Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 2

by Joseph Flynn

  McGill thought about that. “They might buy a house if they could do it inconspicuously. I don’t see an apartment. They’d want more privacy.”

  “A house then, one that’s out of the way,” DeWitt said.

  “Not in the middle of nowhere. Maybe in a city. If they have to run, they’ll want some sort of cover.”

  “Forests make good hiding places,” DeWitt said. “Mountains and ravines, too.”

  “Yeah, but if they start out by hunkering down in some remote place that means they’re thinking of hiding not hunting.”

  “Good point. But maybe what they want right now is a place to rest and plan. Let us grow disinterested.”

  “Is that how Chairman Mao would do it?”

  DeWitt said, “He went for the countryside first, then the cities.”

  “Split the difference,” McGill said. “Maybe a city, maybe a wilderness area. But somewhere that offers some kind of concealment.”

  “That sounds more like doubling than splitting.”

  “I’m not being too big a pain in the ass, am I?” McGill asked.

  “Just big enough,” DeWitt said.

  McGill laughed.

  An FBI big shot with a sense of humor.

  What would they think of next?

  Office of the Press Secretary

  Aggie Wu was doing her daily performance review — how the newsies had behaved and whether she’d handled them fairly — when her secretary said Ethan Judd was on the line.

  Like everyone else in Washington, Aggie had been stunned when Sir Edbert Bickford had hired Judd. She figured it was a publicity move. The placement of a fig leaf of respectable journalism on the burlesque queen figure of WorldWide News.

  As a fig leaf, though, Aggie thought you couldn’t do better than Ethan Judd. She remembered sitting through a lecture he’d given at Medill. He’d made her proud she had decided to become a journalist. She wasn’t so sure how the great man felt about press secretaries.

  She took the call anyway.

  “Mr. Judd, this is Aggie Wu. It’s a pleasure to talk to you.”

  “Don’t you mean talk to me again?”

  “Sir?”

  “When I spoke at Northwestern, you came up to me afterward and introduced yourself.”

  He remembered that? After what, eighteen years?

  “Yes, I did,” Aggie said. “That was a long time ago, and I’m sure you’ve had many J-students compliment you over the years. I can’t imagine why you’d remember me.”

  Judd laughed. “You didn’t compliment me. You told me I got two facts wrong in a recent column. I checked and you were right on one of them; the other was more open to interpretation. I meant to send a thank you note, but it got lost with so many other good intentions.”

  God, he was right. She remembered now. She’d corrected one of the giants of her time.

  Aggie was glad he couldn’t see her blush.

  “Mr. Judd, my manners have improved greatly since those days.”

  “That’s a shame.”

  It was Aggie’s turn to laugh. “Not that I can’t lash the crowd I face every day.”

  “Much better,” Judd said.

  “How may I help you, sir?”

  “I’d like to do an hour-long interview with the president.”

  Patricia Darden Grant had never done an interview with WWN, not as a candidate, not as president. She’d come right out and said it wasn’t a news organization, it was a propaganda organ. If anything, her distaste for Sir Edbert’s crown jewel had grown over the years.

  The feeling was mutual.

  WWN had been expected to be one of the reelection campaign’s biggest foes.

  Until Sir Edbert had shocked the world and hired Ethan Judd.

  He said, “Left you speechless, Ms. Wu?”

  “Yes, but you shouldn’t have. Why else would you have called?”

  “You’ll pass my request on to the president?”

  “I will, but I can’t make any promises.”

  “I wasn’t expecting any. All I ask is that the president watches what I accomplish at WWN. If there come’s a time when she feels it has become a forum for objective news, I’ll be ready to do the interview at a moment’s notice.”

  “I’ll tell her, Mr. Judd. I’ve enjoyed talking with you, again.”

  He told her, “Feel free to let me know of any new mistakes.”

