American Quartet (4 page)

BRUCE
Rosen was not in a good mood. He was sitting in the gloomy half-light of a television set, slumped in a leather chair. Beside him was a half-filled highball glass. The scene did not augur well for the future of their experiment.

She pulled the chain of the table lamp, throwing a yellow splash of light against the paneled walls and rows of leather-bound books. It was a “Wasp” room, down to the nineteenth-century landscape that hung over the fireplace, a touch that bespoke deeper American roots than had been sunk in a couple of generations. She hated spotting details like that. Cynicism was an occupational hazard, like spotted lung to miners.

“It was the loneliness that bugged me the first time around,” he said, lifting heavy-lidded eyes. In the ten months she had known him, he had never seemed so vulnerable.

“What the hell is it, Bruce?” She poured herself two fingers of Scotch and sat on the arm of the chair, putting her hand on his head. The curly touch of it warmed her.

“There’s a kinky rhythm to our work,” she said softly. “Murderers work odd hours, too.” They had been through that before. In their time as lovers, politics had made her a grass widow as well.

“And I don’t control it, baby,” she said, kissing his neck.

Bruce picked up his glass, emptied it and squeezed her buttock with his free hand. It reassured her that her absence alone was not the reason for his depression. A talk show was in progress and she got up to shut off the inane chatter.

“I think I’m going to get knocked off in the primary,” he said. “I saw the polls today. The bitch has got me by the balls.”

She let it pass. The New Woman had scorched the earth, leaving behind her a race of injured men. They simply could not adjust to a nonmaternal woman. Was Bruce going to be one more victim? She wished his opponent was not a woman.

“So you’ll fight it. You’re a pro. It’s not the first trip to the well.”

“Too late. The fucking districts are changing. More black faces. Spanish is a second language. I’ve always been lousy at languages. The bitch . . .” She hated the word. She wondered if he was baiting her.

“But it’s not over yet.”

“She poses as a tough spic street broad. They love it. Maybe Jewish is out of fashion.”

“Not to me. I’m just getting into it,” she said lightly.

“Dumb mick.” He gathered a palmful of flesh and squeezed affectionately. “Always at the tail end of a trend.”

She kept silent, afraid to go too lightly. It was his life. Sixteen years. It was the only occupation he wanted. Once, just once, she had asked him why.

“I like the glory,” he had said. “It fulfills my thirst for recognition and power, for manipulating others. I like to see my name and picture in the papers. I like to make decisions. I like to touch the levers of power. It makes me feel alive.” It had come out like a confessional laundry list and she had actually felt like a priest peering out at him through the veiled opening. Say three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys and a sincere act of contrition, she had wanted to say, but it was too close to all those exposed nerves.

“You could do with a little more Irish.” She poured more whiskey into his glass. “Here’s a temporary cure. Irish medicine.”

“I just don’t want to be beached here,” he said. “I can’t go home anymore. Home has disappeared. I’ll have to stay. Be a ‘usta.’ I’ll get a couple of invitations with honorable on the envelope. Probably lobby for big oil or the potash industry.”

“You are down,” Fiona said, biting his earlobe. There was something to this Jewish mommy bit, she had learned years before, during her first sorties out of the Irish ghetto. Jewish boys were puffed up with confidence by their mamas. Sooner or later, it came out in the wash. They expected their wives, or mistresses, to perform the same service.

“You’ll make it,” she said earnestly. “You always have. So you’ll run scared.”

“Petrified,” he said. “I’ll run petrified.”

Her own mother would have put it all in the hands of providence. Her father would have called it a conspiracy of the Protestants and, of course, the kikes.

“I needed a shoulder to cry on tonight,” he said, resting his head on her bosom.

“That’s not my shoulder.” He seemed to be making an effort to come out of it.

“Every compulsive achiever is paranoid.” He was quiet for a long time and she felt him listening to her heartbeat.

