Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
“A White House invitation, they said.”
“I wasn’t surprised to see him,” Curt said.
“Alexander?” Honora said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“All along I’ve had a nagging sensation that he’s somehow got a hand in this mess.”
“Aren’t you being a shade paranoid?” Joscelyn asked.
Curt shrugged. “Haven’t you wondered how Morrell connected with Fish?”
“Morrell explained that to the press, Curt,” Honora said. “Fish presented himself to the committee.”
“As his patriotic duty to his new land,” Joscelyn added sourly.
“If you believe that, girls,” Curt said, “wait until you hear the one about the tooth fairy.”
“Maybe he likes being on television,” Joscelyn said. “Some people adore it.”
“And what about Khalid?” Curt asked. “In Lalarhein a lot of people must know that Fish is Fawzi. And it can’t be any secret that Fawzi worked for Khalid.”
“You’re right,” Joscelyn said. “I’m sure
Khalid doesn’t enjoy having his wheeling dealing about the airport exposed.”
“That’s exactly my point,” Curt said. “Nowadays, or so Fuad assures me, Lalarheinis don’t get into Khalid’s bad graces—at least not if they hope to remain intact. His disciples are zealots, fanatics; they’re on the ready to carry out suicide missions for Khalid.”
Honora gripped his fingers. “What you’re both saying is that Fish—or Fawzi—is taking a huge chance to come publicly before the committee.”
“Yes,” Curt said. “And my theory’s always been that somebody’s paying him. Paying him handsomely. But I never figured out who it was before today.”
“Alexander, paying Fish?” Honora’s soft voice was skeptical. “How would he even know he existed?”
“Talbott’s has quite a network of corporate spies. I believe that Alexander heard that our Harb Fawzi, now known as Harold Fish, was living here. He went to him. Said there’d be a substantial amount of cash, maybe a lifetime supply, if he’d contact Morrell with his information. The more I think about it, the more positive I get that Alexander’s behind the hearing. There’s no other explanation except a fortune to Fish. For him to take such a risk of angering Khalid, he must be getting very big bucks.”
As Honora climbed the seldom used steps of the massive front portico of the Rayburn House Office Building, passing between its enormous,
unadorned gray marble pillars, an oppressive clamminess descended on her body and spirit.
Possibly her dismay showed, for when they reached the hearing chamber Curt took her hand, keeping her on the seat next to his and out of the camera’s unblinking eye.
The afternoon’s witness was Matthias Haugen, an analyst from the Audit Division of the Internal Revenue Service. Honora’s nonmathematical mind wandered.
There was a stirring behind her, but having schooled herself to remain immobile without changing her bland expression, she did not turn. Everyone on the rostrum stared at the entry, and a few, Morrell among them, showed wide, expectant smiles.
“Good Christ!” Curt whispered. “It’s them.”
Honora jerked around.
Crystal stood in the entry. The tall doors, rather than dwarfing her, made her Anglo-Saxon perfection appear yet more jewel-like. Alexander, Gid and Anne were ranged behind her.
Honora’s new black alligator purse slipped from her lap. Seeing that she made no move to retrieve it, Arthur Kohn bent, placing the small weight in her numbed hands.
Staring directly at her, Crystal compressed her lovely lips, a defiant expression that back in her aggressive, mischief-filled childhood had meant
Try and stop me.
Morrell rapped his gavel, silencing the chatter. Cameramen crouched, the other media people hurried back to their tables, “I am
certain that Mr. Haugen will yield to our visitor. Mr. Alexander Talbott.”
As Alexander walked with springy ease to the witness table, three young, muscular men rose from the rear row, glancing around with watchful wariness.
* * *
Crystal slid into the warmed leather between Anne and Gid. A moment ago, when Honora’s startled dark eyes had been on her, it had taken all of her self-control not to flee from the complicity within this paneled legislative chamber. Yet looking at this rationally, what was there about Alexander’s appearance that could be construed as treacherous to Honora? Her son was merely going to say a few words putting Talbott’s in a good light. How did that constitute a betrayal? After all, Honora and Curt had been separated for years, and everybody knew she was in Washington purely as window dressing, an attempt to divert attention from Curt’s sea of girls.
