“I’m not going anywhere,” he said firmly. “Why would I leave and let you two have all the fun?”
“It’s not going to be fun, Daily,” Gray said with the manner of an undertaker. “You can’t fuck around with these guys. When it comes to carrying out an assignment, they mean business. So we must mean business too. At the risk of sounding melodramatic, this could easily become a life-or-death situation.”
“I’m already in a life-or-death situation,” Daily retorted. He spread his arms to encompass the shabby room. “I’ve got less to lose than Barrie. I have an incurable disease. I’ve got no wife, no kids, nothing. The way I figure it, if I can help you, I won’t die forgotten.”
Barrie crossed the room, leaned down, and kissed the top of his head. “You’re decrepit and ugly, but I love you dearly.”
“Cut that out. I hate that mushy shit.” He waved her off. “Okay, Bondurant, what do we do first?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Barrie smiled at Jayne Gaston’s son across the threshold of his home. “Hello, Mr. Gaston. Barrie Travis. Do you remember me?”
“All too well. What do you want?”
“I brought you this,” she said, holding out a potted blue hydrangea. “May I come in?”
He hesitated, deciding whether he would speak with her. Finally, he stepped aside. “For a few minutes.”
Ralph Gaston, Jr., was a mild-mannered man in his midthirties who had gone soft around the middle. He lived in a neat brick house in the middle of the block in a middle-class suburb of D.C. Barrie had located him through the telephone directory.
She was led through rooms that were clean but littered with toys. “My wife took the kids to the mall,” he explained as he stepped over a Playskool lawn mower.
“I’m sorry I missed them. I wanted to convey my condolences to them as well.”
She followed him onto a screened back porch, where it appeared he’d been watching an NCAA football game on a portable TV. He turned down the volume and took a sip of the beer on the end table. He did not offer her anything to drink. She took a seat in the aluminum lawn chair he indicated.
Barrie began by clarifying that anything they said was strictly off the record. “I’m not here as a reporter. It might actually make you feel better to know that I was fired from WVUE.”
“In fact it does make me feel better,” he said bluntly. “You got no less than you deserved, Ms. Travis. My mother was a lady. She had dignity, and rarely called attention to herself. You made a black comedy out of her death. After the media circus you created at the hospital, I find it difficult to be civil to you.”
“I don’t blame you. More than anything, I regret that your bereavement was made so public.”
“Are you trying to apologize?”
“Very much so.”
“Apology accepted.” He started to get up. “Now if you’ll excuse—”
“Your mother must have been enormously excited when Dr. Allan hired her,” Barrie said, forestalling him.
“What makes you say that?” His voice cracked like a whip, surprising her.
“Uh, well, because he placed so much trust in her.”
“Oh,” he said, visibly relaxing. “Yeah, she felt really fortunate to get such a good job. She said it was particularly gratifying to have such an important patient.”
Barrie’s journalistic instinct was sizzling like bacon in a hot skillet. What had she stumbled upon here? Her initial motive had been sincere: She had wished to apologize for her gaffe and its effect on the Gaston family.
But this meeting with Ralph Gaston was also part of her and Gray’s strategy to protect Vanessa. They could hardly report the President’s alleged crimes to the local police. They had nothing substantive to take to the Justice Department. They couldn’t assault the White House with guns blazing. Their attack had to be much more subtle.
Gray’s view, with which Barrie and Daily concurred, was that the administration must be destroyed from within. It must collapse upon itself like a dying star. The energy of Merritt’s presidency must, paradoxically, cause its own extinction.
Information was the only weapon available to them. They needed to know exactly what had happened in George Allan’s lake house. Barrie had volunteered to start with Jayne Gaston’s son. She hadn’t really expected to learn anything of monumental importance, but maybe she had underestimated the potential of this interview.
Ralph had used words like fortunate and gratifying to describe his mother’s feelings about her job as the First Lady’s private nurse, which implied that she had felt unworthy of the post. Why? Barrie wondered.
“Did your mother have a history of heart problems?”