Them Hustlers Page 4

  As the umbrella-pumping birthday boy reached the stage, the blue suede suited Louisiana killer broke into a rousing version of Happy Birthday. The crowd robustly joined in, singing along unashamedly with Jerry Lee Lewis and the congressmen, senators and small town mayors. These were a people who loved to party, who loved to be close together, to eat and drink and curse and swear.

  In the Bayou being drunk meant you couldn’t do anything foolish. That’s how the congressmen looked at it. A month ago Phil had gone out with Wilkes and Corwin to Bullfeathers, a bar right down from Congress. Him alone with two famous politicians.

  Three hard drinking hours later the men were staggering back to their shared apartment when two women, congressional staffers it turned out, passed them by. The congressmen behaved like college kids, trying to pick up the long-legged girls, following them, shouting after them. A congressional security squad car quickly appeared and after identifying the drunkards gently put them in the car to take them home.

  “Didn’t we have a hell of a time,” Senator Corwin gushed at the next get together. “You sure can hold your liquor.”

  Something was wrong. People feel funny before a wedding, he knew that. This wasn’t nerves. His feelings now were something different. He knew all about pre-marriage nerves. During his University of Maryland days he had perfected a strategy of seeking out older women who as their marriage approached looked for one last fling. A chance pick-up one night in Chevy Chase, Maryland had lead him down this road.

  Some women, he came to understand, panicked at the thought of being tied for life into their impeding marriage and sought refuge in a meaningless physical romp, something that had heretofore been beyond contemplation. In return, the brides-to-be promised themselves it would be their final such adventure.

  For Phil, for any guy, it was the perfect situation. An exciting physical relationship with a “sell by date” stamped on the woman’s body. A week before the marriage the woman would be gone, with both parties satisfied by the deal.

  The system worked perfectly four times in six months. All it took to implement was his spending a few afternoons during the week at a cafe in Bethesda next to Saks Fifth Avenue. Engaged women by the dozen came in to rest after shopping. The fifth affair took a turn for the worst, as Phil was decked by the fiancé in a motel near BWI airport. The black eye and damaged ribs dissuaded Phil from employing his strategy any further.

  So he knew about pre-marriage jitters and that’s not what he was feeling.

  After all, he had no expectation of giving up one-night affairs or changing how he drank and spending time with old friends. Hell, Tanya drank harder than him some evenings. The nervousness instead came from the mystery that was Tanya and her life. The reading this morning with the gypsy tarot card reader had only made him even more uneasy.

  The fortune teller had remembered him, or at least had said she did. He told the gypsy he wanted to know if marriage was in his future. She gave Phil a well-worn deck with pictures more ornate than the usual.

  Phil loved a good reading: The dark room, the incense, the fabric on the table, the sense that the cards were a window into the hidden world all around us. Being the querent, or the one asking the question, was one of those soothing moments brought on by the ancient ritual.

  As he slowly shuffled the cards he sought to make small talk with the woman, but she said little, her dark eyes intently watching his hands. She studied each overturned card as intently as she did his hands. “You are having trouble with love now,” the old woman had flatly declared. At Phil's request she had laid out five cards. This was known as a five card spread. Not just the card that was displayed had meaning, but also the order of the cards would tell a story.

  --The past

  --The present

  --Secrets or hidden influences on his life

  --Advice

  --And finally, what might be

  It had been a brutal session. There are 78 cards in a tarot deck, of which 22 are considered the Major Arcana. The first Major Arcana card is that of the fool, and the remaining 21 tell of the fool's journey from ignorance to enlightenment.

  Phil never quite understood the theory behind the cards--but a pretty fortune teller with flowing red hair had sold him a book on the Austrian psychologist Carl Jung. It was Jung's theory that the power of the tarot came from how they reflected something called archetypes. Phil had bought the book hoping it might lead to something else with the woman, but it all came to naught.

