Beauty Queen

Sidney was serious. "Darling, you're supposed to be a conservative. You're supposed to approve of getting rid of people like that."
    Sidney stood up, hands in pockets, and looked down at her from his six-foot-two height. "I'm for dignified conservatism," he said.
    "Sidney!" she said, really distressed now.
    "Good night, Mrs. Republican," Sidney said, and walked out of the room. They heard the hall door close.
    "Well, I never . . said Jeannie, gasping.
    Winkler went into the kitchen for a glass of water, and Bill followed him.
    "Did you advise her to do that?" Bill asked.
    Winkler was filling a glass of water at the sink. "As a matter of fact, I didn't," he said. He popped a tranquilizer into his mouth, and washed it down. "I advised her against it."
    "She may have made a grave political mistake," said
    Bill.
    Winkler shrugged. "I know," he said. "She may scare people enough to get Intro Two voted down. But this may come back to haunt her, as far as the governor's race is concerned."
    Bill went back into the living room. Jeannie was sitting alone there, amid all the Chippendale antiques and brocade draperies, looking very beautiful and very lost. The list of names lay on the coffee table in front of her.
    Bill sat down by her, and put out his hand toward the
    list.
    "May I?" he asked, as casually as possible.
    "Sure," she said, shrugging, not looking at him.
    The list was a Xerox of names and addresses in the New
    York area and New York State, arranged in alphabetical order, in two columns, starting with Leonard Berkowitz, 85-23 259th Avenue, Floral Park, Queens, to Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Christoff, Silver Lake Way, Syracuse, New York. Skimming quickly, Bill did not see his name anywhere, nor Marion's.
    "Who the hell are these people?" he said.
    "Don't curse, Dad," she said. "It's not Christian. They're just a page from my mailing list. But there are people like that out there. Everywhere."
    "I'm shocked," said Bill, though inwardly he was a little relieved.
    Her lovely brown eyes, fringed with just a touch of mascara and eye shadow, turned toward him in anguish.
    "Oh, Dad, not you too?" she said. "Doesn't anybody understand?"
    "Listen, sweetheart," he said, "your list is a lie. But it also isn't Christian to hate quite that much. Why do you hate those people the way you do?"
    Her eyes stayed fastened on him, and he was sucked back into her childhood, when she was the most appealing and infuriating child he could imagine, and he would have walked through machine-gun fire for her.
    "I hate them because the Bible says to hate them," she said simply, "and because Mother said to hate them."
    "Your mother?" he said, feeling that three-ton weight of fear cargo swinging into his stomach again. "What did she know about things like that?"
    "Nothing, I imagine," said Jeannie. "She just hated them on general principle. She always warned me against them."
    Bill's instincts told him that Jeannie was telling the truth. Cora had turned the child against homosexuals in general but had never dared to breathe a word against her own husband. A strange loyalty, that, considering the tensions that they'd lived in during the last years of Cora's life, when he was sure that she knew about Marion.
    Bill took Jeannie's hand and patted it. "Now, Jeannie, tell me the truth," he said. "Did any woman ever, uh, make a pass at you?"
    She raised her deep dark eyes to his again. The pupils were wide and dark, with some emotion that he could not know.
    "Oh no," she said. "I never even let women be friends with me. I guess that's why . . She seemed to search for words. "... why I don't have any women friends, never did. The only woman I could ever be close with was Mother."
    Suddenly she was sobbing against Bill's shoulder.
    "I have to make up with Sidney," she said against his jacket sleeve. "I can't live without him. And I can't have our marriage break up while I'm running for office."
    Late that same night, while she was working on the night shift, Mary Ellen and Danny found themselves responding to a radio run that turned into a wild car chase. Real life being what it is, and police work being different from the movies or TV, neither of them had ever participated in one of these theatrical affairs.
    They had been driving east along Houston Street, when they heard the squeal on the radio. A patrol car a little farther downtown had spotted a wanted car, a maroon Chevy with the license plate 371-HEX, and had called for assistance, saying the car was