Memorial Bridge June 21
The armored, black limousine crossed Memorial Bridge into the District. In the long rays of the setting sun, the Lincoln Memorial took on a reddish tint. Addis felt weird; he was riding alone with the new President. There was a small army of Secret Service agents in the cars and vans accompanying them, with Washington police officers at the front and rear of the motorcade. But except for Addis and the two plain-clothed, armed men in the front seat, Sam Mumfries was on his own during his first trip to the White House as President.
Earlier that day Mumfries had flown to his home state for a party fund-raiser with the businesspeople who had supported him for decades. A stiff man of patrician bearing, Mumfries four years ago had been bested in the primaries by Hanover. Then Hanover named him to the ticket, giving Mumfries and his Lone Star friends hope for the future. Four more years—then eight for us, Mumfries had been saying at a private club in Dallas that afternoon, when an advance person whispered the news.
Mumfries’s chief of staff, Hamilton Kelly, had stayed in Washington to attend to convention plans. With Kelly and Brewster McGreer now dealing with the transition, Addis had rushed to Andrews Air Force Base to meet Mumfries and discuss the speech Mumfries was to deliver that night.
“Nick, you know, we—Bob and I, that is—we didn’t like each other much,” Mumfries said.
“I know.”
“But never in a thousand years did I—”
“I know, Mr. President.”
Addis had used the title to see how awful it would feel to say it.
“Any more word on the asshole who—”
“No, sir.”
“But a lone gunman, right? Nutcase, right? No signs of a wider plot?”
“No evidence either way, not yet.”
The car drove past the Vietnam Memorial and turned on to Constitution Avenue. The police had cleared the route. Tourists lined the street and stared, trying to see the forms behind the darkened windows.
“How’s Margaret doing?”
“Busy with the plans, with Jack.”
“You know, she and I never got along, even when we were kids. When I was growing up in Louisiana, our families were close. Did some business—my uncle and her pop. And then years later, me and her are … . I remember this one time, I came home from Iran—that’s when I was in the Air Force and flying these secret missions we couldn’t talk about. She must have been sixteen. There was a party. Junior League or a coming-out—something like that. Had on my uniform. She was a pistol. Kept asking where’d I been. I wouldn’t tell her. But she kept at it. I said I couldn’t say. And she near about threw a fit. Everyone looked at us—like we were having a lover’s quarrel. Then I moved to Houston and didn’t see much more of her.”
Mumfries looked at his thick, stubby hands and let the story drift off. Addis studied Mumfries’s face: wide fleshy nose, a furrowed brow, and jowly cheeks. He remembered a columnist observing that Mumfries was disappearing further and further into his own visage.
“And Brew wants you to talk to me about the speech, right?”
“Yes.”
“Thinks I’ll fuck it up somehow. Not do justice to Bob.”
Addis said nothing.
“We know each other several years, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“When you were working for Palmer in the Senate you tried to fuck me a few times. And I tried to fuck you—or him, that is. We’re a party that eats its own. Even if we don’t fancy the taste.”
“Well, I’m not sure—”
“Don’t bother with the manure. The Honduras business—your boss Palmer didn’t have the votes to shut down the operation in committee, so you gave it to the Post. Had to have hearings. And we had those damn nuns protesting. Even at my house. Know what it’s like to come home to a bunch of nuns calling you a murderer?”
Addis started to protest, but Mumfries put up his beefy hands.
“No need. That was ages ago. You know, Nick, I can’t tell you how much I really helped them—both of them. And not just delivering Texas. Biggest mistake you can ever make, my grandfather told me, is to think you have something all figured out.”
Addis did not follow Mumfries, but he did not care.
“You tell Brew,” Mumfries said, “that I’ll get this right. Not to worry. No politics over a dead body. It will be all about healing, coming together, as a nation. Writes itself … I’m sorry to say.”
Mumfries pulled out a piece of paper with scribbling on it.
“Jotted down a few lines on the flight. And I’ll be happy to show you and Brew a draft. I’ll show it to Margaret, if she wants to see it. All in the family. Just like old times. The Masons and the Mumfries.”
The parade of vehicles was turning on to Pennsylvania. A crowd had gathered in front of the White House. Addis could see people holding up photographs of Hanover. One man was waving an American flag. Flowers were piling up by the front gate. Police officers and SWAT team members surrounded the block. Newspeople and camera operators jostled with each other for the best shot of the motorcade.
