Silken Prey Page 11
“Any lonely middle-aged women in there?” Lucas asked.
“Yes. You’re thinking, what?”
“Tubbs wasn’t crazy, he was calculating. Somebody had to set the booby trap the morning that the volunteer tripped it—and that wasn’t Tubbs, because Tubbs has been backtracked by a pretty good cop: he wasn’t at the campaign office that morning. The question is, did he have a lover? Or a very close friend? Somebody he could trust with this?”
After a moment of silence, Kidd said, “Ramona Johnson. She would be your best bet. Divorced four years ago . . . let me see here . . . until about five months ago, she was complaining on Facebook about the lack of eligible men and the problems of middle-aged women. Then she shut up.”
“Ramona Johnson.”
“Yes. There’s one more possibility. A Sally Fey. She’s younger, she’s thirty-one, and she has a new beau, but she’s not talking about it. From what I’ve seen of her and her e-mails . . .”
“You’ve got her e-mails?”
“Forget I said that. From what I’ve seen of her, she’s a very shy, quiet type, and she’s a little mousy. Doesn’t do much with her hair,” Kidd said. “But you can see the hope in her eyes.”
“You can see her eyes?”
“Try to stay on track,” Kidd said. “If the right guy said the right things to her . . .”
“Tubbs could do that. He had a reputation as a ladies’ man,” Lucas said.
“So put Fey on the list.” He spelled her name, and Lucas wrote it down.
• • •
WHEN HE GOT OFF the phone with Kidd, Lucas used his cell phone to check his e-mail, looked at the list that Kidd had shipped him. Twelve names, half men, half women. Would it be an ideologue or a lover?
He’d track down as many of the people on the list as he could, and ask them the hard question. Did you set the booby trap? If the answer was no, Lucas would say, “You realize that Tubbs was killed for what he knew. If you’re lying, you could be next.”
If the answer was still no, the next question would be, “If you didn’t set it, who did?”
It could work.
CHAPTER 8
Taryn Grant’s phone buzzed, a call, not an alarm. She was lying on her bed, waking up from a much-needed afternoon nap. She stretched, yawned, picked up the phone, and said, “Hello?”
“What are you doing?” Her campaign manager, Connie Schiffer.
“Took a nap. I just woke up.”
“Good. We need you sharp. You’re ready for tonight?” A fund-raiser at the Wayzata Country Club. Taryn didn’t actually need the funds, but if people gave you money, they tended to support you, to feel a connection.
“Absolutely.”
“You’re bringing the gorgeous David?” David Wein, a commodities broker who would someday inherit his father’s firm. A small firm. David was a corn expert, but was also thoroughly grounded in soybeans, and sometimes dabbled in sugar beets. He looked good, though he was always called David, and never Dave.
“Tonight, anyway,” Taryn said.
There was a tone in her voice and Connie instantly picked it up: “Ooo, if you’re done with him, could I have him for a week or so?”
“Then, when you were done with him, he’d go around comparing our . . . attributes . . . with the boys in the locker room,” Taryn said.
After a few seconds of silence, Connie said, “Wait—you’re saying that would be a bad thing?”
Taryn laughed and said, “You’re such a slut. I like that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m now walking out to the turbo after spending the last two hours at KeeKee’s. I spent four thousand, three hundred and sixty dollars on ridiculously overpriced clothing sewn by poverty-stricken foreigners. I’m all shopped out and we need to talk.”
“I have to run through the shower and gel up,” Taryn said.
“Fifteen minutes,” Connie said.
“If I’m not quite ready, I’ll tell Dannon to let you in.”
“Mmm . . . Dannon . . .”
Taryn laughed again, pushed End. She switched to the walkie-talkie function and was instantly answered by Dannon. She said, “Connie will be here in a few minutes. We’ve got Push at four o’clock and Borders at five, that’ll take another hour. Then back here to dress for the party tonight. David will pick me up.”
He said, “I’ve got the schedule,” and “Alice is in the house. Carver will be here at five.”
