The Next President (18 page)

Barely concealing a smirk, DeVito said, “Sorry, gents. Looks like none of us was paying attention to where he was going.”

The two guys didn’t say a word, but continued to glare. DeVito take on them was that they were colleagues. He knew that the protection detail had been doubled since Chicago, but he didn’t know these guys. Which was strange, since he knew everyone else who’d been added. But these two pricks with their crew cuts—one dark-haired, one blonde—were strangers to him.

He walked down the hall and rapped on the door of the hotel room from which Charlie Clarke was working. He opened it and walked in a half second before he was given permission.

Clarke looked up from the desk where duty assignments and diagrams of the rooms in which Orpheus—Del Rawley’s code name—would be speaking were spread out in front of him. DeVito pulled up a chair and sat opposite Clarke.

“Have a seat, DeVito Clarke said blandly.

“Don’t stand on formality.”

“If you’re going to tell me about the FBI determining an M-100 had to

be used in Chicago, I already heard. Jenny Crenshaw had the guts to tell me.”

“Yeah, that’s why I called you.”

“So it wasn’t my fault what happened, except anything that could go wrong was my fault. Just like anything that goes wrong from here on in is your fault.”

“You’re a ray of sunshine, DeVito Always have been. But nothing’s going to go wrong on my watch.”

“From your lips to His ear,” DeVito said sincerely.

“So despite being responsible, I’m no longer the goat, right?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, I’m worse than that. I’m an embarrassment. Not only because I was judged too soon, but because I remind everybody else something bad could happen on their watch.”

“Exactly.”

“But I can’t be fired because Orpheus—God love him—won’t let me be.

So what’re you going to do with me?”

“I thought I’d ask if you had any ideas about that,” Clarke told him.

“But my notion was you could play center field. Stand back where you can watch the whole game, then run like hell if you see anybody is about to let the ball get past him.”

DeVito knew that Clarke didn’t have to be anywhere near that nice to him.

“That’s mighty damn decent of you, Charlie. I’ll take you up on that.”

“I never liked you, DeVito but I’ve always respected your abilities.”

DeVito laughed.

“My ex would agree with the first half of that opinion.”

He got up to go, but a thought occurred to him.

“Did we get two new guys on the detail?” He described the crew cuts to Clarke.

Clarke nodded.

“Arnold Roth’s the dark buzz cut Bill Danby’s the blonde.

They’re both assholes. Don’t look at me like that, DeVito I’m not badmouthing my own men. Those two are snoops sent in to look over all of our shoulders after what happened in Chicago.”

“What do you mean?” DeVito asked, puzzled.

“They’re not Secret Service?”

“They work directly for the Treasury Department. So they are colleagues.”

“But they’re outside our chain of command? They don’t answer to the director?”

“I don’t know who they answer to; what I do know is, we might have to

answer to them. They’re part of something called Departmental Internal Management and Oversight.”

“D-I-M-O?” DeVito asked.

“Close,” Clarke responded.

“D-E-I-M-O-S.”

Jenny sent Alita out to face the mob of reporters that had descended upon the Century Plaza and then she closeted herself in her own suite to call Don Ward. She clenched the receiver in a death grip, and as Don’s phone rang repeatedly, she muttered a litany of prayers.

“Don’t be dead, don’t be dead, don’t be dead. Have something for me, have something for me, have something great for me. Answer the phone, Don, answer the phone, ans-Don, thank God you’re there.”

“I was expecting your call, my dear,” he said in a thready whisper.

“But today is not a good day. It took me some time to find the phone, and before that a longer time to remember where my hand was located.”

“Oh, dear God, Don. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“You are never a bother, Jenny. I’d have been deeply disappointed if you hadn’t called. I know what you want, and I have something for you.”

He breathed a wonderfully vicious secret into her ear.

“Don, I love you,” Jenny told him.

“No more than I love you, my dear.”

Jenny asked Don to promise her that he’d call if he sensed… the end approaching.

She’d break away from the campaign for a day to see him one last time. He told her she’d do no such thing. She was to make the best use possible of the weapon he’d just handed her and raise a glass to his memory when her man won.

