No Way To Treat a First Lady Read online

  But even Nick Naylor, veteran of a hundred seemingly hopeless public relations challenges, was at a loss as to how to cope with Babette’s new starring role as the President’s mistress or, as one glib pundit put it, frequent guest in the Lincoln Head Room.

  Max had been complaisant about his wife’s relationship with the late President. His physical ardor for Babette had long since given way to the more exotic refreshments provided by Los Angeles’s leading madams. He had even built a separate bungalow on the property, referred to by the household staff as “the Pump House.” It had its own driveway so that Madam Vicki’s pageant of international talents could come and go without having to pass a tight-lipped Babette on her way home from a grueling day of making not very good movies.

  Max had found it quite pleasant to be a friend of the President of the United States. It certainly impressed his patrons overseas. But this kind of publicity was disastrous. It wasn’t as though he were CEO of a corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Max was an entrepreneur with “ties” to rather exotic people. Now that his wife had become notorious, he found details of his previously quiet business dealings leading the evening news. He was not pleased by this. He was not pleased that three dozen cameramen had permanently encamped outside the gates of Hanging Gardens, their estate. Thank God for the helipad. He was not pleased by the visits from the FBI, the Secret Service, and those grim-faced helots from the Justice Department. He had hired every lawyer in Los Angeles to handle it.

  “Whatever strategy we adopt,” Nick Naylor said over his untouched lobster tarragon salad, “we need to be very consistent with the testimony that Babette will be offering on the stand.”

  It was a beautiful, cool, perfect sunny day in Bel Air. The garden blazed with hibiscus and bougainvillea and jacaranda, the air thrummed with the soft sound of procreating hummingbirds. Yet Nick, Babette, and Max sat inside. The Grab–Van Ankas had not enjoyed an outside meal on their patio since the tabloid television show Crime Time had one day trained long-range parabolic microphones on Babette and Max as they lunched outside, calling each other names not found inside preprinted Valentine’s Day cards.

  “However,” Nick continued, “we need to get our message out.”

  “What message?” Max said. “That she wasn’t humping him?”

  “Max,” Babette said.

  Nick pressed ahead. “I’d like to gin up some press stories about the many other aspects of Babette. Her wonderful charity work, for instance.”

  “What, with the cripples and the retards?”

  “Well, among others.”

  “I knew that was gonna come back and bite us on the ass.”

  “You and Babette have been powerful forces for change in the Middle East,” Nick persisted manfully. “Your donations, the hospital, your company that generously provides Sidewinder missiles and cluster bombs to the Israeli Defense Forces at significant discounts, the prefab houses for the West Bank settlements, Babette’s Concert for Peace in Jerusalem.”

  “Peace,” Max snorted. “They threw rocks. It was a rock concert.” He chuckled and forked avocado and lobster into his already full mouth. “That’s good. Rock concert. You should have thought of that. You’re supposed to be so good with the words.”

  “An international film star and singer, willing to put herself in harm’s way, to bring Arab and Jew together—”

  “They came together. They tried to kill each other.”

  “The larger point is that the concert was a milestone in”—what?—“Babette’s commitment to the peace process.”

  “I wouldn’t push the concert.”

  “But—”

  “She wanted the concert, not the Israelis. I hadda pay that putz minister a quarter million up front, just to—”

  “Max.”

  “Forget the concert. Trust me. You don’t want those vultures digging into the concert.”

  The sound of a helicopter rattled the French doors. “Is that one of yours?” Nick asked.

  Max wiped a glob of tarragon mayonnaise that had been on his chin for twenty minutes and with disgust hurled his napkin on the table. It was one of the few dramatic gestures left to powerful men.

  “I’ve had it with these helicopter pricks. Is there no fucking privacy left in this country? I’m going to the island,” Max announced.

  “Island?” Nick asked.

  “None of your business. None of anyone’s business.”

  “It’s off the coast of Panama,” Babette said.

