What makes you think she’s willing to be interviewed now?”
“I met the Governor’s aide, Carlos de Miranda, at a party last night. He finessed the idea that I should send someone to interview her this afternoon.”
“Finessed?”
“He made the suggestion so adroitly that I thought it was my own suggestion until I had time to think it over.”
“Why would he do that?”
“That’s one of the things I’d like to find out. Maybe you can find out for me this afternoon.”
“I doubt it. An interview with a woman like that has to be the usual guff. How she looks, how she dresses, how she plans menus and guest lists, and how strongly she feels that the wife of of a man in public life should give him every moral support while keeping herself modestly in the background. I could write it without going near her. A computer could write it. Even a good electric typewriter could write it. It writes itself.”
“Tash, I want more than the usual guff. That’s why I’m sending you.”
“Thank you kindly, sir.”
“I want to know why she is giving an interview for the first time. I want to know why Carlos de Miranda went out of his way to plant the idea of this interview in my mind. Is he trying to establish something? Or leak something? Or cover up something?”
“Would he leak something through the Governor’s wife?”
“Probably not, but he might use an interview with her to distract attention from something else.”
Bill’s gaze went to the window where he could see the gilded dome of the State House above the tree tops along the Mall. “Do you know why I got this job? Because I have what they call a ‘nose’ for news. I feel things in my bones before they happen and now my bones are telling me that something is going to happen over there. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.”
Tash let the silence grow a moment, and then said: “What is it you haven’t told me yet?”
“She disappears.”
“Vivian Playfair?”
“Yes.”
“Often?”
“Three times in the last year. The boys on the State House beat think she leaves town, but no announcements are made about her going away, and she’s never seen in airports or railway stations. Even her car stays in the garage when she’s . . . invisible.”
“She could be ill.”
“It would leak to the papers fast enough if a doctor were making regular visits or if she were in a hospital, but there’s nothing. Not even a rumor. She just. . . isn’t there.”
“But he is?”
“Oh, yes. Whatever she does, she does alone.”
“Now you’re getting me interested. What time am I supposed to see her?”
“Three o’clock.”
“I’ll need a photographer.”
“Take Sam.”
Tash rose. To her surprise, Bill rose, too, and walked over to the elevator with her. Busy newspaper editors cannot often spare time for minor courtesies.
When the elevator door started to shut automatically, Bill stayed it with one hand. “Tash . . .”
“Yes?”
“Don’t do anything foolish.”
“What do you mean? Is there something more you haven’t told me?”
“Nothing I can put into words, but . . . be careful.”
2
ABOUT THE TIME people started calling the President’s House in Washington the White House, the Governor’s House in this state became known as Leafy Way, the name of the road where it stood at the edge of the capital city.
It was a winding road where tree branches met overhead to form a natural tunnel. On a spring day like this, the pavement was freckled with sun patches and leaf shadows that danced in each vagabond breeze.
They came suddenly to two brick pillars linked by carriage gates and an archway of wrought iron. Each pillar was crowned with a lantern of glass set in a rococo iron frame. A third lantern dangled from the apex of the arch.
“No brick walls? No electrified wire fences?” said Tash to Sam Bates, the photographer, who had often been here before.
“No,” said Sam. “Just that hedge. Leafy Way is an old-fashioned place. There’s an old right of way through the orchard to a back road where there’s no gate and no guard at all. Just a chain across the roadway does the trick. This isn’t Chicago or Dallas. This is a quiet, law-abiding, country neighborhood. Always has been and always will be.”
“Are you sure?” Tash was looking toward the gates where a bored state policeman stood in front of a sentry box, and two lines of people trudged up and down in opposite directions, crossing and re-crossing as if they were performing a figure in a decorous old-fashioned dance.
One line carried signs that read: NO FOOD FOR MURDERING COMMIES!
The other line carried signs that read: DEATH TO CHILD-STARVING FASCISTS!
Sam shifted the heavy camera on his knees and peered through the windshield. “They don’t mean any harm. It’s just the dock strike. A sort of crossruff. Group One are political exiles from the Caribbean island of Barlovento. They claim the government there is commie and oppose all trade with the island. The local dockworkers’ union, strongly anti-Communist since the thirties, is supporting their blockade by going on strike rather than load or unload ships to or from Barlovento. Group Two are Barloventan immigrants, mostly naturalized Americans, living in the barrio, the Spanish-speaking ghetto. They claim the island government is not commie, merely reformist, and the island people will starve next winter unless they can import food and fertilizer from us now.”
“How do we get through?”
“Blow your horn and they’ll probably let you through.”
Tash touched her horn lightly. Both lines fell back. The sentry glanced languidly at the press cards Sam showed him and turned a key in a lock-mechanism that automatically opened the gates.
“That was easy,” said Tash. “Perhaps too easy from a security point of view.”
“We were expected,” said Sam. “It might not have been so easy otherwise.”
The driveway twisted through a small park of rolling turf and scattered shade trees to a gravel horseshoe in front of a portico with white pillars. The
