She turned to Henry. “Is this what they mean by a suite?”
“Yes,” he said. “Look, Mrs. Mooney, before the senator comes in, I really need to know that —”
“A suite,” Beth said, shaking her head in awe. “I’ve heard of hotel suites, but to think I’d ever actually be inside of one, well, I never figured.”
“I’m sure,” Henry snapped. “Mrs. Mooney, we don’t have much time before the meeting and I must insist —”
She made a point of looking around again. “All of those nice senior citizens, the retirees who send your senator a dollar bill or a five-dollar bill or whatever they can scrape together to help elect him president, do you think they know that their money is paying for this suite? And all those who donated time and money because they believed in the senator’s idea of justice, what do you think they’d say if they knew what his son did to my daughter?”
“Mrs. Mooney —” he began again, and then another door within the suite opened up, and the senator walked in, tall, smiling, wearing a fine gray suit and a cheerful look. The room he was emerging from, she saw, was filled with well-dressed men and women, most with cell phones against their ears or in their hands, and then the door was shut behind him.
The senator strode over, and Beth felt her heart flip for a moment. It was one thing to see him on the cover of a magazine or a newspaper, or on the nightly news, but here he was, right in front of her. My God, she thought. What am I doing? This man coming at her could very well be the next president of the United States, the most powerful and famous man on the planet. And she was a single mom and a hairdresser. For a moment she felt like turning around and running out the door.
Then she remembered Janice. And she calmed down.
“Mrs. Mooney,” the senator said, holding out a tanned hand with a large, fancy watch around his wrist. “So glad to meet you. I just wish it were under better circumstances.”
“Me too,” she said, giving his hand a quick shake. “And, Senator, I know you’re very, very busy. In fact, I can’t imagine how busy you are, so I will make this quick.”
The senator looked to Henry, who looked to her and said, “We appreciate that, Mrs. Mooney.”
Beth took a breath. “So here we go. I’m sure you know your son’s actions, what happened to my daughter, and the agreement that was reached between me and Mr. Wolfe.”
The senator said, “If there’s something that needs to be adjusted in the agreement, I’m sure that —”
“Senator,” Beth said forcefully, “I don’t want an adjustment. I don’t want an agreement. In fact, you can stop all the payments. What I want is justice for my little girl.”
The senator’s eyes narrowed and darkened. Now she could see the toughness that was inside this man who wanted to be president.
“Do go on,” he said flatly.
She said, “You can stop the payments. Stop everything. But I intend to go public with what your son did to my daughter today, this afternoon, unless my one demand is met.”
Both men waited, neither one saying a word. So she went on.
“By the end of the day today, I want you to announce the firing of Henry Wolfe,” she said. “And I want your pledge that he will never be in your employ ever again, either directly or indirectly.”
The senator didn’t make a sound, but Beth heard a grunt from Henry, like he had just been punched in the gut. She went on. “That is it. Nonnegotiable.”
“Why?” the senator asked. “Why should I fire Henry?”
“To keep me from going to the newspapers,” she said. “And because he promised justice for my girl. And she still doesn’t have it.”
She could sense the tension in the air, something disturbing, as she noted both men looking at each other, inquiring, appraising, gauging what was going on. The senator checked his watch. “Well, our time is up, Mrs. Mooney, and —”
Henry spoke desperately. “Tom, please —”
“Henry,” the senator said calmly, touching his upper arm. “We have a lot of things to talk about, don’t we?”
Henry continued, “For God’s sake, Tom, the primary is in just a few days and —”
The two of them went through another door, and Beth was left alone. She looked around the huge, empty suite, went to a fruit basket, picked up two oranges, and left.
THE NIGHT of the New Hampshire primary, she rented a DVD — Calendar Girls — and watched the movie until she fell asleep on the couch. She had no idea who had won and didn’t rightly care.