The Means Page 24

  “He has a real scandal. You just have a bad TV moment. That footage with you looking like you just swallowed a cockroach is going to play in every battleground state around the clock. That imagery is going to be tough, but only in the short term.” Brand continues, “If this allegation on Mason holds any water, nobody will care about an affair. Mason’s had a million of them anyway. If the hit-and-run isn’t immediately discredited, if it can stay in the news cycle for a week, then Mason will lose this election.”

  53

  “Pitch perfect, Mr. President,” says Stark. “You knocked the scandal on its heels and turned the focus right around to Samantha Davis and Pauley.” Stark believes they can no longer win the election but he can’t start talking that way.

  “Man, it felt good to unload. On Hennings too. What a twerp that guy is.”

  “You had better intelligence than anyone out there. Nobody else had the complete story.” Stark notes the value add of his sources.

  “It’s working. For now,” says Mason.

  Stark and Mason are back in their debate prep room, having a similar meeting as Brand and Pauley. Mason also evacuated the rest of his staff to talk in private with Stark. Both men are standing with hearts beating too fast to sit down.

  “Here’s what we know,” says Stark. “There are numerous correspondences, email and handwritten, between you and Monica Morris. They easily have established a romantic link between you two.”

  The president picks up an unopened bottle of water and throws it into the trash. He’s annoyed he ever put anything in writing to Monica. “So what. I had a romance, he has a romance plus conspiracy with the media to set me up.”

  “There’s no evidence yet that they’ve been in collusion, but we’ll certainly play it that way.”

  “They’re lovers, for Christ’s sake,” says Mason, getting into the narrative he wants.

  “It’s going to look like a conspiracy only if we can cast enough doubt that you had any role in the hit-and-run. So far it’s not a very strong criminal case.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Public opinion is something else. There’s enough there to raise eyebrows.”

  “Like what?”

  “There’s an unsolved roadside death in Jupiter. A guy on a bicycle hit by a car. At a time when correspondence confirms you were with Monica in Jupiter. Driving from a dinner in Palm Beach.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Look, all that is circumstantial. That’s why I say it’s a weak criminal case, but the fact is it doesn’t have good optics for you.” Stark sips his water bottle. “There’s no real evidence, so a lot will depend on how this woman presents. She hasn’t owned the car in question for eleven years and nobody has located it yet. Might be in scrap parts by now. There were no witnesses. There are no traces of anything anymore on the roadside where the body was found. We’ll paint old Monica as a crackpot.” Stark shrugs his shoulders. “If she can come across as credible, she can do real harm, though.”

  “Christ.”

  “The real issue is that there’s a news peg based on the affair that’s already established. If she just turned up with a fourteen-year-old hit-and-run story and nothing else, this would never make it to your doorstep. We’d only have the piece from the Standard to contend with. But once Monica’s on camera about an affair, she can go on about whatever the hell she wants. Apparently she’s decided to go after this.”

  The president drops into the sofa, leaning forward over his lap with bent elbows pressed against his thighs. The adrenaline is still flowing but turning to nausea and causing a metallic and inflexible feeling in his muscles. Mitchell is silent.

  “Sir, it’s all a he-said, she-said. We just need to outspin the other team. The public likes you. Hanging a homicide around your neck is going to be a tough sell.” Stark needs to say this to his candidate but he doubts the message is true. He knows the only sell that needs to be achieved is to cast enough doubt around the allegation to swing only a few percent of the voters.

  The president stands to his full height, remembering who he is. In a soft voice he says, “Ron, you need to crush her. Crush Monica Morris and then crush Samantha Davis. Then I want you to take their blood and guts and smear it on Pauley.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You need to make the connection between Pauley and Samantha Davis. You understand me? You need to make the connection.”

  Only a few weeks to November sixth. “Yes, sir.”

  THE END

  54

  “It would have been nice to win on the issues,” says Pauley.

  “They’re all issues. Watergate was an issue,” says Brand.

