A burst of adrenaline focused her eyes upon Shakespeare straddled atop her. His rubber-gloved hands over her mouth and forehead.
“Are you awake?” He slapped her face. “Cuz you gotta remember this. I’m askin’ if you’re Goddamn awake!” Another slap! She tried to answer. But there was his hand across her mouth and the weight of him on her chest. “I said wake the fuck up!” Shakespeare slapped her again. “Now, answer me! You blink twice if you hear what I’m sayin’!”
Connie blinked twice. An almost autonomic response. Her eyelids slamming down over her wide eyes to get the message back to him in the clearest, most succinct way.
“That’s right,” said the intruder. “See me as I am. I know I ain’t so handsome, but I’m twice the man. I promise.”
She realized that the covers were off the bed. Had he done it or had she kicked them off while she was sleeping? The T-shirt she wore was pulled up well above her waist, and the intruder was already forcing her legs apart. Instinctively she bucked against him, using her legs to try to kick him off of her. Then crack! Shakespeare quickly hammered an overhand blow across Connie’s left ear. It shook her like a loud gunshot. In her entire life, she’d never been struck. It so disturbed her synapses, she was instantly distracted and lying limp from the shock and the pain.
“I’m gonna be raped?”
The deadly obvious spilled from her mouth in a sad commentary that sounded strangely out-of-body. Even to Connie.
Shakespeare stuck his teeth to hers and hissed a response. “Missus. Ain’t no such thing as rape between a man and woman. But if that’s what you want…”
With a powerful twist of her leg, he snapped her to her belly and crawled over her back. Those large teeth suddenly at her left ear. “Rape? Now, that always comes from behind. With your eyes closed and a ten count in your head just hopin’ the nigger fuck that’s givin’ it don’t hold back and make it too slow and painful.”
“Please, no,” she pleaded, her eyes squeezed shut and bleeding tears.
“You want rape? This is rape!”
“No,” squeaked Connie.
Shakespeare rolled her back over, shoving her legs apart and thrusting himself deep without getting so much as a quiver of defense. Remarkably, she lay motionless as he ground away inside her, a twisted smile affixed on his surgically repaired face. And no matter what the intruder called it—rape or not—it was an unspeakable violation. Degrading and without consent. All Connie hoped was that it would soon end. She looked to the right. The phone was there and certainly within reach. She thought of dialing 911, wondering if the operator could hear a rape in progress. But how many sick couples dialed and screwed out of their own twisted exhibitionism while the emergency operators listened vacantly with a voyeur’s ear?
“You know, it costs more to send a man to prison than it does to get a law degree at Stanford,” he said.
She hadn’t noticed that it had ended. Didn’t feel the little man ejaculate or remove himself. He was back astride her.
“Betcha didn’t know that,” he offered.
Her voice was barely audible. “Know what?”
“That I was the best fuck you’d ever have,” barked Shakespeare. “And that’s just what you’re gonna tell him.”
“Are you gonna kill me?” wheezed Connie.
“No. But you tell the police before you tell your husband, I swear I’ll kill him.” He brought those teeth close again. So close she could smell his foulness. “Unless you want me to kill him. Is that what the missus wants?”
“No!” she cried. He’d just raped her, and only now did she find herself begging. But not for herself. For Mitch. “Don’t hurt him, please.”
“Looks to me like he’s done some hurtin’ to you.”
“I’ll do what you say. I’ll tell him first.”
“Tell him what?”
“That you were the best.”
“The best what?”
“The best fuck I ever had.”
“Smart girl. Now, lookee over here.” From atop Mitchell’s nightstand, he picked up one of those blue capsules with his rubber-gloved fingers. He held it over her mouth just as he had for Gina. “Now, you swallow this and say good night to your handsome sugar man.”
“What is it?” she asked without thinking, same as Gina.
“You women are all alike.” And with that, Shakespeare forced her mouth open and dropped the capsule, holding her jaw shut until he was certain she’d swallowed the pill. “Now I’ll just lie down here with you until you go nighty-night.”
