House of Secrets - v4 (34 page)

T
he president was swimming laps in the White House pool. Although the chief executive’s butterfly days were long over, his breaststroke was still aggressive, and as he powered down the lane the displaced water lapped over the sides of the pool, slapped against the very near walls, then reversed direction to pour right back into the pool. The taste of chlorine filled the narrow catacomb, and wobbly reflections of the churning water bounced about the curved ceiling.

The British prime minister was across town speaking at the National Press Club. She was due to arrive at the White House in a half hour for a belated getting-to-know-you meeting with the new president, followed by a Rose Garden press conference. Hyland had eagerly taken advantage of the rare gap in his schedule to don his goggles and log his thirty laps.

Generally speaking, Hyland’s ritual laps served to clear his head, allowing him to forget, at least temporarily, the full burden of his responsibilities. On this particular afternoon, the president’s mind was not achieving the temporary amnesia that was his custom. Far from it. The wound that had been inflicted on his fledgling presidency by the forced resignation of his vice president was threatening to worsen. Serious wounds need to be tended to quickly or else infection sets in, which was precisely the worry that Hyland had taken with him down to the chlorine-drenched room. And it was precisely the worry that was not washing away as he powered through the water.

His choice to replace his newly resigned vice president was in the midst of one of the worst personal crises imaginable. His daughter was missing. Snatched right off the street. Hyland could not imagine how he would respond if such an event happened to him. His heart was at Andy and Christine’s full disposal. He had made that clear to the senator earlier in the morning by phone.

The official leaking of Hyland’s choice of Senator Foster to replace Chris Wyeth had not yet begun, but Hyland knew full well that the unofficial leaking was under way, even before Wyeth’s televised resignation. Even if the White House were to seal itself up as tight as a steel drum, those who didn’t know that Hyland had tapped Andy Foster to be the next vice president would know soon enough.

And now the senator’s child was missing. If Michelle Foster’s abduction was not directly related to her father’s newly minted status as vice president in waiting, then Hyland would go out and buy a hat and eat it. A great big one. A big straw sombrero. This was, in two words: Fucking. Awful.

Hyland reached the far end of the lane and performed a perfect flip turn, kicked off, and glided for several feet just below the surface. Over the final five laps he powered down to the standard crawl, an easy metronomic stroke. For the first time since he’d entered the water he could feel the exhilarating burn across his shoulders and in his thighs from the breaststroke regime. He felt a modicum of tranquillity settling in during his final laps. The move from power to grace tipped the scales for him, and he glided back and forth in a no-zone zone, largely mindless. Strictly physical. Briefly a fish once more.

The night before, within hours after the news broke about Michelle Foster’s abduction, Whitney Hoyt had contacted the president to counsel him not to even consider withdrawing his invitation to Senator Foster to become his new vice president.

“Whoever it is that’s taken my granddaughter, that’s what they want,” the former governor told him. “It’s bullshit, and somebody is going to pay dearly for this. But Andy is still in. We’re clear on that. The timetable is probably shot, and your people will obviously have to look into that. But don’t let this thing throw you off, John. If you panic, you’re screwed. You must know that. This can screw up your entire term, right here. Withdrawing the offer to Andy on humanitarian grounds is not an option. I don’t know what the answer is at the moment, but for Christ’s sake, don’t you dare let the country see its president pissing in his pants. Andy stays.”

Hyland was out of the pool and toweling off when Ron Abbey appeared, his shiny shoes clicking in echo from tile to ceiling.

“Tell me that the prime minister ate some bad fish and that we’re scrubbing the afternoon, Ron,” Hyland said. “Please.”

“No, sir. I’m afraid she’s due in ten minutes.”

Hyland shrugged his shoulders. “Jolly good, then.”

The president’s chief of staff cleared his throat. “Um, it’s something else, Mr. President.”

Hyland slung the towel over his shoulders. “It’s always something else. I’m thinking of having that printed up for the front of my desk. What is it, Ron? Is it about the Foster girl?”

“Yes and no, sir.”

“Don’t do that to me, Ron. Not right now.”

“They haven’t located the girl,” Abbey said. “Though they did locate the vehicle that was used to kidnap her. I’ve just been on the phone with the FBI. The director told me not to disturb your swim.”

Hyland blanched. His chief of staff saw immediately that he’d made a gaffe.

“Ron, when I’m unscheduled don’t ever tell the director a word about what I’m up to. They’re FBI. If they want to know things, they can damn well dig for it.”

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry.”

Hyland waved it off. “So what did our dear director have to say?”

“The body of a woman was found in the vehicle. Murdered.”

Hyland’s eyes traveled up to the low ceiling. “Great mother of hell.”

“It gets complicated, sir.”

The president lowered his gaze to his chief of staff. “Oh, does it, now? How novel.”

“The woman worked for Masters and Weiss. One of their top executives was murdered on Long Island a few weeks ago. Joy Resnick. That’s kind of where the complication comes in, sir.”

“Ron, the prime minister is going to be sitting up there watching my tea grow cold. What is it precisely?”

“Sir. The woman they found today. She worked directly for Joy Resnick.”

“I see.”

“No, sir. That’s not all. Resnick was the chief executive at Masters and Weiss in charge of last year’s reelection campaign for Senator Foster.”

“Hold on here. Keep me straight on this, Ron. Joyce Resnick—”

“Joy.”