  Jung had been a disciple of Sigmund Freud. The guy was more like a shrink-philosopher who believed that there was a collective unconscious for all humans, a trait that linked the most primitive tribes in Australia to the dealmakers on K Street in Washington. And the images and names and hence the meanings of the Major Trumps were based on this collective unconscious.

  The names of the cards told the story of an ancient world that lives on only in our deepest dreams: The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, The Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgment, and finally, The World.

  These images, believed Jung, could be used to help sell products via advertising campaigns. The best advertising executives were all students of Jung--so he must have been on to something, figured Greene.

  Two of the first five cards in his reading were Major Trumps. The next two came up reversed or upside down, meaning there was turmoil in his life. The last card was the Wheel of Fortune. Also upside down.

  The Wheel of Fortune was hitting it big. Happy days and all that. Upside down it signaled the querent was a loser and would be disappointed in whatever was the question.

  The gypsy stared at the cards as if she had never seen any of them before. Phil could hardly breathe waiting for her to speak.

  "Maybe you are troubled by love but I see you will be married within eight months.”

  That was a real surprise. How did she see that from a card that meant that life sucked? That it would only get worse before it got better. Does that mean with Tanya? Or in eight months with some other woman?

  “Within eight months,” the gypsy repeated.

  She spoke of love. “It’s a bad time for you. You have been a prisoner in expressing your emotions." She was sure right about that.

  "But, I see it won’t last long."

  She studied the cards, running her fingers over the pictures. "Yes," she brightened, showing a gold capped front tooth. "It will change. You will have the chance to meet a woman good for you."

  Phil also brightened. "Pretty?"

  "Who’s to say? For you she will be pretty."

  That could mean a dog.

  "But it will be a choice you will have to make." That was the way with tarot cards. They didn't tell you your future; only helping the querent see the doors that could be opened or shut because of your own decisions.

  “But it could be,” and here she had stared as if her ability to see into the future was near sighted. “To a woman named V.V. Yes," she looked at Phil directly for the first time. “You will have the opportunity to marry a woman within eight months; the cards are clear.”

  How bogus. What sort of women would have those initials? He wasn’t in the market for a Russian bride. Married within the year to good ol' V.V. No way. Tarot cards were never that accurate. Maybe she took him for a novice querent.

  Leaving the reader he had asked one more question even though he already knew the answer “Am I lucky right now?”

  She didn’t even hesitate or look up. “No. You are not a lucky man.”

  Phil decided not to go to the casino. Maybe she thought him a fool, but she had been dead right the last time. And who needed to spit in the face of a serious reading? Not him.

  He drove up to Philly to keep the lunch appointment. The blouses being offered were top quality and could be sold through his Japanese partners for a safe profit.

&n
bsp; With a promise to think it through, he had left with his mind preoccupied on the wedding and the words of the fortune teller.

  Trouble with love. That was damn right. Married within eight months. Good. That’s what he wanted. Strange, usually tarot readers left themselves a little wiggle room. Not this time.

  Tanya had called to make sure he would make the birthday celebration. A reminder call from Tanya was rare and it clinched his waning interest for a whirl at the crap tables. He told Tanya one more little white lie; that he would have to break his business meeting. “Don’t worry,” Tanya had cooed, “I’ll make it up to you.”

  * * *

  A mop of black hair stood out against all the blondes in the huge Hilton ballroom. It had to be Rachel Goldman. It was. Goldman was the introverted, suspicious reporter who for the past six years had covered Congress for the Associated Press. Phil had called Rachel and asked her to meet him in the hotel lobby. He should have figured Rachel could talk her way through security.

  Rachel could provide for Phil the sort of answers not possible from the gypsy. In his jacket pocket were his last three bank statements. Phil watched as Rachel, head down, weaved her way through the happily drunk crowd. Her permanent scowl made clear she was here on business. Rachel was always on business, even those times when they hung out.

  Jerry Lee Lewis was by now gone, having been flown up from Louisiana to play just two songs. A Dixieland jazz band was getting ready and the huge hall had settled into a moment of comparative quiet.

