Guilt by Association (44 page)

“It’s all in the message,” the candidate said smoothly.

“I know you weren’t keen on hiring her, but you’ve got to admit that Dobbs is worth twice what we’re paying her.”

The public relations expert had deftly created an image of the California senator that was all but irresistible. Men responded intellectually to Robert’s no-nonsense manifesto. Women reacted emotionally to his carefully groomed good looks and boyish charm. Senior citizens viewed his conservative appearance as sincere and approved of his obvious devotion to his mother as well as his wife and son. People everywhere found themselves listening to what he was saying.

The issue was clear—if America was going to be saved, everyone had to do his share. No one would be exempt and no one would profit at the expense of others. “Save America!”
the banners read, and in a few brief months those two words had become synonymous with Robert Drayton Wiilmont.

Mariah Dobbs had indeed done her job, and the only negative ever expressed by the senator was that ice water ran in her veins.
In the four months that she had been on his team, traveling with him, sitting beside him on airplanes, in limousines and at endless strategy meetings, sharing early-morning breakfasts and late-night dinners, sometimes even sharing hotel suites, she had never thawed. The end of an evening was always followed by a polite good-night and the firm snap of a lock on a bedroom door.

For a sexually active man being kept in rigid check, it was agonizing. He began to dream about her, waking before dawn with thoughts about the things he wanted to do to her and the things he wanted her to do to him. More and more, as time went by,
hotel maids found his sheets wet and sticky.

“Are you a lesbian?” he asked her once in frustration.

Cool green eyes appraised him. “No, Senator,” she replied.

“Then why the deep-freeze act all the time?”

“I believe I made it clear at the beginning that I don’t mix pleasure with business.”

“We could put it on a business basis, if you prefer.”

“I can leave, if you prefer,” she retorted.

It was exasperating. He rarely had a problem getting a woman into bed On the contrary, he was usually fighting them off. But this one didn’t seem the least bit inclined. Several times he had come very close to forcing the issue, but then backed off,
knowing he could not risk alienating her. But he wasn’t used to a woman being in control of him, and the more unattainable she was, the more he wanted her.

“I’m sorry if my presence bothers you,” Mariah remarked with a frosty edge in her voice. “I’m sorry if your marriage isn’t everything you need it to be. But, as it happens, mine is.”

“I didn’t know,” he muttered, taken by surprise. No one had told him the bitch was married. Not that it made any difference to him, but it did help to explain her lack of interest

“It wasn’t necessary for you to know,” she told him. “All
that’s necessary is for you to convince the voters that you are first and last a devoted family man.”

She was the only woman he had ever met, he confessed to Mary Catherine, who flat out intimidated him.

“Dobbs is okay,” he said now, with a shrug. “But she didn’t go out and win those primaries. I did.”

Randy smothered a grin. There weren’t many women who failed to fall under Robert’s spell. In fact, he could remember only one, a staff secretary during their first term in the Senate. She was right out of Brigham Young University—fresh, eager,
lovely, and clearly not buying what Robert was selling. She was also smart, and solved the problem of unwanted attention by not staying around very long.

But this time, the senator had met his match. Whenever Mariah was around, Randy would catch his eyes following her. He would stand a little straighter and laugh a little louder, but in vain. Mariah maintained her professional demeanor and gave him nothing else. Whatever frustrations were building up inside of him, he had no choice but to keep his distance.

What Robert didn’t know was that Mariah more often than not warmed herself in Randy’s bed.

“He thought I was a lesbian,” she giggled one night as they lay apart, waiting for the sweat of passion to dry on their bodies.

“You’re kidding!”

“What an egotist! I guess it was the only explanation he could come up with for my lack of interest.”

“He’s not used to women turning him down,” Randy felt obliged to explain. “Very few do.”

“Maybe that’s his problem,” she observed. “He’s always had everything too easy.”

“I guess you could say that,” Randy had to admit. “As a matter of fact, I can think of only one other woman in the last thirteen years who refused to give him a tumble.”

