“I told him I’d introduce him to Carl,” said Connolly.
“The governor,” she said. I took that as an admonishment for his informality. “Greg, I’d like a moment with Jason,” she said, her eyes squarely on me.
“Sure, sure.”
As Connolly excused himself, applause erupted again throughout the place. I wasn’t sure why. I didn’t care why.
“The governor’s leaving,” Madison said to me. Over her shoulder, I could see Governor Snow waving to the crowd. But not out the main exit. An exit that led further into the hotel’s interior.
“Where to now?” I asked.
“We have a suite of rooms here. For more private discussions, away from the hordes.”
Our eyes remained on each other.
“I wasn’t talking about the governor,” I said.
Her expression eased ever so subtly. “Neither was I.”
I followed her through the room, fully charged, a loaded weapon. She said she wanted to use the ladies’ room and left me in the main lobby with about a hundred people and my imagination. The governor and his state police entourage were nowhere to be found. Most of the people were filtering out.
She took her time. I imagined the point was to let the crowd dissipate. When she came back, she made eye contact with me and headed toward the elevator. I followed her in. About a dozen other people did, too. Shoulder to shoulder. I found myself in a corner as the elevator abruptly lurched upward. Madison was standing directly in front of me, and with the lift of the elevator, her body moved backward into mine. Her hair was directly beneath my chin, hints of dark roots to her bleached hair. Her perfume was something expensive. I looked around the elevator. All eyes forward. Some small talk about the weather, Barack Obama’s surprise showing in the primaries thus far, the fundraiser tonight. But nary a word from my female companion or me. A certain part of my anatomy, standing at full attention, was thrust against the small of her back. She didn’t seem to mind. Neither did her hand, which had curled behind her back to, shall we say, grip the microphone.
Moses’s trek through the desert seemed like a sprint compared to this elevator ride. Every person on the elevator seemed to be getting off at different floors before us. I was bursting at the seams, and Madison wasn’t doing anything to lessen my anticipation. If she’d moved that hand any faster, in fact, I might not even have made it to the room. But she knew exactly what she was doing, grooming her new acquaintance just enough to keep everyone in the proper frame of mind without spoiling the surprise.
As the group dissipated, and things were more conspicuous, she cleared some space between us. She looked through her purse for something, biding time. I kept my eyes appropriately down—or inappropriately, because all I was doing was looking at that dress. About twenty different pornographic scenarios bombarded my imagination, as I stood stoically on that elevator. Positions and role plays and sweaty bodies slapping and silk sheets and hair tugging and legs in the air—
The room was a suite itself, with a spacious front room and then a bedroom. She’d done well enough so far, so I thought I would let her take the lead, at least for now. She closed the door behind her and placed her purse carefully on a small table.
She appraised me with those voracious amber eyes. Then she approached, placing her hands delicately on my jacket. “These silly costumes,” she said. She reached up and untied my bow tie.
“And I was so proud of how I tied that,” I said.
She pulled the tie off my neck and slipped it around hers. “Then tie it again,” she said.
So I did, best I could, anyway. I was having some trouble concentrating. She reached behind her and unzipped her dress. Before I’d put the finishing touches on the bow tie around her long, thin neck, her dress was at her ankles. A moment later her strapless bra and panties hit the carpet as well.
“We’ll need some privacy,” she said. I was only then aware of the window in the room, looking out over nothing but another hotel a couple blocks away. I watched her walk to the window, wearing nothing but high heels and the bow tie. She slowly pulled the curtains closed. Maybe a lucky someone got a nice peek. I was pretty sure that thought had crossed her mind.
Then she slowly walked back toward me, taunting me with each careful step of those high heels. She took my hand and led me into the bedroom. It was a queen-size bed, I thought, but it could have been a dirty tarp for all I cared. She put a knee on the bed, then another, and crawled to the center of the bed.
Still in the position, on her hands and knees, she looked back over her shoulder at me.
Maybe these fundraisers weren’t so bad, after all.
44
DEAR PENTHOUSE FORUM, I NEVER THOUGHT THIS
would happen to me. . . .
A knock at the door. I put on a robe from the bathroom and answered. We’d ordered champagne and some finger food. I brought it into the bedroom.
The bedroom had been through a rough two hours. One of the lamps was knocked over. The clock radio on the bedside table had somehow taken a spill as well, standing in a vertical position on the carpet. The bedspread was on the floor, as were the sheets. Only two pillows remained on the bed and they were propping up Madison Koehler, who was checking her BlackBerry, wearing only three things: her glasses, my tuxedo shirt and satin panties.
“Did you, like, read a book about male fantasies or something?” I asked.
“I wrote it.” She seemed pleased with herself. She finished reading whatever email or text message was on her phone and looked up at me.
I poured the champagne into glasses, sat on the bed, and handed her one. “I hope this won’t affect our friendship,” I said.
She looked over her glasses at me and took the champagne. “Let’s promise it won’t.”
By my estimate, I had known Madison Koehler for a hundred and forty minutes, and I’d spent a hundred and twenty of those ravishing her body. Or maybe more accurately, she had spent it ravishing mine. She knew what she wanted and hadn’t been afraid to provide direction. And I was generally willing to accommodate, although I drew the line at the Russian accent.
“Am I your first?” she asked.
That question surprised me. I thought maybe I should be insulted.
“Since your wife, I mean.”
That surprised me even more. She’d done her homework. But on me? I wouldn’t have thought she’d even known who I was.
“Yes,” I said.
