The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy

by Robert MacLean

  Of course we knew better. W.T. was after that tape. The vice presidency at least, depending what he had on the House Speaker, was now in his grasp, and the only thing that could jerk it away again was a few feet of digital tape in which he appeared with a rubber glove on his head and sodomized himself with a household appliance.

  But those first surprise attempts were all he made. It was either in a bank vault or on Belton’s person, by now he’d made copies anyway and, break-ins or no break-ins, his alliance with Belton was still in place.

  And why shouldn’t they proceed together? There was an opening at the top big enough to park a truck in. They could either go ahead without Reb and rehabilitate him later or forget him for good.

  Whatever they decided it was the moment to move. W.T. was due to testify at a congressional hearing and he would want to know what Belton had before he sat down with the microphones. After all, what could a MiniCam in a closet and a receiver in a van actually see? He’d had a cone on his face!

  No, W.T. had to see the tape first, we knew that. If Belton wanted W.T. on his side when he went in there to address the nation he had to show his cards. Otherwise it could get bloody. We didn’t know what W.T. had on Belton but if he called his bluff on the tape they’d be machine-gunning one another, Belton from his forum, W.T. from the Senate floor.

  The tape had to change hands.

  “The tape has to change hands, Lewman.”

  “We want to ask you a few questions about the assault on the Vice President’s office, Wordsworth.”

  I leaned on his desk. “Lewman, will you listen? This is blackmail of an elected official we have here!”

  “No complaints have been made about that, Wordsworth. No charges. I’d have had you picked up but we’ve been watching you.”

  “Got a reliable witness?”

  “If he calls you daddy we’ve got you.”

  “Lewman, this is the most important piece in the game. With this—follow me, now—with this the President’s got them! Both of them! He’ll be in control! He can give his administration a whole new start!”

  “That’s federal evidence you’re talking about, Wordsworth. The Attorney General will want to see that.”

  “I’m sure they’ll both want to consult with you.”

  Agents were assigned to follow Belton Haines, Tiffany, his associates and members of his staff, and without the knowledge of the Secret Service to follow the Secretary of State, his wife, his aides, his office personnel and the Secret Servicemen who guarded him.

  Their phones were tapped. Their fax machines monitored. Email accounts hacked and studied. Their envelopes x-rayed. If anything larger than a business letter was Fed Exed the package was intercepted and squeezed. Any of Belton’s people who even approached the State Department were to be stopped and searched. None did.

  As far as we knew they hadn’t fixed any drop sites. At all suspicious public locations their behavior was circumspect. Careful. Unconcerned. Blasé.

  The two of them actually did wind up in the same federal building one day, and by a coincidence so haphazard it could only have been generated by life they found themselves in the same washroom, standing at adjacent sinks, greeting each other in the mirror.

  “Lo, Belton,” said W.T.

  “Wayne.”

  They ran water until the temperature was right and pumped soap. Neither seemed pressed to biodegrade.

  The Secret Service escort stood by the door. A guy at a third sink patted his hair back and went over his face with a fingertip. Someone was sitting in a stall.

  Belton and W.T. worked up a farmhand lather.

  “How’s Nola?”

  “Nola’s fine, fine. Just fine.”

  The merest tone change would be enough for the subcommittee.

  “How’s Mrs. Haines? Huh.”

  Belton watched him for a moment, the report is quite clear, and they rinsed up and carried their hands to the towel dispenser, neutral as high-level homosexuals.

  The guy at the mirror fingered the skin on his throat. No one came out of the stall.

  They pushed their paper towels through the chrome trap door.

  “Well. See you, Belton.”

  “Yeah.”

  They went out.

  Pressure was building like repressed gas.

  On the night before W.T. was to testify Lord Battersby was giving a party. It would be the last event before the Fourth of July, which closed the season, and the Secretary of State would be the guest of honor.

  Belton would be there. The idea was to create a relaxed context where Inner Washington could stand around with the top contenders for the country’s leadership. You know how the Brits like to think they’re at the center of things.

