“This guy, the bursar? He says my brother-in-law showed up asking about how Rebecca’s fees are paid. Thing is, I don’t have a brother-in-law.”
“Did he give you a name?” He ignored a long, aggrieved sigh from Marcella.
“He didn’t remember, maybe he never gave him a name. A guy in his thirties, athletic, dark hair.”
“Zach Springer.”
“The guy you told me about, the one asking questions upstate about Williston?”
“Yes, him.”
“You want me to take care of this situation?”
“Not just yet.” First he needed to know what Springer had found out, whom he’d told, and what he planned to do. “Keep an eye on him. Let me know where he’s living, who he talks to.”
“No problem, but I gotta tell you, this guy makes me nervous. I could handle him nosing around Williston, but when my daughter’s involved…”
“He won’t be a problem. Now, did you send the package we discussed?”
“Yesterday morning.”
“Good. Keep me informed about the other matter.” He hung up. “Is there anything else?” he asked Marcella, to her visible consternation.
“Just remember, ours is a mutually beneficial relationship. You need me as much as I—or Harry—needs you.” She stood up. “I saw Caroline at a luncheon yesterday, a benefit for some sort of psychiatric charity.”
“You should have been in New Hampshire.”
“She really is a beautiful woman. I don’t understand why she works as hard as she does. No one does. Does she know what you’re up to?”
“That’s no concern of yours.”
“No, I suppose it isn’t. Still, I would think even a man like you would need someone to confide in, someone to share with.”
“Goodbye, Marcella.”
She considered him for a long, uncomfortable moment. “I pity you, Julian. To be so alone.”
After she left he entered his private gallery and closed the door behind him.
Chapter 29
Harry Lightstone was enjoying the morning working at his desk in the Russell Office Building. Since announcing for president three weeks earlier he’d been there only once. True, his staff—a secretary, a speechwriter, a press aide, and two interns—kept things going in his absence, sending him whatever reports and correspondence he needed to see. But he missed the place. His private office was crammed with a lifetime’s accumulation of books and photographs and framed commendations. It was messy and homey and haphazard, the antithesis of his homes in Georgetown, New York, and Pittsburgh, which Marcella had decorated (well, had paid someone else to decorate) with a studied elegance that always seemed impervious to human touch, his touch. In contrast, his office was an extension of him, a validation, in a way. The photo of him at eighteen shaking hands with a smiling, retired Dwight Eisenhower in Gettysburg. There he was with Daniel Patrick Moynihan—a Republican’s Democrat, he’d always thought—touring a Pittsburgh slum. Laughing it up on a fishing trip with Dick Russell himself, another Democrat who knew how to play well with others, the senator’s senator, as he was known. And a hundred more like them, tokens of a full, important life.
He liked his desk, a partner’s desk, it was called, with knee openings on both sides. What a perfect symbol for how he liked to operate—a fact that was noted in most of the longer profiles of him. He liked the carved wood mantel over the fireplace, the big, inevitably dirty windows facing Constitution Avenue. Once, Russell had been so crowded that the original suites had to be divided into tiny cubbyholes—he’d been a lowly congressman then, but had visited Russell many times. With the opening of a third Senate office building in 1982, many of the original suites had been recombined for the thirty-six senators assigned to Russell. The accommodations might be fresher in the other two buildings, but he liked the musty sense of history in Russell, and he never failed to get a kick out of riding the private underground subway that connected it to the Capitol, a kick far more bracing than the one he got riding in Marcella’s Gulfstream. He even relished the piles of papers and reports waiting for his attention, dealing with matters weighty and mundane. And the stacks of letters from constituents, mostly heaping praise on him but often enough lobbing complaints. People were paying attention, those missives told him. The work he did mattered.
He should never have entered the goddamn campaign. He was a shoo-in for reelection in two years, reelection to the world’s best job, as he’d always thought of it: United States senator. And not from just any state, but Pennsylvania—big, populous, historic, urban-and-rural, usually-but-not-always-Democratic Pennsylvania. Senior senator from Pennsylvania.
