by Ridge King
He knew he’d have to meet with St. Clair and his people. Norwalk made it plain that he wanted St. Clair to know that the White House was not going to sit idly by and let Thurston win the fight. And yet Norwalk also made it more than clear to Slanetti that he wanted as few people as possible to know about a concerted effort originating from the White House to influence members. Slanetti knew he couldn’t see each member on his final target list himself. Word would get around and the whole operation would blow. And then he would have failed President Norwalk, something he refused to let happen. He’d never failed the President. Norwalk was heavily invested in the project, dependent on its success as he never seemed to be dependent on anything before, Slanetti thought, and when Norwalk told him that his efforts would be in the vital national interest, Slanetti was determined to succeed at all costs.
His target list was final except for any surprises that might come out of the two party caucuses the next day. He relied completely on the accuracy of his files to minimize such surprises. He didn’t expect more than one or two changes. He could begin moving any time he chose.
At that moment his buzzer sounded. His secretary wanted to confirm two appointments for later that day with two Secret Service agents who wanted to see him. Norwalk gave him full use of the Executive Branch to help carry out his secret objective and agents were made available to do the legwork.
He put tails on all freshmen representatives the moment they arrived in Washington. That afternoon he’d get reports on the movements of three new congressmen: Carberry, Brown, and Hawkins. He already knew from earlier reports that he only needed one agent to cover the first two because Mayor Edward Healy never let them out of his sight. Still, if they took a piss, he’d know about it. Hawkins made little movement of any kind except back and forth between his new office and the Washington Hilton. He dispatched agents to Jackson and Cheyenne to do some digging into Hawkins’s past. They would work through the FBI out of Cheyenne. Agents were also sent to Carberry’s and Brown’s hometowns to check on their records secretly.
He was still unsure what to tell St. Clair when he met him. Running his hand through the neatly trimmed hair on the right side of his head, he considered the problem at some length before touching a button on his intercom.
“Yes, sir?”
“Call Governor St. Clair’s hotel, get him on the phone.”
“Yes, sir.”
He wished he could do it over the phone, but it was inappropriate. He’d made a list of the final results of the voting by states as he thought the Democrats would work it out. According to that list, the Republicans really had an uphill fight, mainly because of the several tied state delegations. He didn’t think the Democrats would think the Republicans could break them. That list, which included the states he thought the Democrats would think they could count on, gave them twenty-six states and the Republicans only sixteen or seventeen. Slanetti didn’t think the Democrats would figure they had too much to do other than retain the states they already had. He knew St. Clair would be worried. The intercom buzzed.
“Yes?”
“Governor St. Clair, sir, line one.”
“Right,” said Slanetti, beginning a smile to get in the mood to speak to the man, a smile he had learned and refined when he was a lawyer in a New York law firm prior to joining Justice early in Norwalk’s administration.
“Hello, Governor? This is Philip Slanetti at the White House.”
“Hello, Phil, I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to meet.”
“So am I, Governor, but we will. How about tonight at your hotel?”
“That’s fine, Phil. I hope you have something we can use.”
“I know what it must look like to you and your people, sir, but let me assure you that we’re not in that bad a situation. The nature of my conversation with you, Governor, will be such that I can only permit you to include one other person when I see you.”
“Why only one? I was planning a full staff meeting. How will my people be able to help if they don’t know what we’re doing?”
Slanetti paused and thought quickly, trying to think how best to tell him that his people wouldn’t be doing anything.
“I can understand the way you feel, sir, but when I explain how the President wants to work this, I believe you’ll understand. Let’s say seven, if that fits in your schedule.”
“Anytime’s all right with me, Phil. I need your help badly.”
“Thank you, Governor. At seven, then.”
“Seven. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Governor.”
Slanetti returned to his list to consider the individuals who made it up. There were many kinds of men and one woman he had to influence over the next few weeks. He had to judge the best timing to approach each one. Resolute people could be approached anytime because once they switched over and made up their minds they could be counted on to stay switched over. The hesitant and weak-willed he’d hold off until the end, so they might be counted on to vote Republican before contrary fears set in and made them act on their own benefits, even though it would be more out of fear from unknown sources than from courage of their own. He reviewed the list again.
There were the ambitious members of Congress, eager to seek higher office, whose reputations were as valuable to them as anything that existed in their lives, including family. It was on the basis of a clean reputation (true or not) that each hoped to achieve higher office.
There were the lazy members of Congress who could be influenced to vote Republican merely because they wanted to avoid any hostile reaction back home that might result from the disclosure of the information which Slanetti had, information he would assure them would remain unused in the future. It was a tacit rule in Washington that bad information could be used by the same party against an individual only once. No member could be expected to buckle under every time to the same interests using the same information against him. Even though blackmail was blackmail and extortion was extortion, it “wasn’t done” that way in Washington.
