Chapter Three
At a quarter past ten o’clock in the morning, Truman Byrd sat at his mahogany desk with a cup of black coffee, a cherry iced pastry, and the day’s array of papers.
Two men sat across from him, each dressed sharply in suit and tie: Dallas Winston, his head of security, and Ronald Rutherford, his long-time friend and future campaign manager.
Ronald was drinking his standard grapefruit tonic water. He was freshly shaven, his shoes gleaming with polish.
“Truman, they’ve put a hit out on you,” Ronald said with his typical bluntness. “Don’t you think we should reconsider the social events?”
Truman grunted irritably and leaned back in his oversized chair.
The beginnings of tomorrow’s papers were already spread out in neat rows along the expansive floor.
He had circulations in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Seattle; magazine titles like Home and Housekeeping; The Nation; Engines.
He had a production company that made moving pictures and radio programs. But advertisers were fleeing en masse with every new bank that shuttered.
Soon, running his information empire might even become a losing endeavor.
It made him feel irritated, harkening back to the days when he was both penniless and powerless.
But he wasn’t either anymore, and so it was easier to fight the sudden urge to do something cruel.
He picked up the unlit cigar that rested along his crystal ashtray.
Light flooded in from the windows, and he watched the animals grazing amidst a green swath of land that dipped down to the sea.
He had seen the view in his mind before Florence had ever built it for him.
Florence Abrams was his right-hand woman—a diminutive firecracker in a man’s suit and a man’s profession, and he trusted her more than most people he’d ever met.
If he could delegate his security to her, too, he would.
“Don’t be absurd,” Truman said. “Why did I hire the best security money can buy if Dallas can’t handle this?”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence, sir,” Dallas said.
He was a young man with the sort of hulking size one didn’t quite realize until standing next to him.
There was a revolver concealed on his hip.
“However, I think given the circumstances we should take every precaution. You do have visiting dignitaries this week, sir.”
“Truman, we’re talking about one hundred and seventy thousand acres of property to cover here. I don’t think it’s unwarranted to be concerned,” Ronald continued.
“We’ll guard the periphery of the immediate grounds, surrounding the house and the guest cottages,” Dallas said. “Increased patrols.”
“And all the staff have undergone strict background checks?” Ronald pressed.
Truman waved his cigar vaguely. “Yes.”
“What of the guests?”
“I can assure you that almost all of them would heartily fail any sort of moral screening, but they’ve passed my own scrutiny,” Truman said. “Do you trust my judgment?”
Dallas Winston shifted. “Our utmost priority is to keep you safe, Truman.”
“I’ve hired you so that I don’t have to think much about that, Dallas. As long as you do your job, it shouldn’t be a problem.”
Ronald sighed.
“I’ll take care of it, Mr. Byrd,” Dallas said.
“I expect you will,” Truman said. He waved the man off with his cigar. Dallas obediently left the room, closing the door with a click behind him, and Truman felt the studied attention of his oldest friend.
“What did you do to provoke them now?” Ronald asked. He almost sounded amused.
“Where to start?” Truman asked. He glowered. “First, I sank their judge.”
It was well known among those in the underground that a network of New York mafia families ruled the city.
They put the politicians in place who would either ignore or actively cooperate with their massive, corrupt system.
The Conti family had also issued a veiled ultimatum to the members of the press—play along, or else.
Other newspapers had capitulated, but Truman hadn’t blinked.
A threat didn’t make him cower, it made his blood beat hot in his ears, a gift from years of listening silently to his father suggest he barely deserved to bear his own name.
“I don’t like your tone,” Truman had countered, and had effectively given the entire New York mob the finger by printing two damning pieces about their candidate in succession, followed by a fawning fluff piece about the opponent.
Predictably, his politician, not theirs, had won the election.
Ronald picked up his drink. “That was months ago.”
“True. But then I took out their Senate candidate.” Truman couldn’t have that popular senator possibly interfering with his own envisioned presidential run.