“So you don’t have to hold my hand. But there is one thing.”
“Anything, sir.”
“I’ve never been much for poetry. Grew up reading Westerns, Zane Grey, Louis L’Amour.”
Addis wondered if Mumfries knew that L’Amour had been a radical in Oklahoma in the 1930s.
“But I thought a touch of poetry might be appropriate tonight. If you have anything to suggest, drop it off with Kelly, okay?”
Addis nodded, as the White House gates closed behind them. The limousine stopped at the front of the executive mansion. The Secret Service agents would not allow the President to leave the vehicle until extra security men were in place. Then Addis followed Mumfries out.
The White House grounds were an armed camp. Uniformed officers patrolled everywhere, brandishing weapons: .9 mm Glock pistols, Uzis. Government snipers were visible on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings. Mumfries was looking about. Addis guessed that the new President had expected to be greeted by the White House press corps. But there were no reporters, no microphones, no cameras. The media had been banished, with an exception. One camera crew had been permitted to remain on the premises and obtain footage for all news outlets. But under the new rules, the crew was kept far from the President.
Standing on the front steps, Mumfries spotted the camera crew two hundred feet away. He moved a closed fist across his chest in a sort of somber half-wave. He then strode through the White House front door and into a cloud of waiting aides.
Addis headed to the West Wing. Inside, he passed the Oval Office. Ann Herson, Hanover’s secretary for thirteen years, was not at her desk. The door was open. No one was there, and Addis walked in. The President’s desk was clean of all papers. Two empty cardboard boxes were on the floor.
Addis entered the small, private room to the side of the Oval Office. Here Hanover had placed a reclining chair. The room had a small stereo system. It was where Hanover did much of his reading. On the wall were his favorite photographs. His first day as attorney general. Jack running on a beach—before the car accident that had paralyzed the Hanovers’ only child. Hanover in a college production of Our Town. Margaret wearing his army jacket. Both of them at Graceland. Few aides and no reporters or visitors were allowed in this room. Herson did not permit it. “The most powerful man in the world,” she once remarked to Addis, “and all he gets is ninety-six square feet of his own.”
Addis left the Oval Office and shut the door. In the hallway, M. T. O’Connor, the President’s scheduler, was waiting for him. The two hugged; he bent his knees sharply so his cheek would be at the same height as hers. O’Connor’s hair fell in front of him. He noticed a few gray strands among the straight black lines. As scheduler, O’Connor held an important position in the White House; she arbitrated all the requests for the President’s time. Did he attend a nurses’ convention, appear at a fund-raiser, call a foreign leader? She juggled, battled with demanding aides, and oversaw how Hanover spent his waking hours.
O’Connor and Addis were usually allies in the political battles fought within the Hanover camp. “The long and short of it,” Hanover had once said of them. Rarely had they disagreed. A few months back, he had argued for abandoning a Secretary of Labor nominee after a network revealed the man had not disclosed his previous treatment for manic depression. O’Connor had urged Hanover to stand by his old college chum. The President dumped the nominee—and his popularity dipped a few points in the polls. Addis sent O’Connor a single black feather, with a card that read, “I’ve eaten the rest of the damn bird.” A few weeks ago, the two had worked together to stage a meeting where union officials, human rights activists, and environmentalists could share with Hanover their criticisms of the proposed China trade accord. But that session had not won over the President. After months of consideration, Hanover had sided with those Cabinet members, aides, and fund-raisers pushing for the treaty, under which U.S. corporations would gain more access to Chinese labor, consumer, and financial markets and China’s trade status would not be subject to those painful yearly reviews.
“Saw you go in,” O’Connor said. “Thought I’d give you a few minutes.”
“Feels like a tomb.”
“The whole friggin’ building feels like a tomb—or would, if there weren’t so many security freaks running around. Like being in the embassy in Lagos, when the friggin’ Nigerians were about to storm in.”
O’Connor had been in the Peace Corps in Africa. After that, she
founded what she called a “health-care empowerment center” for low-income women in rural Minnesota. At a conference on health care services, she met Margaret Mason Hanover, then the First Lady of Louisiana, and immediately became a friend and adviser.
“They’re just overcompensating,” he said. “They lost him and can’t do anything about it. This is how they grieve.”
“And how do we?”
“I haven’t gotten to that item on the agenda yet.”
O’Connor guided Addis around the corner. A security detail with attack dogs passed by.
