looked at his wife. “Our senator wants to see me for a minute. Ken and me. He says it’s important.”
She didn’t reply.
“I owe him a couple of favors,” he said.
“Like him getting you back into your goddamn Marine Corps?”
They locked eyes for a moment, and then Pickering said, rather firmly, “Patricia, we’ll only be a few minutes. Why don’t you order dinner?”
He motioned for McCoy to follow him, and they left the room.
“ ‘Goddamn Marine Corps,’ Aunt Pat?” Ernie said.
“Goddamn Marine Corps,” Patricia Pickering confirmed. “He’s too old—he’s fifty, for God’s sake—to go rushing off . . .”
She stopped, looked at Ernie, and started for the door. “I know him and Richardson Fowler. And he’s already had enough to drink. You coming?”
Ernie considered this a moment, then shook her head, “no.”
“Suit yourself,” Patricia Pickering said, and walked into the corridor. After a moment, Ernie followed her.
“We’ll be right back,” she said.
“ ‘Goddamn Marine Corps’?” Ernie Zimmerman quoted. “She sounds just like Mae-Su.”
“If the Marine Corps wanted you to have a wife, Gunner Zimmerman,” Banning replied, delighted at his own wit, “they would have issued you one.”
“Luddy’s not pissed?”
“Actually, she’s not. She would really like me to go over there and start killing Communists,” Banning said.
A muscular man in a gray suit stepped in front of Patricia Pickering.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said. “May I ask where you’re going?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m going to see Senator Fowler.”
“I’m afraid that’s not possible just now, ma’am,” he said. “Could you come back in, say, thirty minutes?”
“Not possible? What do you mean not possible? Get out of my way!”
“I’m afraid I can’t let you pass.”
“You can’t let me pass?” Mrs. Pickering asked in outrage. “I own this hotel—no one tells me I ‘can’t pass.’ ”
Another muscular man walked quickly up as the first Secret Service agent was taking his credentials from his suit jacket pocket, and then the door of Senator Fowler’s suite opened.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, Patricia,” Fleming Pickering said to her, then turned to someone in the room. “It’s my wife.”
“Let her in,” a voice came from inside the room, and then President Truman appeared in the open door. “Let the lady pass.”
“Ladies,” Ernie said from behind the second Secret Service agent. “I’m with her.”
“Ladies,” the President agreed, smiling.
“Good evening, Mr. President,” Patricia Pickering said.
“Good evening, Mrs. Pickering,” Truman said. “I apologize for this. Won’t you come in for a minute?”
He offered his hand to Ernie McCoy.
“Admiral Hillenkoetter told me Captain McCoy was married to a very beautiful young woman. How do you do? You are Mrs. McCoy?”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” Ernie said.
“Hello, Patricia,” Senator Fowler said.
“I suspected that my overage adolescent was going to crawl into a bottle with you, Dick, and I see I was right.”
“Mrs. Pickering, Mrs. McCoy,” the President said, “this is Major General Ralph Howe, an old friend of mine.”
“How do you do, ladies?” General Howe said, in a twangy Maine accent. He seemed to be amused.
“How do you do, General?” Patricia said, as she shook his hand.
“I think what we have here, Harry,” General Howe said, smiling broadly, “is proof of the adage that behind every great man there really is a beautiful woman.”
Truman chuckled.
“Mrs. Pickering,” the President said. “I wanted a few minutes with General Howe, your husband, and Captain McCoy. A few private minutes that no one would know about. That’s why I imposed on Senator Fowler’s hospitality. . . .”
“No imposition at all, Mr. President,” Fowler said.
“Can I have them for ten minutes, ladies?” the President asked. “They’ll tell you what this is all about later.”
“Of course, Mr. President,” Patricia Pickering said. “I suppose I have made a flaming ass of myself, haven’t I?”
“I suspect my wife would have done exactly what you did,” the President said. “Bess suspects that all my friends are always plying me with liquor.”
She found herself at the door.
“Again, my apologies, ladies,” the President said, and they went through the door.
“And my apologies, Mr. President,” Pickering said when the door was closed. “The main reason she’s on a tear is that she thinks I volunteered to go back in the Corps, and that Dick Fowler arranged it as a favor.”
“If you’d like, I can straighten her out on that,” the President said.
“I would be grateful, Mr. President.”
“Formidable lady, General,” General Howe said.
“I don’t think a shrinking violet could run the Foster Hotel chain the way she runs it,” the President said. “Now, where were we?”
“I was about to offer Fleming a drink,” Fowler said. “Now