Palace Council

by Stephen L Carter

  They dug into sloshy sandwiches. “I need to talk to Eddie,” said Aurie, preliminaries over.

  “So talk to him.”

  “He won’t take my calls.”

  “Guys are funny.”

  “Funny?”

  Gary nodded. He signaled several times before the waitress realized that he wanted another cup of coffee. “Where do you get this blend?” he asked as she poured. “I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”

  “A & P.”

  When she was gone, Gary said, “Eddie’s avoiding you.”

  Aurelia stiffened. “I figured that out for myself.”

  “It isn’t out of spite. It isn’t out of jealousy.”

  “It has to be out of something.”

  “I think it’s out of love, Aurie.” He stirred his coffee. He had given up on the sandwich. The green eyes had a faraway look. “Remember the first night we met? That mixer in Northampton?”

  “The Smith girls and the Amherst men.”

  “The Smith girls and their chaperones,” he corrected lightly. “There were so many chaperones, you almost had one each.” He sipped, pulled a face, added more sugar. A lot more. “But Eddie told me that night that he was going to marry you one day.”

  “He was a romantic,” she agreed, brushing at her cheek.

  “He still is, Aurie. To the rest of the world, he’s a cynic. That American Angle of his. But when he thinks about you, he’s a romantic. He wants to be your dashing hero or whatever it is guys want to be when they’re in love. He’s had a woman here and there, Aurie. You know that. He and that Torie even had kind of a hot-and-heavy thing for a few months. But he’s never married anybody. He’s still waiting to rescue you.”

  Aurelia picked at her French fries. “Gary, are you trying to say that Eddie won’t take my calls because I won’t marry him? That’s pretty childish. And pretty offensive.”

  “That’s not the reason.” He shoved his coffee to one side, picked up his water glass, frowned at the stains, put it down. “No, Aurie. He’s a romantic. He’d happily die loving you from afar. He still wants to rescue you. That’s why he won’t let you near him now. He’s trying to protect you.”

  “From what?”

  “I’m not sure, Aurie. Something happened to him over in Asia. He hasn’t told me what. You heard about that night he got drunk in Hong Kong?”

  She remembered the headlines. The photos. “Of course. I couldn’t believe it when I heard. He doesn’t drink. You know that. He’s been a teetotaler since his father—Oh.”

  Gary nodded. “You see? It was a setup. We were supposed to think he was drunk. Whoever set it up didn’t know he doesn’t drink.” He took one of her fries. “I’m not sure, Aurie, because he won’t talk about it. But—from little hints he’s dropped?—I think whatever happened to him over there changed him. Now he thinks there’s a danger, and he wants to shield you from it.”

  Aurelia could not help herself. The words just leaped from her mouth. “Then why isn’t he shielding Mindy?”

  “Mindy? Who on earth is Mindy?”

  “His assistant.”

  “Oh, yes, his assistant,” said Gary vaguely, as if names of assistants were beneath him. “What about her?”

  “She travels with him everywhere! Why isn’t she in danger?”

  It took him a moment to get the point. “Oh, I see. You’re jealous.” He spoke so matter-of-factly that there seemed no point in contradicting him. “There’s no need for him to shield Mindy. What happened to him in Hong Kong—well, he survived it. I don’t think Eddie is worried for himself. He seems pretty confident to me. No, Aurie. I think you’re the one who would be in danger.”

  “Me?”

  “If the two of you meet up. If whoever it is thinks you’re working together. That’s when the danger would arise.” He saw her face. “Now, don’t worry, Aurie. Nothing is going to happen. Eddie’s very sure. Nothing is going to happen, as long as he stays away from you.”

  She turned away, gazed out the window at the bright autumn sun glinting off station wagons and pickup trucks. Ithaca was supposed to be her refuge. Hers and the children’s. Aurelia remembered her conversation with Bay Dennison after Nixon’s inaugural ball. That’s how you should spend the rest of your life, the Congressman had said. Having fun. And then, of Eddie: Marry him, the two of you ride into the sunset together.

  Until this moment, it had not occurred to her that the words were less a suggestion than a warning. But, then, Kevin himself had tried to warn her, years ago, after she admitted rifling his office files: You’ve never heard of shaking the throne or the Author or Pandemonium. You don’t know anything. Remember that. Especially if anything happens to me.

