The Last Virginia Gentleman

by Michael Kilian

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know that he wanted to buy this horse? That he would have done if he hadn’t given his race money to that injured jockey?”

  “Yes. I heard them talking about it in the aid station. That’s why I bought it. I, I want to give it to him. A sort of surprise. I mean, I don’t want him to know it comes from me. I just want him to have it, for all that he did today. Does this sound crazy? I suppose it does. I don’t even know the man. I’m sorry. I just wanted something good to come out of today. And now I don’t know what to do.”

  “Like you say, you hardly know him. I’m his closest neighbor and one of his oldest friends. If I thought he’d accept such a gift, I would have bought it for him myself. He’s not much on charity—for himself. He paid off all his father’s debts without asking a dime from anyone.”

  “I didn’t mean it as charity. It was just an impulse.” She glanced up. The horse seemed to be staring at her. He was a very beautiful animal. May felt close to tears. “I don’t know what to do. I’ve bought this horse. I don’t even have a place to put him.”

  The Percy woman studied her for a moment, then nodded, as if to herself. “All right. I think there’s a way we can do this. I’ll take him off your hands.”

  “But I want him to go to Captain Showers.”

  “Of course. But we have to go about this a little obliquely. First thing, I’m going to have to buy him from you. It’ll be a hell of a lot easier getting him into David’s barn if we start from mine.”

  May still felt troubled. “I want to pay for the horse.”

  “I understand that. Your secret gift. But transferral of horse ownership is a trifle complicated, especially with good bloodstock. Let me pay you a sum, say a thousand? And you sign the papers over to me. We can go in the office and find a notary.”

  Granby cleared his throat. “I am a notary.”

  He looked very pained. May wondered if she could trust him—either of them. She trusted absolutely no one in L.A.

  “Not so much money,” May said. “Make it a hundred dollars.”

  Alixe Percy shook her head. “That’ll seem too strange for words, my dear. A thousand’s a more likely sum, though I daresay this animal looks like he’s worth a hell of a lot more than the ten thousand you bid. I don’t know how you got him so cheap.”

  “Okay,” said May, anxious to be gone. “A thousand. You’ll let me know what happens?”

  “I’ll invite you out the first time David races him.” She patted the horse’s neck, then fumbled about in the pocket of her jacket, pulling out some papers, cigarettes, a few odd dollar bills, and finally a checkbook.

  “This is very nice of you.”

  “Anyone who wants to do something for David Showers, that’s someone I’m always glad to help.”

  Four

  Robert Moody reached the White House in time to find General St. Angelo, the president’s national security adviser, still in charge at the White House situation room, commanding a motley, ad hoc crisis management team he had scraped together from weekend staff at the Pentagon, State Department, and Central Intelligence headquarters across the river in Langley. Except for a woman Spanish-language expert from the NSC Latin American section, the room was filled with men, their ties loosened, coats removed, and sleeves rolled up, all of them looking more bored and weary than tense. The scene reminded Moody of some Baltimore political back room during a long vote count, rather than the nerve center of the most powerful military force on earth.

  Maps, intelligence reports, diplomatic dispatches, and scrawl-covered notepads littered the conference table, with coffee cups set among them like the playing pieces of a game. At least the team wasn’t using computers. Moody hated the idea of the nation’s security apparatus being run by computers, as always seemed to be the case in the Pentagon war room. General St. Angelo liked to think, not interpret analyses. He was a first-rate national security adviser.

  “Update me,” said Moody, pulling up a chair next to the general.

  “The Mexican government has sent protests flying everywhere and moved some armored recon units down into the border area, mostly around the highway crossing at Ciudad Chetumal,” St. Angelo said. “They also put their air base there on alert. The Brits have sent a strongly worded protest to Guatemala City and put their troops in Belize on alert. Otherwise the situation remains the same as when we last reported. Stable for the moment, but potentially dangerous.”

  He was a quiet-spoken West Pointer. Like Moody, he had seen combat and been decorated in Vietnam. It made for a bond between them that few in the White House command structure could share.