  Barcadere Marina — Grand Cayman Island

  Jackie Richmond found a floppy hat, the kind military guys wore in movies, on Irish Grace. With ten thousand dollars of Carina Linberg’s money in his pocket, he didn’t think she’d even notice losing the hat. Wearing the hat over his sunglasses wasn’t much of a disguise but it would let him blend in with half the other tourists on the island. Jackie took care to lock the cabin as he left the boat.

  Wouldn’t want just anybody making himself at home.

  He went to the marina office and rented a thirty-five foot slip, paid cash for three days. The lady at the desk asked to see his ID and he brought out his Jackie Richmond driver’s license. It had his picture on it, but the woman didn’t ask him to take off the hat and glasses for a comparison. People hated giving cash back once they had it in hand.

  She did ask, “You’re renting the slip for a boat you’ve hired?”

  “Right.”

  “You’re sure you have the footage right?”

  Jackie frowned.

  “The slip will be big enough for the boat?” the lady clarified.

  “It’s a Whaler, thirty-two feet.”

  The woman smiled. “You’re fine then. Is the boat coming from another country?”

  “No, it’s at this other place here on the island. Docked on a canal. I just thought your place looks nicer, you know, safer.”

  “Grand Cayman as a whole is quite safe, but we appreciate your business. Would you like a courtesy ride to meet your captain. I assume he’s with his Whaler.”

  “Right. Yeah, that’d be great. Thank you.”

  She handed him a diagram of the marina and marked his slip with an X.

  She told him if he waited outside a driver would be with him presently.

  He said, “Thanks again.”

  He went outside and a minute later a kid driving a Jeep with a canvas top pulled up, took him where he wanted to go, didn’t feel the need to talk. Jackie tipped him ten bucks. Kid smiled and took off.

  Jackie spotted Cap’n Thurlow’s boat right where the SOB had left it. He’d worried if the cops held Thurlow longer than the no good snitch had paid for his slip rental, the boatyard would impound the Whaler. Maybe chain and padlock it to the dock or something.

  Not so far. Jackie paid for an extra three days rental at that place, too.

  Lull people into thinking he was legit.

  This office was manned by an old guy who was watching a replay of a soccer game. The guy stopped his video and like everyone else in the world was happy to have someone give him money. Before Jackie could get out of the office the TV was back on.

  Guy had forgotten all about him.

  He went to the Whaler and stepped aboard. If anyone asked what he was doing, he’d say he thought he dropped his wallet on the boat. He was the guy who chartered it; just ask the old man in the office.

  Nobody said boo to him. He used a screwdriver and wire cutters he’d taken from a took kit on Irish Grace and hot-wired the ignition. The twin outboard engines fired. He untied the lines, got behind the wheel, dropped the twin props into the water and putt-putted out to sea. All ahead slow.

  The ocean, thank God, was as flat as a pit boss’ stare. But seeing the immensity of all that water in front him, not having anyone to back him up, sent a shiver through Jackie. Made him ask himself what the hell a car thief was doing out there.

  The answer came right back at him — he’d just become a boat thief, that’s what. He’d given himself a chance to stay a free man, and if he was lucky he’d get even with two guys who’d fucked him over, Cap’n Thurlow and
that prick from Baltimore.

  There had to be some way to get his four hundred thousand back.

  How, he had no idea. He’d have to play everything by ear.

  Whatever he did, though, he would go all out.

  Let all the other assholes worry about him.

  A horn sounded. So loud and so close it sounded like a goddamn train bearing down on him. He about shit. Whipping his head around all he saw coming his way was a freaking little motor boat, couldn’t be more than twelve feet long with one dinky outboard motor. Guy driving the boat swerved around him. Gave another blast of that fucking horn — a Chihuahua sounding like a Rottweiler — and threw him the finger, too.

  Jackie was about to curse the prick right back. Two thoughts stopped him. For all he knew, the other guy might have a gun on him. If that wasn’t enough, he had the feeling he’d probably fucked up. The other guy must’ve had the right of way to get so ticked off.

  Shit, he’d been able to steal the boat and get it going, but he didn’t know jack about the right way to operate it when another boat was around.

  All he could think was go slow and let the other assholes go first.

