11
A quick phone call to the operator got me the Landau campaign office’s address—he wasn’t anywhere near the Hill, but only a fifteen-minute bus ride down East-West Highway to Silver Spring.
So it wasn’t much later when I rapped on the door in an office building, dressed in my sharpest baby-blue suit. It wasn’t Chanel, but it was a knockoff of a Jackie Kennedy number, including the hat and gloves. Which might have been overkill, combined with the new hairdo, but, well, if you wanted to be a woman involved in politics, there was no one better to emulate in 1962.
No one answered the door. My last experience entering a campaign office left me hesitant to just walk in, but I could see a figure faintly through the frosted glass and heard a distinctly male voice. So I straightened my hat and turned the knob.
“No!” A man was practically shouting into a phone. “I told you already—we need a smaller venue. If he’s speaking in a big room and no one shows up, he looks awful. We need a smaller house that we know we can fill.”
“Sounds to me like you need to find more people, not a smaller venue,” I said.
The man on the phone looked up, annoyed, and held his hand over the mouthpiece. “Can I help you?”
“I certainly hope so. I’m here to see Michael Landau.”
“Regarding?”
I sized him up. He appeared to be in his early thirties, and even without looking at his hands, it was obvious he wasn’t married. Not with that rumpled shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, lack of a tie, and—I glanced down—brown shoes with a black belt. I never would have let Larry out of the house like that. I peeked around the rest of the office space. There were three other doors off the main office and four desks crammed into this room, all in a similar state of disarray to the one I was standing in front of.
They needed a secretary.
But that wasn’t why I was there. And if he was shouting into the phone about speaking venues, this was likely who I was looking to replace.
“I’m afraid it’s a personal matter,” I said primly.
“I’m going to have to call you back,” he said into the phone. “And by the time I do, you’d better have a smaller room for us.” He replaced the receiver with a thunk. Then he looked up, taking his turn to examine me, but I refused to shy away from his gaze. “He’s not here,” he said brusquely. “You can leave a message with me.”
Three chairs sat against the wall near the door, and I sat in the one that didn’t have a jacket draped over it. “I can wait.”
“Look, Miss—?”
“Beverly,” I said, realizing my last name—either my married name or my maiden name—would be enough to set off alarm bells.
“Miss Beverly—”
“Just Beverly. That’s my first name.”
The man blinked heavily. “I don’t care what your name is. I can’t sit here babysitting you all day. I have work to do.”
I opened my mouth, a sharp retort on my tongue about his appearance indicating he was the one who needed a babysitter, when the door to the office opened and the man whose picture I had seen that morning walked in, carrying a bag from a local delicatessen and a coffee cup.
“They were out of pickles,” he said, not noticing me yet. “What kind of delicatessen runs out of pickles?”
“Go to Hofberg’s next time,” I said. He turned to stare at me. “Better pastrami too.”
Michael Landau looked back at the rumpled man behind the desk, who shrugged. “Michael Landau,” he said, setting the bag and cup down on the desk, then holding out his hand. “And you are?”
“Beverly.” I took the proffered hand and shook it.
“She wouldn’t tell me what she wanted,” the man behind the desk said.
“It’s okay, Stuart,” he said. “How can I help you today?”
“Mr. Landau, I am here to help you .” I glanced at Stuart, whose arms were crossed. “Is there somewhere we can speak privately?”
“Anything you have to say to me, you can say in front of my campaign manager,” he said, eyeing me warily. “You look familiar. What was your last name?”
I ignored the question. This was going to be more difficult with Stuart, the incompetent campaign manager, glaring at me. “Look, Mr. Landau, I’m going to be frank with you. You’re going to lose this campaign.”
His face changed from skeptical to steely. “And why is that?”
“Because Sam Gibson has Larry Diamond running his campaign and you have Stuart over here telling people to find you a smaller room to speak in because he can’t fill it with voters.”
Stuart started to argue, but Mr. Landau silenced him with a “wait” gesture. “And what do you suggest I do about that?”