Alexander seated himself at the green baize table.
“Mr. Chairman, I’m very grateful for this opportunity to appear before the subcommittee. Our family happened to be in Washington, and my mother, president of the Talbott Group, decided we should use this opportunity to bring some good news to the American public. There has been raised at this hearing, and the others before it, the question of large-scale bribery—I mean really unconscionable bribery. Coming only a few years after Watergate, it’s no wonder
the country’s cynical about government and about big business. My mother feels, and so do my brother and sister-in-law and I, that it is up to companies like ours to set the records straight.” By some miracle of vocal pitch he managed to make the rhetoric sound like an easy and casual conversation.
“Thank you, Mr. Talbott—and Mrs. Talbott,” Morrell said, beaming at Crystal. The old lecher, when he came asking for campaign contributions he always ogled her breasts. “We are most grateful.”
“First of all,” Alexander said, “much as I’d like to assure this subcommittee that we of the Talbott Group have never given a bribe of any type, I cannot. Unfortunately what other witnesses and Mr. Ivory have told you is true. Certain countries aren’t like our own. If, for example, you have a job going in Indonesia and need to call Jakarta from Surabaya, you must pay the civil service telephone clerks.” He turned, glancing at Crystal, as if apologizing for sullying her pretty ears with this information. “Minor bribery is a way of life in these places, and I have to impress on this committee that if our own laws make this type of payment illegal, Americans doing business overseas will be unfairly handicapped.”
Morrell raised his cigarette as if dismissing any chance that the Congress would legislate against penny-ante tipping of foreigners.
“That’s the purpose of this committee, Mr. Talbott.” Hergesheimer’s mouth stretched in a near flirtatious smile at the handsome young
man. “To discover what is essential to conduct business without unduly hampering our multinational corporations.”
Alexander leaned forward, causing a vibrating quiver in the public address system. “A great deal of Talbott’s engineering and construction work is done overseas, and we have never sunk to large-scale bribery or illegal political contributions in these countries to get it.”
“Has your policy ever hampered you in obtaining business?” asked Hergesheimer.
“A tremendous amount, especially in the area under discussion. We’ve never done much work in the Mideast. But money’s never been the most important thing at Talbott’s. My grandfather started with a wagon, a team of mules and a reputation for scrupulous honesty. My father brought us up to respect square dealing; he always told me and my brother that it’s up to the top guys to set the ethical standards. My mother now runs the show in Dad and Grandfather’s tradition, and so will my brother and I when we take over.”
“You don’t know how refreshing it is to hear that, Mr. Talbott,” Morrell said.
“I’ll answer any question you want to put to us to the best of my ability. Our books are open to the committee.”
“Today’s session is almost ended. Will you return tomorrow?”
“Not in the morning . . . we have, uhh, a previous engagement. But in the afternoon, we’d be delighted.”
Crystal’s lovely features had gone pale under
the masterful coat of maquillage.
Cheeks drawn in as if she were sucking on a straw, Crystal gazed at the case clock. The old mechanism’s ticking sounded loud above the faint, leathery rustle of the trees outside the window, yet the delicate iron minute hand seemed stuck, refusing to move from eleven thirty-seven to thirty-eight.
Alexander was not yet home.
After concluding his testimony, he had pushed his way to the rear of the committee chamber, planting a well-documented kiss on his mother’s forehead and another on Anne’s freckled brow before he took off. He had not come home in time for dinner. She had moved her food about her plate as if she were on a diet, eating only her sorbet, and before the coffee was served had dispatched Mitchell on meaningless errands to the homes of the three upper-echelon Washingtonians with whom Alexander was thickest. When Gid had tried to buck her up by telling her how great she’d looked on tonight’s News, she turned on him irritably. Anne had suffered a siege of yawns, pointing out that their circadian rhythms were attached to another time zone. As their footsteps sounded on the staircase, Crystal snatched up a fashion magazine, riffling the pages.
Her fear that the Morrell Committee might
uncover Talbott’s dirty tricks was unrelenting. She couldn’t cope with Alexander’s absence.
Why didn’t he tell me we were going back tomorrow? He had it set up with Morrell. What else does he have planned? Where is he?
The answer to her final question popped up immediately.
With some girl.
