Death Before Bedtime (2 page)

“Won’t Father be surprised to see us together!” she said at last.

“Yes.” I was a little worried. I had never met Senator Rhodes. I had been hired by his secretary who had, I was quite sure, known nothing about my acquaintance with Ellen. My contract with the Senator was to run three months with an option in March and then another after that … by which time, if I were still on the job, the National Convention would be meeting and the Midwest’s favorite son Lee Rhodes would go before the convention as the people’s choice for President of the United States, or so I figured it, or rather so I figured Senator Rhodes figured it. Well, it was a wonderful break for the public relations firm of Peter Cutler Sargeant II, which is me.

Ellen had been more cynical about it when I told her the news in Cambridge where we had been attending a Harvard function. In spite of her cynicism, however, we had both decided, late at night, that it would be a wonderful idea if we went straight to Washington from Boston, together, and surprised the Senator. It had all seemed like a marvelous idea after eight Martinis but now, in the cold light of a Maryland morning, I was doubtful. For all I knew the Senator loathed his daughter, paid her liberally to keep out of Washington … nervously, I recalled some of Ellen’s exploits: the time last spring when she undressed beneath a full moon and went swimming in the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel in New York, shouting, “I’m coming, Scottie … Zelda’s coming!” in imitation of that season’s revival
Scott Fitzgerald … imposing on the decorous 1950’s the studied madness of the 1920’s. Fortunately, two sober youths got her out of there before the police or the reporters discovered her.

“What do you think your father’s up to?” I asked, resigned to my fate: it was too late now to worry about the Senator’s reaction to this combination.

“Darling, you know I hate politics,” she said, straightening one eyebrow in the window as frame houses and evergreens flashed by.

“Well, he must be planning something. I mean, why hire a press agent like me?”

“I suppose he’s going to run for the Senate again.”

“He was re-elected last year.”

“I suppose he was. Do let’s send George and Alice a wire, something funny … they’ll die laughing when they hear we’re on a train together.”

“You know I think it’s quite wonderful your father’s done as well as he has considering the handicap a daughter like you must be to him.”

Ellen chuckled. “Now that’s unkind. As a matter of fact he simply adores me. I even campaigned for him when I was fifteen years old. Made speeches to the Girl Scouts from one end of the state to the other.… I even spoke to the Boy Scouts, lovely young creatures. There was one in Talisman City, an Eagle Scout with more …”

“I don’t want to hear any of your obscene reminiscences.”

She laughed. “You
are
evil, Peter. I was just going to say that he had more Merit Badges than any other scout in the Midwest.”

“I wonder if he’s running for President.”

“I don’t think he’s old enough. You have to be thirty-five, don’t you? That was ten years ago and he was seventeen
then which would make him … how old now? I could never add.”

“I was referring to your father, not that Eagle Scout of infamous memory.”

“Oh, Daddy. Well, I don’t know.” Ellen was vague. “I hope not.”

“Why not?”

“It’s such a bore. Look at the time poor Margaret Truman had, trailed by detectives and guards everywhere.”

“If you were a nice girl like Miss Truman you wouldn’t mind.”

“Oh … !” And Ellen Rhodes said a bad word.

“There would be all sorts of compensations, though,” I said, trying to look on the bright side. “I think it would be very pleasant having a father who was President.”

“Well, I don’t. Besides, I don’t think Mother will let him run. She’s always wanted to go back to Talisman City where we came from originally.”

“That would be nice for you.”

Ellen snorted. “I’m a free spirit,” she said, and, all things considered, she was, too.

We parted at the Union Station. Ellen went home in a cab and I walked across the square to the Senate Office Building, a white cake of a building in the shadow of the Capitol.

Senator Rhodes’ office was in a corner on the first floor, attesting to his seniority and power since he was, among other things, Chairman of the Spoils and Patronage Committee.

I opened the door of his office and walked into a high-ceilinged waiting room with a desk and receptionist at one end. Several petitioners were seated on the black leather couches by the door. I told the woman at the desk who I was and she immediately told me to go into the Senator’s office, a room on the left.

