“A little outboard. Gets me around when it’s warm and I wanna drop a line of stink bait.”
“Take me out to that boat?”
“Now I know you got something loose,” sparred Uncle J. “Got a hurricane comin’. Or weren’t we just talkin’ about it?”
“You said it wasn’t gonna happen.”
“Puttin’ up ten dollars is one thing. Puttin’ up half a brain and a boat is another.”
“All I want is a ride out there. I’ll get back okay. I got friends on that boat.”
“That’s what you come here for? To get a ride?”
Mitch didn’t want to argue. He was already on a short rope with ol’ Jasper. He had to deal. “You give me a ride, I’ll have that drink with you. But later. We’ll piss on my old man. How’s that?”
“You promised to call me back, sonny boy.”
“I didn’t. And I’m truly sorry.”
“When you make it to Congress, you call me back then?”
The irony was thick. Congress? Mitch wasn’t thinking past the next hour. Congress may as well have been a million miles away.
And better left there, thought Mitch.
“Okay. I’ll call you back.”
“From Washington.”
“Talk about whatever you want.”
Jasper grabbed his keys. “Okay, then. Let’s get wet.”
FIFTEEN
STEPPING FROM the launch and climbing Deandra’s gangway, Fitz was hoping not to get wet. The gusts were getting stronger and everything was slippery. At least when it came to handshakes, nobody would notice the sweaty palms. At this point, nerves didn’t matter. Only action.
Marshall was swell enough, thought Fitz, offering up some flattering words as they followed Vidor downstairs and into a carpeted smoking cabin. Carved teak ceiling, red leather swivel loungers bolted to the floor, wet bar, oil paintings.
“You ran a good one, Fitz,” said Marshall. “Looks like you got yourself a winner.”
Platitudes aside, Fitz wasn’t there for concessions or early congratulations. He was there to hear the offer.
So let’s get to it before 1 get seasick and retch.
“How about a drink?” offered Vidor with that deep, mellifluous voice. “We’re smoking Cuban. Rafael Gonzales. On a night like this they’ll go swell with some Irish single-malt.”
The rolling of the boat was about as much as Fitz could take. His stomach was already knotted. He declined and found a comfortable seat with a window overlooking the muted city lights. A horizon was what he needed. Something to help keep his balance.
“Marshall’s right. You ran a good campaign,” complimented Vidor.
“Thanks,” said Fitz. “I have a stellar candidate.”
“So you do,” Vidor rolled along. “Too bad I picked the dark horse.”
“The environmental candidate?” asked Fitz, certain his question was leading enough to get the real answer: McCann.
“Oh, I’m sure y’all saw through that ol’ card trick,” said Vidor. “My environmental campaign, a thinly veiled effort to cut into some core Dutton votes.”
“So you’ve been behind McCann from the start?”
“Marshall and I go back a ways.”
“Back then we were both sweet on the same girl,” chimed Marshall.
“But you married her,” added Vidor.
Fitz understood. Marshall was a respected campaign man. Dyed-in-the-wool Republican. The matchup between him and McCann had never made sense.
“And I thought you did it for the money,” said Fitz.
“Loyalty had somethin’ to do with it,” answered Marshall. “But when it comes down to it, I’m as mercenary as the next show runner. That’s why you’re here.”
That’s why Fitz was there, all right.
Palms sweating again, he rubbed them along his pants legs. “Changed my mind. I’ll have some of that single-malt.”
Vidor gladly poured. “Winning campaigns is about success,” he started. “Now, somebody say I’m right.”
“You’re right,” cued Marshall. “Now, don’t treat Fitz like he’s a dumb-ass. Just get to it.”
He would. But nobody told Vidor what to say or how to say it. Vidor had a speech planned and he wanted to hear himself deliver it. “You win a campaign, your price goes up. The next candidate pays more. Show runner, spin meister, whatever you call yourself, it’s about money. Market price.” He brought the drink over to Fitz. “Now, tell me I’m right.”
“Your stock goes up if you win.”
“And down if you lose,” continued Vidor. “Dutton musta gotten you for a rock-bottom deal.”