There were the powerful, silent members of Congress, some of whom Slanetti had to approach himself. But he’d steer clear of the personally influential members as targets when he could because their influence to squelch information sometimes was as powerful as that of the White House to expose it. There were the ten- and twenty-term congressmen with high committee posts and enormous personal influence in Washington and New York, with connections whose power could never be overestimated. Few congressmen of this type were on Slanetti’s list. One who was, however, was Republican John Fulton, eight-term representative from Oklahoma, a big oil interests man who controlled the entire Republican contingent from the state, which added up to four of the five members from Oklahoma. Had Fulton been for St. Clair, Oklahoma would be no problem. But Fulton was rabidly pro-China and therefore against St. Clair. Unless Fulton could be won over, Oklahoma would be lost.
There were members of different backgrounds: a journalist, a doctor, an engineer, but most were lawyers, and pretty good ones at that.
Considering the disparate types he had to deal with, Slanetti had been searching his mind for the best way to execute the operation. He knew this was the type of assignment that could not be revisited and done over. Not if it was fucked up the first time. He knew it had to work the first time if it was going to work at all. He thought of many possibilities, but only one remained. He’d already rejected seeing each person alone. No, he’d work through a series of liaisons who would see each person separately: one liaison for each member, or, if the liaison was particularly effective, perhaps two members. He knew he couldn’t do everything himself. There were representatives from at least sixteen states involved. Things would be much smoother if he worked through liaisons.
He finally made his decision on the basis of what he thought was the hugely inflated congressional ego. As aide for congressional liaison, Slanetti knew how important “face” was to every member of Congress. Each got to Congress on the basis of a certain pub
lic image back home. But even though most had something to hide, he knew they didn’t think they were any different from others, or that the blemishes on their past constituted crimes large enough for them to be forced out of office. And yet they all recognized that what the public knew an official had done could ruin anyone in office.
Slanetti knew when people with such egos got the news that the White House had certain information on them, they should get it from someone other than himself, considering his position. If it came from him, they would think he was nothing more than a spy for the White House checking up on the private lives of members of the legislative branch, which is exactly what he was doing. Also, the existence of Keystone might be surmised if certain crucial members ever discussed their “mutual problems” with one Phil Slanetti.
He therefore decided that the best means of communicating with them was through someone individually friendly with each person. Glancing at his list, he began scratching down names of people he knew who could act as his liaisons. In addition to giving the White House a lot of cover, these liaisons, who would have the best interests of the individual congressman at heart (without whatever personal conscientious qualms they might have), could be counted on to argue the White House position over the congressman’s. Since most of the targets were Democrats, it would be better for them to hear the damaging information from friends and not from the Republican President’s aide for congressional liaison.
He planned to refine the list of liaisons later that afternoon and meet with them individually as soon as possible to give them the information he had and their secret instructions.
Slanetti picked up an invitation he received that morning requesting his appearance at the Thanksgiving party at Horizon. He smiled when he thought of Patricia Vaughan. He knew she hated him and hated inviting him to her parties, but everybody invited someone in his position. He usually rejected them, but he told his secretary to email his RSVP.
Then he called his wife to tell her that they’d be going to Horizon for the Thanksgiving party. Slanetti had two boys, and his wife complained to him that the oldest was in trouble again at school. He said he’d talk to him when he came home for dinner. She then asked what they should get the boys for Christmas. He said he’d think about it. As he hung up, he shook his head as he considered the relative importance of things on his mind just then. He’d always thought of his work at the White House as something far more valuable than his wife, children or anything else his life embraced before his first day working at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Chapter 5
Congressman Scott
Patricia Vaughan was not thinking of the party just then, although she thought of little else in the last week. She had her mind on Neil Scott and her brow was wrinkled with unseemly lines because she was frustrated and worried.
The night after Congress convened to pass the resolution supporting the measures in the President’s speech, she drove up Prospect Road and across Arlington Memorial Bridge in her Rolls Royce coupe, to Scott’s apartment in Arlington. It was raining furiously and she had a raincoat thrown over her shoulders.
When he opened the door she could tell by the anxious gleam in his eye what he wanted. She stood there with her hands in her pockets, her collar turned up. He hugged her tight and close, then kissed her for what seemed to her to be an hour and then he held her back and looked at her, his eyes sparkling.
“Why are you so late, Patricia? I’ve been waiting for you.”
She was cold, still standing in the open doorway, the rain pouring down behind her, flushing the skies.
“Why don’t we close the door, Neil?” she said, walking past him into the comfortably decorated apartment, which stood on a quiet, tree-lined street in a townhouse complex. Scott closed the door as Patricia took off her coat, facing the clean empty fireplace. She’d never known Neil to burn wood in it. She didn’t even know if it really worked. But then Neil wasn’t the type she thought of curling up by the fire. Being cozy with. No, he was strictly the kind of guy you met for a quick fuck.
