The Governor's Lady (37 page)
By the time they gathered at three o’clock, Colonel Doster’s tersely worded letter of resignation was on her desk, along with a copy of a news release from Pickett’s headquarters announcing that Doster had been appointed director of campaign security and special advisor on matters of law and order.
Two of the cabinet members had left weeks ago to join Pickett’s campaign, and now that Doster was gone, nineteen were left at the massive table that had been the meeting place of governors’ closest advisors for more than a hundred years.
Cooper stood at the end of the table, Wheeler at her left, Grace at her right, notepad in hand.
“I apologize for taking so long to get us together,” Cooper said. “It’s been a busy few days, and I didn’t want to take you from your jobs with so much going on. Thank you for all you and your departments have been doing to help us deal with the snow. We have a lot of work ahead, but we’re past the crisis stage. Right now, I want to dispense with a formality. When a new chief executive takes office, it’s customary for the appointees from the past administration to tender their resignations.
And then it’s up to the incoming governor to decide on the makeup of the new administration. I’d like to have your letters—undated—on my desk by the close of business today. If anyone wants their resignation accepted immediately, let me know. Otherwise, I’ll meet with each of you individually over the next week to talk about where we go from here. Any questions?”
They all stared, dumbfounded.
“Thank you for coming, and for your service to the state. General Burgaw, please join me in my office.”
Her office had a seating arrangement in a corner—a comfortable loveseat facing a high-backed chair, a coffee table with a leather-bound Bible and a pictorial history of the state, low light, gilt-framed portraits of venerated Confederate generals on the walls behind.
General Burgaw sat on the loveseat, deep-etched fatigue lines on his already-weathered face, but holding himself resolutely erect. He had put on a dress uniform for the cabinet meeting. They sipped coffee.
“General, do you know the background of this little corner?”
“I don’t.”
“Pickett arranged it when he took office. He called it his ‘wrestling ring.’ He thought if he could get a fellow in this corner, get him to feel the weight of all these symbols of state legacy, and use the right combination of arm-twisting, horse-trading, and gentle persuasion, he could bring him around to wherever he wanted.”
Burgaw set his cup down. “I’ve never had occasion to be in the ring. So where do you want
this
fellow to be?”
“Across the street. I’d like for you to be director of the Department of Public Safety.”
He fixed her with his steel-gray eyes. “Why me?”
“I’ve watched you work the past few days. You pull people together. You lead. You cut through the nonsense and get to the meat of things. You know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t have any experience in law enforcement.”
“I consider that an advantage. The people with law-enforcement experience who’ve been running things over there are a disaster.”
“Yes, ma’am, they are.”
“I’m told we have plenty of good people in the department throughout the state, but they’ve come to accept the way things are. They are uninspired and demoralized.”
“That’s my impression,” he said.
“What they need, and what I need, is somebody who can knock heads, clean things up, build confidence and morale, and get the place running like it should. I need you, and I will back you with every power of this office.”
He bent forward, clasped his hands, stared at them. When he didn’t answer for a long while, she thought,
He’s looking for a gracious way to say no
.
Then he looked up and straightened his shoulders. “I’ve had my military retirement papers drawn up for several weeks. It’s not like me to dither, but something kept telling me to wait. I guess this is why. So, yes, it’s an honor, and I’m pleased to accept.”
She let her breath out with a whoosh. “Thank you, Lord. I hope all of my wrestling matches are that easy. When can you start?”
“I can resign as adjutant general this minute. Then I’ll just be a retiring military reservist with a new job.”
They rose together, and she stuck out her hand. His firm grip enveloped hers.
“I accept your resignation, and you are hereby appointed. Now, if you have another few minutes, I’d like to walk with you over to Public Safety, gather the troops, issue a call to arms, and turn them over to you.”
He picked up his cap from the coffee table and stuck it under his arm. He had a glint in his eye. “I guarantee you, I will take care of business.”
She found Mickey propped up in bed, telephone in one hand, cigarette in the other.
“You are the worst patient I’ve ever seen. I’ve never known anyone so dead set on doing everything she’s not supposed to.”
“I love you too, Cooper,” Mickey said. Her hand shook as she slowly hung up the phone. “Now, I ask you sweetly, will you give it a rest for a few minutes?”
Cooper settled into a chair. “Whose ears were you bending?”
“This one and that one. You’ve been marching through the Capitol like Sherman through Georgia, and I had to get all my news on the telephone.”
“My abject apologies. I should have brought my entire staff over here and given you a detailed briefing.”
“The one who
wouldn’t
talk was Wheeler. He stonewalled me.”
“He works for me,” Cooper said, and didn’t try to keep the irritation at bay.
Mickey smiled. “That’s the way it should be, but damn, it pisses me off. We’ve been trading secrets for years.”
“All right, all right.” Cooper waved her hands. “I’ll tell Wheeler he can tell you anything he knows. Does that make you happy?”
