Lucky Bastard (50 page)

Morgan did not want to hear this. “The bank is cool,” she said. “It's going to fail. The governor made some bad calls. It's a judgment issue. He'll walk away. Not our fault.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Danny, trust me. Are
you
going to rat on Jack?”

“No, but—”

“Okay, that's the key,” Morgan said. “Go back to Columbus. Talk to Merriwether Street. Warn him to be careful. Tell him about your fight with Cindy.”

Danny said, “It wasn't a fight.”

“Of course it was a fight. She's got some wild idea that you and I are lovers, and this is the way she's getting her revenge. Merriwether will never believe that Danny Miller, all-American, is capable of adultery. Especially if you're married to Cindy. Have you ever noticed the way he looks at her?”

Danny felt a pang of jealousy. “A lot of people look at Cindy.”

“Danny, do as I ask. Please.”

“I can't do that to Cindy.”

“Do what to Cindy? Save her from making a fool of herself in front of the whole world, of making an enemy of everyone who'll want to get next to Jack when he's president?”

“She doesn't see it that way.”

Morgan said, “Then she's got a real problem with her future, because that's the way it's going to be. Jack will be the most powerful man in the world and she'll be an ex-prom queen.”

“Morgan, come off it,” Danny said. “Jack's not going to hurt Cindy.”

“Not personally. If you care about her you'll save her from herself. Merriwether Street is a right-wing prick who will do anything to get Jack. You really want him to use your wife to destroy your best friend and get yourself locked up for thirty years?”

Danny was silent. Morgan said, “I remind you that Jack is running for president. That he's the good guy and the other side are the bad guys. Think, Danny.”

“I don't know what to tell Street that would penetrate his skull.”

“I just got through telling you. Cindy is making the whole thing up out of jealousy.”

“That's untrue. It's simplistic.”

“Simple is good. Simple
works.
Tell him.”

“What am I supposed to tell him after I've told him Cindy is crazy?”

“The truth. The bank is going to fail because it made some bad loans. You tried to give the governor a break, a new opportunity in life, but it just didn't work out. He fucked up because he's a born fuckup. We're the real losers. We can live with that. Bad luck. End of story.”

“It won't fly,” Danny said. “Let me talk to Jack.”

8
Back in Columbus, zealously but secretly, F. Merriwether Street had been pursuing his case against the Adamses. But because he did not yet have solid proof, and because he feared that left-wingers in the Department of Justice would tip off their masters in the party, if not Jack and Morgan, and also because he wanted all the credit for himself, he had not told Washington what he was doing. He had not even told his staff or his father or his uncle. Only he and Cindy, poring over documents in the cellar of the Victorian mansion in Tannery Falls night after night, were in on the secret. Their meetings resembled lovers' assignations: cryptic phone calls,separate cars, lies, and an intimacy that was deepened by the thrill of the forbidden and the fear of discovery. Street had always known that Cindy was beautiful and desirable; as a result of their furtive hours together, these qualities were no longer an abstraction. There she was, within reach. Nothing happened between them, of course; nothing could.

Nevertheless, their relationship troubled Merriwether Street's conscience. He was a puritan, the heir to old money and old obligations. He believed strongly in the public trust as the highest expression of a Christian life next to fidelity in marriage and stern but loving fatherhood. He was a model of probity, a man who kept a tight rein on his appetites. He loved his wife and had never betrayed her with another woman and never would. In fact he had never had another woman even before marriage. He was a dutiful father, but in that respect as in so many others he was Jack's opposite.

With every passing day, Street was more and more certain that Jack and Morgan were criminals, that the bank was only the tip of the vast iceberg of their evil works, that it was not important in itself but for whatever larger criminal conspiracy it had been designed to cover up. At the same time he worried incessantly that Jack and Morgan, in their ruthlessness, would trump him again, that in spite of all he knew, in spite of his honor and sense of duty, they would win again and he would be the one who was destroyed.

That did not deter him from his duty. While Jack's triumphant homecoming parade was still in progress, Danny called on Street in his office in the federal courthouse. On the other side of the building, which faced the parade route, drums and bugles blared wind-snatched bars of “Jack, Jack, Jack!” as the bands marched past the reviewing stand where Jack and Morgan were waving merrily and the twins, in matching sailor suits, were snapping off salutes.

Street listened without expression to Danny's story. Then he asked a single question: Where did the twenty-seven-million-dollar deposit—the working capital that brought down the bank—come from?

Danny did not answer.

Street said, “You don't know or you won't say?”

“It's irrelevant. And anyway, it's a confidential matter protected by lawyer-client privilege. I am here as the bank's lawyer.”

“We'll see about that.”

Danny said, “Good luck. But you're barking up the wrong tree.”

For a while Street sat in heavy silence as if listening intently to Jack's exuberant song. People were dancing in the streets. Mass foreplay. He had to admit that pinkos had more fun. Finally he said, “Okay, Miller, have it your way. You have the right to remain silent. And maybe that's what you should do. But I know what kind of money that twenty-seven million was, and how it smelled. And you can tell your friends in the drug business that they're going to go down, and that you and your co-conspirators are going to go down with them. That's a promise.”

Danny said, “My friends in the drug business? What are you talking about?”

He was surprised and deeply disturbed by Street's words. Drug money? This had never occurred to him.

Later, when he delivered his report to Morgan, she snorted in amusement. “My God, that's wonderful! He really thinks it was drug money?”

