Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 2

by Joseph Flynn

  McGill said, “The important thing is, we know they’re interested in you.”

  “They’re after me as a way to get to you,” Sweetie said.

  McGill nodded. “Right. But they don’t know we know what they’re doing.”

  “Unless they’ve got their own spy satellite,” Sweetie said. “Or maybe just somebody up on a nearby rooftop.”

  DeWitt shook his head. “The rooftops are clear. We checked that. With presidential authorization, we can find out if any satellite was overhead tonight.”

  McGill nodded. He’d see to it DeWitt got the approval he needed.

  Elspeth asked Sweetie, “What would you have done if he’d followed you down the street? Or if you’d been upstairs asleep when he broke in?”

  Her interest was professional. It would help the Secret Service know how to react if they were close enough to see Sweetie get threatened.

  Sweetie said, “Shoot first and pray for his soul later.”

  Everyone said amen to that.

  Ubiquity Cable TV — Nationwide

  The ninety-second commercial ran at 3:14 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time embedded in an edited showing of the movie L.A. Confidential. The spot came on just before the film’s climactic shootout. Neither the choice of the movie nor the commercial’s placement within the movie’s storyline was an accident.

  The commercial was shot in the same film noir style as the movie, opening on a woman in a nightgown sprawled dead on a rumpled bed. An eddy of cigarette smoke drifted past, as if someone was sitting in the room with the woman’s body. A deep male voice, sounding a lot like the late Jack Webb, began to speak in voice over.

  “In 1986, aspiring film actress Jennifer Dean was on the verge of her big break.”

  The view moved closer to the dead woman’s face. She’d died bloodlessly but in great pain.

  “Jenny Dean was one of two actresses up for the lead in a major motion picture. The other actress was a former model and a newcomer to L.A. and to acting. Her name was …”

  A smiling headshot, also in black and white, appeared.

  “Patti Darden, now known as Patricia Darden Grant, president of the United States. Guess who got the part.”

  A photo of a radiant Patti attending the film’s premiere filled the screen and then dissolved back to the image of the dead Jennifer Dean.

  “Now, guess who the last person to see Jenny Dean alive was.”

  Another dissolve took the viewer back to the headshot of Patti Darden.

  “That’s right. It was the girl who got the part. Coincidence? The coroner ruled the death a suicide. So the case was closed. Officially. Thing is, a lot of people Patti Darden worked with in Hollywood didn’t fare much better than Jenny Dean.”

  A photo of a damaged car on a stretch of sand appeared. A bloody blanket lay next to the car.

  “Actor Jeremy Danvers was one of Patti Darden’s co-stars. He drove his car off a cliff under the influence of narcotics. He managed to survive. The couple sleeping on the beach blanket wasn’t so lucky.”

  An emaciated woman with leathery skin, desperate eyes and jarringly white teeth appeared live, blinking at the camera.

  “Paige Nelson also lost out on a part to Patti Darden. She survived, just barely. But she’s still anorexic.”

  Paige said, “The casting director told me Patti had the look they wanted. I’ve been trying to look like her ever since.”

  Pathetic Paige was replaced by a beaming President Grant, taking the oath of office at her inauguration. McGill stood at her side, his happiness obvious.

  “A lot of people who don’t know the whole story like this woman’s looks. Once they find out who she really is, they know something else. She sure can put on an act.”

  The commercial ended with a one-line credit.

  Paid for by Americans for Truth.

  L.A. Confidential returned with the bad guys trying to shoot the shit out of the good guys.

  Stephen Norwood, the president’s campaign manager, was awakened by a phone call at 3:20 a.m. Neil Carrick, the campaign’s rapid response chief, was on the line. He told Norwood to go to YouTube and search for a video called Presidential Confidential.

  “You’re not going to believe this one,” Carrick said.

  Norwood’s computer was always on and he found the video in seconds.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said. The video had been posted only three minutes earlier and already had over five hundred views. Forget viral. The damn thing was going pandemic. Norwood had added his view of the video to the exploding tally numbers.

