Читать книгу Rocky And The Senator's Daughter - Dixie Browning, Dixie Browning - Страница 7

The suite was small, the acoustics brutal. The guests were a mixture of media types, politicians, wives and significant others. All were talking at once; few, if any, were listening. At least there was no band to overcome. The noise level had hit him when he’d first stepped off the elevator. Considering that until recently, as an accredited journalist, Rocky had covered nearly every noisy, crowded hotspot on the globe, it shouldn’t have been a problem.

It was. He wanted out.

From across the room he watched as the honoree edged past two network anchors, who appeared to be comparing pinky rings, and absently handed his glass to a well-known syndicated sportswriter.

Rocky waited. He had come to help honor his old bureau chief. So far he hadn’t managed to get close enough to pay his respects.

“Not leaving yet, are you?”

Dan Sturdivant, retiring bureau chief at Graves Worldwide, had trained a surprising number of the reporters in the business today, including Rocky. Now pushing seventy-five, he had a heart condition, ulcers and essential tremors. Which was the sole reason Rocky, even though he hadn’t worked with the man in years, had given up his quiet Sunday evening for this bash at the Shoreham. He’d been a hungry young idealist fresh out of college when Dan had taken him in, sifted through his headful of useless garbage, refilling his brain with a few basic tenets, and set him to work covering court news.

Welcome to the real world. Everything he had gone on to achieve, Rocky owed to this man.

“Heard you’d quit the business,” the old man said by way of greeting.

“News travels fast.” It was a standing joke between them. “Call it a sabbatical.”

“Skip the euphemisms. You’re too young to quit.”

“I’m tired, Dan.”

“You and me both, son, but tired won’t cut it. You gotta have a better excuse than that.”

He had one. And, yeah, tired would do it when a man had been carrying a load of heartbreak for eight years. Dan knew the story, but it wasn’t something either man had ever discussed.

“Stick around, this bash can’t last forever. God, what did I ever do to deserve this kind of punishment?” He shook his shiny bald head and tried to look as if he weren’t loving every minute of it.

“Braves game. If I leave now I can probably make it home by the third.”

“Mets’ll take ’em, you don’t want to watch the slaughter.”

“In your dreams.”

“You know where I live if you want to talk.”

Rocky nodded. Dan nodded. Message sent and received.

He wasn’t ready to talk about what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Financially he had to do something, but he didn’t have to decide yet—not for a few more weeks. Or months. Maybe if he got hungry enough, he could find the motivation to try a weekly column. Two different syndicates had put out feelers.

But first he had to get over Julie. His marriage had ended in the summer of ninety-four, when a drunk driver had rammed head-on into the car his wife had been driving home from the library, breaking her back and causing irreparable damage to her head. He had buried her six months ago. He hadn’t cried then. More than seven years of watching her lying there, alive and yet not alive—Julie and yet not Julie—had used up his lifetime quota of tears.

For seven years he’d taken her bouquets of her favorite flower. Flowers she couldn’t see, couldn’t smell, but he told himself that deep down, she sensed they were there. And that he loved her—would always love her, no matter what. Finally in early February, on a cold, rainy morning, he had buried her beside her parents, after a private memorial service. Then he’d gone home alone and deliberately drunk himself insensible.

A week later he had handed in his resignation, poured three bottles of double-malt whisky down the sink and stocked up on colas. He’d spent the summer brooding, watching baseball and rereading War and Peace. Once the baseball season ended, he’d promised himself, he would start thinking about what he was going to do with the rest of his life.

It had taken Dan’s retirement party to pry him out of his apartment and back into circulation. About time, he acknowledged with bitter amusement. His social skills, never particularly impressive, had grown dull with lack of use.

“Mac, glad to see you.” Quietly, he greeted a guy who had once covered the White House for one of the major networks, then edged past him.

“Hey, Rock—where you been? Haven’t seen you around lately.”

“Rocko, good to see you, man,” someone else called out.

He made it about halfway to the door, weaving his way through clusters of people he knew vaguely. Got held up between one of the massive sofas and a cluster of women picking over the bones of some poor devil obviously known to them all.

“Did you see him at that last press conference? I swear, if I looked like that, I’d slit my—”

A redhead wearing a black suit about two sizes too small leaned forward, sloshing her drink dangerously close to the rim of her glass, and said in a whisky-thickened voice, “Honey, I peeked into his underwear drawer, and believe you me, those rumors are the gospel truth!”

Gossip was the order of the day. Snide comments, catty remarks. Rocky glanced at his watch. He’d planned on being in and out within twenty minutes, tops. It had taken him that long just to work his way across the room. Anyone who had been around pols and media types as long as he had should have known what to expect. With scandal in D.C. as plentiful as cherry blossoms in spring, it didn’t take much effort to pick up a thread here and another one there and weave them into a story that could ruin a few lives and leapfrog a career.

