Her laugh was warm and bright. “Oh, Natalie’s all right. In her way she means well. She’s like most control freaks. They think they’re doing you a favor by having everything their own way. It’s for your own good — and they just don’t understand why you can’t understand that. I had an older sister who was like that, God rest her soul.”
She opened the front door for me. The chill, brilliant day leapt at me. She looked back down the hall. “There are times when I actually feel sorry for her.”
I smiled. “I guess I haven’t gotten to that point yet. And somehow I don’t think I ever will.”
She touched my arm and laughed. “A lot of people say that, I’m afraid.” Then she was closing the door, sealing herself inside the tomb with the one and only Natalie Cooper.
Chapter 16
David Manning and Doris Kelly sat next to each other just inside the office headquarters. Given their expressions you’d think they were patients waiting on bad news from a doctor.
Manning said, “We’re hiding out here, Dev.” Doris nodded. She was pale and nervous.
“From what?”
Before Manning could speak, Ben came back from his desk and said, “They got it after we did.”
“Got what?”
“Reporters,” Ben said. “Three of them were here for an hour. I had to practically push them out the door. Then they went over to the foundation.”
“That’s why we came over here,” Manning said.
From her desk, Kristin said, “Then they started in on me first.”
“What the hell are we all talking about?” I said.
“The son. Bobby,” Ben said. “Somehow they found out about Susan and her son.”
So there you had it. The information hit my brain and my entire body tensed. The word was out and from here on in there was no way we could get ahead of this story. All we could do was defend ourselves, and when you defend yourself a good share of people assume you’re guilty. If we’d broken the story at a press conference that we had called, we could have spun it our way — a mother reunited with her son, sad and sorry that she’d had to give him up for adoption, but now they were together again. Duffy and the press would still have come after us, but at least we would have put a tender face on it before the savagery began.
“I assume we don’t know who contacted the press.”
“Not yet, Dev,” Ben said.
Manning said, “We’ve got a lot of work to do at the foundation, but I don’t want to go back there. I don’t want to get trapped into saying the wrong thing.”
“They even followed me to the bathroom,” Doris said. “I was half afraid the woman reporter was going to follow me inside.”
“I suppose Duffy’ll be on TV right away. Gloating.”
“He won’t have to be on TV, David,” I said. “The press’ll do all his work for him. He can stay above it. He gets to sit in the stands while we get ripped up in the arena.”
“Who the hell knew about it?” Ben said. “Just a handful of people.”
“Larson, that’s who I’m thinking of.” Kristin continued working on her computer as she talked. “That’s what he’s good at. He manages to find out things that other people never get to.”
I was thinking of the woman I’d met at Craig Donovan’s. Another possibility. She knew about it. Donovan would have told her. Not unthinkable that he’d beaten her again and she’d decided to ruin his plan for blackmail.
The first thing I had to concentrate on was preparing a presentation for the press. I had to find Susan and we had to work out a story. Then we had to find Bobby. Even though our heartwarming mother-and-son reunion spin was late, it had to be performed, anyway. We had to do our best to keep Susan in a sympathetic light. We would lose votes over this; the thing was to hold those losses to a minimum.
“I need to talk to Susan,” I said. “What’s her schedule today?”
“She doesn’t have anything until late this afternoon,” Kristin said.
“Where is she now?”
Kristin shrugged. “I don’t know, Dev.”
I tried her cell phone number. No answer. “When was the last time anybody talked to her?”
Manning said, “I managed to get her when the reporters started coming. I think she was out at Jane’s.”
I grabbed a phone book from a nearby desk and searched for Jane’s number. I punched the digits in. Jane answered. “How’re you feeling?”
“Pretty good. Jane, is Susan there?”
The phone seemed to go dead. “Jane?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You just did answer it. I need to talk to her. I’m sorry about putting you in the middle, but she’s got to talk to me.”
“We heard the news station. About Bobby.”
“Please put her on.”
“I’m not sure she’ll talk to you — or anybody, Dev.”
“Try. Please. She’s a big girl. She’s got to face this.”
“She’s scared.”
“So are the rest of us.”
“Damn,” she said. “Just a minute, Dev. I’ll do what I can.”
When she finally came on the phone, Susan said, “I don’t think there’s anything I can do except resign. I’m just trying to get up the nerve to call a press conference and get it over with.”
“We need to talk.”
“I just told you I’ll need to resign.”
Her words didn’t surprise me. I’d seen this happen to politicians before. There are those who hang on forever. Sure, I visited whorehouses every night for twenty years and took more than a million dollars in graft and have a fifteen-year-old girlfriend. But is that any reason to deprive my constituents of my brilliance? At the other extreme you find those who just get overwhelmed and decide they don’t have the strength they thought they had. They get tired, they get worn down, they get embarrassed, and they think, The hell with it. One painful press conference and they’ll slink off the stage. Susan was in that mode now.
“Not before we talk. I need to know everything before we talk about resigning.”
“This isn’t your decision; it’s mine.”
“That’s true. But maybe I can help you make the right one.”
“You really think we still have a chance?”
“It’s possible to put a good face on this, Susan. If we think it through. You have a son. You’ve been reunited. You’re about to become a grandmother.”
“I guess that’s why we pay you.” Her laugh was weary. “I got a chill when you said ‘grandmother.’ I could see how it might work. I love Bobby and I love Gwen.”
“Good. I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”
After I hung up, I saw them looking at me — Ben, Kristin, Manning, and Doris Kelly. Kristin was smiling. “You should write soap operas. You had me going there. I can really see how this could play at a press conference.”
Doris Kelly said, “There was a lot more of that going on than anybody wanted to admit — giving children up for adoption when the mothers didn’t know what else to do. I don’t see where that would be such a big deal.”
It wasn’t the force of her idea that startled me; it was the fact that she’d expressed it. I’d never heard her really say anything before.
“This is a long way from over,” Ben said.
“I’m going out to see Susan. You’ve got my cell number if you need to talk to me.”
“What do you want to tell the press for now?” Kristin said.
“Tell them we’ll be announcing a press conference and until then we won’t have anything to say.”
“That’s going to be some press conference,” Ben said.
“It had better be, Ben. Or we’re all through.”
All the way out to Jane’s I played a fantasy press conference in my mind. With Susan standing with Gwen and Bobby and presenting the whole thing as a happy story of reunion rather than any kind of scandal — and promises of being together from now on — we could create a reconciliation narrative that the press would go for. Interviews with Bobby about his growing-up years. Interviews with Gwen about what a fine man Bobby was and how the baby would bring them even closer together. David Manning would have to put in an appearance, too. Some camera time for all four of them, David, of course, delighted at this sudden surprise. I’d keep Natalie chained in a bunker somewhere. Duffy would keep going at us, but he’d have to be careful. These were no longer the days of The Scarlet Letter. These were the days of watching fame-driven nobodies giving blow jobs to other fame-driven nobodies right there on the family screen. They called them reality shows. Well, our show was G-rated compared to that kind of sleaze.