Chapter 35
A simper and some fluttering eyelashes was all it took to convince the man at the desk that I didn’t want to be higher than the second floor. We were lucky, he told us—if it had been the night before, the delegation from France had the whole second floor.
But it was difficult to keep my eyes from bulging when he told Fields the rate for a night. It was more than I made in a week. He reached into his pocket like that amount was nothing, and I had to excuse myself to the ladies’ room to avoid asking where he got that kind of money.
When I returned, Fields was waiting for me, and he flashed me a discreet thumbs-up. I shook my head but took his arm, and together we went down to the bar. The blonde was nowhere to be seen.
“What if she’s not here? You just wasted all that money.”
“Occupational hazard,” he said.
“If you have that kind of money, why are you driving that car?” I clapped my hand over my mouth. “Sorry. I—”
Fields laughed. “I told you—I’m not getting a new car until I get promoted. But my big expenses are rent and having a drink here while I listen for gossip a few nights a week. And I’ve been working for four years now.”
“But you told me to pretend I didn’t like the champagne cocktail so it would be free.”
He shrugged. “A free drink is a free drink.”
I wanted to ask if he ever took girls out. If he had rented a hotel room before. If he knew nothing was going to be happening in that room he had just paid for. But when I opened my mouth, he spoke instead. “Nine o’clock.”
I glanced down at my watch. It was only eight. But Fields angled his head to the left, and I looked past him to see our blonde walking in.
“Drinks,” I said suddenly as she took a seat at the bar. He started to stand up, but I put a hand on his arm. “I’ll get them this time—my treat. You just spent enough.”
“I can—”
I shook my head and walked toward the bar. “An old-fashioned, right, darling?” I called back over my shoulder. He nodded, looking at me bewildered.
I had absolutely no plan. Carmen had told me this woman was dangerous.
A soldier. But I went right for the empty seat beside her, narrowly beating out a man in a suit who tried to sit next to her.
She glanced in my direction disinterestedly as the bartender brought her a martini.
I hadn’t seen her order, which meant he knew what she drank.
The bartender looked me over. “You old enough to be in here?” he asked with a smirk.
“Yes,” I said, looking him right in the eye. “But I can go grab my driver’s license if you want.”
“Good thing there’s no height requirement,” he said, shaking his head. “What can I getcha?”
He may have thought he was being cute, but there would be no tip at this rate. “An old-fashioned and a champagne cocktail.”
“Your fella’s not paying tonight?”
I shrugged. “Lost a bet.”
“If you say so, short stack,” he said, then turned to make the drinks.
Alejandra de Bernal hadn’t looked over during the exchange, and I needed to figure out something to say to her quickly or I was going to lose my chance.
I couldn’t ask if she came here often, because she could have noticed us two nights earlier.
Or the first time we were here. Just because I hadn’t seen her didn’t mean she hadn’t seen me.
Especially if she was a spy working the vice president for something.
She sipped her drink.
“How are the martinis here?” My heart was racing, and I wasn’t sure I would be able to hear a reply over the sound of blood rushing in my ears.
She set the drink down. “Better than Old Ebbitt’s.
Not as good as the Willard’s.” Her English was flawless.
Nothing like Carmen’s. Nothing like mine.
She sounded like she had been to boarding school, and for the first time in my life, I understood F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s description of Daisy Buchanan’s voice sounding like money.
But there was no hint of a regional dialect that I could distinguish. Not New England, New York, the South, nor the Midwest. It was like she had sprung from the den of a steel magnate of unknown origin.
It was too flawless. People from Boston dropped their r’s. New Yorkers had nasal vowels. Even my own speech had the hint of Yiddish dialect patterns combined with the slightest Southern slurring of you all into y’all.
My spine tingled. She was from nowhere. Carmen was telling the truth. This was her.
“I’ll have to try the Willard’s sometime,” I said as the bartender set our drinks in front of me.
She gave no indication that she had heard me. I placed two dollars on the bar, wishing they were less crumpled and desperately hoping that was enough money. The bartender swept it up, and I exhaled, taking the two drinks back to the table.
“That was stupid,” Fields said immediately. “What did you say to her?”
“I just asked how her drink was,” I said quietly. “But Carmen was right. That’s her.”
“How do you know?”
