Capitol Threat

by William Bernhardt

  “As you wish.” She ground her cigar butt into an ashtray. “Think this is going to get out of committee?”

  “I’m not sure. But it doesn’t much matter. If it doesn’t get out of committee, that makes everything so much easier. But I have to be prepared for every contingency. That’s what clever strategists do. When they play to win. And I always play to win. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

  “So that’s it, then. Never mind the qualifications, the record, the man himself. He’s gay, and you’ve decided that homosexuality is an unforgivable sin, so he’s going down. The sad thing is, I can’t even criticize you. I know you honestly believe what you say. For you, it’s a matter of faith.” She paused. “I just wish your personal faith had less to do with judgment and more to do with mercy.”

  Matera sighed, stood, and stretched. It wasn’t the cigar smoke, but she nonetheless had a strong desire to take a bath. “I think this meeting is over, my friend. We both know where we’re going.” She shook his hand again, then clapped Trevor on the shoulder. “I really wish you’d have taken that cigar.”

  42

  Loving and Trudy sashayed into the back room, arm in arm.

  “Will you stop that already?” Loving muttered.

  “What’s that, sugar?”

  “Don’t—” Loving bit back his words. There were a lot of people in the room. Mostly naked men and totally naked women. Not many of either were paying attention to the new arrivals. “You’re…swinging your hips.”

  “That’s what girls like me call walking.”

  “Do you have to walk so…provocatively?”

  “I am what I am.”

  “Well, actually, you’re not.”

  “Details, details.”

  Loving swore silently. “Do you see Renny?” He’d been so concerned about winning the arm-wrestling match and getting in here, he’d almost forgotten the primary mission. They had to find the mysterious Renny, the man who had instructed Trudy to take Victoria to the Roush press conference. Which she didn’t leave alive.

  “Not yet. Why don’t I work the room?”

  “Okay. What’ll I do?”

  “What you do best. Stand there and look tall and manly.” Trudy leaned over and gave him a peck on the cheek.

  Loving’s reaction suggested he was about to resort to fisticuffs.

  Trudy held up a finger. “Temper, temper.” She winked. “Sugar.”

  She sashayed off to the right. And Loving knew this because he was watching.

  He closed his eyes and mentally chastised himself. Ogling a guy! A guy who looked like a really spicy chick, sure. But still a guy!

  Loving mopped his brow. He had to keep his attention on the matter at hand. Renny.

  The back room was far more glamorously appointed than the club outside. Loving was no expert on furniture, but he knew this was stuff of a higher order. Plush satiny chairs and sofas, lots of mahogany and oak. Most of the men in here looked foreign. Collarless shirts. Accents he couldn’t distinguish. Eurotrash.

  There was a lot of sex going down in the room, in all manner of positions and combinations, but that wasn’t the half of it. A couple of the men in easy chairs were getting lap dances. One had his pants down; the other was jerking off while he watched the lap dance one chair over. These women were clearly of a higher order: well groomed, fit, statuesque, beautiful. Many of them had a foreign cast to their features. Mail-order Russian women? Loving wondered. Lured over with the false promise of marriage, only to end up strutting and grinding in this high-class dive? He hoped not.

  Loving turned his eyes away from the various performances taking place throughout the room and directed his attention to the wall. There was a painting hanging just beside him, a beautiful oil depicting an Old World wooden ship at sea caught in a storm and many men on board trying to bring it to rights. Loving didn’t know much about art, but he was certain he’d seen this picture before. But where?

  Now that he noticed, there was a lot of art in the room, not only paintings, but sculpture and mobiles descending from the ceiling, and brightly colored Pop Art stuff that he hated. He had no idea if it was real or reproduced, valuable or Wal-Mart, but it certainly gave the room a different look from the usual illicit sex parlor. Why did Renny bother? Did he really expect anyone to notice an art show while he had a naked seventeen-year-old undulating in his lap?