Then the connection was broken. Hunter Ward had left his protegee to her work.

Jenny punched in the number for Ronald Turlock, the incumbent’s campaign manager. She was promptly put through to him.

“Ronnie, so glad you could find the time to talk to me.”

“Jenny, it wasn’t me, I swear to God,” Turlock told her adamantly.

“I never heard of that Frenchwoman; I didn’t know she was a Communist; I didn’t know Senator Raw-ley had a love child with her.”

“Love child? Haven’t heard that one for a long time. Still, it does sound nicer than bastard.”

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I’m looking at a flash poll we just completed, Ronnie,” Jenny lied.

“You know, since the Commie-and-the-love-child story broke. The news seems to have hurt Del in the South. Your man has his Bible Belt base locked up tight now.”

“We always did,” came the terse reply.

“The interesting thing is, the numbers right here in California actually seem to be swinging our way in the past couple hours. Good old hedonistic, vote-rich California.”

“Our polls don’t show that.”

“Then your people are keeping the bad news from you.”

“Is there a point to this call?”

“Oh, there’s very definitely a point. Are you on a secure line, Ronnie?”

“Just say what you have to say.”

“Okay, but don’t blame me if word gets out.”

“What word?” Turlock asked icily.

“I’ve come across some disturbing news about the incumbent. It seems he has a rather curious congenital condition.”

“What are you talking about? The president’s in perfect health.”

“I’ll give you that, but did you know that he’s only half a man?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Turlock demanded, but Jenny could hear the sudden note of fear in his voice. He knew just where she was going.

“The incumbent, poor man, was born with an undescended testicle. The right one, I believe. By the time this unfortunate condition was recognized, the poor little pebble had shriveled completely and had to be surgically removed.”

“This is despicable!” Turlock sputtered.

“Well, in a perfect world such a thing would never matter. But this ;s America. How would the country feel? How would your partisans react to the knowledge that their man had no choice but to hang to the left? Could the nation rest easy at night knowing we’re only a teeter-totter accident away from having the first eunuch president?”

At this point Ronald Turlock’s sputtering became incoherent.

“Such a shame,” Jenny commiserated.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Turlock asserted.

“Me? No, never. But just as with you, Ronnie, there are forces that sometimes operate outside of my control.” Jenny’s voice turned to titanium.

“And I can guarantee they’ll be out of control if anybody tries to smear Del Rawley ever again.”

Jenny underscored the warning by slamming down her phone.

She thought Don Ward would have approved.

When J. D. arrived at the office tower that housed Rawley campaign head quarters, he noticed an immediate difference from his previous visit: There was a Secret Service presence in the lobby of the building now. The presence took the form of Special Agent Dante DeVito He grinned at J. D. when he saw him coming.

“I heard you’d been called in, Mr. Cade. I thought I’d take just a moment to speak with you personally.” DeVito noticed that the elderly gent behind the information desk was looking on unabashedly.

“Why don’t we step over here?”

J. D. followed the agent to the far corner of the lobby.

“Did you get my note?” DeVito asked, concerning his apology.

“It warmed my heart,” J. D. said evenly.

“You have an attitude about you, Mr. Cade. Most people don’t talk to federal officers the way you do.”

“Maybe it’s just the way I talk to you,” J. D. suggested. He knew he should back off, but that seemed too much like backing down, and he simply wasn’t in the mood.

“As you pointed out, I was asked to come in this morning. Ms.

Crenshaw is expecting me.”

J. D. started to leave but stopped when DeVito whispered ominously, “I’ve been checking on you. I know everything about you.”

DeVito watched J. D.‘s eyes and waited for him to respond. In vain. Even so, there was unmistakable tension in the air. The special agent continued, “I know where you were born; I know who you married; I know about your son.”

The thought that this man might know anything about what was happening to Evan disturbed J. D. greatly. It took all of his self-control to maintain his composure.

“I know about your business interests; I know where you bank; I know where your home in Santa Barbara is.”

