The President's Henchman (8 page)

That was when she’d given him the letter he’d shown to General Altman.

Pretty damn smart to look ahead and see that the brass might try to replace him.

The president had also been the one to tell him to conduct his interview with Colonel Linberg outside the Pentagon. To tell him to use a face at rest as a point of comparison for the expressions a person might later reveal. To use carefully chosen humor to establish a rapport with his subject.

Welborn had listened carefully, another of the virtues his mother had taught him, and was pleased that he’d been able to put all of those instructions to good use.

He’d wondered, at the breakfast table, how the president had come by all of her advice. Then he remembered that whatever else she was, the president was also a cop’s wife.

Leo was driving McGill to a high-end health club on New York Avenue called Corporate Muscle. It was close enough to the White House to be an easy walk. On a gorgeous day like that Wednesday, McGill would have preferred to walk. It had been several weeks since he’d been out and about on foot; the media was no longer stalking him. He told Deke Ky they would have to stretch their legs later on.

“You know the president talked to me personally, before SAC Crogher approved me for this duty,” the special agent said.

That was the first McGill had heard of it.

“She wanted to be sure I was ready to sacrifice my life to save yours.”

“I thought all you guys were.”

“We are. But she wanted to hear it from me directly.”

“And you convinced her?”

“I asked the president to call my mother. She did. My mother told the president that she’d given me orders to protect the president’s henchman at all costs.
All
costs. The president thanked my mother and has never doubted me from that moment on.”

“Your
mother
told you to sacrifice yourself for me?” McGill asked.

Deke nodded.

McGill’s own mother, a voice teacher, had taught him to be honest, respectful, and how to sing on key. He’d always thought that had been enough.

“So, you’re telling me you don’t want me to take any more walks?”

“I can’t tell you anything except when to duck.”

Deke almost added a “sir” to the end of his statement, but McGill had asked his bodyguard to speak informally — and frankly — unless Crogher, the media, or some other potential troublemaker was around.

“But you’re getting at something,” McGill said. “What is it?”

“You carry a gun. I’d like to know how well you shoot.”

Entirely reasonable, McGill thought.

“We’ll go to the firing range, and you can see for yourself.”

“Thanks.”

McGill thought of his children. “You think my threat level is elevated, too.”

“You’re working now.”

“You didn’t anticipate that?”

“For a while, it didn’t look like it was going to happen.”

Leo pulled the Chevy to the curb outside the building that housed Corporate Muscle. McGill caught his eye in the rearview mirror.

“Leo?”

“My mother’s Jewish. I had to quit racing NASCAR for her.”

“So you won’t die for me?”

“No, but I’ll shoot someone if I have to.”

The manager of Corporate Muscle was absolutely delighted to see McGill walk through the door and struggled bravely not to shed a tear when he told her he was there to meet someone, not sign up for a membership. She cheered up when he let her buy him a freshly made cup of veggie juice and autographed a napkin for her.

The juice bar was separated from the workout area by clear plastic walls, and Deke’s stoic mien and head-on-a-swivel wariness kept anyone else from approaching their table.

McGill unabashedly watched Chana Lochlan go through her workout. She had a female personal trainer to guide her, but Chana looked like a natural athlete who knew exactly what she was doing. Didn’t need fancy workout togs either. Plain white sneakers, anklet socks, gym shorts, and a UCLA softball team T-shirt. She was pushing 160 pounds on the chest-press machine — at least 20 pounds more than her body weight, McGill estimated.

“Didn’t think she was that strong,” he said.

Deke glanced Chana’s way.

“These places attract really competitive people. There’s an affiliated club called Political Muscle. You should see them bust a gut in there.”

McGill grinned.

“What about you federal law enforcement types? You have your own gym?”

Deke looked at McGill, and said with a straight face, “Yeah, we call it Killer Muscle.”

Chana finished her workout just when she’d told McGill she would, spotted him, and came over to his table wearing a towel around her neck. Deke vacated his seat for her and took up a position that guaranteed McGill’s privacy.

The newswoman sat down and wiped the sweat from her brow. She was flushed from her workout, andMcGill thought she came closer to Patti’s level of beauty than he’d first believed. It wasn’t hard to imagine someone becoming obsessed with her.

“We didn’t talk about money,” Chana told McGill.

He shrugged. “I’m new to the business world.”

“How’s five hundred a day plus expenses sound?”

McGill knew Washington lawyers, the fancy ones, made five hundred dollars, or more, per hour, but he still hadn’t checked out the local rates for PIs.

“Okay. If that’s too much, I’ll give you a rebate. If it’s too little, we’ll call it an introductory discount.”

She smiled. “No offense, but I hope I won’t be needing your services again.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t depend on repeat business.”

“I have the information you asked for: The list and the bio are in my locker.”

“Which is locked, not just watched over by an attendant, right?”

“Right. You really are careful, aren’t you?”

McGill sighed. “Maybe not as careful as I should be. Or possibly you’re not. In either case, a word of disclosure is in order.”

He told her that Galia Mindel knew he was working for her. Which meant the White House chief of staff had either bugged his office, or she’d heard about it from someone at World Wide News. The latter possibility justified Chana’s precaution of meeting with McGill at her gym instead of her workplace.

In either case, McGill related, he’d spoken personally with Ms. Mindel and left no doubt that McGill Investigations lay outside her professional purview.

A tight smile graced Chana Lochlan’s face. “Tore her a new one, did you?” And when McGill didn’t respond, she added, “Good. Wish I’d been there.”

“The point is, the confidentiality I promised has been compromised, at least to some degree. You might want to find another investigator.”

Chana shook her head.

