Sally Winters was staying at a health care facility in Alton, Ill., just across the river from St. Louis. From what her father could tell, based on her letters and occasional phone calls, she wasn’t all that happy there. She knew no one in the clinic, of course, and except for her mother, who had been put up by Duane Andrews in St. Louis, she knew no one who lived in the area. But Winters thought it sounded like a first-rate facility, certainly better than the clinic in Kansas City where she had been staying.
So Scuzzy and Blakey camped out in St. Louis to plot their next move. Scuzzy tried another phone call. But that was easily deflected. All calls were referred to a receptionist. Sally had listed the only people allowed to call her and Scuzzy obviously wasn’t on the list.
But Schwartz had another idea. It had worked once during the Michael Jackson frenzy. Who knows. He had nothing to lose. He put a call into a friend in Los Angeles. The next morning, two big boxes arrived at the hotel with dark blue uniforms, complete with striped caps. The plan: Scuzzy and Blakey would sneak into the Alton clinic as sanitation workers, find Sally and offer her big bucks to tape an interview. The twist here was that Scuzzy was now under constant surveillance from Corcoran’s goons. How would they beat their tails?
Scuzzy decided the simplest strategy was the best. Just walk out of the hotel wearing their uniforms and get a cab for Alton. The goons may not recognize them in the uniforms and may not tail the cab.
It was simple and brilliant. And it worked. Scuzzy and Blakey snuck out of the hotel without McCord’s goons knowing anything the wiser.
The clinic where Sally was staying was a low-slung beige brick building that looked like a prison without hot-wired fences. What a place to be holed up, Scuzzy thought. They quickly bluffed their way past the receptionist, giving her some mumbo jumbo about waste streams and inspections and keeping the air clean. Once beyond the front desk, they began asking for Sally and found her room in a matter of minutes.
They found her sitting by the window, book in her lap, day dreaming, her blonde hair falling softly over her shoulders. She was a small woman who looked pale and weak in the morning sunlight, a thinner version of the woman in the photograph Andy Whiteside had given Scuzzy. She wore a blue smock and furry slippers, and her tiny legs looked like she hadn’t had any exercise in years.
She jumped with a start when two men in dark uniforms entered her room and started to rush to the phone by her bed. But Scuzzy and Blakey moved quickly to allay her fears. They were reporters, they said, and they just wanted to talk to her. They would leave immediately if she were uncomfortable.
“And we can help you out,” Schwartz said softly.
“How’d you get in here?” Sally said, unsure whether to dash for the door or scream for help. “How did you find me here?”
“Please, please, don’t get up,” Scuzzy said. “We can make you and your mother very comfortable. We just want to talk.”
“I remember you now,” Sally said. She tilted her head and paused. The look of fear vanished from her face. “You called me when I was in Kansas City. That was the reason they moved me here.” She smiled and sat back into her chair. Scuzzy relaxed. Suddenly, there were footsteps in the hall and Schwartz and Blakey darted behind a door until the steps faded into the distance. Sally laughed at their scurrying. “You’re not going to last here very long, you know.”
She seemed to be enjoying the cloak and dagger routine.
“What we have to say won’t take long,” Scuzzy told her.
“You’re allowed out of here, aren’t you?” Blakey said.
“Yes,” Sally replied. “As long as I’m feeling okay and I don’t go out alone. Some days are better than others, but I can usually go for several hours before I need to lie down and rest. But what do you want with me?”
“We want to talk to you about the president,” Scuzzy said softly.
“But that was so long ago,” she said. “Besides, he seems to be in a lot of trouble these days.”
“We think the president is sick too, maybe just like you,” Scuzzy told her. “Unless you speak up, they’ll never admit it.”
Sally sat quietly. There was quiet muffling in the distance. “It’s because of your story that my mother had to move, wasn’t it?” she finally asked.
“Yes,” Scuzzy said. “I’m sorry about that. I never expected that to happen. All those reporters really wanted to talk to you, not your mother.”
“You talked to Andy, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you pay him money?”
