“Huh,” said Hamm.
“You should see that place sometime. It is spectacular.”
“I’d like to sometime. What does the husband do?”
“Just made a lot of money is all I know. She was divorced before I met her. Why?”
“No reason. I was just reading where this Mrs. Green was named head of some arts council and I was thinking that it might be a pretty good thing for the governor to get involved in.”
Cecil looked surprised. “Really?”
“You’re always bugging me about all that artsy stuff, aren’t you? So I figure maybe I’ll give it a try.”
Cecil left the office, pleased that all his attempts to get Hamm interested in culture had finally paid off. Vita Green was one of the well-known cultural leaders in Kansas City and was admired by everyone, especially the men. She was a tall, striking woman of forty-three with shining black hair that she wore parted in the middle and pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck. She was always dressed exquisitely but simply, usually in bright red, or emerald green to match her eyes, with one spectacular pin on her right shoulder. At first glance she could have been mistaken for Spanish or Greek aristocracy. Few who met her would have guessed that she was 100 percent black Irish. But in addition to being a pure pleasure to look at, she was smart, witty, and a man’s woman in every way. She could converse on any subject and hold her own in any crowd. But when Mrs. Vita Green received the note from the governor asking if they could set up a meeting to discuss the state of the arts in Missouri, her first reaction was to laugh. Vita, along with the rest of her crowd, had always assumed Sparks was some country bumpkin straight from the agriculture department who would certainly never be interested in anything like the arts. She called her good friend Peter and said, “You are not going to believe who wants to have a meeting with me.”
Peter Wheeler, whom Hamm had defeated six years ago and who had turned down Hamm’s offer to join his administration, was a gentleman and as gracious as ever. “I think you should, Vita, and at least hear him out. You never know, and he may be trying to branch out a little.”
She thought about what he had said and after a moment replied, “I suppose you’re right, Peter—anything for art, as they say.”
A few days later, a member of Hamm’s staff called and informed her the governor was going to be in Kansas City for the day and asked if she would be available Wednesday morning between 8:30 and 9:00, before he did his speech at the Elks Club. Although it was an ungodly hour for her, she agreed to meet with him at the arts council building downtown. When she arrived that morning he was already in the president’s office making phone calls. A nervous secretary said, “He says you are to go right in.” His back was to the door and he was on the phone with his feet propped up on the windowsill. She stopped at the door but her perfume did not. It traveled on before her and wafted across the desk and caused him to turn around and hang up instantly. In that perfume were the possibilities of every kind of exotic evening, whether on the roof of her penthouse or on a moonlit beach in the tropics. All this before she said, “Hello, I’m Vita Green.”
When he saw the woman he had only seen in the black-and-white newspaper photographs standing there in living color, Hamm suddenly forgot every other pretty girl he had ever seen in his life—and as governor he saw quite a few, mostly blond beauty queens that had just won some contest or another. In his entire married life he had never thought of another woman in that way, but when Vita walked in, all thinking went out the door and slammed it shut. What stood before him now was the Rolls-Royce of womanhood. She was not a girl. She was a grown woman who, he could tell just by looking, was smarter and more powerful than he was by a mile and it excited him. He felt as if someone had just smacked him in the face with a million dollars. And as usual, it did not take him long to make up his mind.
What Vita Green now saw, jumping up and coming around the desk to shake her hand, was a stocky man about her height in low heels, not handsome in the way she was used to, certainly not sophisticated or well dressed. But when he grabbed her hand and held on to it as if he was afraid she would escape, she was somewhat taken by surprise by the energy and vitality and just the sheer
heat
of the man when he touched her. She was used to being admired by men but this one was different. On first meeting her, most men were overwhelmed and usually fumbled and stepped back away from her, trying to think of a clever thing to say. But, clearly, Hamm Sparks was not trying to think of clever things—or stepping back. There was nothing thought out or calculated about his approach. He said exactly what was on his mind at the moment, he looked at her with the unguarded genuine appreciation of a male for a female, and said, “Mrs. Green, what is it going to take for me to get you? Because I’m telling you right now, I’m gonna move heaven and hell to get it. You want me to jump through hoops for you? Just tell me how high and how many.”
