A Child's Garden of Death (31 page)

“Don't forget to take out a state lottery ticket; your odds are better.”

“Not really. If you break it down, how many people in a small state like Connecticut can fall into both categories?”

“I hope you're right. I'm getting tired of having our friends in blue always around.”

As Lyon glanced in the rear-view mirror he could see the prowl car following them at a not-so-discreet thirty yards. “If we'd stayed home tonight instead of going to this party, we wouldn't have an escort.”

“They'd be out in the bushes.”

“Maybe we should be thankful. Hey, do we really have to go to this thing? Damn, I hate cocktail parties.”

“You mean you hate political cocktail parties.”

“With us, it's always the same thing.”

“How about those literary things you drag me to in New York?”

“That's only once a year. Who's going to be there tonight?”

“Our fearless majority leader, Big Mouth Mackay.”

“Rustling support for his candidacy?”

“They don't even wait for the body to get cold. Everyone knew I was backing Llewyn, and I've already had calls asking me to switch support to Mackay.”

“Well,” Lyon said as he turned into the long driveway, “I do get a kick out of Dawkins's Castle; the evening won't be a complete loss.”

Dawkins's Castle wasn't a castle, although it pretended to be. Built fifty years earlier by Colonel Dawkins out of massive blocks of rock from a nearby quarry, it perched on a high promontory over the river and was a skewed cross between a Rhine castle and something angry children might build on a sandy beach.

The colonel had been dead ten years, and now the house was occupied by his son Wilkie, who, although not adding to the massive stone exterior, had filled the interior with an abundance of electronic gadgetry.

Lyon stopped before the lighted portico, and together he and Bea ran through the summer rain toward the protection of the house. Lyon raised the heavy knocker and let it fall while Bea peered at the several cars parked in the wide drive. “Mackay's already here.”

“Advance and be recognized,” a voice said from a speaker above the door.

“The Wentworths,” Lyon replied, and almost instantly the large double doors swung open. The couple stepped into a long hallway where recessed lights in the stone walls cast a dim illumination across the tiled floor.

A wheelchair swung into sight at the end of the hall. The man in the chair pressed a small button on the arm, and the massive doors swung silently shut behind them.

“If Igor takes my raincoat, I'm leaving,” Lyon said.

“Be quiet and act political or something,” Bea whispered.

Wilkie Dawkins waved to them. “Welcome to the sanctuary, you two.” Like many other paraplegics, he had a massive torso and muscle-knotted shoulders, and his useless legs dangled on the supporting rim of the chair. In his late thirties, he had a calculating look, with piercing eyes that were often disconcerting, and a shock of dark hair that jutted over his forehead. He extended a massive hand toward Lyon. “Lyon, you rat fink, when are you going to write some decent pornography instead of that juvenile crap?”

“Next week,” Lyon replied as he tried to slide his fingers from the crushing grip.

“How are you, Wilkie?” Bea asked as she bent over to be bussed.

“Fine, fine.” Wilkie's chair whirred quietly across the carpet, through another set of doors that opened automatically, and into the living room.

A small group of somber people stood by the huge fireplace holding drinks and talking in low tones. Lyon recognized Ted Mackay, senate majority leader; Congressman Dolan, a state committeeman, and the minority leader of the House. The group peeled open as Bea approached, and as plankton are gulped by large fishes, she was absorbed immediately into the conversation.

Lyon crossed to the built-in bar at the corner of the room, where Danny Nemo was efficiently shaking cocktails. He smiled as Lyon slipped onto a stool.

“Dry Sack, Mr. Wentworth?” he asked with a smile. Danny always seemed to be smiling. Like the former tennis player and surfer that he was, he affably and ingenuously radiated health and exuberance. He had been a noncom in Wilkie Dawkins's Vietnam infantry company, and after Dawkins had received massive shrapnel wounds from an enemy rocket, Danny had carried him through enemy fire to the evac helicopter. Since then, he had remained in Dawkins's employ as butler, social secretary, barkeeper and friend. He placed Lyon's sherry on the bar and picked up his shaker.

“How's everything, Danny?” Lyon asked.