Thank God he hadn’t chosen that route. He didn’t have the stomach for it. Once he’d realized that his objectivity as a reporter was beginning to give way to advocacy, he had asked for reassignment. It had meant not seeing as much of Julie, but then, the hours spent by her bedside had been more for his sake than for hers. The doctor had told him right from the first that, while she might appear to be responding, critical portions of her brain had been injured. That it was only a matter of time before her vital functions began to shut down.

Despite the prognosis, he had gone on hoping. Reading to her, taking her flowers, relating news about people they both knew. Resignation had set in slowly, over a matter of years. He wasn’t even aware of when he’d stopped hoping.

Someone bumped into him, spilling a drink on his sleeve.

“Oops, sorry.”

“No problem.” He had to get out of here. This time he almost made it to the door. “Excuse me—pardon me.”

The woman blocking his exit turned. Her eyes widened as she gave him a slow once-over. “Well, hello, honey. Not leaving so soon, are you?”

“Another appointment.” No thanks. It’s been a long, dry spell, but I’m not that hard up.

Three women emerged from one of the suite’s two bathrooms and paused, still talking, blocking the door to the hallway. A brunette with a spectacular super-structure was saying, “Well, anyhow, like I said, the first two publishers turned it down flat. They as good as told us to take it to the tabloids, but the very next day my agent showed it to another publisher and he offered us a six-figure advance, and my agent said—”

“Forget what your agent said, Binky, check with a lawyer. He’s the one you want beside you the first time you’re sued for libel.”

“No chance. Who’s going to step forward and claim credit for something like that? Besides, my agent says I’m safe because this is a first-person account and I’m not actually naming names.”

“Aw, come on, Binky, you’re not claiming to be Sully’s first, are you?”

All three women laughed. “Are you kidding?”

Amused in spite of himself Rocky squeezed past and waited for the elevator. The woman called Binky was still holding forth. If he wasn’t mistaken, she did a social column for one of the weeklies. He’d once heard her chest referred to as the Grand Tetons.

“Listen, I’m talking group stuff here,” she said, her heavily made-up eyes sparkling avidly. “Kinky like you wouldn’t believe! Poor Sully said his wife was about as exciting as wet bread. He had a taste for fancier fare, if you know what I mean.”

“I met her once at a fund-raiser. His wife, I mean. She struck me as real uptight. All the same, I’d watch my back if I were you. You know what they say about those quiet types.”

Rocky would take his chances with a quiet type anyday over these pampered piranhas. He felt sorry for the wife of whatever poor jerk they were discussing. Evidently she’d been victimized first by her husband and now was about to be pilloried all over again by the public’s insatiable appetite for dirt.

“Yeah, well who’s interested in her?” Binky unbuttoned her black jacket to reveal the scrap of ecru lace she wore instead of a blouse. “Did I tell you they’re rushing production? They’ve got three editors working on it, and marketing has booked me on all the talk shows. I mean, with a title like The Senator’s Daughter’s Husband’s Other Women, it’s gonna make all the lists, probably the top slot, because my agent says—”

The elevator stopped. The doors opened. Rocky stood there, frowning in thought until the doors silently closed again. He had once known a senator’s daughter who had later married a congressman. Was she talking about that particular senator’s daughter? The one who had married that particular congressman? Even by Washington standards, that had been rough. The press had been all over it.

Not that he’d really known her, Rocky amended as another elevator stopped to let off a couple of late arrivals. Still frowning, he stepped onboard. Actually, he’d only spoken to her one time, years before her father’s misdeeds had begun to surface. Years before she had married the senator’s trained seal in the House—a man who had gone down in flames in a separate scandal shortly after the senator had been figuratively tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.

Rocky had been covering the Middle East Summit when the wedding had taken place. He remembered watching some of the coverage. The Sullivans and Joneses, while hardly in the Kennedy class, had still made a pretty big splash. Even the veep had attended the festivities. She’d made a beautiful bride. Not pretty in the usual sense, but with an innate poise that could easily be called regal. He’d caught a flash of that funny little half smile he remembered from their one and only meeting years earlier.

It had been a few years after that when the lid had blown off the first scandal. There’d been rumblings before, but nothing that couldn’t be blamed on partisan politics. Finally, with its back to the wall, Justice had appointed an independent council to investigate, and Rocky had watched from whatever assignment he happened to be on as one after another, Senator J. Abernathy Jones’s sins were laid bare.

