“Who?”
“Don’t ask that.”
“Sorry.”
“The press will be all over you. Take a moment, prepare some remarks. It will be a good time to express concern for the victims and their families. Keep the politics to a minimum, but also keep the hard line. Your ads are prophetic now, so your words will be repeated many times.”
“I’ll do it right now.”
“Call me when you get to Atlanta.”
“Yes, I will.”
FORTY MINUTES LATER, Lake and his group landed in Atlanta. The press had been duly notified of his arrival, and with the dust just settling in Cairo, there was a crowd waiting. No live pictures had yet emerged of the embassy, yet several agencies were already reporting that “hundreds” had been killed.
In the small terminal for private aircraft, Lake stood before an eager group of reporters, some with cameras and mikes, others with slim recorders, others still with just plain old notepads. He spoke solemnly, without notes: “At this moment, we should be in prayer for those who’ve been injured and killed by this act of war. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families, and also with the rescue people. I am not going to politicize this event, but I will say that it is absurd for this country to once again suffer at the hands of terrorists. When I am President, no American life will go unaccounted for. I will use our new military to track down and annihilate any terrorist group that preys upon innocent Americans. That’s all I have to say.”
He walked off, ignoring the shouts and questions from the pack of shaggy dogs.
Brilliant, thought Teddy, watching live from his bunker. Quick, compassionate, yet tough as hell. Superb! He once again patted himself on the back for choosing such a wonderful candidate.
When Lufkin called again it was past midnight in Cairo. The fires had been extinguished and they were hauling out bodies as fast as they could. Many were buried in the rubble. He was a block away, behind an army barricade, watching with thousands of others. The scene was chaos, smoke and dust thick in the air. Lufkin had been to several bomb sites in his career, and this was a bad one, he reported.
Teddy rolled around his room and poured another decaf coffee. The Lake terror ads would begin at prime time. On this very night the campaign would spend $3 million in a coast-to-coast deluge of fear and doom. They’d pull the ads tomorrow, and announce it beforehand. Out of respect for the dead and their families, the Lake campaign would temporarily suspend its little prophecies. And they’d start polling at noon tomorrow, massive polling.
High time candidate Lake’s positives shot upward. The Arizona and Michigan primaries were less than a week away.
The first pictures from Cairo were of a harried reporter with his back to an army barricade, soldiers watching him fiercely, as he might get shot if he tried once more to charge forward. Sirens wailed all around; lights flashed. But the reporter knew little. A massive bomb had exploded deep in the embassy at ten-twenty when a party was breaking up; no idea of the casualties, but there’d be plenty, he promised. The area was cordoned off by the army, and for good measure they’d sealed the airspace so, dammit, there’d be no helicopter shots. As of yet, no one had claimed responsibility, but for good measure he gave the names of three radical groups as the usual suspects.
“Could be one of these, could be someone else,” he said helpfully. With no carnage to film, the camera was forced to stay with the reporter, and since he had nothing to say he prattled on about how dangerous the Middle East had become, as if this were breaking news and he was there to report it!
Lufkin called around 8 P.M. D.C. time to tell Teddy that the American ambassador to Egypt could not be located, and they were beginning to fear he might be in the rubble. At least that was the word on the street. While talking to Lufkin on the phone, Teddy watched the muted reporter; a Lake terror ad appeared on another screen. It showed the rubble, the carnage, the bodies, the radicals from some other attack, then the smooth but earnest voice of Aaron Lake promising revenge.
How perfect the timing, Teddy thought.
AN AIDE WOKE TEDDY at midnight with lemon tea and a vegetable sandwich. As he so often did, he’d napped in his wheelchair, the wall of TV screens alive with images but no sound. When the aide left, he pushed a button and listened.
The sun was well up in Cairo. The ambassador had not been found, and it was now being assumed he was somewhere in the rubble.
Teddy had never met the ambassador to Egypt, an absolute unknown anyway, who was now being idolized by the chattering reporters as a great American. His death didn’t particularly bother Teddy, though it would increase the criticism of the CIA. It would also add gravity to the attack, which, in the scheme of things, would benefit Aaron Lake.
Sixty-one bodies had been recovered so far. The Egyptian authorities were blaming Yidal, the likeliest of suspects because his little army had bombed three Western embassies in the past sixteen months, and because he was openly calling for war against the United States. The current CIA dossier on Yidal gave him thirty soldiers and an annual budget of around $5 million, almost all originating from Libya and Saudi Arabia. But to the press, the leaks suggested an army of a thousand with unlimited funds with which to terrorize innocent Americans.
