Presidential Deal (10 page)

Part 3: Damage Control

Chapter 15

“One lucky boy, you are.”

“That’s the way you figure it, Doc? That the way the Huns think?” Ray Brisa glanced up, but Jameroski was slipping in and out of focus. The bandages on his face limited his range of vision, made everything fuzzy around the edges, but this was something different going on, something to do with drugs.

“Not so bad on your face,” Jameroski said. “This here is bad.”

Ray turned his chin on the table top, looked away at the cracks on the scuzzy green wall. “Thanks for the good news.”

“
Is
good news,” Jameroski insisted. He sprayed something that felt cool on Ray’s burning shoulder.

Ray nodded. He wasn’t anxious to follow this line of discussion. He’d caught hold of the spin of the drugs now. He wanted to dig in his spurs, ride with them, a big wowser ride. “What’d you give me, Doc? Tell me, so I can score a lot of it when I’m better.”

“Yah, yah, I know you like,” Jameroski said. “Careful now, is going to hurt.”

And Jameroski was right, what he was doing to Ray’s back and shoulder did hurt. Hurt like a sonofabitch in that part of him that felt pain. The other part shrugged off the discomfort. That part of Ray Brisa was drifting around some cloudlike landscape like a dark-skinned angel, plunking strings on his little harp and staring down at the poor bastard who couldn’t tell where his shirt ended and his charred flesh began.

“Better you go to hospital,” Jameroski muttered.

Fifty years in the United States, he ought to learn the language
, that’s what Ray was thinking.

“I already was there, Doc,” he said. “I didn’t like the way those people looked at me.”

“You were in hospital? Sure. When, huh? Who said: ‘You! Go now.’ Nobody. Shut up. Lean back now. Let me think.”

If there were enough brain cells left to do the job, Ray thought. Junked-out Doc Hammer, physician to the underworld stars. You didn’t bring your Blue Cross card when you went to see Doc Hammer. He didn’t ask you for your insurance number, you didn’t ask him for no license.

And the fact was Ray
had
been in a hospital. Some homeowner had dragged him up the bank of the canal where he’d drifted after the explosion, called the paramedics, they’d delivered Ray Brisa to Jackson Memorial on a gurney just ahead of the cops. Ray waited till the emergency wagon was on its way to scrape up the next victim of the Miami morning, somehow managed to get down from the gurney, made his way outside, hailed one of the cabs idling under the canopy of the emergency entrance.

“Stink up my car, man,” that’s what the cabbie had told him, they hadn’t driven half a block. Sure. Canal muck, blood, fried flesh, it ought to stink. Fifty wet, stinking bucks later, everything was cool, the cabbie helping him through the door of Doc Hammer’s clinic, otherwise known as the service entrance to Gould’s Pharmacy, a place the old man kept out on the Beach.

“You got great hands, Doc. Anybody ever tell you that?” That was the angel speaking now.

“Shut up,” Jameroski said. “Hold tight.”

Ray saw the doctor snatch something off his shoulder—what was left of his skin was how it felt—heard a wet slap as something hit a waste can. The angel was strumming his harp furiously, but Ray couldn’t hear the music for the sound of the flames snapping on his back.

“Can’t put you to sleep,” Jameroski said by way of apology. “In hospital, sure. But not here.”

Ray Brisa managed a nod. Tears were leaking out his clenched eyelids. He had his hands locked together beneath the table top the doc used for an operating table. Only lucky thing he could think of, there wasn’t a brisk trade in gurney rentals. They’d be doing all this on the filthy floor beneath him. Or, maybe, if the pharmacy had already opened for business, the doc would have him lying out there on the counter, passing prescriptions for Dilaudid and Percodans to his distinguished clientele with one hand, flaying him alive with the other.

Who among the doc’s customers would care?
You gone kill the bitch, Doc? All right. Hand me my pills first, okay
?

***

Ray blinked,
refocused, realized he must have gone out. He was on a cot now in a little storeroom. The doc was sitting on a big cardboard box filled, evidently, with something called
DEPENDS
.

Depends on what
? Ray wondered. The pain had gone off somewhere. The angel was back on his cloud, doing some dreamy nod.

The doc was watching a little black-and-white television he’d set up on some steel shelving. Focus on the picture swam in and out. It took Ray a moment to realize it wasn’t the drugs, though. The doc jiggled one of the rabbit ears atop the set, and the picture steadied.

“Get the frigging cable, why don’t you?” Ray said. His throat felt dry and tight, like he hadn’t talked for a long time.

“Shut up,” Jameroski said, his eyes fixed on the tube.