• • •
TARYN WENT INTO THE bathroom and examined her eyes for circles, jumped in and out of the shower, then went to work on her face. She used only minimal makeup during the day; her natural Scandinavian complexion was good enough, most of the time.
The problem with politics was that it went on well into the night. The night before, she’d gone to a reception in Sunfish Lake with fifty of the faithful, and it had gone late. When the party ended, a dozen of them had gathered in the homeowner’s recreation room and had gotten down to the nut-cutting.
Her lead over Smalls was holding, and the numbers of leaners—people who were not fully committed yet, but who were inclined to vote for her—was increasing. She was going to win, and if she won, if she took off Porter Smalls, she wanted to hit Washington with a bang.
The people in the rec room had had some ideas about how she could do that; two of them were former U.S. senators themselves.
• • •
THEN, THAT MORNING, SHE’D been up at five o’clock, and had hit a series of assembly plants at the morning shift changes, and quickly returned to the Twin Cities for the local morning talk shows. She’d done two of them, but one was way the hell out west, and the other was almost downtown. It’d been hectic.
After the talk shows, she spoke to the Optimist Club in Forest Lake, another short out-of-town trip. She could feel a tickle in the back of her throat, and worried that she might be losing her voice. Schiffer had given her some kind of double-secret lozenge used, supposedly, by the president, to keep the voice going. She’d pop one as soon as she was done with her face.
Taryn looked at herself in the mirror: maybe a shadow there in the eyes, from too many twenty-hour days. Maybe from Tubbs? No: that was dwindling in the rearview mirror. She had more important things to worry about.
And nobody had heard a thing from the cops.
She’d been a little surprised by the campaign. She’d known politics was harsh, but had no idea exactly how harsh it was. There seemed to be one polestar, one overriding objective, one singular focus: to win. Nothing else really counted. Just winning.
She liked that. It fit her.
She went back to work on her face.
• • •
DANNON HAD JUST FINISHED his backyard checks when Schiffer arrived in her plum-colored Porsche Panamera. He let her in, and she went to the living room, carrying a legal briefcase full of paper, which she began digging through. Dannon asked her if she wanted a drink, and she took a lime-water, which he got for her.
Schiffer was a short, sturdy, dark-eyed woman, twice-divorced, with no regrets about either the marriages or the divorces. She had a degree in mechanical engineering from Duke, but after a month working for a lobbying firm in Washington, D.C., she’d never again looked with desire on an open-channel crimper. One thing led to another, and at forty, she was one of the country’s best professional campaign managers.
She was sitting on the soft-as-wool leather couch, looking at a miniature legal pad, when Taryn came down from the bathroom, wearing black slacks and a white angora sweater, with gold earrings and a modest gold necklace.
“Dannon said he’d be in the monitoring room. Alice is outside,” Schiffer said.
Taryn nodded and dropped into a chair opposite Schiffer. “So what’s up?”
“Things are developing and it’s almost all good,” Schiffer said. “I talked to Ray Jorgenson, just in passing, and he says that Smalls is toast. That doesn’t mean we can let up: we have to go after him even harder. Push his head under. Kick him while he’s down.”
“I thought we were doing that,” Taryn said.
“We are, but we can always do more. Ben Wells is giving a talk to the Minneapolis chamber, and if we could commit to a twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation in two years, and if we can plant a question with somebody, he’s willing to go off on Smalls. You know, an unscripted spontaneous statement, spoken in real but slightly saddened anger. He’d call for Porter’s withdrawal.”
Wells was a Republican congressman, who might like a shot at Smalls’s Senate seat someday, after he grew up. Taryn asked, “Would it help twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth?”
“Yes. It’d absolutely curdle the Republican vote,” Schiffer said. “But Wells wants a call from your father, since you wouldn’t be able to make the donation. You know, being . . . a loyal mainstream Democrat.”
“I’ll talk to Father tonight,” Taryn said. “He’ll want me to kick the money back to him somehow, but that’s not a problem.”
