American Quartet Read online

  “I’m not a child,” she said. She actually felt like a child suddenly caught in the rain in an open field. There seemed no place to hide.

  It was Remington himself who came to the rescue. His wary host’s eye had apparently sensed her discomfort.

  “We can see the fireworks from the rear lawn,” he said. “Considering the distance, the display is surprisingly clear, although we don’t hear the boom boom.”

  “I love your house,” she said. It was the most appropriate remark she could think of.

  “A bit of a barn,” he said modestly.

  He smiled, but his blue eyes, despite his charm, seemed layered with ice, confusing her. Perhaps the voters had also seen the chill beneath the facade. His portrait above the fireplace revealed a gorgeous youth and he was aging perfectly, like a well-turned roast, wrinkling in just the right places. His chin was still firm. Beneath his fitted pin-striped suit, he appeared lithe and muscular.

  “This is Fiona FitzGerald, Sean,” he called suddenly to a youngish man with a ceremonial air.

  “Sean Ambrose, the Irish ambassador. This is Miss FitzGerald.”

  “Cork,” he said.

  “On the money,” she replied. “My father is a professional Irishman.”

  “So am I. That’s what I get paid for.”

  Even his laugh had a touch of brogue, reminding her of her grandfather, underlining once again the ethnic brotherhood. No one ever leaves Ireland, he had told her once when she was a young girl. How he would have envied her now, facing, almost touching Himself, the representative of the Old Sod?

  “To my grandfather, the Irish ambassador was more important than the pope,” she said. “Or at the least, the apostolic delegate.”

  “He’s over there,” the Irish ambassador said, indicating a man with a priest’s collar in the crowd on the lawn. “Tad collects diplomats, whatever the relationship between countries.” He pointed out the Russian and Saudi Arabian ambassadors.

  “I did my gig,” Bruce said, coming up to her. He chatted for a moment with the Irish ambassador, who soon disengaged. She noted how practiced they all seemed, making contacts, moving on, like summer insects around a candlelight, never quite close enough to the flame to get really burned.

  Several guests sauntered over to discuss the central topic of all political discussions, reelection.

  “Safe?” someone asked him.

  “Duck soup . . . if the President can hold our cranky Democrats in line.” He looked at her, showing a tiny tremor of anxiety. He is really scared to death, she thought.

  “If he don’t, we can all run for the hills,” the man replied, walking away.

  “What is he?”

  “An appointee,” Bruce replied. “One of nearly three thousand paranoids running around loose, hoping the President will win.”

  “The perils of democracy,” she snickered. He frowned, obviously in no mood to be further reminded of his plight. Meeting peers obviously increased his tension.

  “It’s the Washington zoo,” he whispered, trying unsuccessfully to remove himself from the pack. He ran with these bulls, somewhere in the middle, nondescript. What he wanted was to speed up and get into the lead.

  He spent the next half hour pasting titles on the guests. Senators, congressmen, ambassadors, socialites. It wasn’t quite the full “A” group, he told her with mock derision. Although Congress was in a short July Fourth recess, many of his colleagues had fled the oppressive Washington humidity. Each title was accompanied by a bit of gossip.

  “And there’s Tweedledee,” he whispered, pointing to an attractive woman in her forties. There was a nervous air of discomfort about her, as if she didn’t quite belong there and knew it.

  “Used to be one of Jack’s girls.”

  “Jack?”

  “Kennedy.”

  It was one of his affectations to call famous people by their first names. The Johnson landslide in ’64 had brought him his first term. But the photograph in his den of Bruce when he was an eager beaver Kennedy advance man gave him, she supposed, special rights.

  “He had two White House concubines. Tweedledee and Tweedledum. Just two kids in the typing pool. They serviced him when the wife was away, which was frequently.”

  There it was again. Closet lechery. A favorite Washington syndrome. The closet image brought back memories of poor Damato, festering in his Lolita fantasy. Had it really killed him in the end? She dismissed the speculation. Mysteries, she had learned, could spawn obsession.

