“Does he have anyone else to turn to?” I asked.
“He has lots of rich friends.”
“Friends?”
“Acquaintances. He’s the chairman of the board of the opera.”
“The poor man.”
“On the contrary, I believe he enjoys it.”
Who needs a political machine when they have Felicity Nottingham Cavalieri Gildanov?
I called Pamela.
“I thought you were leaving town,” she said.
“Almost. But I have a task for you. Call Senator Forrester’s office to schedule a meeting between himself and myself. Your call is expected.”
“When will you be available?”
“I’ll get to Washington in a few hours and be there until Sunday afternoon.”
“All right… How much time do you want?”
“I don’t know. It’s all Fred’s idea, not mine. Twenty minutes would be enough for me.”
“Now, don’t whine, Jason. It’s part of the job.”
“Don’t you get on me, too,” I whined.
It was late enough that I had lunch at the airport. I called Katie to check on her.
She was sounding worn out. “Angela called. She wanted to have lunch, but I just can’t. I said you were gone, and I could do dinner tonight.”
“You could try to make her not hate me,” I said.
“I’ll get it down to strong dislike. But it isn’t personal, you know.”
“No. She’d feel the same way toward anyone who was her husband’s son.”
I made one more call before I climbed into the airplane. Well, a couple, to get the right number. Then I waited ten minutes on hold, but finally I heard his voice.
“This is Wilcox.”
“Detective Wilcox. This is Jason Boyer.”
“Mr. Boyer. Yes, sir.” The connection on my cell phone was tenuous, but I could still hear the tone in his words that I wanted to hear. “How can I help you?”
“I was just wondering how your investigation was going. It’s been several days now.”
“Well, Mr. Boyer, actually we’ve just had a meeting about it. We’re giving the investigation a lower priority.”
“Oh. Why is that?”
“We’ve had some questions about the evidence. The forensics lab is trying to be very careful, and they’re not sure there’s really enough to go on.”
“I see. What does it mean to have a lower priority?”
“We’ll keep the file open, but we won’t commit any resources to it unless something new comes up.”
“Well,” I said, “I just wanted to know. Thank you.”
“Yes, Mr. Boyer. Glad to help.”
I could picture his mustache quivering as I took to the wind.
I have a fake driver’s license and a credit card with the same name. Melvin had them created for me so that I could travel without being a Boyer. I might be ashamed of my real name, but I’d seldom used the fake.
For this trip, though, I decided Jeff Benson of Worcester, Massachusetts, would rent cars and manage any other transactions. I was becoming shy of publicity.
I let myself in to the Boyer Embassy in Georgetown. It was two side-by-side three-story townhouses, small by Boyer standards but large enough to entertain in intimate senatorial style.
I’d been there a dozen times during the twelve-year Washington residency. As a younger child, I’d not been welcome. I only visited Melvin and Angela when they were back home. In high school and college, when there was less chance of my breaking something valuable, I came for weekends two or three times a year. It had been empty, except for short visits, for the eight years that he’d loaned his Senate seat to Forrester.
This habitation was even more hostile in my memory than the big house, and now it was mine. I would stay in it and do as I wished. Maybe I’d shatter a Limoges plate on the Dutch-tile floor.
After I let myself in, though, I tiptoed up the stairs and set my suitcase quietly on the guestroom bed. But then, standing on the balcony over the living room, I got hold of myself and spoke to the ghosts.
“You’re dead, Melvin.”
There were even echoes.
“It’s my house now.”
And that was all I needed.
I walked through every floor, sweeping the memories away like cobwebs. Not that there were cobwebs. The place was still cleaned weekly and kept ready in wistful hope of being used.
There was no pink in the house anywhere. Angela had taken her things when they moved out, and she didn’t travel with him when he came for business. Nothing there looked like she had touched it, or like anyone had touched it. Even the bedrooms were professionally furnished and barren of soul.
I found the Matisse. It didn’t look very significant.
I read for a while that evening, but I soon found my eyes straying from the pages. I finally started walking the house again, looking through the rooms more carefully than I had before.
Yes, Melvin had been a senator. I was eight when he was first elected, three years after my mother died, and Eric and I had already been banished to the boarding schools that were our childhood. He’d married Angela a year later, here in Washington. She was twenty-eight, he was forty-three. We did not attend the wedding; at our young age, we could not be trusted to act with the proper decorum.
Our teachers and classmates all knew that Melvin was a senator. Of course, everyone at the school was cut from our same cloth, but even among the wealthy families and social elites, a senator would stand out. And if Eric and I had no real father, a senator would do.
Eventually the schools had rendered me presentable enough to be shown. I don’t know whose hands I shook. There may have been cabinet secretaries and ambassadors. I know there were other senators. Those were the years the questions had started, the first Why am I here? It might have been from meeting so many important people and wondering what my value was.
The monthly checks started when I was in college. There was to be no making a living or working to put food on the table for me. No job to take my mind off the questions.
And now what? This was where Melvin had lived for twelve years. Maybe I’d find something here for myself.
12
I was up early Saturday to explore the neighborhood. The meeting was at ten.
No wonder Melvin had been drawn here. This was a place for the powerful. It was written in every storefront and every discreet, elegant facade. He’d had equals here who weren’t natural enemies, as well as many other powerful people who had been less than equal. Only a handful had been higher.
I walked to Capitol Hill. Melvin often had. Five blocks to the head of Pennsylvania Avenue, then four miles to the Capitol. The only thing that kept it from being a straight shot was the White House smack dab in the way, and what thoughts that must have put in his head. But he was a realist; he only owned one state, not the whole country. Ultimately he’d come back home, where his reign was unquestioned. Caesar or nothing.
And one of the few men who could question his position back home was Bob Forrester. So Melvin had lured him away, to where Bob could build his castle and Melvin owned the sand it was built on.
I came to the senate office buildings and was expected. Then I was accepted into the outer office of the senator. The greatest man is still only a man, so his wealth and power have to be visible in other ways. Big Bob was only a man-but through the window was the Capitol, and beyond it the Mall and the monuments and the