  Moody nodded. He picked up the latest communiqué from Belize and glanced over it as he listened.

  “The American citizen who was shot was trying to get off the streets and got caught in some crossfire,” said one of St. Angelo’s aides. “The embassy has the body. He’s been identified. A missionary.”

  “Catholic?” said Moody, still reading. In Central American political terms, that would mean liberal, maybe leftist. It could also mean trouble—like the murdered nuns in El Salvador.

  “Protestant. Pentecostal or something.”

  “The president’s been informed?”

  “Of everything,” said the general, unhappily, “but he hasn’t been very interested.”

  “We’ll have him interested in time for the morning press briefing,” said Moody. He dropped the communiqué back on the table and, despite himself, yawned. A couple of others at the table reflexively did the same. He glared at them.

  “What are our assets?” Moody asked.

  “Covert?” asked one of the men from Langley.

  “Not spooks,” said Moody. “Troops and hardware.”

  “Elements of a destroyer flotilla in the Gulf of Honduras that will shortly be in boom-boom range of Belize City,” said St. Angelo. “Otherwise, nothing nearer than Key West.”

  Moody pulled one of the maps close, blinking as he studied it. “Near enough,” he said. He leaned back, rubbing his eyes. “This is only a suggestion. You can put it under the heading of precautionary measures. But I’d like to see our sternly worded messages backed up with a hint or two of American resolve. We must have a banana boat or two onloading at Belize City. I wouldn’t mind seeing a few marines landed there to provide dockside security. I’d like the marine guard at the embassy reinforced—by chopper, a lot of big, noisy, nasty-looking U.S. marine Jolly Green Giants. I don’t know what you have on the ramp at Key West, but I think an overflight of the capital area by U.S. military aircraft might be useful, too. Rooftop stuff. Chetumal, Belize City, Belmopan. And maybe Guatemala City.”

  “Okay, I think a reconnaissance flight or two might be in order,” said St. Angelo, nodding.

  The State Department man, a weekend desk officer, looked troubled. “With all due respect, sir, don’t you think this is overreacting? And provocative? Historically, Belize has been a British problem. It’s still a British protectorate. Technically, the Belizean chief of state is the queen of England, no different from Canada or Australia.”

  Moody turned his dark eyes on the man like a tank commander training his gun. The uppity little son of a bitch wasn’t even an assistant secretary.

  “I don’t give a shit about history,” Moody said. “And as far as I’m concerned, the British count about as much in this situation as fucking Luxembourg. I don’t know what’s going on in this piss-ant little country, but whatever it is, it’s going on two hundred miles from the goddamn Mexican oil fields at Tabasco. I suspect all this amounts to is a little south-of-the-border political gunplay that got out of hand, but I don’t want it to get so far out of hand that we have Mexicans and Guatemalans shooting at each other. And I don’t want any of those lunatic guerrilla groups down there deciding this is a great time to start shooting at everybody. Our job is to calm things down, and a couple of F-14s flying low enough to give haircuts can have a tremendously calming effect, isn’t that so, general?”r />
  “They’ll keep some heads down.”

  The State Department man was close to sputtering. “I think Secretary Hollis should be informed of your decision,” he said.

  “I’m sure he will be informed, just as soon as you can get to a phone,” Moody said. “But I want it on the record that I’ve made no decision. I’m not the commander in chief. I’ve made a suggestion concerning routine precautionary measures that might be taken to protect American lives, property, and interests pending a final determination by the president. Understood?”

  The State Department man flushed.

  “Do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  Moody glanced around the table, his eyes settling finally on the CIA’s representative. “The intelligence product on this sucks,” Moody said. “Can we get some fresher stuff?”

  “Consider it on the way.”

  Moody pushed his chair back. “Let’s all get some sleep and reconvene here at, say, seven A.M. I’m sure the president’s going to be calling a meeting of the NSC sometime in the morning. In the meantime, I’ll bring him up to date.”

  By “in the morning,” he meant when the president returned to the White House from his vacation.

  He stood up, feeling very, very good.

