Divine Fury (4 page)

There were three sharp raps on his office door.
 
It wasn’t his assistant and Harper wondered who had gotten past him.
 
When the door opened, Harper saw it was Harry Blount carrying a life-size cardboard cutout of Ronald Reagan, standing tall with his hand raised in his signature wave.

Harper knew Blount would be with him at the campaign announcement and he was dressed for it.
 
Dapper gray Italian-cut suit.
 
Baby blue tie.
 
His longish hair was blown dry and perfectly in place.
 
His dark mustache and a small silver ring in his left earlobe gave him a slight roguish look – a pirate in pinstripes.
  

 
“I thought you were going straight to the rally.
 
What’s this?” asked Harper.
 
“C’mon.
 
Ronald Reagan?”

“Well, I had two things in mind,” said Blount, setting the cutout in the middle of Harper’s office and stepping back toward the desk and next to Harper so he could view it from a little distance.
 

“First, he was the ‘Great Communicator,’” Blount continued.
 
“His politics, obviously, aren’t yours.
 
But you should channel his technique.
 
Second, it’s just a great mind fuck.
 
Anyone who comes in here – all the press – will think, ‘What the…?’
 
Keep ‘em off balance.
 
Don’t let the conservatives pigeonhole you yet.”
        

“Fat chance of that,” said Harper, smiling wistfully and shaking his head.
 
“But I do think I like it.
 
Let’s shake up the status quo any way we can.”

He turned toward Blount and gave him a huge grin.

“You’re too much,” said Harper.
 
He grabbed Blount’s upper arms, pulled him close and gave him a hard kiss.
 
“What would I do without you?”
     

* * *

The voice on the line was young, female and tired.

“Is this Enzo Lee?” she asked tentatively.

“This is he,” Lee replied.
 
“Who is this?”

“I’m Sonia Moretti,” she said.
 
“Are you the one who…uh…wrote the story about Scott?”

Scott…Scott…Scott.
 
Lee wracked his brain, trying to think who ‘Scott’ was. Wait…could it be the shooting victim?

“Are you referring to Scott…ahh…Truman?” said Lee.

“Yes,” she said.
 
“Look. I’m out of the country.
 
I’m in Australia.
 
I just heard about this an hour ago.
 
I’m…just a…I’m just…I don’t know.
 
I just want to talk to somebody…”

“Okay,” said Lee.
 
“Hold on a minute.
 
Let’s slow it down a little bit.
 
Let’s start from the beginning.”

“Okay.”

“Your name is Sonia Moretti?” said Lee.

“Right…yes.”

 
“And how did you know Scott Truman?” he said.

“He’s…my boyfriend,” said Moretti.
 
“I just came over here two months ago.
 
It’s only for a year.
 
I’m from San Francisco.
 
Wait.
 
Are you sure it’s him?
 
I just can’t believe it.
 
It’s not that unusual a name.
 
Maybe there’s a mistake.”

“Did he work at the University of San Francisco Medical Center?” asked Lee.

“Yes,” she said it in a whisper.

“And did he drive a blue Toyota?
 
A Corolla, I think?”

“Yes.” Her reply was almost inaudible.

“Did he go to USC?
 
Or, at least have a USC sweatshirt?”

“Oh, god, yes.
 
Oh my god.
 
Oh my god.
 
Oh my god.”
 
She was sobbing and Lee could tell she was hyperventilating at the same time.
 
She put the phone down and Lee could hear her losing it completely, keening in high-pitched wails.
 
He pictured her, alone in an apartment far away.
 
Hands to her face.
 
Body convulsing with the sobbing.
 
He moved the phone away from his ear and stared across the newsroom.

It was impossible for Lee not to think of the death of the woman he’d loved.
 
It had been two years since Sarah Armstrong had been shot to death in a New York hotel where they had been hiding from the leaders of a criminal conspiracy who were desperate to keep it from unraveling.
 

The first year had been sheer hell.
 
He’d clung to the routine of work like a drowning man.
 
Life had slowly moved toward normal after that.
 
But hearing Sonia Moretti’s despair brought back his own anguish in a flood of feeling.
 
He felt himself tear up.
 
Lee covered his eyes with his hand for a moment and then wiped the moisture away with his bare palm.
 
When he glanced up, he saw Carr watching him from across the newsroom.
 
He looked away.
  

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry,” Moretti said, coming back on the line.

“That’s okay,” Lee said.
 