  The FBI was not invited. Secret Servicemen for the Secretarty and his wife, yes, but the Ambassador was having no underdressed federal policemen hovering around and lowering the tone. Here would be any number of chances for the hand-off.

  We weren’t invited either. Tiffany would be there and there was a well-known uneasiness between the two women. Alberta’s presence could only be a distraction, was Battersby’s thinking.

  “Lord Battersby!” she pleaded. “It’s the climax of the season! How can you leave us out?

  “But Belton won’t mind!” she said.

  Flirting wasn’t going to work. Maybe I should have called him.

  “You could ask him!

  “Oh, Lord Battersby, please, I—”

  There was no question of crashing. His private security people would be at the gate, a social secretary at the door, we’d have to present our invitations, an aide would take us to the living room. Hard to sneak in.

  “I just—” There were tears in her voice. “I—” She sobbed and swallowed, took a quavering breath. “It’s my first season in Washington!” came gushing out. “And now I can’t go to the best party!” She held her throat and swallowed, hiccupped, sniffed, wept.

  “Oh, you will? You will? Oh, Lord Battersby, thank you! Thank you so much! Yes! Yes! Oh, thank you!”

  She hung up and I expected her to straighten her face and dry her eyes, so cynical had I grown. But she wept on.

  “Don’t look at me!” she cried and ran and locked herself in the bathroom, wailing, and I just had to stand there with my hands in my pockets.

  • • •

  We dropped Shoop a few blocks away and the taxi took us along Embassy Row to the Ambassador’s residence. It was big and dignified-looking, columns and vines and so forth, and stood on a few acres of golf green with its back to the Creek. Iron-spike fence and limos all over the courtyard with chauffeurs inside air-conditioning themselves.

  We dismissed the coach and went up to the door. A butler opened, our hands were stamped and we were ushered inwards.

  “Ah,” beamed Battersby, “here’s the poppet. Here’s the frippet.” He held her hand in both of his. “I hoped you’d fetch up. Are you terribly brassed off we didn’t A-list you? It’s all on account of thingamadite, bless his little cotton socks. Load of codswollop if you ask me but there it is. And Word! By jove. Here are Mrs. Haines and Mr. Wallace,” he told the woman beside him. “My sister, Lady Agnes.”

  “Mhello.” Lady Agnes had a bag-of-broken-eggs asymmetry about her. Classically English. Pasta-green complexion and a dress fastened at odd angles. It could only be moments until she collapsed inwards and left an empty skin.

  “The damp weather’s so bad for my hah,” she told Alberta. “When I woke this morning I had a spot on my nose. I hope you’re not going to tell my hand, Mr. Wallace. One knows too much already. Now mind you behave.”

  W.T. drew Alberta’s hand towards him but she slipped his grip before he could grind her fingers. “You look almost human tonight, Wayne. Don’t spoil it.”

  People were coming behind us and I moved around to Nola. After Lady Agnes she looked sort of all right. She had the worn-out-but-willing air of one who has suffered every possible sexual experiment without much comprehension a l
ong time ago.

  “Howdy-do,” she said, extending her hand, but before I could remind her we’d met Alberta was guiding me away.

  Two security types in tuxes and no one else in the living room. We passed through to another salon and out through French doors to a patio. It was a garden party.

  Five hundred or so people stood around drinking on the lawn. A few fox-trotted on an open-air dance floor to a Peter Duchin style orchestra, I don’t think it was him, and off from the house stood a tent, circus-size and blue-striped as for a tournament.

  We made our way through the crowd. Congressmen, cabinet secretaries, embassy people, top-of-the-heap civil servants and a sprinkling of columnists and TV journalists. Belton was standing in a big circle.

  “He could have passed it at the receiving line,” I said. “Given it to a guard.”

  “Why draw attention? It will be much easier here.” Besides, it would be through a go-between, we’d already put that together. Norman would have been the logical choice but he was standing by at the White House. We had managed to convince Mrs. President that we could do this and she and Norman were holding her husband in readiness.

