John Sandford - Silken Prey

“Things are developing and it’s almost all good,” Schiffer said. “I talked to Ray Jorgenson, just in passing, and he says that Smalls is toast. That doesn’t mean we can let up: we have to go after him even harder. Push his head under. Kick him while he’s down.”

“I thought we were doing that,” Taryn said.

“We are, but we can always do more. Ben Wells is giving a talk to the Minneapolis chamber, and if we could commit to a twenty-five-thousand-dollar donation in two years, and if we can plant a question with somebody, he’s willing to go off on Smalls. You know, an unscripted spontaneous statement, spoken in real but slightly saddened anger. He’d call for Porter’s withdrawal.”

Wells was a Republican congressman, who might like a shot at Smalls’s Senate seat someday, after he grew up. Taryn asked, “Would it help twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth?”

“Yes. It’d absolutely curdle the Republican vote,” Schiffer said. “But Wells wants a call from your father, since you wouldn’t be able to make the donation. You know, being . . . a loyal mainstream Democrat.”

“I’ll talk to Father tonight,” Taryn said. “He’ll want me to kick the money back to him somehow, but that’s not a problem.”

“Good. Then let’s make it happen.” Schiffer drew a line through an item on the yellow pad.

• • •

THEY SPENT FORTY-FIVE MINUTES plowing through the minutiae of the campaign. Taryn was running as a law-and-order Democrat, as conservative as she could be and still get the nod from the party. The party understood the problem with taking down Smalls, and hadn’t really expected her, or any other Democrat, to win, so it was willing to overlook a little political incorrectness. On the other hand, she couldn’t be too incorrect.

Walking the line was both interesting and delicate.

Schiffer said, “About the gorgeous David. If you really are thinking of breaking it off with him—or in him—I’d suggest that you wait for three weeks. Everybody understands that it’s a nice, adult relationship, and Smalls has banged enough strange women that he won’t mention it, but you probably wouldn’t want to call it off right now. It’d make you look flighty. Or unsteady. Or fickle.”

“Okay. I’ve about had it with David’s act, but he doesn’t know that,” Taryn said. “I’ll keep him on until the excitement dies down.”

“Excellent.” Another item checked off on Schiffer’s list. “Now, over at Push. We fully support Push and we’ll find money for it somewhere. The problem is that the Republicans are unnecessarily locking up money or sending it off to their already-rich friends . . .”

“. . . and as a longtime successful businesswoman, I know how that works,” Taryn recited, “I adamantly oppose socialism for the rich while the less-well-to-do have their funding cut off . . .”

“. . . for important neighborhood programs like Push,” Schiffer said, “which keeps the drug dealers out of our neighborhoods . . .”

“. . . especially black ones with cornrows, who wear hoodies and those funny low-crotch pants and listen to that awful hopscotch music, or whatever it is.”

Schiffer recoiled: “Oh, Jesus Christ, Taryn, don’t give me a heart attack,” she said, clutching at her chest. “Remember: no sense of humor. How many times do I have to tell you that: No sense of humor . Humor can get you in all kinds of shit and we’ve got this won, if we don’t get funny.”

“Then we go to Borders,” Taryn continued. “I don’t drink too much and I tell everybody that I don’t want their money but I do want their love, and—”

“No humor,” Schiffer said. “You don’t want their money, but you do want their respect—”

“I got it, I got it,” Taryn said. “You need to take a couple of aspirin, Connie.”

Schiffer shook a finger at her: “I lost the first race I ran because I didn’t nail down those details. I let my candidate speak honestly. I let him be funny and intelligent: that was the last time I’ll make that mistake. Now listen to what I’m saying, goddamnit. You want to be a U.S. senator? You want to go higher than that? Then you stay on program.”

Taryn nodded: “Yes. I know and I agree. I like to tease you, but I’m on program.”

Schiffer relaxed. “I know. You’re a natural at this, and with training, you’ll get even better. You’ll get that big-time polish. Some people spend twenty years in the Senate and never get that. You could. You could be a contender.”

“If I stay on program.”

“Absolutely.”

They both knew what they were thinking, though neither said it: Taryn Grant had what it took to be president. She had the business background, she understood economics and finance, she had the money wrapped up, she looked terrific, she had a mind that understood the necessary treacheries: a silken Machiavelli.

• • •

THEY DID PUSH at four o’clock, and Borders at five, and Taryn stayed on program. Dannon hovered in the background, with what looked like a G&T in his hand, which was really water with a slice of lemon. Alice Green stayed outside with the cars.

Taryn knew she’d done well with the richie-rich crowd. They were, her involvement with the Democratic Party to one side, her people. She’d known many of the younger ones since childhood, and had slept with two of them.

So she was a little surprised when, after she’d given her talk on shared values, Schiffer had appeared as she began circulating through the Borders living room, and had taken her arm in a nearly painful grip and hustled her out to a hallway.

“We’ve got a problem,” she said.

“What?” Taryn thought, Murder.

“Smalls didn’t do it. Didn’t do the porn,” Schiffer said. “One of the governor’s people, Rose Marie Roux, has been on television saying that it’s possible that he was framed. Smalls had a spontaneous press conference demanding that the people who did this be caught. There’s an implication there . . . that it could have been an opposition trick. That would be you.”

“When did this happen?” Taryn asked.

“Top of the five-o’clock news. Everybody has it. We need to come up with a reaction and we need it fast.”

“Let me finish the hand-shaking,” Taryn said. “You go sit in the corner and think.”

• • •

TARYN WORKED THE CROWD for another half hour, then swirled out of the room, calling out good-byes. Schiffer was waiting at the door with Green. Taryn had four vehicles, the largest and most ungainly and only American one being the large silver GMC Yukon Denali, which she’d acquired the day before she launched her campaign. She didn’t want the right-wingers asking why she didn’t “Buy American”; and if some leftie asked about the environmental impact, she’d ask, “What, you don’t believe in Minnesota’s ethanol economy?” In any case, the Porsche, Jag, and M5 stayed under wraps.

Leaving the house, she kissed Ellen Borders on the cheek, squeezed her husband’s biceps, pointed Green, who usually rode with her, at the security car, trading places with Barb Siegel, the media fixer.

Schiffer drove, and Dannon and Green fell in behind, discreet in the gray BMW sport-utility escort vehicle.

In the car with Schiffer and Siegel, Taryn closed her eyes and said, aloud, “ We understand that this news is a preliminary statement, but we certainly hope that Senator Smalls is found not responsible for this distasteful child pornography discovery. But, as long as we have to talk about unpleasant things, let me say that I bitterly resent Porter Smalls’s implicit suggestion that his political opponents may be involved with this situation. I’m his only political opponent at the moment, so that was aimed at me. I’ll tell Senator Smalls this: I’ve long been involved in child-care issues, and have devoted quite a lot of my hard-earned money to charities that help children. Need I point out that he has not been? That he should suggest this . . . just totally creeps me out.”