He came over to her, put one hand behind her neck and the other around her waist and kissed her again. She let him kiss her and then asked, as her heavy dark eyebrows rose a little, “Can I have a drink?”
Neil sensed something wrong with her, and she knew he could sense it, but wasn’t sure if she wanted him to or not.
“Sure, baby, sure. I’ll get it,” he said, looking at her as searchingly as he could before moving to the bar and bringing her a Grey Goose and pomegranate juice. She took it and sat down on the sofa. He sat down next to her with a drink. He was close to her and put his arm on the back of the sofa behind her head. She looked into her glass as she drank from it, watching the ice come towards her, knowing he was looking at her. She now felt his free hand in her hair, moving slowly, rubbing her neck. She put the glass down on the coffee table in front of her and turned to him.
He was good looking. His blond hair was beginning to get darker. It did every winter, she thought. His complexion always looked a little ruddy in the winter because he was rather pale. He had a nice firm chin and his nose was slightly upturned, but in a way that only made him more attractive. He smiled, showing his perfect teeth, and leaned over, kissing her on the lips. Then he sat back and looked at her. She slid over, closer.
“How did you ever come from Montana?” she asked him, giggling despite herself. She hadn’t been with a man in quite a while. “You look like you ought to come from Connecticut—you look like the prep school type.”
He raised his eyebrows and pretended shock.
“What do you mean? I’m just like Montana—the salt of the earth.” He tilted his head back and shrugged cynically. “Of course, I did go to Harvard.” He looked at her and smiled. “When I came back to Great Falls they couldn’t refuse me, had to elect me right away.”
He put his glass down on the coffee table next to hers and leaned over her, kissing her again on the lips, slipping his hand around her waist. As he kissed her she closed her eyes, opening them when he finished. He wasn’t smiling now; he was breathing down on her.
“Let’s go up,” he said quietly.
She sighed and felt squeamish. She didn’t want to go with him and yet she did want to be made love to. She hadn’t had any sex since he left town. She wondered in that split second if she’d ever really been made love to or was it just fucking? Jonathan fucked her, those few times. Neil fucked her. There were a couple of others, but she’d never been to bed with anyone more than several times besides Jonathan and Neil, and now there was only Neil. It depressed her when she suddenly realized how much she’d missed in men, never to have been loved by one the way any woman wants to be loved. She knew she was pretty—beautiful—that men were always attracted to her, and it hurt her to think that with so much to offer, and not just physically, she had her whole self to offer, and it had never been accepted by anyone, she’d never met anyone who seemed to want to accept all she had—that with all this, she had never really been loved. Somehow, as Neil asked if she wanted “to go up,” she realized all this for the first time in her life. She knew in her gut she’d never been loved, but she’d never really thought about it clearly until just this minute, having always assumed one never found wholesome love, pure love, complete friendship—that it was one of those things in life one hears about but never experiences. Now she couldn’t think of anything else except that she wanted to be loved. She looked up at Neil, almost on top of her, breathing quietly but anxiously, looking into her brown eyes with his blue ones, waiting for an answer, with no definite expression on his face because he expected her to kiss him gently on the lips as she had done so often before and say, “Of course.”
“Do you really want to?” she asked almost in a whisper—she didn’t know what else to say.
He smiled, fondling her breast and looking into her eyes, trying to arouse her. She wondered if she could ever be aroused again. Her breast felt like a mound of flour being kneaded pointlessly. She
was reminded of that crass joke someone had told once at dinner: Q: how do you make five pounds of fat sexy? A: put a nipple on it.
“You know I want to. I always want to,” he said, slipping his hand down along her waist, rubbing her thigh. He kissed her again, his hand now between her legs. She began to be aroused but she knew as he kissed her and caressed her that she wanted to be aroused by a man who loved her. She wanted to be excited by love and not just by sex, and yet between her legs she knew she wanted what she could get and get now—easy sex.
She suddenly felt more courage than she usually did. It wasn’t her cocktail party insouciance she felt. It was just some inner gut reaction to make some move to change herself. She saw in the lives of too many other Washington hostesses, all older than she was—she was only thirty—what she would become: a middle-aged woman in her morning room drinking coffee wondering which young government agency director or member of Congress would try to fuck her for a favor that week.
She jumped up and turned on him. He looked pretty silly sitting there hunched over the spot where she’d been sitting, looking up at her, totally shocked by her behavior.
“Don’t you ever want to do anything else with me, Neil?”
She immediately regretted saying the words because she didn’t know just what she wanted to say. He hadn’t changed a bit, and she couldn’t justify hating Neil because she’d suddenly changed. Since she couldn’t really be angry with him, she began to feel a well of self-pity open in herself, and she hoped she wouldn’t cry in front of him. No one ever saw Patricia Vaughan cry.