Because this was Ben’s territory he started table-hopping. He’d come to know the important people in district politics and he had to pay them their due. More TV toothpaste smiles.
I was just about to go over and get myself a glass of pop from the bar when somebody stumbled into me from behind. I turned to find Kristin there.
“Sorry, Dev. I tripped. I’m so upset I’m crazy.” Her blue eyes were frantic. She nodded to the lobby. “We need to talk.”
There were two more reporters in the lobby. Local TV. They were interviewing anybody they could grab because most of the attendees were hurrying inside. The formal ceremonies would start in less than ten minutes.
We found a shadowy corner next to a darkened gift shop.
“They have a little dressing room backstage. She’s in there and she won’t come out. She keeps telling me to go away.”
So much for Susan’s ability to stay focused no matter what was going on around her.
“Any chance she’ll come out in a few minutes?”
“I asked her that three times now. She won’t answer. She just says to go away. And I have to pretty much whisper when I talk to her. There are a lot of people around backstage. They’ll pick up on everything if I talk any louder. And there’s press here. They’ll love this.”
“How do we get backstage?”
“C’mon. I’ll show you. I know a way without going through the ballroom.”
The kitchen resembled a war zone. Shouting, bellowing. Men and women in various uniforms cooking, carrying trays, filling glasses, opening ovens, preparing salads, sampling soups, the enemy being a collective appetite that had to be fed and satisfied.
A door in the far wall led to three steps that ended on the cusp of backstage. Black Velvet Elvis was just starting on a Fats Domino song in front of the curtain. I looked for press. The only people I saw had big plastic badges strung over their necks. They were with the campaign. But even so they weren’t paid staff. I didn’t trust them.
There were stand-up microphones, flats, long tables, chairs. Probably most of the business here would be conventions and conferences.
I said hello to a number of people as we walked slowly toward two doors near the back. One door read Stage Crew and the other said Private. Kristin knocked on the latter one. It was one of those apologetic little knocks.
She didn’t get any answer.
I put my ear to the door, listened. What I heard was the wrong kind of silence.
“She’s gone.”
“What? No way, Dev.”
It was my turn to knock. No surprise, no response.
I put my hand on the doorknob, twisted it, and pushed into the room. A long metal coatrack on wheels, two comfortable armchairs, a long dressing table with the standard bulbs around the circular mirror. The lights were off. The dressing room was empty.
“Oh, shit,” Kristin said behind me.
I didn’t see anybody backstage. Black Velvet Elvis was now on to Buddy Holly. Kristin had followed me out of the dressing room. She was on her cell phone asking Ben if Susan was by chance in the lobby. “He’ll go check. And I’ll go out front and keep looking.”
At times like these, even though you like to think of yourself as a rational, sensible being, all the end-game fantasies start preying on your mind. Where was Susan? Maybe she was preparing her resignation speech, trying to beat the press to the revelation it would soon be sharing with the world. Might as well get it over with. Maybe sitting in a nearby bar right now scratching out her speech on note cards — she did everything on note cards — preparing herself for one final news release.
She came from the west end of the stage. I got on my cell and let Ben and Kristin know I’d found her. She was small against the back of the looming curtains. She had her head down, didn’t see me until she was ten yards away. She looked composed but pale. “I suppose you were looking for me, Dev. And I suppose Kristin told you I wouldn’t let her into the dressing room. That was silly. I owe her an apology.” The smile was faked but fetching. “I just went out for some air and I didn’t want company.”
I watched her carefully. Anxiety played in the gray gaze, but she managed to give the impression she was in control of herself.
“We just wanted to be sure you were all right.”
She laughed. “I have one mother already, isn’t that enough?”
I walked with her to the dressing room. The door was still open. She walked inside and started to close it. Black Velvet Elvis had stopped playing. Somebody was addressing the audience. Telling jokes that weren’t getting great responses.
I got as far as saying, “Susan, we really need to—”
“I’ll see you in a little while, Dev,” she said. And closed the door.
I went back to the ballroom and grabbed myself a scotch on the rocks. Kristin took my hand and led me around to meet numerous people. This was a good time for socializing. People were drinking but not yet drunk. The band started playing again, this time a series of Stones songs. An elderly man in a gold lamé evening jacket took Kristin to the dance floor and started bumping and grinding as she pretended not to notice. Every once in a while, though, she’d look over at me and smile and give me a helpless little shrug. If this guy got any more enthusiastic he was going to end up in traction. Then I saw her frown suddenly and I wondered why.
As soon as I sensed somebody stepping up on my right side I knew what had caused Kristin to frown. Greg Larson had invaded our fund-raiser.
Like his partner Monica Davies, Larson had come out of the entertainment business. He’d started life as a studio publicist but found gossip to be more fun and much more profitable. He wrote a syndicated column known for its nastiness and was frequently seen on talk shows with updates on anything that involved stars and scandals. He’d married three different aging stars and had managed to cadge a fair amount of change from each divorce. Eight years ago he’d turned his love of gossip toward politics and set up his own opposition research firm. He had connections all over the world and this made him especially valuable to politicians. He hired the usual suspects to do the grunt work of sifting through newspapers and other documents to dig up their kind of scandals while he practiced the kind of assaults that divorce detectives once did.
There was a senatorial reelection campaign two years ago. A friend of mine was working with an Iraqi vet named Bill Potter who’d lost both of his legs in Baghdad. Potter was ahead in the campaign until his opponent signed on with Larson. Larson did his usual job. Potter’s father was a college professor who’d written a number of antiwar pieces. Potter’s brother was gay. And Larson dug up a high-school photo of Potter grinning and smoking a joint and giving somebody the finger. Then he discovered that he had been treated for post-traumatic stress syndrome after his second tour in Iraq. Larson came up with a commercial he called “Family Values” — Potter’s family — a pinko father, a queer brother, and a dope-smoking smart-ass who couldn’t handle a couple of tours in Iraq without needing some psychological help. So he’d lost a couple of legs — he was still a whiner and a candy ass. It was ugly and it worked. Larson’s man had started twenty points behind and ended up winning by nine points.
“Nice crowd.”
“It was till you got here, Larson.”
“Aw, still bitter about that commercial, are you?”
Larson had the look of a Wall Street CEO, one whose fleshy body needed a lot more time in the gym and a lot less time at the table. But he had the hard good looks and the silver-gray hair that kept him dominant even in the company of younger men — younger men more ruthless than he was.