“Nothing. For the time being. I’ll be in touch. Tell the president I’m looking forward to this campaign. In fact, I want to be closely involved. Closely.”
Bucky’s breath came in gasps. Frank hung up.
Frank’s next call was to the head of his Internet division. He instructed him to pour a major amount of Spider RepellentTM all over the online Yale Daily News so anyone Googling “Cohane” and “bribe” and “Yale” would come up with zero matches.
Having blackmailed the president’s top adviser and taken care of his own little scandal-not bad for ten minutes on the shoulder-Frank Cohane put the Enzo in gear, roared back onto the eucalyptus-scented Pacific Coast Highway, and gunned the engine toward home. He was actually looking forward to torturing Lisa with the latest evidence of her son’s nincompoopery. Under the circumstances, he felt entitled to squeeze every drop of satisfaction from it, while at the same time congratulating himself on having outfoxed a very big bad wolf. Bucky Trumble’s balls now belonged to him. As Frank reflected on it, with instincts like his, he should be quite an asset to the Peacham campaign. Yes indeed, quite an asset.
He whistled as he drove.
Chapter 30
Gideon Payne was in pain, and not just physical.
Try as he might to remember having willingly handed over to the two odious Russian prostitutes his precious watch and fob-handed down all the way from his sharpshooter ancestor-he couldn’t. He had no memory of it. None. (“An alcoholic blackout, perhaps,” Monsignor Montefeltro suggested.) And now those two-shudder-Muscovite jezebels not only knew what Gideon looked like, but were in possession of a watch engraved with his name. The thought of it gave him chest constrictions.
He did, vaguely, dimly, unfortunately, remember using the monsignor’s phone on that dreadful night of nights…and asking the directory operator for the number of an escort service. “Any-hic-escort service.” Oh, the wages of sin.
Now, every time a phone rang-any phone-Gideon trembled and broke out in cold sweat. Was it-them?
He heard a chastising voice inside him, mocking: My, my, my, how the wicked do lie…in wait upon the Judgment Day.
He kept a low profile. He must show up at the last meeting of the Transitioning commission. He had to. But what if the Russian jeze-bels watched C-SPAN? Oh, Lord…
Monsignor Montefeltro, meanwhile, now found himself in a deepening hole of his own digging.
The monsignor had decided that the only thing to do was pay the wretched Russian blackmailers the $900 they were demanding. He got the cash (from his personal account), put on civilian clothes and bug-eye dark glasses of the kind once favored by Jackie Onassis and Greta Garbo, and arranged to meet the ghastly Ivan or Vladimir-he didn’t ask which-at a designated street corner in Georgetown, far from his own home. Once there, he handed over the envelope to the cigarette-smoking Russian, who ripped it open, thumbed the bills, and then grunted at him, “Is not enough.”
“What do you mean, ‘Is not enough’?” the monsignor protested. “You asked for nine hundred dollars. Here is your nine hundred!”
Ivan-Vladimir shook his head. “No. One thousand two hundred dollars is price for both girls.”
“Nine hundred you asked for. Nine hundred I give you. And I tell you good-bye! Dasvidanya!” The monsignor stormed off in a fury.
By the time he reached home, he was sweating profusely. When he walked in, his phone was ringing. He picked up and listened.
“Is priest Montefeltro? Is escort service. You owe three hundred dollars.”
“I tell you before, I am not a priest! It was a costume party!”
“Costume party with two people?”
“You said nine hundred dollars! I gave your gorilla nine hundred dollars! Go away!”
“I make mistake about money. Just like you make mistake. Big mistake. Now you are owing three hundred more.”
The iniquity! “All right, all right,” the monsignor said. “I give you the three hundred. Then it’s finished. But I want returned the watch and the chain that I gave you.”
“No.”
“Sм.”
“No. Watch with chain is tip for girls. Who is Gid-yon Pine?”
Sweat poured anew from the sacerdotal forehead. “I don’t know. It’s an antique watch.”
“Is name on watch. Gid-yon Pine. Is he the one who called for the girls? He have a different accent from you. From south. It wasn’t you who call. You are Italian. Italian priest. According to caller ID, house is belonging to Massimo Montefeltro. So that’s you, yes?”
The besieged monsignor closed his eyes and summoned angels and archangels with flaming swords to smite the wicked, then opened his eyes to find himself still in the parlor where the sin had taken place, still smelling faintly of Protestant barf and Mr. Clean.
“All right, all right! Tell your Ivan or Vladmir I will meet him at the same place with three hundred dollars. Then we are finished. Finished forever.”
“Is not necessary.”
“What is not?”
“To meet at same place. He is now at this moment outside your door.”
The monsignor hung up. A moment later, it rang again. Expecting the Russian, he barked into it, “Russian pimp! I am getting your money!”
He heard silence over the line and the faint static hiss of an overseas telephone call, followed by a tentative female Italian voice saying, in Italian, “This is the Vatican operator. Is this the residence of the Monsignor Massimo Montefeltro?”
Jesu Christo.
“Yes, yes,” the monsignor said in Italian, in a somewhat different tone of voice. “There was another call, to a wrong number. A nuisance.” He summoned his dignity. “It is Monsignor Montefeltro who speaks. Who is calling him?”
“Cardinal Restempopo-Bandolini is calling. One moment, please. I will connect you.”
Had it been any normal Tuesday morning, Montefeltro would have been delighted and even honored to receive a phone call from the holy father’s consigliere principale, personal confessor, and supreme director of the Congregation for the Propagation and Defense of the Faith. Each of these portfolios was impressive enough; combined, they made their possessor the second-highest-ranking cleric in the Vatican and thus the Catholic faith, consisting of over one billion adherents. Even other cardinals trembled at the approach on marble of the scarlet-slippered feet of Bonifaccio Cardinal Restempopo-Bandolini.
So for Monsignor Montefeltro, this call, coming at this exact moment, was an occasion not of pride, but of pituitary gland panic. He stared into the infernal abyss, to the accompaniment of doorbell ringing and the concomitant banging of a meaty Slavic fist.
“Massimo,” said the high-pitched voice over the phone.
“Eminence.” Thump-thump-thump. Ding-dong. Thump-THUMP-THUMP.
“Fraternal greetings.”
Thump-thump-thump…
“And to you, Eminence.”
“I am calling on a matter of the most grave importance.”
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
“Massimo, there is a noise.”
“I beg your indulgence, Eminence. It is-construction. They are building a…chapel. May I call Your Eminence back from a more tranquil telephone?”
“No, no, I must shortly accompany the holy father to an important meeting. My specific instructions will arrive in writing, by courier. But I wanted to tell you personally that there is a profound concern about this Transitioning bill in Washington.”
“Ah. Yes, I am following it closely, Eminence. Most closely.”