Murder Inside the Beltway - Margaret Truman [45]
“You bet, honey,” he said. “As soon as the election is over and Uncle Bob is in the White House, we are getting on a plane and flying to Hawaii. How’s that sound?”
“That’s far away.”
“Yes, it is, far away from Washington. You’ll love it there. You can learn how to do the hula dance.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“You’ll see.”
“Have you made reservations?” his wife asked.
“Not yet, but I will.” He stood. “Excuse me. I have to shower and dress.”
“You’re having lunch with Scraggs?” Sue asked as he came down later.
“Ah, yes. Lunch.”
“I don’t know how you stay so slim,” she commented, “with all your fancy lunches.”
“It’s in the genes.” He kissed the back of her head, gave Samantha a peck on her nose, and headed for the garage.
Besides being methodical, Jerry Rollins believed in moderation in almost all things—except when it came to his car, a red 2003 Porsche 911 GT3, 380 horsepower, 0-to-60 in 4.3 seconds, with a top speed of 190 mph. The car provided him with a sense of being alive as he manually slipped through the six gears with precision and ease, secure in its wraparound cockpit, reveling in the air swirling about his head. Sue hated the car. She would say after watching him lavish tender loving care on it that it was his mistress, and refused to drive in it with him, which didn’t bother him in the least. It had cost almost $100,000 back in ’03, money well spent. A mistress would have cost more.
There was, of course, the expense of keeping it in pristine running condition, and the occasional speeding ticket he’d earned over the past five years, but that was part of the appeal. Besides, three days a week on a shrink’s couch wouldn’t be cheap, either, and not nearly as much fun. Actually, he’d been ticketed only a few times. On two occasions, the officers who pulled him over were so admiring of the growling beast that they let him go on his way with only a warning.
He pulled into the underground parking garage in his office building, glided into his reserved parking slot, and rode the elevator up to his suite, where four younger lawyers, and four administrative staff, were already busy. He went directly into his private office and reviewed a lengthy brief prepared by one of his underlings while he awaited the arrival of Karl Scraggs.
Scraggs had been Secretary of the Interior for the first three years of the Pyle administration. He’d resigned, delivering the canard that he wanted to spend more time with his family. Everyone knew better. Scraggs had gotten himself some unfavorable press after being caught in a compromising position with a woman who wasn’t Mrs. Scraggs. He denied any wrongdoing, of course, and his staunch wife stood by his side when he gave his pro forma press conference. But for Pyle, whose last remaining supporters were evangelicals and wealthy developers, Scraggs’s unappreciated notoriety was politically intolerable.
“I consider Karl Scraggs to be a public servant of the first order,” Pyle had said following Scraggs’s resignation, “a man of honor who has worked tirelessly at my side for the good of the American people. I shall miss him as a colleague and as a friend. Godspeed, Karl!”
Scraggs was best described as a roly-poly man, fond of wide, garishly colored ties, and a signature straw hat in summer. He seemed to laugh at anything and everything, a pleasant fellow to be around, unless you were negotiating something, in which case a venal vein replaced the laughter; the counting of fingers was recommended.
Scraggs arrived at eleven carrying a twenty-page proposal for his book.
“Who’s writing this with you?” Rollins asked as he flipped through the pages.
“A sweet little thing from back home. Got a nice way with words. She’s had some things published. She’s quite a poet.”
Rollins cleared his throat before saying, “A major publisher probably won’t accept her as your collaborator, Karl. They’ll want to assign a writer with whom they’ve worked before, a writer with a track record.”
“Well, then, that’s the way it’ll have to be. She’ll be