Webster’s expression betrayed his reluctant acceptance of De Spadante’s words. The mafioso had been helpful, helpful in ways few others dared to be. And he, Bobby Webster, had called upon him more than anyone else. The day had long since come and gone when Mario de Spadante could be so easily dismissed. It reduced itself to controlling him.
«Don’t you understand? We wanted Trevayne out. A reconvened hearing would have accomplished that.»
«You think so? Well, you’re wrong, Mr. Lace Pants. I talked to Madison last night; I told him to call me from the airport before he boarded. I figured someone ought to know what Trevayne was doing.»
The unexpected information caused Webster to check his hostility, replace it with a concern he hadn’t anticipated.
«What did Madison say?»
«That’s different, huh? None of you smart asses thought of it, huh?»
«What did he say?»
De Spadante sat down again. «The esteemed attorney was very uptight. He sounded like he was going to head home and climb into a bottle with that lush wife of his.»
«What did he say?»
«Trevayne figured that panel of senators for what it was—a big roomful of loaded dice; he made that clear. And Madison made no bones that he sweated out the confirmation—not Trevayne, he didn’t sweat piss—Madison sweated. For a very goddamn good reason. Trevayne told him if those bastards turned him down he wasn’t leaving town quietly. He was going to call in the newspapers, television; he had a lot of things he wanted to say. Madison didn’t guess any of it was too good.»
«About what?»
«Madison doesn’t know. He only knows it’s very heavy. Trevayne said it would rip the city apart; those were the words. Rip the city apart.»
Robert Webster turned away from the mafioso; he breathed deeply to control his ire. The sour-sweet odor that permeated the old house was offensive. «It makes absolutely no sense. I’ve talked with him every day this past week. It doesn’t make sense.»
«Madison didn’t lie, either.»
Webster turned back to De Spadante. «I know. But what is it?»
«We’ll find out,» answered the Italian with quiet confidence. «Without having our asses in a sling over some press conference. And when you girls put it all together, you’ll see I was right. If that hearing was reconvened and Trevayne thrown out, he would have shot off his cannon. I know Trevayne, from way back. He doesn’t lie, either. None of us are ready for that; the old man had to die.»
Webster stared at the heavyset man sitting so arrogantly in the filthy chair. «But we don’t know what it was he was going to say. Has it crossed your Neanderthal mind that it might have been something as simple as the Plaza Hotel? We could have—and would have immediately—disassociated ourselves from anything like that.»
De Spadante didn’t look up at the White House aide. Instead he reached into his pocket, and while Webster watched apprehensively, with a certain unbelieving fear, De Spadante removed a pair of thick tortoiseshell glasses. He put them on and began scanning some papers. «You try too hard to get me pissed off, Bobby… ‘Might have,’ ‘could have’; what the hell is that? The fact is, we didn’t know. And we weren’t going to risk finding out on the seven-o’clock news. I think maybe you ought to go back to the lace parade, Bobby. They’re probably sewing up a storm.»
Webster shook his head, dismissing De Spadante’s invective as he walked to the shabby door. Hand on the broken glass doorknob, he turned to look once again at the Italian. «Mario, for your own good, don’t make any more unilateral decisions. Consult us. These are complicated times.»
«You’re a bright boy, Bobby, but you’re still very young, very green. You get older, things don’t seem so complicated… Sheep don’t survive in the desert; a cactus doesn’t grow in a wet jungle. This Trevayne, he’s in the wrong environment. It’s as simple as that.»
12
The rambling white house, with the four Ionic pillars supporting an impractical balcony above the front porch, was situated in the middle of a landscaped three-acre plot. The driveway was as impractical as the balcony; it bordered the right side of a weedless, carpetlike front lawn and veered—inexplicably—again to the right, ending in a half-circle away from the house. The real-estate agent told Phyllis that the original owner had planned a garage apartment at the end of the semicircle, but before he could build it, he was transferred to Muscaton, South Dakota.
It was no High Barnegat, but it had a name—a name Phyllis wished she could obliterate. It was in raised lettering in the white stone beneath the impractical balcony. Monticellino.
Since the year’s lease did not entitle her to sandblast the letters, Phyllis decided the name would remain between God, the original owner, and Thomas Jefferson.
Tawning Spring, Maryland, was no Greenwich, although there were similarities. It was rich, ninety-eight percent white, and catered to the upward-mobility syndrome; it was essentially imitative—of itself—and insular; it was inhabited by people who knew exactly what they were buying: the penultimate rewards of the corporate dream. The ultimate—when admitted—was southeast: McLean or Fairfax, in the Virginia hunt country.
What the people who were buying the penultimate rewards didn’t know, thought Phyllis, was that they were also getting, without additional charge, all of the unbearable problems that went with their purchases.
Phyllis Trevayne had had them.
Those problems. Five years’ worth; nearer six, really. Six years in a half-hell. It was no one’s fault. And everyone’s. It was the way things were. Someone once decreed that a day should have twenty-four hours—not thirty-seven or forty-nine or sixteen—and that was that.
It was too short. Or too long.
Depending.
In the beginning, of course, there were no such philosophical thoughts about time. The first exhilaration of love, the excitement, the unbelievable energies the three of them—Andy, Douglas, herself—put into the shabby warehouse they called a company; if there were any thoughts of time then, it was usually in the form of where-the-hell-did-it-go.
She did triple duty. She was the secretary so needed to keep Andy organized; she was the bookkeeper filling ledger after ledger with unpronounceable words and unbelievably complicated figures. And finally she was the wife.
Their marriage had been comfortably situated—as her brother phrased it—between a Pratt and Whitney contract and an upcoming presentation to Lockheed. Andy and Doug had agreed that a three-week honeymoon in the Northwest would be ideal. The couple could see the San Francisco lights, catch some late skiing in Washington or Vancouver, and Andrew could make a side trip to Genessee Industries in Palo Alto. Genessee was an enormous conglomerate—everything from trains to aircraft, prefabricated housing to electronics research.
She knew when they began—those awful years. At least, the day she saw the outlines of what was coming. It was the day after they got back from Vancouver.
She had walked into the office and met the middle-aged woman her brother had hired to fill in during her absence. A woman who somehow exuded a sense of purpose, who seemed so committed to accomplishing far more than eight hours would permit—before dashing home to husband and children. A delightful person without the slightest trace of competitiveness about her, only a profound gratitude at being permitted to work. She didn’t actually need the money.