House of Secrets - v4 (40 page)

“Fine.”

Hoyt picked up a small silver hammer to tap free some ice from the frozen mound in the ice bucket. “My mother was a pianist,” Hoyt said. “I’m sure you’ve heard all this. Quite the phenom when she was young. She was performing extensively by the time she was twenty. She gave it all up to marry my father. The touring, I mean. The career. To hear her tell it, it was a blessing. That kind of life is truly grueling. The all-day practicing. The paranoia about the hands. Not to mention the pressures of performing. She said she used to get violently ill before most of her recitals.”

He cocked his head, listening intently to the music. “I always prayed that Christine would take a real interest in the piano.”

“You’re saying you wished that sort of hell on your own daughter?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. That’s not what I’m saying. My mother didn’t give up the instrument, only the performing in public. We always had this sort of music wafting through the house. I find it so soothing. I admit, with Christine it was just a case of foisting my own wishes on my daughter. I guess I’m a sentimentalist and controlling bastard all at once.”

Jenny had arrived in the garden, wielding a trowel. Andy turned from the window.

“Gosh, Whit. I never thought you were a sentimentalist.”

“Aren’t you the funny one.” Hoyt crossed the room and handed Andy his drink. “‘Cheers’ doesn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances.”

Andy took a sip of his drink. The bourbon bit his tongue and sent a liquid warmth into his bloodstream. He knew it was utterly foolish to be drinking at all, let alone so early in the day. “What are you planning to do about Lillian? I don’t think poor Jenny’s got enough weeds out there to keep herself busy all day and night.”

Hoyt looked out the window. His wife was down on her knees, digging the trowel in the soft dirt. He tapped his glass against Andy’s. “I’m leaving Lillian in your and Christine’s hands, Andrew. If Chrissie wants her mother here, that’s fine. It’s a large house.”

He moved back over to the couch where he remained standing. “Jenny will roll with whatever is needed. That’s the kind of person she is. She’s pliable. I mean that in a good way, of course.”

Andy smirked. “That must be nice.”

Hoyt looked sharply over at his son-in-law. “Let me tell you something. Until you’ve lived with someone like Lillian you have no idea what
un
pliable is. You and Christine have conducted yourselves admirably, in my opinion.”

“I agree.” Andy stepped to the armchair and dropped into it. “All told we’ve been pretty fortunate. But this VP thing, Whit. Even before this whole nightmare with Michelle, it was shaping up to be a major problem.”

“But not an insurmountable one.”

Andy shrugged. “I guess that doesn’t really matter now.”

Hoyt lowered himself onto the couch. “Well, in fact it does.”

Andy froze. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I’ve spoken with the president,” Hoyt said.

Warily, Andy set the glass down on the coffee table and inched forward in his chair. “What do you mean?”

“I called him. I told him he might not want to be too quick in accepting your decision to turn down his offer. Certainly not in publicizing it. Obviously he knows the pressure you’re under with this whole situation with Michelle. I told him to expect a call from you to—”

“What?”

“I said—”

“I fucking heard what you said, Whitney! What I want to hear is why you said it!”

Controlling bastard. His very own words. Andy was struck with a nearly unstoppable urge to fish out an ice cube from his glass and whip it at the old man’s head.

Hoyt remained placid. “I said it, Andy, because I believe it’s a rash decision on your part. To say you are currently under a lot of pressure is the understatement of all understatements. This is not the time to be making sweeping decisions, certainly not on something of this magnitude. I told Hyland just to sit on things for now. It’s Saturday. Nobody expects any news from the White House on a Saturday. I told him I would be having a discussion with you.”

“And you are,” Andy said hotly. “A little Schubert, a little bourbon. Nice lubrications, Whitney. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d prefer to make my own decisions.”

Hoyt’s fist came down so swiftly against the coffee table it seemed to catch both men by surprise. “You are making
shit
decisions, young man!”

Andy attempted to respond but was waved off. Hoyt’s words came on like a slashing saber.

