Political Suicide (7 page)

Bryzinski scanned the slate gray sky, letting the chilling rain bathe his face. Spencer Hogarth was in a league unlike anyone he had ever encountered. It wasn’t even worth asking how he had connected with so much information so fast.

After a minute, Bryzinski turned back to him. “I think you’ll find that I’m a very smart man,” he said.

Hogarth’s smile this time was broader and more genuine. “I’m sure that I will, Chris,” he said, releasing his arm from around Bryzinski’s shoulder. “I’m sure that I will.”

CHAPTER 8

Renee Welcome and Steve Gilbride shared a four-bedroom colonial in Arlington, Virginia. The upscale suburb, across the Potomac from Washington, owed its high real estate values to location and the child-oriented culture. Despite the highly regarded public schools, Renee chose to send Emily to the prestigious Carlisle School, where she, herself, had gone.

Steve’s two kids, David and Alyssa, whom Emily tolerated with no great joy, stayed at the brick house on Fifth Street every other weekend and Wednesdays. In an attempt to get to know one another better, Renee had successfully pleaded with Emily to make the weekends with her father coincide with those when the Gilbrides, fourteen and twelve, were with their mother. The deal Renee caved in to was that in exchange, alternate Thursdays would be added to Emily’s time in D.C.

Just the typical modern American nuclear family, Emily liked to tell her friends.

“Are there really such things as professional woman boxers?” she asked now, as Lou swung onto the Roosevelt Bridge over the Potomac.

“Muhammad Ali’s daughter fought professionally, and there was a great movie about women boxers starring and directed by Clint Eastwood.”

“Who?”

“Clint … it doesn’t matter. If you decide you want to box for a living, then go for it. But I’ll tell you, unless you work your little bum off, you’re going to get pounded into the canvas. Those women are tough and athletic.”

“Well, I’m already athletic and I can learn to be tough. I think I should move into your place so I can train with you and Cap. I promise I’ll do my homework every night.”

Lou gulped. Why did he ever think he could stay even half a step ahead of his daughter?

“Now, don’t get me wrong, kiddo, I love having you at my place, and I’ve been able to adjust my schedule at the hospital and the PWO to get you to school in the morning, but—”

“We should discuss it as a family. Isn’t that what you and Mom are always saying?”

Oh, but the kid is good,
Lou was thinking, feeling a fleeting pang for the significant other floating somewhere out there in the cosmos of her future.

By tradition, Lou always accompanied Emily into the house for the drop-off. Before her marriage to Steve, Renee, whose family counseling practice was full to overflowing, often used the time after Emily had raced up to her room to discuss her personal life and problems with Lou. Perhaps it was the strength of his recovery program, but it was as if the man she had loved and wed and slept with and divorced had become her confidant and best friend forever.

The problem was, as Emily not only suspected, but
knew,
Lou had loved his wife when she divorced him, and continued to have strong feelings for her.

This particular Sunday, Steve was at his office in the city, routine for those weekends when his kids weren’t staying in Arlington. Renee, usually upbeat under any circumstance, seemed frazzled. Her wavy chestnut hair, which fell past her shoulders when it was unpinned, looked uncharacteristically unkempt.

Emily remained puttering downstairs rather than making her customary beeline for the solitude of her room.

“Hey, there … the place looks nice, Renee,” Lou said, hoping to clear whatever was souring the air by acknowledging her holiday decorations. Renee, seated at the round kitchen table, which was littered with bills, clattered her reading glasses down, picked up a bill from the stack, and fixed Emily with a hard stare.

“Mom, I have the best idea ever!” the teen gushed as she squeezed past Lou to get inside the kitchen.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Renee said, holding up an envelope Lou recognized as a Verizon bill.

“Meaning of what?” Emily asked, sidestepping her mother’s disapproving gaze to retrieve a yogurt from the refrigerator.

Renee got to her feet. “There are three hundred dollars in text message charges here, young lady. Three hundred and twelve, to be exact.”

Emily appeared confused. “What? That’s crazy!”

“Crazy, huh? Well, then, tell me whose number is this?”

