St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

HIS FATHER TAKE the can away.
    “You need to sober up,” Josh said.
    “Why?” Andy waved his hand casually. “Not a camera in sight.”
    “Winifred’s pet historian has cameras and her digital recorder is always on.”
    “Who cares?”
    Anne Quintrell walked into the kitchen. “I do. Your father does. You should. ”
    “Because you want me to be a senator when I’m thirty?” Andy belched richly, legacy of the two beers he’d drunk without a pause. “What about what I want, huh? What about that?”
    Anne smoothed back hair that was already perfectly in place. “What do you want?”
    “To get laid.”
    Disgust flickered over Anne’s face.
    Josh laughed roughly. “A real chip off the old block, aren’t you?”
    “Hey, Granddad humped everything he saw and he spent his whole life being reelected.”
    “That was then,” Josh said. “Today that kind of womanizing won’t fly at the polls.”
    “Fuck the polls.”
    “It’s about the only thing you haven’t jumped,” Anne said tiredly. “Why can’t you just keep it zipped?”
    Andy rolled his eyes. “Spoken like a nun.”
    “Then get married,” Anne said. “The Meriwether girl would be an excellent wife.”
    Andy made retching sounds. “I’ve seen better-looking dog butts. Just because her father’s a senator doesn’t make her hot.”
    “Hot?” Casually Josh reached out and jerked his son to his feet. “Listen to me, Andy, and listen good. I’ve had it with your hyperactive dick.”
    “Josh—” Anne began.
    “Not now,” Josh said without looking away from his son. “You have two choices. Grow up or sign up for the Marines. They’ve made men out of sorrier boys than you.”
    Andy closed his eyes. “Not another lecture on the value of serving your country.”
    “No lecture. Just fact. I’m through supporting you and I won’t let your mother give you so much as a dime.”
    Andy’s eyes snapped open. What he saw in his father’s eyes made him cold.
    Josh nodded. “That’s right. This is the end of the line. The Senator kept seeing himself in you, kept smiling at the thought of you drinking and screwing your way through life.”
    “He understood me,” Andy said.
    “He’s dead. Times change.” Josh let go of his son. “Change with them or get your spoiled ass out of my life.”
    Andy looked at his mother.
    “No,” Josh said. “She can’t help you. The Senator who understood you so well left everything to me.”
    “How will it look if you simply throw out your only child?” Anne asked quietly.
    “I’ll pay for rehab in Santa Fe. After that, he’s on his own.”
    “Rehab?” Andy said. “You’re crazy. I’m not an alcoholic or—”
    “If you refuse rehab,” Josh interrupted, “I’ll give a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger interview to Jeanette Dykstra for her sniggering TV show. There are more parents out there with screwups for kids than solid citizens. If anything, my standing in the polls will go up.”
    “That’s all you care about!” Andy shouted. “That’s all you’ve ever cared about!”
    Josh shrugged. “And all you care about is getting laid. So what?”
    A volatile mix of tears and rage shimmered in Andy’s eyes. He pushed past Josh and slammed out the back door of the kitchen.
    “He has an appointment in Santa Fe with the New Day Clinic on Monday at ten o’clock,” Josh said to his wife. “If he doesn’t keep it, he’s on his own.”
    “But this is so…sudden,” she said, shaking her head.
    “Only for you. I’ve been ready to throw him out for ten years. But if I so much as lectured Andy, he’d go crying to you or the Senator.”
    “But Andy’s so young,” she whispered.
    “Men his age have fought and killed and died.”
    “You say that like you approve.”
    Josh swore wearily. “We’ve had this conversation too many times. Andy either cleans up his act or I’ll cut him loose. Conversation over.”
    “The king is dead, long live the king, is that it?”
    “That’s it.”
    Tears magnified her eyes. “I’ll divorce you.”
    He smiled slightly. “No you won’t. You want to be first lady as much as I want to be president. You’ve worked and sacrificed for that goal all our married life. You won’t throw it away because a spoiled child pitches a fit.”
    Two tears slid down her cheeks. She didn’t want to agree with him, and she knew that he was right. “You know me too well.”
    “That’s what it’s all about. Knowing people. When you know what they want, you