Chapter 37
Over lunch, Patricia showed me how to perfect a “come-hither look.” She had me practice it on a young man at a neighboring table, and I felt utterly foolish, like a child playing dress-up. But sure enough, he excused himself from the group he was with and came over to introduce himself.
Then I turned as red as a tomato, and Patricia had to get rid of him for me.
“It gets easier,” she chuckled.
“If you say so.” I looked at her, so at ease using her looks to get what she wanted. “Say—how did you ask Clement about that girl?”
“I told you—”
“No.” I put my hand on hers. “I know. I mean, how did you bring up such a sensitive subject?”
“Oh, that’s easy. Men love to feel big and strong and like they’re protecting you.” She batted her eyelashes. “I’ve heard some stories around town about you,” she said, her voice much higher than usual. “You wouldn’t ever let anything like that happen to me, would you?”
I could do that. But could I with the second-most powerful man in the country?
You shouldn’t be doing this, Jack’s voice whispered in my mind.
I shook my head to get him out of there.
Yes, this was terrifying. But if I thought about it too much, I would chicken out, and then where would we be?
Without a story, that’s where. I took a deep breath.
It did help that my voice naturally sounded like Patricia’s when she was coaxing information out of a politician.
I still didn’t know exactly what I was going to say once I got into that room. But my journalistic instincts had gotten us this far. And those same instincts told me I had to be in that room to see what our next steps would be.
Write questions ahead of time, my favorite journalism professor had said. But always be prepared to come up with more on the fly. You have to think on your feet, or you’ll miss the most important details.
The flirting part was new, but I had spent years preparing for this. I would simply have to follow the vice president’s lead and keep my eyes open.
Provided Jack could get me into the room. I threw a sidelong glance at the man Patricia had rejected for me. And if Jack couldn’t, I would just have to try to do it myself.
“Who’s this big fish, anyway?” she asked.
I wished I could tell her. But I couldn’t risk it. So I faked a smile and held a finger to my lips. “I’ll tell you later,” I said, giving a promise I hoped I’d be able to keep.
“What do we do if Havana is there?” I asked as I changed into the black dress.
Jack glanced in the rearview mirror, and I made a face at him. He immediately lowered his eyes. “I—I asked Collins—that’s the vice president’s secretary—to come tonight. I said I had someone his boss would like to meet.”
“Me?” I saw him nod. “And then what?”
“I let you two talk. And if Havana is there, I guess I try to distract her so she doesn’t notice Collins taking you upstairs.”
“Won’t she be suspicious when she sees me with the secretary? I talked to her the other night, and she definitely saw us in the elevator.”
He glanced to the mirror again, then looked away quickly. “She’ll think you’re a . . . working girl.”
“I mean, I am.”
Jack ducked his head. “Not that kind of work.”
Oh, I thought, horrified. Was that what I looked like? I felt dirty suddenly. “And if she tries to stop me from going upstairs with Collins?”
“I think if she gets upset, we’re chasing the wrong lead.”
I finished getting into the dress and leaned over the front seat. “How do you figure?”
“If she goes up there and gets mad, she actually has feelings for him. If she doesn’t care . . .”
“It’s all for show to get whatever she’s after.” He nodded again. I climbed back into the front seat.
“You know, you could just open the door and get in the front.”
“And risk being seen by someone who knows my mother while I’m wearing this dress? No thank you.”
Jack shook his head with a slight chuckle. “The fact that you’re more afraid of your mother than the vice president and a Cuban spy . . .”
I pulled my lipstick from my bag and began applying it. “I’d take Castro himself over an angry Jewish mother.”
“You may have a point there.” Once my makeup was on, Jack put the car into drive. “You’re sure you’re up for this?”
I said I was. “So we have photographic evidence that Alejandra was a soldier in Cuba—is Carmen’s word enough to establish exactly who she is and publish her name?”
“Now that we verified enough of what she said, yes. We can use Carmen as an anonymous source.” We never technically asked if we could quote her.
But she hadn’t told us we couldn’t, and we were open about our jobs.
Providing we didn’t use her name, she should be protected.
As long as we managed to actually stop whatever our woman from Havana was planning, that is.
If not, I didn’t know that there was anywhere Carmen could run that would be safe.
All the more reason to find something that we could use tonight.
I just had to keep my eyes and ears open and figure out what that was.
Jack parked across from the Hay-Adams. “You don’t have to do this,” he said, putting a hand on mine. “We have enough evidence that a foreign national is having an affair with the vice president.”
I shook my head. “It’s a bigger story than that. I know it. I can feel it. If we don’t get anything tonight, then maybe, but I have to try.”
“How loud can you scream?”
I smiled. “I may be small, but I’ve got a mighty roar.”
He didn’t smile back. “Okay. But remember I tried to talk you out of it.”
We looked at each other in the summer twilight of the nation’s capital. “I can do this.”
He nodded. “I know you can. But promise me you’ll be careful?”
“I promise.”
He picked my hand up and raised it to his lips, surprising me. But the gesture buoyed me as well. I wasn’t going to let either of us down. I got out of the car and squared my shoulders as we crossed the street. The vice president wasn’t going to know what hit him.