In This Rain (12 page)

He walked to the table, put down the beer, reached toward a photo but pulled his hand back as though heat emanated from it. Was he afraid? Of what? He who could tear out poison ivy with no effect, did he think Ann’s papers were going to burn his fingers?

No.

That they would cling to him like burrs. Stick like pine sap. That if he touched them they would not let him go.

Damn! Damn Ann, and damn her photos. He clattered his plate onto the table, swept the papers into a pile. He could shove them into the envelope himself, put her address on it and a couple of stamps, and stick it in the mailbox, flip up the flag that would tell the postman here was something to be taken away. Then Ann would understand he’d meant it when he said “Go home.”

Or better: he’d burn them. Shove them into a crackling fire and let them keep him warm. She wouldn’t have brought originals, just copies; she didn’t need them back. He’d send her nothing. He’d let his silence speak.

At the last minute, instead of either, he slammed them into a drawer.

City Hall

Brogan’s. Hudson River landscapes on paneled walls; soft light on people in calm poses of power. Heavy silver clinking on delicate china; the murmur of off-the-record dealmaking. The aroma of single malt from Charlie’s glass mingling with the filtered-air scent of money and success.

Brogan’s went back to the days when the Carnegies drank with the Vanderbilts. A moss-green canopy curved over the sidewalk and a brass handle opened the door. No sign, no number: if you needed those things to find Brogan’s, you weren’t going to get in anyway.

With each seismic convulsion in American life, Brogan’s had shuddered. The first Jew, the first black, the first woman to walk through the door had stopped all movement and sound within. Then, each time, Brogan’s squared its shoulders and started up again, resuming its mission to serve the elect.

Or elected. Charlie, first brought here by a judge as an up-and-coming City Councilmember, was soon welcome on his own. The manager, Frank, had gradually promoted Charlie from the left-wall banquette through the center tables. When Charlie was chosen Speaker, he got to the booths on the right.

Charlie was halfway through his Glenfiddich when he spotted Louise breezing through the door. His wife’s face was half hidden by the graceful brim of what Charlie thought might have once been called a picture hat. Her figure was not hidden at all by her black linen skirt or her cream silk blouse, and her calves were positively shown off by her strap-back heels. As Charlie watched, she kissed Frank’s cheek, then started across the room with graceful, unhurried steps, stopping to greet a banker here, a state senator there. She waved to Herb Washington, the mayor’s bodyguard, sitting with his ginger ale at the bar. Charlie’s eyes followed her, filled with her the way they had been since the day they met, the brash first-term Councilmember and the judge’s daughter.

He stood; she kissed him lightly and slid into the booth.

“Saw your press conference.” She smiled, took off her hat, and fluffed her dark hair. “You were great.”

“Why, thank you, ma’am.” He could smell her perfume, the rich floral scent she wore in the evenings. He never remembered its name. But Lena had it written down.

“Very direct, very angry,” Louise went on. “Very much in charge.”

A waiter appeared and asked if she’d like a glass of dry champagne. She smiled her thanks. Career waiters, they were at Brogan’s, not actors between gigs. They made it their business to remember things.

“You handled the new CBS guy particularly well,” she told Charlie. “I’m not sure I’m going to like him.”

“I’ll tell him; he’ll be flattered.”

She sighed. “You’re probably right.” She fell silent, her attention on the room, who was here, who was coming and going. She turned back to Charlie. “But honey?”

“Uh-oh. The ‘but.’ ”

“Well, I just didn’t think you were fair to Walter.”

“All I said was we were looking into every possibility.”

“You said it too fast. There should have been some ‘Walter Glybenhall’s a pillar of the community’ statement first. You should have looked indignant at the very thought.”

Charlie mugged indignant as the waiter set down Louise’s champagne. She laughed. “You know what I mean.”

“Seemed to me the problem was the opposite. I didn’t think it was a good time to emphasize my relationship to Walter.”

“I just don’t want to see you alienating him.”

“Or his friends?”

“Of course ‘or his friends.’ We’re going to need them.”

“We’re also going to need credibility in the black community.”

Louise looked pensively across the room. “We can win the state without that. But not without Walter and his friends.”

“Win it, maybe. But not govern it.”