“Going up against Hurricane Hammond?” reminded Fitz. “He wasn’t supposed to win. The campaign was just supposed to be a showpiece.”
“For you or the candidate?” asked Vidor.
“Both. Mitch Dutton wanted to put himself out there. See if anybody would bite.”
“And you?” asked Vidor.
“I wanted to show what kind of bite we could take out of a Republican stronghold.”
“In essence—if you lost, you’d actually won.”
“Yes,” answered Fitz.
“Turning losing into winning.”
Marshall capped it again. “You didn’t expect to win?”
“No.” Then Fitz shrugged and smiled as he let the whiskey slide back over his tongue. “But here we are.”
Vidor stood dead center in the cabin as it slowly rocked back and forth. His long legs expertly cushioning the roll of the water, keeping his head still as he spoke. “George Hammond died tragically. You were instantly on the side of the front-runner, caught up in a dogfight with some pipsqueak challenger nobody ever heard of. Then nearly lost the race, had it not been for a fluke punch in a televised debate.”
“He had the momentum. We didn’t,” admitted Fitz. “The debate turned it around.”
“If you win, you won’t get the credit,” offered Marshall.
“I’ll get some. And that’s enough. Don’t forget, I picked a winner.”
“Perception, yes. That’s important. Not necessarily credit where it’s due. But perception,” mused Vidor, who hadn’t yet moved from the middle of the cabin. The boom was about to be lowered from on high. Vidor wanted Fitz to know who had ahold of the mainsheet.
“I’m listening,” said Fitz.
“I picked McCann to win this race. And I’ve got only a week to make it happen. I’m asking for your help,” said Vidor in his lowest octave.
“In exchange for…” pressed Fitz, though he couldn’t believe he’d said it. Maybe because he knew he could always retract any agreement. Why not hear the offer? He was in the driver’s seat. He was sitting on top of a winner. Entertain the deal. That’s why he was there, for Christ’s sake!
“King Media is about to merge with a yet-undisclosed West Coast syndicator. The company is public and I expect the stock will double in price. Part of my deal is thirty million in preferred stock already at two-thirds the market value. You follow me so far?”
“Go on,” choked Fitz.
“Dutton loses. You’re out of a job. Nobody will hire you with the exception of Vidor Kingman, who sees value in Fitz Kolatch and engages him to run his new Southern California enterprise. As part of the deal he receives options on, say, half a million dollars of some of that aforementioned stock. Late the next year, with the syndication deal closed, Fitz Kolatch is the Golden State’s newest millionaire. All for losing a campaign.”
Marshall joined in. “Remember. You weren’t supposed to win in the first place.”
Fitz’s head was spinning. It was one hell of an offer. More money than he could ever imagine from hustling one campaign after another. A retirement package. Yet it was just talk. Words floating on air. A hypothetical result without a plan.
Not to mention the Goddamn ethics of it all! Fitz, are you out of your mind? It could never—Mitch would never—
He backpedale. “I’m sorry. I thought you asked me out h
ere so you could buy in to the Dutton campaign.”
“That’s horseshit and you know it!” sounded Vidor.
“He’s just negotiating,” managed Marshall.
“You say? And what about that prick-tease of a media consultant, Rene Craven?” groused Vidor. “I thought she was negotiating. You know what I went through to get that cunt a honey-pot position at Com-Atlantic? She’s still raking those eastern boys over the coals for a job that was s’posed to get her off the Dutton hump.”
Knocking back the rest of his liquor, Fitz wiped his brow and entertained the pair with some facts. “We’ve got the momentum back. And losing the campaign at this point would require involving the candidate in his own political demise. That’s not Mitch Dutton.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” boomed Vidor. “Why do you think I backed McCann? Because I liked his damn politics?”
“Mitch has his own ideas.”
“That’s a lotta crap, too. Dutton’s as corruptible as the next guy. Get him on the Hill, you watch him learn which hand washes the money and which one picks up the check. My problem is that he thinks he’s an idealist. He thinks he’s got all the answers.” Kingman finally sat. “And at my ripe old age I don’t have the patience for it. I need somebody I can work with. And if it’s McCann, it’s McCann. End of subject.”