“I was thinking of Remington earlier,” he said. “He was assistant secretary of the navy under Kennedy. Practically a kid then. Ran for the Senate from California. Lost. Now he throws parties. Goes everywhere. But he doesn’t count.”

She had seen his name in the social pages of the
Post
and the
Washington Dossier
countless times. Thaddeus Remington III. Good old Tad. He lived in one of the great houses of Washington on Linnean Drive. Not important?

“Remington depressed you?”

“He’s loaded, but he can’t really buy his way in. It’s power that counts. Oh, they kiss his ass. He gets his brownie points. Ambassadors suck up to him because he’s a kind of social catalyst. He brings the mighty together, but he’s never mighty himself. You know what I mean. He’s a celebrity, true, but without power or achievement. Beached.”

It was the second time he had used that word. Thwarted, she supposed he meant.

“An empty life,” he continued. “Every four years, he becomes the new version of a fat cat. A fundraiser for others. But never a kingmaker and never a king. Even his dough can’t insulate from the corrosion of his failure.”

“I can’t see him as an object of pity.”

“If I go down in November, I kiss the Senate seat good-bye. It would be rough.”

“But not the end of the world.”

“The end of my world. In politics, to win is everything. All else is sudden death. All campaigns make me crazy, Fiona. I’m not fit to live with. None of us are. We’d shoot our mothers to get reelected.”

“Would you really?”

“My mother’s already gone.” He caressed her arm. “Bear with me. Pay no attention. This is not the real me.”

“Who is it then?”

“Some gluttonous monster without a shred of integrity. I have this man Clark. A hired gun. He’s figuring it out. I’ll do what he tells me.”

“Anything?”

“Almost.”

He was obviously having an anxiety attack. A hurt child, she thought. Either that or male menopause.

“I’m forty-five,” he murmured, as though reading her thoughts.

“Eisenhower was an obscure colonel at fifty-two, before Marshall picked him and lightning struck. Nixon was a has-been in 1960, in disgrace a little more than a decade later. And still bouncing back. Where is your instinct for survival?” She felt like a cheerleader. “I thought you were Jewish. Besides, you haven’t even begun to fight back.”

“I’m waiting for Clark to tell me how.”

She let him wallow in silence, caressing him.

“And how was your day?” he asked suddenly, turning to her. He began to unbutton her blouse. She let him. This was, after all, what a relationship meant. At least she was only tired, not down. His strength was one of his great attractions. He’s not really weak, she assured herself, just manic.

“My day? I found myself a motive.” She edited herself. “A possible motive.” She explained succinctly. He was a good listener.

“How do you stand it?” he said. “Death morning, noon and night. At least old Papa Hemingway liked it only in the afternoon.”

“A matinee man.”

He laughed. She was drawing him out. It pleased her to see the dynamics of their relationship, she filling his need. When it was her turn, she hoped he wouldn’t let her down.

Finally he had freed her breasts and buried his face between them. She felt the tickling roughness of his chin.

“My bubby,” she said, pressing his head against her flesh.

Death had brought them together. The suicide of Carol Harper, one of his receptionists.

“We have to investigate every death in D.C., natural or otherwise,” she had told him in his office. Like all politicians, he was wary. She knew he was wondering how it would affect his image. He was divorced, handsome, visible. A good story. She was wearing a Wedgwood blue suit and a high-collared blouse. Very neuter. Very professional.

Only three months in homicide, the only woman, Fiona was still shaky in her role, especially without the protection of her uniform and those clumpy sexless men’s shoes she’d had to wear. She had another white partner then, Al Short, who let her do the talking. The man was a congressman and Al was heading for early retirement in a month or two and not inclined to rock any political boats. At that time, she was still naive, learning the homicide trade.

“You saw the medical report,” Bruce told her. “An overdose. No question about that.”

“Did you see her socially?” The question infuriated him.

“What are you trying to make of it? Your implication is a little presumptuous.”

