The Road to Omaha (33 page)

“Charlie? Why? He’s a nice kid.”

“He sounds like
me
!”

“Two points for the white man,” said Redwing, taking the telephone. “Hello, you jackass, it’s your big sister and you’re going to do
precisely
what I tell you to do, and don’t you dare make any moves on my secretary or I’ll re-diaper you like I used to do but with a couple of missing parts.
Got
that, Charlie?”

Sam returned to the couch, then decided against sitting down, opting instead for the suite’s mirrored bar built into the wall and stocked with all manner of spirits. As Red Redwing harangued her brother with instructions, he began producing a large glass pitcher of dry martinis. If there was nothing left to do but scream, he might as well yell half-plastered.

“
There
!” said Jennifer, replacing the phone and turning, expecting to find Devereaux on the couch, instead shifting her eyes to the bar and the mixologist performing his ritual. “What are you doing?”

“Making pain less painful, I guess,” answered Sam, poking a tiny fork into a jar of olives. “Aaron should be here shortly, and sooner or later Mac also—if he ever gets out of the Four Seasons.… It’s not a conference I look forward to. Care for a belt?”

“No, thanks, because that’s what it would be. A heavy belt landing me on the floor. I’m afraid that, too, is part of the genes, so I stay away.”

“Really? I thought that was just a dumb myth—Indians and firewater.”

“Do you think Pocahontas would have looked twice at that scrawny WASP John Smith if she wasn’t tanked? Not with all those cute braves around.”

“I consider that a racist remark.”

“You bet your ass. Leave us something.”

• • •

The elegant manager of the exclusive Fawning Hill Country Club on the Eastern Shore of Maryland turned to his assistant as the heavyset man walked through the imposing front entrance and then past them, nodding his acceptance at having been greeted silently, no name mentioned. “Roger, my boy,” said the tuxedoed manager, “you have just witnessed at least twelve percent of the entire wealth of this country walk through those doors.”

“You’re kidding,” said the younger, equally clean-cut subordinate, also in a tuxedo but without the white rose in his lapel.

“Not for an instant,” continued the manager. “It’s a private meeting in the Gold Room with the Secretary of State. No lunch, no drinks other than bottled water, nothing. Very serious. Two men from the State Department arrived an hour ago and swept the room with electronic devices to make sure there were no taps anywhere.”

“What do you figure it is, Maurice?”

“The movers and the shakers, Roger. Inside that room are the heads of Monarch-McDowell Aircraft, Petrotoxic Amalgamated, Zenith Ball Bearings Worldwide, and the Smythington-Fontini Industries, which stretch from Milan, Italy, to California.”

“
Wow
! Who’s the fifth guy?”

“The king of international bankers. He’s from Boston and holds more purse strings than the Treasury Department.”

“What do you think they’re doing?”

“If I knew, I could probably get rich.”

“
Moose
!” cried Warren Pease, greeting the owner of Monarch-McDowell Aircraft at the door with a hearty handshake.

“Your left eye’s in orbit, Warty,” said the bull of a man. “Do we have problems?”

“Nothing we can’t handle, sport,” replied the Secretary of State nervously. “Say hello to the crowd.”

“Hi there, old buddies,” said Moose, walking around the table in his honorary green Fawning Hill golf jacket and shaking hands.

“Good to see you, chum,” said Doozie from Petrotoxic Amalgamated, his blue blazer encrested, not with the emblem of a club but with the escutcheon of his family.

“You’re late, Moose,” said the blond-haired Froggie, owner and CEO of Zenith Ball Bearings Worldwide. “And I’m in a hurry. They’ve developed a new alloy in Paris and it could make millions in our defense contracts.”

“Hell, I’m sorry, Frog-face, but I couldn’t change the weather over St. Louis. My pilot insisted on a detour.… Hello, Smythie, how are the ladies in Milan?”

“They still
pine
for you, Moose!” replied Smythington-Fontini. The half-British, half-Italian yachtsman wore his white flannels and his billowing yachtsman’s blouse replete with the ribbons of his yachting triumphs.

“So,
Bricky,
” said Moose, grasping the extended hand of the Boston banker. “How’s the money pot? You made a bundle out of me last year.”