“Good. Then let’s make it happen.” Schiffer drew a line through an item on the yellow pad.
• • •
THEY SPENT FORTY-FIVE MINUTES plowing through the minutiae of the campaign. Taryn was running as a law-and-order Democrat, as conservative as she could be and still get the nod from the party. The party understood the problem with taking down Smalls, and hadn’t really expected her, or any other Democrat, to win, so it was willing to overlook a little political incorrectness. On the other hand, she couldn’t be too incorrect.
Walking the line was both interesting and delicate.
Schiffer said, “About the gorgeous David. If you really are thinking of breaking it off with him—or in him—I’d suggest that you wait for three weeks. Everybody understands that it’s a nice, adult relationship, and Smalls has banged enough strange women that he won’t mention it, but you probably wouldn’t want to call it off right now. It’d make you look flighty. Or unsteady. Or fickle.”
“Okay. I’ve about had it with David’s act, but he doesn’t know that,” Taryn said. “I’ll keep him on until the excitement dies down.”
“Excellent.” Another item checked off on Schiffer’s list. “Now, over at Push. We fully support Push and we’ll find money for it somewhere. The problem is that the Republicans are unnecessarily locking up money or sending it off to their already-rich friends . . .”
“. . . and as a longtime successful businesswoman, I know how that works,” Taryn recited, “I adamantly oppose socialism for the rich while the less-well-to-do have their funding cut off . . .”
“. . . for important neighborhood programs like Push,” Schiffer said, “which keeps the drug dealers out of our neighborhoods . . .”
“. . . especially black ones with cornrows, who wear hoodies and those funny low-crotch pants and listen to that awful hopscotch music, or whatever it is.”
Schiffer recoiled: “Oh, Jesus Christ, Taryn, don’t give me a heart attack,” she said, clutching at her chest. “Remember: no sense of humor. How many times do I have to tell you that: No sense of humor. Humor can get you in all kinds of shit and we’ve got this won, if we don’t get funny.”
“Then we go to Borders,” Taryn continued. “I don’t drink too much and I tell everybody that I don’t want their money but I do want their love, and—”
“No humor,” Schiffer said. “You don’t want their money, but you do want their respect—”
“I got it, I got it,” Taryn said. “You need to take a couple of aspirin, Connie.”
Schiffer shook a finger at her: “I lost the first race I ran because I didn’t nail down those details. I let my candidate speak honestly. I let him be funny and intelligent: that was the last time I’ll make that mistake. Now listen to what I’m saying, goddamnit. You want to be a U.S. senator? You want to go higher than that? Then you stay on program.”
Taryn nodded: “Yes. I know and I agree. I like to tease you, but I’m on program.”
Schiffer relaxed. “I know. You’re a natural at this, and with training, you’ll get even better. You’ll get that big-time polish. Some people spend twenty years in the Senate and never get that. You could. You could be a contender.”
“If I stay on program.”
“Absolutely.”
They both knew what they were thinking, though neither said it: Taryn Grant had what it took to be president. She had the business background, she understood economics and finance, she had the money wrapped up, she looked terrific, she had a mind that understood the necessary treacheries: a silken Machiavelli.
• • •
THEY DID PUSH at four o’clock, and Borders at five, and Taryn stayed on program. Dannon hovered in the background, with what looked like a G&T in his hand, which was really water with a slice of lemon. Alice Green stayed outside with the cars.
Taryn knew she’d done well with the richie-rich crowd. They were, her involvement with the Democratic Party to one side, her people. She’d known many of the younger ones since childhood, and had slept with two of them.
So she was a little surprised when, after she’d given her talk on shared values, Schiffer had appeared as she began circulating through the Borders living room, and had taken her arm in a nearly painful grip and hustled her out to a hallway.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said.
“What?” Taryn thought, Murder.
“Smalls didn’t do it. Didn’t do the porn,” Schiffer said. “One of the governor’s people, Rose Marie Roux, has been on television saying that it’s possible that he was framed. Smalls had a spontaneous press conference demanding that the people who did this be caught. There’s an implication there . . . that it could have been an opposition trick. That would be you.”
