Power Play (37 page)

Perez lay on his back on the floor, feeling his jaw where Jake had slugged him. It looked swollen.

“You busted my tooth,” he mumbled. His lips were bloody.

Monster sat near him, sullenly mopping the blood off his face with a reddened sodden handkerchief. The brass table lamp was on its side, several paces away from him. Jake noticed a long gouge in it, where one of Perez’s bullets had hit.

“I don’t feel so good,” Monster said, his head hanging between his knees.

Concussion, Jake thought. I banged him really hard.

All of a sudden Monster puked all over his shoes. The noise and stench made Jake’s stomach turn.

“Hey, Jake,” Younger called. “Turn on the fireplace before we turn into icicles, for chrissake.”

Younger still had the phone in one hand. Glynis was off somewhere, looking for first-aid materials.

“It’s not a real fireplace,” Jake said, edging away from Monster and his mess.

“It’s gas fed. See the knob over by the side? Turn it on and flick the ignition switch over the mantelpiece.”

“Doesn’t it need electricity?”

“No. It’s natural gas.”

Keeping the gun tightly gripped, Jake knelt by the fireplace and twisted the knob. It was stiff, but it gradually gave way and began to hiss. Standing, he clicked the switch.

Poof! Blue flames licked up among the artificial logs.

“It works!” Jake said, surprised. Not much heat, but it was better than nothing.

Younger was still on the phone, yelling at whoever was in charge of the skeleton crew at the big rig. Glynis came back from one of the bedrooms, dragging a bedsheet behind her. As she started to pull Younger’s shirt off, Tim continued to bark orders into the phone.

It took nearly half an hour for the ambulance to arrive. Jake saw the flashing lights flickering through the lodge’s curtained windows. While a pair of paramedics bandaged Younger properly, with Glynis hovering near them, a police cruiser pulled up.

Two state highway patrol officers came into the lodge, stamping snow off their boots. They looked around, scowling, saw Younger being attended to by the paramedics, saw Perez stretched out on the floor, saw Monster sitting with his head hung low and a pool of vomit at his feet, saw Jake in his sixteenth-century knee britches and embroidered jacket, the automatic pistol still tight in his hand.

“What the fuck has been going on here?” the first patrolman demanded.

His partner shook her head. “The senator’s going to be damned sore about this.”

Jake grinned wearily. “I’m sure he will be,” he said.

FAIR PLAY

Once the highway patrol officers heard Jake’s story, with Glynis and Younger nodding their agreement, they bundled Perez and Monster into their cruiser and told the paramedics to follow them to the highway patrol barracks off the interstate, with Younger, Jake, and Glynis.

As they drove through the swirling snow, the paramedic riding in back with them told Younger, “You’re pretty lucky, man. Another inch and you would’ve been in real trouble.”

“Yeah,” said Younger, his face ashen now. He sat on the gurney, Glynis close beside him. She had helped him put his blood-soaked shirt back over his bandaged ribs. Jake sat on the opposite side of the ambulance, with the medic.

“Not even a broken rib,” the guy said. “Bullet just grazed you.”

The highway patrol barracks was ablaze with light in the wind-whipped snow. As Younger gingerly stepped down from the ambulance he muttered, “They must have an emergency generator.”

Jake nodded and hustled Younger and Glynis into the building, out of the cold and snow. Inside, the barracks was warm and bright, but mostly empty. Rows of unoccupied desks, dark computer screens. Off in one corner of the main room an African American woman in the patrol’s blue uniform sat at the communications console, a dozen phone screens flickering in front of her.

The two officers who’d come to the lodge were waiting for them, and ushered them into the office of their captain. He was a tall, stern-looking man with bloodshot gray eyes and close-cropped dirty blond hair, his shoulders wide and his stomach flat. Not the kind of man to take lightly.

He pointed at Jake before any of them could sit down and said, without preamble, “Those two men we’ve got in the infirmary claim you assaulted them both.”

Jake nodded as Glynis helped Younger to ease into one of the plastic chairs in front of the captain’s desk.

“I guess I did. But the older one, Perez, he shot my friend here.”

Glynis blurted, “They’re involved in three murders, maybe more.”

