by D. W. Buffa
“That means you get to go home every night and hope that when you wake up the first news you’ll have is that the president is dead. I should warn you, however, that with none of the careless habits of your reckless husband, I won’t be an easy victim should someone decide they can’t wait for the accidents of mortality. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to study the speech I’m scheduled to give this evening when I introduce you as the next vice president and tell how we propose to build on the foundation of our beloved predecessor.”
The president had his speech, and so did she. In front of a vast audience in the Kennedy Center she struck just the right chord: somber, serious, and, despite the tragedy of her husband’s death, still hopeful that the country could move forward, building on what Robert Constable had done. There was a moment when it all seemed too much for her. She had just finished telling them, all these people who had supported her husband in the past, how the night at the last convention, when Irwin Russell’s name had been placed in nomination for vice president, he had said to her that Russell was the one man who could take over and continue his legacy if anything ever happened to him. There was a catch in her voice; her lips trembled, a tear came to her eye. The audience rose as one and began to applaud, a long, somber tribute to the memory of her husband and to what she had been forced to endure. She flashed a brave smile and managed somehow to go on. Whatever else anyone might remember about those two speeches, they would remember that. Hillary was sure of it.
She knew then that what she had said earlier in the Oval Office was true: that Irwin Russell would have had no chance had she chosen to run against him, that the nomination, and the election, would have been hers for the asking. If it had not been for that damnable secret she would have been here tonight launching her campaign for the presidency instead of being forced into the second place part that, except for the title, she had been playing for the last seven years. Everyone was there to see her, not the accidental president no one had seriously thought would ever hold the office. They lined up, nearly all of them, almost three thousand men and women, waiting to tell her how much they loved her and how much they admired her courage.
She began to realize that it was not too late. She could become vice president, wait a few months, and then break with Russell over some made-up issue, announce that she did not have any choice, that she had promised her dead husband to complete his unfinished agenda, but that the president wanted to take the country in a different direction, one she could not in conscience follow. The country would have to decide. She would run for the presidency herself.
Why had not she thought of it before? Russell could not threaten her with exposure, not after he had vouched for her honesty and integrity by choosing her to become his own vice president. Some of his people might start rumors, but that was a game two could play.
Careful to maintain an air of reserve, she kept shaking hands, thanking each one for the kind and thoughtful things they had to say, promising to do everything in her power not to let them down. The line passed from her to the president, but she knew they had all come to see her, and he knew it, too. She could see it in his eyes, this sense that he was an afterthought, a necessary obligation, a price the crowd was willing to pay for the chance to first have a few moments with her.
“They all love you, Hillary,” said the president when it was finally over and they stood outside.
“They loved Robert,” she replied.
Russell’s smile suggested that they both knew the truth, knew that the crowd had loved Robert Constable only because they had not really known him. It also suggested something deeper, something that Hillary understood immediately: the crowd loved her for the same reason.
“I better go,” she remarked coldly. “I have a very long day tomorrow.”
“I’m sure they’ll all be busy now,” said the president as he turned and got into the limousine.
She watched the motorcade speed away and then, full of thoughts of her future, stepped into her own waiting car, and headed home. It was ten minutes past eleven. Her mood began to darken as she remembered the call she had to take in twenty minutes. Why was Jean Valette calling her, and why now, the night before the last piece would be in place for what she had been waiting for all her life?
Maybe it was nothing. Perhaps he just wanted to offer his own congratulations. Probably he wanted to remind her that he had always been their friend, her and Robert’s, and that he hoped he could in some manner be helpful in the future. That was it. Everyone wanted to remind you of their friendship once you had a position in which you could do something for them. Perhaps she ought to tell him that it might be best if they put things on hold for a while, that things were a little too delicate to do anything that might cause someone to start looking at what their relationship had been like before. Jean Valette would understand. He was too intelligent not to realize the consequences of making a mistake at this point.
The house was cloaked in darkness. Two Secret Service agents escorted Hillary inside while several others took up their positions on the grounds. Though she was not yet vice president, as the former first lady, and the widow of a slain president, she had never stopped being under their protection. Leaving the two agents downstairs, she went up to the privacy of the second floor. She did not like coming back to an empty house. She was used to having people around, people who worked for her and shared her ambitions, people who were always full of ideas, eager, all of them, to be the first with the latest rumors or the latest news. She needed that, the constant noise, the constant attention, the sense of being in the center of things, but tonight she was all alone. Everyone who worked for her had been at the Kennedy Center, listening to her speech.
The study was pitch-black. She turned on the desk lamp and sat down. It was almost eleven-thirty; the call would come any minute. She glanced at the photographs that covered the desk, a chronicle of what now seemed ancient history, the times beyond remembering when she had last had the chance for what might have been a normal life. She wondered why she still kept them. She supposed it was to remind her of the price she had paid, and how that price had been so much greater than what she had originally imagined. She remembered what it had been like, when she was young and attractive and every man she met eager to have her, and how she had known even then that any one of them would be a better husband than Robert Constable. Knowing it, she had done it anyway, because Robert Constable was going to be president, and no one was going to be able to stop him. It seemed odd now, looking back, that she had never once doubted that extraordinary, improbable fact. She had known he was going to be president, and she had known that there was every chance he would make her life a living hell. She had hoped she might be wrong about that.