  Sometimes, when he was working late at night, Moody left the White House by going through the rooms on the state floor, using the main entrance instead of the less conspicuous doors of the West Wing office lobby. Walking along the mansion’s long, red-carpeted Cross Hall, with its marbled walls and pillars, venerable portraits and stately furnishings, gave him a reassuring comfort, a sense of belonging in his job. He liked the notion of the past presidents looking down on him, perhaps approvingly. Occasionally, he’d duck into the Red Room, where Dolley Madison used to play whist with drinking companions late into the night. There was a sumptuous painting above the mantel of Dolley’s young South Carolina cousin, Angelica Singleton, who had married widower Martin Van Buren’s son and was easily the loveliest first lady ever to have graced the Executive Mansion. Moody liked to stand there and gaze at her, much as he might were she alive.

  As he approached the Red Room this night, he heard voices. For a moment, he feared the president had returned, but they sounded like strangers. One voice he suddenly recognized, however. The pitch was high and the accent affected, a little like a bad nightclub comedian doing an impersonation of George Plimpton. It was Peter Napier, a would-be Washington socialite who had been a high-ranking errand boy in the campaign and was now on the staff of the party’s national committee. The man was a little weird and a total phony, but he’d proved very useful, willing to do whatever was asked of him. Moody recalled having once allowed the man a White House pass, but he’d thought it was temporary.

  Moody stepped into the doorway. Napier, startled, stopped in midsentence. He was with a well-dressed, middle-aged couple and a handsome boy Moody presumed was their son.

  “Good evening, Mr. Moody,” Napier said brightly. He was in his thirties, and had a plump, shiny face, pointy nose, and seriously receding dark hair. His smile was eager. Moody didn’t like him, but recognized the need to have people like that around. Someone had to fetch coffee, carry messages, and retrieve drunken politicians from their whorehouses.

  “Good evening.” Moody was curt.

  “I’d like you to meet Mr. and Mrs. Hamlin. He was campaign finance chairman in Ohio? And this is their son Kenny.”

  The boy, maybe nineteen or twenty, smiled as eagerly as Napier.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Moody said, without enthusiasm. “May I speak to you a moment, Mr. Napier?”

  The smile widened. “Sure thing, chief.”

  Moody didn’t go far out of earshot. “What the hell are you doing in here?” he asked.

  “Conducting a VIP tour. Senator Reidy asked the national committee to arrange it and I volunteered to do it.”

  “Are you on the White House access list?”

  “Well, sure. You put me on it yourself.”

  Moody made a mental note to have the man’s name removed. “You and your VIPs are going to have to leave,” he said. “We have a crisis management team working here tonight.”

  “I’ll have them out of here in two minutes, Mr. Moody. Nice to see you again.”

  Napier darted back into the Red Room. As Moody started down the hall again, he heard Napier say, “I’m awfully sorry, folks, but there’s a major international crisis underway and we’re going to have to cut this short. But I think you’ll be able to say you were in the White House at a very historical moment.”

  Moody shook his head, and hurried out the door. “If those people aren’t out of here in five minutes,” he said to the guard, “get them out and escort them to the gate.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Moody. Good night.”

  Moody owned two houses—a big, sprawling mansion outside Baltimore and a beachfront place just north of Ocean City—but after marrying Deena and then taking the White House job, he had bought an apartment in the Watergate complex, convenient to both his work and the capital’s social life. His driver had him home very quickly.

  Their housekeeper had gone to bed, but had left messages on the hall table saying that both Deena and Bernie Bloch had called. He decided to call them back in the morning. Both were doubtless upset with him. He needed some peaceful sleep.

  He switched his regular phone to an answering machine, but activated the direct line from the White House, a secure, closed system to which only a few had access. Then he made himself a nightcap and stepped out onto his long, curving balcony, which looked out over the Potomac at the dark shape of Roosevelt Island. Beyond its high trees were the glittering high rises of the Rosslyn section of Arlington. Upriver were the heights of Georgetown and its hilltop university, the tall twin spires of its chapel a European silhouette against the hazy night sky. Though it was late on a weekend summer night, there was enough traffic on the nearby Rock Creek Parkway to make the city seem to throb beneath his feet, like the constant if almost imperceptible tremble of a ship’s engines felt through the deck—a sensation of power. It was quite pleasing. The Virginia horse country seemed a million miles away.