  “You know what I mean. Policy issues.” Tom looks distant. It’s nine hours before the close of the voting booths in North Carolina. Pauley is up eight points in the Real Clear Politics average of the national polls. Mason has no path on the electoral map to a win. There’s no drama. No suspense. Tom, Alison, and Peter are in the back of a Suburban on the way to vote.

  “I repeat. They’re all issues.”

  “Will you hear what I’m saying for Christ’s sake? I would rather it didn’t come down to this. I’d rather win on something positive from my side, not negative from his.”

  Brand says, “You did plenty positive or you wouldn’t have been in the position for a win. You’re great and you deserve it and the Monica Morris piece was one small factor.” He pats Tom on the knee. “Tom, all of history is made by the macro forces. Single events and individuals are just particles on a stream. No one man led the civil rights movement or caused the fall of Rome any more than did a single organism take credit for the march of a world of amphibious organisms to land. It’s just that we need some names for our history books.”

  “That may be true from the perspective of millennia,” says Tom. “From the perspective of a decade, or the twenty-four-hour news cycle, that’s not true. Everyone with a soapbox says the Monica Morris scandal is my whole margin of victory.”

  Alison squeezes Tom’s hand. “Tom, it isn’t the scandal so much as there is a very attractive alternative. Very attractive.” She kisses his ear. “No one likes to fire anyone and that’s what people had to do to Mason. This just gave people an excuse to do what they already wanted to do. Vote for you.”

  Tom kisses her cheek.

  She says, “This is a happy day. Get happy, you ass.”

  “You’re right.”

  The Suburban pulls up to the public library in Chapel Hill designated for Tom’s and Alison’s vote. Secret Service and the national media surround the Suburban, then layers of the public look on from behind the waist-high portable metal fencing used for parade routes.

  Tom doesn’t plan any remarks here. He just waves, gives the thumbs-up sign, and hugs his wife. They enter the library together through a corridor of Secret Service. There are a dozen individual voting booths, each with a purple curtain. No other voters are in the library.

  Tom and Alison are holding hands. “Race you?” she says.

  He drops her hand and jogs to a booth. He looks at the screen and is amused that he is so struck at the sight of his own name. He taps the buttons on the touch screen and votes for himself for president.

  Alison finishes a moment before him. “You ready?” she says from inside her booth.

  “I am.”

  They step out together, high-five, then hug.

  Brand is registered in New York State, which will hold for Mason. Evenso, Brand will leave the library for the airport and fly to New York to vote this afternoon.

  Tom and Alison, and a security detail and the press, will drive to a farm near Winston-Salem for Tom’s final speech of the campaign. As a boy, he loved the images of Ronald Reagan splitting wood on a farm and he thinks this will be the way to end his campaign and start his presidency.

  He changes into jeans and a flannel shirt on the wa
y. As he steps from the Suburban onto the farm, he gets the medieval smell of animal manure and open fires and he thinks, This is the country I love.

  * * *

  Mason spent the entire day in Westchester, New York. He had continued to campaign hard around the country up to the day before to keep the appearance that he was not despondent or a quitter. But the Monica Morris news was too big and there were not enough campaign days left to run out the clock on the scandal.

  Mitchell and his wife voted and then went to his friend Jason Parr’s estate and horse farm in Bedford to relax in privacy. Parr is seventy, an age between Mitchell Mason and his father, and Parr was a friend to both.

  “Son of a bitch,” Mason says to himself, looking down at his third rocks glass of scotch. Jason Parr stands by the window. His wife, Penelope, sits by Evelyn on the sofa and Mason sits alone in a deep leather chair. They’re in Parr’s library with the television on but muted.

  Parr inherited the thirty-acre estate from his father. Parr has always been wealthy and never worked much.

  They’re all watching for signals from Mason for how to act. Parr wants to lighten the mood but Mason needs to be the first not to be somber and he won’t do it.

