Interface (80 page)

This was the first step: to get close to Cozzano, to get a good
look at his security apparatus, and so memorize the faces of the
people who were close to him. Not the obvious ones like Eleanor
Richmond and Mary Catherine - they were just pawns too - but
the men in suits who hovered around the edges, just out of reach
of the arc light's rainbow-tinged border.

The platform was huge, as big as the stage for a major rock
concert, and it was hollow, and all of the mysterious men in suits
had special access to the cleverly concealed doors and stairways that
led beneath. All the doors were guarded by uniformed cops who
Would only let certain people through; you had to have a special
backstage pass around your neck. But from time to time when
some bigshot went in or out, a door would swing open for a few
seconds, giving Vishniak a glimpse into the hidden world under
Cozzano's feet. What he saw confirmed everything he'd been
thinking: thick black cables snaking everywhere, and banks of
television monitors, men wearing radio headsets, talking on phones
and typing on computers. And in the center of it all, hard to glimpse through the tangle of technicians and cables and structural supports,
sitting right in the middle of the web, was a semitrailer rig, a nice
new one. He couldn't see enough of it to read the words on its side, but he didn't have to; you could recognize it from its color scheme;
it was a GODS truck.

He took a good look at the people under the platform whenever
those doors opened up. These were the ones who were controlling
Cozzano's mind. The ones who, sometime between now and
Election Day, were going to be taking nine-millimeter bullets
between the eyes, fired from Floyd Wayne Vishniak's plastic gun.

Vishniak jumped up and down and screamed along with the
crowd. "I'll save you, Governor Cozzano! I'll get you out of this conspiracy or die trying!" But his words of encouragement were
lost in the tumult.

47

Eleanor didn't get a real chance to talk to William
A.
Cozzano until several hours after the announcement. She had met
him once, briefly, prior to the debate, and spoken with him in
formal circumstances, in a conference room full of flacks and
advisers, before the announcement. After the announcement they
had spent most of their time partying in the ballroom of Cozzano's
hotel. This had not been a real party, of course, any more than a
talk show appearance was a real conversation; it had been a staged
event, and she had had to stay on her toes the entire time. She
knew, without being told, that she was going to have to get in the
habit of holding her tongue more than she was used to, and try to
avoid making gaffes.

Finally, shortly before midnight, she and Cozzano and Mary Catherine got together in Cozzano's hotel suite, on the top floor of the hotel, naturally. The women changed out of their party dresses
and into comfortable, casual clothes, and they had a nightcap up on
the balcony.

She had known about William A. Cozzano for many years and
she had always been a bit put off by the hypermacho foundations of his image: war and football. He had always seemed like the type
who'd be great for smoking cigars and shooting wild game with
corporate CEOs, but who wouldn't be able to handle the subtle
nuances of national politics, who wouldn't really grasp women's
issues.

After about five minutes on the balcony with him, she decided she was wrong. He wasn't a macho shithead at all. He was courtly
in an almost European way and he had a fine, self-deprecating sense
of humour. He had an easy rapport with his daughter that told
Eleanor everything about what kind of man he was.

They ended up conversing for more than an hour. Cozzano had
a penchant for anecdotes and he told several of them. Toward the
end of the evening, Eleanor could tell that this was beginning to
make Mary Catherine slightly uneasy. She would shift in her chair and say, "Oh, Dad!" when he was beginning to launch into a story.
And as he was telling these stories, she would watch his face intently
and occasionally frown or bite her lip.

Eleanor wasn't quite sure why. Cozzano liked to talk, but this
was not senile rambling by any means. It didn't make Eleanor
uncomfortable. He told his stories concisely and they always had a
point that was germane to the conversation. But all they did was
make Mary Catherine agitated.

It looked to Eleanor as though father and daughter had some
talking to do, and so finally, a little after one in the morning, she
excused herself, insisting that she could find her own way down to
the lobby and back to her own hotel. She wanted to enjoy her last evening of freedom before her fulltime Secret Service contingent
kicked in the following morning.

The elevator came quickly - demand was low at this time of the
morning - and she climbed on and punched the button for the
lobby. When the doors closed, she found herself alone in a room
for the first time since Mary Catherine had come to see her earlier
that day. She was exhausted. She dropped her tote bag on the floor, sagged against the wall of the elevator, closed her eyes, and heaved
an enormous sigh.

This was the type of pressure she'd never known before. Since
her first meeting with Cozzano earlier today, not a second had gone
by without her photograph being taken. It boggled the mind to
think about a lifestyle in which you could never pick your nose,
never allow your hair or your face to get messy.

The elevator slowed. Eleanor opened one eye a crack and
saw that they were passing the tenth floor. She closed her eyes again, content to spend another few minutes relaxing before she
exited back into public life again - no doubt, photographers
would be waiting on the sidewalk.

The doors opened and Eleanor sensed someone climbing on
board. Remembering that she was now a role model, she forced herself to open her eyes and stand up straight. It was a thin man in
a suit. He had very short hair and burning, hyperactive eyes. He
was staring at her. His eyes dropped to her tote bag.

