The Next President (11 page)

She looked at her watch. Coming up on eight. Jenny had called Baxter Brown to notify him that she’d be joining them for breakfast and not to

let Del make any appearances before she arrived. She deeply hoped her candidate hadn’t overruled that decision.

Del was staying in the penthouse suite, and there were two Secret Service agents on guard outside the lobby entrance to the private elevator. Another pair of agents rode up with her. More were waiting when the elevator doors opened. Del’s press secretary, Alita Colon, pulled open the door to the suite as she approached it.

“The fellas called up to let us know you were on the way,” she said.

“Come on in. I’ve got juice, coffee, and rolls waiting.”

“You just earned a place in heaven,” Jenny assured her.

“Great so long as it’s not anytime soon,” Alita replied.

“Anything new about the ” Alita shook her head before Jenny even finished.

“Nothing… and that’s part of what makes it spooky. What I heard, the FBI didn’t find any finger prints on that notebook except the ones from the housekeeping lady. So how’d its owner handle it, wear gloves all the time?”

There were several more Secret Service agents in the suite, and there would be others on the roof above them and the floor below. But in the windowless room where Baxter Brown and Jim Greenberg already sat at a table helping themselves to breakfast, no guards were present. Nor would they be after Del Rawley entered the room.

As a legacy of the Clinton administration during which Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr had compelled agents on the presidential protection de tail to testify to a grand jury calculated risks were taken from time to time by the politicians who were afforded Secret Service protection. What the agents didn’t hear, they couldn’t be forced to reveal.

“You look beat, girl,” Baxter told Jenny.

“How kind of you to notice.”

Jim Greenberg poured her a cup of coffee as she joined them at the table.

Alita sat down. They allowed Jenny a grace period long enough to take one sip from her cup. Then they cranked up their stares, silently demanding to know what her emergency was.

She spited them by taking a bite of a cinnamon roll first.

Then she said, “I heard from a very good source last night that Del is going to be the target of a big-time smear. One that might happen any minute now.”

Alita and Jim sat back in their chairs, the better to absorb the news. Baxter Brown leaned forward and bunched his huge hands into fists.

“Who’d you hear that from?” he demanded.

“Don Ward.”

“He’s still alive?” Baxter asked.

“Real sensitive of you, Baxter,” Alita said, knowing the man was Jenny’s friend.

Jim Greenberg added, “If this comes from Hunter Ward, I believe it.”

“Believe what?” Del Rawley asked, entering the room. He made a point of watching the door close behind him.

“Have a seat, Del,” Jenny suggested. When he sat down and poured him self a cup of coffee, Jenny brought him up to speed.

“It’s that motherfucking incumbent,” Baxter pronounced.

“He’s seen that your numbers have stayed up since Chicago, and he’s petrified. So look out, brother, here comes the mud.”

“If Don says it’s coming, it’s coming,” Jenny agreed.

“But the thing I don’t understand is how it could be coming from Ron Turlock.” Ronald Turlock was the incumbent’s campaign manager.

“His reputation is that he’s a straight shooter.”

“Straight into his foot,” Baxter argued.

“That man has lost four elections in a row. He’ll do whatever he has to do, whatever he’s told to do, just like any ” Baxter realized too late where his thought would carry him, and Jenny finished it for him.

“Just like any of us mercenary hack campaign managers, Baxter? Not like you devoted staff advisers who take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.”

“That’ll be enough, children,” Del said mildly.

Jenny felt a flash of shame. If Del hadn’t stepped in, she and Baxter might have gone at it like Vandy and DeVito But she was too tired to hang on to the feeling for long. Besides, she had other dirty work to do, and she was the only one at the table who would do it.

“Del, I hate to ask, but I’ve got to,” Jenny said.

“Is there anything in your past you maybe forgot to tell us?” Jenny had reread the biography she’d compiled on Franklin Delano Rawley while waiting for the flight to Denver.

When the time came to hit back, she hoped to use it to refute whatever charges were made and to remind the public of some wonderful thing her man had done in the period of his life that came under attack.