  Celebrado was there, he could make the score. He was in tight with Reb and there was a cheroot-and-crossed-bandoleros look about him tonight I didn’t like.

  Ivan the Terrible was on his cell phone looking like a self-assured political manipulator. The protocol was to turn slightly from the company and bend forward, index figer to ear, and then fold and resume your party face. Wouldn’t he like to trade in.

  Same for the German. They were looking for leverage these days.

  Tiffany was there with a suspiciously large purse. The McGuffin was home-video-cassette-size, likely, and not for the dinner-jacket pocket. If she could be trusted not to lose it.

  Security heavies with neutral expressions circulated quietly, wanting to hold your glance but looking away. Could be any of them.

  And here was a surprise. Recky was there! I thought she’d be in mourning or something, she couldn’t be that thick-skinned.

  But then this was politics. She’d have to be there to outface the assumption that Reb was perhaps unbalanced.

  Politics is like show business, once you’ve got a face you can come back. She’d be putting out some sort of line. Orgone therapy, primal scream, something.

  “Poor the vees presidon,” said Madame. “She say he is nervous from the shooter and patati patata. On the tele they show him just the top from the waist. You Americans.”

  “Drink?” I said, handing in my glass.

  “I won’t say no. You try to smooth me now after this so long delay? Each times I see you you are very tough to me.”

  “You smell good,” I said, more or less to placate her. She stretched her cleavage holding her wrist to my nose. “Here, you can see the smell.”

  “You know what your trouble is, Wankwurst?” Gora barged between us with her bags, squeezing sideways and rolling her shoulders. “You’re too happy.”

  “I know,” I said. “I apologize.”

  She disappeared like a bad witch.

  Nola was now to be seen. The receiving line had dissolved and they’d be serving supper. First-in-liners were drifting towards the tent.

  And Battersby, why couldn’t he have it? The special relationship, the British call it. They’d want to cement that.

  I counted possibilities as they trickled by and Madame began some version of How Some Guy Did Her Bad. The band was into a latinized And I Love Her and Alberta and Belton were cha-cha-ing on the dancefloor. She turned and teased him with her shoulders.

  “He tries to flirt me but I don’t have the taste to do it.”

  The music became Yesterday and they slow-danced tentatively. Not close, not distant. She had a way of holding him off and reclining in his embrace at the same time.

  “He break my balls, can you say this? And he becames fat. Plaf, plaf, plaf.” She shaped it as it overhung.

  She’d be asking him what made him want to continue with her and he’d say, what, he’d say you hurt me. I haven’t been hurt for a long time. It felt good. Right?

  And she’d say oh, Belton, why does it have to be me? I’m sure Tiffany’s much nicer.

  And he’d say I don’t want nice! How am I supposed to know why, it’s like loving a piece of music.

  And she’d say don’t say that. What do you get out of saying that?

  And he, knowing it was an aspect of her perfection that there was no reaching her, he’d say I have to fill the air with words just to keep you going. I never had to explain myself until you.

  And she’d say darling don’t give me all the plumbing, I can never follow the pipes.

  “You better sharpen up!” went on Madame. “I said you think I am a pencil?”

  He was holding her close now, pressing to him those sexual characteristics we smilingly refer to as secondary. He knew she was working against him but, well, love. He was playing a scene for her. With her.

  I’d die for you, he’d be saying.

  Oh, don’t be so doomy! I’d much rather you lived for me. You’d smell better.

  The music picked up with P.S. I Love You and they left the floor.

  I became aware that it had for some time been my turn to speak. “Don’t try to change things,” I said. “Accept.” That usually covers it.

  “And yes,” she sighed.

  “Shall we eat something?”

  It was getting late. Soon, darkness. Then how would we find it?

  “Sais pas,” she shrugged. She gave me that hey-baby-c’mon-c’mon-c’mon look. Wanted me to sneak off into the trees with her and consort.

  “I need fuel,” I said, talking her arm.

  In the tent desire shrank a little from the air-conditioning. We went to the buffet and viewed the thinly-sliced cold roast beef and so forth. English food.