“Couldn't be better in some ways, but everyone's still upset over Randy Llewyn getting it.”

Lyon nodded as Danny placed several cocktail glasses on a silver tray, expertly poured until liquor brimmed the rim of each glass and, with Lyon following, carried the tray toward the main group.

Congressman Dolan snatched a glass from the tray and sloshed liquor over his fingertips. “It's a damn conspiracy,” he said. “Those radicals ought to be tracked down like dogs and annihilated.”

“No one has ever proved a conspiracy since Booth's attempted coup against Lincoln,” Bea said evenly.

“I think we should consider preventive detention for the far-out groups,” Ted Mackay said.

“Come on, Senator. Even you don't really believe that,” Bea said.

“I'm reflecting some of the thinking of this group, Beatrice.”

Wilkie Dawkins held up both hands. “Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know if there's a conspiracy involved here or not, and for the time being I believe we should leave the whole matter in the hands of the proper authorities, where it belongs. We're here tonight to fill the void left by Randy Llewyn. The convention's in a few days, and unless we're careful we'll have floor fights that will divide the party—and we all know what happened last time we were divided. The opposition walked over us in November.”

There were nods of assent. “I'm with Ted Mackay,” Dolan said.

“Ted appreciates that,” Wilkie replied. “Now, with Randy gone, we all know how it breaks out. Support is evenly divided between Ted and Mattaloni; the deciding factor rests with Senator Wentworth.”

“This isn't fair, Wilkie,” Bea said. “You invited me here for a discussion on convention planning. You have no right to put me in this position at this time.”

“I never knew you were afraid of taking a position on anything, Senator Wentworth,” Ted Mackay said with a smile.

“Nor you to avoid taking one,” Bea retorted.

“Like the welfare laws, Senator?”

The majority leader had subtly moved toward the fireplace and assumed a pose that was an effortless but effective way to dominate the group's conversation. His shock of dusty white hair, his gleaming teeth and his rugged features made Ted Mackay look like a candidate for a cigarette commercial, or, physically, like the perfect political candidate.

“That's a good example, Ted,” Bea said. “Your position on the flat-grant welfare laws …
you
try to live in Darien, Connecticut, on three forty a month; you can't even rent a store front in Darien for that.”

“If you're on welfare you sure as hell shouldn't live on the gold coast,” Ted said.

Bea turned toward the rest of the group. “Well, our leader has at last taken a stand. An untenable one, but at least a position.”

“Call it what you want, Bea, but at least it's consistent. You seemingly want to increase social programs and yet reduce taxes. Now that doesn't make any sense.”

“I'm for a more equitable distribution.”

“Soak the rich.”

“I didn't say that.”

“With your pendulum record, Senator, I don't know what you're saying,” Mackay said with a half smile.

Lyon watched his wife approach the majority leader, and he mouthed her next remark silently as she spoke it aloud. “Now wait just a minute, Senator.”

Lyon retreated across the room toward the bar where Danny Nemo stood smiling and holding a bottle of Dry Sack sherry in the air. He poured as Lyon listened to snatches of the argument taking place across the room by the fireplace.

“Welfare and higher taxes are inextricably tied together, Senator Wentworth.”

“The day I vote property over people is the day I retire to my knitting,” Bea retorted.

“Is that a promise?”

Lyon felt a hand on his arm and turned to see Wilkie Dawkins, who had moved noiselessly across the room in his wheelchair. “Can I see you in my study, Lyon?”

As Lyon followed the wheelchair across the room to the study, doors opened automatically and closed behind them after they had entered. The juxtaposition in this large house of feudal construction and electronic wizardry never ceased to amaze Lyon. He sat in a high-backed chair as Wilkie glided his wheelchair behind the broad oak desk.

They looked at each other for that brief moment of measurement and appraisal which determines the makeup of an imperceptible chemistry that would either attract or repel. Lyon found the brief span inconclusive.