So he had aggressively tanked him with some well-placed smear articles.
He owned the largest-circulating paper in New York City, and he put it to good use.
The Contis had responded by sending him an envelope full of bullets last month.
And that’s when he had let them know what he really had on them.
It was yet to be seen whether they were going to slink back to their hole or stop at nothing to get rid of him.
But Truman had his own way of doing things, his own moral code, and he wasn’t about to let a man whose nickname was Five-Fingers Fitz put a damper on the life and freedom Byrd had spent decades building.
He turned his attention to Ronald. “Who knows, an attempted assassination could be just the thing to kick off a burgeoning political career.”
Ronald groaned. They had been friends for almost a quarter century.
Ronald was cut from the same cloth—a gambler, a go-getter, a ball-buster, a man harsh with ambition.
They had met at a campaign rally for Charles Evans Hughes, blown it off, and met in the back to smoke cigars and talk politics, architecture, and horse racing.
They ended up at a billiards hall, where Mabel had kept up with their shots of cheap liquor and still beaten Ronald in three straight games of darts.
The three of them had drunkenly walked home, singing “The Mermaid’s Song” at the top of their lungs.
Ronald was one of the only people who could still say whatever he wanted to Truman’s face, and though he never wanted Ronald to know it, Truman was glad for that.
“Let’s wait on the sympathetic assassination vote as a last resort, shall we?” Ronald said, reaching across the desk to tear a piece from Truman’s pastry. “So we’re in agreement? After this last hurrah, no more partying with starlets?”
Truman held his cigar up to his nose—fragrant with cherry and coffee—and didn’t answer.
“It’s time to buckle down and get serious,” Ronald said. “The press could ruin your bid for election before it even got off the ground.”
“I am the press,” Truman snapped. “I’ve made certain that the Hill is like being sealed inside a damned envelope.”
Truman had fought tooth and nail to get there.
He had done unspeakable things, destroyed his marriage, and had no family to speak of, but he had scaled the dual jeweled peaks of Hollywood and the press.
He had built the Byrd media company and his namesake newspaper empire from the ground up, which now functioned like a well-oiled network of train lines, carrying information all over the nation.
And what was more powerful than controlling raw information—than shaping the narrative, deciding what was known and not and how it was presented?
The nation’s perceptions were shifted day by day by his stories, depending on what quotes were used or omitted, which page number a story appeared on, what size font its headline was given.
Truman Byrd was elbow-deep in crafting and manipulating reality itself, and that was just the way he wanted it.
Ronald shrugged. “It’s your choice, Truman. But you have to choose. If you want a higher office someday, you must keep a lower profile. Especially with Clem.”
If he wanted. Truman felt the itch then, the one that tickled like his father’s hot drunk breath whispering cruelly in his ear.
Maybe it could never truly go away, now that his father was half-senile and barely able to even recognize his only remaining son.
But even that miserable old bastard would have to acknowledge how wrong he’d been in the face of the office of senator, of the presidency, wouldn’t he?
Hell, Truman was running out of things to achieve.
Ronald drained his grapefruit tonic and winced at the tartness.
“You’ve captivated the attention of a nation.
You entertain them in the cinema, you tell them what to think over their morning coffee.
Isn’t that enough? You could divorce Mabel tomorrow, even marry Clementine if you want.
Truman—maybe this is already the pinnacle. Maybe you’re already there.”
Truman glanced away. He saw a herd of horned elk grazing down the hill.
He saw Clementine, slipping the negligee strap down her smooth shoulder.
But there was still a hot, cruel breath in his ear that whispered “more.”
“I have to say, it mollifies me when the weather’s bad on a day someone horrid arrives,” Cora said. She moved past Daisy to look out the window and down the vista, to where fog was gathering like a cloak.
“I hope this doesn’t mean someone particularly awful is coming today,” Daisy said, violently scrubbing the grout clean between the tiles. Cora pulled the glass windowpanes closed against the gray clouds threatening rain.