The ballroom is crowded with a thousand guests—men in black tie and women in high heels and cocktail dresses with swooping necklines or exposed backs. These are professional couples, venture capitalists and bankers and accountants and businessmen and property developers and entrepreneurs and lobbyists, and they’re here to meet Senator Edward Dowling, newly elected, grateful for their support, their man in the Texas upper house.
The senator is working the room like a seasoned professional, with a firm handshake, a touch of the arm, a personal word for each and every guest. People seem to hold their breath around him, basking in his reflected glory, yet despite his gloss and obvious charm there is still something of the used-car salesman about Dowling’s interactions, as though his boundless self-confidence has been learned from self-help tapes and motivational books.
Ignoring the trays of champagne, Victor Pilkington has found himself an iced tea in a frosted glass. At six foot four, he can look over the sea of heads, making a note of which alliances are being formed or who’s not talking to whom.
His wife, Mina, is somewhere in the crowd, wearing a flowing silk gown that plunges in elegant folds down to the small of her back and between her breasts. She’s forty-eight but looks ten years younger, thanks to tennis three times a week and a plastic surgeon in California who refers to himself as the “body sculptor.” Mina grew up in Angleton and played varsity tennis for the local high school before going to college, getting married, divorcing, trying again. Twenty years on, she still looks good, on the court and off, whether playing mixed doubles or flirting with younger men in the Magnolia Ballroom.
Pilkington suspects she’s having an affair, but at least she’s discreet. He tries to be the same. They sleep in separate rooms. Lead separate lives. But keep up appearances because it would be too expensive to do otherwise.
A man brushes by him. Pilkington raises his hand and grips the passing shoulder.
“How are things, Rolland?” he says, to Senator Dowling’s chief of staff.
“I’m a bit busy right now, Mr. Pilkington.”
“He knows I want to see him.”
“He does.”
“You said it was important?”
“I did.”
Rolland disappears into the crowd. Pilkington gets himself another drink and makes small talk with several acquaintances—never taking his eyes off the senator. He doesn’t much like politicians, although his family had produced a few. His great-grandfather, Augustus Pilkington, was a congressman in the Coolidge administration. Back then the family owned half of Bellmore Parish, with interests in oil and shipping, until Pilkington’s father managed to lose it all in the seventies oil crisis. The family fortune had taken six generations to build and six months to trash—such are the vagaries of capitalism.
Since then Victor had done his best to restore the family’s name—buying back the farm, so to speak, acre by acre, block by block, brick by brick. But it hadn’t been without personal cost. Some people succeed because of their parents and others in spite of them. Pilkington’s father spent five years in prison and finished up cleaning hospital toilets. Victor despised the man’s weakness, but appreciated his fecundity. If he hadn’t impregnated a teenage shop girl in 1955 when he raped her in the back of his vintage Daimler (specially shipped from England), Victor would never have been born.
It’s strange how one family can celebrate its greatness, tracing its genealogies back to the founding fathers of Texas, their political offices and companies and dynastic marriages, while another family’s principal achievement might simply be survival. It had taken bankruptcy and his father’s imprisonment for Victor to appreciate what an achievement it was to rise above the common people, but tonight, in this room, he still feels like a failure.
On the far side of the ballroom Senator Dowling is surrounded by well-wishers, sycophants, and political fixers. Women like him, particularly the matriarchs. All the “old money” families are here, including a young Bush who is telling college football stories. Everybody laughs. Anecdotes don’t have to be funny when you’re a junior Bush.
The doors to the kitchen open and four waiters emerge carrying a two-tier birthday cake with candles. The Dixieland band strikes up “Happy Birthday” and the senator presses his hand to his heart and bows to every corner of the ballroom. There are photographers waiting. Camera flashes reflect from his polished teeth. His wife materializes beside him, dressed in a black diaphanous evening gown with a sapphire-and-diamond necklace. She kisses his cheek, leaving a lipstick imprint. That’s the shot that will make the social pages of the Houston Chronicle on Sunday.
Three cheers. Applause. Somebody jokes about the number of candles. The senator wisecracks back at him. Pilkington has already turned away and gone to the bar. He needs something stronger. Bourbon. Ice.
“How old is he?” asks a man leaning next to him, his bowtie unfurled and dangling down his chest.
“Forty-four. Youngest state senator in fifty years.”
“You don’t seem that impressed.”
“He’s a politician, he’s bound to disappoint eventually.”
“Maybe he’s going to be different.”
“I hope not.”
“Why’s that?”
“That’d be like finding out there was no Santa Claus.”
Pilkington has had enough waiting around. Moving through the crowd, he reaches the senator, interrupting him mid-anecdote. “I’m sorry, Teddy, but you’re wanted elsewhere.”
Dowling’s face betrays his irritation. He excuses himself from the circle.
“I think you should be calling me Senator,” he tells Pilkington.
“Why?”
“It’s what I am.”
“I’ve known you since you were jerking off over your momma’s J.C. Penney catalog, so it might take me a while to get used to calling you Senator.”
The two men push through a door and ride the service elevator down to the kitchens. Stainless steel pots are being scrubbed in the sinks and dessert plates are lined up on benches. They step outside. The air smells of recent rain and yellow slicks of moonlight reflect from the puddles. Traffic is backed up in both directions on Main Street.
Senator Dowling undoes his bowtie. He has fine, feminine hands that match his cheekbones and small mouth. His dark hair is trimmed neatly and wet combed to create a part on the left side of his scalp. Pilkington takes out a cigar and runs his tongue over the end, but doesn’t attempt to light it.
“Audie Palmer escaped from prison the night before last.”
The senator tries not to react, but Pilkington recognizes the tension in the younger man’s shoulders.
“You said this was under control.”
“It is. Tracker dogs followed his trail to the Choke County Reservoir. It’s three miles across. Most likely he drowned.”
“What about the media?”
“Nobody has picked up on the story.”
“What if they start asking questions?”
“They won’t.”
“What if they do?”
“How many people did you prosecute as a district attorney? You did your job. That’s all you need to say.”
“What if he’s not dead?”
“He’ll be recaptured and sent back to prison.”
“And until then?”
“We sit tight. Every lowlife in the state is going to be searching for Palmer. They’re going to string him up and pull out his fingernails trying to find out what happened to the money.”
“He could still hurt us.”
“No, he’s brain-damaged, remember? And you keep telling people that. Tell ’em Audie Palmer is a dangerous escaped convict who should have gone to the chair but the Feds fucked it up.” Pilkington clenches the cigar between his teeth, sucking on the chewed leaf. “In the meantime, I want you to pull a few strings.”
“You said everything was under control.”
“This is extra insurance.”