He knew that after Dawkins's return from Vietnam as a cripple, there had been months of brooding within the castle, and then a total immersion in countless activities. Using the rather large fortune left from his father's insurance-company interests, Dawkins had founded the Murphysville Children's Museum and become the largest contributor to Bea's political party. And yet, Lyon felt, the rush of activities had only submerged the bitterness, not dissipated it.

He also felt that Dawkins considered him somewhat of an ineffectual person labeled “Bea Wentworth's husband”; a quiet man who shadowed his wife to political meetings, often seemed bored, attentive to his wife, but out of the mainstream.

“I thought perhaps you could give me a little help in dealing with Bea.” He smiled. “What are we going to do with her?”

Lyon looked at the man behind the desk and debated about returning the smile. He did smile. “I hadn't really thought about it tonight, Wilkie. Last week I considered turning her in for an eighteen-year-old blonde, but she objected.”

Wilkie pushed a tiled box across the desk and deftly flipped the lid to reveal small black cigars. Lyon shook his head.

“It's convention time,” said Wilkie. “With Llewyn gone, the whole party is up in the air.”

“He was a fine man and would have made a good governor,” Lyon responded.

Wilkie shrugged. “I agree with you, but I'm also a pragmatist. I lost too many friends in Vietnam; perhaps my sensibilities have been dulled. I have to deal with the ‘now' questions, and as a member of the state committee, it's my duty to create order and organization out of what's left.”

“And this is where we come to Bea?”

“She controls enough delegate votes to make her important. Not enough to clinch the nomination for her choice, but sufficient to constitute a swing element at the convention.”

“You know as well as I do that with Llewyn dead she leans toward Mattaloni.”

“Just as it's no secret that my full support goes to Ted Mackay. If Beatrice switches her support, we have a potential first-ballot victory on the gubernatorial nomination without any internecine party fights. Ted neatly walks away with it, and that means there's a strong possibility that Bea could be the next secretary of the state.”

“She's often a contender, never a nominee.”

“It would make the ticket stronger. We'll even let Mattaloni have the lieutenant governor's slot.”

“You heard them out there, Wilkie. She and Ted just don't get along. Bea takes strong positions and fights for them. Ted never makes a stand.”

“He'll be harder for the opposition to attack.”

“What's to attack?”

“I'm not asking them to crawl into bed. Just a switch of her support, and perhaps give the nominating speech for Ted.”

“You had better talk to her yourself.”

“I have. I thought I'd made a little headway, and then see what happens the very next time she and Ted get together.”

“Bea and I only have one rule of marriage, Wilkie. She doesn't write my books and I don't run her political campaigns.”

“Even if it meant Washington in two years?”

The Wobblies in the White House
as a possible book flashed to Lyon, He snapped himself back to reality and laughed. “Even so.”

The study door slammed against the wall as Ted Mackay strode into the room. “That broad's got to go!”

Lyon stood to face the irate state senator. “I find that in extremely poor taste.”

“Taste! Christ! She's ripping me apart in front of my own supporters. What is this, a debate?”

“Calm down,” Wilkie said. “There's an answer to everything, and it's a question of making the right deal for Bea.”

“You can't make deals with her. She's nuts.”

“She'd strengthen your ticket as secretary of the state.”

“Crap! I want no part of her.”

“I've had enough of that, Ted!” Lyon said as his anger rose.

Ted turned to him and smiled as he put his arm on Lyon's shoulder. Lyon back-stepped. “It's only politics, Lyon. You know that under different circumstances Bea is one of my favorite persons, but our chemistry is wrong politically.”

“Then we'll make it right,” Wilkie said.

“No.”

“What?”

Mackay sat back in an easy chair and looked levelly at Wilkie. “I said no, Wilkie. I've always appreciated your support, but on this I'm adamant.”

“You'll do exactly as I say, Ted—exactly.”

“Don't push me, Wilkie. I'm in no mood to be pushed.”

Lyon felt an interplay between the two men that to his knowledge had never before existed. He raised his glass. “I think I'll get a refill.”

As the study doors closed, he had a last glimpse of Wilkie Dawkins brooding behind the desk. He took Bea's arm and steered her toward a secluded corner away from the remainder of the group, which had broken into pro-Mackay or -Wentworth factions.