  He returned his attention to the painting, and a memory sparked. It was a Bible story, that was it. This was the Storm on the Sea of Galilee, and those men scrambling all over the boat—the fishing boat—were Jesus’s disciples. This depicted the scene before Jesus walked across the water. He’d heard the story a million times when he was a kid in Sunday school. Maybe that was why the painting looked familiar. Maybe he’d seen it in church?

  No, there was something else, something more. He just couldn’t remember what it was.

  Someone crept up from behind. “Found him, sugar.”

  Loving pivoted. “I told you not to call me ‘sugar.’ ”

  “I know. That’s pretty much why I do it.”

  Stay calm, Loving told himself. You still need her. Him!

  “So you found Renny?”

  “Yeah. Wasn’t easy. He had his face stuck in—well, you probably don’t want to know.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Anyway, he’s done now. Let me introduce you.”

  Loving followed Trudy across the room, trying to ignore the various forms of immorality and debauchery taking place all around him. He wasn’t normally that much of a prude, but this place was making him sick. All these people making out—if you could call it that—in front of a Bible-story picture! It just wasn’t right.

  He glanced at the painting one last time. Why did that picture bother him so much?

  Loving found his quarry slumped in an easy chair upholstered in what appeared to be a corded green brocade—very fancy. Renny had that slightly dazed, vacant expression that Loving knew as the sure sign that the man had recently emptied his seminal vesicles. Loving supposed he should be grateful for the opportunity to question the man while he was in a dissipated, semi-comatose state.

  Renny’s eyelids fluttered. He looked up at Loving, who from his angle must have appeared to be about forty feet tall. “Trudy say you wish to speak to me?”

  He had a thick accent—Russian, Loving thought, but he couldn’t be sure—and a salt-and-pepper mustache and beard that was no doubt supposed to compensate for the thinning hair on the top of his head. Loving introduced himself, providing as little information as possible. “You know—or I should say, knew—a woman named Victoria.”

  His lips turned up in a sweet, trembly smile. “Ah, sweet Victoria. Such boobies on that woman! Not real, of course. But I have not been such a man as would care.”

  Loving pursed his lips and tried again. “I was wondering why you asked Trudy—”

  “Trudy! Yes! Another fine example of the woman.”

  “She’s—he’s not a woman.”

  “Such a nitpicker you are. Trudy is charming and very pleasant for the eyes. What more does a man require?”

  “Well…”

  “Most importantly, she is so agreeable. She will do anything I ask her to do, you know what I say? Absolutely anything. All I do is pass a little money her way every now and then and she is mine to command. Every man should be so lucky as to have such a willing slave.”

  Beside him, Loving saw the topic of conversation doing a slow burn. Trudy was angry.

  “But enough chatter about people such as these. Why do you ask me questions?”

  “I’m trying to find out why you asked Trudy to escort Victoria to the Thaddeus Roush press conference.”

  Renny shrugged happily, still basking in the easygoing state of afterglow contentment. “That is easy to explain.”

  “It is?” Loving considered himself pretty good at this sort of thing, but even he hadn’t expected the man to talk this qui
ckly. “Why?”

  “Because Victoria—such a lovely woman, but she did not drive.”

  “That’s it? ’Cause she couldn’t drive?”

  “What can I say? A wonderful woman Victoria was. Extremely talented. In so many unexpected ways. But she grew up in Manhattan. She never learned to operate a motor vehicle.”

  “But—” Loving tried to suppress his growing frustration. “There must be some reason you arranged for her to go to the press conference. I’m pretty sure she didn’t have a press pass.”

  Renny’s eyes lowered. For the first time, Loving had the sense that he was thinking before he spoke. “Ah. But there you touch on matters of business. I cannot discuss matters of business.”

  Loving squatted down till they were eye level. “That ain’t good enough. A woman is dead. An innocent man has been accused. This could affect who does and doesn’t end up on the Supreme Court. You’re gonna have to talk.”

  “Ahh…I think not.”

  Loving leaned forward. “I think so.” He reached for the man’s collar.