  Carrick waited silently but not idly as Norwood took in the attack ad.

  “You’re ready to counterattack?” Norwood asked after watching the last frame.

  “We already have the rebuttal on the first implication, that the president killed her rival for a movie role. Patti Darden was the last known person to see Jennifer Dean publicly. But Ms. Dean committed suicide in her apartment nine days after she auditioned. That was in an L.A. Times story. Nobody knows if anyone saw Ms. Dean in the interim.”

  “Was there any evidence of foul play?” Norwood asked.

  “Not according to the medical examiner’s report.”

  “Good, that’s one thing. Now, how the hell does anyone get hold of a police photo of a dead woman?”

  “Don’t know, but I’ll find out,” Carrick said.

  “Is there any information that the president and Ms. Dean exchanged words the last time they saw each other?”

  “I’ll look for that, too. You might ask Ms. Mindel to ask the president if she has any memory of what happened that day.”

  Norwood said, “Jesus. Yeah, I better. Neil, shoot this whole thing down as fast as you can, will you?”

  “Nobody on my team sleeps until we do.” Carrick clicked off.

  Stephen Norwood called Galia Mindel, brought her up to speed. The White House chief of staff called Deputy Attorney General Linda Otani and gave her the particulars of the situation, told her be ready to indict the commercial’s producers and Ubiquity Cable on fraud charges.

  Heaving a deep sigh, Galia called the White House and asked for the president. Just her luck, McGill answered the bedside phone. He was decent about it, though, didn’t crack wise, just put the president on. Patricia Darden Grant listened closely to Galia’s story.

  “Madam President,” Galia said, “can you possibly remember if you said anything to Ms. Dean the last time you saw her?”

  The president said, “I’ll never forget it. I said, ‘Good luck, Jenny.’ She said the same to me and kissed my cheek.”

  “Where did this take place?”

  “On Melrose Avenue just outside the entrance to Paramount Studios.”

  “Did anyone see you and Ms. Dean?”

  “People were coming and going. Nobody said hello to us.”

  Galia heard McGill’s voice but couldn’t make out what he said.

  The president told her. “Jim says to see if you can find out who the guard on the gate was that day. He was paid to keep an eye on things, and two pretty girls wouldn’t go unnoticed.”

  McGill added something.

  “All right,” the president said. “What Jim told me, verbatim, was the guard would have noticed two gorgeous women.”

  Galia had to agree with McGill’s description. She liked the idea of finding the guard on the gate, too. Sometimes it paid to keep a private eye at hand. Not that she’d say so to McGill.

  “I’m sorry for disturbing your sleep, Madam President.”

  “I’d have been angry if you hadn’t. Let’s get these bastards, Galia.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  McGill had one last suggestion.

  The president told Galia, “Jim said to see if you can find Jenny Dean’s phone records for the time between when I last saw her and the day she died. If the records are no longer available, look for Jenny’s family and see if they called her during that period.”

  Okay, Galia thought, now McGill was ju
st showing off.

  Federal Correctional Institution — Danbury, Connecticut

  Every morning, Erna Godfrey prayed on her knees with her face pointed at the wall of her cell and her eyes closed. She was a curiosity to both the inmate population and the staff. A murderess, a former death row prisoner, an attempted suicide, a widow, a woman who’d had a personal conversation with the president of the United States and now a student pursuing a master’s degree in theology from the seminary at Northwestern University, her résumé was unlike anyone else’s within the prison walls.

  She prayed every day: morning, noon and night. Her prayers for the most part were silent, an exception being the saying of grace at the table where she ate her meals. The correctional officers paid close attention to what she said and reported to the warden that Erna only expressed thanks for the food that sustained her that she might work her way toward the path of righteousness.

  The prison administration could abide that.