“For Christ’s sake, do you think an opportunity like this just comes along every year like the goddamn flu? It doesn’t! Trust me. For most people who have even an
inkling
of desire for the presidency, an inkling is as close as they will ever come to the real thing. You’re in the catbird seat, my friend. Life has been such a cakewalk for you, you’re not even aware of how rare this opportunity is. This is a once-in-a-lifetime moment, son. And this whole casual oh-what-the-hell stance of yours is unacceptable! Jesus H. Christ, you are being
handed
the reins of the mightiest country on earth! Do you even understand that?”

“The vice presidency is not the reins—”

“Stop it!” Hoyt’s eyes shone with a silver gleam. “Stop it. You’re sounding like an idiot. Listen to me. For all your smarts, you apparently have no idea how swiftly a political career can descend. You’re a young handsome stud on a fantastic winning streak. But let me tell you, that does not last forever. Shit happens. You know that phrase. Shit happens. It sure as hell happened to me in my day, and whether you believe it or not, it can happen to you.”

“Oh, I believe that, Whitney. Don’t worry on that count.”

“Good! Believe it! Count on it.
Act
on it. You think you’ve got the rest of your life to do what pleases you, but in this game you do not. There are too many other people trying to do what pleases them as well, my friend, and there just aren’t enough goodies to go around. That makes for a very few winners and many, many losers. It’s time you started understanding that a little better.”

“Would you stop calling me your ‘friend’ like that? It sounds ridiculous.”

“I
am
your friend! Jesus Christ, Andrew, if I didn’t look out for you, I don’t know who would! Certainly not my daughter. I love Chrissie to pieces, but that woman’s dreams are not the ones we need to focus on right now.”

“And whose dreams do
we
need to focus on?” Andy asked.

“Yours! If you could get your head out of your ass and recognize them!”

Andy leaped to his feet. His body was trembling. Hoyt remained seated, his chin tilted slightly, almost as if he was daring his son-in-law to take a clear swipe at it. When Andy finally spoke, the shakiness in his voice betrayed his fury.

“I have a daughter… who has been missing… for two days. I don’t know why she was taken. But you can bet it has everything to do with my being in the public eye.”

Hoyt began to speak, but Andy cut him off.

“Hold on. Let me finish. Michelle is missing, okay? Not a single thing on this planet means anything to me right now except getting her back home safely. Second on that list, I would like to keep my marriage. I love my wife. Pliable, unpliable, I don’t care. I love her, and if truth be told, I haven’t always treated her as well as I should have. I want the chance to do that. If turning down the VP job is one way of doing that, that’s fine with me. I don’t care. Grabbing the reins of the country was
your
dream, Whitney. I’m sorry it didn’t work out. But what
I
want right now is my life back. You know that cliché? I want my life back? That means my wife and my daughter. That’s my life, Whitney. Not all this other crap.”

Andy finished off his drink. He was convinced that with almost no extra effort he could have crushed the glass with his bare hand.

Whitney took his time getting to his feet. He looked directly at Andy as he rounded the couch. He stepped over to the rolltop desk near the front window, where he pulled open one of the top drawers and extracted from it a piece of gray paper. He returned to the couch and read a name from the paper.

“Pamela Hunt.”

Andy flinched. Pam Hunt was a former friend of Jenny Hoyt’s. Briefly, a particular acquaintance of Andy’s as well. Very briefly. Years ago.

“What about her?”

Hoyt consulted the paper again. “Rita Flores.
Washington Post
. Good writer, as I recall. A little strident, but so many are these days.”

“What’s this all about?”

The older man snapped the paper in Andy’s face. “It’s about a man who says he wants to maintain the marriage to the woman he says he loves. It’s also about a man who has been pretty damn reckless going about it. Not to mention foolishly reckless if he ever really did hope to make it to the Oval Office someday.”

He consulted the paper again. “Rachel Bittman.”

“Who is that?”

Hoyt allowed himself a small smile. “Perhaps you don’t collect the names of all your trophies, Andy.”

Andy exploded. “But
you
do? Where the hell did you get these names from? What the… do you have
spies
following me around?”

“I don’t know
spies
, Andy,” Hoyt said calmly. “Spies are CIA. I’ve never really been comfy with that crowd.”

