By now, Whitney has become quite amiable toward me. Several glasses of champagne on top of some righteous blow can bring out the friendliness in just about anyone. Besides, that’s why she’s here—to make me happy. As we work our way through dinner she’s very touchy-feely, fingertips on thigh, foot brushing against ankle, finger-feeding me from her plate. I’m enjoying the attention. Her nails brush my crotch under the table; I react predictably. Buster’s lady is doing the same with him, but not as much—this isn’t their first date.
We pig out like madmen, eating and drinking with gluttonous abandon. By the time dinner’s over we’ve knocked back two bottles of ’95 Haut-Brion (three hundred dollars a bottle and worth every penny; I can blithely say that since Buster’s buying) on top of the champagne, plus a half-bottle of Château-d’Yquem that absolutely blows my head off. This is a thousand-dollar dinner, easy. I know the bill is going on Buster’s expense account but the hedonistic excess staggers me, particularly since the two women don’t know great wines like these from a decent twenty-dollar bottle of cabernet from the supermarket. That’s not a put-down of them; twenty bucks is my speed, too. I come from money but I never learned how to spend it like this. Maybe the difference is Buster’s earned his, mine fell into my lap.
Finally, almost mercifully, we’re finished. Buster barely looks at the check as he signs it on his house account.
“Thanks,” I say. “That was awesome, and that’s an understatement.”
“Perk of the job.” He smiles, satisfied with himself. “When Philip Morris gets their monthly bill they won’t even notice, this is a pimple on their ass. By the way, you were Roger Thomas tonight.”
“Who’s Roger Thomas?”
“Chairman of Philip Morris. Another of Rex Clements’s classy buddies.”
“Your partner knows all the right people.”
“We’re the sweepers that clean the elephant shit off the street after the circus parade’s passed by. Someone has to do it.”
The ladies are in no shape for walking, especially in their four-inch fuck-me stilettos, so we cab back to Buster’s place. Whitney sits on my lap for the short ride. We make out like bandits. Ditto Buster and Tiffany. Whitney’s breath is musky. She tastes like sex.
As soon as we’re inside Buster’s house it’s stripped-down hot and heavy, no polite chitchat. I’m loaded and I’m horny. I lead Whitney to my guest room, shoes, jackets, shirt, pants, skirt coming off as we go, a trail of discarded clothes. She was okay to talk to and lovely to look at, but this is why we’re together tonight. That I have no feelings for her beyond pure lust doesn’t matter. I’m living in the moment.
The foreplay goes on and on, I’m riding a whirlwind. She’s a gumby, she really has me going.
Then it’s over. And we’re left with each other.
• • •
Standing in the vestibule in a guest bathrobe, I say good night to the two women. It’s well after midnight. Both of them are dressed, pretty much put back together as they were when they arrived. Buster took care of them; I saw two envelopes discreetly passed, quickly tucked away in their small evening bags. He’s in bed now, sound asleep.
We hear the sound of the cab honking its horn outside. “Thanks for a nice evening,” I say to Whitney.
“Me, too.”
“I’ll be in the taxi,” Tiffany says. “Don’t take long.”
“Just be a minute.”
Tiffany staggers down the front steps to the cab. Whitney fishes in her purse, pulls out a card, hands it to me. I look at it—her name and telephone number, nothing more. The number looks like it’s an answering service. She takes a pen from the purse, scribbles another number under the printed one.
“Maybe we could go out sometime,” she says uncoquettishly. “A regular date, like a movie, the next time you’re in Washington.” She points to the handwritten number. “That one’s my personal number.”
“Well . . .”
“I’m not a regular at this, only with a straight-up person like Buster. Then, if I like the guy . . . when I saw you, I liked you.”
It’s late, I’m half-stoned, wiped out from the sex we had. And tired, it’s been a long day. “A movie. That could be fun.”
“I hope you call.” She opens the door. “But if you don’t, I still had a good time.”
She’s gone before I can say, “Me, too.”