“Who was that?”

“She was a secretary. Her name was Maggie Holden, and damned if she didn’t look just like Julia Roberts. She dis
tracted the hell out of him.” Randy chuckled. “It was really funny sometimes, watching him around her, preening like a peacock.
But he was old enough to be her father and I honestly think that was the way she saw him.”

“What became of her?”

“Who knows? She was there one day and gone the next. That happens more than you might think in D.C. A lot of people just can’t handle the pressure. It was a little weird, though, because when she went, she really went. She never called, never even came back to clean out her desk. When Mary Catherine finally packed up her stuff and took it around to her apartment, her roommate said she’d gone home to Utah.”

“It sounds like maybe it was the senator she couldn’t handle,” Mariah said. “There were some women, you know, who refused to put up with sexual harassment even then.”

“I don’t believe it went as far as sexual harassment,” Randy protested. “I think all he did was flirt with her.”

“Perhaps she didn’t see it that way.”

“Well, whatever, it was too bad. I think she could have had a career in Washington, if she’d wanted it. She wasn’t only a knockout, she was damn smart.”

“Well, based on my own personal experience,” declared Mariah, “I’d say that the senator can be very persistent when he wants to be and he doesn’t handle rejection very well.”

“I’m sorry about that. Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No, of course not.” She laughed. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. But I suppose you should know—I elected to tell him a small untruth.”

“What sort of small untruth?”

She shrugged. “I told him I was married.”

“Why did you do that?”

“I thought it would shake him loose for a while.”

Randy sighed. “As you’ve probably figured, Robert needs a lot of… exercise,” he explained. “We’ve been keeping him on a very short leash.”

“He’s not a baby, for heaven’s sake,” Mariah snapped. “He’s fifty-four years old. Isn’t it time he learned how to control himself?”

“He is what he is.”

“Well, if a little lie keeps him from hitting on me,” she said with a yawn, “that’s all I care about.”

Randy reached out and pulled her into the warm circle of his arms. “Maybe someday that won’t have to be such a lie,” he murmured.

Mariah snuggled against him. “Maybe, someday,” she said, already half asleep.

By the end of March, Robert was steamrolling toward a first-ballot nomination. With his eye fixed on the June 2 California primary, he returned to San Francisco for a two-week round of politicking. Janice Evans had long since left the campaign and gone back to New York to put together her segment on the man behind the candidate. It was scheduled to air a week before the primary.

“I’m doing my part to win you the nomination,” she told him over the telephone. “So long as no one catches on why.”

“You’re going to make one hell of a press secretary,” he replied, shifting in his chair and wishing she were in town because he’d already gone without for too long.

The Willmont campaign headquarters on Front Street was cranked into full gear. Although still two months away, winning the California primary, and winning it big, was considered essential to put Robert on top going into the convention. The suite of offices was filled to overflowing with teams of tireless volunteer workers, mimeographing dozens of press releases, licking thousands of contribution envelopes, and manning an intimidating bank of telephones.

Mary Catherine had arrived the week before, while the senator was still campaigning in Wisconsin. By the time he appeared at Front Street, on April 2, every last detail of his two-week stint had been arranged.

“Maximum exposure, minimum wear and tear,” she told him. “It’s a work of art, but I can’t take the credit.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because the volunteer staff did it. One woman in particular, who’s a whiz at organization. She put the schedule to
gether, made all the reservations, prepared press releases for the locals at every stop, and now she’s working on half a dozen different promotional packets.”

“Point her out,” Robert requested.

Mary Catherine scanned the busy work area. “There she is, over there by the Xerox machine, the one with the dark hair and the designer dress.”

Across the room, the senator caught a glimpse of a neat, attractive woman who looked to be in her middle thirties. She was nothing at all like Mariah Dobbs—dark where Mariah was light, slender where Mariah curved—but there was something about the way she moved, something about the cool efficiency with which she worked that connected the two women in his groin.

“She could be useful,” he murmured.

