Dixie Browning – Rocky And The Senator's Daughter (страница 2)

“Rocko, good to see you, man,” someone else called out.

He made it about halfway to the door, weaving his way through clusters of people he knew vaguely. Got held up between one of the massive sofas and a cluster of women picking over the bones of some poor devil obviously known to them all.

“Did you see him at that last press conference? I swear, if I looked like that, I’d slit my—”

A redhead wearing a black suit about two sizes too small leaned forward, sloshing her drink dangerously close to the rim of her glass, and said in a whisky-thickened voice, “Honey, I peeked into his underwear drawer, and believe you me, those rumors are the gospel truth!”

Gossip was the order of the day. Snide comments, catty remarks. Rocky glanced at his watch. He’d planned on being in and out within twenty minutes, tops. It had taken him that long just to work his way across the room. Anyone who had been around pols and media types as long as he had should have known what to expect. With scandal in D.C. as plentiful as cherry blossoms in spring, it didn’t take much effort to pick up a thread here and another one there and weave them into a story that could ruin a few lives and leapfrog a career.

Thank God he hadn’t chosen that route. He didn’t have the stomach for it. Once he’d realized that his objectivity as a reporter was beginning to give way to advocacy, he had asked for reassignment. It had meant not seeing as much of Julie, but then, the hours spent by her bedside had been more for his sake than for hers. The doctor had told him right from the first that, while she might appear to be responding, critical portions of her brain had been injured. That it was only a matter of time before her vital functions began to shut down.

Despite the prognosis, he had gone on hoping. Reading to her, taking her flowers, relating news about people they both knew. Resignation had set in slowly, over a matter of years. He wasn’t even aware of when he’d stopped hoping.

Someone bumped into him, spilling a drink on his sleeve.

“Oops, sorry.”

“No problem.” He had to get out of here. This time he almost made it to the door. “Excuse me—pardon me.”

The woman blocking his exit turned. Her eyes widened as she gave him a slow once-over. “Well, hello, honey. Not leaving so soon, are you?”

“Another appointment.” No thanks. It’s been a long, dry spell, but I’m not that hard up.

Three women emerged from one of the suite’s two bathrooms and paused, still talking, blocking the door to the hallway. A brunette with a spectacular super-structure was saying, “Well, anyhow, like I said, the first two publishers turned it down flat. They as good as told us to take it to the tabloids, but the very next day my agent showed it to another publisher and he offered us a six-figure advance, and my agent said—”

“Forget what your agent said, Binky, check with a lawyer. He’s the one you want beside you the first time you’re sued for libel.”

“No chance. Who’s going to step forward and claim credit for something like that? Besides, my agent says I’m safe because this is a first-person account and I’m not actually naming names.”

“Aw, come on, Binky, you’re not claiming to be Sully’s first, are you?”

All three women laughed. “Are you kidding?”

Amused in spite of himself Rocky squeezed past and waited for the elevator. The woman called Binky was still holding forth. If he wasn’t mistaken, she did a social column for one of the weeklies. He’d once heard her chest referred to as the Grand Tetons.

“Listen, I’m talking group stuff here,” she said, her heavily made-up eyes sparkling avidly. “Kinky like you wouldn’t believe! Poor Sully said his wife was about as exciting as wet bread. He had a taste for fancier fare, if you know what I mean.”

“I met her once at a fund-raiser. His wife, I mean. She struck me as real uptight. All the same, I’d watch my back if I were you. You know what they say about those quiet types.”

Rocky would take his chances with a quiet type anyday over these pampered piranhas. He felt sorry for the wife of whatever poor jerk they were discussing. Evidently she’d been victimized first by her husband and now was about to be pilloried all over again by the public’s insatiable appetite for dirt.

