difficult. The rooms where Royston was not receiving visitors were full of people; to select individual conversations from that hubbub, you had to use the computer and zero in on a voice print. Willie did it a few times with my coaching, but it hardly seemed worth the effort. All the talk was about a woman VP candidate. The fact that the president’s selection would be female was a foregone conclusion with that crowd, most of whom assumed that the soccer moms and working mothers of America would flock to the banner of the party with a woman on the ticket; the only question was which woman. Zooey Sonnenberg seemed to have the most supporters.
The president called Royston once, and he called the big guy twice to report on the visitors and what they said about the chances of the party carrying their states. I could only hear Royston’s side of the conversation, and it wasn’t anything earth-shattering. I became convinced these two knew the local politics of every county and hamlet in America.
Royston made no big promises, and neither did the president. Apparently they didn’t think this was the time or place for promises — they didn’t need them. Not yet, anyway.
There was some opposition to Zooey for the vice-presidential spot on the ticket, an undercurrent, but how significant it was I didn’t know. To the best of my knowledge neither did Royston, because I didn’t hear anyone give him actual polls of state delegations.
I was listening to this pablum while contemplating my navel when the telephone rang. Thinking it was probably Sarah or Jake Grafton, I clicked it on.
“Tommy, this is Dorsey.”
I almost dropped the telephone. “Just a second while I turn off the television.”
I frantically turned the volume knobs as far down as they would go. Silence filled the van, and Willie stared at me while I took several deep breaths.
“Hey, Dorsey, how you doing?”
“Fine. Where are you, Tommy?”
“Working. By the way, how did you get this telephone number?”
“Oh, I turned on your phone and got it while you were asleep Monday night. You don’t mind, do you? I realized that I didn’t know how to get in touch with you, and that seemed like an easy way.”
Sleeping around can get you in trouble — I learned that in high school. “Enjoying New York?” I asked brightly.
“Oh, yes. I was wondering if you would like to go to dinner?”
“This evening?” I kicked the brain into gear. Did she just want a repeat of Monday night? Was she going to try to wheedle information from me? Or was something else on her mind?
“I’m pretty busy right now, Dorsey. If this is social I probably should work.”
“It’s important to us.”
“Us?”
“You and me.”
Willie couldn’t hear what Dorsey was saying, but he heard enough of my side to get the drift. He winked and leered lasciviously. I shut my eyes so I could concentrate.
“Could we discuss it over a hamburger?”
“That’s not the venue I would choose, but if you only have a little time.. ”
“If it’s important, let’s wait until after the convention. I’ll have several days free then.”
“It can’t wait.”
“Okay. Ten o’clock in the hotel cafe. They do salads, too, I suspect. Dorsey O’Shea might munch a burger on her way to hell, but not otherwise.
“Ten o’clock,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”
” ‘Bye.”‘
“Good-bye, Tommy,” and she hung up.
As I folded up the phone, Willie chortled. “She can’t get enough.”
“You think?”
“What else could it be?”
Indeed. If only I knew how Dorsey was mixed up in this, maybe I could guess. What I did know for certain was that she wouldn’t tell me. No way.
“Was she in her suite when she called?”
“No. I checked while you were talking. No audio from the bugs there.”
I opened the phone and checked the number of the last call received, then wrote it down. I called Sarah and asked her to find out where the phone was. Almost an hour passed before she called back. The delay she blamed on a lack of a high-speed Internet connection. As if I cared.
“So where is it?”
“It’s a cell phone belonging to one Dorsey O’Shea.”
“Thanks.” Well, no help there.
“So how is everything with you two?”
“Really, Sarah, I’m not in the mood.”
“Never mind. I’ll ask Willie.”
Jake Grafton wandered aimlessly through the beach house looking at everything and seeing nothing. He was engaged in the most noxious task known to modern man — waiting on a telephone call. From time to time he flipped through his sectional charts, read his airport directory again, measured distances and calculated flying times. Occasionally he looked up from his task and watched a few minutes of convention coverage. Then he went back to wandering.
Callie and Mikhail Goncharov chatted from time to time, ate, and napped. Callie managed to read a few chapters in her current novel. Goncharov had nothing in Russian to read, so he, too, paced, but he did his pacing upstairs.
“He’s a kind, gentle human being,” Callie told her husband at one point.
“Who is?” he asked distractedly.
“Mikhail.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m trying to imagine how I would have managed to get from day to day if I had been in his place, trapped in a bureaucracy I loathed, one engaged in subversion, murder, framing innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit, all to prop up a criminal regime. I think I would have just quit. Would have gotten a manual labor job to eat.”
Her husband gave her a long look, yet said nothing.
“On the other hand,” she mused, “quitting would have been a cop-out. If you don’t fight evil, you become evil.”
“That’s a platitude,” her husband murmured.
“Every deep human truth is a platitude,” his wife shot back. She was no shrinking violet, which Jake Grafton well knew.
“You would have done what he did,” Jake said. “If fate had put you in that place, you, too, would have written down the secrets, hoping that someday you could find a way to make the truth known. That choice took courage and commitment. Goncharov may be a kind, gentle man, but he’s got guts. So do you. That’s one reason I married you.”
He squeezed her hand and wandered out into the yard to look at the grass.
Ten o’clock came all too quickly. I left the van fifteen minutes early and walked completely around the hotel so that I would approach the main entrance from the side opposite the van. I had on my sports coat and tie.
Dorsey was fashionably late, arriving in the cafe at six after the hour. She saw me at a table in the corner and joined me.
She bussed me on the cheek and squeezed my hand before she sat down. “Thank you for coming.”
“You look ravishing this evening, Ms. O’Shea.”
Actually she looked like she was under a lot of stress. I had seen her in that condition before — chasing the porno tapes, and after she shot the intruder in her house — and knew the signs.
The waitress came, and Dorsey ordered a salad, as I had predicted. I ordered a sandwich and a glass of wine. Dorsey also thought a glass of wine would be good.
“Do you think I look old?” she asked.
