The Next President (14 page)

A flush spread across Blair McCray’s face. He started to say something, but he caught himself.

“You won’t provoke me that easy, Cade.” It took the Kentucky lawman a minute to calm down, however. Then he asked, “So what’s a clean-cut college boy like you know about the local outlaw bikers?”

“There’s a bar down in Anna called Stratford Willie’s. Always has a line of Harleys parked out front.”

“How do you know about that?”

“It’s on the way to my cousin Ben’s house. You had to pass it when you tailed me there the other night. You didn’t notice, that tells me a lot about your powers of observation.”

McCray’s mouth opened again, then abruptly snapped shut.

“Almost had you that time,” Evan said with a grin.

Blair McCray just turned on the pickup’s engine and pulled out.

Stratford Willie’s had a dozen Harleys parked out front as Evan Cade

and Blair McCray pulled up. The hours on the window said 12 P.M.-2 A.M.” but the door was open at eleven that morning.

The bar wasn’t serving, however. In fact, only one of the seventeen people inside was even conscious. He was a lanky man sitting at the bar wearing grimy jeans and a decrepit leather vest over a bare chest on which was tattooed a life-sized portrait of William Shakespeare. The man had an acnescarred face, a long gray ponytail, and improbably clear green eyes. When he sipped from the cup he held in one hand, he revealed a glimpse of white, even teeth. In his other hand he had a dog-eared paperback copy of King Lear.

“Coffee’s the best I can do until noon,” he told Evan and Blair.

“That’ll do for me,” Blair McCray answered.

“Don’t have cream or sugar,” the man added, getting up.

“Black’s fine.”

“What about you?” he asked Evan.

“Club soda?”

The guy grinned and shook his head.

“Tap water?”

“Okay.”

Evan and Blair seated themselves as the man with the tattoo went behind the bar to get their drinks. The two newcomers looked at the comatose bikers.

There were ten men, five women, and one slumped figure whose nest of hair obscured gender identification. One of the women, a generously proportioned strawberry blonde, sprawled back against a chair with her head lolling and her mouth open. She wore a T-shirt that said: You Can Have It If You Can Take It. On her dangling left hand was a set of brass knuckles.

The bartender put a cup of coffee and a glass of water down on the bar.

“Coffee’s fifty cents, water’s free.”

Blair slipped a dollar onto the bar.

Evan nodded at the sleepers.

“That your classics class?”

The man laughed.

“Yeah. The post doc section. A convivial group.” He looked over his two customers with a frank eye.

“You’re a cop,” he told McCray.

Turning to Evan, he asked, “But what’re you?”

“I’m the guy the cop suspects killed his cousin.”

The biker-bartender-Shakespearean gave Evan another, more thorough inspection.

“Don’t see it myself… but even Sweet Will didn’t have all the angles figured.”

“Did you know Ivar McCray?” Blair asked.

“Yeah, I knew Iv… Hey, you’re family. Kin, as Ivar would’ve put

it. I can see it now. You ran Ivar through a car wash a time or two, he’d look a whole lot like you. You’re a McCray.”

The bartender returned his attention to Evan.

“Don’t tell me you’re a Cade.”

Evan nodded.

“And the two of you are here together? Well, goddamn! I’ve read all about what went on between your two families. It’s fucking legendary around here.

Real epic shit.”

“That’s kind of how we’d like to leave it,” Evan said.

“History.”

“Sure. You want to lay off Ivar’s death on somebody else.”

“We’d like to find out who really did it,” Evan replied.

“You feel the same?” the bartender asked Blair.

“If that’s what happened. The way the papers had it, Ivar was involved in some kind of extortion ring; he died making a pipe bomb to teach a lesson to someone who wouldn’t play ball.”

The man shook his head.

“That kind of shit just isn’t one of our local folkways.

The brethren are into chemistry, if you know what I mean, but not the kind that builds bombs.”

“Crank labs explode pretty good sometimes,” Blair reminded him.

“Yeah. But not on purpose. Usually. Anyway, Ivar was half straight—he had a job—and if you ask me, he was nowhere near smart enough to build a bomb.”

“Was anyone unusual around recently?” Evan asked.

“Somebody who might’ve put ideas into his head, helped him to build the bomb he was found with?”

