Shining City

by Tom Rosenstiel

  His phone is vibrating again with another call.

  Rena gets up from his chair and walks over to the window to give her some time, and with his back to her he pulls the phone from his jacket and turns it off. He looks down into the empty interior courtyard below, one of Washington’s secret spaces, a place only staffers and members of Congress could go. It is empty on a Sunday, but the flowers there, shaded by the building, are still in bloom.

  When the crying stops, he goes back and sits down next to her.

  “People want to forgive. They want a happy ending. If you give them one.”

  She smiles—a bitter, intelligent smile.

  “How does all this happen?” she says.

  He outlines the familiar contours of exiting a scandal—if she resigns, the party would back someone she would approve as a successor, a Common Sense supporter. The party would also help with her campaign debts.

  Rena has already arranged the money.

  “You will become sympathetic, almost overnight, because you’ll have already paid the price of losing your job.”

  She nods, bent head raised, then sweeps away tears with the back of her hand.

  “I will be with you, helping you,” he says.

  He also outlines the alternatives—that if she resists and keeps her House seat while facing legal charges, she will be shunned. Then he runs through the rest, the details of a resignation, how to do the press conference. Cartwright looks shrunken, sitting in the big conference room chair. They talk about how to tell staff. Colleagues. Who to talk to in the Speaker’s office. Timing.

  “And you become again the person you really are.”

  Cartwright cries awhile.

  He reminds her to leave the back way, which will take her to the members’ elevator, where she could get to the parking lot without being seen. She doesn’t look up as he leaves.

  Outside the door Rena shudders. When he did real interrogations, he often felt broken afterward. One time he slept for two days.

  Eleanor O’Brien, his new assistant, is waiting in her car behind Cannon. He has found it useful lately to be driven to meetings by an assistant. It saves time, especially trying to park, and gives him the chance to talk on the phone without being overheard by cabbies or hired drivers. O’Brien doesn’t seem to mind losing part of her Sunday. She is twenty-three, and the more she does, she says, the more she learns.

  “How’d it go?” she asks.

  “It’s done.”

  She laughs. “So it was horrible?”

  “Pretty much.”

  He yanks at his blue tie and unbuttons the top button of his white shirt. Though he wears a charcoal or navy pinstripe suit almost every day, this uniform he has never been comfortable in.

  “May I ask you a personal question?” she says.

  “I may not answer.”

  “Why did the Speaker call you to do this?”

  “She asked the same question.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is that what you’re going to tell me?”

  Rena takes a deep breath.

  “I guess they thought she would hear it better coming from a stranger.”

  “You know what Smolonsky said about you?”

  “I don’t want to hear it.” Walt Smolonsky is a hulking ex-cop who works for Rena and talks too much, especially if the person listening is young and pretty.

  “He said people call you for jobs like this because you are not afraid of telling people the truth.”

  “He’s a liar.”

  O’Brien says nothing for a minute and then asks, “Do you think she should resign? Cartwright I mean?”

  “Of course.”

  “Because?”

  “Because she stole—she used public money to cover her debts, and if that isn’t a crime, it’s close enough. On balance, I think it’s better not to have liars and criminals in government.”

  “You know the other thing Smolonsky says?”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “That your dirty little secret is idealism.”

  “He’s screwing with the new kid’s head.”

  She swings the car around the House office buildings and heads down Independence Avenue, which will take them past the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, toward the Lincoln, Roosevelt, and King memorials, and then along the Potomac past the Kennedy Center, where they will turn off toward Rena’s home in the West End. Though he’s driven it thousands of times in the decade he’s lived in Washington, he always finds the drive past the monuments impressive.

  O’Brien’s phone rings.

  “Oh, hi. He’s right here.” She hands the phone to Rena. “It’s Randi.”

  “Your phone’s off,” his partner says. “I tried to call you.”

  “It’s Sunday. Day of rest.”

  “How’s that working for you?” Brooks asks.

  Rena smiles. “What’s up?”

  “You hear the news?”

  “About?”

  “Geez, Peter. About Justice Hoffman.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “No.”

  “Heart attack. On the golf course. They say he was dead before he hit the ground.”

  “Where?” Rena says, trying to picture the scene.

  “Some country club where he belongs. Burning Tree? No. Congressional. Fell into a sand trap or something.”

  Rena imagines worse ways to die than going fast, doing something you love.

  “A lot of people thought Hoffman was a miserable asshole,” says Brooks. “But he was the last real liberal of ‘the Supremes.’”

  Rena’s partner is a lawyer who has done a lot of judicial appointments, pays close attention to who sits on the federal bench. An opening on the Court for Brooks is like a full solar eclipse for an astronomer. “His death leaves a huge hole on the left.”

  Brooks is also a liberal Democrat. Rena, who is a Republican and a soldier, isn’t sure what label fits him.

  He wants to go home and relax, and O’Brien deserves the rest of the day off.

  “Nash won’t have the balls to nominate anyone nearly as liberal,” Brooks adds, speaking of the president, James Nash. “So this will set off a shit storm.”

  “Lovely.”

