Murder in the White House (Capital Crimes Book 1) (2 page)

But he was not shallow. (The remainder of his statement to the European heads of government was that the enlightened self-interest of the United States dictated adherence to the program of multilateral trade agreements he had doggedly promoted for three years, and he had been telling them that their own self-interest would be best served if they, too, adhered to that program.) He had courage. (He had anticipated the political furor that would follow his firing of the Secretary of the Treasury and had decided to tough it out.) He could be subtle. (His statement about the anti-nuclear demonstrators was a signal to a hundred other groups of all kinds, who
had made a fad of street tantrums, that demonstrations would not influence him to take positions he didn’t believe in.) And he was a consummate political manipulator. (Even the Senate he had so colorfully characterized passed most of the legislation he wanted, because he had a thumb, and a dossier, on forty or fifty senators.)

He was powerful. He carried people along with him. His own sense of purpose was real. He was able to communicate much of that sense to the people who worked for him and some of it to the nation. He communicated more of his self-confidence.

***

He had almost walked away from his appointment with President-elect Webster without seeing him. He had flown from Washington for a two-o’clock appointment with Senator and President-elect Webster in his transition headquarters in the Renaissance Center in Detroit; and when five o’clock came and he knew he would miss his return flight if he waited any longer, he almost walked out and caught a cab back to the airport. He might be only a young lawyer working his way up in a Washington firm, but he had his self-respect, and the apparent rudeness of Webster or of his organization turned him angry. Anyway, the dramatic impact of walking out on an appointment with the President-elect of the United States somehow appealed to him; and it was only the thought of the explanations he would have to make back in Washington that kept him in the bleak temporary reception room, pacing, staring down from fifty floors at the gray waters of the Detroit River through heavy snow swirling on a gusty winter wind….

“Ron… good to see you. I appreciate your coming.”

It was after five. A secretary had brought him from the headquarters offices to the Detroit Plaza Hotel—still in the Center—and up to a suite sixty floors above the river. The President-elect, wearing a black cashmere jacket and crisply pressed gray slacks, used his first name immediately, even though they had never met before. Fairbanks had expected a slightly more restrained man.

“Let’s get some fresh coffee. That’s… actually, it’s after five. How about a drink? Scotch?”

The President-elect was almost too comfortable. Maybe it was a facile judgment, but Fairbanks felt that Webster did not wear his triumph too well, was somehow pushing it… He summoned a secretary to pour scotch, and while she worked in the corner of the room he made precisely measured small talk: enough to cover the moment, no more. Ron had flown to Detroit in bad weather. Was it as bad in Washington? He had graduated from Stanford Law, hadn’t he? He knew Bill Guthrie, didn’t he? How was Bill? The secretary delivered two generous scotches. Webster took a manful swallow from his, leaned back in the corner of his couch.

“Bill Friederich recommends you, without reservation.”

Crisp. Abrupt. Fairbanks knew he had been called to Detroit to be offered some kind of job in the Webster Administration; he had no idea what. He knew his old mentor, Justice William G. Friederich of the United States Supreme Court, had recommended him. He had clerked for Justice Friederich. It was the thought of having to explain to
him
that had kept Ron from walking out this afternoon.

“Justice Friederich is a friend,” said Fairbanks. It was a careful, bland answer. He had determined to keep a wary distance. He did not want a job in the Webster Administration, really. He had come to Detroit out of courtesy to Justice Friederich, and, of course, out of curiosity.

“I’m looking for a few people with a special sense of commitment,” Webster said. “There are not many things in this life that are worth a total commitment, and I’ve known people who made that kind of commitment for nothing very much. But this… the presidency for four years. It
is
worth it. I’ve made the commitment for myself, and I’m looking for people who will make it with me. I’m looking for one hundred percent dedication. You think you could give that to me, Ron?”

Fairbanks looked over his scotch. “To be altogether frank, I don’t think I could. I usually hold back a little something of myself… for myself, I guess… I don’t think I could change that, even if I wanted to.” He smiled faintly. “I’m sorry. I don’t see any point in lying about it.”