“I’m very, very sorry.
 
I don’t know what else to say except I’m very sorry.
 
I know this is a horrible thing to go through.”

“Yes.
 
Thank you,” she said, sobbing again and struggling to control herself.
 
“Do you know anything else about why this happened?
 
My friend just read the article you wrote.
 
That’s why I called.”

“I don’t really know too much,” said Lee.
 
“I haven’t talked to the police since the article.
 
I do know they were trying to retrace his steps over the weekend.
 
They think his car was moved from wherever…this happened.
 
Do you know what he did over the weekend?”

“Well, I know where he was until, say, 3 or 3:30 in the morning on Sunday,” said Moretti.
 
“He was talking to me.”

“He was?” said Lee.

“Yes.
 
He was using the line at work,” she said.
 
“He was going in late at night when no one was around and he’d call…and we’d just talk.
 
He missed me…it was so sweet.
 
And, so we talked early Sunday morning, your time, for an hour or so.”
 

“Listen, Sonia.
 
This could be important for the police to know this,” said Lee.
 
“I’ll pass it along to the detective working the case.”

Lee got Moretti’s phone number and email address.
 
They agreed to stay in touch in the days ahead.
 
Hopefully, one of them would find out something to explain why Scott Truman had lost his life.
 
 

When he said goodbye, Lee resisted the urge to tell her that eventually the pain would pass.
 
He knew the wound was way too raw for that.

Chapter 5

AS CAREFULLY AS the campaigns of Andrew Harper and his potential Republican opponents in the November general election analyzed the ever-changing political currents in the Golden State, none of them parsed the endless data any more thoroughly than Brent Daggart.

Daggart, the executive vice president of Soldiers of Christ Ministry based in Los Angeles, was the architect behind the second largest televangelist operation in the country.
 
Its main weekly program reached over 10 million viewers in places as close as Santa Barbara and as distant as South Korea and Zimbabwe.
 
SOCM reported $85 million in annual revenue to its accountants and kept another $22 million – donations from the ministry’s biggest donors – strictly off the books.
   

Daggart had watched with growing anger and disgust as the obstacles to a Harper run crumbled before the San Francisco Democrat.
 
He knew the election calculus in California and nationwide as well as anyone.
 
Running against an ultraconservative opponent, Harper had the clear edge even fighting the anti-gay vote.

He sat two rows behind the video camera at the Long Beach Convention Center that was focused on Rev. James “Jimmy” Burgess, the star of the SOCM religious juggernaut and the engine of its success.

As Burgess performed his magic, Daggart’s mind ground through the logistics of the upcoming unofficial campaign, the shadow operation he was preparing to unleash.
 
He was confident he had both the money and the white-hot determination to stop Harper dead in his tracks.

Jimmy Burgess was nearing the end of his hour-long program and Daggart shifted his attention to the always-dramatic conclusion.

The preacher was on a stage bathed in a bright spotlight with florescent blue panels in the back.
 
Giant monitors on either side carried his hugely enlarged image picked up by the camera stationed dead center in the packed auditorium.
 
Burgess stared directly at the camera as it zoomed on his face and lost the dark blue suit, yellow tie and ivory shirt with the collar button he had unfastened midway through the sermon.
 
He held his gaze steady.
 

Burgess wanted the 12,000 in the hall and millions who would watch him later to squirm as they felt the heat of his stare looking into their souls.
 
He wanted their hearts to race and their palms to sweat in this uncomfortably long silence.

 
“God is NOT MEEK,” he yelled suddenly in a penetrating voice with the slightest country twang that shattered the stillness of the auditorium and echoed off the walls.
 
“He is not timid.
 
He is a lion.
 
He is a warrior.
 
And, he wants you…each and every one of you…to be a fighter, too.

“Six hundred million Christians.
 
Think of it.
Six hundred million.
 
That’s how many Christians live in North and South America today.
 
Eighty-five percent of the population.
 
Eighty-five percent. Did that just happen?
 
Is that an accident?
 

“It’s because God fought for them.
 
And Christians fought for them.
 
From Spain and Portugal, and France and England they came.
 
They threw down the pagan gods.
 
They fought Satan in all his forms.
 
Whether the black evil of human sacrifice or the gray evil of nature worship.

“They came here.
 
They fought for God.
 
And they died doing it.
 
They died of arrows, of starvation, of disease…of sheer loneliness.
 
But they fought.
 
They fought with their last breaths.