  What Erna prayed for within the silence of her thoughts, no one could say. But that morning she rose from her posture of morning prayer and asked the correctional officer if she might speak with the warden. For the average prisoner, that request was not routinely granted.

  Erna, however, was brought to the warden’s office without delay. She had secrets the government wanted to know. Instructions had been given to the warden that if this particular prisoner ever started to feel talkative nothing should be done to discourage her.

  Nonetheless, when Erna asked the warden for a pen and a pad of paper, he said, “No, I’m sorry but I can’t let you have a pen or a pencil.”

  For a second, Erna couldn’t imagine why in the world she couldn’t —

  Hold a pointed implement in her hand? The answer was obvious. An inmate might get to feeling suicidal or homicidal. Wouldn’t be good for anyone’s career to aid in either of those pursuits.

  “My secretary takes dictation,” the warden said. “Would that work for you?”

  Erna nodded. Telling another person would add to the air of confession.

  There remained one point to be resolved.

  “I really should sign my name to what I have to say,” Erna said.

  The problem of providing a signature without the use of a pointed object was solved by the warden’s secretary. She was the mother of a three-year-old. She had a red crayon in her purse. She snapped it in half and peeled the paper away from the blunt end.

  The warden looked at it, smoothed the edge with a thumbnail.

  He said, “I’ll let you sign your name with this. Is that okay with you?”

  “That’d be fine. Red’s just the color for what I have to say.”

  Erna spent the next hour giving up every shred of information she had on the radical anti-abortion underground movement, including the identity of two people, like her, who had killed in the name of being pro-life. When she was done, her statement was entered into a computer and printed out. Erna read it and signed with the red crayon.

  The document was scanned and sent electronically to the office of Attorney General Michael Jaworsky. It arrived as he was talking with Deputy AG Linda Otani. The preliminary federal investigation into the death of Jennifer Dean had revealed that in the last days of her life not only had Ms. Dean failed to get the movie role, her father had died of a heart attack and her boyfriend had left her for another woman.

  Besides that, the woman on the bed in the commercial was not Jennifer Dean. The photo was a still shot of another actress, Haley Edwards, from a movie titled The Wages of Sin. Ms. Edwards had been alive at the time the photo was taken and remained so.

  Deputy AG Otani wanted to indict the largest cable company in the country for facilitating a fraud: implying that Patricia Darden Grant was responsible for the death of Jennifer Dean. Otani also wanted to launch an investigation to find out just who was hiding behind the name Americans for Truth and indict them for fraud, too. And now Erna Godfrey had decided to come clean about the antiabortion underground.

  All that in an election year.

  Leaving Michael Jaworsky to think, Thank God I’m not president.

  National Reconnaissance Office — Chantilly, Virginia

  In return for McGill’s suggestions that helped debunk the Presidential Confidential video, the president saw her way clear to provide a day-pass for McGill, Sweetie, Elspeth Kendry and Byron DeWitt to the nation’s spy-in-the-sky agency, the National Reconnaissance Office. The NRO held the responsibility for monitoring the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It also kept tabs on the comings and goings of terrorist organizations.

  Much of its work was done hand in glove with the Pentagon and various spy shops. But it also tracked the movements of drug traffickers and the doings of other criminal organizations. In less sinister but no less deadly circumstances, the NRO assessed the impact of natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, fires and floods.

  Given this broad portfolio of responsibilities, it was less than surprising that the NRO did have a bird overhead taking photographs of the slice of Washington, D.C. that Sweetie and Putnam called home on the night in question. McGill and company were informed in no uncertain terms they should not ask why those photos had been taken. Just be grateful help was being provided.

  The four of them sat around a small conference table in a room with bare walls and a two-way mirror. They’d had to surrender their cell phones. They would be allowed to view the photos in the room, but neither take them with when they left nor reproduce them. They were allowed to make notes with pens and paper provided by the NRO.

  As if they couldn’t guess, they’d been told they would be observed from behind the mirror.

  To make sure they didn’t try to slip a photo into their underwear.