Now she was taken aback and, to her astonishment, she found this total candor to be refreshing and completely irresistible. She had to smile. At that moment someone started knocking on the door.
She said, “Why don’t we start with dinner?”
Not letting go of her hand and looking right into her eyes, he said, “Mrs. Green, I can’t wait that long. How about lunch?”
“It’s Vita. Where would you like to go?”
“I don’t care. You tell me where and when. . . .”
“How about the Downtown Club. Shall we say one o’clock?”
He nodded.
“Will we be discussing the arts, Governor Sparks?”
“It’s Hamm, and I sincerely doubt it,” he said.
She walked to the door and when she got there paused a moment and then turned around and looked back at him. “And by the way,” she said, “I intend to be early.”
“And I’ll be there waiting.”
All the way back to her apartment she had to laugh but the joke was on her. Of all the things she had expected to happen in her rather well-planned life, a rube politician named Hamm Sparks was certainly the last person she would have guessed.
That night after dinner he told her he had decided to stay in town for a few more days.
“Really?” she said. “Don’t you have a state to run?”
He looked at her. “Honey, I can do two things at once.”
I’ll just bet you can, she thought.
And this is how the relationship of Vita and Hamm began. There was no courting, no games, just raw physical attraction. They both had met their match and both felt as if they had unexpectedly stumbled upon something they had been searching for for years. There was no struggle for power, only the start of a powerful merger.
A Lot in Common
N
O ONE HAD BEEN
surprised when Mrs. Vita Green was named governor’s adviser on the arts. People were not in the least bit suspicious when Hamm spent more and more time in Kansas City and left his wife at home. She rarely went anywhere with him anyway, so no one noticed. The fact that Vita and the governor were seen at some of the same events and parties did not cause eyebrows to raise; it seemed only natural. But then few knew that when the governor checked into his suite at the Muehlebach Hotel he walked in and walked right back out again, through the basement door, where Trooper Ralph Childress was waiting in the alley to take him over to Vita’s apartment and would wait to take him back in the early morning.
Not only was Vita more wildly attracted to him than she had ever been to any man in her life, but she liked him. Hamm Sparks was exactly who he was, with no ego, no pretensions. He was an eager student. He wanted to learn, to improve himself. She had a lot to teach. Vita also recognized so much of herself in Hamm. They had a lot more in common than met the eye. Most people would not have guessed that Vita had ever worked a day in her life or that she had not been to the manor born. She had only heard about all of her rich cousins living in fine homes, going to the best schools, shopping in the finest stores. Her father, a likable man, had come from a nice, upper-middle-class family, attended a good college, but had been afflicted with an addiction to both gambling and drink. One by one, he’d lost every job he had been handed, until they wound up having to live off the small check that his embarrassed brothers sent them once a month, more to keep him away from them than from any real obligation. Growing up being thought of as the poor relations in a family takes its toll. Vita had seen her mother’s eyes, which had once been blue and sparkling, turn dull and lifeless and her hair go white from the stress and strain of lace-curtain poverty. This, she decided, was not going to happen to her. She made a vow she would never depend on anyone. But on the bright side, for all their bad qualities, shame and humiliation had fueled the ambition that led her to where she was today.
