“I know.” He waved his hand. “We’re friends, aren’t we? Can you just be my friend for five minutes instead of my campaign manager?”
She let out a breath and sat on the coffee table, facing Park. “Fine.”
“Jackson was...well, he was once very important to me, but I broke his heart when I decided to run for office, because no one would take a gay Republican candidate seriously. Maybe theywould now, but definitely not then. And you know me, you know what I wanted to do when I ran for office the first time.”
Martha nodded. Park’s decision to change party affiliations and throw himself into politics had probably been a long time coming, but after spending a few years developing his own company and seeing the way federal regulations both helped and hindered his business, he’dwanted to get involved at a legislative level. His interest in politics was not entirely selfless, given that he supported policies that would benefit his company and its employees, but he also thought he could help effect change within the party for those like himself who were conservative on economic issues but thought the Republican Party had gone off the rails. Park had an innate understandingof the economy, of the way it worked for real people, not just the theoretical way it worked based on projections from think tanks or economic theory written by college professors who had never worked outside of academia. Not to mention, the current emphasis on party loyalty over real solutions for real problems frustrated the hell of Park. The US Senate had lost touch with the people, but Park hada lot of ideas for what it could do.
Well, that, and after two years in the state Assembly, he found he liked the minutiae of government, that he thrived at it. Martha had convinced him he was handsome, charming, and good at talking to people, which, she argued, were the keys to getting elected to higher office. Which was how he found himself running for the United States Senate.
“I knowthis has been hard on you,” Martha said.
“Do you know what Dan suggested the other day? He said I should get married. As if I could just pull a wife out of thin air. But he thought having a pretty woman on my arm would help me get elected. Can you believe that?”
“Forget about Dan. We have bigger fish to fry.”
Park didn’t want to be discussing this with Martha. He loved Martha likea sister and trusted her as a friend, but he would have rather been discussing how he got here with Jackson, who had understood him in a way Martha still didn’t sometimes. “We should suspend the campaign. At least until the police sort through the evidence and make an arrest.”
“Do you think that will make it look like we’re conceding defeat?”
“I don’t know. But it seems tacky to campaignright now. A girl died, Martha.”
“I realize. She died in your apartment.” Martha glared at him.
“I swear I don’t know her. The police showed me photos last night. Her name was Zoe apparently.” He held up his hands. “I wish I could remember meeting her or that I had some explanation for her being in my apartment, but I have nothing. I feel sick about this.”
“The media could potentiallyspin this as a lover’s spat gone wrong.”
“They could. I think the police already are. But both you and I know she could never have been my lover.”
“Because you’re far more interested in Jackson Kane.”
Park sat forward and rubbed his temples. “It’s not like that.”
Martha opened her mouth and leaned forward as if she were about to argue with him. Then she shook her head. “I thinkyes, we should probably suspend the campaign. You can’t leave the city anyway, so we’ll cancel the speech in Yonkers on Friday and reschedule the weekend in Rochester. I’ll talk to Louis.”
“Okay. What do I do in the meantime?”
Martha stood again and resumed pacing. “You meet with Dan and Ray and you work out a strategy. If you insist on hiring Jackson Kane, then you get him in here tomeet with your team. Then you do whatever your team says you do. You do not leave this hotel without Dee or Dum or both. Got it?”
“Yeah, I...yeah.”
Park’s phone rang then. The caller ID displayed “Dad.”
“He’s been calling all day,” Park said. “I don’t want to talk to him.”
“You sound like a child about to get caught for shoplifting a candy bar.” Martha touched Park’s shoulder.“Better answer it. You’ll have to face him eventually.”
Park took a deep breath, steeled himself, and answered the phone. “Dad, I know what you’re—”
“Parker Thomas Livingston. What the hell is happening?”
He’d been full-named. That was a bad sign. “I swear I don’t know. I was in Buffalo all weekend and—”
“The scandal alone. What was that woman doing in your apartment?”
“I don’tknow!” Park closed his eyes. Leave it to his father to think the scandal was the bigger issue. “I swear. I have no idea what is going on. I don’t know that woman, I don’t know why she was in my apartment, and I just want all of this to go away.” He knew he sounded like a whiny child, but his father brought that out in him sometimes.
“Okay.” Park’s father spoke with surprising calm. “We’llfind a way out of this. I’ll hire you a lawyer. We can make this right.”