The room was empty. It was a fascinating place, and while I waited I examined everything: the vast mahogany desk covered with party symbols, the hundreds of photographs in black frames on the wall: every important political figure since 1912, the year Leander Rhodes came to the Senate, was represented. Leather chairs were placed around a fireplace on whose mantel were arranged trophies and plaques, recording political victories … while above the mantel was a large political cartoon of the Senator, handsomely framed. It showed him, his shock of gray unruly hair streaming in the wind of Public Opinion, mounted upon a spavined horse called Political Principle.

“That was done in 1925,” said a voice behind me.

I turned around quickly, expecting to find the Senator. Instead, however, a small fat man in gray tweed, wearing owl-like spectacles, stood with hand outstretched, beaming at me. “I’m Rufus Hollister,” he said as we shook hands. “Senator Rhodes’ secretary.”

“We’ve had some correspondence,” I said.

“Yes sir, I should say so. The Senator’s over in the Capitol right now … important vote coming up this morning. But sit down for a minute before we join him and let’s get acquainted.”

We sat down in the deep armchairs. Mr. Hollister smiled, revealing a handsome upper plate. “I suspect,” he said, “that you’re wondering exactly why I engaged you.”

“I thought Senator Rhodes engaged me.”

“He did, he did, of course … I was speaking only as his … proxy, as it were.” He smiled again, plumply. I decided that I disliked him but then I usually dislike all men on first meeting: something to do, I suppose, with the natural killer instinct of the male. I tried to imagine Mr. Hollister and myself covered with the skins of wild beasts, doing battle in the jungle, but my imagination faltered: after all we were two Americans living in rooms centrally heated and eating hygienically prepared food got out of cans … the jungle was remote.

“In any case,” Hollister was saying, “I thought I should brief you a little before you meet the Senator.” He paused. Then he asked: “What, by the way, are your politics?”

Being venal, I said that I belonged to the same party as my employer; as a matter of fact, I have never voted so even if I did not entirely admire the party of Senator Rhodes I hadn’t perjured myself.

Mr. Hollister looked relieved. “I don’t suppose, in your business, that you’re much interested in politics.”

I said that, aside from my subscription to
Time
magazine, I was indeed cut off from the great world.

“You don’t have, then, any particular choice for the nominating convention?”

“No, sir, I do not.”

“You realize that what I tell you now is in the strictest, the very strictest confidence?”

“I do.” I wondered whether or not I should cross my heart; Mr. Hollister had grown strangely solemn and mysterious.

“Then, Mr. Sargeant, as you may already have guessed, The Senator’s Hat Is In The Ring.”

“The what?”

“Senator Rhodes will announce his candidacy for the nomination for President on Friday at a speech before the National Margarine Council.”

I took this awesome news calmly. “And I am to handle the publicity?”

“That’s right.” He looked at me sharply but my Irish, piggish features were impassive: I saw myself already as Press Secretary to President Rhodes: “Boys, I’ve got a big story for you. One hour ago the President laid the biggest egg.…” But I recalled myself quickly to reality. Mr. Hollister wanted to know my opinion of Leander Rhodes.

“I hardly have one,” I said. “He’s just another Senator as far as I’m concerned.”

“We, here in the office, regard this as something of a crusade,” said Mr. Hollister softly.

“Then I will, too,” I said sincerely. Before he could tell me why the country needed Lee Rhodes, I remarked that I happened to know his daughter, that, by chance, I had come down on the train with her. Was it my imagination, as they used to say in Victorian novels, or did a cloud cross Mr. Hollister’s serene countenance? As a matter of fact, it was worse than a cloud: it was a scowl.

“Is Miss Rhodes
in
Washington?”

“I believe so. Unless she decided to go back to New York.”

“A charming young lady,” said Mr. Hollister, without conviction. “I’ve known her since she was a tiny tot.” The idea of Ellen Rhodes as a tiny tot was ludicrous but I was not allowed to meditate on it. Instead I was whisked out of the office and into the reception room; then into a further office filled with gray women answering the Senator’s voluminous mail. I was introduced to all of them; next, I was shown an empty desk which I could call my own, close by
one of the tall windows which overlooked the Capitol. I noticed that none of the typists was under fifty, a tribute, I decided, to Mrs. Senator Rhodes.

