His part of the agreement committed him to treating her with unfailing courtesy and deference whenever they were in the public eye. He’d picked this up from a Southern senator so long in office he’d grown moss. “Whoop ‘em in the bedroom, By,” the white-haired old lecher had confided, “but treat ‘em like queens where the world can see. They’ll forgive you the one out of gratitude for the other.”
Also, for every year of service, Lupe got a generous payment deposited into an account in the Cayman Islands. If she lasted ten years, she’d have well over a million, but she had to stay until he said leave in order to collect. Which could be during or after his second term in the White House. Fulfillment of that ambition would begin when he utterly destroyed the incumbent as well as the reputations of the incumbent’s family, friends, and acquaintances! He smiled secretly to himself, relishing the battle plan.
“Trouble, By?” Lupe said in the open doorway, two drinks in her hands. She held one of them out to him.
He shook his head as he took it. “Tempest in a teakettle, like always. Any little thing, she comes unglued.”
“Was Tim hurt?” Lupe liked Tim, despite his brave attempts to hate her on his mother’s behalf. Poor kid. He didn’t get much fun at home. Lupe believed in fun. When By was too busy to enjoy it, she had fun elsewhere, though carefully. There was always fun available.
“Broken leg, not serious. Is there something in the gift closet?” Lupe kept gifts and cards on hand for all conceivable occasions. Whenever Byron needed to mark an occasion, she had something suitable. She made a virtue out of shopping.
“Oh, lemme think. I bought two new computer games last week.
He can have fun with those, sitting down. And a book on astronomy.”
“Astronomy?”
“He was reading articles on it, last time he was here. It’s written for nonscientists, but it isn’t childish.”
“I’ll sign the book tonight. Send the stuff FedEx, okay?”
“Sure thing. Tomorrow morning.”
He grunted assent. “I expected a call.”
“A man did call. ‘Mr. Jones’. He said you wanted to see him this evening before dinner, and he’ll be here in half an hour. I told Cally to hold dinner until eight.”
“Fine.” He gulped at the drink, feeling the taste all the way down.
“Cally put some tapas out in the den, and unless you need something else, I’m going down to Edwina’s until about seven-thirty.”
He nodded, not bothering to respond, merely registering that she was going down the stairs and out. He heard her car leaving the driveway. Just for the hell of it, he wandered back to hernido an d picked up the daily diary by her phone.Tuesday, noon. Lunch with DeeDee Mclntyre, shopping. Five pm—cocktails with Edwina Taylor-Lopez, re the Hispanic Caucus. Very nice. She was absent, her absence was documented, leaving her blameless. She knew Mr. Jones had called, and that’s all. When she returned home, her husband would be alone. Their relationship depended, he thought, in large part on what he did not tell her. He would have been surprised to learn that Lupe thought it depended as much on the things she didn’t tell him.
He heard the door chimes and Cally’s voice in the hall. When he arrived at the door of the den, the two of them were at the bar cabinet and ice was clinking into glasses while very expensive single malt was poured over them. They had ignored the good but much less pricey stuff Lupe had put at the front of the cabinet.
“Senator,” said the larger man: “Dink” Dinklemier, all six foot five, two hundred thirty or forty odd pounds of him, ex-college football star, ex-mercenary, smarter than he looked and a current employee of the Select Committee on Intelligence that Morse chaired.
“Good to see you, Byron,” murmured the other man, removing his coat and seating himself. He was Prentice Arthur, slightly graying, dignified as a deacon, ex-CIA, ex-security advisor, currently serving as the senator’s hook and line to certain unnamed fish in the Pentagon. With the money that flowed over there, there was habitat for lots of fish, everything from sharks to bottom feeders, each of them useful in his own way.