Vita was a completely self-made woman. After finishing high school she had left Kansas City for Chicago and immediately got a job at Illinois By-Products, a company with about seven hundred employees. Over a period of three years she had worked her way up from the secretarial pool to one of five secretaries to private secretary to executive secretary. Two years later she was made personal assistant to the president of the company, with two secretaries of her own. The president and owner of the company, Robert Porter and his wife, Elsie, had no children of their own and they took an interest in the intelligent and ambitious young woman. They often invited her to join them at their home for dinner or at one of their clubs. Vita was a fast study. She quickly learned how to dress, how to use the right knife and fork. At night she studied art, music, and history. When she met the people the Porters introduced her to, she soon became a frequent guest in the beautiful residences along Lake Shore Drive. Vita felt that she was finally mingling with the kinds of people she should have been around all her life. The “by-products” of the company were a delightful little mixture of iron ore, copper, and steel, and with Mr. Porter’s help, by the time she was twenty-eight she had already made a small fortune buying and selling World War II surplus scrap iron. Not a romantic product but when Mr. Porter died and left her even more stocks than she’d bought,
scrap
and
iron
became her two favorite words.
She had never married. There was no Mr. Green. When she had moved back to Kansas City, the creation of Mr. Green had been her own little private joke. She’d even named him after the color of money. There had been men, rich powerful men, but none she was willing to marry. She was already rich and very happy. She liked the life she led. She enjoyed coming into that spacious beige apartment, filled with her lovely things, sitting on top of the city where she had once been poor and unhappy. When she looked back on her life, she was grateful, in a way, and wondered if she would have enjoyed it quite as much if the money had been handed to her on a silver platter. She had worked for every dime she had. Granted, it had not been easy for a woman in business in a man’s world but from where she sat now it had been worth it. She now had everything she wanted—including Hamm Sparks. There was something so wonderfully freeing about completely surrendering herself to him without reservation. It was those moments when she let go and allowed herself to flow and meld into him, that moment when she could no longer tell where she stopped and he began, that made her happier than she had been for a long time. This little fireplug lover of hers ate fast, walked fast, talked fast, and made love fast. She loved the way he was always ready, always full of energy and speed, like a car that could go from five miles an hour to seventy in less than five seconds. She could depend on him, count on never having to have a second thought wondering if he wanted her. Being with Hamm was like watching a starving man devour a huge meal and still manage to love every bite, no more, no less than the last time. And for a woman of a certain age, it was the kind of thing that kept a secret smile on her face and a hum in her body. But most of all she loved the way he was coming to trust her and depend on her.
Hamm had also found a person he could talk to, a woman who would not laugh at him or look down on where he had come from or think any of his ambitions were too much to try for. On the contrary, Vita had almost more ambition for him than he could have ever dreamed for himself. To his great surprise, he had discovered that Vita knew more about the working of politics inside and out than he did. For a while before her father fell apart completely, he had been involved in local politics and was one of old Boss Pendergast’s men during the twenties and thirties, when Kansas City politics had been a hotbed of greed, graft, and good times. Until Pendergast went to jail. But during that time, although she was only twelve or thirteen years old, she had also learned where a lot of the bodies were buried, so to speak, due to her father’s inability to keep his mouth shut when he had a snootful, which was often.
After she had been with Hamm a year, she decided to pay a visit to one of her father’s old friends, Earl Finley. He had known Vita when she was a little girl and had always been very fond of her. He knew she had been a large donor to Peter Wheeler’s campaign and he was very happy to see her after all these years, and catch up on old times. After a while, Vita steered the conversation around to Hamm. At the mention of his name, Earl practically bit the white plastic tip off his White Owl cigar. “Don’t blame us for that, Vita, we tried our best to stop him. But the little redneck son of a bitch slipped right past us and now this stupid hayseed is thumbing his nose at us and won’t listen to a word we say.”
Vita said, “Earl, I think you may be wrong about Hamm. He might be stubborn but he’s not stupid. I think he understands he can’t fight you and the senate at the same time. Call off the dogs and quit blocking every move he makes and I’ll give you my word he’ll push a few things through you want.”
He chewed on his cigar for a moment and blinked his eyes a few times, wondering what she meant. “Aw now, Vita, how can you be sure what that little maverick son of a bitch will do? He’s never done anything we wanted him to yet.”