“I’ll put the tab on my room,” she said distractedly.
Truthfully, she was a very beautiful woman. And she wasn’t the woman for me.
“No, Dorsey. You won’t.” I bent, kissed her on the lips, and headed for the door.
It was raining when I came out of the hotel. I was in no mood for Willie Varner, so I went walking. Bought another umbrella and I didn’t even have an expense account. There was a little bar on Ninth Avenue at about Fifty-seventh, and I dropped in. Quiet. Two drunks at a little table in the back of the room. Tending bar was a defrocked priest or a disbarred lawyer — I didn’t ask which. The place reeked of old wood and wasted lives. High at one end of the bar was a television with a Yankees game going, with no sound. They were playing someplace with sunshine. I wished I were there.
I ordered a double Scotch, the oldest stuff they had, and sat at the end of the bar by the window and watched the rain and the traffic and the people hurrying by.
Dorsey wasn’t a bad person. Oh, she was a poor little rich girl, and I believed her when she said every man in her life wanted money. Still, I wasn’t the guy to rescue her. I didn’t want her money. I didn’t want the frantic indolence, the eternal vacation, the doomed-to-failure effort to stay young and trendy and with it. I wanted to look my age, to keep busy with things worth doing, and to find a woman who loved me.
Dorsey didn’t.
At least, I didn’t think she did.
So why in hell did she ask me to marry her?
Didn’t she know that wasn’t done in middle-class circles? Any woman worth her salt could maneuver the object of her affections into getting on his knee and popping the question. Or maybe, being a hip young modern, Dorsey didn’t give a damn.
Wonder if I was the first man Dorsey ever asked to wed.
Can a husband testify against a wife in New York? Maryland? Why did I have this suspicion eating on me that she was somehow involved in this mess with Royston? She knew everyone in Washington; she admitted she’d been to the White House. Why not Royston? Or the president?
Naw — she was no Monica.
I sipped the Scotch as slowly as I could, but it went down way too fast, so I ordered another.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and laid it on the bar beside my drink. After a while I picked it up and dialed a number I had memorized.
He got it on the second ring. “Grafton.”
“Tommy. Been a hell of an evening. Dorsey proposed.”
“Proposed what?”
“What the hell you think? Marriage, goddamn it!”
“How much is she worth, anyway?”
“My guess is about four hundred million. Give or take.”
“Why didn’t you get the number?”
“She was proposing marriage, not a merger.” That wasn’t strictly true, but I was in no mood to get into the messy details with Jake Grafton. I had all the respect in the world for him, but there is a limit.
“Girls that rich don’t come along every day,” he observed tactlessly. “My old man always told me that I should marry the first time for love, the second time for money.”
“If you and Callie ever split the blanket, I’ll give you Dorsey’s telephone number.”
“He also said it’s as easy to love a rich girl as a poor one, although I don’t think he had any experience to back that up. It was a naked assumption on his part.”
“Terrific.”
“So did you say yes?”
“I called because I think it’s time for you to tell me what is going on. Everything you know.”
“Don’t know much,” the admiral muttered, “and that’s a fact.”
“Everything you suspect.”
“All of it?”
“All of it. Who, what, where, when, why.”
“It’ll take a little bit.”
“Believe me, I’ve got nothing but time.”
So he told it. Dumped the whole load on me. When I hung up thirty minutes later I tossed the phone on the bar and sat watching the rain through the window. When the barman came around I asked if he had coffee. He said he could make a pot. And he did.
CHAPTER THIRTY
It was after midnight when I got back to the van. As I put my umbrella on the floor to drain, Willie sniffed and said, “Been drinkin’, huh?”
“If you were a better cook you’d make some lucky man a good mother.”
“So what’d she say?”
“She wants to marry me,” I said flippantly.
He snorted in derision. “That’ll be the day,” he said, turning back to the computer. “Royston got a call a while ago I think you should listen to. I got his end of it.”
“Who was he talking to?”
“You tell me.” He handed me the headphones, then went back to punching the keyboard. Rain drummed on the top of the van, making a pleasant sound.
I donned the headphones and got comfortable. A proposal from Dorsey. That’ll be the day! And yet, this was the day. Four hundred million genuine American dollars, half to me, and I told her I’d think about it.
If half of that pile wasn’t enough, Carmellini, just what was your price?
If Willie only knew the truth, my reputation as a corruptible bastard would be in jeopardy. Yet knowing Willie, he’d probably just tell everybody that Carmellini wanted to steal it, not marry it.
My ruminations were interrupted by Dell Royston’s gravelly voice in my ears.
“Hello.”
After mumbles and grunts and some long pauses, Royston said, “You’re going to have to announce your decision soon. Like tomorrow. Heston’s set to make the nominating speech, but he has to have a name to plug in.” Heston would be Senator Frank “Piggy” Heston, the senior senator from one of the smaller states — he got his nickname from his addiction to pork projects for his constituents. By reputation, he had never seen an appropriations bill he didn’t like.
Another long pause followed that comment, then, “I see…”
Finally, “I can hold the train in the station for a few hours, but by tomorrow afternoon it’s got to pull out… Sure. See you tomorrow evening.” Tomorrow evening, I knew, the president planned on making his acceptance speech to the convention, to be broadcast nationwide on all the networks.
Willie raised a finger and pushed a button.
I took off the headset.
“Well?”
“The president hasn’t made up his mind,” I said.
“His own wife! You’d think the bastard could say yes or no.”
Which left me speculating about the relationship between the president and first lady. Theirs was a political marriage, sure. But they had four years to figure this out!
Willie leaned back in his chair and scratched a scab. “Well, you ready to go back to Jersey and snatch a few winks? Or will you be sleeping over somewhere?”
“Maybe the president isn’t sure he could be reelected with Zooey on the ticket. Reelection is the first priority.”
“Bullshit!” Willie pointed to a stack of newspapers on a ledge. “The pundits say he’s a shoo-in. The economy is humming, he’s hell on terrorists, working on the Mideast thing… There’s a landslide shaping up.”
“‘Dewey Defeats Truman!’”
“Maybe he just doesn’t like the bitch.” The bitch he was referring to was Zooey.
“You think likes and dislikes matter in politics?” I mused.
“Oh, I know, these politicos would bend over and spread ’em for the devil if he would deliver the sinner vote. But unless someone catches him in bed with a live boy or a dead woman, this president doesn’t need help. That’s my point.”
“Beats me,” I replied.
“Well, Jersey or what?”
“You go. Take a cab. I’m going to stay here a while.”