  “That would not be such a good idea.”

  “Oh yeah? You think you could take me?”

  Loving felt a hand on his shoulder. Trudy. “That’s not what he means, sugar.” Trudy jerked her head backward.

  Loving did a quick scan of the room. They were hard to see. The spotlights on the walls focused upon the art objects, creating blind spots in unusual places. But when Loving forced himself to focus, he was able to detect at least four men standing about the room, one against each wall. They were not paying the slightest attention to the women in the room. They were watching him and Renny—their boss, no doubt—very carefully.

  Muscle. Hired muscle.

  Renny shrugged. “So you see, Mr. Loving, we are at an impasse, are we not?”

  Loving backed off. He could take those creeps one at a time, but they were unlikely to come at him one at a time. That’s why there were four of them.

  “This isn’t over. I’ll be back.”

  “I think not,” Renny said, supremely confident. “It will take more than a strong arm to get you in here again. You will never get past the bouncers at the front door. So I fear that this is farewell, my friend.”

  Loving gritted his teeth. Much as he hated to admit it, the man was right. How would he ever get in here again? He wasn’t a police officer, and even if he were, what would be the basis for a warrant? Even if he put on a Sherlock Holmes–type disguise, he’d probably never be able to get back in here again. He’d played his hand and lost. What a fool he’d been! He should have seen this coming. He should have—

  “There’s a back door behind the green sculpture,” Trudy whispered in his ear, pointing.

  “Huh?”

  “Go.” Trudy leaned forward over Renny’s easy chair. “And just for the record, I never liked working for you, and you still owe me money, you Ukrainian creep!”

  Renny looked almost as puzzled as Loving felt.

  Trudy turned her attention back to Loving. “Count of ten, sugar.”

  “Huh? What are you gonna do?”

  “What I do best. Create a diversion.” Trudy winked. “Count of ten.”

  Loving began counting. Trudy disappeared. And ten seconds later, the lights went out.

  A gun fired in the darkness.

  43

  Ben was closeted with his advisors—quite literally, since they were all standing in a janitorial storage closet down the hall from his office. The press had Ben’s office, Senator Hammond’s office, and the Caucus Room covered; this was about the only place left where they could meet without having to field the same question over and over again: Will Thaddeus Roush withdraw?

  “Is there no hope at all?” Ben asked.

  Sexton shook his head sadly. “I’ve talked to every senator on the committee who would talk, and the AA of every senator on the committee who wouldn’t talk. This has become too much of a lightning rod—for all the worst reasons. It’s going to go straight down party lines.”

  “And that means we lose,” Beauregard added, as if Ben didn’t know that already. “Ten to eight. The nomination dies in committee and President Blake picks someone else. Without ever being forced to take a controversial position on a controversial issue.”

  “Who can we call? Who could we work on? There must be someone who could be persuaded to vote his or her conscience,” Ben said.

  “What do you think I’ve been doing for the last forty-eight hours?” Sexton snapped. “It hasn’t happened.” He glanced at his watch. “And now it’s too late. I hate to say it, but…it probably would be best if Roush threw in the towel.”

  The door cracked open. “That won’t be happening.” Roush stepped inside.

  Sexton gritted his teeth. “I don’t like it any more than you do, Tad. But I hate to see you rejected. You deserve better than that.”

  “I won’t turn tail and run.”

  “If you go in that room, you force everyone to take a stand. It becomes a referendum on gay rights.”

  “Maybe it should be!”

  “Let me correct myself. It becomes a referendum on gay rights—and the gay community loses.”

  “The first time. Perhaps we have to lose a few times before we can win. Better to start the process.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ben said, “but I disagree. Better to wait for the right time. The first black Supreme Court nominee—Thurgood Marshall—passed because the time was right. The first female appointee—Sandra Day O’Connor—passed because the time was right. I had hoped that the time was right for you.” He lowered his head. “But apparently I was wrong.”

