THE PRESIDENT 2 (2 page)

The nerve of these people
, Dutch thought with some degree of anger, although his face revealed nothing.
 
“My wife is a trained criminal defense attorney,” he calmly pointed out. “She’s a professional who has been involved in social justice issues for well over a decade.
 
She wasn’t speaking randomly or off-the-cuff.
 
She was speaking as a woman with considerable experience and expertise in the area in which you cite.”

“But she blamed the laws on the books, sir, rather than the criminals themselves, for their incarceration.
 
You didn’t answer my question.
 
Why is she soft on crime?”

“She’s not soft on anything,” Dutch said with a smile, although he was raging inside.
 
He needed a release, and knew he would have to find that wife of his and get one as soon as this
inquisition-masquerading-as-a-press-conference
was over.

But it would be nearly fifteen more minutes of back and forth before Allison Shearer, his press secretary, could shout
Last question!
, he could answer it, and then he and his staff could leave that press room and that unrelenting press behind.

“That went well,” Dutch said snidely to Max Brennan, his chief of staff, as Max scurried to keep pace with his taller, more athletic boss.
 
A train of presidential aides followed closely behind the fast-moving men.
 

“We don’t even know who the kidnappers are yet,” Max said, virtually out of breath, “and they’re already demanding answers.
 
Geez.
 
And now Congress wants to parade you up on Capitol Hill like some guinea hen so they can get in on the
Blame Dutch Harber
bandwagon too.
 
Which reminds me,” Max said, stopping Dutch’s progression by gently touching him on the arm.
 
The aides, understanding, stayed back far enough to allow the two heavy hitters some degree of privacy.
 
“The Congressional Hispanic Caucus wants to deal.”

“Do they now?” Dutch asked.
 
“That’s some good news.”

“Yes, sir, but they want a parade too.
 
They’re willing to offer public support for the Hearn Amendment only if you’ll agree to a day-long summit here at the White House, cameras rolling, on immigration reform.”

“An all day summit?”

“All day.
 
I know it’s crazy, sir, but that’s their bottom line.
 
And they don’t mean a hello-goodbye by the president, either.
 
They want you to chair the event so it’ll get maximum coverage.”

Dutch just stood there as he often did when his mind was deep in thought.
 
He knew it would be virtually impossible to give any one event an entire day of his time.
 
But he also knew that amendment would fail if he did not have CHC support.
 
“If we can set it up, okay.”

Max sighed relief.
 
“Good.
 
It won’t be any time soon, I’ll make that clear, but at least we can get that amendment out of committee.”

“Set it up,” Dutch said, about to continue moving.
 
But Max stopped his progression again.

“Another thing, sir,” he said, in a voice even lower.
 
“Jennifer wants a meeting.”

Dutch shook his head.
 
“No.”

“But, sir, she’s the wife of a billionaire.
 
She’s one of the Democratic Party’s staunchest supporters.
 
You can’t say no to one of our most generous donors.”

“I thought I just did.”

“What I mean is, sir, we have tough mid-terms coming up in a couple years, with some serious collective bargaining and other ballot initiatives we’ve got to fight tooth and nail.
 
We’ll need her money and the money of every donor we have on the books just for our ground game to be competitive, or we could lose those initiatives and the House could swing back into Republican hands.”

“The answer is still no, Max.”

“But why for crying out loud?
 
Because you and her fooled around back in the day?”

“Yes,” Dutch admitted.
 
“But not just back then.”

At first Max didn’t get it.
 
He frowned.
 
“I knew you two had a thing going when you were in the Senate, but I don’t see where. . .”
 
And then he began to understand.
 
He stared at the president.
 
“Are you telling me,” he started, and then forced his voice even lower.
 
“Are you saying that you’ve been with her,
intimately
, since you’ve been president?”

Dutch hated to admit it.
 
“Yes,” he said.

Max could not believe it.
 
He knew Jennifer Caswell was a great looker and there was a time when Dutch couldn’t keep his hands off of her.
 
But when in the world did Dutch hook back up with her? And why, Max wondered, was he always the last to know?
 

“When did all of this happen?” he asked the president, who also happened to be his best friend since childhood.
 
“Was it since you’ve been with Regina?”

“No,” Dutch said snappishly, finding the entire conversation disagreeable.
 
“Of course not. Before Gina.”

“But more than one time?”

Dutch nodded.
 
“Yes.”

“But,” Max still wasn’t quite understanding this.
 
“She’s married, sir.
 
She was married during your first term.”