• • •
It’s five o’clock. I slept fitfully for a few hours, but I’m up now. I don’t want to go back to sleep—I don’t want to be here at all. It was a nice act of friendship for Buster to fix me up with a sexy lady, wine and dine us like royalty, and foot the bill to boot, but that’s not what I want. I want resolution; I need it. What I don’t want is having to stare at Buster across a morning cup of coffee and face more questions about the killing at James Roach’s farm.
I fumble into my rancid clothes, splash cold water on my face, scribble Buster a thank-you note. It’s still dark when I close his front door behind me and drive off in search of an open diner.
• • •
I sit in my assigned carrel in the Library of Congress main reading room, waiting for the magazine articles and journals I’ve requested. Earlier, over coffee and scrambled eggs in a coffee shop near Dupont Circle whose other night-owl patrons were cops and assorted graveyard shifters, I’d checked my answering machine. There were a few messages of no consequence and one from my mother, requesting my presence at dinner tonight. And that I bring my new friend, Maureen, so that my mother can meet her and Maureen can pass muster. She didn’t use the words “pass muster,” but that was tacitly implied.
That’ll be fun, watching my mother size up Maureen. Sparks may fly.
The runner, an old geezer who looks like Bartleby the Scrivener, wheels his cart up to my cubicle, hands me my box, and shuffles on. I dump the contents onto the desk and start sifting through them.
What I have in front of me is everything I could find in the library’s files on the subject of James Roach, going back over three decades, to the hot center of the Vietnam War. I arrange the literature in chronological order, oldest to most recent—political science magazines and journals like Foreign Affairs that deal with the CIA, the military-industrial complex, and matters of state and the interlockings of economics and government. I pick up the first piece, a New York Times Sunday magazine article from May 1967, and begin reading.
Three hours later, I’m finished. I push back from my cramped position, stretch the kinks out of my back, and reflect on what I’ve learned.
James Roach is a complex, disturbing, fascinating character who’s led an exciting, turbulent life. Married four times, once to a member of the Dutch royal family. An Army Special Forces officer in the early 1960s, with a stint in Vietnam, he left the service and signed up with the CIA, based in Southeast Asia—Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, South Vietnam—where he was involved in various furtive activities. Roach was, among his many shadowy enterprises, a go-between for foreign weapons merchants and U.S. agencies that wanted to arm various rebel factions but were barred from doing so by U.S. law. He made a fortune dealing guns, and also ran afoul of the law.
In 1979 he was charged with violating laws governing illegal transfers and sales of weapons to foreign governments, but after two years of pretrial investigation and depositions the case was dropped on the eve of going to trial for “national security reasons.” The case was never resurrected, despite the protestations of the U.S. attorney handling it (a Democratic holdover from the Carter administration). The files were permanently sealed.
That, as far as I could find, was Roach’s only official brush with the law. Other allegations about him, mainly regarding other arms dealings, have surfaced over the years, but nothing’s ever stuck to him.
The contacts he’d made over his years working for the government helped him build a thriving international trading firm. He still brokered arms, but legitimately now. In the 1990s he began investing heavily in tech stocks, emerging a
s an early, savvy Internet entrepreneur, alongside his other businesses. The latest Forbes estimate of his personal wealth is over two hundred fifty million dollars.
Also starting around 1990, he began buying his way back into the political mainstream. He contributes substantial sums of money to both political parties, and has friends in high places in both camps. In 1998, the Democrats rewarded him with an assistant secretary of commerce position dealing with the World Trade Organization, and after the 2000 elections he was given his present post. He still owns his trading companies, but his holdings are in blind trusts.
James Roach is a textbook if depressing example of the revolving door that spins between the public and the private sector, where the lines are so blurred as to be nonexistent. He is, clearly, a man who’s accustomed to having power and isn’t reluctant to use it.
There’s lots of intriguing information, but nothing damning—except the decades-old situation involving the failed arms prosecution. I jot down some notes on a sheet of legal paper, and leave the cool confines of the library.