  “The ‘Common Sensers and the Holy Rollers Wrath of God Squad’ versus the ‘Twentieth-Century New Deal Elitist Bleeding Heart Help the Homeless Gang,’ ” Brooks says. “And nobody will be able to tell when it’s over which side was good and which was evil.”

  Rena’s partner, a prep school and Ivy League girl, also likes to talk like a master sergeant.

  “Let’s hope we can stay out of it,” he says.

  Supreme Court nominations have taken on a particularly dishonest and jaded quality in recent years.

  Rena looks out the passenger window. He’s had enough of politics for one day.

  “Amen to that,” Brooks says.

  He hangs up O’Brien’s phone and returns it to her. Then he turns on his own. Almost instantly it begins ringing.

  Rena looks down. No caller ID. He checks recent calls. There have been ten calls from Unknown Caller. He answers the call coming in.

  “Mr. Rena, this is Spencer Carr.”

  Spencer Carr is the president’s chief of staff.

  “It’s been too long, Peter.”

  Not long enough, Rena thinks. When Carr was a backbencher congressman he had lied to Rena about a deal being worked out with senators. Carr may not remember, but Rena hasn’t forgotten.

  “Yes, it has. How are you, sir?”

  “Good. Peter, thanks. I hate to impose on your weekend. But the president would like to see you. Tonight.”

  Four

  4:15 P.M.

  Berkeley, California

  She will have to put the packages down to open the door. He’s sure of it.

  When she gets to the top step of her apartment building, she’s going to stop, put some o
f those bundles down, fumble with the lock, then hold the door. He’d seen her make that mistake before; she forgets where she puts her keys and then has this whole hassle with the grocery bags.

  If she does that now, he’ll do it today.

  The thought stops him. So it’s really gonna happen. After all the planning, all these months, all the hiding and watching. He feels a surge of euphoria and fear mixed together, like a shot of syrup in his veins.

  He watches her in the van’s side mirror as she comes up the sidewalk. He needs her to get close enough to see him clearly but not feel threatened.

  When she’s twenty yards away he gets out of the van and shoves the door closed hard.

  Embarrassed grin. “Sorry,” he says. “Didn’t mean to slam it.”

  She returns the smile. A shared secret. A little bond. How clumsy of him.

  The woman is nearing middle age now. She looks smaller and rounder than she had back then. The frizzy hair, not dyed, is going gray. Something around her eyes suggests loneliness; something around her mouth suggests she has given up hoping that might change.

  He moves around to the back of the van and opens the doors, takes out a tool kit in a canvas bag, and begins to head toward the entrance of the building basement. He wants her to get a good look at him. That will make her less suspicious. Phone company guy in overalls with a little hitch in his right leg, hat on backward.

  He drops off the bag of tools. Then he turns as if he were going back to the truck. He has the clipboard in his hand.

  She hesitates at the bottom of the steps that lead up to the front door of the apartment.

  She stopping? Forget something? Don’t leave.

  No. She’s trying to remember where her keys are. She begins to move up the six steps to the front door. She is trying to figure out if there is a way she can manage the lock without stopping, without putting down all her things. She grimaces as she gropes for the keys in her purse, but she can’t move her hand very much. Too many grocery bags. She is realizing it now, what he could see from the van. She ain’t that smart.

  Not hardly. If she had been, everything might have turned out differently. She wouldn’t have ruined everyone’s life.

  Stay in the present, he thinks. This, right now.

  He moves to the bottom of the steps.

  “Ma’am? Let me lend you a hand. Here, I can open it for you.”

  Don’t ask. Make her stop you.

  Voice steady, friendly, like he had practiced in front of the mirror. He is moving up the steps. He has his pen out, as if he’d been writing something on his clipboard. He slips it back in the breast pocket of the overalls, with the name Jim on it, right below the phone company logo.

  “That’s okay,” she says. She is hesitant but not fearful.

  “Don’t be silly,” he says. “It’s nothing. Just take a second.”

  She isn’t sure. But she doesn’t say no.

  “Lemme open it for you.”

  “Well, I, I have to get my key.”

  “Lemme hold the groceries then.”

  She would be most worried about putting down the groceries. You put those plastic bags down and everything falls out. It would be a relief not to.

  She hands the two grocery bags over. He takes them in his gloved hands.

  “Thanks. Very nice of you,” she says.

  “My pleasure.”

  She opens the door and steps inside.

  He begins to hand the bags back to her, leaning his arms through the open doorway.

  She is smiling.

  It only takes a second to push his way into the foyer and shove her farther inside. He shuts the door and drops the plastic bags, and the groceries spill out on the floor. A white thin trail begins to leak from a fallen milk container. He pulls a heavy plastic bag from his overalls, one he had in advance, one she cannot tear. He pulls it over her head.

  His smile has turned upside down into the bad-man frown. Where he grew up, you practice that as a kid. And perfect it on the street.

  She hasn’t said a word. She is too surprised.

  Now it’s too late.

  He can see her eyes through the plastic. They’re huge. Shock melting into fear. He knows that look. He had seen it inside. Even strong men get it—when they realize it’s the end. Her fear is so big it startles him for a second. She’s gonna have an effing heart attack. The bag is inflating and deflating with her huge, gulping panicked breaths. His big, gloved hands are around her neck, sealing the bag. The bag is fogging up inside.