The bartender looked at his fingernails, which were as well-tended as his teeth. He sighed, then lifted his eyes to Evan and Blair again.

“As a matter of fact, yeah. But I don’t think you want to tangle with this dude.”

“Why not?” Blair wanted to know.

By way of explanation, the bartender asked, “You ever hear of the ROK army? That’s R-O-K, as in Republic of Korea.”

Neither Blair nor Evan had.

“They were the baddest motherfuckers in the whole Vietnam War. If it moved, they shot it. If we’d just hired enough of those ROK boys to do all the fighting, there’d be a Disney-land in Hanoi today. Of course, there wouldn’t be any Vietnamese left to pick up after the tourists.”

“What’s your point?” Evan asked.

“The point is, this dude who was talking to Ivar, he was the only American motherfucker I ever saw who looked like he could’ve been a drill instructor for the ROK army.”

“He was Asian-American?” Evan inquired.

“No… well, maybe, yeah. Just a touch. I didn’t really think about it the time I saw him talking with Ivar, but maybe that’s what made me think of the Koreans. The thing that came through loud and clear, though, was that here you had a stone killer. Wouldn’t matter to him if you were a bug or a bishop. Get in his way, he was going to step on you.”

“You know his name?” Evan inquired.

The bartender shook his head.

“How about where we might find him?” Blair asked.

The bartender shook his head sadly, as if they hadn’t heard a word he’d said.

“I don’t know,” he told them.

“But there’s another suicidal goddamn fool who’s looking.”

“Who?” Evan asked, “Deena over there.” He inclined his head at the strawberry blonde with the brass knuckles.

“You can probably tell just by looking, she’s in mourning. She was Ivar’s old lady.”

Deena Nokes woke up snorting, sputtering, and throwing a roundhouse left.

Her brass knuckles glinted in the overhead light. But the ponytailed bartender had anticipated just such a reaction and stood well clear of the blow.

Some of the cobwebs cleared from the woman’s brain and she realized who was standing in front of her.

“Oh, it’s just you, Punch,” she groaned at the bartender.

“Gentlemen callers, Deena.” He gestured to Evan and Blair at the bar.

She struggled to bring them into focus.

“Who the hell are they?”

“A cop and his sidekick. A McCray and a Cade. They’re interested in finding that evil-looking sonofabitch who talked to Ivar, the dude you’ve been looking for.”

Deena pressed a hand to either side other head to steady her visual field.

“Sweet Jesus,” she said, looking at Blair, “you must be Ivar’s brother.”

“Cousin.”

Manually aiming her face at Evan, she added, “I don’t know you at all.”

A shaggy head lifted from a table and bellowed to knock off all the fucking yapping or somebody would get killed. Deena yelled back, “Yeah, you, motherfucker.” But when other complaints were registered by disturbed sleepers. Punch ushered Evan, Blair, and Deena outside.

The woman recoiled from the sudden blast of daylight as if she was a

vampire. Blair steadied her, but she pulled away angrily. Blair held his hands up to placate her.

“We just want to talk,” he said.

“Punch said you might be able to help us find the guy who was talking to Ivar,” Evan informed her.

“I haven’t found that bastard yet, but when I do…” Deena reached around to the small other back and pulled out a Smith & Wesson .38.

“This man’s the one you blame for Ivar’s death?” Blair asked.

“Who else? Ivar was talking to him, and right after that the big dummy comes home telling me how he’s going to start making us all this money. Then the next thing I know, he’s electrocuted dead. Who else am I gonna blame?”

Evan held his breath, waiting to hear if Blair would suggest his name to the gun-wielding woman. There was a momentary glimmer in Blair’s eye, but he didn’t put Evan on the spot.

“You think you can describe this man who talked to Ivar?” Blair asked.

“Give us an idea of what he looks like.”

Deena snorted.

“I can do better than that. I can show you the picture I drew so I’d never forget the sonofabitch.” When she saw doubt in the eyes of the two men, she added, “I’m a tattoo artist. Who do you think did old Shakespeare on Punch in there? You could frame my drawings and hang ‘em in art galleries. The ones that don’t show people fucking.”

She put her gun away and stared at the sidewalk.