The captain stared at her for a long, silent moment. Then, looking back at Jake, he asked, “What is this, a Hallowe’en party that got out of hand?”

It took a while for them to explain. Glynis took out her miniature recorder and the captain played it, listening in stolid, impassive silence. Jake saw his gray eyes narrow, though, whenever Senator Leeds’s name was mentioned.

Once the recording ended, the captain asked, “Senator Leeds is involved in this?”

“He’s mixed up with them,” Jake said, “but I don’t think he knew anything about their trying to kill us.”

Glynis said, “He’s mixed up in the murders of Professor Sinclair and his wife, over in Vernon.”

“The senator?” Clear disbelief etched the captain’s lean, angular face.

“The senator,” Glynis said firmly.

Jake asked if he could phone Tomlinson.

“It’s three in the morning, you know,” said the captain.

“Then I guess I’ll wake him up,” Jake snapped.

The captain thought it over for a moment, then gestured to the phone console on his desk. Jake got Tomlinson’s answering machine, with its cheery “Vote for change!” message. Trying to keep the annoyance out of his voice, Jake briefly told the machine where they were and what had happened.

“Phone machine?” Younger asked. He looked pale, drawn. Whatever the medics gave him for the pain is wearing off, Jake figured.

“Yeah. They’re all asleep.”

“But if his phone machine’s working they must have electricity.”

“You think the city hasn’t been hit by the blackout?”

“Either that or he’s got a backup generator at his house.”

Thinking of the Tomlinson mansion, Jake was certain that there was an emergency generator chugging away somewhere on the grounds.

The captain slid his chair back from the desk. “You people better stay here tonight. We’ll find bunks for you out back.”

“What about Perez and…” Jake hesitated, feeling foolish about calling Monster by his nickname.

With a shrug, the captain said, “They’re in the infirmary. Under guard. They’re not going anyplace.”

He got to his feet and Jake stood up, too, then helped Glynis to raise Younger from his chair.

“I’ll get one of my men to pick up your car tomorrow morning, once the storm blows away.”

“Thanks,” said Jake.

The ghost of a smile curled the captain’s thin lips slightly. “How much you want to bet there’ll be a lawyer here for those two punks before we get your car back to you?”

*   *   *

It was nearly ten
A.M.
before Jake, Glynis, and Younger left the highway patrol barracks. Jake drove Younger’s Land Rover back toward the lodge, to pick up Glynis’s Jaguar.

“I hope I can get it started,” she said.

“Do you have jumper cables?” Jake asked Younger.

Tim shook his head. “Never needed ’em.”

“I have cables in my trunk,” Glynis said. “I bought them last summer.”

“Good,” said Jake.

The sky had cleared to a cloudless brilliant blue, the interstate was plowed and sanded, big white banks of snow sparkled in the sunlight on either side of the road.

As he drove, with Glynis and Younger seated behind him, Jake turned on the radio and pecked buttons until a news station came on.

“… several thousand households are still without electrical power in the wake of last night’s surprise blizzard,” a woman was saying, as cheerfully as if announcing a lottery winner.

Then she added, “But Lignite County and points west were only affected by the blackout for less than an hour. The experimental power generator operated by the university outside the town of Lignite provided electrical power for the entire western half of the state all through the storm.”

Jake glanced at the rearview mirror. Younger was grinning tiredly, Glynis was beaming at him.

“Score one for MHD,” Jake said.

Younger nodded happily and then broke into an enormous yawn.

By the time they reached the lodge Younger was snoring quietly, one arm wrapped protectively around Glynis’s shoulders. Her head was resting on his shoulder.

Jake wished she were sitting beside him, with her head nuzzling his cheek.

Glynis’s car was buried in snow. As Jake stopped the van and wondered if he could find a shovel inside the lodge, Glynis murmured, “They were going to kill me. You saved me, Jake. You and Tim.”

“Your damned Jaguar saved you,” Jake grumbled. “If Monster’d been able to start the car, they’d have taken you off before we got there.”

“Still…” Glynis said softly, gazing at Younger’s sleeping face.

Jake grimaced. I took out Monster and Perez, I was the hero last night. All Tim did was stop a bullet. But she’s nestled with him like they’re a pair of lovebirds.

Life isn’t fair, he told himself. Not fair at all.

