“Well, gee,” she replied. “A politician’s wife can do very well for herself, what with three shifts of Secret Service men in the house. Those boys are always randy.”
He bit her on a nipple.
“So, how was it?”
“Could have been worse, I guess; at least, I didn’t get sick.”
“That’s an improvement, but how will you ever win if you’re well?”
“There is that, isn’t there?”
“I get the impression from the papers that it’s going okay, but not great.”
“A reasonable assessment,” he agreed. “George Kiel is turning out to be more of a handful than I’d imagined. He’s well ahead in the delegate count, and we’ve got less than a month before the convention, in L.A., and he still won’t debate me.”
“You having any fun at all?”
“Weirdly enough, yes. I like it when I can get in a room with fifty people and really answer their questions. Trouble is, the staff keeps pointing out that if I only talk to fifty people at a time, I can’t get elected to anything.”
“So, my darling, how would you feel about being vice president?”
Will sat up and stuffed a couple of pillows between his back and the headboard. “I really, really don’t want to do that,” he said. “I’d rather be slugging it out in the Senate than representing George Kiel at funerals.”
“It might not be all bad,” she said. “Joe Adams has done it well.”
“Doing it well is not the point,” Will replied. “The point is, that as VP, one has absolutely no power of any kind, and George is not the sort of guy who’s going to share it. I’d get about the same treatment that Harry Truman got from FDR.”
“You forget that Joe Adams is president of the United States, at the moment.”
“I don’t want to sit around waiting for George to kick off. What’s the news on the president?”
“He wakes up from time to time, but doesn’t seem able to communicate. I got that from Sue Adams.”
“I’d rather not be VP, even under those circumstances.”
“So, you’re telling me that if Kiel nails down the nomination and then summons you to a hotel suite in L.A. and tells you that he can’t win without you and, for the good of the party, you have to be VP, you’re going to tell him to get stuffed? Lyndon Johnson didn’t want to be vice president, either.”
“I hope I’ll have the guts to tell him to get stuffed,” Will said, “but in a situation like that, you never know, do you?”
“No, you don’t.”
“So, how would you feel about being the second lady?”
“About the same as being first lady, I guess. I would do everything I could to ignore it, and as second lady it might even be easier to keep my job, or maybe even get promoted.”
“If I stayed in the Senate, it would be even easier.”
“Don’t think I haven’t thought about that,” she said. “By the way, you do remember that we have dinner at the White House tomorrow evening?”
“I remember, and have the awful feeling that George Kiel is going to be there, too.”
“And I’ll have to make nice with his wife.”
“Oh, yes. Won’t that be fun?”
“She could win a Mamie Eisenhower look-alike contest,” Kate said. “Even to the clothes.”
“I love you when you’re catty,” he said, kissing her ear.
“I talked to Sue Adams again today,” Kate said.
“And how is she? More important, how is Joe?”
“She said everything was fine. I’m not sure why I didn’t believe her.”
Will sat up straight. “Do you think Joe is worse?”
“I don’t know. She was chipper enough, but there was something under the surface that I couldn’t read. Still, they wouldn’t be giving this dinner party if he wasn’t all right, would they?”
Will relaxed. “You’re right, they wouldn’t. You know, I’ve hardly given Joe a thought for the past few months.”
“Don’t feel guilty; he’s had his hands so full that he probably hasn’t thought a lot about you, either. God forbid we should read about some incident in the papers, or start hearing rumors that he isn’t quite right.”
“I suppose I should give some thought to what I’ll do if I do hear those rumors.”
“What can you do?”
“I can press him to resign, I suppose. I’m not really comfortable with the knowledge that he’s ill.”
“But then Eft Efton would become the acting president, wouldn’t he?”
“I suppose the country could stand even that for a few months, although it would give him a big leg up in the general election. I think he’s going to get the Republican nomination.”
“I hope he does,” Kate said. “Wouldn’t you enjoy running against him?”
“It would get dirty.”
“On his part only, I hope.”
“I hope, too.”
“If it gets really bad, would you fight fire with fire?”
“You mean start digging into his personal life? Not a chance. I’ll leave that to Larry Flynt and the tabloids.”
“Eft won’t leave it to them; he’ll go all out to get anything he can on you.”
“What is there to get?” Will asked.
“You can’t think of anything?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever done anything in my life that I can’t defend, if I have to. There are some votes that I cast for political advantage that I’m not proud of, but I don’t think that’s the kind of thing Eft could use against me. He’s had too many of those in his own career.”
“I have to tell you,” Kate said, “I have a sense of foreboding about this. After the Clinton mess, everybody’s fair game.”
“Well, game, maybe, but not fair game. And the current atmosphere may cost the Republicans a lot of seats in the House.”
“How about the Senate?”
“I think it’s unlikely that we can get majorities in both houses.”
“So, if you’re president, you’ll likely have a Republican-controlled Senate?”
“Probably, so I don’t want to piss them off too much during the campaign. I’ve worked hard to build relationships with a lot of Republican senators, and I don’t want to squander that in a dogfight with Eft Efton.”
They snuggled into bed, and she put her head on his shoulder, pressing her body against his. “How much time together do you think we’ll get if you’re president?”
“A lot more than now,” he said, “but maybe less than we had before. I’ll do the best I can; you know that.”
“I guess I know that,” she said.
“There’s always Camp David and the bedroom on Air Force One.”
She laughed. “I wonder if I could make love on an airplane full of staff, press, and Secret Service agents.”
“We already know that the presence of agents doesn’t slow you down,” he said, kissing her.
“It didn’t, did it?” She giggled.
“Not in the least.”
“Want to do it again?”
“Will you settle for first thing in the morning? I’m pretty bushed.”
“If I have to,” she said.
“Maybe we can do it in the bathroom at the White House tomorrow night.”
“Promises, promises,” she said.
27
Terry Cogan drove through the flat south Georgia countryside toward Reidsville. Cogan was a smalltime Atlanta lawyer, in his late thirties, who supplemented his DUI cases and ambulance chasing with occasional investigative work, and he was pleased to have this job, even if he wasn’t sure who he was working for. He’d gotten a call from another lawyer in a big Atlanta firm, a friend of his father, who’d sometimes sent cases his way, and the man had been tight-lipped about who was instructing him. Maybe it was better if he didn’t know.