And lie with her, he did. Right alongside as if he were Mitch holding her tight. All Connie could do was stare at the ceiling and pray. Pray for survival. Pray that Mitch was safe, wherever he was. And pray the blue capsule she’d swallowed wasn’t a lie. It could have been poison. Some kind of death pill. Darkness would soon come. She wouldn’t know the truth until she woke.
Stranger still. As the certain sleep was taking hold, for one nightmarish moment she imagined it was Mitch lying next to her. He was holding her close, whispering nursery rhymes to her with his own silly words added just to make her giggle. Private time. In that momentary flash of time, it might’ ve been Mitch next to her in the August moonlight. Much like that rarest of nights, only a week earlier, when husband and wife lay, postcoital, back to front. When silently, before falling asleep, she’d whispered another prayer and asked Christ for a miracle. Asked him for what she’d been told was practically impossible. A child of her own.
Mitch woke up alone sometime after seven. Rene was nowhere within earshot. She probably went back to her room to change, he thought. He swung his legs over the bed and ran a hand through his hair. It smelled of Rene. Then before he could summon a guilty thought, he noted the flashing message light on the telephone. He picked up, followed the instructions for message retrieval, and silently hoped to hear his wife’s voice at the other end. Maybe she’d called Fitz after all. She wanted to apologize.
The voice mail recording spoke. “Room 1254, you have one message. To play, press the star key. To return to menu, press pound.”
Mitch pressed the star button. The message was cued and played back in the unique voice that was Shakespeare McCann’s. “Hickory dickory dock. Your wife has joined my flock. She’ll vote for Shakespeare. And come this time next year. I’ll be punching the congressional clock.”
The twisted motherfucker! How did he know where to…And what was that about my wife?!
He fumbled and forgot the menu instructions on the voice mail. He wanted to play it again. The voice was saying, “You have no more messages.”
Three. He pressed three, certain it was for playback. Instead the recorded voice answered, “You have erased your message. Thank you.”
He slammed the phone down in frustration. Picked up and dialed Rene. What the fuck is her room number—919? He dialed, woke up some poor, hungover hotel guest, apologized, and then called the front desk. “Yes. I need to dial the room of Rene Craven…Okay. Thank you.”
The line paused and he thought he’d been cut off. He was about to hang up when the phone started ringing. Rene answered on the second chime. “Hello?”
“Get up here right now!”
Mitch depressed the switch. He dialed nine, then one, followed by his area code and home phone number. There was another long pause as the hotel computer registered the room charge. Then he could hear the phone ringing on the other end.
Pick up, Connie. Please pick up the phone.
Just like the night before, the line rang endlessly. No machine. No answer. Nothing. He stopped counting rings, because the next thing he recalled was the knocking at the door. He hung up, threw on his trousers, and headed for the door. Rene was there in the same dress she’d worn the night before.
“We’re going back to Cathedral.”
“Excuse me?”
“Something’s wrong.”
She followed him back into the suite, careful to close the door behind her. “What?”
&n
bsp; “Cancel everything. Then get us the next flight home.”
“We can’t cancel everything.”
Mitch vanished back into the bedroom. Something in Rene told her not to follow or panic. Just do as instructed. She dutifully went back to her room and her PowerBook to arrange the return trip to Cathedral and deal with the problem.
Whatever it was.
Murray Levy lived on Sheffield Avenue, Cathedral’s former red-light district turned bohemian enclave. The street and surroundings offered mostly coffeehouses and beat bars, inhabited by a gay population and perpetual hipsters who thought it was cool to “hang homo.” Recently the Sheffield Renters and Property Association had voted to close the avenue to weekend traffic and install wrought iron on every corner to give it a New Orleans look. Suffice it to say, rent prices on Sheffield were going north.
When the phone rang in Murray’s apartment before 7:00 A.M., he crawled over and lifted the handset from the cradle. And though his voice cracked from an evening of breathing secondhand smoke, he answered like a true political diehard who was all too used to Fitz waking him at all hours for various and sundry tasks. “Murray here.”
