The Architect (13 page)

“Neither of them knows. James just took a job at Brown Brothers Harriman, and William just made partner at Simpson Thacher Bartlett. I don’t see any reason to involve them, until it’s absolutely necessary.”

“When will that be?”

“When she’s showing, I suppose.” She shook her head. “It honestly doesn’t seem real yet. It doesn’t seem like something God would...” She closed her eyes. “I shouldn’t say that. We can’t know his ways.”

Crosse disagreed. He believed God made his ways plain to man, but that man was often too frightened or too selfish to act in accordance with his will. President Kennedy, before he grew weak and came to doubt America’s power to reshape the world, had put it well: “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.”

Hadn’t Jesus carried his Father’s truth in his heart? Hadn’t Abraham been willing to sacrifice Isaac after the voice of God instructed him to do so? Hadn’t President Buckley done God’s work here on earth, liberating whole peoples from oppression? And didn’t Crosse himself know precisely what God expected of him? “Maybe he’s listening more than you know,” he told the first lady.

Buckley looked at him. “I’m not praying for this pregnancy to end,” she said. But the way she turned her head, her gaze drifting toward the floor, said the opposite.

“Of course not,” Crosse said.

She cleared her throat, took another deep breath, and abruptly stood up.

Crosse stood up.

“I know you need to take much more precise measurements
of the existing space,” she said. “Feel free to ask for help from me or my assistant Joyce.”

“Thank you,” Crosse said, extending his hand. They had had their talk, between the lines. The deal was done. She would sleep better that night, not knowing why, nor wanting to know. “I may need to come back a few times,” he said, “to make certain my design will accomplish exactly what I intend it to.”

She shook his hand. “Not a problem. Your clearance is complete. You won’t be held up.”

“And if I tend to wander about, it’s only because my mind does. Please tell your staff to yank on my leash. I learn quickly.” He smiled.

“Wander wherever you like,” she said.

He looked into her eyes. “I want you to know I realize how much you and your husband have sacrificed for the public good,” he said. “I’m truly honored to work with you. If I could design just one more structure in my life, this would be it.”

Demo version limitation

THIRTY-THREE

Clevenger and Anderson parked
on Broadway and walked down Suffolk Street, past brownstones and brick bowfronts waiting their turn for gut rehabs, like ghosts of Chelsea’s past, a city literally risen from the ashes not once, but twice, lingering still near flash point.

They could see a dozen shadowy figures in front of a house two blocks away, tossing a football back and forth across the street, pushing each other up and down the front steps, playing chicken with a lone car speeding past.

“So what’s the plan?” Anderson asked, when they had closed to one block.

Three or four of the Royals, wearing their trademark skullcaps, baggy jeans, and football jerseys, spotted them and started drifting up the sidewalk.

“I really haven’t given it a lot of thought,” Clevenger said.

“Great. Me, neither.”

“I just need enough time to talk Billy into getting the hell out of here.”

The Royals formed two rows of two on the sidewalk, an urban gauntlet.

“Here goes nothing,” Anderson said. He walked ahead of Clevenger so that they were single file. Then he kept walking, just in front of Clevenger, right between the Royals. “Evening, gentlemen,” he said, with a nod.

“What the fuck, Nigger?” the biggest of them, black, about nineteen or twenty years old, called after Anderson, just as Clevenger stepped in front of him. He was wearing a thick silver chain with a snake with ruby eyes on it.

Clevenger turned around and faced him, turning his back to two of the Royals. “I’m looking for Billy Bishop,” he said.

Anderson stopped walking, so that he was back-to-back with Clevenger, sandwiched between the four Royals.

“Who the fuck are you?” the big man asked Clevenger.

“His father.”

“His old man’s in jail,” he said, leaning toward Clevenger. “Murder rap. So, take off.”

“No problem,” Anderson said. “We’ll find him.” He scuffed his shoes on the ground as he stepped forward, to let Clevenger know he was moving toward the house.

Clevenger turned to follow him, but something hit him hard, across the back of the head. His scalp, then neck felt wet and warm with blood. He managed to

stay on his feet, swung around and smashed his forearm into the jaw of a Royal holding a length of pipe. The kid went down.