Maybe that was it, Ray thought. Bedside manner deficiency. Doc Hammer’d started off losing a patient here and there because of it, he’d gone on drugs to compensate. His whole life went into the shitter because he didn’t know how to relate to the feelings of others.

“Ooo, Doctor,” Ray said. “I like these drugs you do.”

“
Listen
,” Jameroski said, making a slashing motion with his hand. “I put you out in street!”

No doubt about it, Ray thought. Serious bedside deficiency. But he kept his mouth shut this time.

“…these unprecedented acts of terrorism,” someone was saying, a voice Ray Brisa thought he knew. “And we will not rest until those responsible are apprehended and brought to account, that much I can promise.”

Ray let his head loll to the right angle, stared up at the wavering black-and-white image, caught sight of President Sheldon there on the screen. Palm trees in the background, a skyline that looked familiar.
Pissed off
, Ray thought.
This is a man way pissed off
.

“…not allow my personal feelings to intrude in this matter,” the President was saying. “There have been many victims here today, and we recognize that fact. My heart goes out to the families of the fallen. We will do everything within our power to see that justice is done.”

The President turned away from the cameras then, ignoring a clamor of shouted questions and thrust microphones. A cluster of Secret Service agents stepped between him and the pursuing reporters and the scene shifted back to one of the sets of the evening network, where an anchorman in an expensive hairpiece promised Ray and the doctor that he would return in a moment.

“Whoosh,” Jameroski said, leaning back, shaking his head.

“How long I been out of it?” Ray Brisa said. His head felt full of cotton.

Jameroski turned to regard him. “Your entire life, I think is safe to say.”

Brisa wanted to laugh, but it turned into a wracking cough, which in turn jiggled the flesh of his shoulder into flame. It all finished in tears and Ray gasping for breath on the cot. It had taken him by surprise, that’s all, Jameroski with a good line, like a guy with Alzheimer’s sometimes gets.

“What’s so great on the television, Doc?” he managed, finally.

Jameroski shook his big grizzled head. “Unbelievable, you know? Like nothing I ever saw.”

“It looked like Miami to me,” Ray Brisa said.

Jameroski glared at him. “You stupid! Of course is Miami. You don’t know? Got damn President is here. You don’t know?” Jameroski’s voice had risen dangerously, Ray thought. “President of United States!”

“I just forgot, okay? What happened?”

The news anchor was back then and the doctor pointed grimly at the set.

“…where, if you have just joined us, a tragedy of monumental proportions has taken place,” the newsman said, his face ashen. “Unconfirmed reports are that a dozen Secret Service agents and as many as forty civilians, including a number of the nation’s most heroic individuals, were killed in the gun battle inside the hotel, while more than two hundred onlookers gathered outside the hotel were felled by a cloud of toxic gas loosed by persons unknown. Officials have not yet confirmed this fact, but sources tell us that the First Lady, Linda Sheldon, is missing. I repeat, the First Lady of the United States is missing and may have been kidnapped by terrorists.” The announcer paused, as if uttering the words had drained him of something vital.

He sat staring blankly for a moment and then something seemed to jar him from his trance. He pressed his hand to his ear as if listening to some unseen speaker. “We’re going to take you live now to Javier Sotolongo, who is standing by with word on that explosion and fire at the airport…” he began, and then Jameroski’s hand reached out to turn off the sound.

The doctor turned to stare at Brisa with an expression that was less angry than thoughtful. It was a look that made Brisa uncomfortable.

“Maybe
you
do something,” the doctor said.

“Do something
what?”
Ray was feeling a little nervous. Jameroski had worked on him half a dozen times: gunshot wounds, stabbings, concussion, a hundred stitches on his knee where he’d run though a plate-glass window just ahead of an angry homeowner who’d been sleeping late instead of going to work like he was supposed to. All those instances, nothing had fazed Jameroski. Did his work, took his money,
hasta la vista
.

“You hear,” Jameroski said, waving at the TV. “Somebody kidnap the First Lady. First blow up one airplane, drop nerve gas at downtown.”

Ray glanced at the screen, saw what looked like a helicopter shot: office buildings surrounding a park, about a million emergency vehicles clustered down below.

“Wait a minute,” Ray said. It was beginning to sink in now. “All this happened in
Miami
? Like when?”

“Today,” Jameroski said.

“No shit,” Ray Brisa said. He glanced back at the TV, trying to ignore the growing dread inside him. “Somebody did all that?” He noticed Jameroski was still eyeing him suspiciously. Ray started to lift up off the cot, realized heavy straps were holding him down.

“Hey, man, what is this shit?”