  “Louise Padgett Sharp is her name,” he said. “Haven’t seen her in years.” He lowered his voice. “Can’t imagine what she’s doing here.”

  Suddenly he spotted someone behind her.

  “Good to see you, Mr. Ambassador.” He stuck out his hand to a large jolly man. It was the Soviet ambassador. He quickly introduced Fiona. The big man smiled graciously and moved on.

  “It’s a United Nations,” she whispered.

  “Just Remington doing his thing.”

  It was darkening and the guests had begun to crowd the buffet table, taking heaped plates of lobster, roast beef, salad and brie to tables on the lawn, decorated in red, white and blue. Waiters in black tie poured vintage wines. Remington chatted with Mrs. Sharp, giving her more attention than was due a single guest, but it seemed forced. The woman was agitated, she looked furtive and confused.

  “He seems interested.” Fiona tugged at Bruce’s sleeve, but he did not respond. Remington’s reaction to the woman was out of kilter. His mask of charm had disappeared, revealing a flash of temper. She felt like a voyeur and quickly turned away.

  A collective sigh went up on the lawn. The fireworks had begun, big bursts of colored sparks sprinkling in the humid air. The spectacle seemed to go with Remington’s private vision, a tintype with an earlier American flavor.

  She also felt patriotic, admiring a spectacular burst that had replicated white stars against a blue field, like the flag.

  “Miss FitzGerald,” a Hispanic female voice intruded, Remington’s maid. “Telephone.”

  “Dammit,” Bruce said irritably.

  “Woman’s work is never done, Bruce.” She had expected this call all evening.

  It was the eggplant, and his anger sputtered over the wire.

  “You had no right to take those paintings,” he shouted as soon as she had identified herself. “A reporter from the Hagerstown Daily Bugle or whatever just creamed all over me. Not to mention their bush league PD and that prick, O-something.”

  “O’Leary.”

  “Yeah, him,” he mumbled. She let it pass.

  “I did it to keep them out of the press. They’re going to make the man a pervert.”

  “Maybe he was.”

  “He was the victim, remember? Why poison his wife and kids? It could be important evidence.” She did not tell him that she also wanted to protect the semi-innocent nymphet.

  “I don’t like these interdepartmental hassles,” he growled. “I also don’t like my poker games interrupted.”

  “Better that we release it properly to our press,” she said, sure of her ploy. “We’ll look better. Besides, they are Mrs. Damato’s property. She let me have them.” It was stretching the truth slightly. The poor woman wanted no part of them and would have burned them.

  “I want a break in this case, FitzGerald, and I want to come out on top.”

  “Of course.”

  Was he uncertain whether to let her continue on the case? But she knew that she was less of a threat than some of the more ambitious black detectives. “I want you to brief me first thing in the morning,” he said, surprisingly calm.

  There was a pause, then a throaty chuckle at his end.

  “What you doin’ there with all them fancy dudes, mama?” The jive talk showed his jealousy, also his special form of ridicule.

  “Watchin’ fire in the sky, man,” she shot back, wanting to add “mufucker.” The loud click as he hung up tickled her eardrum.

  What she did not tell
him was that her instincts were rebelling at the idea that Damato was shot by an outraged parent. But the eggplant hated intuition, the despised female taint. Perhaps black men in general hated women, all women. She loathed the generalization, but working in the MPD was teaching her aberrant lessons. She choked off the unworthy thought and a burst of brilliant fireworks helped dismiss it from her mind.

  6

  IN the brief flare of her cigarette, Remington had seen the predatory beak of the wooden bird above them, its carved wingspread hovering over the bed, its beady wooden eyes almost alive, bearing witness. Reaching out, he caressed the smooth ridged claws.

  That first time with Louise had set the match to the dry tinder in his soul. The beginning! It had barely been a week, the memorable date, June 29. Eons ago.

  He had come across her by accident. She had materialized, a face out of the dim past, at one of those summer obligatory “in honor of” parties on a sprawling Potomac lawn. She had been in his peripheral vision before, but always at a distance. She had never really been part of the scene, always someone to be hidden in a closet, one of Jack’s girls.