“It’s Mitch,” said the voice at the other end. “I want you to go over to my house and check on my wife. Don’t ask why. Don’t talk to anybody else. Just go. Now.”
“Mitch. It’s six-thirty—”
“You haven’t earned back my patience, Murray. Now, repeat what I told you.”
“Go to your house. Check on your wife.”
“If she’s okay, tell her you were delivering overnight numbers. So take an envelope.”
“And if she’s not? I mean, I guess that’s why you’re calling for—”
“If there’s no answer, call the police and break down the fuckin’ door! You got me?”
“Got it.” Murray was sitting up by now. Ron was awake and stroking his back, but he shrugged it off as he hung up. “Gotta go.” He was out of bed and throwing on last night’s clothes.
“Don’t tell me,” groaned Ron. “Another of Fitzwater’s milk runs?”
“It’s not Fitzwater. It’s just Fitz. Plain fucking Fitz. Anyway, this is something for Mitch.”
“I thought he was in Washington.”
“He is. Don’t ask me any more questions.”
“Oh, I get it. Campaign secrets. You give your skinny little body to me, but your heart belongs to Mitch Dutton.”
“You don’t understand. I thought I was out. Now he needs me to go to his house and do him this favor.”
“The only thing out about you is your shirttail.” Ron helped Murray tuck his shirt into his pants, then gave him a slap on the butt as if he were being sent in for the big play. “I’m sleeping in. So don’t come back before noon.”
“Fine. Lock up, will ya?” He was out the door.
“Without a kiss?” called Ron after him.
“Feed my cat!” Murray shouted back. Ron could hear his footsteps recede down the stairwell. After that, he had everything down pat. Ten seconds to get to the car. Five seconds later Ron would hear the Honda’s engine turn over. A count of two followed by six seconds of whining reverse as Murray backed out of his parking space. Finally, first gear and the Honda would wind its way out onto Sheffield Avenue.
Then it would be safe.
Ron reached across the bed and picked up the phone and dialed a number, long tattooed in his head. It rang five times before an answer. “It’s me. Dutton just called and asked for some big favor. Murray had to go to Dutton’s house for something. He didn’t say what for.”
The voice didn’t respond immediately. And then simply said, “Thanks. Check’s in the mail.”
By the time Mitch and Rene reached Dulles Airport, it was nine forty-five in the morning. The flight was at tentwenty sharp. With no bags to check, they retired to the American Airlines Admirals’ Club where they’d have fifteen minutes with the national party’s Brad Pustin and Kevin Cronyn.
Rene’d warned him in the cab. “Don’t kill me over this, okay?”
“I’m not exactly in the right frame of mind,” Mitch complained. He felt as if he’d been jumped from behind.
“Fifteen minutes. Smile and listen. These two think they’re God’s gift to first-time candidates.”
“And if I say no?”
If you say no, I swear, I’ll tell your wife about last night.
“Just don’t,” she pleaded. Then she braved the big question. “Is this about last night?”
“No,” he said, lying only in part.
“Because if it is, we can just forget it ever happened.”
“Just like that.”
“I’ve been here before. I can just walk away. Can you?”
“You’re amazing,” he remarked. And it wasn’t a compliment. “You think this is about you, don’t you?”
“Okay. So it’s not.” The neurotic in her had escaped. She screwed the lid back on. “It’s about your wife, isn’t it?”
“Let’s stop right here, okay? We’re out of my com fort zone.”
“Okay, then.” Rene took a deep breath. “And the meeting?”
Mitch didn’t have a ready answer. So he let her stew.
Brad Pustin and Kevin Cronyn were waiting for them inside the Admirals’ Club lounge. And though she hadn’t lied when she’d told Mitch they’d gone so far out of their way because they were so excited to meet him, she hadn’t said what else she’d promised to make the meeting happen.