“THE LAST ACT…”

The final week of the election campaign was a blurred furor of rallies, speeches, news media interviews.

The success of the MHD generator during the blackout made national headlines, while Senator Leeds’s involvement with organized crime rattled the state’s political structure.

Although neither Perez nor Monster would say a word to the police, the state’s criminal prosecution office reopened the investigation into the Sinclair deaths, and even Florida ruled that Dr. McGruder’s death was “suspicious.”

Senator Leeds stoutly denied any connection with the murders, claiming it was all a political smear campaign, but as Tomlinson Senior gleefully pointed out, the senator was on the defensive now.

“We’ve got him on the run!” Amy boasted cheerfully. “His poll numbers are sinking out of sight!”

Jake was interviewed by each of the state’s major TV news shows, and even a Public Broadcasting System team came in from New York to do a special report about the MHD generator.

With Bob Rogers feeding him details, Jake reeled off facts and figures about MHD power generation. Tim Younger, walking stiffly because of his bandaged ribs, groused and growled that he couldn’t get much work done because of all the reporters and photographers prowling around the big rig.

“Don’t worry about it,” Jake told Younger, with a happy grin. “Each minute on TV is worth a thousand hours of running the rig.”

Younger scowled at him.

Two days before the election, Senator Leeds called a major news conference.

“Maybe he’s going to concede?” Jake wondered.

“When pigs fly,” said the elder Tomlinson.

Jake was at the Tomlinson residence, in the library with the candidate’s father and a few of his elderly cronies. A good percentage of the state’s wealth is right here in this room, Jake said to himself as he watched the men—gray haired, white haired, no haired—settle themselves in armchairs to watch the televised news conference.

Tomlinson was on the other side of the state, where a mammoth rally was planned for the evening. With Amy. And Glynis is up in Lignite with Tim, Jake knew. I’m here with the rich and the arthritic.

Leeds’s people had chosen the ballroom of the Sheridan Hotel, downtown. Every major news team in the state was there, and even reporters from several cable news networks had shown up. Jake saw CNN and Fox News cameras among the local crews. But the ballroom was so big that the audience of reporters and camera teams looked sparse. Not smart, Jake thought. Somebody in Leeds’s organization didn’t think this through. They should have partitioned the ballroom or used a smaller space to make the place look jammed.

A local anchorman was blathering about the campaign and Franklin Tomlinson’s late surge to pass Leeds in the polls.

“Oddly enough, it was last week’s Hallowe’en blackout that moved Tomlinson solidly ahead. He’s been pushing for MHD power generation, and the experimental MHD generator in Lignite kept that whole region of the state alight and warm when most of the other power generators in the state failed.”

Tomlinson Senior nodded vigorously at the TV screen. “Damned right,” he said loudly. Then he turned to Jake and told the others, “And there’s the man who advised my son about MHD.”

Jake felt downright uncomfortable as the rest of the old men in the library smiled at him. All those expensive false teeth, he thought.

“And here comes Senator Leeds,” the TV anchorman said, a note of excitement in his voice.

Jake saw that a stocky, middle-aged woman in a dark pants suit came up to the lectern with Leeds. Her complexion looked Hispanic to him. As the senator stood before the microphones, she took up a position behind him in a posture that reminded Jake of a soldier: chin high, spine straight, hands clasped behind her back.

Leeds smiled his toothy smile. “Thank you all for coming out on such short notice. I have an important announcement to make.”

He hesitated, then half turned toward the gray-haired woman. “I’m sure you all know Ms. Yolanda Quintero, head of the regional office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

Jake leaned forward in his chair.

“Ms. Quintero has been investigating the deaths of Professor Arlan Sinclair and his wife. There’s been a lot of insinuations made about these killings and the influence of organized crime in our state. I’m here today to tell you that the killers have been arrested and will be brought to trial.”

Perez and Monster, Jake thought. They’re going down for it.

His eyes narrowing, Leeds went on, “This election campaign has been marred by deliberate smears and outright falsehoods trying to link me with organized crime. I’m here to tell you that these smears are totally false. As Ms. Quintero will explain to you, my office has cooperated fully with the FBI and I have been cleared by the FBI of any connection with organized crime.”