Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [61]
“It doesn’t?”
“No. You’re the only person in my life who won’t let me get away with anything, and that’s good. I need people who’ll be straight with me, tell it like it is. Want to work on my campaign?”
“No.”
Simmons laughed. “Maybe you’ll change your mind down the road. Come with me to Chicago.”
“Why?”
“Give you a chance to see our old stomping grounds. How long since you’ve been back?”
“Six months.”
“I’d love to have you with me, Phil. I’d really appreciate it. I’m staying at the Ambassador East. That’s where we’ll have the exploratory committee meetings. But it won’t be all work. There’ll be plenty of time to enjoy a drink in the Pump Room. Remember the nights we spent there downing a few?”
“Nice place.”
“So you’ll come?”
“What about your staff?”
“They’ll be with us, but that’s what they are—staff. I need a friend.”
While Simmons had been making his pitch for Rotondi to accompany him, Rotondi had been silently processing the request. He wasn’t interested in tagging along for the ride just to be Simmons’s listening post, but it occurred to him that there was another reason to spend time in Chicago.
“Sure, Lyle. Why not?”
“Great. Neil has arranged for a private jet through the Marshalk Group. Sure you can tear yourself away from your lady friend–chef for a few days?”
“I never see her anyway,” Rotondi said. “She feeds half of Washington.”
“Marriage on the horizon?”
Rotondi ignored the question. “I spent time this afternoon with Marlene,” he said.
Simmons screwed up his face. “Why?” he asked.
“What do you mean why? I always got along with Marlene and—”
“That doesn’t say much for you. She’s been nothing but trouble, always filling Jeannette with poisonous thoughts about me and our marriage.”
Rotondi was mute.
“Despite that, I’ve been damn good to her, Phil, damn good! If it weren’t for me, she’d be a bag lady out on the street.”
“She was Jeannette’s sister,” Rotondi said, stating the obvious.
“Yeah, I know, you marry into a family you take the good and the bad, the bitter with the sweet. Well, believe me, my friend, Marlene Boynton is the bad and the bitter all rolled into one. Hungry?”
“Not particularly.”
“Let’s grab something anyway and talk about more pleasant things. Charlie Palmer’s? I’m in the mood for red meat.”
• • •
While U.S. senator Lyle Simmons and former prosecutor Philip Rotondi, college roommates who loved the same woman, dined at one of Washington’s signature steak houses—a truffle-basted filet mignon for Simmons, salmon with corn ravioli and corn ragout for Rotondi—another Simmons was sitting down for a family dinner at home. Neil Simmons’s wife, Alexandra, had ordered in Chinese, which those reporters still stationed outside the house dutifully noted, and envied.
Neil had spent most of the day at his office at the Marshalk Group, trying to focus on business while fending off calls from the media. He’d almost lost it while approaching his driveway when a TV cameraman stood in his way to videotape him through the windshield. For a split second, he considered taking his foot off the brake and jamming the accelerator to the floor. But discretion overcame temptation, and he waited until the cameraman finally stepped out of the way.
“I can’t take this anymore,” Alexandra said as she and Neil emptied plastic containers into serving dishes.
“It’ll be over soon,” Neil said, giving a salad he’d made a final toss. “Once the memorial service is behind us, the vultures will go away.”
His assurances didn’t appease her. She fairly snarled as she touched the toaster oven in which she’d heated up General Tsao’s chicken, and burned her finger. “This is so harmful to the boys’ psyches,” she said, running cold water over her burn. Alex Simmons had read virtually every book ever written on the psychology of raising children.
“They’ll survive,” he said.
“You don’t care, do you, Neil?”
“Care about what, that some bastard murdered my mother?”
“I’m not talking about that. I am talking about getting the ghouls outside to go away. Jesus, Neil, your father is a United States senator. Why doesn