BENTLEY ABERNATHY WAS awake when the phone rang.
He had been staring into the darkness hoping for some indication from his wife’s side of the bed that she might also be awake and possibly receptive to a little middle-of-the-night sex after which he was always able to fall asleep immediately. Brenda had made it clear to him years ago that she did not want to be awakened in the middle of the night for sex and that he should go jack off in the bathroom or take a sleeping pill when he was suffering from a bout of sleeplessness. But occasionally she, too, would be wakeful and roll willingly into his arms without expectation of foreplay, her own fantasies apparently having been at work, and they would come together for an immediate, intense coupling followed by a bit of affectionate snuggling as they both fell soundly asleep.
Even though Bentley was an attorney and not unaccustomed to late-night phone calls from desperate clients, the demanding ring of a telephone in the still of the night was always startling. Always made his heart lurch. And in the span of a millisecond, that first harsh ring precipitated an avalanche of possibilities that had nothing to do with clients. As disappointed as he was in his four spoiled and seemingly worthless children, he realized how much he still loved them when the middle-of-the-night phone calls came and his greatest fear was that something terrible might happen to one of them-something an attorney father could not make go away. The possibilities were many. Automobile accidents topped the list, followed closely by overdoses. Or the fear would resurface that his daughter’s jerk of a husband was capable of abuse. Or one of his sons might have been severely injured in a barroom brawl. Or had driven into Mexico and been murdered by banditos. Or been mugged. Carjacked. Kidnapped. One of his children could be bleeding to death on a hospital gurney or cold and dead on a slab at the county morgue.
Without his glasses, Bentley did not even try to read the number on the caller ID. He grabbed the phone before it rang a second time. An instant later Brenda turned on her bedside lamp.
“What’s taking you so goddamned long?” a rasping male voice immediately demanded.
Bentley fell back on the bed and took in a deep, calming, grateful breath. His spoiled, worthless children lived on.
“You said to take all the time I needed to find the perfect young woman,” Bentley said into the receiver, reminding himself of the almost impossible list of criteria he had been given.
“It’s been four damned months, and I pay you a great deal of money to look after our affairs down there. I told you that this particular affair was to have top priority.”
“It is my top priority,” Bentley assured his caller, carefully keeping any sign of irritation from his voice.
“My sister says you haven’t found a single girl for her to interview.”
“That’s because we didn’t want to waste her time with unsuitable applicants. Amanda was very specific about the sort of young woman that she and her husband were looking for. But I can assure you that we have narrowed down the search. In fact, I have a promising candidate coming into the office in the morning.”
“E-mail me something on her.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Before Bentley could respond, the caller hung up, and he allowed himself a single “Shit!”
“God almighty, I presume,” Brenda said.
“Yeah. I’ve got to take care of something downstairs.”
Brenda was sitting up. One strap of her nightgown had slipped from her shoulder, revealing a portion of her right breast. For an old broad, his wife was still a looker. Still had a great body. Great tits.
Bentley took a chance and reached over to pull her nightgown even lower and rub a fingertip around the exposed nipple. He was rewarded with just the tiniest suggestion of a smile.
“How long will ‘something’ take?” she asked.
“Five minutes,” he said.
“Well, I might still be awake,” she said.
Bentley leaped from the bed. He beat on his chest and let out a Tarzan yell as he went racing across the room. Brenda’s laughter followed him.
In his downstairs office, Bentley looked in his Rolodex for his secretary’s home phone number and dialed it.
“Hi, boss,” she said sleepily. Obviously Lenora didn’t need glasses to read her caller ID.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I had a late-night call from Gus Hartmann. He thinks we’re neglecting his sister’s search. Didn’t you say the young woman you have scheduled in the morning looked like the best of the lot?”
“Yeah. At least on paper and over the phone she seems promising.”
“I need you to e-mail her file to Gus Hartmann ASAP. He’s at home.”
“I’m heading for my computer now.”
“Do I pay you enough?” he asked.
“For the time being.”
Bentley thanked her then hurried back upstairs.
At the top of the stairs, he could see the flicker of candlelight from the open bedroom door. His heart surged.
Brenda was naked. “I want you to kiss me for a long time,” she said. Her voice was low and sultry.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he said, taking her in his arms. God yes, he would kiss her. Every inch of her. He was doing just that when the phone rang. “Don’t answer it,” Brenda said. “He’ll just upset you.”
Bentley shook his head and reluctantly reached for the receiver.