Andy’s knees were not doing their job. He lowered himself back into the chair.

“Andy. This does not need to be a problem between us. I want you to understand that. The last thing in the world I want to do is show these names to Christine.”

“They’re just names,” Andy said thickly. “Why would she believe they meant anything?” But even before the words were out of his mouth, his heart sank. “You have evidence.”

“Audio. And only Miss Flores. Not Jenny’s friend. And certainly not your busty jewelry-store girl. That’s the Bittman woman, in case you’re curious. Though she was quite willing to provide an affidavit if we wished. Not for cheap, mind you. That’s one hard-bargaining lady you tangled with there.”

“You’re a bastard,” Andy said.

Hoyt shot right back. “You, my friend, are reckless.”

“That’s my own business.”

Hoyt shook his head sadly. “Not so. You’re married to my daughter. That makes it partly my business. But more to the point, you are so perfectly. positioned to make it to the White House, Andrew. For sweet Jesus’ sake, I simply cannot stand by and watch you screw up that opportunity.”

“And so… what? You had me
spied
on? What’s the game here, Whitney?”

“The
game
here, son, is that I’m not accepting your giving up on the vice presidency.”

Andy was dumbfounded. “Excuse me?
You’re
not giving up on it?”

“I’m sorry to break this to you, Andrew, but there’s nothing original about you. I’ve seen many versions of you through the years. I know your game. You enjoy the thrill of simply not getting caught. It really is the damnedest thing. Life hands you good looks, a good brain, charm by the bucketful, and it kicks open every single door you’d like to see kicked open. Yet that’s still not enough. It’s all too easy for you. You’re out there walking on water with no effort whatsoever, and the only real hardships are the ones you come up with on your own. Though it’s not really hardship, is it? It’s just a challenge of your own creation. And the challenge isn’t getting women to sleep with you. Golden boys don’t have that problem. The challenge is in not getting caught.”

He gestured with the gray paper. His face was florid.

“Except you’ve
been
caught, son. I’ve had you pegged since before you married my daughter. I’m not being a prude, Andrew. And I’m not even questioning your feelings toward Chrissie. You and I both know you can love your wife wholeheartedly while you’re running around playing barnyard rooster. But if you think there’s never going to be a price to pay for your behavior, you are just dead flat wrong.”

He handed Andy the paper. Andy could barely bring himself to look down at the names typed on it. There would be plenty of time later to process all that Whitney had just said. But right now, Andy’s mind was sprinting as fast as it could in order to stay ahead of all this. The only important point — he felt sick even acknowledging this to himself — was whether or not the name Joy Resnick was on the sheet of paper.

It wasn’t. Andy cleared his head as best he could.

“What exactly is this about, Whitney?” he asked again. “If you’ve had this dirt on me all along, why are you showing it to me now?”

“Fair question,” Hoyt said. “There are several reasons. The first, I want it to stop. You’ve had your adventures. You’ve screwed your last jewelry-store salesgirl. Enough is enough.”

“Fine. What else?”

“The other reason is that I would like to know that the next vice president would have the wisdom to accept the wise counsel of certain senior statesmen from time to time.”

Andy’s eyes narrowed. “Is this for real, Whitney? You want to know if I would listen to your
opinion
if I were to be in the White House? You’re going to blackmail me so that I will
talk
to you?”

“So that you will listen to me.”

“And you’re thinking you’d control me with this garbage?”

Andy went ahead and fished an ice cube out of his glass. Pressing into its natural indentations, he could feel the frozen water giving way to the heat of his fingers.

“Please,” Hoyt said. “That is way too dramatic, Andrew. Let’s give me some credit here. I don’t happen to care for the direction this country is taking. John Hyland is a smart fellow, and clearly popular. But he’s naive. People seem to like that these days. But naivete and fairy-tale thinking will sink this country and sink it fast. I don’t want that. And I don’t think you want that, either. We need to pull this country back. We need to pull this government back. I want influence, Andrew. I do know a thing or two about what’s best for this country, and I want to contribute.”

“You want influence.”

“I want guaranteed influence.”

“I’m sorry, but I seem to be missing the part where you were
elected
to do this. By the people.”