  That’s what he did, all the way back to the marina where Irish Grace was docked.

  Eastbound Stevenson Expressway — Chicago, Illinois

  The Buick Enclave carrying Damon Todd, Arn Crosby and Olin Anderson breezed along in the lull after the morning rush. Crosby was driving. He stuck the needle on the speedometer exactly at the speed limit and kept it there.

  Back at the house in Ottawa, Crosby had looked over his shoulder and told Todd, “I know how to drive to avoid attention from the cops or anyone else. So if you don’t see a plane coming in for a strafing run, keep any backseat comments to yourself, okay?”

  Todd replied, “I’ll count out-of-state license plates.”

  Anderson laughed at that. Even Crosby grinned. They set off, three good friends.

  To outward appearances, Damon Todd was doing nothing more than looking out his window and watching the world go by, but he knew something was wrong. Crosby and Anderson had changed. They’d gone from being submissive to borderline assertive. They were no longer apprehensive that something terrible might happen to them if they questioned Todd’s judgments or his decisions.

  With the loss of that dread, Todd was the one who felt threatened. There had been no overt threats or gestures, but he thought the two former CIA operatives were plotting against him. They might have moved against him already if he hadn’t told them of his plan to probe the security cordon surrounding James J. McGill’s family in Evanston, Illinois.

  The three of them had sat at the kitchen table of the house in Ottawa and Anderson had asked, “What’re you thinking, Doc? Doing something nasty to bring the man on the run?”

  Crosby said, “As a rule, we don’t kill children.”

  “There were those two little shits up in the Hindu Kush,” Anderson reminded him.

  “True, but they were shooting at us with AKs. You pick up the gun …”

  “You die by the gun,” Anderson finished the thought.

  They both saw the unspoken question on Todd’s face.

  Crosby told him, “We expect to go down fighting, too.”

  Anderson added, “You hang with us, Doc, you better plan on a violent end, too.”

  “What if we just go our separate ways now?” Todd asked. “Live quietly. Make it cost-ineffective to look for us, as you told me before.”

  “You know the problem with that,” Crosby told him.

  Anderson pointed to the research notes Todd had made. “That’s not a retirement plan you’ve got there, Doc. That’s an outline for vengeance. Think about it. From what Arn and I have seen, you’d have no problem tapping people for enough money to carry you comfortably until you’re a hundred years old, but that’s not what you want.”

  Crosby said, “You want to get McGill. If he was just some mope, okay, you could do it. Probably on your own. But McGill is good. He’s had training. He has resources. You’re not going to get him without our help.”

  “My money says you’ve got a few more people you’d like to pop, too,” Anderson said.

  Todd couldn’t help but keep Daryl Cheveyo from coming to mind. The psychiatrist who’d been his first contact with the CIA could have — should have — advocated more strongly for Todd to be allowed to join the Agency. If he’d done that, if Todd had been hired the way he should have been —

  He saw Crosby and Anderson grinning like jackals.

  They knew exactly what he’d been thinking.

  Anderson said, “So there is another guy who needs killing. But tell us, Doc, is there some babe who’s done you wrong, too?”

  Chana Lochlan, he thought.

  She’d been one of the first young people he’d ever helped. He’d crafted her so beautifully. She’d succeeded so wonderfully. She’d loved him in return — right up until the time she’d hired that bastard McGill to —

  He saw Crosby and Anderson staring at him.

  They were learning too much about him.

  He told them, “I hear old age is a bitch.”

  They both laughed. Anderson told him, “We used to say that every time we started a new mission.”

  “Just our luck we kept coming back alive,” Crosby said.

  Approaching Chicago, they saw the skyline appear from forty miles out. Less than an hour later, they came to the lakefront. Crosby turned onto northbound Lake Shore Drive. The boats had been taken out of the city’s harbors for the season but people were walking and running in Grant Park on the unseasonably mild late autumn day.

  Chances were, Todd thought, on a pretty day like this, the people James J. McGill loved would be out and about, too. Evanston was another thirty-minutes north in light traffic.