“There’s no picture. I need to know what this girl looks like.”
“We’ll take one tomorrow,” Bentley said and hung up the receiver. He wanted to disconnect the phone before returning to his wife’s lovely, warm, delicious body but didn’t dare.
Gus Hartmann printed out the e-mail and read the report again before putting it in his desk drawer. Then he pushed back his chair and headed for the open French doors. A fountain gurgled pleasantly in the meditation garden, and the soft hooting of an owl could be heard from the grove of pine trees just beyond the brick wall.
The garden was just as it had been when his mother would come here. A willow draped its branches elegantly over the fountain, and a sculpture of Jesus, his arms outspread, beckoned from the shadows of a stone grotto. The gaslights still came on every evening at dusk. The plantings were kept the same. Not a weed, fallen leaf, or cobweb was allowed to mar the garden’s pristine beauty.
Gus seated himself on a stone bench where his mother used to sit for long periods of time without moving, seemingly without breathing. He would watch her from the French doors until she realized that he was there. She would smile and open her arms. “Come here, my darling boy,” she would say.
It was an image he clung to.
Gus and his sister Amanda had kept the house and grounds of the northern Virginia estate much as it had been when they were children and lived here with their famous parents. And the Texas ranch, too. Both were monuments to another time.
Gus looked through the open doors at the portrait of his parents that hung above the mantel. What a striking couple they had been. And tragic. An irresistible mix-beauty and tragedy. Even after all these years, people still made their way to the gate of the estate to leave tacky little bouquets of flowers and silly little messages, especially in remembrance of his and Amanda’s mother. Amanda read the messages and had a secretary respond if there was an address. Each address was added to the mailing list for the Alliance of Christian Voters, and the writer was extended an invitation to join the organization and help bring the God of our fathers back to American life and government. If an individual made a large enough donation to the Alliance or a clergyman brought his congregation into the fold, he or she would be invited to a retreat or seminar at Alliance headquarters in Washington, D.C. And depending on the size of the gift, that person might even be invited to a reception or a dinner here at Victory Hill and meet Amanda Hartmann in person. Gus never attended these affairs, but he did sometimes stand in the shadows of the upstairs hallway and watch Amanda receive guests, all of whom seemed to have a pathological need to shake her hand and gush about how important her books had been to them and how much they had enjoyed her appearances on Oprah or Regis and how they remembered her mother with such awe and admiration. Even corporate moguls and those elected to high political office fawned over Amanda, and those who were old enough to remember her father told her what a fine man he had been, what a great president he would have made. And, of course, there would be a photographer waiting to take each guest’s picture with Amanda. Such photographs were autographed and mailed to the visitor with a personalized letter.
The only gatherings Gus attended were board meetings and private dinners for a small group of powerful men who had a vested interest in making sure the correct side of the political spectrum maintained a firm control of the nation’s destiny. For, like his father before him, Gus was a political animal. Unlike his father, however, he was not a politician.
Jason Hartmann had been the youngest governor in Texas history. He was midway through his first term when he married Mary Millicent Tutt, who was already known to millions for her inspirational books and her nationally syndicated newspaper column and her television and radio shows. Their wedding had been a media event. Pictures of the bride and groom appeared in countless newspapers and on the covers of magazines. The accompanying stories usually pointed out that Jason’s gubernatorial election had been financed by his whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking billionaire father, Jonathan “Buck” Hartmann, who had struck it rich wildcatting for oil and claim-jumping in western Texas, and that Mary Millicent was the daughter of Preacher Marvin Tutt, an old-time tent evangelist who died after being bitten by one of the poisonous serpents that he sometimes wrapped around his neck during his hellfire-and-brimstone sermons. In spite of their notorious fathers, the bride and groom were heralded as Texas “royalty.”
Gus had no memory of the governor’s mansion or his father’s election to the U.S. Senate. His first memories were of the Texas ranch and this house, where his family had lived during his father’s Senate years. Jason Hartmann had been on track to be nominated as his party’s presidential candidate when he was stricken with a malignant brain tumor. Gus had been eight years old at the time and his sister Amanda ten. They went with their parents to the Texas ranch and watched from the sidelines while their father languished and finally died. Their mother became even more beloved as she traveled around the nation bringing millions of lost souls to the Lord and launching the Alliance of Christian Voters as a memorial to her late husband. The Alliance was dedicated to returning the United States of America to its staunch Christian roots. Many of Mary Millicent’s supporters wanted her to run for political office, but she preferred to endorse candidates rather than become one. She’d often told her son that it was the kingmakers who ruled the world and not the kings themselves. But, of course, she realized that political office was out of the question for Gus.