“Most of it tax-deductible, old chum,” countered the New England banker, smiling. “Would you have it any other way?”

“Hell, no, Brick! You sweeten my coffee every morning.… I sit here, right?”

“Right.”

“
Right
!” insisted Froggie. “I’m in a hurry. Those new alloys in Paris could fall into the hands of German industry. Get with it, Warren.”

“All right, I shall,” said the Secretary of State, sitting down and furiously tapping his left temple to keep his wavering eye in place. “I’ve informed you all by security phones that our good buddy and my old roomie, the President, has put me on top of the Italian problem at the CIA.”

“I suppose somebody has to be,” observed Doozie of Petrotoxic. “The man’s become something of a menace, I understand. The stories of his so-called abusive tactics are practically legend.”

“Yet, since taking office,” said Moose, “he’s been effective. From the day he walked into Langley, our companies haven’t had a serious union problem. Whenever there’s a threat, former colleagues of his show up in limousines and the threats go away.”

“Nice touch, the limousines,” said Doozie, dusting a speck of lint off the family crest on his jacket. “And I must say, he’s been an inspiration, the way he throws around his national security prohibitions at those scruffy environmentalists. Mummy and Daddy would have thought the world of him.”

“And although he’s thoroughly unacceptable socially,” added the aristocrat of Boston merchant bankers, “through his connections with certain offshore institutions, he’s made possible extraordinary extensions of your corporate finances. We’ve all made millions by not paying millions in taxes.”

“Damn decent fellow,” admitted Moose of Monarch-McDowell Aircraft, his jowls jiggling as he nodded his head.

“No question,” concurred Doozie. “He truly understands that the success of his betters can mean the betterment of himself. The real trickle-down theory, indisputably proven.”

“Also,” said the inheritor of the Smythington-Fontini multinational companies, “where else could so many of us turn? He’s an extremely patriotic American. He realizes every defense project on every drawing board in the country
must
be approved, no matter how questionable it may appear, for in the attempts, there’s always valuable … research, yes,
research.
”

“Here, here!”

“Here, here—”

“
Well,
” broke in Secretary of State Pease, holding up a trembling right hand that he instantly grabbed with his left and pulled back on the table. “The splendid qualities that have made him such an asset may well be the very reasons why he could become an enormous liability.”

“What?”

“
Why
?”

“Because every one of you has had extensive dealings with him.”

“Buried, Warren,” said Froggie icily. “Deep down.”

“Not for him.”

“What
happened
?” asked Boston Bricky, his face, already
bleached from the absence of sunlight in his vaults, growing paler.

“It’s directly related to the other difficulty we face, which I’ll bring up later.”

“Oh, my
God,
” whispered Doozie. “The savages … that Court with three left-wing senilities and one nerdy enigma still on it!”

“Yes,” confirmed Warren Pease, barely audible. “In trying to short-circuit the whole stupid fiasco, Mangecavallo traced the crazy litigants to Boston, then called in his criminal hoods from New York. Real honest to P-and-L sheet killers. One was captured.”

“Oh, great green gobs of greasy, grimy gopher guts!” cried Bricky. “
Boston
?”

“I read about that,” said Moose. “There was a riot at some hotel and the hood who was arrested said the President was his lawyer.”

“I didn’t know your old roomie was a lawyer, Warty,” said Doozie.

“He’s
not
. But if my old roomie’s name can even be mentioned, how long before Mangecavallo surfaces, and as sure as there’s plea bargaining, you’ll all be next.”

“What did you expect, Mr. Secretary?” remarked the blond Froggie, his voice in a deep freeze as he looked around the table at each member. “You give a thug responsibility, you’re responsible for thugs.”

The silence was the silence of the damned. Finally, Moose of Monarch-McDowell spoke.

“Good Lord, we’ll miss him.”

“Then we’re in agreement?” asked Warren Pease.

“Well, of
course
, old chum,” replied Doozie, his eyebrows arched in innocence. “What other avenue can we possibly take?”

“All roads lead to my beautiful bank on Beacon Hill!” shouted Bricky. “He’s dead
monkey
meat!”