“Now if you like we’ll go over to the Senate.”

I had never been inside either the Senate Office Building or the Capitol before and so I am afraid that I gaped like a visitor from Talisman City at the private subway which whisked the Senators in little cars from the basement of their building to that of the Capitol.

After we got off a crowded elevator, Mr. Hollister led me down a long marble corridor to a green frosted double glass door beside which stood a uniformed guard. “That’s the floor of the Chamber,” said my escort, in a low reverent voice. “Now I’ll see if I can get you into the cloakroom.”

As I later discovered, this was the holy of holies of the Senate, almost as inaccessible to a non-Senatorial visitor as the floor itself. Some quick talk got us in, however.

The cloakroom was a long room with desks, couches and a painted ceiling, very ornate, a little like Versailles; swinging glass doors communicated directly with the Senate Chamber from which could be heard a loud monotonous voice.

“Senator Rhodes,” whispered Mr. Hollister proudly, pushing me back against the wall, out of the way of the statesmen who wandered in and out, some chatting together in small groups, others reading newspapers or writing letters. It was like a club, I thought, trying to summon up a little awe, trying to remember that these were the men who governed the most powerful country in the world.

Mr. Hollister pointed out several landmarks: Senator O’Mahoney, Senator Douglas, Senator Byrd … I stared at them all. Then the swinging door opened and Leander Rhodes, the Great Bear of the West as he liked to hear himself referred to, appeared in the cloakroom, his face red from
speechmaking, his gray hair tangled above his bloodshot eyes, eyes like his daughter’s I thought, recalling irreverently her face on the pillow beside me that morning. But no time for that.

“Ah, Sargeant. Glad to see you. Glad to see you. Prompt. I like promptness. Secret of success, punctuality.” Since neither of us could either prove or disprove this statement, I murmured agreement.

“Been to the office yet? Yes? Good scout. Let’s go to lunch.”

It took us quite awhile to get from the cloakroom to the Senate Dining Room. Every few yards or so, the Senator would pause to shake hands with some other Senator or with some tourist who wanted to meet him. He was obviously quite popular with the voters; the other Senators were a bit cool with him, or so I thought, since he was, after all, by reputation anyway, a near-idiot with a perfect Senate record of obstruction. He regarded the administration of Chester A. Arthur as the high point of American history and he felt it his duty to check as much as possible the subsequent national decline from that high level. He was a devout isolationist although, according to legend, at the time of the First World War he had campaigned furiously for our entry into that war, on the side of the Kaiser.

I suppose I shouldn’t, in actual fact, accept jobs from men for whom I have so little respect but since it never occurred to me that Lee Rhodes had a chance in the world of getting nominated, much less elected, President, I saw no harm in spending a few months at a considerable salary to see that his name appeared in the newspaper, often and favorably.

The lunch was excellent, served in an old-fashioned dining room with tile floor where the Senators eat … there is a
Pre-Civil War feeling about the Senate Dining Room … especially the menu, the remarkable cornbread, the legendary bean soup which I wolfed hungrily, trying not to stare too hard at Senator Taft, who sat demurely at the next table reading a newspaper as he lunched.

“Suppose Rufus here has briefed you?” said Senator Rhodes, when coffee arrived and all around the room cigars were lit, like Roman candles.

I nodded, holding my breath as a wreath of blue Senatorial smoke crossed the table and settled about my neck.

“Day after tomorrow, Friday, that’s the big day. Making announcement then. Want it well covered. Can you do that?”

I told him that all speeches by such a celebrated statesman were well-covered by the press. He took my remark quietly, adding that he wanted
Life
there, or else. I said that
Life
would be there.

“Get yourself located yet?” he asked, after we had exchanged a number of very businesslike remarks. I said that I hadn’t, that I’d only just arrived on the morning train.

“Stay with
us
then; for a few days,” said the Senator generously. “Got plenty of room. Give us a chance to talk strategy.”

“I’d appreciate that, sir. By the way I happen to know your daughter slightly. I came down on the train with her this morning.”

Was it my imagination … no, it wasn’t; the Senator sighed rather sadly. “A wonderful girl, Ellen,” he said mechanically.