Small sheds flanked the White House. A conservatory was on the right. A bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson, with his right hand placed over his heart, stood before the mansion in the middle of the driveway. Bright flowers surrounded the granite pedestal block. They were freshly planted, judging from the overturned soil.
A soldier approached from Pennsylvania Avenue. He was a private. The man was about to pass Mazorca when they both heard a loud commotion coming from the portico. Dozens of men poured out the front door. They were a rowdy bunch, whooping and boasting and knocking each other around. Mazorca stepped onto the grass to let them go by. The soldier did the same.
There must have been a hundred of them. Many had pistols stuffed in their belts. Others had big knives. When they reached Pennsylvania Avenue, they turned right, turned right again on Fifteenth Street, and eventually disappeared behind the State Department and Treasury.
As they left the White House grounds, the soldier turned to Mazorca.
“Are you one of Jim Lane’s men too?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“I suppose not. You don’t really look it.” The soldier pointed toward the vanishing horde. “The ‘Frontier Guards.’ At least that’s what they call themselves. They’re more like a mob. They arrived yesterday from out West and spent the night here. They couldn’t have been more out of place. There are a lot of them-two or three times the number that just passed by. They say they’re here to protect President Lincoln.”
The bluecoat apparently was a talker. “And they’re all in the White House?” asked Mazorca.
“They’ve turned the place into a bivouac. I’ve never seen such a rabble. But the truth is we need every man we can get these days. We’re short of soldiers all over the city, and those fellows look ready to fight.”
“At least the president is safe.”
“I suppose. With the soldiers on duty here, plus Lane’s men, I think we could hold off a small group of attackers. I’m sure you’ve heard all the rumors of kidnapping plots and that sort of thing.”
“It seems as though people move in and out of the building with ease.”
“Mr. Lincoln has insisted on keeping the house open at all times. He talked to us the other day about it and said that when he was a congressman during the Polk years, the house was shut to the public. He said it created an appearance of aloofness, and he wanted no part of that.”
“Interesting.”
“I definitely see his point. But sometimes I wonder how safe he really is in there. He calls it ‘the people’s house,’ but it’s his house as well. I sure don’t want any harm to come to him.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”
“What’s your business here?”
“Just looking.”
“Have you come for a job?”
Mazorca narrowed his eyes. “You could say that,” he replied.
The soldier thought nothing of it. “That’s what most of the people who come here are doing,” he continued. “They’re asking Mr. Lincoln to give them jobs in the government.”
“I see,” said Mazorca. “Well, right now I’m just looking.”
“Good to meet you, mister,” said the soldier. He walked into the house.
Mazorca watched him go. “I’ve already got a job,” he said, to no one but himself.
When Violet Grenier heard the Irish girl marching up the stairs, she rose from her chair and smoothed her dress. The door opened, revealing a plain-looking girl in a plain-looking dress. Polly was perhaps seventeen years old, and she possessed precisely what Violet wanted in a servant: an appearance so thoroughly ordinary that none of Violet’s male visitors would notice her. If there was one thing Violet Grenier was good at, it was securing the attention of men.
“Mrs. Grenier, you have visitors,” said Polly, in a meek brogue.
Violet already knew. She had been writing a note at her desk when she glanced out the window of her second-floor study, looked across Sixteenth Street to St. John’s Church on the other side, and saw two men walking straight for her front door. She had not recognized either of them.
“They called themselves Jeff and Alex,” continued Polly. She seemed unsure of herself, which was normal except that now she seemed hesitant even by her own standards. “They didn’t give last names, and they said it didn’t matter because you wouldn’t know them by their names but by a phrase. They made me memorize it: ‘Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction.’” The girl’s face, usually expressionless, showed a flash of distaste.
Violet recognized the words immediately. It surprised her to hear them. She asked Polly to repeat the line. The girl closed her eyes and spoke it again.
“Tell our guests that I will join them presently,” said Violet.
Polly nodded and left. Violet stayed behind and paused before a mirror. She was one of those women who was not beautiful at first glance but became so as a man studied her. She was tall and slim, with olive skin that flushed into color on her face, thick eyebrows crowning brown eyes that somehow sparkled, and just a touch of gray in her black hair, which was parted straight down the middle and drawn back tightly despite a current fashion calling for rings and curls. Her beauty was the kind that comes with maturity, a confident pose of female experience that younger women could only hope to achieve one day. She also had a good figure-one that few women could duplicate even in their youth. At the age of thirty-nine, Violet had never felt better about herself.
There was a time when she would have thought feeling good about herself was impossible. Just six years earlier, she had become a childless widow when her husband died on a business trip to California. The news came to her in a telegram. She had read it in this very room. For months she was despondent. Her husband had left her with enough money to remain comfortable, but also more grief than she thought she could bear.
Slowly but surely, however, Violet overcame her sadness. It had been like recovering from a long convalescence. Yet when it was gone, it was gone for good-and Violet once again threw herself into the Washington political scene as a high-powered hostess whose guests came from the ranks of cabinet members, military officers, and foreign diplomats. When her friend James Buchanan was elected president in 1856, she achieved even greater levels of prominence. An invitation to dine at her home had become a prized mark of social success.
Although Violet had no shortage of suitors, a widowed woman in possession of a good fortune does not necessarily want a husband. Violet enjoyed her newfound prestige and decided that she would rather entertain senators than marry one. She met most of them in drawing rooms and across dinner tables, but these were by no means her only places of congress. They were not even the most important ones.
Violet had discovered a talent for bewitching men. At first she deployed it for her own amusement. Before long, however, she realized that her paramours were willing to share their intimate knowledge of Washington politics-she heard what was said behind the closed doors of committee rooms, which public men were to be trusted under no circumstances, and who aspired to high office but would never get there because of a drinking problem. Sometimes men confided in Violet because they wanted to impress her. Other times they did it because they just wanted to talk and she was willing to listen. Their motives hardly mattered to Violet, who realized that she occupied a unique and privileged position. And she saw it as an opportunity to exploit.