good to see you, Byron,” murmured the other man, removing his coat and seating himself. He was Prentice Arthur, slightly graying, dignified as a deacon, ex-CIA, ex-security advisor, currently serving as the senator’s hook and line to certain unnamed fish in the Pentagon. With the money that flowed over there, there was habitat for lots of fish, everything from sharks to bottom feeders, each of them useful in his own way.

  “Dink. Arthur.” The senator seated himself, putting his half-finished drink on the table beside him. “I hope you’ve got some news for me.”

  “Well,” the larger man split a grin, one side of his mouth expressing amusement while the other half looked on, uninvolved, “I’ve got good news and other news.”

  Morse regarded him narrowly, disliking this jovial approach to what was very serious business. “Very well, let’s have the good news. They’ll support me?”

  “Some considerable support will come your way.” Dink sprawled into a chair, which creaked beneath his weight.

  Arthur murmured, “Quid pro quo, of course. I’ve got a list of suggested items here. They’d like you to sneak as many of these through as you can.” He took a sheet of plain paper from his billfold, unfolded it and passed it across the senator’s desk. No heading. No names. Just a list of clauses and short, innocuous-seeming paragraphs that might be added to various bills.

  The senator frowned. “It’ll have to be late-night votes for most of these, but I should be able to manage a good bit of it. Nice of them to put it all in proper form.”

  “Saves time, is all,” grunted Arthur. “Our friends seem to want things loosened up a little at the INS, the DEA, the ATF.”

  “That’s pretty much what I expected.”

  “They’ll be grateful,” said Dink.

  The large man had risen and was moving around nervously. The senator ignored it, recognizing the restlessness as habitual. He asked, “How grateful will they be, Dink?”

  Dink turned, grinning his half grin. “Oh, as much as you need, Senator. Like mega-millions. And then, as much more, if needed.”

  The senator licked his lips. “How do they get it to me?”

  Arthur gave him a stern look, wagging a finger in admonition. “Soft money, Senator. It goes around you. Some into Lupé’s overseas account. Some to your ex-wife. Some for this, some for that. It never touches you. Just like with the pro-life money. You vote your convictions about the gross immorality of the drug trade just like you vote your convictions about the gross immorality of abortion. Your good friends and supporters from south of the border don’t want to see the drug legalization balloon rise any higher than their ankles.”

  The senator sat down, relaxing. He hadn’t known he was tensed up until this minute. Now, everything was letting loose.

  He grinned. “Be sure to extend my good wishes.”

  Arthur smiled. “Oh, they know that, Senator. Our amigos know you wish nothing for them but good, all the way to the bank.”

  “And what’s the other news?”

  “Something General McVane picked up. It came over from the Air Defense Command. Just a weirdness, but in the light of your committee, we thought…”

  “Weirdness or not, what?”

  “Air Defense has picked up some oddities they can’t explain. Seemingly incoming somethings or other, not the profile one would expect from missiles, certainly no launch data, but things.”

  “Satellites,” said Morse, dismissively.

  “No. Not satellites. Not space junk. Not decayed orbits ending with stuff burning up. These are flights, they change course, they go from A to B to X.”

  “So? What do the eggheads say?”

  Arthur shrugged. “Something some other country came up with that we don’t know about. Something some branch of our own government came up with that we don’t know about. UFOs.”

  Morse glowered, staring at his clenched hands, thinking. “Where’s X?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The X they go to, end up at, where is it?”

  “No one place, Senator. East Coast. Florida. New Mexico–Texas area, Oregon.”

  “Is there any way we can find out more?”

  “Believe me, both the NASA guys and the Air Command are giving it their best shot. They’d vastly prefer not being asked about it until they can explain it.”

  Morse almost wished they hadn’t told him about it until they could explain it. He’d been helping cut allocations to NASA every chance he got, a calculated risk, and he didn’t like the idea that something inimical might show up, something that could have been prevented except for the cuts. “You sure McVane gave you everything he knew?”

  Dink frowned. “In this case, I think yes. He’s pretty firmly in our side pocket, Senator, and he’s safe. No political ambitions, just big military ones.”

  “Do we have people on the ground looking for…well, what? Space landings?”

  “The FBI’s been alerted. They haven’t come up with anything. Oh, a mass disappearance in Oregon, but that’s probably a kidnapping by eco-terrorists.”

  “Mass disappearance?”

  “Eleven men, loggers.”

  Dink offered, “It could be part of a general eco-terrorism campaign. Three guys in Florida were done in, too.”

  “Loggers?”

  “No. They were draining wetlands.”

  “Well, keep me informed,” the senator grunted, his euphoria only slightly dimmed by this niggle.

  “Anything else we can do for you?” asked Dink. Morse leaned back, tenting his fingers. “You could be helpful.”

  “Always glad to be of service.”

  “I’ve got a pro-life bill coming up. It could be delayed, but my best guess is two weeks from now. The usual people will be arguing, nobody will be listening, but I had this flash. I’ve been getting flak from some of the neanderthals. They’ve had too many of their sharpshooters and bombers arrested lately, and they’re scared to use force but hungry to go on the offense. It occurred to me some of my liberal opponents might be vulnerable on the issue if they’ve personally used abortion services.”

  Dink frowned. “I don’t understand? If they’ve used services?”

  “I’m thinking, maybe some of them have had someone close to them who had an abortion. I’m not going to take up floor time in the Senate with it, you make too many enemies that way. But, if I had something concrete, I could do a C-SPAN bit, challenging one or more of them. The tape would make good campaign stuff in a few soft areas. Would there be any way to get hold of those records?”

  Dink stared at the ceiling. “We’d need names.”

  “You know who they are, Dink. And we can go back over twenty years on some of them.”

  Arthur spoke up, “No, Senator. You misunderstand him. We’d need the names of the women.”

  Morse was taken aback. “I was thinking wives. Maybe daughters?”

  The two men shared a look, then Arthur shook his head. “It wouldn’t look good, Senator. Attacking a fellow legislator for a medical decision made in the family would not go down well. No matter how people say they feel about abortion when they answer a public poll, they want private stuff kept private. People don’t like interference with privacy issues. Remember that impeachment fiasco? All we di
d was make people mad at us. Remember what happened in 2000? The issue is loaded, By. I wouldn’t go there.”

  The senator’s lips curved in a tiny, icy smile. “Suppose you dig up some names for me, and I’ll decide what risks to take.”

  “We’ll look around,” said Arthur, after a pause and with a significant glance at his colleague. “We’ll see what we can find.”

  They talked about sports while they finished their drinks. The senator didn’t offer refills. He walked his two guests to the door, shutting it firmly behind them.

  As they walked to their car, Dink remarked, “He didn’t ask many questions about the blips.”

  “What could he ask? What do we know? There’s something flying around out there we don’t recognize, or it’s sunspots, or it’s interference, or it’s UFOs. The only reason we told him was to prevent his hearing about it from someone else.”

  “This clinic idea of his, I wish he’d keep his eye on the ball.”

  Arthur shrugged. “Give him credit, Dink. He knows money alone won’t elect him, and he knows where every voter in his state is and what turns them on. In this case, however, the down-side is bigger than the up-side, so we just have to manage him.”

  “Manage him how?”

  “Well, I’ll rattle the walls very gently to see if any worms crawl out of the woodwork. Then, if Morse reminds me about those names he wants, I’ll can tell him we’re working on it, but so far we haven’t come up with any names except Lupé’s.”

  Dink’s jaw dropped. “Do you know that?”

  “Let’s say I suspect it. I won’t say it unless I have to.”

  “God, Prentice!”