“Who’s calling?” a delicate female voice asks through the intercom, even though she just buzzed us in three minutes ago when we first pulled up to the twenty-foot-tall hedges and wrought-iron gate that protect the estate.
“Mrs. Sant, it’s Wes Holloway,” I say into the intercom. “From President Manning’s office.”
With a click, the front door opens by remote control. Ten feet away, a young woman with perfectly arched eyebrows, sheer lip gloss, and flowing blond hair straight out of a shampoo commercial strolls toward us through the anteroom. She’s wearing a peach cashmere sweater with a low enough V-neck to reveal why she’s a trophy wife. And like the best trophies in town, she has breasts that are perfect and real, just like the diamond bracelet that engulfs most of her wrist.
Anxious to be out of sight, I go to step inside. Lisbeth tugs on the back of my button-down, keeping me in place. Protocol says I’m supposed to wait to be invited in. And with money this big, protocol rules.
“So nice to see you again,” Mrs. Sant says in an Australian accent, even though we’ve never met. Like most Palm Beach wives, she knows better than to take a chance.
Finally reaching the doorway, she studies my face, then glances over my shoulder at Lisbeth’s beat-up car. Again, perfect Palm Beach. Judgment first, niceties later.
“I take it the President’s not with you,” she adds, still staring at our car. It’s not until she’s done with me that she even notices Lisbeth.
“No, he’s actually meeting us in—”
“Ms. Dodson?” she asks excitedly, grabbing Lisbeth’s hand as if she were proposing marriage. “I met you that night at the Alsops — oh, I’m sorry,” she adds, patting her own chest. “Cammie Sant — my husband’s Victor,” she explains as if that’s all the introduction she needs. “Oh, what a treat! I read you every day! Come in, come in…”
I don’t know why I’m surprised. When you cover society, part of the job is having society suck up. But instead of reveling in the moment, Lisbeth shrinks from it, consciously slowing down so she’s a full step behind me as we enter the anteroom.
“Oh, and that mention you did of Rose DuVall… good for you. We all knew it was her husband who dragged the kids to court.”
Next to me, Lisbeth looks away, fighting to avoid eye contact. At first, I thought it was modesty. But the way her face falls… the way she anxiously scratches at the freckles on her neck… I know shame when I see it. Especially when it comes from not meeting your own personal expectations.
“Oh, and please ignore the mess,” Cammie adds, leading us through the sumptuous Mediterranean-style living room and pointing to the white billowy painter’s cloths that’re draped over every piece of artwork on the walls. “The jury’s coming tomorrow.”
Two years ago, the previous owners of Cammie’s spectacular fourteen-bedroom, twenty-thousand-square-foot home were brutally gunned down by their only son. With the parents dead, the house was sold to Cammie and her husband, an heir to the Tylenol fortune, who, according to the stories, were so desperate to make a splash in the P.B. social scene, they swooped in and bought it for twenty-seven million even before they wiped the chalk marks off the wide, cypress plank floors.
“The sheets were Victor’s idea,” Cammie explains. “You know, with the jury set to walk through the old crime scene, we just thought… when it comes to the collection… we don’t need everyone knowing how many Francis Bacons we have.” She raises her eyebrows at us.
I nod, staring at the stark white sheets. Traveling with the President, I’ve been to plenty of billionaires’ homes with a Rembrandt or Monet or Warhol on the wall. Some’ll even have two or three. But here… as we pass from the living room, through the library, through the blood-red billiard room in back, I count at least thirty covered pictures.
“Of course. Of course, you’d want to be discreet,” Lisbeth says, finally looking up.
Stopping short at the double French doors that lead out back, Cammie spins around at the word discreet. A lesser clubwoman would take it as a threat. It’s not. And Cammie’s not lesser at anything. Tugging on the bottom of her peach sweater, she smooths it over her flat stomach and smiles to herself. It’s every hostess’s dream: being owed a favor by the local gossip queen.
“Listen, I have some errands to run — what a pleasure meeting you,” Cammie adds, happily excusing herself. “Tommaso’s out back. He’ll take perfect care of you.”
With a flick of the antique brass doorknob, the French doors swing open, leading us out across a stone path that takes us past the saltwater pool, through an expansive formal garden, and into a fruit orchard filled with the sweet smells of grapefruits, tangerines, and Persian limes.
“Am I shallow for hating her perfect, yoga-trainered ass?” Lisbeth asks as we pass one of the lime trees. “Or should I just be content in despising her for the mere fact that I now owe her one?”
“If you wanna get technical, we actually owe her two,” I say, pointing to our destination.
Beyond the orchard, beyond the stone amphitheater, even beyond the football-field-sized patch of meticulously mowed grass that runs down toward the water, sits a pristine, 160-foot, three-deck, black-and-cream-colored mega-yacht that towers over every other boat floating behind it on the calm currents of Lake Worth. The Pequod, it says in fine gold script along the transom at the stern. It’s not until we’re right alongside it that I even appreciate how big the yacht is — from front to back, it’s gotta be three eighteen-wheelers parked end-to-end.
“You sure it’s fast enough?” Lisbeth asks, craning her neck back and shielding her eyes from the sun.
She’s not talking about the boat. As fast as we need to move, we don’t have time for a pleasure cruise. Nor can we afford to risk heading to the local airport and getting tracked by our IDs and airline tickets. I take two steps back to get a clearer view of our target. It sits on the rear sundeck with its three still blades arched slightly downward.
A car would take over four hours. A seaplane would take an hour and forty minutes. But a French-built, twin-engine helicopter with no boarding, taxi, or wait time since it’s parked on a yacht? We’ll be there in an hour, easy. Plenty of time to get what we need and be back at Manning’s house tonight.
“She’s gorgeous, no?” a man calls out in a heavy Spanish accent. Sticking his head over the railing, Tommaso stares down at us from the edge of the deck. “The President is joining us, yes?”
“No,” I say, still craning my neck up. “He’s meeting us there.”
Tommaso shrugs it off without a care. In a pilot’s navy blazer and a blue-and-white-striped shirt, he’s dressed as staff, which means he’s used to spoiled honchos changing their minds at the last minute. “Come, let us go,” he adds, motioning palms-up to a metal staircase that leads up to the main deck. Within seconds, we’re aboard.
That’s why I called Oren in the first place. When we went to Saudi Arabia, Oren found a sheik who was happy to loan the President his jet. When we flew to North Carolina for vacation, he found an heir of the Kentucky Fried Chicken family to do the same. It’s not snobbery. It’s Oren’s job. As director of travel, he’s there to collect the name of every person who says the phrase that’s uttered most often to every former U.S. President: Let me know if you ever need anything.
On most trips, the President just needs privacy. Today, I need the same.
Naturally, Oren was hesitant. But when I told him that I was having trouble breathing… that Nico’s escape… just seeing his face on the news… and the pains in my chest… Please, Oren, you know I never ask. I just need to get away… as fast as possible…