The candidate frowned at her. He got up from the table, turned away and then back, and frowned again. But he was an honest enough man, and a smart enough politician, that everyone else in the room could see and they were all watching closely that he was thinking the question through.

“No,” he said finally.

“There’s nothing illegal, unethical, or shameful.”

Jenny nodded.

“Okay, then even though Don says otherwise, we have to anticipate a lie. A big lie.”

“No doubt from an unnamed source,” Alita offered.

“We’ll have to be damn quick in exposing it as false,” Jim added.

“And adept at regaining public favor.”

“And subtle while we give the president a swift kick in the ass so his side won’t try something like this again,” Baxter put in.

“I agree with the kick,” Jenny said.

“I don’t see any need for subtlety, though.”

“This is my life that will be under attack,” Del reminded them.

“I know what I’ve done and what I haven’t. I’ll know better than anyone else how-much this smear will hurt me and my family. So I’ll be the one to decide the type and the severity of the response.”

“But it will have to be fast,” Jenny said, and the others all nodded.

“Yes, that it will,” the candidate agreed.

Del Rawley still had a busy day ahead of him, but Jenny claimed a private moment with him before she returned to California. He assured her that he was not about to let this notebook flap distract him. After surviving Chicago, it would take something a lot more serious to scare him. Somewhat relieved on that account, Jenny told him about their other problem: Agent DeVito

Was Del really sure he wanted a loose cannon like that around the campaign?

“He wanted a peek in Marva Weisman’s handbag?” The candidate had to laugh.

“He also insulted a man who Vandy says is perfectly nice and added ten thousand dollars to our coffers.”

Del Rawley sighed.

“I think your idea of a note of apology is appropriate.”

“Not outright dismissal?”

The candidate shook his head.

“Jim has already told me that my loyalty to Special Agent DeVito has played well with the public; it’s been worth two to five points in the polls with a cross section of the electorate. How would we all feel if I fired him now and we lost by a whisker?”

Now Jenny sighed. Del patted her shoulder.

“Look, tell DeVito that I said no more hidden cameras. Give Vandy a nice bonus for setting up the evening with Marva Weisman. That was a real coup.

And you…”

“Yes?”

“Why don’t you deliver DeVito’s apology note to that fellow… what’s his name again?”

“J. D. Cade.”

“Yes, you go see Mr. Cade. Tell him we’re sorry. Make sure there’s nothing ominous about him, to allay any fears DeVito might have.”

“Maybe see if I can hit him up for some more money?”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t,” the candidate told his campaign manager.

When J. D. returned to the Refuge with the twenty thousand dollars to pay off the hacker for the PostMaster Plus password, Pickpocket told him, “You had a phone call while you were out. The machine picked up.”

The little thief informed J. D. that he was just on his way out. He had to get ready for the meeting that night at Pan Pacific Park.

“You didn’t happen to listen to the phone message, did you?” J. D. asked.

Pickpocket grinned.

“What, you think I’m nosy?”

J. D. gave him a look.

“Even out here by the pool, I could tell the caller was a woman. I thought it might be personal. I don’t snoop on stuff like that. Not without a good reason, anyway.”

After the little thief left, J. D. retrieved the message.

The woman said her name was Jenny Crenshaw. She was the campaign manager for Del Rawley. She wanted to take him to lunch tomorrow and present a note of apology to him from Special Agent Dante DeVito Would he please call the campaign office to confirm or let her know if he was unable to make it? She left the number.

For a brief message, it gave J. D. a lot to think about.

Could this woman prove to be a better avenue to his target than Vandy Ellison?

Would accepting the invitation and getting only lunch out of it queer any subsequent approach to Vandy? That was, if Ms. Crenshaw wasn’t as plain as a scoop of vanilla, would Vandy’s nose get put out of joint by learning J. D. had gone out with her?

How many blood vessels had Special Agent DeVito burst writing his apology?

Finally, was Pickpocket telling him the truth about not having listened to the message?

Addressing the questions point by point: He had to accept the invitation.

It was too good an opportunity to miss. Ms. Crenshaw, as campaign manager, was the CEO of the election effort. There could be no better way to get close to his target.

