Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

“Another winner, Steve,” she said confidently.

“They get thinner every day,” Pace complained. “I wish I could get my hands on some substance.”

“It’ll come. As long as you’re out on the streets twenty hours a day, seven days a week, looking for it.”

“Gee, thanks,” he replied.

He was shutting down his computer when Bobby Clack, a young news intern, hailed him. “Hey, Steve. The call on line four’s for you.”

He punched the button and picked up the receiver. “Pace.”

“Steve, we’ve got to talk.”

Pace recognized the voice immediately. But the cryptic greeting was unlike Mike McGill. “Sure, Mike. Go ahead.”

“Not over the phone. Someplace I can get to pretty quick from Dulles, but someplace where no one will know us.”

Pace’s concern grew. This was squirrelly as hell. “How about a place called the Toodle Inn? It’s on Route 50 about ten miles east of you. Do you know that area?”

“I know Route 50. I never heard of the place. Are you serious? The Toodle Inn?”

Pace gave him directions.

“Okay. An hour. Be there. Something lousy’s coming down.”

Harold Marshall was more than fashionably late, and Evelyn Bracken was furious.

Evelyn’s annual spring bash, a society-calendar highlight in the nation’s capital, was well into its third hour. Marshall had promised to get there early to help with final preparations, but he’d called at seven, as the first guests arrived, to say he was detained unavoidably on Capitol Hill by events relating to the Dulles accident.

Angry though she was, Evelyn put on her party face and explained to her guests that Marshall’s tardiness was due to the incredibly important responsibilities of his Senate position. By touting her lover’s status, she elevated her own, and that alone made her feel better about spending the first critical hours of her party—including the dinner—unescorted. So convincing was she that when Marshall finally made an appearance in the lantern-lit gardens behind Evelyn’s Potomac, Maryland, manse, it was an entrance of sorts.

It was attention he received too rarely since the Republicans lost control of the Senate in 1986, and he was forced to hand the gavel of the Transportation Committee back to Democrat Garrison Helmutsen, whom Marshall regarded as a singularly retarded Minnesota farm boy.

The senator was enjoying the moment, saying brief hellos on the three brick steps at the end of a corridor running from the main front foyer through the house to the backyard. Evelyn swept the conversation away by embracing Marshall, kissing the air beside his right ear and crooning, “Darling, I was certain you’d never be able to come because of that simply awful mess at Dulles. I’m so delighted to see you. Come, let’s find someone who can fetch you a drink. You must be dying.” She drew out the last word as if she were playing a scene, as indeed she was.

When they reached a spot on the trimmed lawn somewhere between the magnolias and the dogwood, dimly lit by two Polynesian flame lanterns, Evelyn stopped abruptly and withdrew her right hand from the crook of Marshall’s left arm. Amid the lanterns, Evelyn Bracken was on a burn of her own.

“There’s nothing about that damned accident that couldn’t have waited until Monday morning. Do you do these things on purpose, to humiliate me?”

Marshall, who had drawn a deep breath in anticipation of this sort of confrontation, exhaled slowly. He looked down on Evelyn from a height of six-feet-two and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Darling, don’t you think, instead of railing at me, you should be singing the praises of whatever deity gave you this magnificent evening for your little gathering? No? Well, since you insist on railing at me, I must tell you this isn’t your average Senate business, and no, it could not wait until Monday morning. I do not crash large aircraft with more than three hundred people aboard on purpose, especially if they are powered by engines built in my state. And you are not humiliated. You are the consort of United States Senator Harold Kingsley Marshall, who would appreciate it if you would act the part… and your age, while you’re at it.”

“Harold, stop it. I hate it when you lecture. This is my big occasion. It only happens once a year. It’s all so difficult to manage properly in the best of circumstances, and it’s particularly difficult without an escort. Is it any wonder I’m miffed?”

“Miffed?” Marshall repeated with mock alarm. “You’re miffed? Does that go hand in hand with beautiful, rich, and bitchy?”

Evelyn smiled and dropped her eyes. “I’m sorry. How would a double martini suit?”

“Fine, in a minute,” Marshall said in clipped words, his voice suddenly cold. He held her by the upper part of her left arm, his grip tighter than it needed to be. “Don’t ever question me, or my office, or my business again. I will do what my duties—and my peculiar personal interests—require, and then, as time permits, I will get to you.” Evelyn was trying to pull free. Marshall continued, holding fast to her arm, his cold blue eyes intent and angry on her face. “We’ve had this conversation before,” he said. “I do not wish to have it again.”

He released her. “Now I’ll have that drink,” he said.

She spun to the task of his martini, catching the eye of a cocktail waitress working the crowd. “Be a dear and fetch me a double Absolut martini, on the rocks with a twist, very, very dry. On second thought, make it two. I could use one myself.”

Evelyn turned back to Marshall, but he had been cornered by Charles Lauder, the Republican congressman from Los Angeles and the ranking minority member of both the House Public Works Committee and its aviation subcommittee. As important as it was to Marshall to have Converse in his state, it was equally important to Lauder to have Sexton in his district.

Evelyn feared the men would remain locked in conversation on the fringes of her party for the rest of the evening, although by their presence they added to the desired prestige of the get-together in her garden. And their conversation, carried on at a voice level that would not reach nearby ears, added an aura of intrigue that would spice reports on the party in Monday’s newspapers. The old adage about politics in Washington was proved again: There is more business conducted over drinks after 6:00 P.M. than in all of the regular working hours combined.

Evelyn’s thoughts were interrupted by the cocktail waitress bringing the two drinks.

“Thank you,” the hostess said, turning toward the earnest conversation behind her. “Pardon me for interrupting, gentlemen. Your drink, darling,” she said, handing one large martini to Marshall. “Charlie, you look wonderful, handsome, and oh, so sexy. If it weren’t for the presence of this buckeye from the other body, I might try to bed you.”

Lauder laughed, allowing himself to be pulled into the game. “Evelyn, that’s a splendid offer, but whatever would we do with my wife?”

“Jeannine?” Evelyn leaned in very close to Lauder’s face, letting her left breast rest against his arm. “But, Charlie,” she said in a loud stage whisper, “Jeannie and I are best friends. Surely she’d understand. I’m harmless.”

Lauder raised a hand to Evelyn’s shoulder, copping a feel of his own on the way up. “I think that’s what the asp said to Cleopatra, my dear.”

Marshall took two long sips from his martini as the scene played out before him. At that point, he’d seen quite enough.

“Evelyn, be a darling and circulate without me for a few more minutes,” he said. “Charlie and I have some business to finish. We won’t be much longer, I promise.” His mouth smiled, but his eyes didn’t, and Evelyn left the two men as quickly as she could without appearing to follow an order.