“He’s got a knife,” Anderson said, pointing at another one of them, lunging toward Clevenger.

Clevenger arched away as a blade flashed in front of his eyes.

Anderson whipped his pistol across that one’s face.

The kid—maybe fourteen, maybe less—dropped the knife as he staggered back, blood pouring from his nose.

Anderson sensed someone coming up behind him, threw an elbow and found a soft spot. He turned around, saw the big Royal with the medallion doubled over. He aimed his gun at his head.

At least ten Royals had spilled from the front door of their town house.

“You done now, Mothafuck!” one shouted.

Another disembodied voice: “Outgunned, out-fuck-in”-manned.”

Clevenger drew his Glock, grabbed the bloodied kid, and held it to his head.

That didn’t stop more Royals from streaming out of the house, down the sidewalk, but it kept them from closing to less than ten feet. They ringed Clevenger and Anderson, their voices soft and steady and fierce— the rattle of a rattlesnake.

“C’mon, man, let homeboy go.”

“Suffolk, wrong place, wrong time, Dude. You
know
better than be here.”

“Cap these two fuckers ‘fore they do Gas and Steel, man.”

“Die ‘em.”

But no one took another step. Even in a Chelsea gang, where death was no stranger, life remained precious.

“Where is Billy Bishop?” Clevenger asked no one in particular.

Anderson grabbed the big Royal by his thick rope chain, pressed his .44 Magnum to his jaw. “Answer the fucking question, or I’ll off you and a few of your friends in self-defense.”

The big Royal looked up at Anderson and spit at him.

Anderson jammed the gun into his mouth.

Clevenger looked at Anderson, saw his jaw churning. “North,” he said quietly. “Don’t. He isn’t worth it.”

Anderson didn’t answer, didn’t blink, didn’t move his finger off the trigger. “Where’s Billy?” he asked, through clenched teeth. He pulled the gun out of the big Royal’s mouth.

“Fuck you.”

Anderson pulled his arm back, ready to smash the gun across his face.

“I’m right here,” Billy said, from behind Clevenger.

Anderson stopped.

Clevenger turned and saw Billy pull back the hood of his sweatshirt, then pull a bandanna away from his face.

“What do you want?” Billy asked.

“My truck’s on Broadway,” Clevenger said. He noticed Billy’s pupils were pinpoints, even in the moonlight. He was high, probably on heroin. “Walk up the street. Let’s go home.”

“I live here,” Billy said.

Nods and murmurs from other Royals. A couple of them near Billy held out their hands.

Billy slapped them five.

“Bullshit you do,” Clevenger said.

Anderson had his gun trained on the big Royal, again, while his eyes tracked back and forth from him to the others, like he was trying to figure out how long the stalemate could hold.

Clevenger nodded toward Broadway. “C’mon,” he told Billy. “Let’s get out of here.”

“How about you get out of here?” Billy said. “This is my family. You’re nothing to me.”

Hoots and high fives from the Royals.

Clevenger looked at Billy and saw him looking back at him in a different way than he ever had before—as though the two of them were strangers. No anger, no fear, no contempt. A sterile, dispassionate gaze. And that hit Clevenger much harder than the length of pipe that had opened a gash on his head. He lowered his gun, nearly dropped it.

Anderson saw what was happening. He pushed the big Royal away from him, grabbed Clevenger and dragged him out of the circle, pointing his gun at one Royal, then another, to keep them from rushing him. “Let’s live to fight another day,” he whispered to Clevenger, grabbing his belt and pulling him backward.

Clevenger started walking toward Broadway under his own steam.

The Royals stopped following them after about a block.

“Royal blood thicker than yours, Daddy!” one of them shouted, his voice echoing down the street.

Raucous laughter.

A chorus of taunts: “Big fucking gun, man, no fucking balls.”

“Love youuuu, Papa Doc.”

Clevenger pushed his gun back into the waistband of his pants.

“What now?” Anderson asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe that’s the end of it. Maybe I have to be okay with that.”