“Yes, we did,” Scuzzy said. “He looked in bad shape. That’s why he talked and gave me the pictures.”
“But why should I talk to you?”
“Because the president hasn’t really treated you right,” Scuzzy said. “You’re cooped up in this clinic, with no friends to talk to. And, besides, we can pay you very well.”
“My mom too?”
“Your mom too,” he said. “We’re talking about a couple of thousand dollars for a 30-minute conversation. You could leave this prison and go wherever you want.”
Sally’s eyes widened at the mention of cold hard cash. She hadn’t caught on initially what he had meant by his offer of help. “Can you make me well again?” she asked. “That’s what I really want. I want to get better.”
“We can’t promise you anything like that,” Blakey said. “All we can do is get your story out and give you a little nest egg to help plan your future. It’s a start, not a guarantee.”
No one said anything for a few seconds. Schwartz and Blakey feared their time was running out.
“Look,” Scuzzy said. “I have a plan. You go into St. Louis with your mother, like to shop, right?”
“Sometimes…”
“And you always have chaperones, right?”
“Yes, they call them nurses but they seem more like bodyguards.”
“Well, there’s a hotel and mall in downtown St. Louis where I think it would be easy for you to slip them,” Scuzzy said. “Are you up for it?”
“I’m well enough to get around some,” Sally said. “But how do I know you’ll help out me and my mother?”
“We’ll give you cash before you say a word, you have my word. If you’re not happy with that, you just turn around and come back here to the clinic. How’s that sound?”
“Are you for real?”
“We wouldn’t have risked trying to get in here if we weren’t shooting straight,” Blakey said.
Sally looked at the two men, dressed in their ill-fitting blue sanitation uniforms offering her a fortune and an escape. This seemed a bit too good to be true, but then, who would have thought Andy’s story would cause such a ruckus?
“Can you help me find doctors to cure me?” she finally asked.
“Yes, of course we can, yes,” Scuzzy said quickly. He was getting edgy and eager to leave. He was about to make a sale and had to do it quick.
“Well, okay, then,” Sally said. And Scuzzy sighed a huge sigh of excitement. This could be the scoop of his career.
It was agreed. That Saturday, Sally and her mother would go on a shopping trip to St. Louis. They would visit a mall with a department store that exits out onto a hotel lobby. Sally and her mother split up, enabling Sally to escape her chaperones, get into the hotel and up to Scuzzy’s room where Blakey’s cameras would be waiting.
Thursday night’s televised press conference in the East Room went better than McCord had planned. The lights and the makeup made Corcoran look healthier than he really was—especially on TV. A slightly baggy suit hid the weight he had lost. More important, he came off as rested, voluble, feisty and in command, a leader eager to do battle with Congress and the Democrats. He even pounded the podium a few times for emphasis, startling some of the reporters and cameramen in the first row.
And when the first questioner asked whether he had had an affair with Sally Winters, McCord thought, Corcoran even looked a bit sympathetic, a put upon president taking the high road with reporters who couldn’t stay out of the gutter.
“No, Helen,” Corcoran said. “That tabloid gossip is garbage and just is not true. I love my wife and Lisa and I and the girls are very happy together. I’m saddened, of course, about the woman’s illness and we are trying to get her help. But there’s nothing more to the story than that.”
“But if I can follow up, sir,” the reporter continued. “You know there has been talk about your own health. You seem to have lost weight and there are reports that you may be sick. Could you tell the American people tonight what if anything is wrong with you?”
“Nothing my doctors can’t solve,” Corcoran said with a small smile. “Yes, I have been under the weather a bit over the last few months. My allergies kicked in pretty strong over the winter and then the doctors tried to get me to lose weight and I’m afraid we went a little overboard on the program. But a couple of weeks in the good ol’ American West have brightened my spirits and my body and my soul and, to tell you the truth, I couldn’t wait to get back to Washington to talk to all of you.”
As chuckles rippled gently through the East Room, another reporter was more direct. “Sir, with all due respect, the talk of your health has led some to ask whether you, like Sally Winters, have AIDS. Could you tell us directly that you do not have AIDS?”