“I certainly got that impression.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful!” Morgan was laughing, positively bursting with merriment. She had been desperate for a diversion, something that would steer the world away from the truth about Jack's sources of finance. Folding the bank was good. But drug money! Only a Republican could have imagined that he could penetrate Peter's smoke screens, avoid Peter's booby traps, and break through to the drug cartels, which would turn out to be a happy band of eager witnesses. F. Merriwether Street was off on a wild-goose chase that could last for years and was guaranteed to come to nothing!

“Drug money!” Morgan said. “Manna from heaven.”

Danny said, “I'm glad you're pleased. But he's coming after us. What now?”

“Ignore the blockhead. Full speed ahead on closing the bank. File bankruptcy, whatever. You handle the details. The governor signs everything. And whenever Merriwether Street mentions drug money, look very, very nervous.”

Danny said, “Morgan, I
am
nervous.”

“We can fix that, baby.”

She kissed him, long and wet. “My God, it's been so long!”

It had been three days. They were in Morgan's room. It was four o'clock in the afternoon. Morgan picked up the phone and said, “Muriel, I don't want to be disturbed for any reason. That goes for the watchdogs.” She meant the Secret Service agents who now went everywhere with her, who stood guard outside the door. She was undressing as she spoke.

After Danny left, Morgan opened her safe. After pulling on a pair of surgical gloves stored inside, she extracted a videotape. It was sealed in a padded envelope. She turned on her computer and, still wearing the gloves, typed F. Merriwether Street's name and home address on a label and printed it out. She affixed the label to the envelope along with a priority mail stamp.

Then, without a glance at the waiting Secret Service agents, she strode into the outer office and out the front door. The agents leaped to their feet and followed.

At the curb, where her limousine waited, she dropped the envelope into a mailbox.

One of the agents said, “We'd have been glad to take care of that for you, ma'am.”

Morgan smiled, cold-eyed, with all thirty-two of her perfect teeth. “I like to do things for myself,” she replied.

The agent opened the car door for her. She said, sharply, “You don't listen, do you? Don't ever do that again. I can open my own fucking doors.”

9
F. Merriwether Street was revolted by the tape. As a puritan he was also fascinated by it. It confirmed so many of the things that he had always known, in the abstract, to be true of human females. It was plain from Cindy's reactions that what was happening to her was new, shocking, totally unexpected. Yet she loved it; she could not help herself. This man had her running on all fours. There was no mistaking that what she felt was, in fact, ecstasy. But what must she have felt afterward?

Only by sealing the tape as evidence and locking it in a safe was Street able to resist the urge to look at it again. At the same time, he recognized it as a blatant attempt to impeach his witness and intimidate him. And he knew where it had come from. That had been the whole point of sending it to him. It was a warning.

He immediately called Cindy. She calmly acknowledged that the tape was genuine and described the circumstances in which it was made.

“You were set up for blackmail against a contingency exactly like this one,” Street said.

“A reasonable person could so conclude,” Cindy replied.

“By whom?”

“Who else could it be?”

“As far as I'm concerned, this just reinforces the case. Do you want to go on?”

“Yes.”

“I can't burn the tape. I may have to produce it on discovery.”

“I know that.”

“Cindy, I have to ask you this. Is the tape everything they have on you?”

“Everything I know about, everything that's true,” Cindy said. “But that doesn't mean there won't be more things coming in the mail. They're going to do everything they can to distort this investigation and lead it down blind alleys. Accuse the accuser, that's their first law.”

Street didn't quite know what she meant by that, and even when her prediction came true he did not see the connection.

Three

1
The honey-colored half-Chinese girl was Peter's first disciple. Soon she became the bait of the fisherman. She was good—so good that I suspected prior training. She brought others to him. Only the brightest and most beautiful were invited to remain. There were parties on the houseboat, parties on the beach. As expected, Peter was staying in character, building a cadre. I watched, but with circumspection. Even assisted by amateurs, Peter was a formidable counterespionage service all by himself. The fact that he had trained me was both an advantage and a danger: He knew what to look for because he knew what I would be looking for. One evening by accident I found myself dining across the room from Peter in a trendy restaurant. I was alone; he was with the honey-colored girl and two or three other beauties of both sexes. Waiters (only slightly less beautiful) hovered. Peter was already a celebrity; I was a regular whom the headwaiter was happy to meet for the first time each time I tipped him twenty dollars for a good table. As wine was poured for him to taste, Peter's eyes rested on me for a moment. Without recognition? Perhaps.

A day or two later, while I read a newspaper and drank coffee at the News Café, the honey-colored girl swept down on me. She wore her usual street costume, string bikini and Rollerblades. The only part of her body completely concealed were her eyes, behind huge sunglasses. She leaned over my table, displaying even the nipples of her admirable breasts, and with a catlike smile said, in excellent Mandarin, “Love your face. Is it new?” She dipped a fingertip in my coffee and drew it lingeringly along one of the surgical scars behind my ears. Then she skated away, naked buttocks working for the tantalization of the invisible man who was myself, grinning and sticking out her tongue. Was this a message from Peter or cocaine? I assumed the former; it is always best to assume the worst.

I watched my back. I never saw anyone behind me, but I began to hear familiar phenomena on my telephone—the sudden fading in volume that is sometimes, though not always, a sign that the phone is being tapped. When outdoors I began to wear an amplifier, also disguised as a Walkman, which permitted me to hear small sounds from a considerable distance. One day while sitting on my balcony, and then the next day as I walked along the beach, I heard what I was listening for, the snicker and hiss of a shutter on a camera with a long lens. I was being photographed. Or was I?