“That doesn’t prove anything!” cried Hillary Constable, throwing up her hands. “Suggesting that someone talks to someone hardly constitutes a crime!”
“He knew all about it!” Hart shouted back. They glared at each other across the room. “He knew everything. He told Morris there was nothing to worry about. He told him that they-‘they!’-hadn’t done anything wrong. He-”
“They hadn’t done anything wrong-that’s what he said? You see, he hadn’t. Isn’t that what-?”
Hart looked straight at her, his eyes cold, immediate.
“He said no one would ever find out!”
Hillary Constable turned on her heel. Folding her arms in front of her, she stared out the window, too angry to say another word. She began to tap her foot.
“What have you found out about his…death?” she asked finally.
She would not turn around, would not look at him. Hart’s eyes were drawn back to the photograph of her on the beach. The thought flashed through his mind that she must have had a temper then as well, but had always gotten away with it: No one who wanted her would have risked telling her that she had misbehaved. How many times has the beauty of a woman taught cowardice to men?
“Your husband was involved with The Four Sisters. He was taking money, vast sums of it, in return for doing things he shouldn’t have done. He told someone what Morris told him. Morris was convinced that by doing that the president signed his own death warrant, that-”
Hillary Constable wheeled around. She seemed puzzled and confused.
“Signed his own death warrant? Even if all this is true, why would the fact he told someone that Morris had changed his mind about what he was doing mean that?”
“Because if the president was willing to betray Morris, there was no reason to think he would not betray the people he was doing business with.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. If you and I are in a conspiracy with someone else and you tell me that the other person is thinking about telling the police, I can understand getting rid of him, but why get rid of you?”
She said this as if instead of conspiracy and murder, she was discussing a problem in formal logic. If A equals B, and B equals C, then A…whatever follows, follows; there is nothing moral or immoral about it. Hart had a different understanding of things.
“Because it’s the only way to be absolutely safe, the only way to make sure, now that everything is starting to fall apart, that there isn’t anyone left who knows what you’ve done.”
“Yes, I suppose you have a point.”
Pursing her lips, she seemed to think about it. She went over to the bookshelves where she kept the liquor and poured herself another glass. She closed the bottle and then remembered.
“Would you like…?”
“No, I’m fine,” replied Hart, glancing at the drink he had barely touched. Instead of going back to the window, Hillary Constable took the easy chair next to his.
“What do you think of our new president?”
Though he tried not to show it, Hart was stunned. They were talking about the death of her husband, talking about who might be responsible for his murder, and all of sudden she wants to know his opinion of Irwin Russell? He searched her eyes, but he could see nothing beyond what appeared to be a genuine interest. That in itself revealed more about who she was than anything he might have discovered had he been able to penetrate the veneer of near perfect self-possession.
“What do I think of…? I’m afraid I’ve been a little too busy trying to find out who might have murdered your husband to have given much thought to his successor.”
“Interim successor might be the better description. Irwin was the perfect vice president: quiet, inoffensive, someone everyone liked because he was not a threat to what anyone wanted for themselves.” She gave Hart the knowing look of the consummate insider, someone who can size up a situation, take the measure of everyone involved, judge the play of forces with a physicist’s precision, and do it all in the blink of an eye. “That was the reason we chose him,” she added. “Unlike most of the people in Washington, he didn’t wake up every morning full of resentment because someone else was president.”
“And now he is,” said Hart in a way that suggested something more than the obvious fact. “I’m sure you’re right. I doubt he ever felt any resentment that someone else was sitting in the Oval Office, but are you sure he never thought about it, never wondered what it might be like, especially after he was put on the ticket and became vice president?”
That same knowing look was in her eyes.
“Oh, he thought about it, all right; rather I should say, worried about it; worried whether he could hold up under the strain, the pressure, the requirements of the office-if something ever happened. Do you know the first thing he wanted to know when Robert asked him to be his running mate?-Was his health as good as the published reports said it was. Was his heart condition really just a minor matter? Does that sound like someone who spends his time dreaming about what a great president he would be?”
The irony of course, as Hart quickly noted, was that was exactly the kind of question someone desperate for the office might ask; and exactly the way someone would have to ask it, as if his only concern was that nothing was likely to happen and that he would not have to serve. But she was right about Irwin Russelclass="underline" he was that creature almost extinct in Washington, a politician without ambition for what he did not have.
“As I say, I really haven’t had any time, and it hasn’t yet been two weeks. But everyone seems to think he’s doing as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Why do you ask?”
She stood up and, holding her drink in her hand, crossed over to her desk. She seemed distracted, uncertain what to do next. Her eyes darted from one thing to another, until, finally, they came to rest on the same photograph that had caught Hart’s attention. For a moment it seemed to take her back, not just to the past, but to a different remembered future, to a time when she had lived her life in the expectation of things that had not happened. Her blue eyes brightened and the rigid discipline of her mouth gave way to something softer and more sincere.
“Have they always called you ‘Bobby’? They never called him that. It was always ‘Robert’ or ‘Bob.’ ‘Bobby’ is more endearing, isn’t it? There is a kind of intimacy in it-you know, the easy familiarity you have with someone you grew up with, someone who knows all the innocent secrets you had when you were kids. That’s the way people feel about you. But you know that, don’t you? You’re too smart not to know that. No one ever called him that,” she went on, caught in a recollection that was new to her. “He wouldn’t have let them; he wasn’t strong enough for that. He thought it sounded weak. ‘Bobby.’ I asked him once about it. I mentioned Bobby Kennedy; he started talking about Jack, and how it sounded better, more in charge, than ‘Johnny.’ He thought about things like that. Names-they don’t mean anything, really, do they? And then, again, they mean everything, don’t they? There are people who want me to run; people who think I should be the nominee. What do you think I should do?”
There was not so much as a pause between the one thing and the other; not so much as a second’s delay before she went from what seemed an idle reminiscence about her husband’s name and the announcement that she was thinking about running for president herself. Hart was beyond the point of being shocked, much less surprised, by anything she said. He was watching what he knew was a performance, but he still was not clear why she was giving it. He was sure she wanted something; he just was not sure what it was.
“You asked me to see what I could find out about your husband’s death. You told me that he had not died of a heart attack, that he had been murdered,” he reminded her in a firm tone of voice. “I’ve talked to Clarence Atwood, and I’ve talked to the agent who was in charge of the detail that night. They confirmed what you said. How could you even be thinking about running for president, how could you be thinking about anything, before we get to the bottom of this? And remember something else: I told you at the beginning that this couldn’t be kept secret for more than a very short time, that it was going to have to come out, that there would have to be an investigation.”