  The mantle of fatalism Crosby and Anderson had draped over Todd began to settle more comfortably on his shoulders. He probably shouldn’t have expected to live a long life. Everyone in his family had died at relatively young ages. Why should he endure?

  If he were able to take down McGill, Cheveyo and …

  He still didn’t know what to do about Chana. She should be made to understand the pain she had caused him, but he wasn’t sure he could cause her death. If he saw her again, he’d probably fall in love with her all over again.

  But McGill and Cheveyo, Crosby and Anderson, too, he’d be greatly pleased if they all died before he did. The two rogue CIA men thought they’d outsmarted him.

  He’d have to prove them wrong.

  George Town Harbor — Grand Cayman Island

  Welborn had learned the name of the maulers’ yacht, Carcharodon, and its anchorage, George Town Harbor, from Willa Pennyman. Who’d heard it from her cousin Eddie. Who’d seen the yacht arrive and had picked up Harry, Kurt and Wally at the harbor shortly after their arrival on Grand Cayman.

  The three thugs knew they’d been betrayed, just as that fucking guy, Jackie Richmond, who kept getting away from their bosses, had been betrayed by the boat captain he’d hired. The whole goddamn island was full of snitches.

  It wasn’t going to be any fun for Harry, Kurt and Wally to go home and report that they’d failed. Fact was, it damn well might be fatal. The bosses wanted Jackie Richmond dead so bad it made their teeth hurt.

  Being male chauvinists, they blamed Jackie rather than Alice for their troubles.

  A platoon of the RCIPS’s finest saw to it that Harry, Kurt and Wally were marched onto their craft and told they were no longer welcome in any of the Cayman Islands. Would never be welcome again. Would be locked up good and proper for a long time if they ever came back.

  Commissioner Peck handed Harry a written order to that effect.

  Peck asked, “Do you understand what I’ve just told you?”

  Harry nodded, but said nothing.

  He looked at Welborn. Pegged him for an American. Some kind of cop, too.

  He had to be looking for that prick Jackie, too. But hadn’t found
him yet.

  Or there’d have been no reason to give him and the boys the boot.

  You never knew, Harry thought.

  All the cops chasing Jackie, he still might give them the slip.

  If the little bastard found a way to fly off the island, Harry and his friends were screwed. But if Jackie left on the water … hell, there wasn’t anything short of a cigarette boat that could outrun them.

  Commissioner Peck asked Harry if he needed to top off his fuel tank.

  “No,” Harry said.

  “Have you left anyone ashore?”

  “No.”

  “Right then, off with you.”

  Welborn stepped forward and whispered in Peck’s ear. He nodded and told Harry, “I’m afraid we’ll need just a minute more of your time.”

  The commissioner waved a sergeant and a sturdy constable forward, “Please go below. See if there’s anyone else aboard. If there is bring him or her up on deck for a chat.”

  Harry glared at Peck. And Welborn.

  “Frightful, the authority the police have in some places,” the commissioner agreed.

  The two cops went below, returned moments later shaking their heads.

  Within minutes, the yacht was underway, leaving the harbor.

  Once clear of slow-moving traffic, the Carcharodon rose on its hydrofoils and raced away, quickly becoming a speck in the distance.

  “Predatory beast, that craft,” Peck said. “Strange the owner didn’t bother to complete the name.”

  “Pardon?” Welborn said.

  The commissioner turned to look at his guest. “You weren’t offered Latin in school?”

  “Sure, I was, but I went with flower arranging instead.”

  Peck smiled and said, “Carcharodon Carcharias. Jagged-tooth one. Better known as the great white shark.”

  Welborn thought about that. Wondered if great whites were known to circle back.

  The Oval Office

  More often than not when McGill stopped by the Oval Office, Edwina Byington, the president’s secretary, told him the president was busy with affairs of state and he’d have to come back later or wait until late at night when she returned to the residence. It could be trying to have to share your wife with the whole country on a good day, and the whole world on a bad day. McGill tried to keep a good attitude. If he had it tough, Patti had it far worse.