  “Don’t tell about the island. Jesus Christ, you tell everything. That’s why we’re in this to begin with. What do I have to do, have your tongue removed surgically?”

  “Max,” said Nick, “I’m not about to tell anyone about your island. But how is it going to look if you go off to an island and leave Babette to face the music?”

  “She made the music. She can sleep in it.”

  “The Shah of Iran used to own it,” Babette said. “Max bought it from the Shah. Well, the wife. After he—”

  “What are you, Architectural Digest? Shut up.”

  “Max,” Nick said, “isn’t there some other place you could go to get away?”

  “You got something against the Shah of Iran?”

  “Personally, no, but—”

  “Let me tell you something. I did business with the Shah of Iran for fifteen years. Tankers, oil, caviar, helicopters, army uniforms—the best uniforms in southwest Asia. Did you ever see pictures of his generals?”

  Nick sighed. “They looked sensational, but—”

  “The first shopping mall in Tehran? I built it. The Shah of Iran was an honorable man. Maybe not the brightest world leader I have met, but you could do business with him. These mullahs? Try bribing them with a bottle of whiskey. They’ll cut off your hand. And this is a pity. This was a beautiful country. I had many friends. What happened to them? Tragic. I can’t even talk about it.”

  “I’ve got to get myself out there,” Babette said.

  “To Iran? They’d eat you alive.”

  “On television. Get myself on television. It makes no sense. Connie Chung, Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer, begging me for interviews. And I can’t even return their calls? What sense does this make? I should go on television.”

  “I’d really, really wait until after the trial,” Nick said.

  “The lawyers said no interviews,” Max said. “You’re not doing interviews.”

  “But I wouldn’t talk about the case. I would talk about the Middle East, about the Kyoto Protocols.”

  “You think they want to hear your views on Gaza and exhaust emissions? Would you explain to her? They wanna talk to you about schtupping the President.”

  “You’ve never taken me seriously.”

  “Did I pay for your peace concert? Do I pay for your whatever you call them, issues advisers?” Max turned to Nick. “Issues advisers she has. On my payroll. One of ’em’s a dyke.”

  “She is not a dyke.”

  Max rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Two hundred grand a year for the three of them. Do you know what they do? They read the newspapers and write ‘briefings’ for her so she knows the difference between the West Bank and an ATM machine.”

  “I am a personal friend of Shimon Peres!”

  “Wonderful. Have him over for dinner. I pay for her to go to Davos in the jet? To Davos she goes every year. To network. She comes back and tells me we have to do something about debt relief. To her, debt relief is me paying her bills.”

  “Excuse me! Excuse me if I care about global warming and hunger and peace while you’re buying up golf courses in Arizona for the Sultan of Brunei.”

  “Where’s dessert? I want dessert.”

  “You could never stand it that Kenneth MacMann cared about what I thought about the Middle East. He valued my input.”

  “Input? The only input he wanted with you was inputting his—”

  “Don’t talk to me. You and your escort services. Do you know what his American Expres
s bill was last month? I saw. Twenty-eight thousand dollars. He puts it on his American Express so he gets points. How smart is that? Mr. Genius International Financier!”

  At such times, Nick yearned for the simpler days of going on television to denounce the latest medical evidence that smoking was bad for you.

  “Why don’t I get back to you in a day or two with some concrete proposals?”

  Perri Pettengill and Boyce lay in bed in Boyce’s Fifth Avenue apartment with its view of Central Park, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, California, and the Pacific Ocean. Scented candles burned on both bedside tables. She had on a cream-colored teddy, no panties, thigh-high stockings made of real silk, drops of Outrage perfume in just the right places.

  Thrilled as she was that Boyce was defending Beth MacMann, Perri wondered. Beth McMann was an undeniably attractive woman. She and Boyce had been engaged. A long time ago, but still.