  She is fighting him now. Thrashing to free her arms, which he has pinned across her chest. He lifts her off the ground. Eliminates her leverage.

  She tries to call out, but it’s all just gasping. She’s too terrified to generate sound.

  Good. She should be scared. Too bad it will only be a few seconds. Not scared for ten years. Not seeing her life chip away, like old fucking paint.

  “You know who I am, you goddamn bitch?” he says in a loud whisper.

  She thrashes, then stops, then thrashes again. She’s losing energy. She thrashes again.

  “This is for Peanut. You worthless piece of shit.”

  She loses consciousness. Then the bag stops inflating and deflating. She ain’t huffing and puffing now.

  She ain’t anything.

  He keeps his hands around the bag and her neck until he’s sure.

  He lays her down.

  Then he opens the door. Picks up the clipboard he has left outside. He skips down the steps, as if he ain’t got a thought in the world. He grabs the tool bag. Then he heads back to the van. He even looks down as if he were checking something on the clipboard. A work order or some shit.

  He pops the driver’s side door open and slips in, putting the tool bag beside him. Ignition. Side mirror. Check for traffic. He pulls out.

  He breathes deeply to calm himself. It takes a few blocks to relax. He’s done it. No more dreaming about it, doing it in his mind. He’s no-shit-really-done-it.

  It doesn’t feel like he thought it would. And God knows he had thought about it. For months. For years. Seen it in his head, like he was watching a movie. Visualization, man. Dream it. See it. Make it happen.

  It feels like he’s still watching himself. He is calmer than he ever imagined. He feels serene.

  So, it’s begun. After all this time.

  Be cool. Stay in the present. Think.

  Because he’s just getting started.

  Five

  7:50 P.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  Civilians rarely spot the sharpshooters. The camouflaging surrounding the White House is too expert. The rifles, however—mostly Remington M24s—are routinely sighted, safeties engaged, to keep the marksmen sharp. The hardest part is fighting the boredom.

  Rena glances at the rooftops around Lafayette Park and spots subtle movement.

  In the hours since the call, he has managed to relax, run, and shower. Now he is back in the charcoal suit and blue tie. He clears security at the white guardhouse and crosses the driveway to the entrance to the West Wing.

  White House Chief of Staff Spencer Carr is waiting for him in the large eggshell-white lobby.

  “Peter, thanks for coming.”

  Lifeless handshake.

  Message delivered:

  I’m not happy about your being here.

  Carr, a former Internet executive and Silicon Valley congressman, is handsome in an arid way, like a Hollywood actor too good looking for character roles but not appealing enough for leads. So he plays villains.

  He is famous in the Nash administration for three things: vast wealth, intense loyalty, and extreme ruthlessness.

  “Is there anything more you can tell me about why I’m here, sir?” Rena asks.

  “I’m in the dark, Peter,” Carr lies. The lie is meant to be obvious, a sign of disrespect. Rena nods, holding Carr’s gaze long enough to show he understands.

  A few moments later the president’s private secretary, Sally Swanson,
rescues them to say the president will see them in the Residence. A meeting in the Residence, rather than the Oval Office, suggests the president wants this meeting unobserved.

  Swanson leads them through her small office next to the president’s and out a door to the West Colonnade, the breezeway overlooking the Rose Garden that links the West Wing to the living quarters. The West Wing was once the greenhouse. It was converted to offices under Theodore Roosevelt in 1902 when he needed the second-floor offices of the old mansion for his large family. It has kept expanding since.

  They enter through French doors facing the back of the mansion and take an elevator to the second floor. Halfway down the large central hallway Swanson opens a door guarded by a Secret Service agent with an electronic earpiece and suit that bulges over a holster.

  Inside, the president sits on a floral sofa, dressed in gray slacks and a crisp white dress shirt open at the collar, watching ESPN.

  He turns and Rena looks into the most famous smile in the world. “Peter Rena,” the president says warmly.

  James Barlow Nash. The latest and most successful of the Nashes of Nebraska. The great-grandson of an-honest-to-god famous western lawman. Great-grandpa was suspiciously rich when he retired. Nash’s grandfather expanded the fortune and moved into politics, not by running for office but arranging for other people to hold it on his behalf. Nash’s father became a senator, and, even more remarkably, a Democrat, albeit one who denounced “communism, communalism, and most other isms that don’t start with the word capital.” Nash completed the transition—from regional figure to national one, and from conservative Democrat to something harder to define.

  On a coffee table in front of Nash sits a small glass of whiskey, neat. Probably Labrot & Graham, Rena thinks, a Kentucky bourbon Nash doesn’t like people to know he prefers. “It’s bad politics to have favorites,” Nash likes to tell aides. One of Nash’s famous legal pads—supposedly he fills one each day—plus his beloved antique Parker pen, sit on the sofa beside him.

  Nash summons everyone to sit and walks to a bookcase bar.

  “Peter?”

  “Whatever you’re drinking, sir.”

  Nash looks at Carr, who nods, and the president brings over two whiskeys.