Webster smiled too—more broadly. “Well, you’re honest,” he said wryly.

“I’m a skeptic, I guess something of a cynic,” Fairbanks said.

Webster laughed. “Any other disqualifications?”

Fairbanks grinned. “I didn’t vote for you.”

“I knew that. Bill Friederich told me. He also told me you had your reasons. He said you were circumspect and, if you agreed to work for me, would support me while you were with me. Was he right about that?”

Fairbanks nodded. “I’m rather naive politically,” he said.

Webster laughed again. “I hear otherwise.”

A door from another room in the suite opened, and Webster’s daughter came in. Fairbanks recognized her from her pictures. “Lynne,” said Webster. “Pour yourself a drink and sit down. This is Ron Fairbanks. I’m about to offer him a job.”

The young woman settled a critical eye on Fairbanks. She was nineteen or twenty, as Fairbanks remembered the press stories about the Webster family: a student, the President-elect’s youngest child. She was attractive, not to say beautiful; but Fairbanks thought she looked tired. He remembered reading somewhere too that Lynne Webster had said the campaign had exhausted her. She did pour herself a drink, and came to stand behind her father, as if waiting for him to dismiss Fairbanks and then she could have a word with him.

“I want you to serve as Special Counsel to the President,” Webster said to Fairbanks….

“I didn’t expect it,” Ron said to Lynne an hour later. He had not expected what followed, either. Webster had said he realized Ron had missed his return flight. He told him there was a room for him there at the Plaza; and then, for a further surprise, he said to Lynne that he could not have dinner with her after all, since Senator Fleming was arriving within the hour, and since Ron was stuck overnight in Detroit, alone, maybe it would be pleasant if they had dinner together.

Here they were, then, in La Fontaine, the fine French restaurant in the hotel, sitting opposite each other at a table: the daughter of the President-elect and his new Special Counsel. Lynne was not pleased. She had expected to have dinner with her father, not to be pushed off on a stranger and be compelled to make conversation
about such things as her impending move to the White House. She was silent. She dipped her hand in the water in the fountain from which the restaurant took its name—it was immediately beside their table—and said casually that the water was room temperature. People in the restaurant recognized her. They stared. She noticed and was uncomfortable; she stared at her hands. Two Secret Service agents sat at a nearby table too, rarely taking their eyes off her. Lynne glanced around. People were embarrassed to be caught staring and quickly looked away.

“Assault by eyeball,” she said.

The waiter lingered over their table, extending the ritual of opening a bottle of white wine so he would have more time to study the daughter of the President-elect, to memorize her features, her clothes, her figure, the better to be able to describe them vividly to friends later. Lynne accepted a glass of wine and held it between her hands, staring into it, frowning.

“There are two things,” said Ron slowly, “that being the daughter of the President-elect does not involve.”

“Oh? And what are they?”

“First, it involves no obligation on your part to entertain me this evening, simply because your father held me in Detroit so long I missed my plane. Second, it involves no obligation on my part to attempt to entertain you when obviously you are uncomfortable and bored. I suggest I pay for the wine and leave.”

She blushed. “I’m… I’m sorry—”

“Third thing, no obligation to apologize. We were thrown together, no fault on either side… does he do that often?”

“He meant well,” she said quickly. “He thought you
and I would have things to talk about, things in common. He meant to relieve me of another evening of political talk.”

“Well…” Ron shrugged, smiled.

“Can you make us some interesting conversation, Mr. Fairbanks?”

“I think so, Miss Webster… For starters, you have very good legs…”

And from there it went quite well. The daughter of the President-elect defrosted, though still a bit edgy… nervous… in a way that made him more curious than he could explain…

The White House, Tuesday, June 12, 10:15 PM

Waiting in the Yellow Oval Room were the Secretary of State, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the ranking Republican of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and the White House Chief of Staff. They had watched on television the return of Air Force One to Andrews, and when the helicopter landed on the lawn they were assembled in the Yellow Oval Room, sipping drinks and munching on chips and nuts.