“We had a nice little business, Ivar ‘n’ me. He’d hand out fliers, talk to people, show them the tattoos I’d done on him. I’d do all the work in my trailer. It was great. We had all the money we needed. We had all the fun two people could ever want.

But Ivar didn’t think he was doing man’s work. Why’d he have to think that?

Why the hell did he have to go and leave me?”

When Deena looked up, there was a world of pain in her eyes, but not a single tear.

“I’ll let you help me, since you’re kin,” she told Blair.

“But I’m not too steady right now. You and your friend come to my trailer tomorrow. I’ll show you that bastard’s picture.”

Deena gave them directions and then staggered back to Stratford Willie’s, but she stopped at the door and pointed at one of the Harleys.

“That hog was Ivar’s. It’s all I got left of him. I’m keeping it.”

Blair McCray nodded his approval.

The Rawley brain trust met before the campaign charged into the first full day of its crucial swing through California. Del Rawley, Baxter Brown, Alita

Colon, and Jim Greenberg were gathered in the candidate’s suite at the Century Plaza Hotel. Only Jenny Crenshaw was missing.

Her absence led everyone to wonder the same thing, and Alita gave voice to the question: “You think Jenny got word that the smear is about to hit the fan?”

“Let’s just wait and see,” Del said calmly. There were still Secret Service agents in the room, and he wanted the conversation confined to small talk until they were dismissed. Jenny entered the room two minutes later and the agents took her arrival as their cue to depart.

The look on Jenny’s face was serious enough to confirm everyone’s fears, but the reason for her grim expression surprised them.

“Sorry I’m late, but I just had a call from the head of the FBI task force investigating the assassination attempt in Chicago. He told me this information is for our ears only, and I have the feeling he wouldn’t have given it to me at all if I hadn’t been raising hell with him every day.”

“What’d he tell you?” Del wanted to know.

“He said they’ve figured out where the shot had to originate.”

“That’s the big secret deal?” Baxter asked, incredulous.

“Ten days later, and they finally figure that out. So they have to make it seem like a big deal.”

Del put up a hand to forestall any further criticism.

Jenny continued.

“The wind was blowing hard that day; I was told that can move a bullet around quite a bit. And there were thousands of windows available as shooting stands. That’s what the FBI said made pinpointing the location so difficult.”

“But that’s not what we’re supposed to keep secret, is it, Jenny?” the candidate asked.

“It’s not the important thing, anyway.”

“No,” she answered. Then she told them the kind of weapon the FBI determined had to have been used in the shooting, the McLellan M-100. She explained its exceptional range the reason why the assassin had been able to get off the shot and then elude capture and the fact that the navy’s SEALs were supposed to be the sole possessors of the weapon.

“Some navy commando was the shooter?” Alita asked, wide-eyed.

Jenny shook her head.

“The FBI and the navy say absolutely not. The whereabouts of every SEAL on the day in question has already been checked and they’ve all been ruled out.”

“But somebody got ahold of one of their weapons,” Baxter said.

“That’s where things get really sticky,” Jenny replied.

“According to the navy, they can account for every weapon in their inventory. On the day of the shooting. Every day before the shooting. And every day since the shooting.”

“Forever and ever, amen,” Baxter added snidely.

Jenny summed up.

“They say it wasn’t one of theirs.”

“Does anybody else have such a weapon?” Jim Greenberg asked.

“Not that anyone’s admitting, no.”

“Is there any other weapon with the same range?” Jim followed up.

“No. Nothing that’s accurate, according to the FBI and the Pentagon.”

“So we all just imagined Del almost got killed?” Baxter wanted to know.

Jenny didn’t bother to respond.

Del asked, “Would there be any way for someone working at the plant where these weapons are manufactured to make illicit copies for himself? I imagine they’d fetch quite a price.”

“They’re checking into that now,” Jenny answered.

“Any further word on the notebook that was found in Denver?” Baxter asked hotly.

Jenny shook her head.

The raw emotions of that terrible day in Chicago had resurfaced in everyone at the table. Added to that was a new sense of dread. If the assassin had a restricted military weapon, he was likely far more than a lone madman, and for all they knew, he’d been ready to try again in Denver. The brain trust mulled their respective thoughts in silence. Then Del Rawley reminded them they still had an election to win.