“You don’t know how hard it was for me to come to you. The only reason I did … well, I thought …” She wiped her forehead again with the towel. “It’s hard to be the objective journalist here, but I thought it was great, what you did for the president.”

“What I did,” McGill said in a quiet voice, “was fail her terribly.”

“I’m not overlooking that. But you didn’t let that stop you; that’s what impresses me. You set things right in the end.”

Tell that to Andy Grant, McGill thought, but he didn’t say anything.

He jumped, though, when Chana Lochlan put her hand on his.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said with a grin. Then her face became sober, and she added, “I didn’t mean to bum you out, either. I just wanted to say I thought you’d be the one to get the job done for me. I still do.”

McGill gently withdrew his hand. “Thank you.”

She stood up. “I’ll go get the list and the bio for you now. We’ll both be more careful from now on. Especially about the list, okay?”

McGill agreed and watched her go.

The bio would be a standard capsulization of Chana Lochlan’s life, suitable for family reading, PR-department-approved. The list, though, would give the names of all of Chana Lochlan’s lovers. She and McGill had discussed the subject at his office. If a stranger knew her body and her sexual partialities, then he must have learned them from someone with firsthand knowledge. Someone who’d been there and done that.

McGill took his reading material back to the office, where he could lock it in his wall safe. First, though, he and Sweetie pored over the life and times of a media celebrity, scanned the lovers’ list, and shared their first impressions.

“Ms. Lochlan became sexually active at eighteen,” McGill recapitulated, “and by her present age of thirty-five, she’s had fourteen lovers.”

“Take out the three years she was married, and it works out to about one new man per year,” Sweetie said.

“Not willing or able to make a long-term commitment. One of the two.”

Sweetie looked pensive.

“What?” McGill asked.

“It’s too neat. A straight-line progression: new year, new man. No repeat customers. We have a good-looking, successful, well-paid woman here. She didn’t impress any of these Romeos enough to make him clamor for a second chance? None of them meant enough to her to call him some night when she was lonely?”

McGill said, “Does seem strange.”

He hadn’t thought of it, he guessed, because he’d had only three lovers in his forty-six years. Might not seem like a lot, certainly not a number to brag about, but he liked to think it was because each time he’d made a terrific choice, been lucky enough to find a woman with whom he might have gone the distance.

He certainly intended to go the distance with Patti.

“You’re thinking maybe Ms. Lochlan left a name or two off her list,” McGill said to Sweetie. “Someone who means more to her than just a new calendar boy.”

“Yeah … or we’re a couple of fuddy-duddies completely out of touch with the sexual cravings of the modern career woman.”

Unable to reach a conclusion on that point, McGill told Sweetie about Galia knowing who his first client was.

“The more I think about it, the more I think she got the scoop from someone at World Wide News. I don’t see her having a crew break in here and wire us for sound. Too Nixonian.”

“Let’s hope so, or the ‘Chana Lochlan’s Lovers’ story could be all over the
Enquirer.”

“I’m going to have someone come in to check for bugs, just to be sure.”

“No, I’ll do it. We’ll keep a lower profile that way.”

McGill said thanks, then told Sweetie about his conversation with Celsus Crogher that morning. Sweetie’s face got very hard.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Deke suggested reinforcing Barbara Sullivan’s people with Secret Service personnel.”

“Yeah, that’d be the first thing he’d think of.”

“I was thinking of asking you to go see how things look. The kids love you.”

Sweetie nodded. She felt the same way about McGill’s children.

“You want me to go now?”

“Barb’s going to call me tonight. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

“No, I’ll go as soon as I can get a flight. I’m supposed to see an apartment at lunchtime, but I’ll blow that off.” Sweetie had been living in a hotel for months.

“Go look at the apartment. I’ll get you on a midafternoon flight. People are happy to do me favors. You’d think I was someone special.”

McGill and Deke had lunch on a bench at the National Mall. Leo ate in the car. It was McGill’s treat, kosher dogs, fries, and soft drinks all around. The Mall was McGill’s favorite place in town, but then it was easy to like a national treasure. Some critics complained that too many monuments were forcing their way onto the Mall, and McGill could see the time coming when the word would have to be given: Sorry, full up.

Maybe it would even fall to Patti to be the hardnose who had to do it.

For all its museums and memorials, the Mall was also a place simply to enjoy being outside on a sunny day. People tossed Frisbees on the grass or played lunchtime soccer. Mothers pushed children in strollers, guides gave bicycle tours, and everybody from tourists, to office workers, to formations of Marines chanting in cadence, jogged along the pathways.

And the parking on adjacent Jefferson and Madison Drives was free.

McGill said to Deke, “Great place.”

The special agent nodded, as he ceaselessly scanned their surroundings. He said, “Some people come here and just smile. Others cry. But for the same reason.”

“It reaffirms their faith that we can accomplish great things?” McGill asked.

Deke was about to answer when he suddenly looked toward Third Street, just west of the Capitol. Something had caught his eye, and he reached under his suit coat for his Uzi. McGill quickly got to his feet and turned to see what was the matter.

What he saw was a naked woman with long blond hair astride a white horse. The woman had the horse moving in their general direction at a trot. Deke had his weapon out now, but his finger was not yet on the trigger. Off target, off trigger.

McGill said, “I don’t think she’s carrying any concealed weapons.”

Deke didn’t respond. He just kept watching. As did everyone else on the Mall. Reminded McGill of a scene from the old science-fiction movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, when a flying saucer landed on the Mall. A spaceman with a giant robot or a naked woman on a horse, they were both showstoppers.

Then a scrum of rugby players wearing Georgetown T-shirts decided that the
au naturelle equestrienne
was a prize worth capturing. They ran after her, but the rider saw them coming and urged her mount to a gallop. McGill and Deke watched as she charged by.