His gaze cold and unflinching, the Speaker said, ‘So?’
‘I think you know, sir. There was no husband over here, but there was a man who must have loved her very much. A
rising young politician trapped in an unhappy marriage from which he could not escape because of the laws of the Church and his constituents’ blind adherence to them. For years this man, who was also an attorney, sent money to the woman and visited her and the child in Ireland as often as he could… as an American uncle, of course—’
‘You can prove who these people were?’ interrupted the ageing Speaker curtly. ‘Not hearsay or rumour or questionable eyewitness identification but written proof?’
‘I can.’
‘With what? How?’
‘Letters were exchanged.’
‘Liar!’ snapped the septuagenarian. ‘She burned every damned one before she died!’
‘I’m afraid she burned all but one,’ said Varak softly. ‘I believe she had every intention of destroying it, too, but death came earlier than she expected. Her husband found it buried under several articles in her bedside table. Of course, he doesn’t know who E is, nor does he want to know. He’s only grateful that his wife declined your offer and stayed with him these past twenty years.’
The old man turned away, the hint of tears welling in his eyes, sniffed away in self-discipline. ‘My wife had left me then,’ he said, barely audible. ‘Our daughter and son were in college and there was no reason to keep up the rotten pretence any longer. Things had changed, outlooks changed, and I was as secure as a Kennedy in Boston. Even the la-di-das in the archdiocese kept their mouths shut—’course, I let a few of those sanctimonious bastards know that if there was any Church interference during the election, I’d encourage the black radicals and the Jews to raise hell in the House over their holy tax-exempt status. The bishop damn near threw up in apoplexy, screaming all kinds of damnation at me for setting a hell-fire public example but I settled his hash. I told him my departing wife had probably slept with him, too.’ The white-haired Speaker with the deeply lined face fell silent. ‘Mother of God,’ he cried to himself, the tears now apparent. ‘I wanted that girl back!’
‘I’m sure you’re not referring to your wife.’
‘You know exactly whom I mean, Mr. No-name! But she couldn’t do it. A decent man had given her a home and our son a name for nearly fifteen years. She couldn’t leave him—even for me. I’ll tell you the truth, I kept her last letter, too. Both letters were our last to each other. “We’ll be joined in the hereafter heaven,” she wrote me. “But no further on this earth, my darling.” What kind of crap was that? We could have had a life, a goddamned good part of life!’
‘If I may, sir, I think it was the expression of a loving woman who had as much respect for you as she did for herself and her son. You had children of your own and explanations from the past can destroy the future. You had a future, Mr. Speaker.’
‘I would have chucked it all in—’
‘She couldn’t let you do that, any more than she could destroy the man who had given her and the child a home and a name.’
The old man pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes, his voice suddenly reverting to its harsh delivery. ‘How the hell do you know about all this?’
‘It wasn’t difficult. You’re the leader of the House of Representatives, the second in line for the presidency, and I wanted to know more about you. Forgive me, but older people speak more freely than younger ones—much of it is due to their unrecognized sense of importance where so-called secrets are concerned—and, of course, I knew that you and your wife, both Catholics, had been divorced. Considering your political stature at the time and the power of your Church, that had to be a momentous decision.’
‘Hell, I can’t fault you there. So you looked for the older people who were around at the time.’
‘I found them. I learned that your wife, the daughter of a wealthy real estate developer who wanted political influence and literally financed your early campaigns, had a less than enviable reputation.’
‘Before and after, Mr. No-name. Only I was the last to find out.’
‘But you did find out,’ said Varak firmly. ‘And in your anger and embarrassment you sought other companionship. At the time you were convinced you couldn’t do anything about your marriage, so you looked for surrogate comfort.’
‘Is that what it’s called? I looked for someone who could be mine.’
‘And you found her in a hospital where you went to give blood during a campaign. She was a certified nurse from Ireland who was studying for her registry in the United States.’
‘How the hell—’
‘Old people talk.’
‘Pee Wee Mangecavallo,’ whispered the Speaker, his eyes suddenly bright, as if the memory brought back a rush of happiness. ‘He had a little Italian place, a bar with good Sicilian food, about four blocks from the hospital. No one ever bothered me there—I don’t think they knew who I was. That guinea bastard, he remembered.’
‘Mr. Mangecavallo is over ninety now, but he does, indeed, remember. You would take your lovely nurse there and he would close up his bar at one o’clock in the morning and leave you both inside, asking only that you kept the tarantellas on the jukebox really quiet.’
‘A beautiful person.’
‘With an extraordinary memory for one of his age but without, I’m afraid, the control he had as a younger man. He reminisces at length, rambles, actually, saying things over his Chianti that perhaps he would never have said even a few years ago.’
‘At his age he’s entitled—’
‘And you did confide in him, Mr. Speaker,’ interrupted Varak.
‘No, not really,’ disagreed the old politician. ‘But Pee Wee put things together; it wasn’t hard. After she left for Ireland, I used to go back there, for a couple of years quite frequently. I’d drink more than I usually did because nobody, like I said, knew me or gave a damn and Pee Wee always got me home without incident, as they say. I guess maybe I talked too much.’
‘You went back to Mr. Mangecavallo’s establishment when she married—’
‘Oh, yes, that I did! I remember it as if it were yesterday—remember going inside, no memory at all of coming out.’
‘Mr. Mangecavallo is quite lucid about that day. Names, a country, a city… a date—of severance, you called it. I went to Ireland.’
The Speaker snapped his head towards Varak, his unblinking eyes angry and questioning. ‘What do you want from me? It’s all over, all in the past, and you can’t hurt me. What do you want?’
‘Nothing that you would ever regret or be ashamed of, sir. The most stringent background examination could be made and you could only applaud my clients’ recommendation.’
‘Your… clients? Recommendation…? Some kind of House assignment?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘The horseshit aside, why would I agree to whatever the hell you’re talking about?’
‘Because of a detail in Ireland you are not aware of
‘What’s that?’
‘You’ve heard of the killer who calls himself Tammy O’Sheary, the provisional “wing commander” of the Irish Republican Army?’
‘A pig! A blot on every Irish clan’s escutcheon!’
‘He’s your son.’
A week had passed and for Kendrick it was further proof of the quick passage of fame in Washington. The Partridge Committee’s televised hearings were suspended at the request of the Pentagon, who issued dual statements that it was revising certain financial ‘in-depth’ records, as well as the fact that Colonel Robert Barrish had been promoted to brigadier general and posted to the island of Guam to oversee that most vital outpost of freedom.
‘One Joseph Smith of 70 Cedar Street in Clinton, New Jersey, whose father had been with the 27th in Guam, roared with laughter as he poked his wife’s left breast in front of the television screen. ‘He’s been hosed, babe! And that what’s-his-face did it! He’s my buddy!’
But as all brief periods of euphoria must come to an abrupt end, so did the temporary relief felt by the representative of the Ninth Congressional District of Colorado.
‘Jesus Christ!’ yelled Phil Tobias, chief aide to the congressman, as he held his hand over the telephone. ‘It’s the Speaker of the House himself! No aide, no secretary, but him!’
‘Maybe you should let the other “himself” know about it,’ said Annie O’Reilly. ‘He called on your line, not mine. Don’t talk, sweetie. Just push the button and announce. It’s out of your league.’
‘But it isn’t right! His people should have called me—’
‘Do it!’
Tobias did it.
‘Kendrick?’
‘Yes, Mr. Speaker?’
‘You got a few minutes to spare?’ asked the New Eng-lander, the word’spare’ emerging as’spay-yah’.