  Parr says, “It’s almost five o’clock. I need to do it before it gets too dark.”

  Mason thinks, Jesus, he’s actually going to do it. I’m going to get fewer than a hundred electoral votes and he’s still going to do it.

  Parr puts on a white wig with a three-cornered hat and Colonial coat so he looks like George Washington in the paintings of the Potomac crossing. He walks out of the library and across the field to his stables.

  Every election day Parr does a celebration ride on horseback in Colonial getup. It’s not the kind of thing he naturally does, but he did it once when he was drunk and then declared it a tradition so now he has to do it always because to stop would be to concede he was drunk and a fool.

  “For crying out loud,” says Mason, and he groans over his knees to stand and walk to the ladies by the window to watch Jason come out of the stables. Penelope is too uncomfortable to speak so she watches her husband harder.

  Parr takes the horse out in a slow trot. He lifts his hat by one corner and smiles at the three faces in the library window. He works the horse to a cantor.

  Evelyn comes around to take Mason’s hand that doesn’t hold scotch. She says, “This will be better for us, dear. No more piranhas at your heels. Or mine. You’ve given your service up to the limit you can give and now we can live our lives in some peace.”

  Mason looks straight out the window at the trees but not at Parr. The host is riding in loops and waving like a jackass and Mason doesn’t want to see it. “We live in a great mirage, Evelyn. There’s no substance to anything, there’s just what your brain gets tricked into believing. That’s what matters more than what’s actually true.”

  She squeezes his hand and brings her body against his. The affection is real.

  He says, “The press held the narrative and never left it, everywhere I went. Things in my past that never warranted comment are now context for how this whole thing is possible.” Mason won’t say the name Monica Morris.

  “It’s unfair, darling.” Evelyn believes her husband and doesn’t believe the charges. Her husband has been under siege for more than a month and the two have developed a codependent bunker mentality.

  Parr moves out of his circular pattern and makes straight for a three-foot-high hedge bordering the field. The horse moves faster and Parr pulls the horse up too soon. The front hooves clear the hedge but the back hooves clip it so that the front of the horse lands hard and Parr’s chest and face crash into the back of the horse’s neck. His hat flies off and the wig comes to his eyebrows. Parr straightens up with a dazed look and is otherwise okay. Penelope laughs. Mason turns for more scotch.

  He likes Parr well enough but is uncomfortable around him, not for how he is but for who he is. Parr is a Democrat and his position in New York society makes him a natural connection but Mason is uncomfortable with how Parr acquired that position and what he has chosen to do with it. Parr is a dandy who gets by on wealth and pretension. He can see through Parr, and in moments of doubt and defeat Mason hopes he isn’t just a little better at doing the same things Parr does.

  55

  Pauley wins with 319 electoral votes. The White House changes occupants and this time changes parties too. Mason and Pauley exchange only brief and formal communications. Mason writes the traditional letter for Pauley to unseal after inauguration.

  The scandals increased the outrage over a political process that is broken and attracts the wrong sort of men and women. Pundits joked that it was a choice between a Republican or Democrat, small government or big government, a hand up or a hand out, and a civil or criminal case.

  In America the cynics always take control over time but Americans love beginnings, and for the beginnings Americans always rationalize optimism. People find that Pauley seems like a good man, a good father and husband.

  Pauley never addressed the relationship with Samantha Davis. He talked only of his vision for the country. Samantha Davis never spoke out and so reporters were left with a fourteen-year-old tryst and nothing more and the story passed as Brand had predicted.

  Mason’s scandal fared worse among the independents. Most who began as Mason supporters remained Mason supporters and unbelieving of the allegation. They opened their minds to the idea of conspiracy. Just as the nation had watched the trial of O. J. Simpson, all seeing the same facts in evidence and the same arguments made, then falling along predictable lines, each with a moral certainty, so did the Democrats and Republicans divide. There was negligible party crossover and the election was determined by the true independents, the ten percent of society that rules.