  Peter Napier got his charges off the White House grounds onto Pennsylvania Avenue without too much embarrassing haste, and then accompanied them on foot to their hotel, the majestic, beaux arts Willard, two blocks away. The mother seemed very tired, prompting Napier to invite them all for a nightcap in the Round Robin Bar, calculating that the son might accept but they would not. In fact, the boy suggested just that when his parents declined, but the father somewhat sternly reminded him that he was underage.

  No great matter. The boy had expressed an interest in serving as a Senate page, and Napier had promised to see what could be arranged. He’d see the boy again. He’d look forward to that.

  When they parted, Napier made a point of saying that he would have to get up very early in the morning in case the White House called. After all, he said, there was a major international crisis. He was glad they didn’t ask where, as he didn’t know.

  Deena Moody was furious with her husband for ditching her in Dandytown the way he had—for making her face the sheriff and all the dumb but humiliating questions all alone. She’d get back at him for this in some truly nasty way at the first opportunity. Deena was a woman who earned her living by marrying men, and it occurred to her she was close to due for a promotion. That, of course, was a decision to be made after the next convention, when the president would make his call on a running mate for the next election. If he dumped the vice president for Moody, a possibility that at least one or two political columnists had already begun to ponder, that, she supposed, would be promotion enough. In the meantime, she was getting very tired of her husband’s job.

  The Blochs were going to drive her back to Washington in the morning. In the meantime, she thought she might as well find some way to take advantage of her husband’s absence. A couple of men in the inn’s bar had tr
ied flirting with her, but Deena was not at all interested in that. Sherrie Bloch, rattled by the deaths of the girl trainer and her husband, had gotten quite drunk and was spewing forth a lot of unkind revelations about her husband. These could be useful, indeed. Deena sat sympathetically with the woman, stretching out her own drinks and listening patiently. Sherrie was complaining that Bloch had sometimes used the Clay girl for sex. Deena already knew that. She wanted to know who else had jumped in the hay with the dead girl. She had a pretty good idea her husband had. Women were probably his only weakness, but it was a big one.

  Sherrie said her husband was extremely upset about something that night. Deena knew it wasn’t because of Vicky Clay. Except to complain about the sheriff’s handling of the investigation, Bernie Bloch had paid practically no attention to that little matter. Vicky might as well have been a horse who had died. Maybe less than that, since she didn’t cost him anything. What did it take for Bernie Bloch to value a woman? What would she have to be, or do? How had this dumb, mouse-voiced bimbo gotten her hooks into him, and kept them there for so many years?

  Sherrie was so drunk she probably couldn’t stand, but not enough to stop talking. They’d been joined by three others, a silly-looking couple as drunk as Sherrie was, and a young man whose type Deena instantly recognized, the kind who hung around money like a fruit fly hovering over a bowl of grapes. Deena wanted no part of him. Not now. Creeps like that were for a woman’s old age.

  She stood up. “Sherrie, honey. I’ve gotta go see somebody. You all right?”

  Sherrie waved her off. Deena took that as a blessing.

  Bloch was in the bedroom of his suite, sitting lumplike on the edge of his bed, staring morosely at the floor. It was several hours since he’d gotten the bad news about the auction from Billy Bonning, and Bloch had given up trying to get through the White House switchboard to Bob Moody, who had left instructions not to be interrupted by anyone. Bloch had his friend’s direct office number, of course, but that just ran on and on unanswered. Calls to Moody’s Watergate place had reached only a housekeeper and then an answering machine. Bloch couldn’t understand how Moody could have done this to him—whether his old pal was angry about something or had just suffered a mental lapse. He decided it must have had something to do with the White House. That job was changing Bobby Moody, a lot more than Bloch liked.