“He’s too much for
any
of us!” cried Smythington-Fontini. “A criminal warlord at the core of the intelligence service—especially one who knows
us
—could
name
us!”

“Who’s going to
say
it?” demanded Moose. “Goddamn it, somebody’s got to
say
it!”

“I shall,” answered Froggie in a monotone. “Vincent
Mangecavallo must as soon as possible become the
late
Vincent Mangecavallo.… A terrible accident, of course, nothing
remotely
suspicious.”

“But
how
?” asked the Secretary of State.

“I, perhaps, can answer you,” said Smythington-Fontini, casually inhaling on his long cigarette holder. “I am the sole owner of the Milano-Fontini Industries, and where but in Milan, Italy, are there always cadres of malcontents that my untraceable subordinates might appeal to with a few hundred million lire? Let’s say … I can arrange it.”

“Stout fellow!”

“Good man!”

“Damn fine show!”

“When it’s all over,” exclaimed Warren Pease, his left eye reasonably in place, “the President himself will award you a commendation medal!… A quiet ceremony, of course.”

“How did he
ever
get through the hearings?” asked the pale-faced New Englander. “I never expected it.”

“I, for one, have absolutely no desire to know,” replied the President’s prep-school roommate. “However, as to the
nomination
of the silently accommodating Mr. Mangecavallo, may I remind all of you that it was the result of the President-elect’s search committee, the majority of whom are around this table. I’m sure you felt that he’d never survive the Senate, but he did, and there you have it.… Gentlemen, you yourselves are responsible for placing a Mafia godfather as director of the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“That’s rather crudely put, old man,” observed the escutcheoned Doozie, jutting forth his chin as he fidgeted. “After all, you and I, we did go to the same college together.”

“God knows it pains me, Bricky, old chum, but surely you understand. I’ve got to protect our
boy;
it’s my job, honor-bound and duty and all those other things.”

“
He
didn’t go to college with us. He wasn’t even pledged to our frat at the other place, the one for the grinds.”

“Life isn’t fair to most of our crowd, Bricky,” said Froggie, his eyes, however, gazing coldly at the Secretary
of State. “But just how could you possibly protect our boy in the Oval Office by alluding to any responsibility on our parts regarding Mangecavallo, which we would promptly and vociferously deny?”

“Well,” fairly choked the Secretary, his left eye again a steel pinball shooting between two magnets, “as it happens, we have the complete minutes of the search committee’s meetings.”

“
How
?” exploded Bricky, the pallid New England banker. “There were no secretaries and no minutes were
taken
!”

“You were taped, fellas,” answered the leader of the State Department, whispering.

“
What
?”

“I heard our loyal, fine-familied son of a bitch!” cried the Moose. “He said we were
taped
!”

“With what, for God’s sake?” demanded Doozie. “I never saw any machines!”

“Voice-activated microphones,” said the Secretary, hardly louder than previously. “Underneath the tables—wherever you met.”

“What was that?… Wherever we
met
?”

The faces around the table were frozen in angry astonishment; then one by one, as the realization hit them, the voices followed.

“My
house
?”

“My
lodge
on the lake?”

“My estate in
Palm Springs
!”

“The offices here in Washington?”

“Everywhere,” whispered Warren Pease, his face white.

“How could you possibly
do
such a thing?” roared the angular Smythington-Fontini, his ascot askew and his cigarette holder a veritable saber.

“Honor-bound and duty,” replied the blond Froggie. “You unmitigated bastard, don’t you ever expect to play at
my
club again.”

“And I suggest you cancel any plans you had for attending our class reunion, you despicable turncoat!” cried Doozie.

“As of this moment I accept your resignation from the Metropolitan Society!” stated Moose emphatically.

“I’m honorary chairman!”

“Not any longer, you’re not. By this evening we’ll have reports of your shocking behavior at State. Say, sexual harassment, female
and
male. We can’t tolerate that sort of thing! Not in our crowd!”

“And any thought you entertained about berthing your insignificant cabin cruiser at our yacht club is out of the question,” pronounced Smythie. “Dirty pot sailor.”

“Moose, Froggie, Doozie—you, too, Smythie! How can you
do
this to me? You’re talking about my
life
, all those things I hold dear!”

“You should have thought of that before—”