"Whatcha got there?" he said, brusquely.

"My stuff," she said, unable to come up with anything more
eloquent at this time of the morning.

"What's this?" he said, bending over and reaching for it.

The tote bag was just a cheap freebie given to by her travel agent
in Alexandria. Eleanor had brought it along precisely because it was
so flimsy that it could be wadded up and stuffed into other luggage.
Tonight it had come in handy for carrying a change of clothes.
Right now she was wearing jeans and an old sweatshirt with
TOWSON STATE printed across the front. Her party dress,
jewelry, and purse were all in the tote bag. The purse was on top.
As the man in the suit bent down, she followed his gaze, and saw
that the strap of the purse - a heavy gold-plated chain, a la Chanel
- was dangling out. His hand reached out, quick as a snake, grabbed
the chain, and yanked, taking the purse out with it.

"Hey!" she said, and grabbed at the chain. But he yanked the
purse away as her hand was closing around it, ripping it out of her
hand and bending a couple of nails back.

She'd heard of these guys: well-dressed thieves who wandered
around in posh hotels late at night, snatching purses and picking
pockets. They'd be in the lobby any second and then this guy
would be in trouble. "Goddamn it," she said, and kicked him in the
knee.

"You bitch," he said. He bent down, got one shoulder into her
solar plexus, and used the thrust of both legs to body-slam her into
the wall of the elevator. Her head snapped backward against the
wall, which didn't cause any serious damage but did leave her disoriented; she slid down the wall and collapsed to the floor with her legs sprawling, and realized that she could not draw a breath.

The man loomed in front of the elevator's control panel. He had
pulled out a huge keychain, the kind that's attached to a spring-
loaded reel on the belt, and shoved a tubular key into the switch at
the base of the panel. He rotated the switch one notch and then
pressed the button beneath the one for the lobby.

The door opened a moment later. This was not the lobby of the
hotel: she saw barren concrete walls, harshly illuminated with cheap
industrial lights, and steel doors with numbers painted on them.
The man turned the key switch one more time and the elevator
froze in position with the doors open. She still couldn't hardly
breathe. This was the first time she'd had the wind knocked out of
her since the second grade.

"Get out," the man said, reaching down to grab her wrist. He yanked hard and trudged out into the corridor. He wasn't so much
helping her to her feet as he was dragging her over the floor.
Eleanor hardly cared; the lack of oxygen was a more immediate
concern than this guy's bad manners. She ended up tumbled in a heap on the floor next to a steel door in the corridor, close to the
elevator. The keychain jingled once again, the door swung open on
a big room with a few people in it.

Finally she drew in a breath. Her lungs had constricted, her
airway was clenched shut, and the air passing through it made an
ugly sobbing noise. But it felt good. She forced that breath out
and drew in another one. Color vision returned. Her panic
subsided.

In the meantime, a couple of other men in suits had stepped to
the door, grabbed her arms, hauled her up off the floor, and
dragged her into the room. They sat her down on a chair. The
room contained four cheap steel desks, chairs to go with them, a couch, and a table with a coffee machine. In the corner was some
kind of communications setup: a phone switchboard and a two-
way radio.

Eleanor closed her eyes and just concentrated on breathing for a
while. But when she closed her eyes, her head began to swim
around; she was still dizzy from having been slammed into the wall.
She kept her eyes open just enough to get a strong visual fix on one
object: a cheesy pinup of a woman with huge breasts, dressed half
in a cop uniform and half in sexy lingerie, a pistol stuck into the
band of her fishnet stockings, dangling a set of handcuffs from her
finger.

Finally she recovered enough to get pissed. "What the hell is
going on here?" she said, and rose from her chair. But someone gripped the collar of her sweatshirt from behind, twisted it tight
around her neck, and jerked her back down into the chair. "Shut
up, sister," a voice said. "You should know better than to make
trouble."

Then they grabbed her arms and pulled them around behind her back, behind the back of the chair. She heard a high zipping noise
and felt something go tight around her wrists: plastic handcuffs. She
couldn't move her arms.

"Would you guys mind telling me who the hell you are?" she
said.

They ignored her. The man in the suit who had confronted her in the elevator went over to the telephone, punched a couple of
buttons, and spoke: "Yeah, this is Moore in Security. We have apprehended a black female carrying a bag with someone's purse and some jewelry. She is intoxicated, violent and disorderly. Have
you had any complaints of missing property from any of your guests
tonight?"

He listened for a moment. "Okay. Well, it's possible she hit one
of the other hotels on the block and just got here. You want to
phone some of the others and see if they've had any problems?"

By now, the entire contents of Eleanor's tote bag had been
spread out across the table, and the hotel dicks were pawing
through them, making lewd comments about her underwear and
appraising her jewelry.

Eleanor knew she should have been chewing them out. She
should have been calling down the retribution of heaven above.
But she was so stunned that it was almost more interesting to stand
back and observe.

A television set was going on the coffee table, showing a late-
night news program. Her face flashed up on the screen right next
to Cozzano's. What happened next was the most gratifying
moment she had experienced since the birth of her last child.
"Look at the TV," she said.