That fucking video. That devil Julian Mellow. Even Marcella came in for some vitriol, as he sat there in his office cocoon, silently brooding. Wife of the senior senator from Pennsylvania wasn’t good enough for her. Nothing was. Well, he was going to lose anyway, next week in New Hampshire would end it for all practical purposes, and then he’d be back home—well, back in Washington. He thought briefly, guiltily, of the seven million dollars in campaign funds he’d blown through, much of it raised in hundred-dollar increments over the internet. Who were these people? What could possibly have encouraged them to enter their credit card number and expiration date on Lightstoneforpresident.com? He’d staked out no original or compelling positions, had failed to rise to any oratorical heights that might have inspired such generosity. The fat cat donations he could understand: even if he lost in New Hampshire—when he lost in New Hampshire—he’d still be one of the most influential men in Washington. But these anonymous donors, thousands and thousands of them…who were they, what had they seen in him…what were they expecting? Could they all be abortion-hating zealots? Gay bashers? Was his campaign being underwritten on a tide of anger and hate? Did they see him as one of them? Because he wasn’t, really. He’d had to shimmy far to the right to be taken half seriously in New Hampshire, becoming a caricature of his old, more temperate self.
“Senator,” came a female intern’s high, nervous voice from the doorway to the outer chamber. She was young and pretty, Ivy League-brilliant and eager to please. He could have had a fling with her, have it videoed and distributed to the media, and still win reelection. An intern was acceptable every now and again in the new political climate. But that…person in San Francisco? “There’s something happening downstairs in the mailroom. The supervisor called and asked you to come down.”
He stood up and put on his jacket. He was the top-ranked Republican with an office in the Russell Building. Duty called. “Did he say what it was?”
“No, but he sounded upset. You want me to come?”
“That’s okay, wait here.” He registered her disappointment—interns rarely got to leave their desks except to fetch coffee—and headed off along the interminable second-floor corridor. He took the stairs to the basement, where a small crowd had already formed outside the entrance to the mailroom. It parted obligingly as he approached, but a man in a dark suit held up a hand to stop him from entering.
“Dick Shelton, FBI. I can’t let you in there, Senator Lightstone.”
“What’s happening?”
“At ten fifteen, give or take five minutes, a Senate postal worker doing a routine mail scan uncovered a suspicious package.”
“Bomb?”
“Anthrax.”
Harry shook his head. Five years ago, while serving on the Senate Armed Services Committee, he’d signed an appropriations bill that had authorized the installation of automated anthrax detection systems in all congressional office buildings. The system collected air surrounding mail-handling equipment and used polymerase chain reaction analysis to look for anthrax DNA, returning a result on sampled air in as little as thirty minutes. But the equipment was a bit too sensitive, generating innumerable false alarms, each one disrupting work at great cost.
“It’s the goddamn equipment,” he said. “We haven’t had one legitimate anthrax case since we installed it. Thank God for that,” he
added quickly.
“Can’t blame the equipment this time,” the agent said. “One of the mail handlers felt a powderlike substance inside an envelope, and there was some spillage on the outside.”
“Jesus, do you think it’s—”
“Unlikely, but we’re taking no chances. The handler is in quarantine, on his way to Bethesda Naval.”
“Well, it sounds like you have it under control. Do what you have to do.”
“Yes, sir. The press may be here later, and they may want a statement. That’s why we thought you should come down.”
“Press? This is what, the third incident in a year? We’ve never had press.”
“But this particular package is addressed to Stephen Delsiner. Marked confidential.”
Shit. The Rooney-Delsiner campaign would get miles of publicity out of this, and if it turned out to be an actual anthrax attack, they’d not only get the nomination by a landslide, they’d get Purple Hearts. Losing in New Hampshire was one thing, a humiliating loss quite another.