  So tonight, after taping Hard Gavel, Perri had come straight back to the apartment to make sure everything was ready when he got back from Washington on the last shuttle. Dinner had been waiting, his favorite, linguine alla vongole, with the teeny-tiny clams, bought that morning at an ungodly hour by Fung, Boyce’s butler-cook-concierge, along with a glass of crisp, chilled Orvieto. Boyce permitted himself one glass of wine a night, nothing while trying a case.

  The Billie Holiday CD was on, Manhattan twinkled expensively through the window. During dinner she slipped off her shoe and stroked his ankle with a stockinged toe and made purry allusions to the waiting bed. A little squeezy-squeezy on the way into the bedroom, where the candles were already lit, the bed turned down like the Bower of Bliss, Eros’ trampoline.

  She popped into the dressing room to turn herself into a Vargas Girl, and as she was putting on the finishing touches, dabbing Outrage on her inner thighs, what sound did she hear coming from the bedroom? Moans of anticipation? No. The TV.

  She emerged, looking hot enough to induce an erection in a three-thousand-year-old Egyptian mummy, and he’s on the bed, shoes still on, flipping through the channels with the remote.

  Hard Gavel came on. At least he was watching her show. That day she’d interviewed C. Boyden Gray, the very tall, distinguished Washington attorney who had been White House counsel in a previous administration. He said he was relieved that something like this hadn’t happened on his watch.

  Boyce flipped past her show. She couldn’t believe it. He flipped until he came to The Geraldo Rivera Show and stopped. Geraldo. Her competition.

  Geraldo’s guests were Barry Strutt, Bill Howars, and Alan Crudman, an unholy trinity of trial lawyers. Each thought of himself as the best in the business.

  The fourth guest, piped in via remote from Harvard Law School, was Edgar Burton Twimm, the tweedy Wise Man still waiting for some president to nominate him to the Supreme Court. He was on to provide gravitas and to shift uneasily in his seat when the other guests said something provocative.

  Perri stood there, an Aphrodite in silk. And what did Boyce do? Asked her to bring him sparkling water. With ice.

  This left her with a choice of going into the kitchen and inducing a collateral erection in Fung or putting on a bathrobe. She was mad enough to get completely dressed and leave. But seeing Boyce intently watching Edgar Burton Twimm interjecting thoughtful harrumphs and cautioning against “throwing out the Fourth Amendment with the bathwater,” Perri wondered if he would even notice that she was gone.

  They’d been seeing each other for six months now. If he was trying a case, you could pour lighter fluid on yourself and light a match and he wouldn’t notice. But the trial hadn’t even started yet.

  Well, he was Boyce Baylor and she was television’s up-and-coming law honey and he had just signed on to the Trial of the Millennium and that made him her ticket to certain stardom.

  Take a deep breath. Get him his (damned) ice water.

  As she turned to go, Alan Crudman spoke up. Alan Crudman, the noted San Francisco attorney, was riding high these days. He had just gotten his latest client acquitted, an NBA basketball player who after a three-day cocaine binge had driven his Lexus off a raised drawbridge over the Intracoastal Waterway, demolishing the top deck of the yacht that was passing through at the time, killing two people and maiming four others. Crudman described his client as “a terrific human being.”

  Crudman told Geraldo that while he, Alan Crudman, tried not to get emotionally involved with his clients, it wasn’t always possible.

  “How Boyce Baylor,” he said, “is going to handle the fact that he was once engaged to his client and she dumped him is anyone’s guess.”

  Perri said, “I thought you dumped her.”

  Boyce grunted.

  William “Billable” Howars, the exuberant Memphis, Tennessee, lawyer, said that Boyce would probably make Babette Van Anka out to look like “the whore of Babylon” on the stand. This brought a soft cough and concerned interjection from Edgar Burton Twimm about the presence of television cameras in courtrooms.

  Barry Strutt had won a dramatic court-ordered exhumation of President Kennedy’s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald that had established finally and irrevocably, beyond a shadow of a doubt—absolutely nothing, but he was triumphant about it. He said that it would be bad strategy for Baylor to try to cast doubt on the testimony of Secret Service agent Woody Birnam, who said he had overheard the President and First Lady arguing that night. He said that a Washington, D.C., jury—the phrase was now understood to be code for “predominantly black”—tended to respect the Secret Service and wouldn’t like it.

