Thomas Mallon: Finale: A Novel of the Reagan Years

Nixon knew he’d be bored here today, but nothing bad would happen; there’d be no nervous moments of the sort he’d experienced even at that party for Jeane Kirkpatrick. And there was, he supposed, a chance he’d get a moment to knock some sense into Reagan over the Iran-Contras business.

On the breakfast tray they’d sent around a list of the day’s activities and golf foursomes. He saw that Reagan’s included Shultz and French Smith, his old attorney general. Nixon had given up the game ages ago. When he was on his way up, it had always seemed like some compulsory cocktail party. For all the high spirits he deployed on the course, he’d felt like a caddy to Ike and his rich friends. Even so, Pat was right: a couple of days out here would do him good. But living here would be death. The names of the surrounding towns — Rancho Mirage, Cathedral City — made the place sound like some rich man’s afterlife that had been assembled in outer space, the celestial impression only increased by the wind turbines outside Palm Springs, hundreds of them by now, soon to supply all the electricity. He wondered if the EPA — an agency the kids no doubt think Johnson founded — had a hand in them.

Up ahead he saw a small woman in a straw hat. Her hair didn’t look blond, so it wasn’t Lee Annenberg, and he hoped it wasn’t one of tonight’s dinner guests, some CEO’s wife he would be expected to recognize. Then he saw two men walking behind the woman and realized it was Nancy herself. She waved first — neither of them really wanted to see the other — and he waved back. Once they reached the same spot he accepted a peck on the cheek and offered her his arm.

“We’re so disappointed that Pat’s not here,” said the first lady.

Pat, he remembered, had once described Nancy as a Fabergé egg that talks. “She sends her love,” he said.

“I think these are so wonderful,” remarked Nancy, pointing to the olive trees. “Just look how clean the ground beneath them is — no gooey mess. Lee told me it’s a special pesticide that keeps them from bearing fruit. So you get the pretty trees without all the olive muck.”

Christ, it sounded like Agent Orange. “Have you started to think about a house?” asked Nixon. “For when you both come back to California?”

Nancy appeared startled, ready to say, What’s the rush? “Maybe Bel Air, or Pacific Palisades,” she answered. “Not Beverly Hills.”

“It’s hard to know where’s right. We thought we’d be in San Clemente for the rest of our days. Then I got stir-crazy and we went to New York, which didn’t work for Pat. Of course our circumstances were a little different. The retirement was rather sudden!”

“I worry that ours may be the same!”

Nixon could see her immediately regretting the little burst of candor. Her facial expression now pretended it was a joke, but her tone had betrayed her.

“I know you’ve talked to Ronnie a couple of times,” she said.

Nixon smiled, slyly. “And I know you’ve talked to Bob Strauss.”

“Oh,” said Nancy. “He’s told you?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think of my idea?”

“It’s not a bad one at all. But it’ll fall short because it’s too clever. What’s needed is something simple and sweeping. If you give them a sword,” he explained, quoting his famous line to David Frost, “you’ve got to fall on it yourself. That’s the only way of pulling it out and surviving.”

She knew that he was recommending an abject televised apology. “Please talk to him later,” she entreated. “Face-to-face may be more effective than the phone.”

“Or I could send him another fax!”

It was Nixon’s turn to wish he hadn’t said something. But she just looked at him with those huge eyes; he could see she didn’t know what he was referring to.

She came to a halt, and the agents behind them stopped as well. She patted his arm. “You know, Ronnie always hoped to make you ambassador to China. He says that you accomplish more on your private trips over there than Winston Lord does for us officially.”

“Well, I’m touched to hear that. But it was never in the cards.” Nixon paused. “You know, what Ron needs to think about is not just where he wants to live but what he wants to do once it’s over. In ’89, I mean,” he hastened to add.

“Yes,” Nancy answered, with a sigh that acknowledged how much there was to survive between now and then. Nixon could see that in and of itself the question about postpresidential activity didn’t really engage her. There’d always been, for all their ambition, a strange laziness to her and Reagan.

They walked in the direction of the pool, toward its terrace’s circular white awnings, which rose on long poles, like lorgnettes positioned to shield individual sunbathers.

“Well,” Nancy now told him, “I promised Lee I would check on my rose.” All the first ladies and female British royals had one bred in their honor here. There was a whole little garden of them.

“And I should turn back,” he replied.

Each was relieved to be veering off from the other.

“See you at lunch?” Nancy asked.

The idea appealed to him no more than golf. Dinner, with all the money men and showbiz waxworks, would be plenty.

Nixon flashed her his don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it smile. “Let’s say cocktails instead. I’ll keep to myself for lunch. I’m looking forward to just some cottage cheese — in my cottage!”

—

The Arlington branch of the Riggs National Bank, which held the checking account of Mr. Nicholas Carrollton ($416.50 in available funds), remained open until noon on New Year’s Eve. The branch also housed a safe-deposit box in that name, and at eleven a.m. Nick went to the bank with Anders Little and removed an envelope from the long, flat metal container that he’d seen only once, some months ago, when Spitz Channell helped him fill out the paperwork required to obtain it.

Once they returned to the car, Anders counted the money without removing his leather gloves, which were thin enough not to interfere with his flicking of the bills. The cash amounted to just under forty-five grand.

“And you never touched any of this, right?” he asked Nick one more time.

“No. When I made that joke to you about having a great cash flow, it was just ’cause, like, I knew the money was there ? I still don’t know exactly why it’s been there, or what you and I are going to do with it.”

Anders put the bills back into their envelope. “Did Terry Dolan have any favorite charities?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What about the organization that helped him?”

Twenty minutes later the two of them were parked outside the offices of the Whitman-Walker AIDS clinic in Adams Morgan — on the corner of Belmont Road, as it happened. Anders could look through the driver’s window and toward Channell’s apartment. Nick, wearing a knitted cap and a scarf that covered his mouth, went inside and put the envelope, now marked DONATION/FROM AN ANONYMOUS FRIEND, on the desk of a receptionist who’d gotten up for a quick break.

“Wow,” he said to Anders after returning to the car. “I don’t suppose I could take a tax deduction for that? Kidding! ”

Anders wasn’t surprised to find himself laughing. Since Sunday night, after talking to Anne, he had felt a lightening of the spirit, a sort of pleasant limpness, as if a fever were breaking. This morning at six-thirty, when Nick had brought him his running shoes — holding them by the laces with his teeth, in imitation of a faithful dog — Anders had, to his own and Nick’s disbelief, rolled over and said, “I’m sleeping in. Why don’t you do the same?”

Neither had to go into work today, and once the money was gotten rid of, Anders drove back to Arlington and dropped Nick at his own place.