“When did this happen?” Taryn asked.
“Top of the five-o’clock news. Everybody has it. We need to come up with a reaction and we need it fast.”
“Let me finish the hand-shaking,” Taryn said. “You go sit in the corner and think.”
• • •
TARYN WORKED THE CROWD for another half hour, then swirled out of the room, calling out good-byes. Schiffer was waiting at the door with Green. Taryn had four vehicles, the largest and most ungainly and only American one being the large silver GMC Yukon Denali, which she’d acquired the day before she launched her campaign. She didn’t want the right-wingers asking why she didn’t “Buy American”; and if some leftie asked about the environmental impact, she’d ask, “What, you don’t believe in Minnesota’s ethanol economy?” In any case, the Porsche, Jag, and M5 stayed under wraps.
Leaving the house, she kissed Ellen Borders on the cheek, squeezed her husband’s biceps, pointed Green, who usually rode with her, at the security car, trading places with Barb Siegel, the media fixer.
Schiffer drove, and Dannon and Green fell in behind, discreet in the gray BMW sport-utility escort vehicle.
In the car with Schiffer and Siegel, Taryn closed her eyes and said, aloud, “We understand that this news is a preliminary statement, but we certainly hope that Senator Smalls is found not responsible for this distasteful child pornography discovery. But, as long as we have to talk about unpleasant things, let me say that I bitterly resent Porter Smalls’s implicit suggestion that his political opponents may be involved with this situation. I’m his only political opponent at the moment, so that was aimed at me. I’ll tell Senator Smalls this: I’ve long been involved in child-care issues, and have devoted quite a lot of my hard-earned money to charities that help children. Need I point out that he has not been? That he should suggest this . . . just totally creeps me out.”
“Not ‘hard-earned money,’” Schiffer said. “You inherited too much, and not everybody knows you founded your own company. Say, ‘devoted a lot of my time.’ And get rid of the ‘totally creeps me out.’ That sounds Valley girl, and you already look too Valley girl.”
Taryn nodded. “Where was I . . . That he should suggest this, I can only characterize as vicious. As distasteful in the extreme. And, frankly, as creepy. I woul
d remind him that this child pornography was on his personal computer, in his personal campaign office, and if somebody placed this pornography on his computer . . .”
“Personal computer . . . and ‘creepy’ is good, because he is a little creepy,” Siegel said.
“. . . if somebody placed this child pornography on his personal computer, and it wasn’t his, then it was one of the people in his campaign office—the office that he’s supposedly running. And I will tell you—I’ve checked, and none of my people has ever been in Porter Smalls’s office. Furthermore, I’d note that what Commissioner Roux said tonight didn’t say that Porter Smalls was innocent of the child pornography charge, just that there seem to be other possibilities.”
“No. No. Quit after the part where you say, ‘the office he’s supposedly running,’” Schiffer said. “When you’re done, I’ll get some of the TV people together and make the point, off the record, that he’s not been shown to be innocent. They’ll run with that.”
“The more we can hook his name to child porn, the better it’ll be for us, even if he’s innocent,” Siegel said. “If there’s a headline every day that says, ‘child porn’ and ‘Porter Smalls,’ then that wouldn’t be all bad.”
“It was better the other way,” Schiffer said, “because we had him beat. Now this adds a complication.”
“I will beat him,” Taryn said. “Where are we doing the press conference?”
“I thought the front lawn, inside the gate,” Schiffer said. “There’s a nice sort of amphitheater thing there on the lawn.”
“You think we could get them around by the pool?” Taryn asked.
“Well, we could, but why would we?”
“Because it looks rich. The point is, if this hurts me, I’ll be hurt with the more conservative voters out here,” Taryn said. “The richer ones. I want to make the point, ‘I’m one of you.’ I’ve got the liberals no matter what.”
Schiffer thought about that for a moment, and then said, “Yeah. That’s good.”
Taryn said, “That fuckin’ Roux. What the heck was she doing?”