Act of Darkness(35)

“He’s get stage fright at that?”

“Stephen gets stage fright if he has to give a toast at Thanksgiving dinner. He really isn’t very comfortable in public, Mr. Demarkian. He’s just comfortable in front of television cameras. That’s what you need these days. Is this getting us anywhere?”

Gregor sighed. “It’s getting us at least a tentative answer to my question. Senator Fox gets these attacks only when he has stage fright, but not every time he gets stage fright.”

“So?”

“So, whatever’s going on, it isn’t a psychological response to the stage fright. Or it isn’t likely that it is.”

Dan Chester stared at him—so hard and so long, Gregor began to wonder what he could possibly have said to make the man so bug-eyed. Surely the thought must have occurred to him that Senator Fox might simply be breaking down. It was the first thing Gregor had thought of, and the first thing Carl Bettinger had suggested when he called Gregor to ask for his help. “Fox is one of the real world-class bozos on Capitol Hill,” Bettinger had said, “and my reading is the man’s not glued together too tight.” But even if Stephen Whistler Fox was a rock, the question would have to be asked. In the face of the clean bill of health delivered by the UConn medical center, it would have to be asked first.

“Mr. Chester,” Gregor said. “You must have considered—”

“Considered?” Dan Chester exploded. “Of course I considered. Stephen’s not having a nervous breakdown. Or at least he wasn’t having one when these attacks started.”

“Meaning he is having one now?”

“You’d be a little upset, too, under the circumstances. But you don’t understand. Stephen couldn’t be having—psychological—psycho—oh, hell.”

“Excuse me?”

Dan Chester got out of his chair. He had lost his blankness and his control. He dumped his empty coffee cup on the rectangular table near the door, passing from anger to the edge of hysterical laughter. He seemed to be holding himself in only with difficulty.

“Look,” he said, “maybe you’re right. Maybe you ought to talk to Stephen.”

“Mr. Chester, I have to talk to the senator. At least, if I’m going to do you any good I have to.”

“You think that’s going to help you out, Mr. Demarkian? Well, that’s fine. You talk to him. I’ll set it up myself. But try to remember one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“People like Stephen Whistler Fox don’t run the country. People like me run the country. And it’s a good thing, too. If we had to depend for government on people whose only qualification for office was that their jawlines don’t blur on videotape, we’d be in even worse shape than we are. Do you get my drift?”

“No,” Gregor said.

“Look at the folder,” Dan Chester said. “It’s got everything and nothing in it. I’ll go find the honorable senator.”

Chester threw the bolt, flung open the door, and began to disappear into the hall outside. Just before he was out of earshot, Gregor said, “Mr. Chester, speaking of folders, there are some very fancy ones upstairs.”

Chester stopped. “What about them? I wrote them myself. They’re supposed to be souvenirs.”

“Was it your idea to include a heart-shaped paper clip?”

Chester gave him a twisted little smile. “That,” he said, “was Janet’s idea. In fact, the folders were Janet’s idea. She says they were Vicky’s, but she always says that when she thinks I’m going to hate an idea.”





SIX


[1]


WHEN DAN CHESTER FINISHED with Gregor Demarkian, he didn’t go in search of Stephen Whistler Fox. Instead, he went out the great sliding glass doors in the beach room to the deck, and from there onto the beach itself. Janet saw him moving clumsily across the sand in his perfectly clean, perfectly stiff Top-Siders, shaking his head and talking to himself in a tone too low to be heard over the Chinese water-torture rhythm of the waves. He went up onto the flagstone patio around the saltwater pool, where long tables had been laid out in preparation for lunch. He fiddled with the decorations there—red, white, and blue flowers in red, white, and blue vases tied with red, white, and blue satin ribbons; a red, white, and blue donkey that was a piñata stuffed with red, white, and blue candy; a red, white, and blue elephant that was also a piñata, but stuffed with coal. Victoria had a sense of humor.

Janet was standing on the beach, halfway between the house and the water, and when she saw Dan she hesitated. Patchen was down there, sitting cross-legged with her knees in the tide, and Janet wanted to talk to her, alone. What she didn’t want to do was get that close to the water, where she would be able to see the beach at the de Broden place without obstruction. For Janet, the de Broden place epitomized everything she didn’t like about Oyster Bay: the carefully understated good taste, the carefully understated fashionless clothes, the carefully understated tones of voice. At the de Brodens’, even the sand was carefully understated. Watching them, Janet sometimes thought they lived at the bottom of an invisible sea.