Although Alexander hadn’t lived on Clay Street for years, she still thought of the inevitable end of his brief affairs as a homecoming—
He always comes back to me
, she would think, taking a complacent attitude toward his sexual vagabondage. Since his adulthood she seldom felt concern about his safety—she was proud of his ability to take care of himself. Tonight, however, she visualized a blazing-eyed husband with a shotgun, some heartbroken ninny snatching up a carving knife, a Latin lover with a dangerous glint of freshly broken glass in his hand. Her head tilted at the sound of a car turning on Q Street. It braked outside, and she ran into the chastely symmetrical hall to fling open the front door.
Mitchell was climbing the black iron steps.
“Oh, it’s you, Padraic,” she said.
“Sorry I took so long, but I had to wait for Senator Edmunds.” As he came inside he added with the deferential tact that so often canceled the need for awkward questions, “There was a small party at the Rogovins’—they’d invited Alexander but he hadn’t showed up. He wasn’t at the Edmunds’ or the Newlins’, either.”
“He hasn’t called, and it’s nearly midnight.”
He smiled reassuringly. “That’s early for
Alexander.”
“Yes, yes,” she sighed. “But he could’ve gotten to a phone.”
“It’s been a bad day for you.”
She agreed. “Horrendous. But at least you’re home, and that’s a help.” With a glance at him, she returned to the living room.
Shutting the door, he sat next to her on the cushioned settee. She shifted closer, resting her head on his shoulder. His jacket felt cool from the night; he smelled of breath mints, a mildly aromatic cologne and something else lightly perfumed, probably a new brand of deodorant. His arm went around her, and after a minute or so the long, thin hand dropped to curve around her breast. Through her blouse and elaborately wired French brassiere she could feel the light, reverent rubbing of his fingertips. Since that time in Tokyo she had occasionally initiated what she persisted in thinking of as a necking session. Though Mitchell’s kisses and caresses never bridged the chasm of her frigidity, his worshipful adoration restored a sense of her incalculable worth as a prize, a love object, and thus calmed her mind.
He reached for her top button, but she, anticipating Alexander’s return, pushed his hand away. He continued as he had before, and as his temperature rose she caught a whiff of his sexual odor, nowhere near as pungent as Gideon’s had been but nevertheless mildly acrid.
He gave a dwindling, convulsive gasp and with a hasty good night, hurried stiff-legged
from the room: she heard his footsteps creak on the staircase leading down to the small rooms that had originally been the pantries but now served as additional sleeping quarters. There had never been a repeat of that first repellent leakage.
She washed and creamed herself for bed. Tying the sash of her quilted pink robe, she went into the brightly lit hall to sit on a straight-backed chair, vaguely conscious of the fact that she needed only a rolling pin to complete the time-honored cartoon of a shrew awaiting her errant husband. It was almost one when a car pulled into their garage. Her relief was so intense that she needed to pee. After using the toilet, she stood in her doorway.
Alexander had almost reached the top of the stairs before he saw her.
He elaborated on a courtly bow. “Ahh, the doyenne of this and many other houses waiting to bid me safe return.”
He was, she realized, under the influence. God knew what influence—marijuana, cocaine or some trendy new substance she had not heard of. At least when her father had staggered home, they had known the exact nature of the beast that had bitten him.
“You promised today would be the only time we’d be at the hearing!” she burst out.
“Could I help it if the Honorable Morrell demanded a gala repeat of my stirring and patriotic performance?”
“What’ve you been using?”
“An assortment of the usual.”
“If you’re going to do drugs”—she used his term—“I wish you wouldn’t drive.”
He sank down on the top step, shaking his head from side to side. “Mom, do you have any idea how much I hate him?”
She didn’t need to be told who
him
was. Sitting on the carpet at his side, she could smell an autumnal sweetness. “Alexander, it was a mistake coming to Washington,” she said. “But there’s no need for us to go to that hearing. No need at all. Mitchell can go—he’ll concoct some sort of excuse and read a statement from us.”
“You don’t understand me at all, do you?”
“I try to,” she said almost humbly. “But this personal crusade, I can’t see the sense in it.”
“Sense?” He shook his head. “Poor Mom, such a gorgeous,
practical
lady.”