“Yeah, well who’s interested in her?” Binky unbuttoned her black jacket to reveal the scrap of ecru lace she wore instead of a blouse. “Did I tell you they’re rushing production? They’ve got three editors working on it, and marketing has booked me on all the talk shows. I mean, with a title like The Senator’s Daughter’s Husband’s Other Women, it’s gonna make all the lists, probably the top slot, because my agent says—”

The elevator stopped. The doors opened. Rocky stood there, frowning in thought until the doors silently closed again. He had once known a senator’s daughter who had later married a congressman. Was she talking about that particular senator’s daughter? The one who had married that particular congressman? Even by Washington standards, that had been rough. The press had been all over it.

Not that he’d really known her, Rocky amended as another elevator stopped to let off a couple of late arrivals. Still frowning, he stepped onboard. Actually, he’d only spoken to her one time, years before her father’s misdeeds had begun to surface. Years before she had married the senator’s trained seal in the House—a man who had gone down in flames in a separate scandal shortly after the senator had been figuratively tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail.

Rocky had been covering the Middle East Summit when the wedding had taken place. He remembered watching some of the coverage. The Sullivans and Joneses, while hardly in the Kennedy class, had still made a pretty big splash. Even the veep had attended the festivities. She’d made a beautiful bride. Not pretty in the usual sense, but with an innate poise that could easily be called regal. He’d caught a flash of that funny little half smile he remembered from their one and only meeting years earlier.

It had been a few years after that when the lid had blown off the first scandal. There’d been rumblings before, but nothing that couldn’t be blamed on partisan politics. Finally, with its back to the wall, Justice had appointed an independent council to investigate, and Rocky had watched from whatever assignment he happened to be on as one after another, Senator J. Abernathy Jones’s sins were laid bare.

The feeding frenzy had eventually brought down half a dozen smaller fry, but if memory served, the young congressman his daughter had married some six years earlier had not been among them. Sullivan’s downfall had come a year or so later, following what had started out as a simple drug bust. By then the senator had been history.

Rocky hadn’t wanted to watch the second chapter unfold, but with all the networks covering the story, it was unavoidable. And, unfortunately, understandable. Juicy scandals had a way of selling newspapers, hiking ratings, making careers. That had been proven too many times to be in doubt.

So he’d witnessed the handsome young congressman’s downfall, watched as the press—his own peers—had hounded the man’s wife, his office staff, even his barber. He remembered thinking once, seeing Sullivan’s wife trapped by a mob of yelling reporters between the front door of her Arlington house and a car driven by her housekeeper, that Joan of Arc might have worn the same stoic expression.

That had been more than a year ago. Immersed in his own crisis, Rocky hadn’t thought of her since then.

Now he did.

Her name had been Sarah Mariah Jones the first time he’d ever seen her. It had been at a fund-raiser sponsored by a couple of Hollywood celebrities. She must have been about fifteen years old at the time. He’d been a green reporter and she’d been a gawky kid trying hard to look as if she weren’t dying to be someplace else. Anyplace else. He remembered reading somewhere that her mother had died recently. The senator’s habit of using her for photo ops, then shoving her into the background had been pretty well established. Rumor had it that years ago he had forgotten and left her at a town hall meeting in a school gymnasium for about six hours before he’d remembered to send someone to pick her up.

It had occurred to him that day at the fund-raiser that she’d been painfully aware of her own role in her father’s struggling reelection campaign. She was there to be used the way he used everyone else, then shoved aside until the need arose again. The old pol had played the family card for all it was worth, ever since his opponent, a married man with three children, had been caught in a compromising situation with an aide.

It had been the standard celebrity bash. Only those journalists who shared the senator’s ideology had been invited to meet and mingle with the glitterati. Rocky, who had considered himself politically unbiased at that early stage of his budding career, had been on his way out when he’d spotted the girl.

In a dress that was obviously expensive and painfully unflattering, the young Sarah Mariah had watched her father buttonhole another major contributor, clasp his hand, slap him on the arm and then proceed to apply the thumbscrews. Something about her expression had caught his attention. It reminded him too much of children he’d seen with eyes far too old for their tender years.