“Has Senator Delsiner been alerted?”
“He has, sir. He’s in New Hampshire.”
“Good. Call me the moment you have a read on the powder. And let me know if the press needs a statement.” The crowd parted again to let him pass. Upstairs, he entered his office suite through the public door, rather than the private door that opened directly from the corridor. That meant walking through a series of chambers occupied by his staff, which he liked to do every so often, stopping to talk business or inquire about a sick relative or recent vacation, just to keep morale up now that he was away so often. As he passed through his press aide’s office he saw Stephen Delsiner on the always-on television in the corner.
“What this shows,” Delsiner was saying, “is that we live in a dangerous world. We need to strengthen our defenses even in a time of peace…” He stood in front of a colonial-era house, no doubt somewhere in New Hampshire, enhancing his brand-new image as a fearless battler of tyranny.
“You know it’s baby powder,” his Senate press aide, Ramona Carson, said. She’d been largely marginalized since he’d announced for president, replaced by a media professional picked by Fred Moran. Soon enough she’d be back in charge. “I mean, he’s talking as if being senator is a daily act of courage.”
“Still, you can’t buy this kind of publicity,” he said and headed for his office. It would all be over in a week, he told himself. His new mantra…all over in a week.
FRIDAY, JANUARY 30
Chapter 30
Billy Sandifer waited across from the apartment building on West 82nd Street until a man he assumed to be Zach Springer emerged at ten fifteen. It had been a long and tedious morning, watching a parade of well-dressed men and women emerge from the unimpressive building. Fancy clothes, shabby building…Manhattan in a nutshell. The man he thought was Springer had a bicycle with him, a sleek model that looked like it weighed less than an empty briefcase, and he was decked out in a tight-fitting shirt and shorts, with clip-on bike shoes that Billy heard clicking on the sidewalk even from across the street. Good-looking guy, obviously fit, his hair a bit stragglier than his neighbors’. He didn’t appear to be a person who was looking forward to a little exercise, some fresh air. In fact, as he put on his helmet and fingerless gloves, he looked preoccupied, his mouth locked in a frown, his forehead creased—a fighter pilot suiting up for what he sensed would be a doomed mission. Well, it was a cold day, though mild for January. You had to be a little obsessed to be biking on a day like this.
Springer pedaled off to the west. Billy waited a few minutes, just in case, then walked across the street. He found Springer’s name on the buzzer panel, handwritten next another printed name, S. Pearlman. Roommate? Lover? Wife? He pressed the buzzer for 6D, waited, pressed it again, waited some more. No answer. He then pressed a few different buzzers until someone answered.
“Who is it?” came a woman’s voice through the small speaker in the buzzer panel.
“Con Ed, I need access to the basement.”
“I didn’t call Con Ed.”
“It’s a building-wide issue, m’am,” he said.
“See the super,” was the response. Then silence. He tried a few more apartments and had one hand in his jacket pocket, ready to take out his pick set, when someone buzzed him in without questioning.
He took the service stairs to the sixth floor to avoid running into anyone. Apartment 6D was protected, if that was the word, by a single tumbler lock. He removed a leather pouch from his jacket pocket and selected a medium-gauge pick and tension wrench. He’d had the set since he was a kid in Canarsie, a gift from an older friend who was heading off to prison on an assault charge. The passing of the torch. Before he’d come across the antiglobalization movement as a focus for his general restlessness and occasional rage, he’d been a bad kid, breaking into neighborhood apartments and stores. Thank God for global trade and child labor, he’d often thought. He and his pals used to break into the mansions of CEOs of global companies when no one was home and loot the places. They’d spray paint walls ($1/hour for children in Haiti…how do you sleep at night? was a favorite in master bedrooms), slash paintings, break china…occasionally take something back as a souvenir and reward. Stupid stuff that rarely made the papers but always made them feel good.