“Supremely. Hell, it’ll all be buried with me before long.”
“Okay, so you know what’s going on. Advice?”
Mickey pulled the bedcovers up to her chin and thought for a moment. “Cooper, your fanny is so far out on a limb, there ain’t much but air beneath you.”
“I know that.”
Mickey looked at her appraisingly. “But what you did today, that’s staking out territory. Keep doing it. Like Cleve and the Highway Department.”
“I don’t remember that,” Cooper said. “I was more worried about braces on my teeth than what was going on downtown.”
“When he took office,” Mickey said, “the Highway Department was in about the same shape as Public Safety is now—maybe worse, because the opportunity for corruption was incredible. Bid rigging, kickbacks, people in and out of government—including some of the ones who helped Cleve get elected—making money off road contracts. People, me included, told him, ‘Go slow. Don’t stir up a fuss at Highway. Ease into things.’ But he did anyway. It was one of our colossal arguments, and he won hands down. Buckets of blood were shed, including his. The money people and their people in the legislature blocked him at every turn. But then the feds got wind of what he was up to and started investigating. A grand jury, indictments, trials, people going to prison. There were times during those first two years he thought of himself as a failure. But he wasn’t.”
“You think that may happen to me?”
“Possibly. But when you believe in something, be like your father, not me.”
“Anything I should have done today that I didn’t?”
“Yeah, you shoulda pushed Pickett out of that helicopter at about two thousand feet.” Mickey closed her eyes and lay back against the pillows. “Now, go away. I’m pooped. Call Estelle to get this bed cranked down.”
“I can do it,” Cooper said.
She found the control, lowered the bed, then stood there for a minute while Mickey’s labored breathing slowed, her face relaxed, and she slept. She took Mickey’s hand—brittle bones barely covered by thin, mottled skin, veins snaking cordlike just under the surface. It occurred
to her that she had never really, truly looked at her mother’s hands. She had no recollection at all of Mickey’s hands in her childhood. Surely, she had been picked up, hugged, fussed over. Surely, they had been kind hands at times. She could not recall Mickey’s hands ever being used against her in anger. She could not recall ever being jerked, slapped, spanked, even shooed away. Of course, there was that terrible moment at the sheriff’s with Jesse. She recalled with absolute clarity the whack of Mickey’s purse against Jesse’s head. But it was the purse she remembered, not the hand that wielded it.
She thought now of the insistent feeling that had been with her the past couple of days—the yearning, the empty place where she had so often wanted Mickey to be. She felt her heart and soul opening to it now, each of them opening to the other.
And at the edge of all that was the memory of Cleve in his last hours: “We are the sum of our regrets.”
No. Not here
.
She got a briefing from Burgaw. The weather was warming—highs in the fifties over the next several days—and that, along with the massive effort, was beginning to bring about a sense of normalcy.
She scheduled a news conference in the afternoon. She would face questions about the snow, but more than that about what had happened with Doster and Burgaw. The
Dispatch
was full of speculation, much of it wildly off base. Felicia Withers’s column in the morning paper had given grudging approval of the change but questioned Burgaw’s credentials. Cooper had to address that. Along with all the other.
The intercom buzzed. Grace sounded frantic. “We’ve got a problem with Wheeler.”
“What do you mean?”
“They called from the Finance Department. He’s over there creating a fuss. Going through files. Yelling at people.”
“My God. Tell him to get over here. Right now.”
He came ten minutes later, waving a thick file folder, his color high. “I knew it!”
“What are you talking about?”
He dropped the folder on her desk. “The state bought fifty tractors from Jake Harbin on a no-bid contract. They called it an emergency and paid a premium price. I’ve been sniffing around this piece of crap for months, but everybody was afraid to talk. Now, I’ve got ’em.”
She realized she was sitting on the edge of her chair. She took a breath and settled herself. “Wheeler, sit down.”
It took a moment, but he finally sat. His unruly eyebrows twitched.
“Is this your idea of what being a chief of staff is about?”
Wheeler pointed at the folder. “The sonofabitch is stealing.”
“The way it was done, was it legal?”
“Technically, yes. The Finance Department can declare an emergency under certain circumstances.”
“When did the state buy the tractors?”
“Last year.”
“Who was governor last year?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said stubbornly. “It’s still wrong. Don’t you want to do something about it?”
“Not right now, I don’t.” Cooper picked up the folder. “Wheeler, we can’t undo everything that’s been done before. We can try to keep it from happening on our watch. I’m going to make you a promise: I’m not going to do anything illegal, and I’ll try my best not to do anything underhanded.”
He ran his hand through his hair. “All right. That’s fair enough.”
“But keep digging. Quietly. What you find, it may be something we’ll need later.” She handed him the folder.
“This isn’t an isolated case,” Wheeler said. “Pickett and Jake Harbin are joined at the hip. Fifty tractors? That’s peanuts.”