“Forget it,” Mary Catherine told him. “She has a very successful career and no long-lasting interest in politics. And in case you’ve got something else in mind, she’s also very married.”

“What kind of career?”

“Have you seen a book called
Tapestry?”

Robert shook his head.

“I have,” Randy said. “Pictures and poems about the Southwest. It was impressive, as I recall.”

“
Tapestry
is one of a whole series of books that she and another woman have done about America,” Mary Catherine noted.

“They’re the same two who did
Dichotomy,”
Randy added. “You know, the book on D.C. that everyone was raving about a few years ago.”

Robert did remember that one. Elizabeth had had it out on the coffee table for months.

“She’s a photographer?”

“No. She’s the poet.”

“What’s she doing here?”

“I guess poets must be voters, too,” Mary Catherine said with a shrug. “She wandered in one day and said she had
some free afternoons, and you were the first politician to come along who wasn’t afraid to tell it like it is.”

“Wait a minute,” Robert said with a sudden frown. “Do I know her? I think she looks familiar to me, but I can’t seem to place her.”

“I can,” Randy told him. “If I’m not mistaken, she was at the groundbreaking ceremony back in December. In fact, I’m pretty sure she wanted to say something to you that day, but then I guess she changed her mind.”

“I must have made quite an impression,” the candidate replied, flashing one of his famous grins and standing up a little straighten.

Karen had been working for the senator’s campaign for three months. She spent Tuesday and Thursday afternoons promoting a man she had every wish to see chewed up into tiny pieces and spit out, and the sheer perversity of it all made her smile while she worked.

“I need to do this,” she told Ted the night before her first day at Front Street. “Don’t ask me why, I just need to do it.”

“I
have
to ask you why,” he protested.

“I’m not sure I can explain it,” she replied. “But this is a man who almost killed me and certainly changed my entire life—and I don’t even know who he is. Natalie said that maybe a man who destroyed at twenty-three could have learned to build at fifty-three.
I want to find out if he has.”

“Surely there’s another way,” he argued.

“I can’t learn the things I need to learn about him from reading articles and watching interviews,” she declared. “I know it might sound crazy to you, it does a little to me, but I need to know who he really is, from up close. I have a right to know who he really is.”

The Xerox stopped grinding out copies and Karen bent down to pick up the stack. Straightening up, she turned in the direction of the collating machine, only to collide with a navy-blue suit. Pages scattered in all directions.

“I’m terribly sorry,” the suit said. “Here, let me help you.”

Robert scrambled to gather the errant papers. Up close, he
could see she was perhaps a bit older than he had first thought, but certainly no less attractive.

“We haven’t met,” he said. “I’m Senator Willmont.”

“I’m Karen Doniger,” she replied, amazed at how calm her voice sounded.

He put out his free hand and, while it took all the courage she could muster, she took it.

“I understand you’re something of an expert on America,” he declared.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your books.”

“Oh,” she said in some confusion. “I didn’t realize you were familiar with my work.”

“To be perfectly honest, I’m not. My staff is.”

She allowed herself a slight smile at his ingenuousness. “From a certain, very limited perspective,” she conceded, “I suppose you might say I’m an expert.”

“Your perspective could be very useful to me,” he said. “Maybe we can find time to discuss it.” He still had hold of her hand.

“Maybe,” she returned, disengaging her fingers with apparent unconcern.

It was a noncommittal answer to a non-question. The opening gambit had been played. He returned the stack of papers he had collected with a dazzling smile.

“I’ll look forward to it,” he promised, caressing her with his eyes exactly as he had on a December night so many years ago.

Y
ou didn’t forget that I’m going over to DeeDee’s for dinner tonight, did you?” Amy asked at breakfast the following Tuesday.
“I have to help her study for the history exam.”

“No, I didn’t forget,” Karen replied, putting a bowl of cereal in front of her stepdaughter, and thinking how easy her transition to San Francisco had been, after all.

“I’ve got that meeting with the supervisors tonight,” Ted said. “It’s bound to run late.”