Now J. D. felt a sense of relief, and he had to keep that off his face, too. This prick was just fishing. He might have come up with a laundry list of information on J. D. available from public documents, but he didn’t know anything important. Still, J. D. had to play the injured party.

“That’s all the time you get, pal. I’m leaving now.” Then J. D. had a flash of inspiration.

“And you better tell those two creeps you’ve got following me they better knock it off, too, before I sue the lot of you.”

The ultimatum took DeVito completely by surprise.

“What two guys?

What the hell are you talking about? I don’t have anybody following you.”

DeVito reaction was far too honest for J. D. not to believe him. Which told J. D. that DeVito wasn’t yet another minder but an independent antagonist.

He continued to play his hand.

“You know who I’m talking about. Those two guys with the crew cuts, blonde and dark-haired, stamped from the federal cookie cutter. They’ve been following me for days—they were even at the Weisman fundraiser last night—and I’m sick of it.”

J. D. left DeVito standing there trying to sort out what he’d heard. He’d taken a risk telling the special agent about his minders; as far as J. D. knew, those two crew cuts weren’t aware that he was on to them yet. If DeVito confronted them directly, that would change.

But he didn’t plan for his minders to be around much longer, anyway.

Vandy Ellison greeted J. D. at the door of the campaign office. She took him into a conference room where Jenny was talking with four men and a woman. J. D. recognized the woman. Lucy Gray was the sister of a former California governor. Two of the men J. D. recognized, and two he didn’t. Of the former, Ted De Long was an actor who’d left show business to become an extraordinarily successful vintner; the other was Donnel Timmons.

Jenny saw J. D. had arrived and made the introductions. The two men he didn’t recognize, he knew by name. Anders Sutherland was a venture capitalist worth billions; Cormac Conlan was an ex-priest who had written a bestseller called The Gospel of the Streets.

“The reason I’ve asked all of you here,” Jenny told them, “is that I’m going to need surrogates to speak for Del Rawley for the next couple of days.

Del is back in Wisconsin to be with his family right now. I’m sure all of you have seen or heard this morning’s news—” J. D. raised his hand and shook his head. Jenny quickly filled him in.

Then she added, “Del is considering withdrawing from the race.”

“Shouldn’t you be with him?” J. D. asked.

“My job is to run the Rawley campaign,” Jenny told him.

“And I don’t intend to miss a beat. So when Del does come back, as I’m sure he will, we won’t have lost any ground. That’s why I called all of you. In case you didn’t know, there are always more requests for a candidate to speak than he can possibly meet. Whenever practical, surrogates are asked to fill in.

Now, with Del completely unavailable at such a critical time, there are a number of speaking engagements that just can’t be missed. That’s why I’m asking all of you to fill in for him. I’m sure you know the general outlines of his positions, and I can provide you with material to fill in specific details.”

“But you told me the senator writes all his own speeches,” J. D. pointed out.

“And even with the facts in hand, there’s no way I could hope to match his gift for language.”

Jenny said she had copies of speeches that Del had already written. She didn’t expect any of them to simply read them verbatim, but to paraphrase them as they saw fit while keeping to the substance of what Del had committed to paper.

Everyone agreed, but J. D. was clearly reluctant.

Jenny provided the others with all the details they would need. On his way out, Donnel tapped J. D. on the arm.

“Let’s get together and talk.”

When the others had left, Jenny asked J. D. if something was wrong.

He told her about the exchange with Special Agent DeVito as he arrived for the meeting, how the man had all but boasted that he’d been prying into every corner of J. D.‘s life. J. D. said he’d like to help the senator, he’d like to help Jenny, but he was really not crazy about the idea of a federal agent with a bug up his butt turning his life upside down.

J. D. mentioned that he’d threatened to sue DeVito if the fed kept up his invasion of J. D.‘s privacy, but that would be pretty awkward to do if he were speaking publicly on behalf of the candidate. Perhaps he should decline Jenny’s offer, just quietly go about his life as a private citizen. Let DeVito get bored and forget all about him.

Just to be safe, he added, “I’d still like to see you after the election, of course.”