• • •
It’s a long shot—the case has been closed for over twenty years—but it’s the only lead I can pursue on my own, so I might as well give it a try.
The federal prosecutor who tried to put Roach away is long retired; I don’t even know if he’s still alive. His last listed address was on Woodley Place in Northwest D.C., but when I find that number in the reverse directory and dial it, it isn’t him, the party on the line had had this phone number for ten years.
Late afternoon. I’m back home now. I sit at my PowerBook, running the man’s name, Maxwell Simmons, through various databases, starting with the regional telephone directories for the metropolitan Washington area. Simmons is a common name, but not with a Maxwell in front of it. There shouldn’t be many of them around. Hopefully, if he’s alive, he didn’t move to some faraway burg in the Smoky Mountains in North Carolina or some other such remote outpost where people like him retire to because it’s cheap.
No luck in D.C., no luck in any of the Maryland counties in proximity to Washington, going as far north as Baltimore, east to Annapolis, south to St. Mary’s; nor can his name be found in the nearby Virginia counties—Arlington, Fairfax, Loudon, or Prince William.
He could be anywhere; or nowhere. I should check the obituaries—the Washington Post would have run an obit on him if he died. Or his number could be unlisted, certainly a possibility.
I’m about to get out of the telephone search and start looking through federal records when the name Maxwell Simmons pops up on my screen. It’s in Essex County in Virginia, which is due west from where I am now, on the other side of the Potomac. The specific location is Taneyburg, a graceful Revolutionary War–era village much like Jamestown, located not far from some of the great battlefields of the Civil War—Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania. When I was a kid my dad and I toured the Civil War battlefields of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. That trip was one of the principal reasons I became a teacher of American history. Those two weeks I spent with my father were my most memorable vacation.
I dial the number. It rings several times—five, six, seven. I’m ready to hang up when a voice comes over the line. An old man’s voice—frail, tentative. “Hello?”
“Is this Maxwell Simmons?”
There’s a pause, then: “Yes.”
“The former federal prosecutor?”
“Who is this?”
I’ve flushed my quarry—no point in beating around the bush. “Someone who’s looking into James Roach’s past.”
A longer hesitation than the first. “What about it?”
“The case you were prosecuting over twenty years ago, that got thrown out. I’m trying to get information about that.”
“Are you a reporter?” he asks apprehensively. “One of these Woodward-Bernstein types?”
“No, sir,” I assure him. “I have no connection with the press.”
“Detective? Police?”
“No. I’m a private citizen. I’m not connected to anything. Or anybody.” I get a quick idea. “I’m a history professor. I’m researching for a paper I’m doing on arms dealing over the past quarter-century. Your name came up in conjunction with Roach.”
“A paper,” he says flatly. “You want to write a paper about Roach?”
“I might,” I tell him, “if I can come up with an angle.”
The old man sees through my ruse. “What’s the sonofabitch done now?” he rasps.
I smile—I like hearing him describe Roach like that. He might be willing to spill some beans. “I don’t know. Nothing. I’m . . .” I don’t want to say I’m a neighbor, in case this blows up in my face. “Can I come talk to you? In person?”
There’s another pause. Then: “Where’re you calling from?”
I can picture him fearfully looking out his window, to see if I’m camped outside his house. “Maryland,” I tell him. “I could come see you tomorrow, if that’s convenient,” I continue, pressing him.
The line is silent for some time, but he hasn’t hung up. “Mr. Simmons?” I prompt.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he answers with an attempt at finality. “All that’s buried in the past. And I prefer to keep any dealings I had with James Roach buried.”
I can’t take “no” for an answer, not after the trouble I’ve gone through to track this man down, and everything that’s led up to this. “Look,” I say, half groveling, half persuading, “just let me come visit with you. If you don’t want to tell me anything, I won’t force the issue. But let me come see you. There’s truth that needs to come out.”
There’s another long silence.
