Death of a Political Plant Read Free

we’re alone at home,” added Laurie, with a smile and sideways look at Roger. She leaned toward him provocatively. “I hate to admit it, but it’s very nice to have the summer to ourselves. You seem to have company running in and out continually, while we have just been…”
    “A deux?” said Louise, smiling. “I hear what you’re saying, Laurie. We’ll be alone for exactly one week, and then more company is coming and the girls return home.”
    Bill smiled sagely. “Ah, I think you ladies do protest too much. Look how our children progress, ever upward, ever away from us. Pretty soon they’ll all be gone, and we’ll be old folks whining for them to visit.”
    During this banter, they had paid little attention to the ebband flow of the party, so they were surprised when Tom Paschen, entourage respectfully hanging behind, came up and joined them. The President’s chief of staff was barely as tall as Louise in her spike-heeled Manolo mules, though he looked elegant in evening clothes that reeked of Savile Row. Unfortunately, it was spoiled by his expression of the harried rabbit out of Alice in Wonderland. Louise thought he would buttonhole Roger Kendricks. Roger had stepped down from his executive editor position to join other Post staffers in covering the presidential election. So she was surprised when Paschen came straight to her side.
    Casting a quick look that took in her face, semirevealed bosom, and slim hips in black pants complete with satin stripe down the side, he extended a hand to the foursome and breezily summarized his mission: “Hi, Roger, and, Laurie Kendricks—isn’t it? Bill, I’ve come over here to hit on your wife.”
    They laughed. Even then, Paschen didn’t break a grin, and looked thoroughly distracted, all business. “Just for a minute.” He put a firm hand under her elbow and steered her to the stone railing, beyond which Calder’s artwork sailed soundlessly in the chatter-filled building, like a silent chaperon.
    “Louise,” he said in a confidential tone, “I’ve only got five minutes.”
    That was not surprising; the man probably had the busiest job in the country.
    “Something about my program.”
    Paschen looked surprised. “Yes. Smart girl. You knew. You’re aware of the scoundrels Congressman Goodrich has taken on board to try to damage the President: Rawlings and Upchurch, the terrible twosome, and Upchurch’s reprehensible staff. They’re spewing out the damndest lies.” Still lookingbeyond her, casing the room as he spoke, he said, “Look at Franklin Rawlings. He’s keeping his head above the cesspool: He just shoves Upchurch out front to be the impetuous bad boy, the new guy in the political game who may reach too far, but whom we’re supposed to forgive because of his youth and zeal.”
    She thought Tom sounded a little sour grapes. Rawlings was a tall, thin man in his fifties who did his magicianlike campaign strategizing for whoever would pay him his exorbitant fees, smiling all the way. And Goodrich had reached him first, or she was sure that the President would have been happy to hire him on.
    “Yeah, I think Rawlings has put himself in a bind: His young compatriots have spun out of control, and in the end he’s responsible.” The chief of staff gave a curt nod at a man bunched over the nearby refreshments table. “And you must recognize their campaign’s enfant terrible, Willie Upchurch. There he is, with his fat little hands in the shrimp. That’s his gang of three: the worst pissant lowlifes I’ve ever seen.” His patrician nose elevated a bit. “They’re no better than thugs.” Louise knew Paschen himself was renowned as a vicious political infighter, so why was he complaining about how the game was played? Then, as if reading her mind, he said, with asperity, “There’s politics and politics, and dirty politics has reached a new low in this election.”
    Upchurch, a rosy-cheeked, baby-faced man, was shoveling in food as if he were