Jameroski studied him. “Didn’t want you to roll off, hurting yourself while I do the working on you.”

“Well, that’s over with. Un-fucking-tie me, all right?”

Jameroski made no move.

Brisa tried to shift about inside the straps. “Do the math, doc,” Ray Brisa said. “I been with
you
all day. I didn’t have anything to do with that shit on the television.”

Jameroski didn’t seem convinced. “Lot of things to be doing. Have to be a lot of people helping.”

Brisa stared at him, not believing it. “Well,
I
didn’t,” he said. “I’m no terrorist.”

“You are talking while you sleep, you know?”

That look again. Brisa felt a panic rising.

“Talking? About what?”

Jameroski raised his shaggy brows noncommittally. “Costing you one hell of a lot, this time,” he said.

That’s all the old fart cared about, Ray thought. The more serious the crime, the heavier the dime. Always somebody around to grind your ass, no matter what side they were on.

“Somebody tried to kill
me
, okay? Look at my sorry ass.” Ray Brisa was thinking about the tall man who’d handed him the briefcase, how he’d wanted to dismiss him as just another South American drug scammer. He was thinking about Luis and his ghastly smile. He was thinking about Jorge. God knows what had happened to Jorge. Guys drive a boat up his ass, maybe.

Jameroski was looking at Ray Brisa all right, but nothing in his aspect had changed.

Ray Brisa found himself squirming under the old man’s gaze. Junkie doctor giving him shit, he thought. How about that? Just because Ray Brisa was sick. He hadn’t messed around with any crazy shit like Hammer was talking. He hadn’t.

He was still trying to convince himself it was true even after the doctor had stood up and walked out. Even after the door had locked shut behind him. Even after the pain had rushed back to claim him and the angel was strumming its ass off again. The way his mind worked, Ray Brisa thought. The way his mind worked.

Chapter 16

“Who the hell
are
these people?” The President glanced up from the document Chappelear had handed him. Chappelear was doing his best to exude calm, despite the events of the day.

“No one’s heard of them,” Chappelear said. He heard the helplessness in his own voice. “These cells splinter, they reform, it’s as fluid as the Middle East down there. Maybe more so.”

He raised his hands away from his body in a gesture of futility. The communiqué had come off a fax machine in the hotel an hour earlier. Identical copies had rolled off machines in the Homestead offices of the United Farm Workers of America, the Haiti-America Foundation in Northeast Miami, and, for some bizarre reason, the Department of Modern Dance at Florida International University:

It had been signed
Los Pueblos de Libertad y Justicia
, a group without a history, without a face. A cell within a cell within a cell, for all anyone knew. No demands, no instructions, no mention of the First Lady.

An immediate full-barreled response had solved only one mystery surrounding the communiqué so far: the fax number now belonging to the university’s Department of Modern Dance had once been assigned to the Institute for Cuban Policy.

“They’re leftist, that much seems certain,” Chappelear said. “Maybe an offshoot of Shinning Path. Maybe some reorganized Salvadoran insurgents, or one of the Panamanian groups. We just don’t know at this point.”

The President crumpled the document in his fist, made as if to hammer his fist against the desk before him, but seemed to lose heart midway through the gesture. He turned away from Chappelear, wadded the paper up, tossed it onto the floor. An aide hurried over to pick up the ball of paper before it had stopped rolling.

Frank Sheldon was pale, his features slack, all his fabled, robust bonhomie vanished. This was not a president any longer, Chappelear was thinking. This was a man whose world had disintegrated in the space of an afternoon, a husband who had lost his wife to forces unknowable and unfathomable.

Earlier in the day, the view out these windows had suggested power and privilege and possibility. Now the weather had turned dark, and the bay was a gray slate dotted with whitecaps, the welter of pleasure boats long gone.

“Quantico’s got a team of profilers working, Mr. President.” It was John Groshner, who’d entered the room on the heels of the aide. “They’re saying that the fact we haven’t heard anything about the First Lady isn’t necessarily bad news.…”

“Isn’t necessarily bad news?” The President swiveled upon him angrily. “What the hell kind of talk is that?”

Groshner put up his hands helplessly. “They’re psychologists, Mr. President. They’re working with what they have, which isn’t much, admittedly…” He trailed off before the President’s withering look.

The President waved dismissively, then sat staring down at his desk for a moment. Chappelear thought he could trace the waves of pain moving through him. After a moment, the President glanced up.

“This is your bailiwick, Larry,” he said, an implied question in his tone. “Here we were, ready to open negotiations with Cuba, what everybody down there’s been begging for thirty years”—he broke off angrily, waving his hand at the aide—“and we get this tide of fascism bullshit! What could have prompted it? What’s the matter with these people?”

