House of Secrets - v4 (29 page)

“Everyone knows it, so what is the point in your repeating it?”

“I’m sorry, dear,” Jenny continued, “but in my opinion, what Chris just said was one of the most courageous political speeches I have ever heard.”

Hoyt scrambled to his feet. He skirted the coffee table, moving quickly over to where his wife was seated.

Jordan started forward. “Whitney!”

Jenny rose up calmly from the ottoman. Hoyt moved forward, getting his chin to within an inch of his wife’s. His watery eyes were livid.

“I don’t
ever
want to hear you say something like that again. Is that clear?”

Jenny Hoyt held her ground. There had never been any issue of physical violence in her nine years of marriage to Whitney. Still, she had rarely seen her husband so enraged. She responded to Hoyt in a cool tone. “For goodness’ sake, this is what you wanted. Chris Wyeth is gone. His career is over, Whitney.”

The flames remained in Hoyt’s eyes. He was so angry his body was trembling.

Jordan came closer. “Whitney, she’s right. Let the man have his final hurrah. What were you expecting? Tears?”

Jenny took her husband’s freckled hand in hers and squeezed it lightly. “You did this, sweetheart. You pulled the levers. Whit, you did this to be happy. Can’t you be happy?”

Generally speaking, for a man his age Whitney Hoyt was terrifically fit. But at certain times in their life together, it would hit Jenny Hoyt just how old her husband actually was. After all, the years did have the man by the throat, and sometimes their grip showed itself.

P
resident Hyland’s meeting with Senator Andrew Foster in the Oval Office was not on the schedule that was made available daily to members of the press. Officially, Hyland was in the White House gym, looking after the little pair of love handles that had attached themselves to him since his inauguration in January.

The two men were at the seating area, drinking tea. The teapot was a Royal Patrician Antique Rose Chintz six-cup teapot, exceedingly delicate and feminine-looking and, according to Hyland, the very pot from which Franklin Delano Roosevelt had taken his tea for most of his three-plus terms in office.

“Nothing to fear but fear itself,” Hyland remarked after giving Senator Foster the provenance of the teapot. “That man delivered some killer lines. I just love that one.” He recited the phrase again. “It’s so true. There
is
no fear except when you cop to it. It’s brilliant. If any of my speechwriters ever delivers a gem like that one to me, I’ll fall to my knees.”

Andy wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to the president. He wondered if perhaps Hyland had spotted something in his eyes. Fear was Andy’s constant companion these days; it was piggybacking everywhere he went. It had risen with him that morning in New York when he’d slipped out of bed before sunrise, and it had stayed with him on the early shuttle down to the capital. It had managed to slip past the elaborate White House security with the ease of light. Hyland’s delight in the phrase eluded him.
I have much to fear
, Andy thought, and he imagined sliding the three photographs of himself and Joy Resnick onto the president’s desk and asking the chief executive, How about these? Pretty fucking frightening, wouldn’t you say?

Hyland held his Royal Patrician teacup in both hands, as if he was warming them. Andy was somewhat unnerved by his gaze; the man looked as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

“I’d like to clear away the Whitney issue first thing, if I may,” Hyland said.

Andy shifted in his chair. “Whitney?”

“In truth, there’s very little to discuss,” Hyland said. “Except that I do want to make it clear to you, Andy, that you are here because
I
want you here. Whitney Hoyt did not choose you to replace Chris Wyeth. I did. Of course, we both know that the governor is delighted with the choice.”

Andy agreed. “I imagine it won’t make him unhappy.”

“I’m assuming Whitney told you about our meeting?”

“No,” Andy said. “He didn’t say anything to me.”

“Well, we met.” A small laugh escaped Hyland. “Whitney summoned me, is more like it. Grand Caesar that he thinks he is. The bastard had the goods on Wyeth. This whole kickback garbage. He’d had that information tucked in his pocket all along, I’m positive. Stupid and completely foolish stuff, of course. Chris basically said as much in his statement this morning. Simple greed and stupidity. How many eons do you suppose it is going to take before the best and the brightest finally stop also being the stupidest? For some ungodly reason, we keep thinking,
‘I’m
the one who’s going to get away with it. I’m the special one.’”

Andy felt ill. How dare he be sitting here with the president of the United States discussing his own imminent ascension?

Hyland continued. “I assume you saw what else Chris did this morning? His little twist of the knife?”

“I guess you could say he told America to watch out for the Whitney Hoyts of this world.”

“Exactly! Beware the pissing contests.”

Andy looked across the coffee table at John Hyland. Even though Andy’s own political position in a Chris Wyeth presidency would have been superb, privately he had been glad when Hyland had prevailed in the primaries. He liked the man. He thought Hyland was the right man for the job at the right time in history. The fact that Andy was sitting in the Oval Office sipping tea with the president and discussing the strategies for presenting himself to the country as Hyland’s new vice president was astounding. He wanted this job. History seemed to be flinging a lot of horseshoes helter-skelter right now, and Andy was watching his own spinning through the air in achingly slow motion, right toward the golden pole. If he could somehow manage over the next few days to turn his nightmare to dust, it was completely possible that his horseshoe could come down with a resounding
clang
. A classic ringer. He wanted this opportunity. He wanted to contribute palpably to the new president’s vision. He’d wanted to discuss this with Christine the night before, after receiving the official invitation, but their discussion had devolved swiftly. Andy could never have imagined the severity with which his and Christine’s visions diverged. It was as if the two were inhabiting completely separate worlds.