“That’s why I’m here. If you hire me as your campaign manager, you can win this.”
For a moment neither man spoke. Then Stuart threw his head back in laughter, and Landau chuckled. I raised an eyebrow.
“Did you put her up to this? Found her when you went to get lunch and sent her on ahead?” Stuart asked.
Landau shook his head. “I thought you put her up to it?”
I glanced at my wrist for effect, then remembered I still needed to get a new watch. “If you two are quite finished, I don’t have all day.”
“Look, I admit we could probably use a secretary—”
“We definitely need a secretary,” Mr. Landau said, looking at me intently.
“But the campaign manager job is taken. By me. And we’re going to win this election on our own.”
I shook my head. “I’m terribly sorry to break this to you, but you’re not. The Washington Post knows it. I know it. Sam Gibson definitely knows it. And I think deep down even you know it. But I’m the one person who can change that.”
“Why is that?” Mr. Landau asked, looking at me from the corner of his eye.
“Because my full name is Beverly Gelman Diamond. My father is Bernie Gelman, and I spent six years married to Larry Diamond.” I watched as recognition and then alarm spread across their faces.
“Get her out of here,” Mr. Landau said to Stuart. “Now.”
“Excuse me?”
The two men exchanged a look and then huddled together, whispering. I caught the words spying and husband and low even for him .
“I’m not a spy. I want Larry—and by extension Sam—to lose.”
They both turned to look at me. “Why?” Mr. Landau asked.
I took a deep breath. All I had was the truth. “Because he’s been cheating on me with his secretary and told me if I didn’t take him back, he was selling the house and making me move the kids to an apartment.” They took this in. “So, yes, I want a job. But specifically this job. I grew up on Capitol Hill. You want to know why Larry is so good at his job? He had me and my father. So if you want to win, I’m how you do that. And I’ll tell you right now, you book that bigger room, and I’ll help you fill it. You book a smaller space, and you might as well give up now.”
“Absolutely not,” Stuart said. Mr. Landau turned to look at him, but something had shifted in his face. “You can’t trust her. She’s married to Larry Diamond. She said that much herself.”
“Only until we can get divorced,” I said. “Trust me, I don’t want to be married to him any more than I want to marry you.”
Stuart stood up a little straighter at the insult and started to return fire, but Mr. Landau cut him off. “I can’t hire you as my campaign manager. But I can hire you as a secretary and see what happens from there.”
He held my gaze for a few seconds while I contemplated this. I knew full well that I could win him over. Stuart might be a different situation, which was understandable; I was there to take his job. But there was a warmth behind Mr. Landau’s eyes that offered a glimmer of hope.
“I don’t know shorthand. I don’t take dictation. And my typing is atrocious at best.”
“How about personal skills?”
I smiled my most dazzling smile, and he softened, smiling back. “I’ll take the job—on the condition that you actually do listen to me. And when you see that I know what I’m doing, you promote me and hire a real secretary.”
“Promote you to what?” Stuart asked.
I turned back to Mr. Landau. “Why, whatever position you think I deserve, of course.”
Something had changed in the room. I couldn’t explain it, but there was an electricity crackling that hadn’t been there before. Then Mr. Landau held out his hand again. I placed mine in his. “You’re hired,” he said.
I grinned again. “I’ll be here first thing tomorrow. You won’t regret this, Mr. Landau.”
“I regret not locking that office door,” Stuart grumbled.
But Mr. Landau ignored him. “Michael,” he said. “We don’t stand on formality in this office.”
Every junior staffer in Sam’s office called him “Senator Gibson.” Even Larry did, if it wasn’t just the two of them.
“Michael,” I repeated. “It’ll do. For now. Until we change your title to ‘Senator Landau.’”
I didn’t wait to see the effect of my words. Instead, I turned and opened the door to the hall.
“What on earth did you just do?” I heard Stuart saying before the door closed.
“I don’t know,” Michael’s muffled voice replied. “But she’s right. Book the bigger room. We’ll find people.”
I smiled again from the hallway. They had no idea what kind of revolution they were in for.