Corcoran paused, remembering the admonitions of his advisers not to give them an “AIDS” soundbite. “I can assure you that I do not,” he said with a measured tone in his voice. “I suffer no serious illness and I look forward with much anticipation to next year’s campaign, which I expect will be hard-fought but which I am sure I will win. Again, I am saddened by what has befallen Miss Winters. But that has nothing to do with me and my health.”
“Mr. President, will you release all of your health records to quiet this talk?”
“Of course, John, no problem. The American people should have faith in their president. I have released the records of my physicals every year and all those records are open to members of the media. Just ask.”
It was a bravura performance. McCord and the president’s other aides were gloating Friday morning as they read the papers and watched the morning news. After weeks of being pummeled in the press, the president was finally fighting back and his spunk was lifting the spirits of everyone on the White House staff.
Their high would not last.
The president’s meeting with Senator Avalino that morning was not a pleasant affair. George Avalino was a gruff Republican from New Jersey. Though pro-choice on abortion, he was otherwise quite conservative and a good friend of the president, both from their days in the Senate and since he had been elected president. Corcoran’s people often relied on Avalino for inside intelligence on the Hill, to pick up the occasional plotting among moderate Republicans aimed at undermining Corcoran’s policies. In turn, the senator had been rewarded with access to the White House and money for pet projects.
A short man with a jowly, baggy-eyed face, Avalino came across as a pol from the old school, tending to stay out of Washington’s media glare. But reporters respected him for his honesty and his intelligence and voters liked him for his bluntness and down-to-earth qualities. The son of a fruit cart vendor from Newark, he had become a wealthy supermarket tycoon and used his money to win a Senate seat 15 years ago. He hadn’t faced a serious challenge since.
Because of his loyalty, the president usually looked the other way when Avalino pushed his pro-choice bills, figuring they would die before they got to his desk anyway. And they usually did. But the international family planning bill was different. Avalino had snuck it into the budget in a deal with the Democrats and now it was only the president’s opposition that stood in its way. The senator couldn’t understand, given all the times he’d stood with Corcoran, all the help he’d given him over the years, why he would single out him—of all people—this time.
The meeting was awkward. Avalino pleaded his case, reminding the president of all the water he had carried for him the last two and a-half years. He asked for so little, the senator said, why cut him off at the knees now?
The campaign’s coming up, Corcoran told him. “You know how I feel on abortion. You know how the party feels about it. I can’t go soft on this issue now.”
“But to say this bill is about abortion is crazy,” the senator said. “This isn’t money for abortion. This is money to teach poor people in poor countries about family planning, how to avoid having large families, how to make life easier for themselves. This means fewer abortions, not more.”
“Sorry, George. That’s not the perception. These groups promote abortion all the time, have literature on it in their offices. Give free counseling. I can’t go along this time. No way around it.”
“Then why did you wait till the last minute to oppose it?” the senator asked. “Why didn’t you raise a red flag earlier, before I had cashed in chits with the Dems to get this in the budget? Do you know how bad you make me look on this?”
“I’m sorry, George,” the president said. “You’ve been a good friend of this administration and a good friend of mine. There are many things I’d be willing to do for you. But not this. I just can’t help you this time. It’s too close to the campaign.”
Steamed, Avalino turned around and walked out of the Oval Office without even shaking the president’s hand. His shoulders hunched over, his eyes staring at his feet, he quickly walked out of the White House and into a bouquet of microphones set up on the lawn.
“What did you talk to the president about?” he was asked.
“Legislative matters,” he mumbled.
“Do you have a problem with his immigration bill?” Avalino was known to think the measure was a bit too tough.
“Didn’t talk about it,” he said.
He started to walk away when someone asked how the president looked.
“A bit peaked, I’d say,” he said.
“You say he didn’t look well?” a reporter shouted.
“The president hasn’t looked well for some months,” the senator said. “I don’t know what’s wrong, maybe he needs a new set of doctors.”
“But he said last night that he was fine?”
“This president is not well and he should do something about it,” Avalino spat out. “That’s all.” And then he was gone.