“ This is still a third world country. It wouldn’t do for the American ambassador to go driving about in a Roller.”
“ Doesn’t Dani miss it?” Broxton was looking at Warren over the roof of the car. Warren Street was still as handsome as ever, his jaw still firm, his eyes still crisp. He was fifty-four, rich, an American ambassador, Dani’s father and his best friend.
“ Miss the Rolls? I don’t think so. She always thought it was a bit conspicuous. Thinks my left-hand-drive Ford is, too. She usually endures the press and grind of the maxi taxies.”
“ What?”
“ You’ll find out about the maxies soon enough. Yellow mini vans, they cram as many people in them as possible and zoom up and down the streets at something just short of the speed of light. It’s like a local bus system.”
“ And Dani rides in them?”
“ Every day. She’s become quite a woman, my daughter.”
“ Do I hear a but in there?” Broxton said.
“ I hate it that she has to travel so much. She used to enjoy spending the new money. I loved it. We’d go out and just buy things, rich is so much better then poor. And then she made a pile in her own right, but now sometimes I think she’s ashamed of all the money. I think it’s why she goes traipsing all around the third world.”
“ It looks like she does good work,” Broxton said. He was proud of her and it pleased him. He’d always loved her, but he could never remember a time when he’d been proud of her. She’d always used her ruthless beauty and fierce determination to get ahead. Now she was applying her looks and will for the benefit of others and it made Broxton feel good.
“ I can’t argue with that,” Warren said. “I love her, but I’ll never understand her. You know she works in the embassy four days a week for no pay. She’s my unofficial press secretary. Nothing goes out of that place, without her looking it over first, and if it looks like it might harm me in any way, ever, she cuts it. You can’t believe the amount of paperwork she wades through just to make sure my image isn’t tarnished. As if I really cared about my image.”
“ Nobody will ever understand her.” Broxton sighed. “That’s what makes her so unique.” The two men climbed into the car. Broxton settled down into the passenger seat. He thought about the story in the newspaper, but he was afraid to bring her up.
“ She’s always loved you, Bill, but I think you waited too long,” Warren said, bringing it up for him.
“ She looked happy in the picture,” Broxton said. He didn’t have to tell Warren what picture.
“ It happened so fast.” Warren took a right out of the driveway and headed for the long cool ride around the Savannah. “One minute she’s the social butterfly of Trinidad, then Kevin starts acting serious all of a sudden and the next thing you know they’re an item, and I mean an item. Kevin must eat at our place five nights a week. Not my favorite person in the world, but he’s okay.
“ Kevin Underfield, the guy with the flask on the plane. I saw it in the paper.”
“ Yeah, him.”
“ Sounds like a mortician.”
“ Used to be a newspaper reporter, now he’s working with Chandee, helping him modernize the police force. Comes from a good family. Big bucks,” Warren said. Broxton smiled. Despite his wealth, Warren still thought like a middle class kid from Long Beach.
“ She knew him from before?” Broxton asked.
“ She was his agent.”
“ He wrote a novel?”
“ No, he wrote that book defending the Hezbola. Said it was their right to take hostages. Claimed they had just as much right to torture and kill their captives as those early American terrorists had dumping tea in the ocean. His words, not mine.”
“ I remember now, he was on all the talk shows. The guest everybody loved to hate.”
“ That’s him. Only he’s not that guy you remember from television. He’s tamer now, talks like a scholar.”
“ I remember him on Cross Fire. He seemed more like a rabid dog than a college professor.”
“ That was all Dani. Theatrics to sell his book. Remember how she used to be?”
“ Yeah.”
“ She spent a lot of time with him in Lebanon, helping him with the second draft. I think the book was as much Dani as it was Underfield,” Warren said.
“ I didn’t know that,” Broxton said. He’d lost touch with her during his marriage. While she was making her mark on the world, he was wallowing in a dead end job with a woman that wanted his boss more than she’d wanted him. Dani was making her fortune while he wrote bad copy for bad ads touting bad products.
“ He can’t write. Dani can. His thoughts, her talent. It was a controversial book. Did well.”
“ I read it,” Broxton said. “I thought it was a load of crap.”
“ Yeah, well I guess I did, too, but one good thing came of it.”
“ What’s that?”
“ After that horrible book tour was over Dani lost all interest in making money. She sold the agency and came to work for me in Washington.”
“ National Security Advisor to the President of the United States,” Broxton said. “Pretty important job.”
“ Yeah, well I was kind of tired of it. My heart problem was a good reason to walk away.”
“ Big job to walk away from.”
“ Not when you don’t see eye to eye with the boss.”
“ I thought you two got along great.”
“ We did, we do. He listened to everything I said. Then most of the time he went and did the direct opposite.”
“ He’s the one that has to answer to the voters.”
“ So he’s told me. More than once.”
“ You going back?”
“ Next year, but not in an official capacity. I’ve had my fill of that. I’ll just sort of hang around and nag at him when I think he’s screwing up.”
“ You can do that?”
“ Probably not. He wants me for State in the second term.”
“ You’re shitting me?”
“ No.”
“ That’s pretty official.”
“ If I take it.” Warren slowed the car and turned up a circular driveway and parked behind a red Porsche convertible. The porch light was on, the front door was open and the light inside the house framed Dani in the doorway. She was wearing a white silk blouse and faded Levi’s. She wasn’t wearing shoes.
“ We have company,” Warren said.
“ Billy Boy,” Dani squealed.
“ Dani,” Broxton said, and she was in his arms, squeezing tight. She gently bit into his neck, as she used to do when they were children, and he answered her squeeze with a bear hug of his own, pulling her off the ground and twirling her as if she was still a little girl.
“ No Kevin tonight?” Warren said, after Broxton had set her down.
“ He bought me a car.” She pointed to the Porsche.
“ Kind of fancy for the proletariat,” Warren said, kidding, but she wasn’t laughing anymore and Broxton looked into her eyes, clear as cut glass, and shivered. For an instant he thought he caught a glimpse of wild desperation. Then it was gone and she looked hard, old beyond her thirty-six years. Tiny crows feet crinkled out from those eyes, long eyelashes adorned them, a hint of baby blue eye shadow covered their lids. She’d been driven when she ran the literary agency, but never desperate. She’d been ruthless, but in a soft kind of way, never hard.
“ It’s been a long time, Bill” she said.
“ Almost two years,” he said, relaxing as her stare mellowed into a welcoming smile. This was the Dani he