  McGill was okay with all the precautions. He knew they’d been given an extraordinary privilege. But he imposed one condition of his own.

  “Look at us all you want, but no one listens in on our conversation.”

  An organization dedicated to snooping on others, the NRO didn’t like its nosiness being curtailed in any way. They objected to McGill’s condition.

  He said, “Tough. Special Agent Kendry will sit with you to make sure you don’t eavesdrop. You’re not happy with that, I’ve got the president on speed dial.”

  He had to use it. The president gave her husband’s NRO escorts a short earful of hell and they relented, but on her way out of the room, Elspeth cast her eyes to the ceiling. Her message was clear.

  These were the people who spied from above. You think maybe they had cameras in the ceiling? DeWitt suggested they write any notes with their pads held in the vertical position.

  Sweetie took things two steps further. No talking or writing, and McGill and DeWitt would sit on either side of her, hunching their shoulders around Sweetie like a mini football huddle. Once everyone was in place, Sweetie put the stack of photos to be examined in front of her.

  “You think maybe I got a little too dramatic here?” McGill whispered.

  DeWitt shook his head. “You’re making a natural adaptation to the federal bureaucracy. Secrecy begets power, power is always hoarded.”

  “Spook fever,” Sweetie said.

  “No vaccine,” DeWitt said.

  They looked through twenty-two photos. The satellite caught the guy she’d seen on the sidewalk outside her house. Sweetie tapped her finger on his image. McGill and DeWitt nodded. Another photo showed the same guy going out the house’s back door. A sequence of shots showed him going down an alley. He got into a black sedan two blocks away. He sat in the front passenger seat. Someone else drove the car away. The angle on the car didn’t allow for seeing whether anyone was in the back seat.

  One pass through the photographs was all they needed.

  Sweetie pushed the pile to the center of the table.

  They put the unused pads and pens on top of the photos.

  Got up and left the room.

  On the way back to Washington, Leo told
them there was no way anyone had bugged the Chevy while it was parked in the NRO lot. He’d been in it the whole time, awake and alert. No one doubted him, but they decided to wait until they were back at McGill’s office to start making their plans.

  However, that plan got interrupted.

  A young guy in a blazer, khakis and boat shoes approached McGill on the sidewalk outside his office. He came to an abrupt halt when Elspeth pointed her Uzi at him. He put his hands in the air in the hope she’d understand he’d come in peace.

  In his right hand he held a folded piece of paper with some sort of seal on it.

  “Who are you and what do you want?” Elspeth asked.

  “My name’s Henry Davis. I work for the House Committee on Oversight.” He waggled the paper in his hand. “This is for Mr. McGill. May I?”

  He carefully extended it in McGill’s direction.

  A natural sense of curiosity led McGill to reach out. The piece of paper had barely touched his fingertips when Sweetie snatched the piece of paper away from him. Elspeth reacted by thrusting her weapon at Davis, very close to firing it now.

  Davis backpedaled and said, “Mr. McGill, you’ve been served. That subpoena requires you to appear before the House Committee on Oversight and respond to such questions as may be asked of you. The date and time of your appearance are noted on the subpoena. Failure to appear will result in a charge of contempt of Congress being brought against you.”

  His spiel complete, Davis was the epitome of a smug bastard, smiling and victorious.

  McGill told Elspeth, “Shoot him.”

  She flicked the Uzi’s safety off. The click echoed like canon fire in Davis’s ears. His face froze in horror. Elspeth looked as if she was about to follow orders.

  But she turned to McGill and asked, “You sure?”

  “Nah, I was just kidding.”

  They walked up the stairs to McGill’s offices.

  DeWitt said to him, “Remind me never to tick you off.”

  White House Press Room

  The President looked out at the assembled press corps for ten seconds before saying a word. None of the reporters looking back at her fidgeted. Few of them did so much as blink. Patricia Darden Grant let very little get under her skin, but there was no question she was angry today.