Treadmill (10 page)

Cooper arrived at his apartment in an odd state of mind. He felt at war with himself. A strange feeling of fatigue afflicted him. Despite his long nap, he did not feel well rested.

He put a Healthy Choice dinner in the microwave and got into the shower. When the water hit him, he felt an unexpected stinging sensation at the base of his forearm. He inspected the area, and noticed a small bruise. He couldn’t remember how it had occurred—perhaps from when he had fallen on the floor. He soaped up and stood under the hot spray for a long time, washing away the last several days. It made his body feel renewed and alive. All he had to do was turn inward again, reject outside temptation, and whip himself back into his old regimen.

When he was dry, he put on his terrycloth robe and removed his dinner from the microwave. He was hungrier than usual—he had had nothing to eat since his daily light breakfast, perhaps another reason for his fatigue. Cooper decided to turn in early. Tonight,
The Magic Mountain
would have to wait.

He stretched out languorously on his bed, hoping his mind would empty and he would slip effortlessly into sleep. Before Parrish, he could channel his thoughts and the characters he had read about each night, and lose himself in their lives. Tonight was different. But it wasn’t Parrish, nor his characters he was thinking about, but instead Susan Haber dominating his thoughts…and fantasies. He felt his carefully constructed defenses begin to crumble.

He must have been drifting, on the darker edge of sleep, tugging at his consciousness, when suddenly he was awake, alert to a soft knocking on his apartment door. Since he had lived in that apartment, no one had ever pressed his buzzer, except by mistake. And no one had ever knocked on his apartment door.

It was nearly 2:00 AM. He got out of bed, went to the door and looked through the peephole. He saw the agitated face of Beth Davis distorted by the lens.

“I don’t believe this,” he muttered.

“Let me in! Please.”

Responding to her urgency, he opened the door and she came into the apartment. She looked frazzled, and her complexion was ashen. She was wearing her usual navy blue jogging clothes. It struck him that he had never seen her without them.

She put a finger to her lips to command his silence. “I know you’re surprised,” she whispered.

“What…” he began, then checked himself, waiting for an explanation.

She said nothing, continuing to hold her finger to her lips. She was frightened and distraught. It crossed his mind that, perhaps, he was dealing with a certified paranoid. He was more amused than alarmed. Beth beckoned him to follow her to, of all places, his bathroom. Closing the door, she turned on the faucets full blast.

“If they bugged your house, this is the safest place.” She had raised her voice just enough to be heard.

“This is extremely strange…” Cooper began.

“I know.” She brushed the air with her hand. “I’ve been worried sick all day.”

“About what?”

“You.”

He remained silent, unwilling to take her seriously. “Well, here I am.” He decided to humor her while he thought of some method to get rid of her. She flipped down the toilet seat and sat on it. He slouched against the bathroom door.

“We have to stop meeting like this,” he chuckled.

She didn’t react, her expression somber. He felt her gaze washing over him. She sucked in a deep breath, trying to get herself under control. “Give me a minute,” she said, massaging her temple.

“I’ll keep an open mind,” Cooper said.

“I hope so.”

After the brief surge of adrenaline, he felt a wave of fatigue again. He yawned. “I’d like to get back to sleep soon.”

She nodded and inspected her hands. “All I want to do is get to the bottom of this.”

“Of what?” Cooper asked.

“You haven’t noticed
anything
strange?”

Of course
, he thought to himself. Cooper was tempted to tell her about what he had learned about Parrish, but he deliberately held back.

“Things are not what they seem,” she said.

“They never are,” he said.

“When you didn’t show up for your workout, I began to get worried. I stayed longer than usual, hoping you might finally get there.”

“I had other things to do today,” he said.

“Jack, believe me, this is serious.”

Cooper was about to say something, but she stopped him with a gesture.

“I took every precaution. I hope I wasn’t observed. The security in this building is absurd. There is an open door in the back, on the basement level. That’s where I came in.”

“Was all that necessary?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered. “Absolutely. Can’t you understand? They’re watching you!”

This was all supposed to be over
, he told himself. But now he was suddenly confronted by his own denial. Apparently, whatever was in play was far from over.

“Who are they?” Cooper asked.

“I can’t say for sure.”

“Is it because of Parrish?”

“I think so,” She bit her lip, ruminating.

“Parrish is gone,” Cooper admitted.

“Gone? I…I’m not sure I can trust you,” she blurted.

“Then why are you here?”

“I want to trust you, Jack. I really do. But you seem…”

“Seem what?”

“Indifferent. As if it doesn’t matter. But it does, Jack.”

“Beth, for God’s sake, what are you talking about?”

“I think both of us are getting too close…that’s why all this is happening.”

It was all riddles and confusion. Yet he could not bring himself to conclude that she was delusional, although the possibility was there.

“I’m not who I said I was,” Beth said.

“Who are you then?” Cooper asked somewhat sarcastically.

“Beth Davis is not my real name,” she said. “My name is Laura Chase.”

“Is that supposed to ring a bell?” Cooper asked.

“I thought it would be nice to start over with the truth,” Laura said. “I’m so tired of all the subterfuge.”

She turned away and looked into space. Cooper waited silently for her to continue.

“My husband is….” She paused. “Was…,” she lifted her eyes to the ceiling momentarily, “…a key aide to the Vice President”

“
The
Vice President?” He asked loudly.

“Please!” She shushed him.

“The Vice President of the United States of America?”

She nodded. “Vice President Riggs Haley. My husband was with him since when he was Senator. He was a loyal aide…. A good and moral man.” A sob escaped her, and her eyes welled up. She wiped away a tear with the back of her hand. “Sorry,” she said. “Riggs will be named as the next candidate of the Republican Party by the President. But you must know that.”

