Grand Master (6 page)

It was a bright, clear, windless afternoon
when he drove home from the airport, the kind of lush summer day
that made him wonder, not just what kind of fool would want to fly
back and forth to Washington, but what it must have been like, back
in the Twenties, when Los Angeles was still new and exotic and
Santa Barbara was a long way away from everything and the house
that Helen loved was a good half mile from its closest neighbor.
Perhaps because his own life, the life he had with Helen, had
involved so much heartache and tragedy, he had always a certain
fondness for the past. It was the great secret, the one no one
talked about. The great American dream was not about the future, it
was about what might have been but wasn’t.

He made the last turn on the winding, narrow
road. The gleaming white Spanish style house, buried in the
sunburst colors of clinging bougainvillea, was just ahead. He
passed through the open gate, parked the car, and went inside.
“Helen,” he called, but there was no answer.

He put his suitcase down on the cool tile
floor and went into the kitchen. An empty coffee cup with a trace
of lipstick had been left on the table next to the morning paper.
The paper had been folded back to the third page where the story of
the President’s funeral had been continued next to a picture of a
somber looking ‘Senator Robert Hart of California, entering the
National Cathedral.’ Bobby smiled to himself, imagining for a
moment the look in Helen’s eyes when she turned the page and found
the picture of him. He glanced at it again and felt a little the
hypocrite for having, like the others, played the mourner for
someone he would not miss.

He found Helen in the backyard, the other
side of the pool at the far edge of the lawn, cutting roses in her
usual, methodical way, each one exactly the same length, then laid
side by side in the woven wicker basket held on her arm. She
treated them like children, speaking soft words of encouragement as
she carefully selected the ones she thought were ready. Standing in
the shadows of the back patio, Bobby watched with growing amusement
as she danced from one rose bush to the next.

“Bobby!” she cried, half-embarrassed when he
finally started toward her. She stamped her foot, pretending
petulance that he had not let her know he was home. She put the
basket of roses on the ground, unfastened the straw hat she was
wearing, and let her hair flow free. Wiping her dusty hands on the
sides of her blue summer dress, she laughed self-consciously. “I
didn’t expect you until this evening. I thought I’d fill all the
vases with flowers and have everything nice.”

He was right in front of her. She touched the
side of his face and her hand felt warm against his skin. He put
his arm around her and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Let’s go
inside. I’ve got a lot to tell you.”

They sat in a room just off the kitchen, a
small second living room where they often spent their evenings,
Helen curled up in a corner of the sofa, Bobby in an easy chair,
watching as the sun slipped down the western sky and set fire to
the Pacific.

“What is it, Bobby? I read all about the
funeral; I watched a little of the television coverage. Why do you
seem so worried? Is it whether Russell can do the job?”

“Russell? I’d almost forgotten. Strange;
well, maybe not so strange: if there was ever anyone easy to
forget, it’s Irwin Russell. And now he’s president, though that
shouldn’t last very long - a year from November to be precise.”

“He won’t run, he won’t try to get elected on
his own?”

“That was the reason Constable picked him,
the reason he dropped Jamison from the ticket.”

“He put Jamison on the Supreme Court. Isn’t
that what Jamison wanted?”

Bobby arched an eyebrow. He shook his head as
if to tell her that nothing that happened in Washington was ever
quite what it seemed to be.

“Jamison wouldn’t have agreed to become
vice-president, wouldn’t have agreed to be on the same ticket with
Constable, someone he didn’t think was half as qualified as he was
to be president, if he had thought there was any chance he would
not be there at the end of eight years, next in line for the
office, with a clear path to the nomination. The first time he ever
thought of being on the Court was when Constable told him that he
was not going to be on the ticket again, when he told him that he
could either fill the vacancy that was about to occur on the Court,
or go back home and try to run for governor again.”

“But why, what did he think Irwin Russell
would bring to the ticket that Tom Jamison couldn’t?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing in the way of any political
advantage, but then Constable did not need any help to get
re-elected. Russell was supposed to be someone who could help him
in Congress. He had been there damn near thirty years, was chairman
of the Finance Committee, had a solid reputation, members on both
sides of the aisle liked him; but he is colorless, dull as dust,
slow, plodding, the moment he starts to speak you start checking
your watch, wondering how long it will last. In other words, he was
for Constable, the perfect combination: someone who would not cause
any trouble and was smart enough to know that the vice-presidency
was as far as he could go.”

Helen folded her arms and frowned. She still
did not understand.

“I don’t know this for sure,” confided Bobby.
“No one ever came out and said it, but the rumor at the time was
that Constable did not want to leave, that he wanted to stay in
office, and that he had a way to do it, or at least that he thought
he did. He could not run again, he could not serve more than two
terms in office, but what difference did that make, if his wife
could take his place.”

Helen had never been surprised at anything
the Constables had done. She had once remarked that they seemed to
think that everything that all of history, everything that had
happened in the past, had been leading up to them. “I imagine the
only real question is which of them thought of it first.”

Dazzled by how quickly she could get to the
heart of things, the smile faded from Bobby’s lips. “There are
people who were around them for years, who thought they knew them
better than they ever knew anyone, who insist that it was only
after a lot of other people started talking about what a great
president she would be, and how this was the first real chance to
elect a woman, that they began to consider the possibility.”

Helen’s eyes went wide with wonder; her mouth
began to quiver as if she were about to laugh. “What was it you
told me, not that long ago: the closer some people are to power the
more willing they are to believe? But, whichever of them was the
first to think of it, that’s all gone now, isn’t it? Robert
Constable is dead. Or do you think she might try anyway?”

“Run for president? I doubt it. She has other
things she has to deal with now.” He said this with a worried
expression, and then hesitated, not quite sure how to tell her what
had happened, and what, because of it, he had to do. He got up from
the chair and sat next to her on the sofa. “Constable didn’t die of
a heart attack.”

