Albany, New York
The Honorable Lucius Alfonso didn’t read Maine papers. He read New York and Washington papers. He read U.S. News & World Report. He read the memos his aides prepared to brief him on national issues. He knew more about welfare and health care, Medicare and Medicaid and military spending and education than he’d ever cared to know. Occasionally, when he was alone, he read Hustler and dreamed of ramming those plump, inviting asses. More often, he dreamed of watching the good Senator from Maine, James Buxton, fall face first in the mud. If necessary, he’d carry the water and make the mud.
He raised his head and met O’Malley’s dancing eyes. “I don’t see how it does us any good to have her dead, Mike. We need a living, breathing woman. From the pictures, she was a nice little piece, too.”
The woman across the table cleared her throat. Keris Carlyle hid her neat body and lovely long legs beneath high-necked blouses and boxy suits. Her only feminine indulgence was her hair, gorgeous, breast-length, Marilyn Monroe platinum hair. The governor couldn’t keep himself from imagining it on his pillow.
Now Keris tossed that hair and said a single word, “Pig.”
The governor flushed and fumbled with some papers on his desk. O’Malley had brought her in to help him improve his image with women voters, to raise his consciousness about his unconscious sexism. At least ten times a day, she made him feel like a horny little boy.
“She’s still living and breathing, Lou.”
“In a coma. On life support. That’s your idea of a good time?”
Keris cleared her throat again.
“Did we do this?”
O’Malley’s face was perfectly blank. “Not to my knowledge,” he said. “But our operatives in the field report rumors that there’s a video tape somewhere of the good Senator and Ms. Lila Friedman bumping uglies.”
Keris cleared her throat a third time
“Shit, Keris, you’re supposed to be keeping track of him, not me.”
“You speak for him,” she said quietly. “You are his public representative. He will be judged by what you do and say as well as by what he does and says. You can’t go around sounding like a paternalistic, red-neck wildebeest, Michael, whether you like it or not. In here, you can do it if you want, so long as you’re aware of what you’re doing. Out there…” she pointed at the closed door, “you can’t do it at all.”
She switched her focus to the governor. “Look, Lou.” She tapped her pencil on the table. “You’ve already got an image problem. Angela has been a brick, but your daughter Gina has publicly accused you of hitting your wife. We’re working on bringing Gina into the fold, giving her a role in the campaign, but that’s your one bite of the apple. You can probably diffuse being a wife-beater if you show up enough places with Gina and Angela at your side. But not…”
She paused for effect. “Not if your eyes pop every time a nice set of tits walks by. Not if you drool every time a big, round ass rolls past. Not if you see women as a collection of body parts you’d like to back up against the wall and fuck instead of intelligent people who vote.”
Damn, Alfonso thought. She’s read my mind. He tapped the article again. “So, Mikey, we’ve got total deniability on this?”
O’Malley nodded.
“What about the tape?”
“We’re working on it. Unfortunately, the only person who seems to have known where it is took a permanent wrong turn and ended up at the bottom of a lake.”
“That’s all we’ve got? No gossipy best friends, confidants, nosy neighbors? Jealous other women? There has to be something.”
“May be hard for you to believe this, Lou, but the woman is a saint. Brave, dedicated, hard-working poverty lawyer, willing to give her all for her clients. Happily married. A mother. No lovers. No scandals. People up there are more likely to point at you with a shotgun than tell you something bad about her.”
“There must be something, Mike. Nobody’s perfect.”
“Other than Buxton, she comes close. Maybe the daughter knows something. Rumor is they’re tight. Maybe Friedman confided the details of this past love to her daughter as a cautionary tale.”
“How would we use anything we got from the daughter?” the governor asked.
“Like something from the National Enquirer,” Keris suggested. “Get close to the kid. She’s bound to be upset. Get her talking. A few drinks, a sympathetic ear, get her to spill her guts. Especially since her boyfriend just cheated on her with her best friend.”
“How do you people learn this stuff?”
Keris and Mike exchanged smiles. “Tearful daughter reveals mother’s death-bed confession of affair with Senator Buxton.”
He slapped the table with glee. “You two are soulless fiends.”
Keris lowered her eyes modestly. “Thank you, Governor,” she said. “We do our best.”
“Get Dobbs on the phone and have him find the daughter. Keris, I want you to fly up there and make the contact personally. You’ll know how to get her talking. Be sure you record every word she says. O’Malley, you keep working on that tape. Someone must know where it is.”
The governor watched them walk out of his office. O’Malley was getting fat. His ass jiggled when he walked. Oughta send him to the gym. But then poor Mikey might have a heart attack, and he couldn’t do the campaign without him. Carlyle, on the other hand, had a perfect ass. The governor grinned his wolfish grin. With their help, Buxton’s mud was on the way. He could hardly wait to see old holier than thou wallowing in it.