“Joy. Murdered a couple of weeks ago.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Have any arrests been made on that?”

“No, sir.”

“And now
her
assistant has been murdered? That’s correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Link this up for me, Ron.”

“Sir, Resnick’s assistant has been found in the vehicle that was used to abduct Senator Foster’s little girl.”

Hyland draped the towel over his neck and took a hard grip on both ends. “So, whoever kidnapped Michelle Foster and killed this woman — does she have a name?”

“Marion Mann.”

“Somebody kidnapped Michelle Foster and murdered this Mann woman.” He grimaced at the unintentional word combo. “And a few weeks ago, somebody murdered Miss Mann’s boss?”

“Who worked full-time last year for Senator Foster’s reelection.”

The president gazed into the water. “I’m not liking this.”

“Like I said, it’s complicated. I only just now got all this from Director Pierce.”

The president said nothing more. His chief of staff was correct: It
was
complicated. It could mean something, it could mean nothing, or it could land someplace in between. The only thing Hyland knew with any certainty was that he wanted nothing else right now but to get back into the water.

Finally he spoke. “Prime minister in five minutes?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stall her. I’ll need ten.”

S
he had moved beyond exhaustion. Each day brought with it a numbing fatigue. Leaden feet. Delayed response time.

Amazing what scant sleep can do.

Her first night, she had crawled under one of the overturned rental rowboats in Prospect Park and passed a fitful night dreaming of the cold blue eyes of the man who had murdered her husband.

The following morning, after sinking the battered laptop in the lake, she had made the trip over the great cathedral bridge, inching with reluctance toward the city, and that night she had made her bed beneath the wall of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, tucked unseen between the outside wall and the low row of box bushes bordering the building. An automatic sprinkler system had roused her early in the morning, and she had emerged back onto the streets, soggy and exhausted.

Later that day she had spent precious dollars to have her hair cut short and spiky, after which she had made use of a public bathroom at a library downtown to trade in its bleachy white for something dull and cinnamon.

She was hungry.

It wasn’t so much her minuscule funds she was concerned about as the fact that eating itself felt like a supremely optimistic act. As she stood in a doorway staring down at her feet, a bald woman in red robes placed a tangerine in her hand. She tried to say “thank you,” but her throat was too dry, and no words came out. That evening she lay down in the small courtyard of a church near a busy street, but sleep never came. The following day — somehow she had identified it as Friday — the notion made its way into her head:

This is how people become lost
.

This is how they disappear
.

She was fine with this. She wanted to disappear. She was toxic. It was why she had to vanish. She had led her own husband’s murderer directly to his door, and she had watched as he’d begun to bleed to death on the hotel room floor. And she still held in her pocket the reason he had been killed. The little blue piece of aluminum. Her husband had praised it as the key to their future. More than once over the past week he had held up the little stick to her and declared that it contained inside it an entire house. A fancy car. A trip around the world. Clothes. Food. Anything she wanted.

But it had also contained his death. He’d forgotten to mention that, hadn’t he? The little stick was like one of those golden stones in a fable. She recalled those stories from when she was a child. It was a source of fortune, and at the same time it was a source of ruin. Good luck and bad luck, all rolled into one. Like life itself.

She was exhausted.

She made her way uptown to the park behind the huge library and saved precious pennies by fishing a half-eaten sandwich out of a trash can. She sneaked onto a subway and rode it up to the end and back again. Twice. Time stretching in two directions.

The exhaustion had moved into her bones. It had made her body light and her head seemed like a helium balloon, dragging the rest of her along like a string. She came up out of the subway station with the hot breath of the tunnel trailing her to the street. The helium was beginning to leak away. The energy to keep her feet moving was disappearing. The sidewalk was threatening to rise up and claim her.

A bed
.

The very thought of an actual bed brought an ache to her chest. She could not sleep on the ground for a fourth night. She just couldn’t. She simply wasn’t vanishing quickly enough.

Her small hand slid into her pocket and her fingers closed around the golden stone. It was time to confront it. So many questions she needed to ask it. Why was her husband dead? Why hadn’t the new life he had promised her appeared? What had the stupid, stupid man gone and done? He’d been mean to her sometimes, yes. But she knew it was because he’d been scared and frustrated. His abilities had been so much smaller than his fantasies.
Maybe he has gone to a better place. Maybe he learned something valuable from his many mistakes, and maybe now — at last — he will have a chance to shine
.

S
he walked into a copy center near Grand Central. Ignoring the peculiar look the clerk was giving her, she placed the golden stone on the counter.

“I want to look at this.”

The clerk directed her to a computer cubicle and showed her how to bring up the files.

“If there’s audio, you might want to use a headset.”

She waited until the clerk was back behind the counter. She put on the headset. For a full minute she sat motionless in front of the blank screen. When she felt ready, she tapped the key that the clerk had indicated. A bluish image burned onto the screen. An empty bed appeared, seen from above. Then a vertical line split the screen door down the middle. The empty bed was now visible on the right side of the screen. On the left side was a large, lumpish white rock. No. It was a
pillow
. It looked so inviting. She sat staring at the screen for another two minutes before anything began to take place. It was a person, passing in front of the bed. A woman. She was pulling her dress over her head.

If a single muscle in Irena’s body moved over the next forty minutes, it did so without her permission.