If that put Vandy Ellison’s nose out of joint on a personal level, he still felt confident that she was professional enough to continue to love him for his money. And given proximity on that basis, he was sure he could recapture at least a reasonable facsimile of her affections. Enough to make her pliable when the time came.

In DeVito be knew he now had a real enemy, and the more he was around the campaign the more DeVito would hate him. But the special agent would become truly dangerous only if he came to suspect J. D. was anything more than he pretended. Then J. D. would have to consider removing the man somehow.

About Pickpocket: He was the problem that was the most perplexing at the moment. That J. D. needed the little thief was beyond question. But it made him extremely uneasy to think that Pickpocket had learned he had contacts with the election campaign of a presidential candidate who’d almost been assassinated eight days ago.

It would not be difficult for the computer hacker to connect the dots.

The thing was, J. D. couldn’t see himself killing Pickpocket even if he did.

He pushed that problem aside for the moment and called Rawley campaign headquarters. Jenny Crenshaw wasn’t in, so he left a message: J. D. Cade returning Ms. Jenny Crenshaw’s call.

He’d be happy to have lunch with her.

The grand jury in Alachua County, Florida, returned a true bill. Sergeant Beauregard “Dixie” Wynne of the Gainesville Police Department was indicted for first-degree murder in the shooting death of D’antron Nickels, holdup man and hostage taker. The next step in the legal process would be to take the defendant into custody. It would also be the most difficult step.

“The sonofabitch hasn’t come back yet?” state attorney Colman Crisp asked chief of police Levon Pettigrew.

The two men sat in the state attorney’s office. Crisp was as white as the starched collar of his shirt. Pettigrew was as black as a moonless night.

“The only sonofabitch I see in all this has already been buried,” the chief said.

“You condone what your man did?”

“I condone D’antron Nickels being dead.” Pettigrew leaned forward.

“What I don’t condone is Sergeant Wynne’s being charged with first-degree murder.”

“Goddamnit, Levon. That’s what it was. None of your cops would ever

admit it, but two of the paramedics on the scene told the grand jury they saw Wynne shoot Nickels as calmly and deliberately as if he was a clay pigeon.”

“Are those people mind readers? They knew what was in Sergeant Wynne’s head? What I learned, those two were never at a hostage situation before. Never saw a SWAT team at work.”

“Look, we get Wynne in here to tell us his side, we get some of your people to be more forthcoming, I might knock the charge down to involuntary manslaughter and recommend a suspended sentence. The sergeant’s lawyer has already advanced the idea that Wynne might have thought he’d seen something nobody else did, or might have suffered a very unfortunate muscle twitch. I could take that into account. But we’ve got to take him into custody.”

The chief offered no response to that notion.

“I’m trying to be reasonable here, Levon, but if I find out anybody knows where Dixie Wynne is hiding and is holding out on me, I’ll charge them with obstruction of justice.”

“Nobody’s holding out on anybody. Nobody knows where Sergeant Wynne has gone. All we know is he told a neighbor he was going where nobody’d mind what he shot.”

“Hunting trip, huh? So you think we ought to just keep quiet and wait for the man to come home?”

Chief Pettigrew smiled thinly.

“Let’s just say I wouldn’t want to be the man assigned to go find Sergeant Wynne.”

Without saying so, he hoped his SWAT sniper never came back to town, either.

That evening Lvan had been out and about in Carbondale. He’d been at the university library for two hours trying to resume his studies before he gave in and admitted that focusing on schoolwork was simply beyond him for now.

And most likely for the foreseeable future.

After that, he’d cruised by Pru Laney’s house, hoping that she might be sitting on her front porch on such a pretty evening. But she wasn’t, and he wasn’t able to bring himself to go ring her doorbell. Driving away from the Laney house, he stopped for fast food, which had all the appetite appeal of a mud pie. He threw away more than half of his order.

What bothered Evan most of all was that everywhere he went he saw Blair McCray’s blue pickup truck in his rearview mirror. That sonofabitch was beginning to annoy him.

Feeling frustrated, trapped, and increasingly angry, Evan drove back to