Silken Prey

I’ll make
that
mistake. Now listen to what I’m saying, goddamnit. You want to be a U.S. senator? You want to go higher than that? Then you stay on program.”
    Taryn nodded: “Yes. I know and I agree. I like to tease you, but I’m on program.”
    Schiffer relaxed. “I know. You’re a natural at this, and with training, you’ll get even better. You’ll get that big-time polish. Some people spend twenty years in the Senate and
never
get that. You could. You could be a contender.”
    “If I stay on program.”
    “Absolutely.”
    They both knew what they were thinking, though neither said it: Taryn Grant had what it took to be president. She had the business background, she understood economics and finance, she had the money wrapped up, she looked terrific, she had a mind that understood the necessary treacheries: a silken Machiavelli.
    •   •   •
    T HEY DID P USH at four o’clock, and Borders at five, and Taryn stayed on program. Dannon hovered in the background, with what looked like a G&T in his hand, which was really water with a slice of lemon. Alice Green stayed outside with the cars.
    Taryn knew she’d done well with the richie-rich crowd. They were, her involvement with the Democratic Party to one side, her people. She’d known many of the younger ones since childhood, and had slept with two of them.
    So she was a little surprised when, after she’d given her talk on shared values, Schiffer had appeared as she began circulating through the Borders living room, and had taken her arm in a nearly painful grip and hustled her out to a hallway.
    “We’ve got a problem,” she said.
    “What?” Taryn thought,
Murder.
    “Smalls didn’t do it. Didn’t do the porn,” Schiffer said. “One of the governor’s people, Rose Marie Roux, has been on television saying that it’s possible that he was framed. Smalls had a spontaneous press conference demanding that the people who did this be caught. There’s an implication there . . . that it could have been an opposition trick. That would be you.”
    “When did this happen?” Taryn asked.
    “Top of the five-o’clock news. Everybody has it. We need to come up with a reaction and we need it fast.”
    “Let me finish the hand-shaking,” Taryn said. “You go sit in the corner and think.”
    •   •   •
    T ARYN WORKED THE CROWD for another half hour, then swirled out of the room, calling out good-byes. Schiffer was waiting at the door with Green. Taryn had four vehicles, the largest and most ungainly and only American one being the large silver GMC Yukon Denali, which she’d acquired the day before she launched her campaign. She didn’t want the right-wingers asking why she didn’t “Buy American”; and if some leftie asked about the environmental impact, she’d ask, “What, you don’t believe in Minnesota’s ethanol economy?” In any case, the Porsche, Jag, and M5 stayed under wraps.
    Leaving the house, she kissed Ellen Borders on the cheek, squeezed her husband’s biceps, pointed Green, who usually rode with her, at the security car, trading places with Barb Siegel, the media fixer.
    Schiffer drove, and Dannon and Green fell in behind, discreet in the gray BMW sport-utility escort vehicle.
    In the car with Schiffer and Siegel, Taryn closed her eyes and said, aloud, “
We understand that this news is a preliminary statement, but we certainly hope that Senator Smalls is found not responsible for this distasteful child pornography discovery. But, as long as we have to talk about unpleasant things, let me say that I bitterly resent Porter Smalls’s implicit suggestion that his political opponents may be involved with this situation. I’m his only political opponent at the moment, so that was aimed at me. I’ll tell Senator Smalls this: I’ve long been involved in child-care issues, and have devoted quite a lot of my hard-earned money to charities that help children. Need I point out that he has not been? That he should suggest this . . . just totally creeps me out.”
    “Not ‘
hard-earned money
,’” Schiffer said. “You inherited too much, and not everybody knows you founded your own company. Say,
‘devoted a lot of my time.’
And get rid of the
‘totally creeps me out.’
That sounds Valley girl, and you already look too Valley girl.”
    Taryn nodded. “Where was I . . .
That he should suggest this, I can only characterize as vicious. As distasteful in the extreme. And, frankly, as creepy. I would