  “You found me” he marveled as she drew close.

  “Yes Phil that’s my job. I find those who hide from me.”

  Rachel was not well liked by those in the power circles, a compliment for an old-fashioned reporter. She was tolerated, but it was hard for politicians and their entourage to like a reporter who took the time to dig for stories. More than once a Rachel AP scoop had scuttled a backroom deal or thrown a curve to a politicians’ plan.

  The young reporter was neither conservative nor liberal, turning her glare onto the Clinton White House as often as on the Republicans. Funny enough, Rachel, all five feet two of her, with her mess of curly black hair and backpack that carried her computer and notes and magazines, had the sort of access that Tanya craved. She also had a curvy shape that Phil had enjoyed twice now. Phil figured that few in Washington thought of Rachel as a desirable woman - she was too much the journalist.

  “You one of them beauty pageants?” He teased.

  Rachel hated all things frivolous. Phil knew that.

  “What ya got to show me?”

  Phil pulled out the bank statements. Adjusting her backpack she took the statements with both her hands. A moment later came the first whistle from her lips. Then another long moment later a second low whistle. Rachel was impressed.

  “You know what you got here?”

  “No.”

  “Really, you that innocent?” She looked intently at him.

  “Look, you had an opening balance of $800, then a deposit of $15,000. Good for you. But two days later you pulled it out. Then that same day a deposit of $12,000 went into this other account. Pulled out three days later was $10,000 and deposited four days later was $8,000. Then back into the first account. Classic churning and skimming.”

  Rachel handed the statements back to him. “Why you kiting?”

  “It’s Tanya. I gave her access to my accounts. This started two months ago.”

  “The lobbyist bitch you marrying ‘cause you’re broke?”

  Rachel saw Washington as a world of black and white. There were those who were part of the crooked system and those fighting to break it up. The never ending Washington battle. Political insiders against journalists. Tanya was everything that Rachel despised, someone profiting from secret deals that in the end cost the taxpayer money. Rachel pushed. “You talked to her about this?”

  “Sure.”

  Exasperated, Rachel wanted all the details.

  Phil didn’t answer. He could think of what he wanted to say but no words would come out of his mouth. Long ago his mother had worried it was a sign of some serious flaw in his development. It probably was, but over time his parents and his teachers accepted his handicap.

  Rachel understood. She had a soft spot for Phil Greene, and it had little to do with his being attracted to her physically. Well, maybe it did. Few thought of her as a woman, only as an AP by-line. Her figure wasn't bad. But sure, she didn't wear heels and suffocate her face with makeup and flirt with the politicians and administration officials. Phil had been her only sexual partner in the last year. And he had been good. Really good.

  Greene was finally able to find his voice. He explained that when he had pushed Tanya last Sunday, she had glibly gone on non-stop for ten minutes about the need for security, not telling anyone what she was doing, how it was her payment for the consulting work to the congressmen. Maybe Phil hadn’t understood what his fiancée was explaining, but as a veteran salesman he sure knew when the wool was being pulled over his eyes. The woman he was about to marry was lying. And not about some lover but about money.

  The jazz band got going with a rousing edition of When the Saints Go Marching In. But the tune was out of synch as the earlier excitement was dissipated. The crowd was thinning out since the bars were closing down. Dozens of helium filled balloons festively emblazoned with Happy Birthday Congressman were slowly descending, matching the deflated feelings no doubt of the dozens of young women who had not scored any prized catches.

  Rachel looked over his shoulder. “Uh-oh. Time to leave. Here comes the bride.”

  Good god, Tanya was fast approaching from his left with Tucker. Tanya had removed her mask else they would have been caught red-handed. Rachel threw a sarcastic smile when right now Phil needed an escape door. “Call me, but not when you’re drunk.” With a quick adjustment of her backpack she vanished into the crowd.

  Phil turned to face the approaching duo.