She put down her BlackBerry, got off the bed, and took some strawberries from the room service tray. I enjoyed the view. I was enjoying myself, generally. Maybe a little conflicted, but this day had to come. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life celibate. And this was probably the way it was destined to happen, an impulsive urge without the opportunity for deliberation and second thoughts. Regardless, the dam had broken. In a small but meaningful way, I had moved on.
“How do you like working for Charlie?” she asked, sitting in a chair, tucking one leg under herself.
“I don’t.”
“You don’t like working for him?”
“I don’t work for him. I work for myself.”
“Oh,
I see
,” she said playfully. She pushed a strawberry into her mouth, what I would have found to be a somewhat provocative gesture had I not been completely spent at this point. “You’d do well to be clear with him on that point.”
I didn’t comment on that. Charlie had made it clear to me that he didn’t have a sense of humor about disloyalty.
You fuck me, I’ll fuck you harder,
he’d said. He’d even made a point of mentioning that guy Dick Baroni, someone who apparently had crossed him in some way and who wound up with broken bones and a torched office as a result.
Madison walked into the anteroom and returned fully dressed. She tossed my tuxedo shirt on the bed. “Carlton Snow is going to win this November,” she informed me. “He has the money and the incumbency label.”
“He’s not an incumbent. He fell backwards into the job.”
“Doesn’t matter. Everyone calls him Governor. Same difference.” She primped in front of the bedroom mirror, fixing her hair and her makeup. “We have enough money that we can win the primary without emptying our bank account. Edgar Trotter doesn’t have that luxury in his primary. He has to spend a lot. We’ll have a two-to-one advantage in money, and we’ll win.”
“Okay, so why are you convincing me of this?”
She finished with the mirror and grabbed another strawberry. “Charlie says you’re as sharp as they come. Hector thinks you walk on water.”
“And you listen to them?”
She thought about that. “The governor does. Absolutely.”
That seemed to be true. Hector had gotten me an interview for the job with the PCB in the time it would take me to blow my nose. I figured what Hector did for the governor was all about race. The governor needed the Latinos, and Hector was a celebrity for the time being.
“Do you?” I asked.
She angled her head. “What you did for Hector was plain for all to see. And Charlie, whatever else you might say about him, is cautious. He is very slow to trust. The fact that he trusts you tells me a lot.”
“Okay, so the governor’s going to win and I get a gold star.”
She still hadn’t reached her point. But I sensed she was about to, and I thought I knew what it was.
“I want you to work for me,” she said.
I didn’t know what that meant. My job was with the Procurement and Construction Board and, in a very real sense, with Charlie Cimino. It was a role that suited the FBI’s purposes. What would I be doing working for the governor’s chief of staff?
“Carlton Snow didn’t hire me to be his chief of staff,” she said. “He hired me to get elected to a full term. Everything I do is about that. I’m his chief of staff, but I’m also running the campaign. Do you—do you know anything about campaigns?”
“No,” I conceded.
She sighed. “I’m chief of staff to make sure that Carl doesn’t step on himself. I don’t do anything unless it involves the campaign in some way. I don’t worry about personnel issues or anything technical. I just make sure his policies are right. Otherwise, I’m on the campaign.”
“Okay, and I just told you I don’t know anything about campaigns.”
She shook her head. “I don’t need you for that. I need you to make sure that everything we do receives a lawyer’s blessing.”
Receives a lawyer’s blessing
. Lovely, how she put that. Not
legal
.
“You must have people who do that,” I said.
She made a face. “We have campaign lawyers, obviously. People who can navigate the campaign finance laws. But on the state side? Government work? No, it hasn’t been a priority. Half the people in the office are from Governor Trotter’s staff. Republicans. Remember, Carl got thrown into this job on a week’s notice.”
I hadn’t thought about that. You have an entire staff for the governor, and then mid-term, the governor resigns and the lieutenant governor jumps in. He hadn’t been in office even a full year yet. He was probably stuck with a lot of Langdon Trotter’s people.
“Besides,” she said, “I need someone more . . . talented.”
More creative, she meant. More ethically flexible. Better able to take something illegal and give it the appearance of legality. Apparently, I’d come highly recommended in that regard. Quite the name I was making for myself.
“You and Charlie—you can still work with him, but I would take priority.”
I threw her words back at her. “You’d do well to be clear with him on that point.”
“Don’t worry about what I tell Charlie Cimino,” she snapped. “You worry about what I tell you.”
Sometimes I smile when I’m not pleased. This was one of those times. “I don’t recall accepting the offer to work for you. So you might want to take caution in your tone.”
She raised her chin and stared long and hard at me. “Charlie mentioned the attitude.”
“Did he? Good.”
“How long do I have to wait before you say yes?”
Now I was smiling because I admired her brass. “And why am I going to say yes, Madison?”
“You’re going to say yes,” she said, gathering her purse, “because Governor Carlton Snow will make you rich and powerful.”
She had no idea what she was doing. She didn’t know what I represented. She didn’t realize that she was inviting the federal government into the inner circle of the governor’s office.
She slipped a card out of her purse and left it on the bed. “Oh, and one more thing,” she said on her way out. “What happened here tonight? That doesn’t leave this room. Nobody can know about this.”
She didn’t want anyone to know about the sex? Fair enough. Wasn’t my style to kiss and tell, anyway. And since I wasn’t wearing a wire to this event tonight, not only would the feds not know what we did between the sheets, but they also wouldn’t know that she just asked me to work for her, either.