“You rode back with Mumfries?” she asked.
He nodded.
“You think the changes will come soon? Or will he sit on them?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Brew’s going to try to stay on.”
“Probably.”
“Prove after all these years he’s not just a Hanover appendage.”
“Maybe.”
“What should we do? Yeah, I know, it’s ghoulish to be talking like this. But we’re just going to turn the whole store over to Mumfries? Imagine what happens to the President’s program when he gets done with it. He reamed us on the tax bill, telling the committee what we were going to do. Man, he pushed for their environmental cuts. Remember that lovely interlude? And you can forget China—he’ll make it worse. And in two weeks he’ll waltz into Chicago, grab the nomination, and he’ll—”
“M. T., he’s the President now.”
He noticed her eyes were puffy.
“But just hand him the friggin’ keys?” She waved her gangly arms. “So he can toss them to his scummy cronies? There’ll be no legacy. Zippo. Didn’t you want a second term?”
I wish I could say, “More than anything.”
But he couldn’t. The past three years had been filled with too many political dogfights that ended in bland compromise. Hanover had not hollered when his proposed political reforms were ignored by Congress. Want your budget passed? the party leaders told him, Then keep out of how we raise money. The bombing raid in Lebanon—that had been pointless and it killed several civilians, including a prominent Jordanian journalist. But Mike Finn, the political director, had pushed Hanover to order the air assault after the press reported on a terrorist scheme to assassinate a U.S. ambassador. Otherwise, Finn said, the media would brand Hanover with one word: wimp.
Brew McGreer was always waving poll results, living in fear of the slightest downward tick. He said no to a top-to-bottom review of military
spending. Don’t want to get the generals too pissed, he argued. He nixed proposals to bolster the antitrust division at Justice and to strengthen the collection of corporate taxes. Could hurt with fund-raising, he explained. Let’s not scare the business community: “Gotta keep the fucking markets fucking happy.” And Mumfries constantly chimed in about the need to respect political realities.
It was easy, Addis knew, to blame McGreer or sneer at Mumfries. It was harder to admit that Hanover shared McGreer’s belief that the guiding principle was, avoid providing the slightest opening to the opposition—for imagine how much worse it would be if they were in the White House. There would be one measurement of success: reelection. But that meant steering clear of the tougher fights.
Addis had agreed that the priority was reelection, but in his mind that did not require all the caution counseled by others. And until recently, he had wanted, above all else, a second term. One in which Hanover might be less receptive to the cries of his risk-averse advisers. One in which Hanover could wage the right battle or two. Addis was certain that neither Hanover nor McGreer would worry about what the polls said about Mumfries’s future prospects. Only weeks ago, Addis had hoped that the next term would prove that he had made the right decision years ago in New Orleans.
That hope was gone. For Addis, it had slipped away before the assassination. But he wasn’t going to tell O’Connor about the phone call. Not now. It no longer mattered. Like so much, it was moot.
“What’s to be done?” he asked.
“There’s something. There always is. We get everyone on the same page: continuity. Our few buddies in the press. Your friend Palmer in the Senate. Margaret, too. Continuity. If he keeps the same staff, the same Cabinet, the potential for damage will be less.”
“For a few months, and then after he’s elected on his own?”
“That’s in months. You think I like being the bitch-from-hell right now? But it’s really for him. If we don’t get out in front, we’ll …”
“Have you talked to anyone about this?”
O’Connor shook her head.
“Not Margaret.”
“She’s a little busy.”
“Let me think about it.”
“Don’t think too long,” she said. “You know Mumfries has a plan already. And if he doesn’t, it’s only because Kelly hasn’t laid it out for him yet.”
“Sam and Ham.”
“The Sham Twins.” It was a phrase they only used with each other. The two embraced once more.
In Addis’s office, his computer was beeping, signaling his message bank was full. He scanned the list. His parents. Assorted journalists. Addis returned one call: the one from the woman who was to start tomorrow as his assistant. Let’s wait and see, he told her message machine. And Holly Rudd had called. Six months ago, she had moved to Washington to join a labor law firm downtown. But she had not tried to contact him until today.
He checked the internal email. McGreer had sent a note requesting a report on Addis’s ride with Mumfries. There was a postscript: “You don’t have to worry any more about New Orleans.” Addis tapped out a reply: “All’s well with our friend. He says he is happy to share. No surprises.” He hit the enter button. Then he realized that he had nothing official to do.