  Gary touched her hand. He spoke softly. “I can send somebody if you like.” He paused. “To look after you. I know competent people, Aurie.”

  “But I’m not in any danger.” She managed a smile. “It’s sweet of you to offer, but I’ll be fine. I don’t think they’ll hurt me, either.”

  “Eddie thinks otherwise.”

  “It’s probably best if he goes on thinking that. I’ll leave him alone for now. You can tell him—well, tell him we spoke, and that I’ll leave him alone.”

  Back at the airport, Aurelia thanked Gary for all he had done, especially for Mona. He nodded and kissed her cheek. Watching the plane bank across the brilliant sky, she remembered the rest of her conversation with Bay Dennison. You’re raising the Garland heir. That’s an important responsibility.

  Locke Matthew Garland, named for the writer of the Harlem Renaissance and his paternal grandfather. Locke, the Garland heir.

  This was all about her son.

  CHAPTER 49

  Again the Golden Boy

  (I)

  “I WON’T BE STAYING for the party,” said Lanning Frost. “To do otherwise would be ethically unjustified.”

  “I understand,” said Aurelia, who had already heard from Margot that the Senator would not be present, and had actually hoped that he would depart before her arrival. But he was either too savvy or too well counseled to say a word about Kevin, dead now four years.

  He gave her hand a practiced political pump, then swept out of the room surrounded by a bevy of advisers. The occasion was a reception Margot Frost had arranged at her Georgetown home to honor the surprise success of Aurelia’s first novel, which had been hesitantly published, to token publicity, a month earlier. It was late May of 1969. War had broken out in California. That was what people called it, a war. National Guard troops with fixed bayonets had battled demonstrators in Berkeley. A helicopter had launched a chemical attack. Mona was thrilled. Aurelia was terrified. Not for her country but for Eddie, who had been out there, lighting rhetorical fires, but had evidently escaped before the aerial assault. At the reception, everybody pretended nothing was going on in the world. Aurelia’s novel was a romance, and editors were certain that nobody was reading romances any more. The story among the cognoscenti was that the publication of her book had been a favor to the great Edward Wesley Junior. But somehow the novel had found an audience.

  Margot shepherded Aurelia around the roomful of important Washingtonians. Since her husband’s near-assassination, Margot Frost had become one of the city’s leading hostesses. People who had never heard of Aurelia until today told her how much they loved her work. A few old pals and experienced pols asked about her children. Aurelia felt hemmed in. She had been in her day quite the party maven, but since Kevin’s death and her flight to Ithaca, she had grown locked-in, private, uneasy around crowds. She did not understand the success of her book. She did not see the nation’s hunger for the ordinary amid the turbulence. She saw a richly furnished drawing room packed with fawning strangers, most of whom made a larger fuss over Margot, future First Lady, than over Aurelia herself.

  Their inattention relieved her.

  She was standing near the bar, half listening to a conversation about California, when she spotted, in the corner near the piano, the onetime g
olden boy of Harlem, Perry Mount—a familiar face, and the man Eddie had crossed the ocean to find. He was as tall and impressive as ever, communicating a sense of energy, a readiness to leap into excited action. Nursing a glass of ginger ale, Perry had made his own private space. Nobody approached him. Aurelia suspected that nobody knew exactly who he was, or what he was doing there. He caught her eye and tilted his glass her way. She excused herself and approached him.

  “It’s been a long time,” she said, smiling broadly because, in his familiar presence, the old Harlem skills came back to her. She reminded herself that Eddie had told her on the day Kevin died that he believed Perry and Margot were conspiring together. Maybe it was even true. He was, after all, here. “You look well,” she said.

  Back in the day, Perry had reserved for women a puffy half-smile, almost a kiss, that managed to welcome and mock you at once. He did it now. “And you, Aurelia. But of course you always look good, don’t you? Congratulations on the success of the book, by the way. I haven’t read it, but I can hardly wait.”

  “When did you get back?”

  “Back?”

  “I heard the State Department sent you to Saigon—”

  “Oh, I quit. Ten years. That’s more than enough service to one’s country. I’m at a think tank now. More money, less risk.” His smile grew wider, but the brown eyes, huge behind the glasses, were waiting for something. “And I get to stay home. Maybe I’ll start a family. I’m in my forties, Aurie. Don’t you think it’s time?” He toyed with his ginger ale. “I’ve been seeing Chamonix Bing. You remember Chammie, from the old days? Formerly married to Charlie Bing? Listen. Maybe when you’re not so busy we can all do something together.”