Senator Kyle Pidgeon, the Republican, flushed and wheezing, held the Secretary of State tight in conversation; and it was only with visible effort that Lansard Blaine was able to break away, cross the room, and shake the hand of the President.

“I’ll want you with me downstairs,” was all the President said to Blaine. He referred to a meeting in the Oval Office, scheduled for 10:30, when he would report
to the other members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and to some from the House Foreign Affairs Committee. (“It makes them feel
damned
important to meet with the President in the middle of the night,” he had remarked to Lynne as they walked from the helicopter.)

Blaine sipped brandy from a snifter. “Solid front, hmm?” he said. “I heard O’Malley ask you if I’m resigning.”

“
I’ll
deal with O’Malley,” the President said under his breath—just before he smiled broadly and reached to shake the hand of Senator Pidgeon.

Ron Fairbanks studied the Secretary of State. Blaine had always impressed everyone with his self-assurance, with the reserve and calm he could display under intemperate attack by a senator or a protestor or an aggressive interviewer. It was plain tonight, however, that he was ill at ease. Ron watched him slip away from Senator Pidgeon once again and walk purposefully to the steward to order another cognac.

“Are you going to check over the Pillsbury memorandum before you leave for the night?”

Fairbanks’s attention was diverted by the question from Fritz Gimbel, the Chief of Staff. “I suppose so,” he said to Gimbel. “This is breaking up shortly…?”

Gimbel glanced at his watch. “In eight minutes.”

In eight minutes. Yes, in eight minutes precisely if that militaristic little creep had anything to do with it, Fairbanks thought… if he left the White House before the Webster Administration left office, it would be because of Gimbel. He was an unpleasant man, invested by the President with a great deal of authority. Small, wearing an ill-fitting gray checked suit, peering about
with unfriendly eyes that stared through his austere steel-rimmed glasses, Gimbel orchestrated everything in the White House. In a minute he would order the steward to leave, so stopping the drinking. A few minutes later he would suggest firmly to the President that the meeting in the Oval Office should begin in three minutes if it were to begin on time. Likely, the President would accept the suggestion. Gimbel would hold open the door.

Blaine too disliked Gimbel. Two men could hardly have been more in contrast. Blaine was a preppy, then a Yalie, and he had spent two years at Oxford. Gimbel was from Indiana and had graduated without honors from some small-town Indiana college. Blaine was a scholar of diplomatic history—had come, indeed, to the State Department from a professorship at the University of Michigan, which he had held with distinction for twenty years. Gimbel had gone from college to the Webster Corporation, first as an accountant, then as an administrator, finally as executive assistant to the President—he served Robert L. Webster in the White House almost exactly as he had served him in Detroit. Blaine had a calm, aloof panache. Gimbel was a nervous, abrasive little man.

Blaine and Gimbel had aroused cries of cronyism early in the Webster Administration. Both of them had been personal friends of Robert and Catherine Webster for years. Catherine was a psychiatrist; and, until she moved into the White House as First Lady, she had held a professorship in psychiatric medicine at the University of Michigan. She and Blaine had taken leaves of absence from the Michigan faculty at the same time—Blaine was more of a friend of hers than of her husband, although
Webster had retained Blaine as a consultant on foreign affairs during his senatorial campaign and again during his presidential campaign and had expressed both privately and publicly his confidence in Blaine’s judgment in matters of foreign relations. Gimbel had served the Webster family as well as the Webster Corporation in Michigan—as a babysitter sometimes, as a driver, as a runner of errands, as well as a trusted get-things-done man in the executive offices of Webster Corporation.

“Why don’t you sit down, Lan?” the President’s daughter said to Lansard Blaine, She took hold of his arm. “I’m sure the senator will surrender you to me.”

“Of course,” said Senator Pidgeon. He was a little drunk—on the couple of scotches he had had; that was all it ever took—and he attempted what he supposed was a courtly bow and stepped back two paces.

Blaine allowed Lynne to lead him to a wing chair, where he sat staring into his brandy while she, standing beside the chair, firmly kneaded his shoulders. Blaine did not look up. He accepted a massage from the President’s daughter without acknowledging it.