Renee crossed the room, bill in hand. Emily, who in the time it took her mother to reach her wolfed down several spoonfuls of yogurt, examined the bill, took another bite of yogurt, and said through a mouthful, “That’s Katie. Isn’t she in our Friends and Family network?”

Katie Willard was one of Emily’s closest friends from school.

“No, Katie is not on our Friends and Family network,” said Renee.

Emily looked offended. “Well, Steve was supposed to add her.”

“Don’t bring Steve into this!”

“Why?” Emily said. “I asked him to do it.”

Lou moved to intervene, then pulled back. The core containment had not nearly been breached.

“And what on earth could you possibly be texting so much about?” Renee asked.

“Stuff. I dunno, Mom. It’s just how we communicate.”

“Well, you’ll need to come up with another way of communicating that doesn’t cost three hundred dollars a month.”

“Then, duh, just add her to our Friends and Family network.”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that,” Renee said. “You are thirteen years old, and you will show me some respect.”

The core was beginning to shed radiation.

Emily turned to Lou. “Do you see? Do you see why I’ve got to get out of here?”

“What’s she talking about?” Renee said, now directing her ire at Lou.

“I’m moving in with Dad,” Emily said.

Breach!

“Okay, time-out,” he said, extending his arms. “Each of you, back off to a neutral corner and hold your breath for a minute. Renee, to preempt your question, no, this was not my idea. Em, to preempt what you were going to come back at Mom with, this is not a lily-white city where a redhead is the closest thing to a minority. If you think about it, you’ll realize there is more cultural diversity here than there is in my neighborhood. Okay, breathe.” Lou looked from mother to daughter. The tension between the two of them seemed to have lessened a tick.

“This so unfair!” Emily said, slumping down onto the kitchen’s wide-plank cherrywood floor. “I can’t even have a pet.”

“A pet?” Lou asked.

“Steve’s son, David, is allergic,” Renee said.

Lou found himself considering Emily’s request to move in with him, even though such a change would be a logistical nightmare. Now, it appeared he wouldn’t have to take sides. Renee was a mother for the ages, always ready to cart Emily to track or play rehearsal, or even to adjust her work schedule to monitor a field trip. Emily’s demands were a phase—a reaction to having things not go the way she wanted them to. But they still had to be handled carefully.

Gratefully, Emily had just given them an opening … a pet.

“Hey, why don’t we compromise here?” Lou offered.

Emily rose up from the floor. “What kind of compromise?”

Renee appeared suspicious.

“I’ll get a pet,” Lou said, holding up his hands in a way that implied the scales of justice were now in balance.

“Mom?”

“If a pet would make you happy, and you can’t have one here,” Renee said, “then it seems fair for you to have one when you visit Dad’s, provided there is no more talk about switching around your living arrangements.”

“A pet is hardly a multicultural inner-city experience,” Emily said, brushing aside the suggestion with her words, but not her eyes.

“It’s called a compromise,” Lou said.

“What kind of pet?” Emily asked.

“How about a flea.”

“Very funny.”

“Okay, a guinea pig.”

“How about a dog?” Emily countered.

“How about I have a job and you’re at my place only on the alternate weekends and one weekday.”

“Then what about a cat?” asked Emily, homing in with the accuracy of a Sidewinder missile.

“A cat?” Lou’s voice cracked.

“A cat,” Emily said, grinning now at what amounted to absolute victory.

Lou’s mind raced through alternatives from aardvark to zebra, but came up with nothing more practical. “Okay, okay,” he said. “We’ll get a cat.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

“Rescued from a shelter,” Emily added. “And I’ve got to pick him out. And he’s got to be neutered.”

“But of course,” Lou said, feeling his throat tightening at the ease with which he had been beaten.

Emily bounded over and kissed him on the cheek. “I’m sooooo super excited! Bye! I love you.” She made a delighted little squeal on her way out.

“So what are we going to do about these text messages?” Renee called after her at the moment her bedroom door slammed.

“Gone,” Lou said. He was gazing blankly at the staircase when he realized that he was wondering if Sarah Cooper was allergic to cats.