Promises, promises…
One of the many currencies of national politics. What followed was the casual arm-twisting, followed by a million machinations of salutations, assertions, and character assassinations if a promise to an insider or party leader was not met. Mitch knew little of this, temporarily seeking shelter in the ignorance of the idealist. He promised nothing he couldn’t deliver. But Rene. She’d promised she could deliver Mitch Dutton to D.C.
“Charm them,” she’d pleaded.
And charm, he did. He talked them out of nearly five hundred thousand dollars in National Committee investment in exchange for a double-barreled caveat. Brad Pustin was first, leaning in over the small cocktail table covered with coffee cups and stale pastries.
“Word is, Mitch, that you don’t like to play dirty,” said Pustin. “Afraid to get a little mud on your suit. Is that right?”
“We had a bad week,” said Mitch. “But so did Bob Leuchesi.”
“Ooh. He got us with that one,” said Kevin Cronyn, his ruddy complexion hiding his Irish from no one.
Mitch had been following the news. Bob Leuchesi, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, had just been indicted in New Jersey on extortion charges. The rumor was that he would resign before the weekend.
“Don’t look so happy, Brad,” goosed Mitch. “Or should we be calling you Mr. Chairman?”
“If nominated, I will not run,” joked the finance director. “And if elected, well, I’ll think about it.”
Everybody laughed. And Mitch continued, “Let me answer your question with a question. I wonder if a campaign negative isn’t unlike when a marriage turns bad. Can you ever get back to where you started? Can trust be salvaged? Can love ever prevail?”
Rene started hacking with a bite of muffin caught in her throat. Where in God’s name was he going with this?
“You okay?” asked Kevin, offering her his glass of water.
“Fine. I’m fine. Sorry,” she said, glaring at Mitch the whole time.
He ignored her. “What I’m asking is if the relationship between a candidate and the voter isn’t like a marriage. There’s a public trust about which I’m concerned,” he said. “I’ve been public about taking the high road.”
“Nothing wrong with the high road,” said Brad. “And I’m likely to agree. But as far as we can tell, nobody knows squat about this guy McCann. Who he is, what he’s capable of, et cetera. But the kinda crap he’s pulled on you so far is making you look bad.”
Kevin took over with a more la
id-back approach. “The money we’re giving you serves two masters. Master number one wants to make you a member of the House. Master number two wants to crush the opposition. Do you know what the word campaign means?”
“I believe it’s defined as war.”
“Exactly,” said Kevin.
“All’s fair in love and war,” blitzed Brad, his toothy, frat boy grin cracking at the corners.
“So I’ve heard.” Mitch smiled. “And close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”
“That’s a good one. Can I steal that?” asked Kevin. “I got a candidate in Maryland who could use it.”
“Be my guest.” He didn’t tell him the quote belonged to the deceased Hurricane Hammond. “Gentlemen. I have every intention of kicking my opponent’s ass all the way back to South County. Your money’s on the right horse.”
“It better be.” Brad returned in the guise of the bad cop. “We’ve got plans for you here. It’s all in motion, if you get my meaning. And with only ten weeks left in the race, voters could give a good Goddamn about what Mitch Dutton has to say. At this point, all they care about is who hits the hardest.” He snubbed out his cigarette for punctuation. “Do us all a favor and bury him, Mitch.”
A pretty Admirals’ Club attendant appeared. “There’s a telephone call for you, Mr. Dutton.” Mitch was out of his chair in a shot, leaving the rest of the gang in Brad Pustin’s lingering cigarette smoke.
Rene assured the two men, “He’s in. He’ll do what it takes. I can promise that”
“Woulda been good to hear it from him,” said Brad.
“We did.” Kevin smiled. He patted Rene on her thigh. “We most certainly did.”
Murray was calling from a campaign cell phone while parked out in front of Mitchell’s house.
“Is she okay?”
“I didn’t see her. I talked to Gina.”
“Gina Sweet.”
“Yeah. The girl from primary night.”
“So what’d she say?”
“Well, I must’ve rung the bell and knocked on the door for ten minutes before anybody answered. Then Gina answers. She looked real hungover and really pissed. But that’s just my opinion.”
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