  Perhaps it was the wide-brimmed hat, which cast her face in the shadows, making it look younger, sharpening the image of what she once was. Cute. Time hadn’t brightened her intellectually either. Not that he had ever really talked with her in those days. She was just a girl in the typing pool.

  “It’s destiny,” he had told her. She had flushed with pleasure. “And a very sensuous lady.” He had reserved her then, right under a huge tulip oak. She was leaning against it, drink in hand, straightening to make her bosom rounder, a gesture which told him she was available. She had just separated from her second husband, she volunteered. “A real loser.” But she had the golden President’s mark on her and who could come up to that? Tad had taken her home, calling ahead to Mrs. Ramirez to unfreeze a batch of chili and toss up a salad, which they ate with iced champagne in the Rustic Room. The champagne had made her giggly and the flattery, talkative, as if he were really interested in her pedestrian life. Remington let it all pass through him, waiting for the moment when she would trust him enough to tell him what he had to know.

  Everything had been building to this, waiting for just the right moment, the sign. Louise Padgett Sharp was that sign. She wanted more champagne, but he did not open a second bottle. He needed her clear memory. To stimulate her, he showed her pictures of him with the golden President.

  “He was lovely,” she said, tears brimming over her lids and onto her cheeks. He licked them away, tasting their salt. Then he found her lips, parting them, his eyes open to the photographs.

  Upstairs, in his bed, with the wooden eagle as witness, under the approving gaze of its eyes, he did it, as if it were a holy ritual. His tongue explored, probed, searched those places where the golden President had been. Her pleasure was excruciating and he let it occur to her again and again, his own hardness unfaltering.

  “My God,” she gasped finally.

  She had placed her cigarettes on a night table beside the bed. Sliding one out, she groped for a match. Finding none, she opened a drawer and found a little silver gun. “No,” he said quickly, “it’s not a lighter.” She studied it and then tossed it back in the drawer. “I hate them,” she said. “They always remind me.”

  Her matches had dropped to the floor. Finding them, he lit her cigarette and watched as she sent the smoke in spears through her nostrils. Like a miracle, the gun had appeared to bridge the gap. A sign!

  “What was he like?” he had asked, no longer tentative. He had won the right to command her.

  “Fun,” she said, after a long pause.

  “I mean, how did he do it?”

  “How?” She seemed startled, puffing deeply.

  “It turns me on,” he said, hating the vulgarism.

  “You like to talk it,” she laughed. He knew then that he had broached the intimacy. She must like that as well. Perhaps, too, she felt the power of the experience. It was not, he was sure, the first time that she had told it.

  “Did he do it straight? Missionary-style?” he coaxed.

  “Every way, mostly sitting on his lap. Once he got me in the Oval Office like that. Also, I’d do him under the big desk.” She put out her cigarette and rolled over on her side, tracing her nail along his chest.

  “Was he big?”

  “About like you,” she said, looking down. “My God, you’re curious.” She giggled. “You’re making me feel guilty.”

  “What was his best way?”

  “Doggy-style in that room right next to the office,” she said without hesitation. “I really loved that.”

  “What was his face like when . . . you know?”

  “He smiled. I made him happy.”

  He had wanted to ask her more, but her tongue was busy elsewhere. Gently, he eased her away.

  “How did he smell?”

  “Smell?”

  She seemed confused. He repeated the question, sharp, like a scolding teacher.

  “Like a man,” she said.

  “Like me?”

  “No. He was an Aqua-velva man.” It was meant to be a joke. It irritated him.

  “Like a man, Tad,” she said in a whining, placating tone. “Like you. I don’t have a good memory for smells. He smelled good.” She sniffed his body. “Like you.” But she did not begin again, squatting at the foot of the bed, watching him, losing the spirit of the game. But he couldn’t stop. There were things he had to know, and the trail was endless.

  “And how did he feel? I mean, the texture of his skin.”