“I can tell you right now: You tried harder, for longer, than almost anybody would.”

“What do I get, a medal?” Clevenger asked.

Anderson shook his head. “Raising a family is a whole different kind of war. Nobody ever thanks you for your service.”

That turned a key inside Clevenger. Because it reminded him again that his fight for Billy’s soul wasn’t one battle or two or ten. It
was
a war. And the good news and the bad news was there was no way to be defeated. It could go on and on and on. That was the beauty and terror of being a parent or a priest or a peacemaker in the first place. Hie only way to lose was to surrender—either your will or your humanity or both. “I want you to call in one more favor from John Rosario,” he told Anderson.

“You want him to keep an eye on Billy?”

“No. I want him to arrest him. He’s using heroin. Ten-to-one he’ll get him for possession.”

Anderson nodded slowly. ‘They get him for that, he goes away. No bail this time. Could be six months, maybe a year, before his case is even heard.”

“People come through worse,” Clevenger said. “The point is to come through. I don’t know if he lasts on the street.” He paused. “And I don’t know what he turns into if he does.”

Anderson took out his cell phone. He dialed Chelsea police headquarters. It started to ring. “Last chance,” Anderson said to Clevenger. “You sure?”

An operator answered.

“Of course not,” Clevenger said. “What do you thinkr

Anderson stared into Clevenger’s eyes several seconds.

“Hello?” the operator asked.

Anderson brought the phone to his lips. “I need to get in touch with John Rosario,” he said. He listened a few seconds. “Yeah. Tell him it’s an emergency.”

THIRTY-FOUR

AUGUST l6, 2005

West Crosse had spent
three hours gathering measurements of the East Wing he knew he would never use. At 11:10 A.M. he started toward the first family’s private residence on the second floor of the main building, taking a less-traveled route he had memorized from classified plans of the White House given him by the president. Ten minutes later he stood outside Blaire Buckley’s bedroom. He knocked softly on her door.

No response.

He tried the door. Unlocked. He opened it, walked inside, closed it behind him.

Although Blaire was seventeen, her room was indistinguishable from a seven- or eight-year-old’s. A lacy, pink comforter on the bed. A stuffed bear, a stuffed giraffe, and several dolls propped against the pillows. A light-up Barbie vanity. Two jump ropes and a hopscotch mat. Board games stacked in a corner. A bookcase filled with children’s books.

Crosse walked over to the bookcase, pulled out one of the volumes:
Judy Moody Predicts the Future
. Another:
Judy Moody Was in a Mood. Not a Good Mood. A Bad Mood
. Another, this one a picture book:
A Lion at Bedtime
.

He walked over to a tall chest of drawers, saw Blaire’s ribbon hair ties, rhinestone rings, and plastic bracelets, glittery barrettes, a dozen lip glosses, neatly arranged in baskets on top. Next to them was a stack of
Highlights
magazines, written for children in grade school. Behind them was a photograph of Blaire on a swing, overweight, with dull eyes, being pushed by her father, the president of the United States.

A wave of disgust washed over Crosse. How could it be that an organism with the intellect of a gifted primate could cause such chaos and pain in the life of the leader of the free world? How could a being without the mental acumen to read at half her grade level be permitted the freedom to take a lover and carry a child? How could anyone miss the fact that her DNA was itself deeply flawed, that to pretend she was fully human was to make a mockery of the miraculous potential of man?

Blaire’s existence was no different from any other architectural disaster. Poorly designed footings can take down a building. A poorly designed building can foul an entire cityscape. But in this case, the potential losses were exponentially greater. The president could fall. The prestige of America could be damaged. The cause of world freedom could be set back.

History had its own structure, as vulnerable to a fault of design as any other.

Blaire Buckley was no different in her destructive potential than a terrorist.

Crosse recalled one of the first great American voices with whom he had strongly identified. He had read and reread the writings of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a devout Christian and eugenicist who advocated the sterilization of defective women. In one famous case, upon ordering a hysterectomy be performed on Carrie Buck, a mentally retarded, seventeen-year-old woman whose mother and child were also retarded, he wrote, “It is better for the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind... Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”