Her brow furrowed and she shook her head slightly, as though she didn’t understand something he’d said. But she didn’t answer, just sipped her champagne.

A new OMB Deputy Commissioner came over to greet the mayor, an exuberant young guy still at left-banquette rank but obviously pleased as punch to be here. He shook Charlie’s hand, was introduced to Louise, exchanged small talk for the ritually prescribed forty-five seconds, and scrammed cheerfully back to his table.

“I wish I weren’t getting old,” Louise mused. “I’ve forgotten his name already.”

“If you’d been paying attention instead of running your toes up my pants leg, you’d remember.”

“If my toes had done their job, you’d have forgotten his name yourself.”

“Sweetie, your toes could make me forget my name.” Charlie gave her the OMB Deputy’s pertinent facts again, adding, “Came over from Citibank. We think he’s a guy to watch.”

“Who does? Don?”

“For one.”

Louise gave her usual skeptical eyebrow-raise to an opinion of Don’s, but Charlie didn’t respond; this had been going on for years. Nevertheless, he saw, she gazed across the carpeted expanse to the young man’s table. Her eyes held the steady look they always had when she was filing information away in her mental database.

“What did you do this afternoon?” Charlie asked her.

“I thought, since we were in town, I’d have lunch with Edith. To talk about that Riverkeepers project.”

Charlie nodded, though he was fuzzy on the details of the program: something about high school students cleaning up the Bronx River. Sipping her champagne, Louise expanded on the benefits of the idea, educationally, environmentally, and public-relations-wise. “So really, they’re using me,” she finished. “It’s valuable for them to have the mayor’s wife involved. And I’m using them. This will play well upstate.”

“A beautiful relationship.”

“Actually, I do kind of like Edith. A little too earnest, but she’s very sweet. And Helene Aldrich was there, too. You know we’re going out to Southampton with them Saturday? Why are you making that face? You forgot, didn’t you?”

“No, just tried to. Lex is such a bore.”

“I know, honey, but he’s a real power in the center of the state. Lex owns half of Rochester.”

“No way out?”

Louise shook her head. “The Aldriches aren’t a good cancel.”

Charlie had a sudden vision of Helene and Lex Aldrich, mouths open in surprise as a giant hand stamped “cancel” on their foreheads. “You think we need to spend the whole weekend?”

She considered. “I don’t think that’s necessary. If we go out late morning and sit around the pool a little, we can come back after dinner. Will you survive?”

“The pool.” Charlie snorted. “They serve those chartreuse drinks with umbrellas in them.”

“Don’t exaggerate, it was plastic monkeys on the rim. Anyway, we can sneak out and walk on the beach. They have a lot of beachfront.” She patted his hand, then glanced at her Cartier watch, the one he’d given her last Christmas. “When’s Walter coming?”

“We said six. He’ll probably keep me waiting just to prove he can.”

“It’s come to that?”

“With Walter it always was that.”

“Fifteen minutes?”

“Oh, God, no. Under ten.”

“Then I’d better finish up and go.”

“You don’t have to leave before he gets here.”

“Oh, yes, I do. Otherwise how will you have time to miss me?”

She took another sip, then put the flute down, leaving an inch of liquid in the bottom as she always did.

Knowing how she loved champange, he’d asked her once, long ago, why she did that.

*

Newlyweds at a senator’s Christmas party, they’d stepped out briefly to be alone on the penthouse terrace. Behind them people laughed and mingled beyond glass doors obscured by frost; on the terrace the air was cold and still. New York’s streetlights and stoplights shone brightly below and the stars did the same above. Charlie’s arm around Louise kept them both warm. She didn’t answer his question, but, gazing over the city, slipped the strap from the shoulder of her velvet dress, guiding his hand to where she wanted it. Charlie heard her gasp at the first cold brush of his fingertips, then saw the dreamy smile start as her nipple rose to meet his touch. He nuzzled her ear, and was about to suggest they go home, when Louise laughed, pulled away, and straightened her straps again. She took a sip of champagne. “You need to talk to the senator,” she said. “About the water resource bill.”

“I’ll call him tomorrow.”