  “Happy birthday, Congressman,” he gave Tucker his best sales smile while placing a kiss on Tanya’s cheek.

  “That was the AP reporter?” Tucker went directly for the kill. “What you give that gal?”

  Phil had to think fast. “Just the wedding info,” praying the two of them hadn’t seen Rachel hand back the bank balances. What with the press of people it was a good bet to play. The only bet he had.

  Tanya was incredulous. “You invitin' that fat little muckraker to my wedding?”

  “Our wedding honey.” The sales smile stayed plastered on his face.

  Tanya had no idea how good he could be when faced with a sale that had to be

  closed.

  “That muckraker knows the President, knows the Speaker, knows everyone in this town,” he crooned, employing the sing-song tone of voice used when a deal was moving his way. “I thought it good to have her on our side.” Bigger smile, his jaw jutting up just a half-inch or so. Meant confidence. “Can’t hurt.”

  Miracle of all miracles Tucker came to his defense. “The boy is right.” A big wink for him. “Might come in handy someday. Get her drunk at the wedding, maybe snap some photos.” Another wink to Phil. Was the congressman joking?

  Tanya reached into her purse and handed Phil her coat ticket, conceding at least for now whether a reporter like Rachel would be at her wedding. It wasn’t right to argue with Phil in front of Tucker. “Be a darlin' and get me my overcoat. It’s the light blue one, we bought in Bermuda? I’ll meet you in front of the hotel. Figure in ten minutes. Be a good angel, won’t you?”

  The two watched Phil disappear.

  Tanya looked over at Tucker. “What you think?”

  “Does Phil know anything?”

  Tanya shook her head.

  “Test him. We’re having that Gigi pow-wow for Livingston next week, don’t forget. Give your boy something false on Gingrich. When you get home, just as soon as you walk in the door….”

  Tanya Lyn cut Tucker off short. “I know how to plant information, Tommy.”


  The congressman grinned. “I bet you do dear.”

  Tucker took in a full look at Tanya, as if he was inhaling all that was her aspirations. She had served him well, never complaining much, never refusing a request, however difficult or, frankly, illegal. The congressman felt empowered. Filled with the energy from the hundreds that had come for his birthday. An admission that he stood at the gates of power and might just be getting even closer. “If all goes right you and me will be spittin' close to the number one power broker for all of the United States Congress.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Hear how everyone is talkin' about Livingston's gaining ground?”

  “They sure are,” agreed Tanya. She rattled off some the powerful names she had spoken with that night, the sort of staffers and lobbyists that greased the Washington political machinery. “Bob Shane mentioned it to me, so too Larry Waxer, Elizabeth O’Brien and even Henry Bitterman.”

  "Who's Bitterman?"

  "The chubby fundraiser for the insurance industry, you met with him 'bout two weeks ago? He's the one that likes the young girls?"

  Tucker impatiently made the situation even better. “They all sayin' Livingston got it?”

  “No. They are sayin' he is close.”

  Tanya maternally took Tommy’s arm and led him over to the far corner where the rest of their group, including Tucker’s wife Toni, was waiting. As they walked through the crowd, stopping to say hello to friends and colleagues, Tommy kept focused on Livingston. “We have to show Phil to Gigi," he whispered. "You arranged that? So she knows what he look like, sounds like and all that?

  Tanya patted his arm.

  Worried, the congressman didn’t give up. “Gigi need the right feeling for her magic to work, if it’s needed of course. She need to know whether the skin is rough or soft, warm or cool. She need to look into his eyes, see how he is thinkin', how the fella holds himself.” A quick laugh. “Who knows how Gigi does it? But that voodoo is real, you believe it right, you seen it right?

  “Sure congressman.” Tommy was getting all nervous at the thought of Livingston becoming Speaker. He was leaving no weapon in their arsenal untouched, not even Gigi. He worried aloud just how well they could trust Phil. Tucker probably thought the same of me, realized Tanya for the first time. She shuddered.