Americans have a penchant for electing tall candidates, and Gus was a very short man. He stood barely five feet tall and, having been diagnosed as an infant with a rare form of dwarfism, achieved that height only because he had been treated with growth hormones throughout his childhood. He was not only exceptionally short, his head was overly large for his frame, his arms and legs too short.
Gus and Amanda had grown up knowing that he would someday administer both the Alliance and the oil company founded by their grandfather Buck Hartmann and that she would eventually take over their mother’s ministry and become the spiritual leader of the Alliance.
Gus left the limelight to his sister. If people had heard of him at all, it was as the brother of Amanda Tutt Hartmann. Only the most astute observers of the political scene realized that he had played a pivotal role in the current president’s rise to the White House and was perhaps one of the most powerful men in the country. Gus refused to be interviewed when contacted by the occasional perceptive reporter who realized that the reclusive chairman of both the vast Alliance of Christian Voters and Palo Duro Oil and Gas was more than what he seemed. Nevertheless, every few years an article about Gus would appear in one of the nation’s more astute publications. A photograph almost never accompanied such articles, for almost no photographs of him existed in the public domain. He never appeared at public events. Never appeared in public at all. Palo Duro and Alliance board meetings were generally held at Victory Hill or the ranch or via teleconferencing. Whenever he went to the White House, he entered through a back entrance used mainly by delivery people and servants. If he wanted to speak with the president from his home, all he had to do was punch a button on his phone. Gus spoke to the president almost daily to remind him of his priorities and that he had run for office as a devout Christian and damned well better do nothing to destroy that image.
His sister, however, was quite well-known and continuously sought after by reporters and photographers, and her face was often on the covers of magazines. Amanda was as elegant and well-spoken as their mother had been and had inherited their mother’s skill with the written word but carried a softer message to her flock. Amanda’s God was more loving and forgiving than her mother’s had been. Amanda’s book, Peace from Within, had been an international best seller. And, like her mother before her, she was a frequent guest on talk shows, and there would be standing room only at the rallies and revivals she held all over the country, during which she urged attendees not only to give their heart to Jesus but to register to vote and to use their vote to bring the United States of America back to God.
Gus realized that his sister had always assumed he shared her religious faith, and he never bothered to tell her otherwise. For him, religion was now and had been throughout history a way to control the masses. He placed his faith in power-in political power-and religion had become the defining force in American politics. Gus had masterminded the president’s election by bringing together the power and wealth of giant corporations and the religious right. Under Gus’s direction and Amanda’s ministry, the Alliance of Christian Voters had become a powerful political action group.
In spite of his disdain for all things religious, Gus loved and admired Amanda immensely. He had been relieved when her brief marriage to a professional football player ended, and she and her infant son came home to Victory Hill. The football player, who had a history of bar fights and an addiction to gambling, refused to give up parental rights and allow his son’s last name to be changed to Hartmann, but less than a year after the divorce, the man had been the victim of a drive-by shooting.
Amanda’s son had no memory of his father. Gus had been the father figure in Sonny’s life, a role he had cherished. Still, he had never completely realized how profoundly he loved his nephew until the accident. It was almost six months ago now since Sonny had been found pinned under an all-terrain vehicle at the bottom of a shallow canyon in the far northwest corner of the ranch. He had been taken by helicopter to Amarillo, but after more than a month in intensive care, Amanda had him moved back to the ranch, away from prying eyes, and taken up the mantle of a grieving mother. Her millions of followers assumed that Sonny was dead and grieved along with her, but the press had not given up so easily. With their telephoto lenses and audacity, they drove up the isolated road that led to Hartmann Ranch. They stayed until the frigid reality of a Panhandle winter drove them away.
Technically, Sonny Hartmann was still alive. He still moved and even mumbled at times. But the essence of the boy who had been Gus’s beloved Sonny lived no longer.
Gus now conducted his life under a staggering burden of grief.
His sister had prayed a thousand prayers to her God, asking that Sonny be restored to her. Gus even reconsidered altering his own religious beliefs for a time. Even though he had not prayed since childhood, when his grief became unbearable Gus had given it a try. On bended knee he made his bargains and promises, but they had been to no avail.
He looked into the face of the stone Christ and pondered trying once again.