“Don’t you want to set the record straight, even after all this time?” I push. “So the rest of the world can know what you knew, back then.”
I’ve touched a distant chord—I can feel it over the line. “Okay,” he consents. “Got a pencil on you? I’ll give you directions.”
Maureen’s dressed to kill. “Am I presentable enough for your mother?” she teases me as I gape, taking my arm as we walk from her motel room to my car. “Have you been behaving yourself, Fritzie?”
The image of Whitney, in all her bodacious, naked glory, flashes in my mind, along with the image of me, equally naked, entwined with her. We were there less than twenty-four hours ago, a blink of the eye.
My emotions are roiled. I don’t owe Maureen any allegiance, emotional or sexual—she’s the one who set this agenda between us. But I feel guilty anyway, as if I cheated on her.
“I only have eyes for you.” Which is the truth, as we stand here. And beyond this moment, if I’m being honest with myself.
“Good.”
I look at her again. Her smile says nothing more than . . . what? I can’t figure her. The Mona Lisa could take lessons in inscrutability from this woman.
• • •
Dinner is to be an intimate group: Maureen and me, my mother, and the Franklins, an elderly couple who have been friends of mom’s since before I was born, here tonight as a beard, so mother’s machinations regarding Maureen won’t look so obvious. The Franklins are among the last of mother’s friends who are still alive. That’s an ongoing burden on her psyche, her friends dying on her. She must think about how much more time she has, and how she’ll spend it.
Seeing me married and settled down is her number one priority. Grandkids would be a bonus. I wish I could make her that gift. It would be nice to give her back one thing to make up for all she’s given me.
My mother comes out of the house and strides to us as we get out of my car. “Mother, this is Maureen O’Hara, don’t ask. Maureen, this is my mother, Mary Bradshaw Tullis, the doyenne of King James County.”
“Stop showing off your vocabulary, Fritz,” my mother scolds me, her eyes twinkling. She gives Maureen the once-over, extends a parchment-thin hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you at last. You don’t look the least bit like an ogre.”
“Mother . . .”
Maureen laughs. “I’m harmless. Trust me.”
“She’s tall,” my mother informs me, as if I didn’t notice. “Almost as tall as you. You have a regal bearing, my dear,” she compliments Maureen.
“Thank you, Mrs. Tullis. That’s lovely for you to say.”
She’s trying to seduce mom. But my mother can’t be easily seduced, she’s seen way too much in her long life.
We walk through the house to the veranda, where the bar’s been set up. Mother seems to want to like Maureen. The woman is a Harvard professor, after all—good credentials. “Come let me introduce you to my friends,” she says, interlocking Maureen’s arm in hers.
She escorts Maureen over to the Franklins, who already have their drinks. Even in her low sandals Maureen towers over my mother, but they make a striking couple. Two formidable women. I’m overmatched tonight, I know that already.
Dinner is delicious, as usual. We serve ourselves from the sideboard where Mattie has laid out the dishes—it’s her night off, she went into town with a friend after she cooked the meal. My mother has strategically placed Maureen next to her, on one side; I’m opposite them, sandwiched between Mr. and Mrs. Franklin.
The meal proceeds convivially. My mother and Maureen are in animated conversation throughout, most of it in tones too low for me to hear. I know that they’re talking about me; both keep stealing glances in my direction and then turning back to each other, giggling behind their hands like schoolgirls.
“Let us have a short break before dessert,” my mother suggests when we’ve finished. “Will you help me clear, dear?” she asks Maureen.
“Of course, Mary.”
It’s already “dear” and “Mary.” It isn’t a man’s world, despite the old aphorism; women only say that to humor us.
“We’ll join you in a moment,” my mother tells the Franklins and me, shooing us outside.
The Franklins decline; it’s late for them, they need to be on their way. We say our good-byes and I escort them outside to their old Cadillac. Mrs. Franklin clings to me as we walk to the driveway; her night vision is shot, she’s like an old dog, only comfortable in her own surroundings.
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