bit.'
The rumor that one of the White House personal staff would sign the petition to remove Kennedy from the presidency had set off warning signals in Christian Klee's head.
Eugene Dazzy was at his desk surrounded by three secretaries taking notes for actions to be taken by his own personal staff. He wore his Walkman over his ears but the sound was turned off.
And his usual good-humored face was grim. He looked up at his uninvited visitor and said, 'Chris, this is the worst possible time for you to come snooping around.'
Christian said, 'Eugene, don't bullshit me. How come nobody's curious about who the rumored traitor on the staff is. That means everybody knows, except me. And I'm the guy who should know.'
Dazzy dismissed his secretaries. They were alone in the office. Dazzy smiled at Christian. 'It never occurred to me you didn't know. You keep track of everything with your FBI and Secret Service, your stealth intelligence and listening devices. Those thousands of agents the Congress doesn't know you have on the payroll. How come you're so ignorant?'
Christian said coldly, 'I know you're fucking some dancer twice a week in one of those apartments that belong to Jeralyn's restaurant.'
Dazzy sighed. 'That's it. This lobbyist who loans me the apartment came to see me. He asked me to sign the removal of-the-President document. He wasn't crude about it, there were no direct threats, but the implication was clear. Sign it or my little sins would be all over the papers and television.' Dazzy laughed. 'I couldn't believe it. How could they be so dumb?'
Christian said, 'So what answer did you give?'
Dazzy smiled. 'I crossed his name off my 'friends' list. I barred his access. And I told him I would give my old buddy Christian Klee his name as a potential threat to the security of the President. Then I told Francis. He told me to forget the whole thing.'
Christian said, 'Who sent the guy?'
Dazzy said, 'The only guy who would dare is a member of the Socrates Club. And that would be our old friend Martin 'Take It Private' Mutford.'
Christian said, 'He's smarter than that.'
'Sure, he is,' Dazzy said grimly. 'Everybody is smarter than that until they get desperate. When the VP refused to sign the impeachment memorandum, they became desperate. Besides, you never know when somebody will cave in.'
Christian still didn't like it. 'But they know you. They know that under all that flab you're a tough guy. I've seen you in action. You ran one of the biggest companies in the United States, you cut IBM a new asshole just five years ago. How could they think you'd cave in?'
Dazzy shrugged. 'Everybody always thinks he's tougher than anybody else.'
He paused. 'You think so yourself, though you don't advertise it. I do.
So does Wix and so does Gray. Francis doesn't think it. He just can be.
And we have to be careful for Francis. We have to be careful he doesn't get too tough.'
Christian Klee paid a call on Jeralyn Albanese, who owned the most famous restaurant in Washington, D.C., naturally named Jera's. It had three huge dining rooms separated by a very lush lounge bar. The Republicans gravitated to one dining room, the Democrats to another, and members of the executive branch and the White House ate in the third room. The one thing on which all parties agreed was that the food was delicious, the service superb, and the hostess one of the most charming women in the world.
Twenty years before, Jeralyn, then a woman of thirty, had been employed by a lobbyist for the banking industry. He had introduced her to Martin
Mutford, who had not yet earned the nickname 'Take It Private' but was already on the rise. Martin Mutford had been charmed by her wit, her brashness and her sense of adventure. For five years they had an affair that did not interfere with their public lives. Jeralyn Albanese continued her career as a lobbyist, a career much more complicated and refined than generally supposed, requiring a great deal of research skill and administrative genius. Oddly enough, one of her most valuable assets was having been a tennis champion in college.
As an assistant to the chief lobbyist for the banking industry, she spent a good part of her week amassing financial data to persuade experts on the congressional finance committees to pass legislation favorable to banking. Then she was hostess at conference dinners with congressmen and senators. She was astonished by the horniness of these calm judicial legislators. In private, they were like rioting gold miners, they drank to excess, they sang lustily, they grabbed her ass in a spirit of old-time American folksiness. She was amazed and delighted by their lust.
It developed naturally that she went to the Bahamas and to Las Vegas with the younger and more personable congressmen, always under the guise of conferences, and even once to London to a convention of economic advisers from all over the world. Not to influence the vote on a bill, not to perpetrate a swindle, but if the vote on a bill was borderline, when a girl as pretty as Jeralyn Albanese presented the customary foot-high stack of opinion papers written by eminent economists, you had a very good chance of getting that teetering vote. As Martin Mutford said, 'On the close ones it's very hard for a man to vote against a girl who sucked his cock the night before.'
It was Mutford who had taught her to appreciate the finer things in life.
He had taken her to the museums in New York; he had taken her to the
Hamptons to mingle with the rich and the artists, the old money and the new money, the famous journalists and the TV anchors, the writers who did serious novels and the important screenplays of big movies. Another pretty face didn't make much of a splash there, but being a good tennis player gave her an edge.
Jeralyn had more men fall in love with her because of her tennis playing than because of her beauty. And it was a sport that men who were mere hackers, as politicians and artists usually were, loved to play with good- looking women. In mixed doubles, Jeralyn could establish a sporting rapport with partners, flashing her lovely limbs in their struggle for victory.
But there came a time when Jeralyn had to think of her future. At forty years of age she was not married, and the congressmen she would have to lobby were in their unappealing sixties and seventies.
Martin Mutford was eager to promote her in the high realms of banking, but after the excitement of Washington, banking seemed dull. American lawmakers were so fascinating with their outrageous mendacity in public affairs, their charming innocence in sexual relationships. It was Mutford who came up with the solution. He, too, did not want to lose Jeralyn in a maze of computer reports. In Washington her beautifully furnished apartment was a refuge from his heavy responsibilities. It was Mutford who came up with the idea that she could own and run a restaurant that would be a political hub.
The funds were supplied by American Sterling Trustees, a lobbyist group that represented banking interests, in the form of a five-million-dollar loan. Jeralyn had the restaurant built to her specifications. It would be an exclusive club, an auxiliary home for the politicos of Washington. Many congressmen were separated from their families while Congress was in session, and the Jera restaurant was a place where they could spend lonely nights. In addition to the three dining rooms and lounge and bar, there was a room with TV and a reading room that had a copy of all the major magazines published in the United States and England. There was another room for chess or checkers or cards.
But the ultimate attraction was the residential area built on top of the restaurant. It was three stories high and held twenty apartments, which were rented by the lobbyists, who loaned them out to congressmen and important bureaucrats for secretive liaisons. Jera was known to be the very soul of discretion in these matters. Jeralyn kept the keys.
It amazed Jeralyn that these hardworking men had the time for so much dalliance. They were indefatigable. And it was the older ones with established families, some with grandchildren, who were the most active.
Jeralyn loved to see these same congressmen and senators on television, so sedate and distinguished- looking, lecturing on morals, decrying drugs and loose living and emphasizing the importance of old-fashioned values.
She never felt they were hypocrites really. After all, men who had spent so much of their lives and time and energy for their country deserved extra consideration.
She didn't like the arrogance, the smarmy self-assured smugness of the younger congressmen, but she