The clock struck eleven-thirty. She moistened her lips and began to rehearse in her mind what she was going to say. It was so quiet she could hear her own breath. A minute passed, and then another. She tapped her fingers softly on the desk’s leather top. Five minutes passed, then ten.
“Damn,” she muttered in frustration. “Five more minutes, that’s all I’m giving him.”
Suddenly, she felt a strange sensation, one she could not account for, a kind of warning, a premonition, that something was different, not quite right.
“I’m afraid Jean Valette won’t be calling tonight. I’ve come instead.”
She jumped to her feet, pointing into the darkness at the other side of the room, where from the chair in which he had been sitting Bobby Hart rose to greet her.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hillary Constable stared at Bobby Hart in wild-eyed disbelief.
“Where did you come from you? How did you get here?”
“What’s the matter, Hillary? I thought you would be glad to see me. Didn’t I do everything you asked, try to find out who killed your husband before—what was it? Yes, I remember: before all the rumors started and the country tore itself apart? Didn’t I find out everything you wanted to know about how much of Robert Consta
ble’s involvement with The Four Sisters could be traced back to you?”
In the dim light of the desk lamp each movement cast a shadow on the wall, creating the illusion that they were on a stage playing to an audience they could not see.
“When I asked you to do that, I didn’t know you were the one who had had him killed!”
Hart had been sitting in that darkened room for a long time, waiting for her to come in, waiting to confront her with what he knew. He had been thinking about what he was going to say to her, what she was going to say to him, from the moment he had gotten on the private plane from France. He thought he was ready for anything, but when he heard this he could barely restrain himself.
“I was the one who had him killed! You miserable…. Who the hell do you think you are? Your husband was a liar and a cheat, and the biggest thief who ever held the office, but you—you’re worse. I know all about you; I know all about you both. The Four Sisters didn’t come to your husband, he went to them. He started it, he demanded money, tens of millions, and you knew all about it, didn’t you? You knew what would happen if someone got hold of that story; you knew what would happen if he talked to Quentin Burdick. That’s why you did it—why you had your husband killed—to protect yourself!”
“That’s a damn lie!” she screamed back. “I’m going to put an end to this right now.” She picked up the phone, but Hart caught her by the wrist and forced the receiver back.
“You’re not going to do anything.”
“And just how are you going to stop me?”
“With this, if I have to.”
He pulled his jacket to the side, revealing a pistol tucked into his belt. He saw the smirk start onto her lips, the arrogant dismissal of what, despite the gun, she thought an empty threat.
“You think I won’t—after what you’ve done to me? You think I don’t know how? I remembered well enough when I had to shoot the son-of-a-bitch who murdered Austin Pearce. Trust me, I’ll use it if I have to.”
The smirk vanished, replaced with uncertainty if not yet fear.
“Why are you here? What do you want? What do you hope to prove? Everyone knows what happened, why you had Robert killed. You think that because you somehow got back into the country, all you have to do is hold a press conference and announce that you’re innocent?”
“You’ve already done that for me today, in the Rose Garden, you and Russell, when you denied knowing anything about The Four Sisters. Weren’t you a little worried when you did that? Didn’t you wonder how much Philip Carlyle really knew?”
“You weren’t there. How do you know the name of the reporter?”
Hart smiled at her in a way that made her mouth go dry.
“We were for a while both guests at the home of Jean Valette.”
Darkness swept across her eyes and for a moment she thought she was about to faint. She took a deep breath and dropped into the chair.
“At the home of Jean Valette,” she repeated in a lifeless monotone. “I didn’t… What you said I did—I didn’t have anything to do with Robert’s murder. I really thought—when I saw the evidence, the records of payment—I thought what they said about you was true. But, Jean Valette—why would you, why would that reporter…?”
Hart had seen too many of the different faces of Hillary Constable, too many masks put on for effect, to believe any of them authentic, especially one as convenient as this, the practiced look of a woman misunderstood.
“You really believed, when you saw the evidence…? Of course you did. There were only two people who had something to gain by the president’s death: Irwin Russell and you. The Four Sisters story would have forced the president to resign. And you—what chance would you have had to run for anything after a scandal like that? But instead, Robert Constable dies, Russell becomes president, and you become—what?—president-in-waiting? You told me you were going to run against Russell. Why didn’t you? Nothing could stop you. That’s what you said. But there was something, wasn’t there? Russell knew about The Four Sisters, because he had done the same thing as Frank Morris. Except that Russell didn’t have a conscience, he wasn’t any danger to the great Robert Constable. Unlike Frank Morris, he didn’t have to be killed.”