The cabin fell silent around Vidor. He let his words hang out there for a while until there came a knock on the door. “What do you want?”
The ship’s captain entered. He looked pallid and tired from days at Vidor’s beck and call. Yet he nodded with deference to his boss. “Harbor Patrol thinks we oughta tie up somewhere near the commercial docks.”
Vidor waved him off. “Fine, fine. Now, leave us alone.”
“Yes, sir,” said the captain. “Just thought I’d tell you the tide’s way up, so it could be bumpy crossing the second breakwater.”
Vidor nodded, followed the captain to the door, and, as soon as the captain was gone, locked it. No more interruptions. Marshall took the cue and withdrew a large leather suitcase from underneath a seat cushion. He drew closer to Fitz as he opened the lid and tilted the case to reveal what was inside. The obvious. Cash. Money. But it wasn’t for Fitz.
It was street money. The dirty little secret of campaign politics.
Instantly Fitz saw the plan and was shaking his head. “It won’t work.”
“What won’t work?” offered Vidor. “You pay for votes. Buy off some of them partisan poor. Spread the money around, and don’t be shy about it.”
“And then what?” asked Fitz.
Vidor stood again and drew close to Fitz, punctuating his plan with his finger in his chest. “Then my newspaper will raise holy hell about you all trying to buy votes.”
“In this campaign? After all that’s come and gone?” said Fitz with a laugh. “It’s a pimple on a gnat’s ass.”
“It could turn the tide back in our direction,” said Marshall, sounding not entirely convinced himself.
“A week before the election?” scoffed Fitz. “At this point? The only thing that’s gonna sink Mitch Dutton would be pictures of him humping some farm animal.”
Fitz crossed over to the bar. The boat rocked wildly. But he made it to the bar and poured himself another. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Vidor moved in behind him. Close. Towering. “I’m asking for your help, Mr. Kolatch. And I’m offering you a pot full of gold in return.”
Fitz poured his drink and knocked back a lick of it, still keeping his gaze out the window toward the ever-dimming lights of Cathedral Island. A shadow crossed his view, though he thought nothing of it. It was just a deckhand. No. Fitz was looking out the window, trying only to see his future.
“You want to turn the tide?” he asked. “Well, it’s going to take some kind of personal testimony from somebody close to him. Somebody who is willing to lie. Someone who is willing to say that Mitch Dutton is unfit to serve in Congress. That he lies. Is unstable. Psychotic, even.”
Vidor smiled and spoke softly. Fitz was playing ball. “And who might that be?”
Fitz tossed back the rest of his drink. “It might be me. But I’ll need more than what’s on the table—a helluva lot more.”
A quick smile flashed from Vidor to Marshall, who looked away in disgust. He was there to aid in the breaking down of Fitz Kolatch. Marshall had half hoped for failure. Hoped that Fitz would stand tall, and by his candidate. Dutton wouldn’t make that bad of a congressman. Kingman would still be a gazillionaire. And Marshall would be happy in his retirement.
Marshall said to himself, “I gotta get out of this business.”
From the motel window the water hadn’t looked that rough. After all, it was harbor water, protected from the madness of the ocean beyond by the double breakwater. Then there was Jasper’s theory of how to drive rough seas in a twelve-foot outboard. Rear of the boat, full throttle, bouncing off the peaks, staying out of the valleys. The hull slammed crest after crest. Mitch stayed low, tucking his casted right hand away from the rain in the pocket of the borrowed seaman’s jacket.
“Bet it hurts like a sonofabitch,” shouted Jasper over the motor and wind and slapping rain.
“What?” Mitch shouted back.
“Yer hand.” Uncle J held up his own right, balled into a familiar-looking fist. “Yup. I saw it. Live on the TV. Reminded me of the time I whacked your old man. Right across the ol’ forehead. Broke three knuckles.”
“Why?” Mitch had to ask.
“I was drunk and he was being himself.”
“So what happened?”
“He kicked the shit outta me,” howled Jasper. “Like father, like son.”
