“Rick’s that guy Mary Ann met at the funeral, right?”
“That’s the one.”
“I can’t believe my uptight little cousin allowed some man to put the moves on her at a funeral,” Dena said. “I wish I could have seen that.”
“It’s probably best that you weren’t there.”
“How come?”
“Well, it was in a church and it would have really sucked if you had stepped inside and burst into f lames.”
Dena grinned. “Get the hell out of my office before I smack you.”
When I stepped inside Fitzgerald’s campaign headquarters I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed. I had expected to be confronted with a scene reminiscent of the trading floor on Wall Street, but instead no one looked harried or stressed, and the only multitasking going on involved stuffing envelopes while talking on the phone. The room was unimpressive, too. Fluorescent lights, gray carpets: a far cry from the elitist image Fitzgerald had been unintentionally projecting to voters.
“Hi, Sophie!”
I nearly jumped out of my skin. Johnny clearly had a knack for being able to sneak up on me.
“Wow,” he said, looking down at his watch. “You’re right on time! It’s four o’clock on the button.”
“I didn’t want to be late.” I treated him to a disinterested smile. I had the uncomfortable feeling that Johnny’s effusive babbling was his way of flirting.
“But you’re not early, either! That’s pretty impressive considering you came from Frisco. You timed it perfectly!”
“Mmm-hmm, Johnny? It’s San Francisco. Never, ever Frisco.”
Johnny laughed as if I had made a great joke. “Oh, right, Frisco is like the F word for you city people! Too funny! Do you think that there’s a name that New Yorkers hate? Like do the people upstate call it York or ’ork…”
“Johnny, I don’t mean to be rude, but could you let Fitzgerald know I’m here?”
“I’m fairly certain he already knows,” said a deep, friendly voice.
I turned to see Flynn Fitzgerald f lashing his perfectly straight white teeth. He had to look up to make eye contact with me, which surprised me since even with the three-inch heels I was wearing I only came to five-eight. But he carried himself well, giving him the illusion of height.
He gave my hand a firm shake. “Did you have any trouble finding the place?”
“No, I just…followed the scent of victory,” I said with a smile.
Fitzgerald released a chuckle.
“I’ll call and confirm your appointments for tomorrow,” Johnny said to his boss. “Have a good interview!”
“Thank you, Keyes,” Fitzgerald said, addressing Johnny by what I assumed was his last name. He then led me to the back of the main room and into a small office. “Thank you so much for coming.” He gestured for me to sit.
“I think I’m the one who should be thanking you,” I said as I draped my jacket over the back of my chair. “You’re the one doing me a favor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Fitzgerald closed the door before sitting down behind his particle-wood desk. “Politicians should always be grateful when a journalist takes the time to talk to them. You’d be surprised how many reporters write articles without ever bothering to question the person they’re writing about.”
“Thank you, but this article isn’t so much about your campaign per se as it is about campaigning in general.” I took a small notebook and pen out of my purse. “I thought we could start by discussing how you divide up responsibilities among your top staff.”
“We all wear a lot of hats around here. I have a media consultant who spends an enormous amount of time editing my speeches, a speechwriter who spends hours talking to the press, and so on and so forth.”
“So everyone here is a jack-of-all-trades?”
“You could say that.”
“It must be hard with Eugene gone. I mean, with the workload.”
“O’Reilly was a wonderful man and his absence will be sorely felt. However, I have an incredible staff and they’ll rise to the occasion.”
“What was Eugene responsible for?”
Fitzgerald’s smile tightened. “As I said before, we are all responsible for a little bit of everything.”
“But what did the bulk of his responsibilities entail?”
For a moment Fitzgerald didn’t answer and I had the horrible suspicion that he had just figured out that I wasn’t there for the reasons I had claimed. Perhaps it was the knee-length leather skirt that was giving me away. Only Ann Coulter could pull off right-wing shtick in leather. The rest of us needed to wear pastels or risk being called out as imposters. But then Fitzgerald’s expression softened and he leaned back in his chair. “Eugene was a researcher. But every campaign is run differently, as I’m sure you’ll discover if you talk with Anne Brooke. Have you made an appointment to speak with her?”
I shifted slightly in my seat. The idea had never occurred to me. “I’ll be speaking to her soon.”
Fitzgerald lifted his eyebrows. “So she agreed to an interview? I wasn’t sure if she would since, as you probably know, the National Review has the unjust reputation of being somewhat biased.”
Shit, I had just walked into a trap and an obvious one at that. “I told her the same thing I told you. This article is less about the politics involved in the campaigns and more about the campaigns themselves.” Fitzgerald nodded but didn’t say anything. “Plus, I told her I was impressed that she had the courage to speak out against the cigarette tax, despite its popularity within the Democratic Party.”
“Right, the cigarette tax. It may be the only issue Brooke and I agree on. That and Robert Louis Stevenson, the school she chose for her son. I went there myself. However, I do find it odd that a woman who refuses to support school vouchers would send her son to a private boarding school.”
“Guess she has her reasons.” I didn’t know enough about Brooke and her son’s situation to be able to comfortably comment further. “Are you and your wife planning on sending your children to Robert Louis Stevenson?”
Fitzgerald frowned and looked down at his desk. “We haven’t been blessed with children, though we are planning on adopting.”
“I’m sure you’ll be a wonderful father,” I said, unsure if that was true. He was being nice and appeared to have some gentlemanly qualities, but my gut told me that he wasn’t a spare-the-rod kind of guy.
“Thank you. Getting back to Brooke, she’s run a very good campaign so far, but then again I expected nothing less. She’s a very calculating woman.”
I hesitated, choosing my words carefully. “I’m not sure her campaign has been all that great. Since it began she’s had to spend more time explaining her previous affairs and drug use than talk about her positions, and then one of her campaign workers threw himself out of the fifteenth-story window of her campaign office. I’ve got to think it’s a bad sign when the people who are supporting you start killing themselves.”
If Fitzgerald was amused he showed no sign of it. “What happened to that boy was tragic.”
“What happened…to him?”
“He