“Now is better.” She smiled and put the champagne flute down on a glass-topped table. As she walked back into the party, leaving him and her champagne unfinished, Charlie could see the outline of her still-hard nipples under her velvet dress.

Now, as she slid out of the booth at Brogan’s and kissed his cheek, saying, “See you at home. Dinner’s at eight,” he searched the folds of her blouse, but the fabric was rippling and loose and he wasn’t sure what he saw.

City Hall

Louise left at ten to six. Charlie was alone at Brogan’s for another nineteen minutes before Walter Glybenhall arrived, Walter clearly pushing his under-ten as far as he dared. Given the mess in the Bronx, Charlie might have been surprised, but Walter had always believed in the good offense, the preemptive strike.

And it wasn’t like Charlie had a chance to get lonely. Spotted alone with a Scotch, he was fair game. Herb raised his ginger ale as Louise left, wordlessly offering to come shoo people away until Walter showed, but Charlie waved him off. You don’t want to be in public demand, he thought, don’t run for public office.

So he’d shaken two dozen hands, been part of a dozen quick conversations where the words were nothing and the subtext everything (and a couple of them he’d made a note to himself to remember to report to Don, to get his take), by the time Walter turned up.

Silver-haired and broad-shouldered, his Nordic ancestry glowing from his handsome profile, Walter Glybenhall was right-side-booth material, too, and a discreetly gorgeous hostess stood ready to guide him across the room. (Women might be welcome to drink at Brogan’s now, but Brogan’s understood where the power still resided and what made the powerful feel the effort had been worth it.) But Walter murmured something to the hostess that made her giggle, and crossed the carpet alone. The United Fund vice president who’d been chatting with Charlie greeted Walter, asking jovially whether any of his end-of-the-fiscal-year audits had discovered unexpected surpluses, because if so he could suggest a use for them. Walter gravely promised to look under the mattress and the vice president, chuckling appreciatively, returned to his table.

“She’s married,” Charlie remarked as Walter slid into the booth. “And you’re late.”

“Pardon?” The faintest hints of a vague mid-European accent inflected Walter’s speech. It summoned up ski slopes, vast hotel lobbies, boardrooms with unfamiliar skylines beyond tall windows.

“Alyssa.” Charlie nodded toward the hostess. “Meilin, too. It’s the redhead who’s single. Carmen.”

“Carmen’s not working today. I adapted. Rum and Coke,” Walter told the waiter. Walter was mercurial, his choices unpredictable. There was nothing for the waiters to memorize, except that whatever he ordered, he expected it to be mixed from the top shelf.

“So, Charlie. I apologize if I’ve kept you waiting. Especially when I assume you’ve called me here to chastise me?”

“Partly.”

Walter’s smile was impressive against his golden tan. “I didn’t have the opportunity to see your press conference earlier, but I was given quite a detailed report. I understand you’re investigating me.”

“Three Star, yes.”

“Of course, Three Star. Good, good. It would be a shame to waste all the time and money it’s costing me to do this project on the complete up-and-up.”

“The up-and-up was the deal, Walter.”

“Well, no. The deal was that I would create a project the community would adore.”

“A project that would stand up to scrutiny. And killing people makes the community adore you exactly how?”

“Not ‘people.’ One unfortunate woman. One tragic accident.”

“Three accidents, if you want to be accurate.”

“Only one serious, that affected your beloved ‘community.’ For which I assure you we’ll pay. Our insurance company has already made quite a generous offer to Harriet Winston’s family.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Whatever the point, sufficient money will blunt it. And Charlie, if you really want to be accurate, you’ll have to stop saying ‘accidents.’ ”

“Don’t start that again, Walter, because I’m not buying it.”

“I see. You’d rather believe in coincidence.”

“No, I’d rather believe you’re cutting corners and paying people off.”

“Charlie!” The waiter set down Walter’s rum and Coke; both men were silent until he was gone. “Would I do that? On this job? After I promised?”

“I didn’t think you would. But as I told you on the phone, I have a problem.”

“Which is?”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Walter!”

“Charlie. Outside of Ford Corrington, who wants my scalp, and Edgar Westermann, whose animosity is not quite as rabid but who can surely tell a sound bite when he sees one, no one will care about any of this by the middle of next week.”

“Harriet Winston’s kids?”