“Couldn’t care less. I’m way out of the news loop,” Cooper responded indifferently.

“Dale, my husband, and Riggs were like brothers. Dale didn’t work for Riggs, he slaved for him, day and night. His entire life was devoted to Riggs and his future. Dale was the architect of his long-term campaign for the Presidency. There was no question in Dale’s mind that Riggs would be in the Oval Office one day. They were both obsessed with it, and had built a team to get there.”

She grimaced as though bitter bile had been coughed up from deep in her chest.

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked.

“Because it’s relevant.”

“Not to me, it isn’t!”
What could this possibly have to do with me?
Cooper wondered, but decided to see it through, resigning himself to hear her story.

“They were both so focused. They had been planning this for years,” she continued, lost for a moment in her own private thoughts.

Ambition
, Cooper thought. It was something he had purged from himself when he decided to detach from his past. He recalled his favorite fiction character, Julien Sorel from
The Red and the Black
, a man whom ambition had destroyed.

“It was about six months ago when I noticed the change in Dale,” Laura continued. “Something only a wife would notice. We were married for twelve years. You learn how to tell when something is wrong.”

Not everyone
, he thought, remembering Margo.
Awry
, he supposed, meant different things to different people. This woman on the toilet seat, whoever she was, he postulated, was awry. Her gaze was so intense it was fixated. He studied her eyes.

Something in Laura Chase’s attitude reminded him of Parrish, in that she seemed on the verge of revealing her personal secrets. He gave in to curiosity, but steeled himself against any emotional involvement.

“Dale had always been preoccupied with the Vice President, his affairs, the man’s political and personal life. Riggs is more than just any other Vice President. He has learned the art of wielding power, and he has the President’s ear—in fact, the President owes him. Ideologically, I suppose, one might call him centrist…you know, someone without real commitment, a sail to catch the political winds. He is very good at vigorously supporting all factions, maintaining that balancing act. The goal, after all, is to get elected. Nothing else really matters to a politician, despite their pious words. Everybody agrees that Riggs was heir apparent. He had been the principal water carrier for the President during both his administrations. Without him, the President would have gone up in flames years ago.”

She stopped abruptly and looked at him sternly. Perhaps he had not looked absorbed enough in her unraveling.

“It’s important for you to know this,” she snapped. It was a like a drill sergeant’s command.

Cooper nodded. How else could he possibly react?

“In recent months, Dale’s preoccupation with the Vice President became, well…different. Troubled. He wouldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and would fly off the handle at the slightest provocation. Where he had once confided in me, he clammed up. I thought maybe it had something to do with Kent Henderson, the Vice President’s political director and Dale’s protégé, a young Turk who was being groomed to handle the big campaign. Dale often told me that Kent was getting more and more difficult. He complained that Kent was awesome in his ambition for the Vice President, too awesome, hard to keep in check. Dale and Kent seemed to have developed major disagreements between them, although Dale always said that such conflict was both endemic and healthy. Nobody, he told me, had all the answers, no matter how much they thought they did. Kent quickly became more than just the Vice President’s employee. He became Dale’s competitor. Dale had also started losing weight, looked less healthy, less vibrant, always seemed to be in a state of either tension or exhaustion, which was especially strange, since his normal routine was to workout every morning with Riggs and Kent to relieve his stress. For years, he would leave the house early to jog and workout with them in the club that Riggs had set up at the Naval Observatory. They had a private trainer come in every morning. That would always do the trick, put his mind and body at ease.”

Cooper now found himself being drawn into Laura’s story. She grew more animated.

“They frequently traveled, and I would see their pictures taken all over the world, jogging up a storm through the main streets of foreign capitals. Of course, part of it was to keep an image, carefully designed to show Riggs brimming with strength and youthfulness. It’s important to do that kind of thing. Keeping in shape equates to vigor, and showing vigor is good politics.” Her eyes bore into his. “Image is everything in this business.”

“There’s a cliché for you.”

“Riggs is a driven man. He wants to be President. That’s the politician’s disease, progressive and incurable. Every move he makes, public or private, is designed to further that ambition. I’m convinced that they would kill their own mothers if it got in the way. It is a commitment of a man’s soul, a holy pact with himself. And Dale went along with it.”

What was this woman driving at?
Cooper thought.

“Six months ago, Dale stopped jogging with Riggs. He seemed more nervous, depressed. I kept at him, wanting to know what was making him this way. His answer was always the same: ‘You know I can’t tell you anything going on in the Vice President’s office.’ Hell, I was his wife! I was entitled to know what was affecting my husband. We argued. We weren’t intimate anymore. Dale was drowning in anger.” She shook her head. “He had mentioned he was worried about Henderson. Dale was the one who brought Henderson to the Vice President, groomed him, mentored him, nurtured him.”

What does this have to do with me?
Cooper thought. She was trying his patience. He hadn’t thought very much about the problems of politicians. Based upon his experience with Margo, he believed that many people, perhaps the majority of them, lied without conscience in pursuit of their own agendas, and politicians were especially guilty of that. He supposed that he had joined the ranks of the cynics.

“Beth….”

“My name is Laura.”

“Okay, Laura. I have absolutely no interest in the Vice President or his staff. Why is this important to me? I’m tired and I’d like to go to bed.”

But Laura plowed ahead with her story.

“You have to understand the context, what’s at stake here, Jack.” She cleared her throat. “Something was corroding Dale from within. He said he was simply not interested in working out with Riggs anymore. They were fitness nuts, like you and Parrish. Addicts.”