I turn away from Trish, glance once more at the portrait of her father above the mantel. It’s strange how you can look at one thing and see another. Every time I look at that painting, I wonder what kind of home run he was trying to hit, naming his daughters after those of a disgraced president. Was he banking on Nixon returning to power? Was he trying to impress whatever Nixon admirers hadn’t been booted out of office by the time Julie and Trish were born in 1975? Or was he naturally Nixonian, a cynical beast fully on board with Nixon’s “screw my enemies” mentality?
Nixon once erroneously proclaimed, “I am not a crook.” Technicalities and plausible deniability being the mother of all reckless assertions, I could say the same: I am not a crook, for my shenanigans are so far beneath the radar that no one but Trish cares about them. Although I’ve guided my financial clients into solid if conservative portfolios, I’ve been far more reckless with my own personal investments. And far less successful. I’ve lost staggering amounts of money. To impress Laurel, I booked us into $1,000-a-night hotel suites for our assignations. French doors opened out onto private balconies that overlooked the White House, the Potomac, the C&O Canal, and the national monuments scattered throughout town. I booked dozens of these hotel suites in the months we’ve been seeing each other. Now my credit cards are significantly overdrawn.
“Honey?” I say, leaning back against the wall until I feel the flocked wallpaper on the back of my neck. “Honey, if I told you how confused I am, you wouldn’t believe me.”
“I’d believe you,” Trish says, slipping her hand into mine. “You’re not the only one who’s confused.”
We stand like this for several minutes. Everything’s quiet save for the occasional car on the cobblestone street in front of our house and the tick-tock of the grandfather clock in the next room. Moonlight shines in through the windows, its silvery light changing as clouds ebb and flow over the sky.
“Do you want to talk about this now?” Trish asks.
“No. Please. I’m in no shape to say anything sensible right now,” I answer, slumping down against the wall.
Months after I met Trish, I received a phone call from her father, Jack Riggs, inviting me to lunch. I arrived at Savory Mew at the appointed hour expecting her to be present, but opening the door, Jack informed me she was away with friends. “Let’s get to know each other,” he said, decanting port wine for us into a pair of cut crystal glasses. I’d been to Savory Mew often enough that the house no longer intimidated me, yet on this occasion, alone with Jack Riggs, the blinds drawn, I realized an interrogation awaited me. Lunch was the stated purpose of my visit, but food was nowhere in sight. He offered me a cigar, which I declined.
“Sit down,” Jack said.
I sat on the living room sofa, a priceless antique, and eyed the ancient windup Victrola in the corner of the room. During a previous visit, he’d commandeered my attention by bringing out rare Billie Holiday 78s on the Okeh label, but entertainment wasn’t to be had on this particular afternoon.
“You’re not a very smart man,” Jack Riggs said.
I sucked in a breath.
Jack Riggs produced a folder containing my college transcript. I had majored in business but had been on academic probation for several semesters. Having just barely graduated six years earlier, I hoped my poor college performance could no longer be used against me. Previously, Jack Riggs had laughed amiably at my jokes, stroked his chin while considering my more thought-provoking comments. I thought he liked me. I thought he was glad I was dating his daughter.
“And your professional prospects are, shall we say, underwhelming.”
“I’m circulating my résumé around town again, sir. Something will pop up. I’m sure of it.”
Jack Riggs smirked. “Should I make a few calls? See what I can rustle up for you?”
My eyes widened. I hadn’t considered asking Jack Riggs, as big a player in the Washington business scene as I was likely to meet, to help in my job search—an oversight that, I suppose, lent credence to his contention that I wasn’t very smart. “I’d love to work at your bank, sir. I promise to work hard. Even if you started me off in an entry-level position, I promise you won’t be disappointed.”
“You? At my bank?” Jack Riggs glanced at my transcript and frowned. “I’m afraid that wouldn’t be wise.”
My shoulders sagged.
“But I’ll do what I can. Trust me on this. And now I need to trust you on something.” Jack Riggs pushed a photograph across the mahogany coffee table. The photo was of a beautiful woman with short blonde hair and ample cleavage barely contained by her red lace lingerie halter top. She looked to be about thirty, a tad older than Trish and me. “What do you think?”
Unsure how to respond, I sipped from my port glass.
“Tell me.” Jack Riggs looked at the photo again and grinned. “You think she’s attractive?”
Suddenly, I understood what he was getting at. Or so I thought. His wife, Trish’s mother, had died five years earlier after a protracted bout of lymphatic cancer, and from the bashful way he grinned, I gathered he’d brought me here for a man-to-man conversation not about my professional problems but to seek advice on his own affairs of the heart. I took another sip of port. “You’ve got excellent taste, sir.”
“Damn right I do. She cost me four million dollars too.”
The figure flabbergasted me. I let go of the photo. It fell from my fingers and fluttered to the table.
“Four million. Easy. Between what I paid to keep this quiet from her husband, extract a pledge that she won’t press charges against me, and the trust fund to take care of the baby’s upbringing and eventual college costs. Hell, the agreement she signed requires that she says nice things about me if anyone asks. But take it from me: floozies are expensive.” His term—“floozies”—was distasteful, harkening back to the Kennedy administration if not earlier, but though he expressed regret, his tone conveyed bad-boy bravado. He was an old goat, a grizzled player. His cheeks bloomed with pride. “Everything’s got a cost. Especially if you make as many bad choices as I have.”
In the years that followed, I’ve thought often of this conversation. He laid his cards on the table. We both understood each other’s faults. My own father had abandoned my mother and me when I was thirteen. I’d already begun to look at Jack Riggs as a substitute father figure, but his crudeness appalled me. He talked of groping secretaries, grabbing women by their pussies, and planting kisses on the female associates who came to him for business or career advice. He told me about the harassment suits, the out-of-court settlements, and the cost of maintaining silence about his shenanigans through NDAs.
“Take my advice: don’t follow my example.” Jack Riggs lifted a cigar from the Spanish cedar humidor at the corner of the table. Tobacco products had never interested me, yet the process by which he went about lighting that cigar fascinated me. He struck a long wooden match against the striking strip of its matchbox, and then, after the sulfurous smell dissipated, he held the cut tip of the cigar at an angle to the match, rotating it in his hands so that the tip burned evenly. “You sure you don’t want one of these? Arturo Fuente God of Fire. About the smoothest smoke you’ll find anywhere in the world.”
“No, sir,” I said. “I’m good.”
Jack Riggs put the cigar to his mouth and, still holding the match to its tip, drew in a few breaths. He released his breath. A small flame flared from the tip of the cigar. He took another puff until the flame extinguished itself. Setting the cigar down on a ceramic ashtray, he let out a puff of smoke. To this day, though it’s been years since he last smoked a cigar at Savory Mew, I sometimes sit down on the same sofa and smell the nauseating aroma of that cigar and feel again the nervousness of that afternoon.
“Take my word: less expensive ways exist to get yourself in trouble. Stay clear of floozies, because you don’t have the jack to deal with that.”
“Jack?”
“Money. You don’t have jack. At your level, one extra woman will exhaust your entire net worth.”
“And you?”
“Let’s just say all the extra women in the world haven’t made a dent in my net worth.” He produced a business card with the name of a private investigating firm printed upon it.