President Hyland set his teacup aside and leaned forward in his chair. “I’d like to ask you something, Andy. You’re under no obligation to answer, but it’s something that has always perplexed me. It has perplexed a lot of people.”

Andy nodded tersely. “Shoot.”

“Precisely how many blind babies did Wyeth have to rape in order to become such a pariah in your father-in-law’s eyes? I just find it fascinating. For so many years those two were of such a piece.”

“I can’t honestly tell you the whole history behind Whitney’s antipathy toward Chris,” Andy said. “I’ve never had any real discussions with either of them about it, and frankly, that’s worked for me. Old story. The politics got ugly and the friendship curdled. After Whitney resigned from the governorship he was counting on Chris’s support for his run for the presidency, and Chris essentially stabbed him in the back. I hated to see things between them degrade the way they did, but you know as well as I do, this is a rough business.”

Hyland allowed a trace of a smile onto his face. “So I’m hearing.” The president straightened in his chair. Andy could practically hear the shift of gears. “So, then. What say we get on to you.”

Andy gestured with his cup. “No time like the present.”

“Here’s where we are, Andy. The most important thing for the nation right now is that we handle this change in the administration in a way that reassures everybody. Chris Wyeth has been a popular political figure for a long time. Nobody is arguing that Chris didn’t have superb qualities that more than justified his spot on the ticket. And that valedictory he gave this morning is certainly not going to hurt his brand equity one bit. There are plenty of people out there who don’t want to see him step down. But that decision’s been made. Our great fortune in having you in particular available to step into the job is the continuity it brings. You and Chris are already associated in people’s minds. In good ways, I mean. Your politics, your social connections. Your careers have been something of a complement to each other, so we’re going to be emphasizing this continuity. This is as close to not rocking the boat as we can get.”

“I think I see where you’re coming from, Mr. President.”

“Of course, what we don’t want is the continuity of scandal. I’ve been assured that you’re as clean as a Boy Scout.”

Andy considered the details of his little sit-down with William Pierce the day before. Either the FBI director was keeping a few of his cards from the president, or Hyland was running a little bluff here to sound out Andy.

Andy raised three fingers pressed together. “I’m prepared.”

“Good. So as you know, we’re looking at Monday morning to make the announcement. That means by Sunday, of course, the word is out. We’ve already been in touch with your office about the Sunday shows. You’re not to do any of them. We’re quite firm on that. In fact, it might be best if you and your family were to be away for the weekend. Out of media range altogether, if that’s even possible anymore. Maybe you want to take that lovely wife of yours away for a little getaway. It’s likely to be your last crack at normalcy for quite a while.”

Andy’s thoughts raced again to the night before and the look of betrayal that had settled onto his wife’s face. The number of ways it broke his heart was too great to tally.

“I’ll think about that, Mr. President.”

T
he wind was whipping hard, creating tiny whitecaps on the water. Metal umbrellas out on the pier trembled vigorously, the slicing wind setting off a low moaning sound. It was also stealing the stinging tears from Christine Foster’s cheeks, blasting them away the instant they appeared.

Christine gazed across the river. The New Jersey skyline had nothing of note to offer. Christine felt like such a snob. Weehawken. Hoboken. Jersey City. She had lived on the river for what seemed like forever and had never bothered to get clear what was what across the river.

Somewhere over there, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr had fought their infamous duel. It was her brother who had first told her the story. Thomas Jefferson’s vice president and his unrelenting political nemesis had risen early in the morning and each ferried across the hard-running river in rowboats to play out the asinine ritual on the cliffs of Weehawken. Vice President Burr had killed Hamilton with a shot that had purportedly been outside the confines of the rules of the duel. Whatever in the world that meant. Killing is killing; where precisely
rules
found their way into the barbarity was something that escaped Christine’s way of thinking.

Christine was seated on one of the green metal benches lining the waterfront. The heels of her feet were wedged up on the lip of the bench, her arms looped tightly around her knees. She’d left the apartment and come out to the riverfront walk an hour ago. At the moment, she could not conceive of ever getting up from the bench and going anywhere else. It wasn’t so much that the river or the modest New Jersey skyline was particularly jazzing; it was that Christine simply could muster no enthusiasm for taking any of the various next steps that life was presenting. If anything, she wanted to take steps that led backward.

Christine tried to recall Peter relating to her the story of the Burr-Hamilton duel. She could not remember if Burr had finished out his term after the incident. Back in the day, did they allow for the victor in a so-called gentleman’s settlement to continue in office? Had history recorded a known murderer working in the White House? Christine’s gaze traveled the landscape across the river. She tried to imagine two little puffs of smoke. One distant body falling to the ground.

She missed her brother. Sometimes thirteen years felt more like thirteen seconds, and this was one of those times. Christine recalled the exact feeling of hearing the news that Peter was dead. She and Andy had just returned from a weekend with friends out in the Hamptons; the message had been waiting for her on the answering machine. Her father had left it.