She had been tempted to apologize, but he wouldn’t let her break in.

“She was a damned receptionist. I barely knew her. I was strictly her employer. I feel rotten that she did this thing, but I had nothing to do with it. Nothing.”

She could see the color rising under his deep tan. She let him work it out.

“It’s just routine, sir.” She was rocked back by his tongue-lashing.

“Is she a confirmed suicide?” he asked, suddenly gentle.

“No question about that. She took an overdose of sleeping pills and left a note in her own hand to her parents, asking for forgiveness. Just a couple of scrawled lines.”

“All right, then. Why bother me about it? There’s no question of foul play?”

“No.”

He seemed fully relieved now. What she did not tell him was that the girl was the closet mistress of an important senator, although she was certain he knew that. In the capital, young vulnerable girls were passed around by powerful men like pieces of meat. Few made it to the altar. Most remained in the closet, sometimes all their lives. Police files were filled with information about similar suicides. It was, as she had told him, routine. The juicy details were kept hidden forever, largely to protect appropriations or to be used for subtle blackmail. Even the press, with occasional lapses, joined in the conspiracy, unless they had targeted an enemy or needed the hapless lecher as a source.

“She was stupid, throwing away her life,” Bruce Rosen said with disgust. “Don’t you think?” His yellow-flecked hazel eyes probed at her. She felt his minute inspection, and involuntarily she pressed her thighs closer together. Inexplicably, the man moved her.

“I try to stay away from emotional judgments,” she said. “It confuses the facts.”

Al Short, sensing the tension, said: “I think we got all we need from the congressman.” He stood up and put out his hand. The congressman shook it with obvious political sincerity.

“Glad to oblige,” Bruce said, winking at her. She had learned to ignore these little macho bits. But she couldn’t dispel the pull, the magnetic attraction. It annoyed her. It interfered with business. Perhaps she hadn’t been trying hard enough to be neuter that day. She found out why a week later.

He called and asked her for dinner at Tiberio’s. She said yes, perhaps too quickly. Was she transparent? she wondered. She was irritated by her vulnerability. They met at the restaurant, where he was waiting for her in the little alcove bar.

“I was nasty,” he said, offering his little boy’s abashed look. She had gone off to Loehman’s and bought a new dress for the occasion. “You look smashing for a cop.”

“Just routine.” She giggled, feeling clumsy and unsophisticated.

Julio put them side by side at a table under a bright floral painting that matched the colors of the flowers on the table. It was late October and Washington was enjoying one of its golden fall seasons. The air was clear and crisp and the moon was full. She would always remember that.

After two Scotches, she felt braced enough to face the routine litany. Men simply could not rest without knowing why she had become a cop. Knowing what? At least it was something that made her interesting.

“I’m not good at explaining it,” she confessed. She had avoided the nuances of street talk, taking care with her language; she was trying to impress him. People came over to shake his hand and he reacted in practiced political style. But there was no mistaking his interest in her, and she was loving it.

“Maybe nostalgia. Maybe some instinctive filial urge because of my family being cops. Maybe it was also a deliberate attack on the concept of a woman’s place. Maybe I’ve got an urge to be a heroine.”

“Maybe it was opportunism,” he said shrewdly. “You’re a double minority.”

“You noticed.”

“There must be a lot of pressure.”

Because he was a congressman, she resisted telling him about the poor morale, the promotions based solely on race, her gripes against the eggplant. The D.C. government still depended on Congress for its money. The department, despite its flaws, carried a special brand of loyalty. The eggplant would have loved her tact.

“I’m all for women going as far as they can,” he said, a trifle unctuously. He appeared to her then as a beautiful, elegant man, secure in his manhood, filled with an obvious sense of male superiority. It might be intellectually repelling, but his explosive sexuality could not be denied. Soon he was telling her about his first wife. She listened, trying not to betray her impatience. God, get the preliminaries over with, she thought.