Dutch looked at Max with great frustration, although his anger was more a reflection of his own disgust with the womanizing man he used to be, than any negative feelings he held toward his chief of staff.
 
“I know she’s married, Max, why are you telling me that?”

“I thought you didn’t, even in your most active days, I didn’t think you would fool around with a married lady.”

“She married Ralph Caswell in some private, secret ceremony and forgot to mention it to me.
 
Did we have sex while she was married?
 
Yes, we did.
 
Did I know she was married while we were having sex?
 
No.
 
Not initially, anyway.
 
When I did find out I wish I would have immediately broke it off, but I didn’t.
 
Jen was a sexual habit for me by then and unfortunately, I wasn’t able to break the habit that easily.”

Max had heard about Jennifer’s freakishness in bed, that was why, he believed, Dutch was interested in her to begin with.
 
“So you guys continued to see each other after you discovered the truth?” he asked him.

“A few more times, yes,” Dutch admitted, “until I became so disgusted with myself that I could hardly look at myself in the mirror.
 
Then I broke it off.
 
For good.”

Max looked at his boss doubtfully.
 
Jennifer Caswell was always one bad mood away from being certifiably nuts.
 
For her to give up a man like Dutch Harber just because she got married to some rich old guy with plenty of dough didn’t even sound like her.
 
“And she just accepted that break?” he asked Dutch.

Dutch’s eyes glazed over, remembering that crazy time.
 
“Hardly,” he said.
 
“I had to literally threaten to tell her brand new husband just to get rid of her.
 
And that’s why I have no intentions of seeing her now.”
 
Then he frowned.
 
"Anyway, I need to talk to my wife before we head over to Capitol Hill,” he said, walking away, his aides now scurrying to follow behind him.
 
“And get Ed Drake,” he added without turning around.
 
“I want a briefing on the ride over.”

“Yes, sir,” Max said as he watched him hurry to get to his wife.
 
How a man like him could go from
Wham Bam Harber
, the love’em and leave’em specialist, to somebody completely devoted to that wife of his, was a mystery to Max.
 
Especially considering that wife of his.
 
Not that he had anything against black women, he didn’t.
 
He found them just as attractive as any other woman.
 
But the one the president had decided to latch onto was just too black: dark skin, full lips, voluptuous body, hair either braided or in some other Afrocentric style that irked Max no end.
 
And she was unapologetic about her style too, even when many national magazines, except maybe for
Jet
and
Essence
, constantly complained about her lack of taste.
 
She just didn’t seem to care.

And now Jennifer Caswell was back on the scene, a woman who once held Dutch’s full attention.
 
And held it, to Max’s dismay, even after she married billionaire industrialist Ralph Caswell.
 
That could be a problem.
 
Not just for Dutch, not just for the Democratic Party.
 
But for Max, who was secretly positioning himself to seek public office himself in a couple years.
 
What if Jennifer was still in love with Dutch, his ex’s never seem able to completely let him go, and that was why she was insisting on this meeting? Dutch was no longer interested, and was making it clear, but what if she was still interested?
 
That could be a nightmare, just like Kate Marris had been a nightmare.
 
Jennifer had the kind of forceful personality that could create all kinds of havoc for the president.
 

Max began walking again, sighing as he walked.
 
He knew he had to keep a lid on any more bimbo eruptions, not just for the president’s sake, not just for the party’s sake, but for his own as yet unspoken, but secretly very real political ambitions.

Max’s assistant hurried up to his now-mobile boss.
 
“You okay, sir?” he asked him.

Max frowned, looked at his subordinate with contempt.
 
“Of course I’m okay!
 
What are you asking me that for?” he asked him, his eyes unable to shield what he could just sense was a fast approaching storm.

***

Regina Lansing-Harber stood in the marbled shower stall inside the White House residence for far longer than it took to clean her already clean body.
 
But she couldn’t stop thinking about this new, in the fishbowl, under the microscope, in your face life of hers.
 
Dutch had warned her repeatedly.
 
He had told her not to expect any degree of reasonable treatment from a DC press corps that feeds on unreasonableness.
 
And she had smiled; hit him playfully on the arm, as if he had told her some distasteful joke.
 

But she wasn’t laughing now.

Dutch’s inauguration for his second term as president was barely a month old and already they were on his case: blaming him for the weak U.S. economy.
 
Blaming him for the stagnation in the European markets.
 
Blaming him for the abduction of those silly-ass, risk-taking rich college students who chose to spend their winter vacation in a war zone of all places, a
war zone
!
 
And now Dutch, who had too much on his plate already, was forced to clean up that mess too.