  “That would be nice.” She decided to be direct. “Perry, did Eddie find you? He went all the way to Vietnam looking—”

  “Oh, yes. Eddie.” His eyes bored into her, beseeching and demanding at once. The eyes of command. And victory. Aurelia wondered if it would be possible to hide secrets from this man. Or, if he really put his mind to seduction, to resist him. “We sort of found each other.”

  “Was he—how did he—”

  “He seemed fine when I saw him in Hong Kong.” The smile flattened. All at once the golden boy looked golden and boyish, an expression that used to drive the girls half mad. “Don’t tell me your Eddie hasn’t been in touch. That’s rather unlike him.”

  She let this one pass. “Perry, if you saw Eddie, then you know he was hoping you might—”

  He cut her off. “I don’t know where Junie is. Neither does Eddie. I’m certain of that.” He spoke with a peculiar satisfaction. The eyes were hardening. “I’m not even sure she’s still alive.”

  Aurelia had always been bold, and she did not think this opportunity would again present itself. She felt more than heard people approaching. “Eddie says you were in touch with her. With Junie. Underground, I mean.”

  Perry shook his head. “Somebody’s been telling tales out of school, I see. You should know I can’t discuss that, Aurie. Just let me say that whatever I did, I did in my official capacity.”

  “You were in touch with her. You were!”

  “My inability to comment is not a confirmation.” He seemed to be quoting from the manual.

  “Have you ever heard the term ‘shaking the throne’?” Taking her only other shot. “Because years ago you said something to Eddie about shaking the throne, and about how Harlem has secrets.”

  “Did I? I was such a pretentious little bastard in those days, wasn’t I?” The powerful eyes lit up, but he was looking over her shoulder. “Margot, dear. Surely you haven’t come to take this ravishing creature away from me.”

  Margot had come to do exactly that.

  Perry was handing Aurelia a business card. “Call me next time you’re in town,” he said, receding, with the old kissable grin.

  (II)

  WHEN THE PARTY BROKE UP, Margot made Aurelia stay. They had not laid eyes on each other since Eisenhower’s funeral, and had not exchanged more than a word or two since Kevin’s. It was time, said Margot, that they had a talk. Just two girls together, she added. But Aurelia knew that Margot Frost was the sort of woman who had never been a girl in her life.

  They sat in the parlor and took off their shoes, and Margot broke out a very impressive 1947 Château Carbonnieux Blanc. Its taste was light and surprisingly rosy, and Margot said they should get sloshed together, as in the old days. The trouble was, they had shared no old days, and Margot Frost was the last person with whom Aurie was interested in getting sloshed. Aurie took small, practical sips. But Margot, fleshy legs tucked beneath her on the sofa, was gulping the wine like water, and Aurelia supposed that if the future First Lady wanted to get sloshed, her own job was to sit there and let it happen.

  “You seemed pretty cozy with Perry,” said Margot, teasingly.

  “We’re old friends.”

  “What about your boyfriend? Eddie? How’s dear, dear Eddie?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend, Margot. I haven’t really talked to him since he got back.”

  “I hear he’s looking for his sister.” She lifted the glass and swirled it this way and back, playing with her own reflection. “Do you think he’ll find her?”

  “I wouldn’t really know.”

  “Maybe she doesn’t want him to find her.”

  “Maybe not,” said Aurelia, suddenly very wary. She reminded herself that, in order for Margot to be the genius behind Lanning, she first had to be a genius.

  “Women do run from men. Happens every day.”

  “I suppose so.”

  “I ran into him in Hong Kong,” said Margot. “Your Eddie. Did I mention that?” A long swallow. “He seemed—determined.”

  Bother while a maid came in with more cookies. Margot, without ever quite seeming to stuff herself, had finished off the tray. It occurred to Aurelia that something quite terrible was eating at the First-Lady-in-waiting. She wondered whether it could possibly be as terrible as Eddie seemed to think.

  Alone again.