  “So are you saying you want me to quit?” Roush looked at him, his face twisted in a knot. “Is that what you’re saying? After all we’ve been through? I should quit?”

  Ben thought for a long time before finally speaking. “I think you should…” He tried again. “I think you should do what’s best for you, Tad.”

  Roush laid his hand firmly on Ben’s shoulder. “Then let’s get our butts into that Caucus Room.”

  “Before we begin,” Chairman Keyes said after the hearing had come to order, “I have a few words I’d like to say to the people in this room. An opening statement, if you will.”

  “Point of order,” Ben said, pulling the microphone to his lips. “This is not a courtroom.” Smart-alecky, yes, but he wasn’t likely to get another chance.

  To his surprise, Keyes grinned. “Yes, Mr. Kincaid. Thank you for that clarification.” He looked to the side of the gallery, which Ben knew equated to looking directly into the camera. This speech wasn’t for the people in the Caucus Room. It was for the folks out in television land.

  “There’s been a lot of discussion about this proceeding in the press of late. Too much, if you ask me. And too little of it has focused on things that actually matter.”

  Like what, threesomes in gay bars? What was the purpose of this? The man already had the votes he needed to give the President what he wanted—Tad’s head on a platter. Didn’t he?

  “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. Throughout these proceedings, I—and I think I speak for my colleagues as well—have been concerned with one thing and one thing only: the professional and personal qualifications of the nominee. So when we cast our votes today, ladies and gentlemen of the press, you may be assured that we are voting on that basis. And that basis alone.”

  Very sweet, Ben realized. He’s basically arguing that he and his companions could conceivably kill Tad’s nomination without being considered anti-gay.

  “Every man and woman on this dais has a conscience, and those consciences place integrity and loyalty at the epicenter of—”

  “Point of clarification,” Ben said, interrupting. What the hell—this thing was over, anyway. “Do Robert’s Rules of Order permit the chairman to attempt to influence the committee members with a so-called opening statement right before the vote is taken?”

  “Mr. Kincaid!”

  “I mean,
I know you’ve been doing it for weeks, but in the hearing room, on national television? I don’t know. It just seems sort of tacky.”

  Keyes’s nostrils flared. “Mr. Kincaid, I am grossly offended by your suggestion that—”

  “Well, I was grossly offended by your self-serving opening statement.”

  Keyes pointed a gavel. “Consider yourself fortunate that I don’t find you in contempt of Congress.”

  “I could hardly be more contemptuous of certain members of Congress than I am at this moment.”

  “Mr. Kincaid!”

  “Why don’t you call this what it is? A pathetic attempt to save face even though you and the other members of your party are about to kill the nomination of a worthy man because your partisan masters wish it. Because it turned out the nominee had a different sexual preference than you do and wasn’t afraid to tell everyone.”

  For the first time since the start of the proceedings, Keyes appeared barely able to contain his rage. “You are out of order.”

  Ben started to reply, but Keyes cut him off. “I sat patiently and listened to your speech yesterday, appallingly self-serving though it was. Now you will afford me the same courtesy. And if, as I think may be the case, you don’t know the meaning of the word ‘courtesy,’ I can direct you to the nearest dictionary.”

  Ben settled back into his chair. There was no reason to continue—he’d made his point. Anything more would just seem obnoxious. Not that he particularly minded being obnoxious to Senator Keyes, but it wouldn’t do Roush any good.

  “As I was saying,” Keyes said, rediscovering his oratorical voice, “this assemblage has always acted with pride and dignity as befits these chambers, so let no one dare to cast aspersions, let no one congregate with the wicked, but let us only cast our votes as our hearts, our minds, and our Creator directs us.”

  Ben tried not to roll his eyes. It was the first time he’d heard anyone violate the Constitution three times in a single sentence.

  “All those who favor sending the nomination of Thaddeus Roush to the full Senate with a favorable recommendation for confirmation should so signify by saying ‘aye.’ All those opposed should signify by saying ‘nay.’ The clerk will call the roll.”