  Alberta came up on my other side.

  “Tonight another game?” Madame asked her. “Little to little you become rich.”

  “Why, Madame Loose!”

  “Lucerne,” she said, moving away to shop for pickles. “You speak like a foot.”

  “Belton doesn’t have it.”

  “I saw you frisking each other.”

  “Well what have you found out? Are you going to waste the evening with that? She does make an impression at a distance but close up!”

  “I render myself at the table,” Madame told me, leaving us.

  “Her plastic surgeon can hardly hold her together.”

  “I don’t think it’s Recky. Norman says Reb doesn’t know.”

  “And you believe him?”

  “I have no fixed opinion on the matter. I mention these things to amuse you.”

  “I wish it were working.”

  The mess sergeant slapped my plate with a spoon of potato salad.

  “Time’s running out,” she said. “We have to do something.”

  We went to different tables, she to join Belton and Stolkov, I to Tiffany and Madame. The host and hostess sat close by with Recky and the Tuppers, it was a little embarrassing.

  Nola’s purse was hooked on the back of her chair and Alberta opened and poked in it as she passed, gave me a little shake of the head. “Remember not to say anything polysyllabic,” she told me.

  Tiffany turned on her. “Polly Who?”

  I picked at my scotch and salad.

  A few tables away sat the unpicturesque Gora, spoon in fist. “What are you lookin’ at, dipstick?”

  “You,” I informed her.

  “What for?”

  “Possibly because you’re in front of me.”

  “Crawl back into the drain.”

  “Food all right?” came in Battersby. He was accustomed to handling with grace these little tensions between the highbrows and the hoi polloi.

  “What’s that joke about the European dream? Ah, I have it. It has British policemen, French cooks, German organizers, Swiss engineers and Italian lovers. What? What? Now, the Euro
pean nightmare has, now listen, British cooks, German policemen, French engineers, Italian organizers and Swiss lovers. What? Hah hah. Creases me up.”

  “Really, Randolph.”

  “Ah. Everything all right? French wine tonight, Madame, ça va?”

  Belton looked at W.T. W.T. looked at Belton.

  “I hope we’re going to have sweety,” said Lady Agnes. “Did you tell them we want sweety?”

  Celebrado looked at Recky. Recky looked at Celebrado. He made a circle of thumb and forefinger and fluttered his tongue at her through it.

  Tugboat Annie said, “You couldn’t read the skin on my ass.”

  “Could you moderate your language just a touch,” pleaded Battersby. He looked around to see how far this was carrying.

  “Well you will row these people in,” his sister told him.

  “This sort of thing’s not on,” he said.

  “Dickhead,” said Gora.

  I refused to be provoked.

  “Yes I knew her,” Alberta was saying. “She used to be lovely. Now she’s fat and has an ugly mouth.”

  She looked at me questioningly and I just had to shrug. She now rose and came over to us, picked up Madame’s handbag and emptied it on the table. “Could you lend me a doofy, I’ve forgotten mine.”

  “What the hell in the world?”

  “Oh, but of course, you haven’t used them for decades. Tiffany, please, could you?”

  The latter leapt to her feet holding her purse behind her. “Hey where did you land?”

  Belton looked nervous. This was not the moment for a public scene.

  “Now, now, ladies,” said Battersby, approaching cautiously, “no need to get our knickers twisted.”

  The women circled, Tiffany backing. “Hey you’re gonna get a kick in the pants!”

  People were noticing. Battersby gave Alberta a look of betrayal and held Tiffany’s chair for her. “Now, sit your dear little self down—”

  “If by dear you mean expensive I’m inclined to agree.”

  “And keep your paws off Belton!”

  Battersby looked around helplessly, mortification paralyzed Tiffany for just that instant and Alberta lunged in and grabbed the bag away, shook it out on the floor.

  “Oh, of course not. You won’t need them until you drop. Wayne, I appeal to you I’m absolutely gushing.” She grabbed at his pockets until he could pull himself away. Nola scream-wept.