The feeding frenzy had eventually brought down half a dozen smaller fry, but if memory served, the young congressman his daughter had married some six years earlier had not been among them. Sullivan’s downfall had come a year or so later, following what had started out as a simple drug bust. By then the senator had been history.

Rocky hadn’t wanted to watch the second chapter unfold, but with all the networks covering the story, it was unavoidable. And, unfortunately, understandable. Juicy scandals had a way of selling newspapers, hiking ratings, making careers. That had been proven too many times to be in doubt.

So he’d witnessed the handsome young congressman’s downfall, watched as the press—his own peers—had hounded the man’s wife, his office staff, even his barber. He remembered thinking once, seeing Sullivan’s wife trapped by a mob of yelling reporters between the front door of her Arlington house and a car driven by her housekeeper, that Joan of Arc might have worn the same stoic expression.

That had been more than a year ago. Immersed in his own crisis, Rocky hadn’t thought of her since then.

Now he did.

Her name had been Sarah Mariah Jones the first time he’d ever seen her. It had been at a fund-raiser sponsored by a couple of Hollywood celebrities. She must have been about fifteen years old at the time. He’d been a green reporter and she’d been a gawky kid trying hard to look as if she weren’t dying to be someplace else. Anyplace else. He remembered reading somewhere that her mother had died recently. The senator’s habit of using her for photo ops, then shoving her into the background had been pretty well established. Rumor had it that years ago he had forgotten and left her at a town hall meeting in a school gymnasium for about six hours before he’d remembered to send someone to pick her up.

It had occurred to him that day at the fund-raiser that she’d been painfully aware of her own role in her father’s struggling reelection campaign. She was there to be used the way he used everyone else, then shoved aside until the need arose again. The old pol had played the family card for all it was worth, ever since his opponent, a married man with three children, had been caught in a compromising situation with an aide.

It had been the standard celebrity bash. Only those journalists who shared the senator’s ideology had been invited to meet and mingle with the glitterati. Rocky, who had considered himself politically unbiased at that early stage of his budding career, had been on his way out when he’d spotted the girl.

In a dress that was obviously expensive and painfully unflattering, the young Sarah Mariah had watched her father buttonhole another major contributor, clasp his hand, slap him on the arm and then proceed to apply the thumbscrews. Something about her expression had caught his attention. It reminded him too much of children he’d seen with eyes far too old for their tender years.

Which was probably why, from a mixture of boredom and sympathy, he had collected a cup of tea and a finger sandwich—asparagus and cream cheese, he remembered distinctly—and made his way over to the potted palm where she’d gone to earth.

“Hi. My name’s Rocky and I’m a truant officer. Do you have your parents’ permission to be here?” Silly stuff, but hell—she was just a kid.

“How do you do, Mr. Rocky. My name is Anonymous Jones, and if you blow my cover I’ll be deported at the very least, beheaded if the king’s having a bad hair day.”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” They’d both stared at the senator’s trademark silver pompadour. “Brought you a last meal just in case. Asparagus sandwiches. They looked like a safer bet than those small brown things.”

“The barbecued loin of weasel?”

“Those were all gone. There were a couple of the guppy filets left, but you know what they say about seafood.”

“No, what do they say?”

He’d shrugged. “Beats me.”

She had smiled then. A quick, spontaneous smile that was gone almost before it appeared. They had talked for a few minutes and then she’d reached for the tea. Her hand had struck the saucer, and in trying to catch the cup before it spilled, she’d managed to dump the sandwich onto his shoes. Cream-cheese side down. Smack on the laces, where it couldn’t easily be wiped off.

The poor kid had looked stricken, so he’d forgotten his own irritation and made some crack about asparagus being a known insect repellant. “It’s the scent, you know? You ever sniff an asparagus? Whoa. Really bad stuff.”

She’d looked so grateful he’d been afraid she was going to do something gauche, like kissing his hand. Mumbling something about an appointment, he’d left before she could embarrass them both.

Even then it had occurred to him that she had vulnerable eyes. Far too vulnerable, considering the circles she moved in. He remembered thinking that with a crook like J. Abernathy Jones for a father, she’d be in therapy before the year was out, if she wasn’t already.

Sarah Mariah Jones Sullivan, he mused now. Daughter of Senator J. Abernathy Jones, who had been reelected by the skin of his teeth shortly after their one and only meeting.

Wife—make that widow—of Junior Congressman Stanley Sullivan, the senator’s protégé and handpicked puppet. Despite his reputation as a latter-day John Kennedy, the jerk had been nothing more than a dirty, womanizing lightweight who had barely managed to escape the tail end of the scandals that had put an end to his father-in-law’s career, if not to his ambitions.