  “You have to understand Lanning,” said Margot, several times. “He’s not the way everybody says. He’s not stupid. He gets a little tongue-tied. Don’t we all get a little tongue-tied sometimes? But he’s going to be a great President. A great President.” More wine. Aurelia helpfully poured. “You know, it’s not easy. Your husband—he was a good man. Lanning is a good man, but, well, he’s not easy to be married to. He needs a lot of help, Aurie. My help. Other people’s.”

  Aurelia murmured understanding.

  “This is what I was raised to be,” said Margot. “First Lady. I mean, I’m not First Lady yet, but everybody knows I’m going to be. I can’t ever let my hair down. Ever.” And then, eyes sparkling mischief, she reached up and did exactly that, mussing a coiffure that must have cost her half a week at the salon. “Well, no. No. That’s not right. I wasn’t raised to be First Lady. But I was raised to marry an important man and to help him achieve whatever—and that’s what I’m doing, Aurie. I’m helping my important man. I’m making the deals and the alliances and raising the money. Why do the newspapers say I’m some kind of ambitious schemer? Why do they write these things?” Accusatory, as if Aurelia had written them herself. “I’m a wife, that’s all. Isn’t this what wives are supposed to do? Help our men? Didn’t you help Kevin?” Another glass. She was angry now. “It was easier for you, Aurie. You didn’t have to live with all these expectations. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to help my man get to the top. You believe that, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “I wish I was more like you,” Margot continued, to Aurie’s surprise. “I wish I could just disappear to some little town for three or four years and come back and—well, I don’t know if I’d come back or not. There’s too much to do. So much to do, and so few people I can really talk to. There’s Perry, of course—”

  “I never realized that you knew him,” said Aurie, ingenuously.

  “Our families go back simply years,
” said Margot. Her wide brow furrowed, three neat little lines, as if more would be an offense. “They say he was in love with Eddie’s sister. Do you believe that story? Don’t you think his employers would hold that kind of thing against him? In government, I mean?”

  “You can’t control who you fall in love with, Margot.”

  The future First Lady seemed to find this proposition dubious. She gulped at the Château Carbonnieux and lapsed into a troubled silence. “I’ll tell you, though,” she finally said. “Perry’s the ambitious schemer. Not me. Perry. He knows where all the bodies are buried. Literally. He’s CIA—did you know that? And those articles Eddie wrote? About PHOENIX and everything? That was Perry’s baby. That’s why he had to come back. Why he had to leave the Agency. Eddie wrecked his career. Did you know that?”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I’m very serious. Perry must hate him terribly.” Margot leaned in closer, her breath sweet from the wine. “You know what Lanning says? Perry killed people over there.”

  “It’s a war—”

  “Not that kind of people,” said Margot. She covered her mouth. “Oh, well. We’ve talked long enough, haven’t we? Didn’t you say you and Claire Garland had tickets to a show later tonight?”

  She was bustling Aurelia to the door, and did not look remotely sloshed. All the way back to the hotel, Aurie wondered. Maybe Margot was really able to turn her sobriety on and off that fast. On the other hand, perhaps she had been trying, from the depths of whatever her involvement with the Project, to send a message.

  Maybe a threat.

  Maybe a plea for help.

  CHAPTER 50

  Conversation with a Judge

  (I)

  BY THIS TIME, Aurelia was coming to share Eddie’s paranoia. She believed, often, that she was being followed. She would glimpse the same pale face behind her at the supermarket, or lurking in the shadow behind the statue of Ezra Cornell on the Quad, or climbing out of a car an aisle or two away when she pulled into the parking lot of the Jamesway Discount Store. Not Mr. Collier. Eddie had never explained exactly what he suspected about the former bodyguard, but Aurelia would have known his face anywhere. No. This was somebody else. Then, in the summer of 1969, her follower changed identities so suddenly that she wondered if she might be imagining things after all. That summer, the irrepressible Locke was eleven, and the quiet Zora had just turned thirteen. Their mother decided that the family needed a real vacation. And so, following their annual late-June trip to Beech-wood Cemetery in New Rochelle, where they visited the grave of Kevin Garland on his birthday, Aurelia rented a small house on Martha’s Vineyard, a shingled Victorian on a crowded hill overlooking Oak Bluffs Harbor, inland from East Chop, a neighborhood known in those days as the Highlands.