  56

  Samantha Davis stays an extra day in Washington, DC, to see a girlfriend from college for a drink. They decide to meet at the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown because the bar there offers a compromise between good people-watching and a place quiet enough to talk.

  At the time of the inauguration, it takes more than just wealth to get a room at the Ritz. It also requires either connections or extreme advanced planning. The people-watching might be very good.

  Samantha always determines her first drink ahead of time. It’s too cold out for gin and tonic and wine won’t be enough. A vodka martini, up. She takes a taxi to the hotel, enters the lobby and walks left to the bar and lounge. It’s mostly wood and dark red fabrics and has a warm feeling. The lounge is crowded but in a calm state, full of many private conversations. People who have come to meet someone they know, not someone new.

  Samantha sees a single open stool at the bar and starts for it. She’ll take it so her friend can sit later because Samantha would rather stand anyway. The bartender is serving two men in the far corner. One has a thick neck and thick face with a sports coat that is tight on his shoulders. The other is slender and neat and handsome in a manicured way.

  She takes her seat and puts her jacket on the short backrest of the stool. She looks again to the bartender who is finishing with the two men.

  The thick man recognizes her before she recognizes him and he’s smiling. He is Connor Marks. She’s stunned to see him in a context other than Miami Beach and she calculates it’s been well over a year. She had called him twice after he gave her the lead on Monica Morris and he had returned neither call. She smiles and waves just as the bartender puts a gin and tonic in front of her. Another gift from Connor.

  Wrong season, she thinks, and drinks it anyway. Connor looks very pleased to see her but the other man looks agitated. He looks from her to Connor and back, then says a word to Connor and walks out making eye contact with only the exit. The man looks familiar to Samantha but she doesn’t know why.

  Connor had nodded to the man but never stopped looking at Samantha. He picks up his drink and turns the corne
r of the long bar to join her.

  She’s a journalist at heart and curious to know what the hell he’s doing here. She makes a quarter turn in her bar stool to greet him. “A long way from Miami, Mr. Marks.”

  “Just a short flight to celebrate our new president. The least I can do.”

  “I had no idea you were so motivated by politics.”

  “It’s not politics so much that motivates me,” he says. He smiles but it’s not flirtatious or even friendly. It’s triumphant and smug.

  “What happened to your date?”

  Connor laughs for real this time. “He decided to hustle off.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Kenny Landers.”

  Of course, she thinks. He’s the billionaire CEO of the private security firm who donates fortunes to the GOP. “Stepping up in the world, are we?”

  “We’ve been friendly for a while now. For two years.”

  He wants to tell her more. He’s bursting and Samantha is getting alarmed but wants to let him tell her. “I see.”

  “He hired me for a little piece of work.”

  “I didn’t realize you were a mercenary too.”

  “I’m nothing like a mercenary,” he says.

  “Do tell.”

  “I could never. But you’re welcome to venture a guess. Of course, I can’t confirm or deny anything. All I’ll say is that sometimes the country needs a little repointing.”

  Samantha starts to turn things over piece by piece. “And how did you manage that?”

  “You tell me,” he says.

  “Monica Morris?”

  He sips his drink and it seems like confirmation.

  “Was Monica Morris real? There were photos and witnesses to the affair.” He keeps smiling. “Or was she just real enough?” Each time she turns a thing over, it leads to another, worse thing. “She had the affair with Mason but not the hit-and-run.” She’s not asking anymore, she’s declaring a story. “Monica was angry with Mason who had moved on from her, or you just paid her enough to work with you. You did a bunch of legwork on his old affairs, you found one you could prove, you got her on your team.” She imagines Marks sitting in the file room of a Florida police station, let through a locked door by a buddy, taking photos with a little camera then making a wisecrack on his way out the door to go tell Monica what to say and how to play it. “Then you searched around for an unsolved hit-and-run that fit a timeline you could match with Monica.”