“You’re guessing. You could never prove anything like that.”
“You didn’t have your husband killed?”
“No, I swear. I—”
“Then Russell did.”
“I can’t believe that he would—”
“More likely, you were both in it together. Atwood arranged everything, didn’t he? And, as you told me yourself, Atwood always did what you asked him to do. He tried to frame me for it. He tried to have me killed. He had Austin Pearce murdered. Which one of you asked him to do that?”
She did not answer, and Hart became more agitated and impatient. His eyes were cold, determined, and lethal.
“When did you decide to do this? When did you decide to set me up?”
“I didn’t!” she protested.
His hand moved toward the gun.
“All right, it’s true: I wanted you to find out how much of what Robert had done with The Four Sisters could be traced back, how much I might have to explain. And there is something else. I was afraid. I thought Robert was killed to stop him from talking to Burdick. I thought someone connected with The Four Sisters must have done it.” With a plaintive glance she asked, “Isn’t that what you thought: that The Four Sisters was behind everything?”
“It’s what you wanted me to believe, part of the way you used me. And it almost worked. I was going to kill Jean Valette if I had to. But you made a mistake when you had Atwood try to implicate me. Atwood works for you.”
“Atwood works for Russell!” she shot back. “Russell is now the president, or have you forgotten that little fact?”
“He won’t be for too much longer,” said Hart, subjecting her to a scrutiny so close she felt a shudder run up her spine. “And you won’t be taking his place.”
“Why do you say that? What is it you think you know?”
He just looked at her, a grim smile on his face.
“You were staying at Jean Valette’s?” she asked, trying to draw him out. “When everyone was looking for you, when you were supposedly on the run somewhere in Paris, that’s where you were, at the chateau?”
“He said you both had visited. Yes, I was there for a while, and so was the chief of detectives of the Surete. We were joined by that New York reporter, Philip Carlyle, and things got quite interesting. You should have been there. I would have liked to have seen your reaction when Jean Valette began to tell him about how the president of the United States extorted tens of millions of dollars from companies he owned, and how both you and Irwin Russell knew all about it. But that was just the beginning. Before Carlyle left, Jean Valette gave him all the documentation needed to prove every charge: bank records, wire transfers, numbered accounts—every penny The Four Sisters was forced to give you and your husband. That’s why Carlyle asked you what he did this afternoon: so that when his story runs on the front page of this morning’s paper he can print your categorical denial, or rather, given all the evidence he has, your categorical lie! You’re not going to be confirmed as vice president and you’re not going to run for president. You’re going to be indicted as a co-conspirator for fraud and, unless I miss my guess, for murder.”
There was a sharp knock on the door.
“Are you all right, Mrs. Constable?” asked a Secret Service agent. “We thought we heard voices.”
Hart warned her with his eyes. She went to the door and opened it just a crack.
“No, I’m fine. I had the radio on.”
She turned around, but Hart was gone. Breathing hard, she braced herself against the desk. Then she picked up the telephone and called the White House.
“I need to speak to the president!”
The voice at the other end told her that the president had retired for the night and left instructions not to be disturbed. Sh
e slammed her hand hard on the desk and shouted:
“I don’t care about his instructions! Wake him up, goddamn it! Tell him it’s urgent!”
While Hillary Constable waited impatiently for Irwin Russell to come to the phone, Bobby Hart made his way through the shadows of the leafy back yard and out to the end of the street where Charlie Finnegan was waiting in his car.
“What did she say?” asked Finnegan as they drove down the block.
“Just what you’d expect: that she didn’t do it, that she thought I did, that she had thought at first that The Four Sisters was behind it. She did admit that she knew something about what Constable had been doing and that she was worried about how much she might have to explain. That’s why she asked me to look into it. What she can’t explain is Atwood. She tried to blame it on Russell, said Atwood works for him.”
Folding his arms, Hart leaned against the passenger side door and shook his head, discouraged, as it seemed, by what had happened.
“I’m such a fool sometimes. I thought that the shock of seeing me would be enough, that she’d just confess, that she’d tell me everything. She’s probably never told the truth about anything in her life, and I thought she’d tell the truth to me!”
“You didn’t really think that,” protested Finnegan with a cynical laugh. “You might have hoped she would, but you knew better than that. If she went to trial and got convicted, she’d insist with her dying breath that she was innocent. Her life means nothing if she ever admitted to what they really were. And as long as she doesn’t admit it, or even if she admits some of it and explains the rest away, there will always be people who believe in her, who believe in them. So long as there is a mystery about who really had her husband killed, she’ll always be remembered, she’ll always be important. Isn’t that the reason everyone wants to become famous, so they’ll never be forgotten?”
Hart was not listening. He was too caught up in what he knew he had to do.
“She did it, she and Russell both. I’m certain of it. The only problem is I can’t prove it.”