Helen guessed at once what it meant.
“Someone…?”

“Murdered him, assassinated him, that night.
A woman did it, a woman he was with.”

“In the hotel, where he died?” she asked,
wanting to be sure.

“He’d picked her up somewhere - which means
that she knew where he would be and how she could get his
attention; or someone sent her there, someone he knew, someone he
trusted. She used a needle, injected him with a drug that stopped
his heart, caused cardiac arrest. There’s more to it, but that
doesn’t matter now. No one knows about this. You’re the only one
I’ve told. I wish I didn’t know, but when she -”

“She?”

“Madelaine Constable. At the reception after
the funeral, she asked to see me. She wants me to find out what I
can about what happened. She thinks that I might be able to do
something without anyone finding out. She’s worried about what will
happen if it becomes known that the President was murdered before
we know who did it and the reason why it was done.”

Helen jumped to her feet, angry at what he
had been asked to do. “You can’t do this, Bobby! She’s using you.
Don’t you see that? The only thing she’s worried about is how this
might affect her.”

Bobby reached for her wrist and tried to give
her assurances. “That’s why I didn’t promise anything, except to
see what I could find out; why I told her that whatever I found out
there was going to have to be an investigation, and that the public
was going to have to know.”

“Why do it at all, Bobby? What good will it
do? Why take the risk?”

“Because there’s a sense in which I think
she’s right. Whatever way this affects her - that’s not important.
What is important is how it affects the country. If I can find out
something before it hits the papers we might stop the kind of
panic, the kind of wild rumors that will tear the country
apart.”

She did not disagree, but neither did she
doubt her own belief that he was being drawn into someone else’s
game. “There’s something she isn’t telling you. She’s never done
anything that wasn’t based on a calculation of her own
advantage.”

Bobby got to his feet and took her by the
hand. He smiled in a failed attempt to convince her not to worry,
that he could take care of himself. “Whatever she might be
thinking, she can’t use me to cover up what happened.”

“Because you told her that you wouldn’t do
that? But maybe all she wants is time.”

“If that’s what she’s after, I’m afraid she
doesn’t have much left. Constable had a meeting scheduled the next
morning with Quentin Burdick of the Times. He must have thought
Burdick was onto something important, because he cancelled
everything else he had scheduled not just that day but the rest of
the week. I know Burdick well enough to know that, whatever he was
working on, he won’t give up.”

CHAPTER SIX

The flight from New York arrived in Los
Angeles twenty minutes late, but Quentin Burdick had lots of time.
His appointment was not until two o’clock the next afternoon, which
meant he could spend the night in Santa Barbara and not have to
leave much before noon. After the dismal, muggy weather in New
York, the prospect of an evening walk along the Pacific had the
charm of an overdue vacation.

Two hours after he landed, he checked into a
motel across from the beach, made a few phone calls and then,
putting on a windbreaker and a pair of sneakers, went for a stroll.
Almost painfully thin, with a narrow, angular face and quick
moving, inquisitive eyes, Quentin Burdick looked younger than his
age; but today, as he walked beneath the palm trees swaying gently
in the late day breeze, he felt older than he was. Since the moment
he heard about it, he had not been able to rid himself of the
suspicion that there was more than simple coincidence in the timing
of Robert Constable’s death. The rumor that he had not been alone,
that he had been in bed with some woman, made Burdick wonder
whether Constable’s heart attack had been self-induced, or whether,
if not quite that deliberate, the President had set out to test the
limits of his endurance, half-hoping that he would not make it.

He had tried for months to get an interview,
but instead of a straight answer, a firm refusal which might have
seemed to confirm the President’s involvement, he had been met with
ambiguity and evasion, assurances that the President would be only
too glad to talk to him once he found the time. There had not been
much to work on in the beginning, a few anonymous sources whose
information it was impossible to confirm, a few tax returns that
raised some questions but scarcely proved anything improper, much
less criminal. He had nothing he could use, nothing to write a
story that he would want his name on or that the paper would print,
and Constable knew it. The President was too shrewd, had too much
the politician’s instinct, not to know that Burdick did not have a
story. With each new request for an interview, the excuses became
more transparent, until, quite unexpectedly, Burdick got the break
he needed. It was just a name, but it put a face, so to speak, on
what until then had been a web of possible connections that seemed
to lead in all directions and therefore led in none. The name, as
he discovered, meant everything; it meant that the President now
thought he knew a good deal more than he did.

“Tell the President,” he had told Constable’s
chief of staff, “that the story I’m working on is about The Four
Sisters, and that I think it’s only fair that I get his side of
it.”

An hour later Burdick got a call back. It was
not from one of the President’s assistants, it was from the
President himself. Cheerful and exuberant, he made it seem that he
had been waiting for months to see Burdick, and not the other way
round.

“They’ve got me going from one place to
another; no time to do anything I like. Hell, yesterday I was
giving a speech in Atlanta, and tomorrow - would you believe it -
I’m on my way to Rome for one of those economic summits where all
those rich people get together and I try to tell them all the good
they should be doing with their money. Now when are we going to get
together, Quentin? What’s a good time for you?”

Quentin Burdick stopped walking. He sat on a
bench and watched the orange red sun grow larger and larger as it
settled down on the far horizon and began slowly to dissolve in the
sea. Years before, when he lived for a while out on Long Island,
reading The Great Gatsby and wishing he could write like
Fitzgerald, he sometimes stayed up all night just to watch the sun
rise from somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic and paint the
sky a dozen different shades of pink and purple, but this was
better, now that he was older, more comforting in a way, a sense of
dignity and peace and the permanence of things as the world slipped
gently into the night and the dreams you remembered danced once
again in your never aging mind.