Chappelear noted the use of the past tense.
So much for a legacy of change in Latin politics
, he thought.

“Logic doesn’t necessarily enter into it, Mr. President,” Groshner ventured. “You met with Vas, that could have been enough to set them off.”

“That’s just political courtesy…”

“In some quarters, maybe.”

The President sighed, fell back in his chair.

“Or you could figure it another way,” Groshner continued. “Maybe someone hears you’re ready to open a dialogue with Castro, that just might mean he’s sold out his own principles, their communist butts are finished at last.”

The President looked at him in disbelief. “That’s lunacy.”

Groshner shrugged. “That’s how screwed up politics is among the left down there. Vas understands it. That’s why he’s got so much clout. He maintains one simple policy for the communists. Invite them to the bargaining table…then shoot them between the eyes.” Groshner leaned forward in his chair. “One thing I can tell you, Charles Hollingsworth is going to be all over the evening news, reminding the country how dangerous it is to consort with the left wing.”

The President looked ready to explode. “That’s ridiculous!”

Groshner shrugged. “He wants to win an election, sir.”

The President sagged back in his chair, covering his face with his palms. “Jesus God,” he muttered.

Chappelear sighed, exasperated with Groshner, his simplistic assessments, his obdurate pragmatic focus on the elections in the midst of what had happened. Well, Frank had wanted to hire a bulldog, and a bulldog was what they had.

Chappelear turned to the President, who was still massaging his face with his hands. “We’re not even certain this group really exists, Mr. President. Or if they had anything to do with what happened.”

The President turned to Chappelear. “We don’t know very goddamned much, do we, Larry?”

There was a pause while Chappelear searched his mind for something even remotely comforting.

“I spoke with Jorge Vas a few minutes ago,” Groshner said. “He’s got a fairly extensive network of informants in Central and South America, probably at least as reliable as ours. He assures us every one of his people has an ear to the ground.”

Chappelear eyed Groshner. “As long as we maintain trade restrictions with Cuba, hold the line on those sugar subsidies,” Chappelear heard himself saying. Groshner bristled, about to retort.

Sheldon’s head snapped about. “I don’t want to hear any more of that, Larry,” he said. “Am I making myself clear?”

Chappelear realized he was exhausted himself, was letting his emotions get their way. Hardly the way to get through a crisis. “Sorry, Mr. President,” he muttered.

“That goes for both of you,” Sheldon added.

The President turned a dark glance on the two of them, then softened momentarily. He sighed, raised his hands in a gesture of frustration. “The truth is, if the devil himself were to appear in this room, deliver information we could use to find Linda, I’d treat him like a brother.”

He was about to turn away from them when he stopped, fixing his gaze on Chappelear. “That said, let me ask you something, Larry.”

“Sir?”

The President’s face had taken on an even more sallow tone. “Just speculating for a moment.”

“Of course,” Chappelear nodded.

“What about Vas? Could he pull something like this, some bullshit stunt to discredit Castro?”

Chappelear looked at Groshner, who stared back as if to say, “Here’s your chance.”

Chappelear returned his gaze to the President. “It’s something we’re looking into, sir. We wouldn’t discount any possibility at this point.”

The President nodded, then turned away gloomily.

“We’re going to hear something soon enough,” Groshner said. Chappelear didn’t think he said it very convincingly, though he understood why Groshner would give it a try.

Chappelear wanted to do his part. He raised a sheaf of the papers that the aide had brought in along with the copy of the communiqué. “We’ve got promises of cooperation from every friendly government. Quantico’s got five hundred special agents on the way down from all over the country…”

Sheldon waved his hand to stop him, wandered off to the windows at the far end of the room. He stood there, gazing out at the gloomy sea, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Maybe you shouldn’t be standing right there, sir…” Chappelear began.

“It’s security glass,” Groshner said. “Blanked out.”

Chappelear turned, about to retort.

Sheldon ignored them both. “It should have been me,” he said, still staring out. Streaks of rain silvered the glass now. A gull rose up suddenly, a few feet away, was just as quickly whisked away by a gust of wind.

He turned back to them. “That’s what we have to figure, isn’t it? All those good people lost because the perpetrators were coming after me.”

“Well, sir, we can’t be certain of anything just yet…” Groshner said.

“I wouldn’t blame myself, Mr. President,” Chappelear said.

Sheldon stared at the two of them, hands still behind him, chewing on his lower lip. If he had been ready to respond to either remark, he apparently changed his mind. He took a deep breath, glanced down at his shoes.

