Act of Darkness(24)

“Father Tibor and the cardinal,” Gregor said, “have been close friends for several years.”

“Really. I suppose it’s even true. But I’ll tell you something that isn’t true, Mr. Demarkian. You, as a campaign contributor. Especially as a campaign contributor to Stephen Whistler Fox. You’re much too intelligent for that. Do you want to know what else isn’t true?”

“What?”

“You, as the fat, middle-aged lover of this wayward debutante here.”

“Ah,” Gregor said.

“I am not a wayward debutante,” Bennis said.

Victoria pulled open the great front double doors of her house, stepped into the foyer, and told them, “If the two of you were lovers, she’d be wearing a great deal less underwear.”





THREE


[1]


AT NINE FIFTEEN, DAN Chester was standing at the single window of his bedroom, looking down at the Rolls-Royce in the drive and the people who’d got out of it. The scene interested him, because although he’d talked to Gregor Demarkian and knew him by reputation—had known of him, in fact, long before that little twerp Carl Bettinger suggested bringing him in—Dan had never actually seen him. He hadn’t even seen Victoria Harte’s pictures of him, clipped from the pages of People and Time, the way the fans she detested most clipped pictures of her. If Victoria had offered, he would have looked, but Victoria hadn’t offered. Victoria never offered him anything. If she could have, she would have barred him from the house. Instead, she gave him this bedroom, one of the two small ones facing the drive and not the sea. It was supposed to keep him in his place.

He had left a stack of file folders on the top of the bureau next to the window, and now—having noticed that Demarkian was a large, tidy man who wore suits in summer—he picked them up. He knew he ought to read through them one more time, but he also knew he wouldn’t. He’d gone to bed at one o’clock in the morning and gotten up again at twenty to five. Between twenty to five and now he’d taken two dozen calls from the staff office in Washington and spent two hours talking into a tape recorder, answering a stack of mail three and a half feet thick. Now he was feeling both restless and caged—restless, because since Stephen had started keeling over at parties, the entire world had seemed to be on hold; caged, because there were too many people in the house. The invitations to this seminar had been explicit. Arrival time was set for four o’clock today. Instead, Clare Markey had shown up at eight, Kevin had come in after dinner last night, and Patchen Rawls had appeared out of nowhere to take a place at the breakfast table.

He left the window, crossed the room, and put his ear to the door, listening for sounds in the hall. It was quiet out there. Having made the monumental mistake of intruding on Victoria’s privacy before they’d been given permission, they’d all locked themselves out of sight until the emotional weather cleared. He opened the door a crack and looked out on the empty carpeted hall, a wide strip of royal purple plush that seemed to stretch west to infinity. He stuck his head out farther and saw the double doors to Janet’s bedroom, shut.

He let himself into the hall, closed his bedroom door behind him, and crossed the plush to knock on Stephen’s. Stephen had a window that faced the sound, but other than that his room was no bigger or better than Dan’s own. Victoria didn’t like him either. Dan listened, heard the sound of pacing, then knocked a second time and said, “Stephen?”

The pacing stopped. Footsteps came close. Breathing came closer. Stephen was just on the other side of the door.

“Dan?” he said.

“That’s right. Open up. I’ve got something to talk to you about.”

There was the sound of a bolt being thrown—Victoria had made sure that every room in the house could be locked, but only from the inside—and then the door swung open, revealing the Great White Hope in a dirty T-shirt, a pair of ragged jeans, and bare feet. Stephen looked on his way to a bed of bench in a public park. “Come in quick,” Stephen said. “That Markey woman’s been around three times already this morning. Asking after my health.”

Dan slipped into the room and shut the door behind him. “Are you sure it was Clare Markey? It could have been Janet.”

“It wasn’t Janet. Janet isn’t speaking to me.”

“Maybe you ought to get rid of Patchen Rawls.”

Stephen reached past Dan and threw the bolt again, then wandered back into the middle of the room, oblivious. That was Stephen’s great weapon, being oblivious. It was particularly effective because it was not an act.