  In the darkness across the bed, she moved her legs Indian-style, perplexed but patient. His big toe played with her, reassuring her that it was still play.

  “His skin was thick. He had longish hairs on his arms and legs. He was slender, beautiful really.” She paused and moved her body forward. “Like you.”

  A new wave of feeling began, tiny shivers at the base of his spine, radiating through him. She crawled forward and began her tongue’s work again.

  “And taste,” he cried, knowing, certain that some angel was touching him, that he was transcending self, merging with the other golden man, that he was him. Him! The explosion pounded in his brain, surged. His essence flowed upward, forced by the power of the earth, spending in great squirting plumes. Above him, the great eagle flapped his wings, the beak snapped closed and carried him upward. It was, he had no doubt, the final sign.

  “Like you,” he heard her say. A lifetime had passed. “Like you.”

  At that moment his plan, resurrected from its suspended state of abstract longing, was irrevocably set in motion, his will inexorably set on its tracks. He knew the time had come.

  He devoted most of July 1 to assembling props, going over the minute authentic details. It would be as near perfect as possible, a replication of pristine inspiration. He rechecked his notebook, which he stored in the locked closet of the library along with other items needed to perform these acts.

  The bulky man was shot at exactly 9:25 A.M., July 2, ninety-nine years before. Again a sign. Nine and nine. The number eighteen. Arriving at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Station five minutes before, the man looked happy, relaxed, anticipating his July Fourth holiday. The other man, Guiteau, wearing black, his droopy moustache and scraggly beard moist in the summer heat, had pumped two bullets into him, the fatal one into his back. Remington checked his Gray’s Anatomy, also among his props. The .44 slug from the pearl-handled English Bulldog pierced the pancreas, but the big man had miraculously survived when a clotted sack formed around the wound and continued the blood’s circulation. That would be impossible to replicate. The other bullet had pierced the man’s sleeve, harmlessly.

  Guiteau had practiced firing at saplings near the Potomac and Remington had secretly done the same. The authenticity was absolutely necessary, preordained. Otherwise, the signs would disappear. But the context was ninety-nine years after the killing and whoever was ordaining it would als
o have to make allowances.

  That evening he put on the clerical garb, his own symbolic invention, the turned collar tightly grasping the folds of his neck. He studied himself in the myriad mirrors of his bedroom as he put on the black wig, the moustache, the scraggly beard; he packed the gun, the tumbler oiled, with the bullets inserted, a few pages of writing paper, a copy of The Berean, that Biblical revision of Guiteau’s former cult.

  “I am Charles Guiteau,” he told his splintered images in the mirror. “And what I do, I do for the good of the country.” He let out a childish giggle. It was thrilling. He discovered he had an erection.

  He had telephoned to reserve room 222 at the Hotel Washington at Fifteenth and G. It was close enough to the site of the old Riggs House to be acceptable. The fact that the hotel had a room 222 was still another sign. He took his white Volkswagen bug (the other was a Bentley) out of the garage and drove downtown. He had bought it solely for this one task, a chariot of death, waiting for the moment.

  The clerk hardly looked up as he checked in and took his cash; he had no credit cards and would stay for only one night. Even the request for room 222 hadn’t phased the clerk. Room clerks, Remington had learned, were totally disconnected and indifferent. He signed the card: The Rev. C. J. Guiteau. It was a title his precursor had once assumed.

  In the room the air conditioning coughed and sputtered and he could sniff the vague scent of disinfectant. At the writing desk he took a ballpoint pen from his pocket and began to recompose the letter that had pulsed in his memory.

  “The President’s tragic death was a sad necessity, but it will unite the Republican party and save the Republic. Life is a fleeting dream and it matters little when one goes. A human life is of small value . . .” He paused, studying the words, proud of the flourish of his handwriting; he felt waves of delicious excitement beginning at the base of his spine, radiating out. The exquisite power of it transcended everything, the room with its pedestrian furnishings, the immediacy of time, the other reality of himself. Addressing the envelope to himself as Remington, he sealed and stamped the letter.