I explained the utter lack of an accent. Fields leaned back in his seat, studying me. “That’s a good observation.”
“Why do you sound so surprised? I’m a fantastic journalist—when I have the chance to show it.”
“I—” He shook his head, then stopped talking as he watched something in the center of the room.
I followed his gaze to see a man in a suit approach a table of young women.
We weren’t close enough to hear what he said, but he indicated two of them, both bottle blondes.
They reached into their purses and pulled out IDs, which they handed over.
He studied them, pocketed the cards, and indicated for both women to go with him.
They did so, arm in arm, practically squealing with excitement, while the other three girls at their table looked on dejectedly.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“That,” he said, “was the president’s secretary.”
My eyes widened. “You mean—?”
He nodded. “They won a trip to the Lincoln Bedroom. Or whatever room he uses for trysts.”
“Two of them? Together? Or . . . ?”
“I don’t know for sure. Sometimes yes. Sometimes he’ll choose one. Sometimes they’ll both come back, and one of the other girls could have a chance.”
I studied the three women who remained. None of them had left. “And they . . . want that?”
Fields looked at me, amused. “There are girls here every night hoping for the chance.”
I thought about Patricia and her congressman. She wouldn’t turn down a private tour of the White House. Even if it meant . . . I shuddered slightly.
A jacketless man with a loosened tie who looked vaguely familiar pulled out a seat at the table with the remaining three girls, and they perked up slightly.
I couldn’t place him, and Fields leaned close.
“Secretary of the Interior,” he whispered, his breath tickling my ear.
“A few Cabinet members will walk over from the White House and pick off the leftovers.”
“And the girls just make it so easy for them,” I murmured back. “Whatever happened to playing hard to get?”
“That’s what the good girls do.”
I felt like there was an implication there. I wasn’t playing anything. I was hard to get because I didn’t want to be gotten. Even if I was starting to enjoy Fields’s company.
A hotel porter crossed the room to the bar, handing an envelope to the bartender. I could feel Fields tense beside me. “Here we go,” he whispered. “Pretend you’re looking at me.”
I turned my head. In my peripheral vision, I saw the bartender open the envelope and pass something with a closed hand to the blonde at the bar.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to hide my alarm as Fields moved his head lower, his lips just grazing my neck below my earlobe.
“A note or a key probably,” he said. “When she gets up, we go. If you still want to do this.”
“What are you doing?” I whispered to him as his lips touched my ear. My whole body was tingling. I wanted him to stop. I wanted him to never stop.
“Playing the part.”
Right. We had to be going to a room together. I put my hands on either side of Fields’s face, pulling him up so we were eye to eye as the blonde stood from her seat at the bar. I nodded, nervous, but trying not to let him see it. “Let’s go upstairs.”
He swallowed. “You’re sure?” I didn’t know if he was saying it for show or if he was really asking.
“I’m sure.” We were in this too far to quit now. She walked out of the bar, and we followed close behind, Fields’s arm around my waist.
The blonde was at the elevator, the button already pushed.
Fields tickled my side, and I giggled reflexively.
I started to object to the tickle, but he turned me so our foreheads were almost touching, and I understood he had elicited the laugh to make me sound giddy.
I needed to play the part too, I realized, and I wrapped my arms around his neck.
“Jack,” I said quietly.
He stiffened slightly at the use of his first name. He leaned closer, and I found myself looking at his mouth when the doors to the elevator opened.
Alejandra stalked in, pretending we didn’t exist, and we tumbled in after her, laughing softly as I fell against the wall. “Too much champagne,” I giggled.
She didn’t acknowledge us, just reached for the buttons of the automated elevator. “Two,” Fields said, not even looking at her. She glanced over, offended that he thought she would push a button for him. But it was the floor she was going to as well, of course.
“Jack,” I whispered again, pulling him closer. The elevator lurched upward, stopping suddenly as the doors opened and the blonde walked out and turned right. We followed her, Fields’s arm around my waist again.
Two large men in dark suits stood outside a door at the end of the hall. Secret Service, I thought. It didn’t mean anything for sure yet though. We had to know. I kept walking, and Fields pulled me back at a doorway about twenty-five feet from the men as the blonde walked directly toward them.
“This is us,” he said, louder, then began patting his pockets. “Where is that key?”