“I’m assuming that we’re maintaining the highest levels of surveillance?”

“Everything’s locked down tight, all public transportation, the marinas, the commercial airfields,” Groshner said. “We’ve got checkpoints on the turnpike, the interstates, the major highways. You couldn’t move the Invisible Man out of here.”

Sheldon gave him another weary wave. “How about satellite imagery? Can that help us at all?”

“They’re assembling the readouts right now,” Groshner said. “So far as pinpointing anything very specific in the midst of a built-up area such as this, we’ll have to be extremely lucky. We may be able to use it to get a pretty good look at boat traffic, but it’s a busy place and the imagery’s still being evaluated.” He gave Sheldon a hapless look. “Half the damn city’s out on the water at any given time, it seems.”

“That’s where we should have been,” Sheldon said quietly. “Out there trying to catch a fish or something.”

He stared out at the water for a moment, then turned back to them. “Is it possible she’s still somewhere close by?”

“Anything’s possible, Mr. President,” Chappelear said. “We’re going to hope that whoever’s responsible didn’t go very far. We’re going to hope that we get some clearer statement—”

“We’re going to hope that she’s still alive,” Sheldon interrupted, his voice almost a whisper, his face ashen. “If they wanted me, and got Linda instead, then what if…” He broke off, leaving his deepest fear unstated.

Chappelear fell silent. Even Groshner looked stricken, he noticed.

Sheldon covered his face with his palms again, massaging the flesh as if he were trying to rouse himself from a terrible dream. Finally he dropped his hands and squared his shoulders. “Whoever the hell it was wanted me,” he said. “But they didn’t get me, did they?”

Groshner shook his head as if he’d read a script that prompted the gesture. The man exuded all the sincerity of a personal injury attorney, Chappelear thought. He stared back at Sheldon, waiting for whatever was coming next.

“I’ll tell you one thing. We are going to move heaven and earth to get my wife back. And I intend to make these people goddamned sorry for what they’ve done. Are you with me on that?”

“Absolutely, sir,” Groshner said.

“Without question,” said Chappelear. He wanted to clap Sheldon on the back, lead a cheer, tell him it was the only way to respond, that Frank Sheldon could be counted on no matter how dark the day…but he held his tongue.

“Good,” Sheldon said. He gave them a grim look in turn, then turned to look out the windows again.

“I still have to be the President,” he said after a moment. His voice was forlorn, barely above a whisper.

“The country needs you, sir,” Chappelear said gently. “The people need a leader as badly as they ever have.”

Sheldon nodded after a moment. “I suppose they do,” he said with a sigh.

He turned and took the sheaf of papers from Chappelear’s hand, flipped through them until he found something he was looking for. He glanced up.

“Tell Ms. Walters I’ll see her in ten minutes,” he said to Chappelear. Still exhausted, the lines of worry still etched at his eyes and mouth, but a glimmer of the old Frank Sheldon there, cranking himself up, ready to throw himself back in the fight.

“That’s a delayed feed,” Groshner protested. “You’ve got Brokaw waiting to go live.”

“We’ll get around to Brokaw,” Sheldon said. He glanced at his watch, than at Groshner.

“Barbara Walters was the first one of these people ever to take us seriously,” he said. “She came down to Jeff City, she and Linda hit it off like sisters. They stayed up half the night talking, and never a peep of any silly gossip ever hit the air.”

He turned to Chappelear, trying to muster his energy.

“So go tell her we’re going to do these interviews ladies first,” he said. “Just as soon as I wash my face.”

Chappelear nodded and started for the door.

“One other thing, Larry.”

Chappelear turned. “Yes, sir?”

“I’m making you the point man on this investigation.”

“But the Service…” Groshner cut in.

“I’m not going to have any goddamned quarrels about who’s in charge,” the President snapped. “Every agency’s going to do its part, and Lawrence Chappelear is going to coordinate. I’ve already sent the order down. Am I making myself clear?”

Groshner dropped his gaze. “Yes, sir.”

“I appreciate your confidence, Mr. President. Are you sure…?”

The President reached out to take his shoulders. “Just make sure the job gets done, Larry. I’m counting on you.”

Chappelear stood erect, trying to rise above the swell of despair that threatened to engulf them all. “I’ll do everything I can, sir.”

The President nodded then, and disappeared into the bathroom.

Chappelear turned, glanced at Groshner, who was fighting to keep the anger out of his expression. He wanted to say something to the man, but despaired of coming up with any comment that wouldn’t sound like a playground taunt.

Never mind, he thought. There were far more important matters to attend to just now. But God willing, all of this would pass. He would come to terms with John Groshner on another day.