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“Some of her…allies. Benefactors.”
“Donors?”
“Sure. Call ’em that.”
“So, I’m bait?”
“You’re not bait,” Eddie said, his tone closer to rebuke than reassurance. “Bait gets eaten.”
“You’re a lure,” said Artie.
“Does she even know that John and I had a…a fling?”
“Yes.”
“I really don’t want to do this, Artie. Forgive me, but no.”
“That’s your answer?”
“What about the police? Why can’t you—”
“I told you, the police aren’t taking this seriously. Either they honestly don’t believe my brother was murdered, or they’ve been bought.”
“Look,” said Eddie, and I realized that he was the heavy in their good cop/bad cop dance. “If they get the casino, you’re out the door. That’s the fact. You’re done, you’re gone. All we’re asking is that you get Schweiker—who is a terrible human being and an idiot—to your dressing room. We’ll do the rest.”
“Are you planning to hurt her?”
“Of course not! Though it sure would be tempting,” said Eddie, and Artie added quickly, stepping on the words of his entertainment director, “They’re the ones who are the criminals, Crissy. They’re the ones who killed my brother. But, I can assure you, no one is going to hurt her. I got some people who will just make it clear she needs to tell her friends to find a different casino.”
I nodded, taking all of this in. “Can you promise me that this won’t, in some way, wound or embarrass John?”
“My God, it will help him. You’ll be helping to snuff Erika Schweiker as a political threat. You do this and you’re doing three things. You’re protecting John Aldred. You’re saving this casino. And you’re covering your ass.”
“And if I don’t,” I murmured, thinking aloud, “John may not get reelected, you lose the casino, and I’m unemployed. Is that your point?”
“Jesus Christ, Crissy, yes,” Eddie told me. “That’s our point.”
Outside the windows, I heard the bleating of a delivery truck in reverse. The Morleys’ offices were near the back doors to the casino kitchens.
“So?” Artie asked. “Whose side are you on?”
“And how much do you like the idea of unemployment?” Eddie added, his eyes as cool as a lion’s appraising a solitary gazelle.
I looked at the paper in my lap. “When should I call?”
“What about now?” Artie suggested. “There’s no time like the present.”
* * *
When I recall my private moments with the senator, I think often of this: a night when we were alone in my dressing room when he was separated from his wife and we had been seeing each other clandestinely a month. He was seated on the couch, his feet on the coffee table, his impeccably polished wingtips on the floor. He had loosened his tie and was watching me take off my makeup after the second show. He was tired because he had been in the Capitol that day and flown west. I was gobsmacked that he had come to see the show yet again, because he was exhausted. I knew how hard he worked and the committees he was on. The next day he would be seeing his children and the woman from whom he was estranged.
He said, “One of my staffers gave me a Diana quote today: ‘I lead from the heart. Not the head.’ ”
“Why in the name of God were you soliciting Diana quotes? Aren’t we a state secret?”
“The U.S. government has many levels of secrecy,” he chuckled.
“But why? Does he—”