“You’re really going to have to go through with this cat thing, you know,” Renee said.

“We had a cat at the halfway house. As I recall, it tweren’t much of a problem.”

Renee smiled inscrutably and mumbled something that sounded like “You wish.”

Before Lou could ask her to repeat the remark, his cell phone rang. The caller ID was just the number.

“Hello?”

“Dr. Lou Welcome?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Yes.”

“My name is Jeannine Colston. I believe you wanted to speak with me.”

CHAPTER 9

Lou had seen the hollowed-eye look before—many times before. Jeannine Colston was beaten down, pummeled by exhaustion, loss, and the malicious snipings from her family and friends as well as the media. News of her affair with Gary McHugh, the man accused of brutally murdering her husband, had exploded in the press like a land mine. In some ways, Lou sensed, she was as dead as Elias.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Colston. I know it can’t be an easy thing for you to do.”

They faced each other across the front foyer of the Colstons’ rambling colonial. Jeannine, whose striking patrician beauty was gray and tight-jawed, eyed him coolly. Despite the ravages of what she was enduring, it was still easy to see why McHugh could have lost his heart to her so absolutely. Out of reflex, it seemed, she dusted the light snow off Lou’s coat, hung it in the closet, and motioned him to a sofa in the living room. There was an uncomfortable chill in the air, as if she had not bothered to turn on the heat.

“Given your friendship with Gary, I wasn’t even going to return your call,” she said.

“I understand. First let me extend my deepest condolences. I’m so very sorry for your loss and everything else that’s been happening.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that. Tea? Coffee?”

Lou shook his head and gestured to the dozens of luxurious floral arrangements engulfing the room. “Impressive,” he said.

“I’ve thrown at least this many out. It’s been almost a week, but they keep coming.”

“The congressman was very popular.”

“In case I didn’t know that, so many reporters and former friends have gone out of their way to remind me.”

Inwardly, Lou groaned.
What in the hell am I doing here?
According to McHugh’s attorney, he was putting the man’s defense at risk, and according to Colston’s widow, he was sticking a salted knife into an open wound and turning the blade. Lou had seen the security cameras that filmed McHugh coming and going. He knew about the forensic evidence linking the man to Colston’s murder. No other suspects had been approached or arrested, no new persons of interest identified. Open and shut.
What other explanation can there be? How can this not be the case of an alcoholic in a blackout bender, and a love affair gone horribly wrong?
Gary McHugh was sitting in a Baltimore jail, denied bail at his arraignment, and Lou was having a hard time convincing himself that his friend and client did not belong there.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Colston. That was insensitive of me. I like to think empathy is one of my strengths as a doctor. I didn’t demonstrate much of it just now.”

“I have been told by Gary that you are, in fact, quite empathetic. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to see you.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand. Did Gary speak about me very much?”

“Quite a bit, actually. But I saw you at the funeral. You were one of the very few there whom I didn’t know, so I asked a close Washington friend who knows everyone, and she told me about you. After you left me those messages, I did some checking.”

Lou gazed across the heavily furnished room at the large, empty fieldstone fireplace. If Jeannine Colston asked how he got into the funeral, he had decided not even to try for any answer other than the truth—that Gary had called in a favor from a judge in D.C. As it turned out, she never asked, possibly because the truth was the only logical explanation.

“Anyway,” Jeannine went on, “you looked me in the eyes, and then you just turned and left me alone. I thought you had a very kind, interesting face.”

“Thank you. I wasn’t there to make any trouble. I just wanted to get a better sense of your husband and the people who were associated with him. I thought it might help me help Gary.”

“I’m afraid Gary is beyond helping,” she said.

The funeral for Elias Colston had been held at the National Cathedral in Bethesda, Maryland. The media had gotten hold of the story of Jeannine’s affair with the congressman’s friend and physician, and turned the somber rite into a circus. Over a thousand were in attendance, including many of the military’s top brass, who had come to pay their last respects to the man who oversaw their funding as chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

“I’m assuming you want to know what I think happened,” Jeannine said to Lou.

“If it’s not too difficult for you.”

“Difficult … not difficult. What difference does it make now?”