He first inserted the tension wrench, then slowly pushed the pick all the way into the cylinder until it hit the back, simultaneously twisting the wrench a bit to force the shaft against the pins, forming an edge for the pins to press against. Next he raised the pick to the top of the cylinder and dragged it to the first pin, twisting it side to side to lift the pin up and out of the cylinder, where it rested on the edge made by turning the cylinder with the tension wrench. A small but very satisfying vibration and an almost imperceptible click told him that the pin was released. He repeated the process, working quickly but deliberately, until all five pins had been raised, then turned the cylinder all the way around using the tension wrench and the pick. When the deadbolt gave way he felt the tiny click travel down his body in a shiver of satisfaction. He opened the door and entered the apartment.
• • •
Marcella Lightstone was outside a strip mall near Nashua, shaking hands with strangers, hands slippery with sweat and no doubt teeming with bacteria when a campaign aide tapped her on the shoulder. “You gotta see this, Mrs. Lightstone,” he said. “There’s a TV in the deli over there.”
She was grateful beyond measure for an excuse to take a break. While it was depressingly true that her appearances at strip malls and coffee shops and ghastly “warehouse” stores the size of stadiums hardly caused stampedes, they were exhausting and vaguely humiliating. How often could she drone the words “I hope you’ll come out for Harry next week” without feeling stupid? Her jaw muscles ached from smiling. And then there was the futility of the thing. Harry was still down ten points in the polls. Why bother?
She followed the young campaign aide, who looked like an idealistic volunteer but was in reality on the payroll, like most people connected to the campaign—Harry didn’t inspire volunteers, and wouldn’t unless he began to look like a winner. Inside the deli, a small group was staring up at a television mounted above the cash register, where Stephen Delsiner was addressing a gaggle of reporters in front of what looked like a school building.
“It is utterly ridiculous, outrageous, in fact, to suggest that I in any way asked for or requested or solicited that cocaine,” he was saying. In his open-collar white shirt, blue blazer, and pressed gray slacks, he looked as likely to use drugs as break into a freestyle rap. But the geniality that had made him one of the Senate’s most popular members and a hit with voters in New Hampshire had deserted him, she could see right away.
“Look, anyone can send illegal drugs to anyone, and that’s what happened here. Someone sent me a quantity of cocaine, knowing it would be picked up in the Russell post office because of its resemblance to anthrax. It was meant to embarrass me, perhaps t
o chase me out of this race. But I will not be scammed into withdrawing. My problems with drug abuse are well documented, as were my successful efforts, over a decade ago, to take them out of my life.”
Several reporters shouted out questions. One voice rose above the rest.
“Senator, has Gabe Rooney asked you to step down?”
“He has not.”
“Has he contacted you today?”
“We speak every day, several times a day, actually.”
“And did you discuss the cocaine?”
“In passing. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to spend some time with the good people of New Hampshire.” He walked off camera amid a pelting of questions.
“The Xavier School, where he’s appearing, is just a mile or so down the road,” someone in the deli said. “Maybe he’s on his way here for some munchies.”
“Cocaine doesn’t make you hungry,” someone else said. “It takes away your appetite.”
Marcella wondered if the cocaine delivery was what Julian Mellow had in mind when he told her to leave the drama to me. It seemed a rather feeble gesture, unlikely to do much, if any, damage.
“Do you think this will hurt him?” she asked the young campaign aide.
“Nah, looks like a hoax. I mean, who has coke sent to their office? With his approvals, he’ll probably come out of this looking like a victim, which could even help.”
Damn Julian Mellow. Did he really think it was so easy to sink a campaign? The cocaine package barely rose to the level of high school prank, hardly the sort of thing to change the course of an election. She needed this, all of this—the sweaty handshaking, the nervous speechmaking, the cheap charter flights, the jaw-numbing smiles for the ever-present cameras, most of all the disruption of what had been one of the great lives, her life—she needed this like a fucking hole in the head.
“Mrs. Lightstone?”
“What?”
Presidents' Day Page 14