Mitch let the subject drop. He looked ahead to the yacht. They were close. Barely a hundred yards to the gangway. Jasper throttled back and eased the outboard closer, noting that nobody was there to greet Mitch. “Expected, are ya?”
“Not exactly. But I’ll get a ride back to shore if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Actually, I was hoping for an invite. Supposed to be some kinda beauty inside.”
“I’m crashing, Uncle J. And two’s a crowd. Sorry.”
“Best you board ‘er from the bow.”
Mitch crawled forward, balanced in a crouch, then readied himself with a foot up on the rail. When the water underneath the bow swelled and the gap between the two vessels closed, he flashed back to when he was a boy.
He’d let the rush of water pushing up the bow catapult him from the shrimp boat to the dock. Sometimes twenty feet into the air. He’d tuck and roll when he’d land, smile on his face, dusting himself off. Maybe a splinter or two, but otherwise okay. All boy. Mitch would look back to the boat to see if his Uncle J had watched the stunt.
He braced for the next swell and pushed off early to avoid the catapulting effect. He was no longer a boy and didn’t want to come crashing down on the metal gangway. Instead, he landed steady on his feet, catching hold of the Deandra’s railing. The gifted pistol, though, it tumbled from his pocket, clattering off the gangway and slipping into the black water.
“Give ‘em hell, sonny boy!” Jasper gave a hearty good-luck wave before shifting into forward and charging back toward shore.
With no captain or deckhand there to greet Mitch, he hung tight to the gangway and felt the rumble of idling engines. And the shifting air brought wafts of diesel to his nostrils.
Memories. Diesel. Shrimp boats. Churning water.
He cleared his mind, resolving to climb, crash the meeting, and let them do the explaining. He prayed for clarity. Hoped for some answers. If anything, he seemed guaranteed brief asylum from the madness he’d left onshore. There was safety in the harbor, despite the wind, rain, and a threat from the bitch hurricane.
The vessel rocked underneath a large swell and the gutters ran dark. Mitch balanced and aimed for the lights glowing from the cabins below deck. There was movement, shadows cast across the deck. Life. People. The meeting to which he was not invi
ted. Silently, he cursed all of politics and its defiant secrecy against the public trust. The pricks! To his right was a downward stairwell and the door to the smoking cabin. To the left, a lit porthole.
Eavesdrop, Mitch. Get your bearings before shocking them.
He couldn’t hear the screams. His ears were buffeted by gusts and his eyes were fixed on the dancing shadows cast from the porthole across the deck. Images, moving quickly. A shadow movie. He didn’t want to be seen or discovered just yet. He only wanted to see…
…and see it, he did.
At first it was all red. A still life of blood and hacked bodies strewn across the cabin. There was Vidor Kingman. His distinctive frame lying facedown on the floor, arms trapped underneath his body.
Then there was Fitz. Poor Fitz. His bloodied, twisted head came hurtling toward Mitch, slamming against the porthole at which he was staring in awestruck horror. He fell backward, screaming, his howls for help falling deaf on the ears of a hurricane wind.
Where’s Marshall?
At the porthole appeared Shakespeare McCann, spattered in feral blood and peering through the smeared glass. Could he see Mitch? Mitch couldn’t tell, let alone move. He sat there, butt solid and frozen to the deck, back against the rail. Scared even to pull his feet into the safety of the shadow where he was fixed. Motionless. Agonizing. Watching in close-up as Shakespeare McCann scratched his stubbled beard and plotted his next move.
And then…
With the wonder of a child and his first canvas of finger paints, McCann took his index finger and marked the bloodied porthole with a message, the letters spelled backward to Mitch:
McCann for Congress.
Taking his cue, Mitch pulled away from the horror show, sliding from his perch and finding his feet. With wobbly legs and shaken vision and balance, he climbed. Up, he thought. Go up. His instincts were giving the instructions now, drawing him to the top deck and through the swinging, open door of the wheelhouse. Once there, he knew why. The radios. He had to call out a Mayday. Ship in distress. Deandra needed help.
God…Mitch needed help!
Upon reaching for the radio, he saw the damage. The dials had already been smashed. The handsets ripped from their sockets. “That’s right,” he said.
Dark Horse Page 41