  Geraldo broke for a commercial. Perri went and got the sparkling ice. Geraldo was back on by the time she returned. Boyce was snoring. She thought about pouring the ice water on his lap, then got into bed and turned the channel back to her own show.

  Chapter 7

  Boyce and Beth sat together on the observer side of a one-way mirror as Boyce’s team of pollsters prepped seventy people on the other side of the glass for the focus group that was about to begin.

  Normally, Boyce did not invite his defendants to participate in these sessions. Often, being in jail, they were unable to participate. But Beth had asked to come. She seemed genuinely eager to hear what people thought of her.

  The focus group began. Part one consisted of the pollster reading aloud a series of statements about Beth. The group pressed buttons on the consoles in front of them. The body sensors measured their sweat, breathing, and heart rates to determine the honesty of their responses. The first question was: “Do you believe that Beth MacMann killed her husband?”

  Beth looked at the computer screen in front of Boyce. A bar column of lurid electronic red rose vertically. The number 88.32 appeared above it.

  “Is that—”

  “That,” Boyce said, “is where we start.”

  Three and a half hours later, after the last person had been unhooked, thanked, handed a check, and reminded that he had signed an enforceable confidentiality agreement not to reveal even that the session had taken place, Beth looked as if she had just been sentenced to death.

  “I think we could both use a drink,” Boyce said.

  Beth nodded wanly. They went to Boyce’s hotel suite.

  He felt for the first time since taking the case a sense of pity for her. Large crowds used to cheer when she took the stage. Now she had just spent the afternoon listening to a majority of seventy people call her a murderess and, into the bargain, a scheming, manipulating, power-grabbing bitch. It wasn’t the steely Lady Bethmac sitting across from him staring into her Scotch, but a frightened woman facing the death penalty.

  “I tried to be a good First Lady. I pushed through initiatives on child care, prescription drugs for the elderly, the environment, a lot of things.”

  “I know,” Boyce said. “The bastards ought to be grateful, instead of getting all bent out of shape just because you killed their president.”

  Beth gave him a horrified look.

  “So shall we dispense with the self-pity
and get to work?”

  She nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “We heard some bad news today. But we also heard some good news. Many of them, at least the males in our group”—Boyce looked at the screen of his laptop computer—“think that the President and the entire government hate you. I’m very pleased with that.”

  “You are?”

  “Yes. We can accomplish wonderful things with that.”

  “Was there any other wonderful news?”

  “Two-thirds thought Babette Van Anka’s last movie stank. The one where she played the Israeli female tank commander. That’s excellent news. And you did very, very well among certain demographic groups. Males twenty-five to forty-nine want to have oral sex with you.”

  “Why would you ask such a thing? It’s mortifying.”

  “It would be mortifying if they didn’t.”

  “Why”—Beth blushed—“that particular category?”

  “Our research indicates that ninety-seven percent of heterosexual men want to have sex with attractive women. So this tells us nothing useful. But men only want to have oral sex—to perform oral sex—on women to whom they are especially attracted. This is great news for our side.”

  “I don’t even know how to process that information.”

  Boyce scrolled. “We didn’t score well with pet owners. They didn’t like the fact that you didn’t have a dog in the White House.”

  “You want me to go out and buy a sheepdog?”

  “We could get you a puppy, but it’s kind of late. Gays liked you, especially the hard-core lesbians.”

  “I score well among hard-core lesbians?”

  “They love you. Probably because you crushed your husband’s skull with a spittoon.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Whatever. We’ll be getting some deeper analysis on those numbers. Among the former military, we did not do well. Not at all. No surprise there, since you—since they think that you killed one of the nation’s great military heroes. By the way, everyone—even the hard-core lesbians—thought you were a little dry-eyed at Arlington Cemetery during the burial.”