As it turned out, Rocky had been back in the States after a stint in Kosovo when Sullivan had gone down in flames. Still immersed in his own private, personal immolation, he had not joined the pack, choosing instead to watch the coverage from the privacy of his barren apartment. Looking calm, pale and emotionless, Sarah Mariah had been there each day beside her husband and his lawyers. Comparing the grown-up woman to the teenage girl he remembered, he couldn’t help but wonder how much it was costing her. God knows, she must have already suffered enough when her father’s sins had come home to roost.

Under the most trying circumstances imaginable for any sensitive young woman, she had never, to his knowledge, lost her dignity. Rocky watched as day after day she’d be caught outside and surrounded before she could escape. Head held high, she would face down her tormentors with that same disconcertingly direct gaze he remembered.

“Miz Sullivan, did you know at the time…?”

“No comment.”

“Mrs. Sullivan, is it true that you’ve already filed for divorce?”

“No comment.”

“Hey, Sarah, is it true that you were at some of those Georgetown parties your husband threw? Is it true that a Hollywood director supplied the talent and the—”

“If you’ll excuse me?”

Someone—Rocky learned later it was her father’s housekeeper—usually rescued her by pulling her bodily away when she would have stood there with that startled-doe look in her eyes until she ran out of no-comments.

After a while the two scandals had run together in his mind: the senator’s illegal fund-raising, aka influence peddling, arranging for the bypassing of certain sanctions to sell classified materials to terrorist nations, and the offshore bank accounts; followed only a few years later by Sullivan’s sordid little sex, drugs and booze peccadilloes. The consensus was that the man was incredibly stupid to have continued his activities right on through his father-in-law’s investigation.

But then Rocky had been immersed in his own private hell while it was all going on. About the time the first scandal was making the nightly news, Julie’s kidneys had begun to fail. Dialysis had held her for a while, but under the circumstances, she had not been a candidate for transplant. After one last quick overseas assignment, he had handed in his resignation, needing to spend as much time as he could with the woman he’d once loved.

So it was all mixed up in his mind—the end of his shell of a marriage, the Jones-Sullivan affair, and the end of his career. A man could run only so far, so long, before life caught up with him.

He did recall wondering more than once how the shy, intelligent girl with the wry sense of humor, the haunting little half smile and the marked lack of physical coordination, could have married a lightweight like Sullivan in the first place. The guy was smooth. He had the kind of face the cameras loved, but Rocky had once heard him on a radio talk show when a caller had asked if he was worried about the Chi-coms controlling both ends of the Panama Canal.

Judging by his response, the poor jerk had never heard of the Panama Canal, much less any possible political ramifications. He had stumbled around in search of a response and ended up parroting the day’s talking points about campaign finance reform. By the end of the program he’d been batting 0 for 4.

Still, the guy must have had something on the ball. Sarah Mariah had married him. And just as she had stood by her father during the Senate hearings, she had stood stoically beside her husband as, one after another, all his tawdry little secrets had been exposed. With a face that revealed none of her emotions, she had quietly shamed all but the hardcore paparazzi before it was over into granting her grudging respect.

But by that time Rocky had stopped watching. Enough was enough.

Enough was too damned much.

The congressman’s sleazy affairs had been too commonplace to sustain a media barrage for long, once it was determined that national security was not at stake. The mess had sprung up again briefly a few months later when Sullivan had taken dead aim at a bridge abutment and totaled both himself and his car. Shortly after that, Sarah Mariah dropped out of sight.

That must have been about the same time that Rocky himself had dropped out. One way of putting it. He had watched Julie’s final decline. He had cried. He had read until he couldn’t face another book. He’d watched an entire season of baseball, his own brand of opiate. When he’d realized he was drinking too much, he had quit cold turkey. All things considered, it hadn’t exactly been a banner year.

A few nights after Dan Sturdivant’s retirement party, Rocky was watching the news and toying with the idea of doing a series of columns when he caught a thirty-second teaser for a daytime talk show featuring Binky Cudahy, author of the upcoming bestseller, The Senator’s Daughter’s Husband’s Other Women.

That’s when it hit him. Wherever she’d gone, whatever kind of a life she had managed to salvage for herself, the congressman’s widow was probably going to come in for some unwelcome attention once the book hit the stands. Did she even know about it? Did she watch daytime TV?

For all he knew she might be lying on the sand soaking up sun on some tropical island by now. God knows, she deserved a break.

But she also deserved to know what was headed her way, in case she needed to duck. Rocky knew he could find her. He’d put in too many years as a reporter not to have sources. Although why he should feel this proprietary interest in a woman he’d met only one time, and that more than twenty years ago, he couldn’t have said. Maybe because there was a big, gaping hole where his life used to be.

Well, hell…the least he could do was give her fair warning that the buzzards would soon be circling again.