The Israelis knew what Yidal had for breakfast and where he ate it. They could’ve taken him out a dozen times, but so far he’d kept his little war away from them. As long as he killed Americans and Westerners, the Israelis really didn’t care. It was to their benefit for the West to loathe the Islamic radicals.
Teddy ate slowly, then napped some more. Lufkin called before noon Cairo time with the news that the bodies of the ambassador and his wife had been found. The count was now at eighty-four; all but eleven were Americans.
The cameras caught up with Aaron Lake outside a plant in Marietta, Georgia, shaking hands in the dark as the shift changed, and when asked about events in Cairo, he said: “Sixteen months ago these same criminals bombed two of our embassies, killing thirty Americans, and we’ve done nothing to stop them. They’re operating with impunity because we lack the commitment to fight. When I’m President, we’ll declare war on these terrorists and stop the killing.”
The tough talk was contagious, and as America woke up to the terrible news in Cairo, the country was also treated to a brash chorus of threats and ultimatums from the other seven candidates. Even the more passive among them now sounded like gunslingers.
ELEVEN
IT WAS SNOWING AGAIN in Iowa, a steady swirl of snow and wind that turned to slush on the streets and sidewalks and made Quince Garbe once again long for a beach. He covered his face on Main Street as if to protect himself, but the truth was he didn’t want to speak to anyone. Didn’t want anyone to see him darting yet again into the post office.
There was a letter in the box. One of those letters. His jaw fell and his hands froze when he saw it, just lying there with some junk mail, innocent, like a note from an old friend. He glanced over both shoulders—a thief racked with guilt—then yanked it out and thrust it into his coat.
His wife was at the hospital planning a ball for crippled children, so the house was empty except for a maid who spent her day napping down in the laundry room. He hadn’t given her a raise in eight years. He took his time driving there, fighting the snow and the drifts, cursing the con man who’d entered his life under the ruse of love, anticipating the letter, which grew heavier near his heart with each passing minute.
No sign of the maid as he entered the front door, making as much noise as possible. He went upstairs to his bedroom, where he locked the door. There was a pistol under the mattress. He flung his overcoat and his gloves onto an armchair, then his jacket, and he sat on the edge of his bed and examined the envelope. Same lavender paper, same handwriting, same everything with a Jacksonville postmark, two days old. He ripped it open and removed a single page.
Dear Quince:
Thanks so much for the money. So that you won’t think I’m a total thug, I
think you should know the money went to my wife and children. They are suffering so. My incarceration has left them destitute. My wife is clinically depressed and cannot work. My four children are fed by welfare and food stamps.
(A hundred thousand bucks should certainly fatten them up, Quince thought.)
They live in government housing and have no dependable transportation. So, thanks again for your help. Another $50,000 should get them out of debt and start a nice college fund.
Same rules as before; same wiring instructions; same promises to expose your secret life if the money is not received quickly. Do it now, Quince, and I swear this is my last letter.
Thanks again, Quince.
Love, Ricky
He went to the bathroom, to the medicine cabinet, where he found his wife’s Valium. He took two, but thought about eating all of them. He needed to lie down but he couldn’t use the bed because it would be wrinkled and someone would ask questions. So he stretched himself out on the floor, on the worn but clean carpet, and waited for the pills to work.
He’d begged and scraped and even lied a little to borrow the first installment for Ricky. There was no way he could squeeze another $50,000 from a personal balance sheet already heavily padded and still teetering on the edge of insolvency. His nice large house was choked with a fat mortgage held by his father. His father signed his paychecks. His cars were large and imported, but they had a million miles on them and little value. Who in Bakers, Iowa, would want to buy an eleven-year-old Mercedes?
And what if he managed to somehow steal the money? The criminal otherwise known as Ricky would simply thank him again, then demand more.
It was over.
Time for the pills. Time for the gun.
The phone startled him. Without thinking, he scrambled to his feet and grabbed the receiver. “Hello,” he grunted.
“Where the hell are you?” It was his father, with a tone he knew so well.
“I’m, uh, not feeling well,” he managed to say, staring at his watch and now remembering the ten-thirty meeting with a very important inspector from the FDIC.
“I don’t give a damn how you feel. Mr. Colthurst from the FDIC has been waiting in my office for fifteen minutes.”
“I’m vomiting, Dad,” he said, and cringed again with the word Dad. Fifty-one years old, still using the word Dad.
“You’re lying. Why didn’t you call if you’re sick? Gladys told me she saw you just before ten walking toward the post office. What the hell’s going on here?”
“Excuse me. I gotta go to the toilet. I’ll call you later.” He hung up.
The Valium rolled in like a pleasant fog, and he sat on the edge of his bed staring at the lavender squares scattered on the floor. Ideas were slow in coming, hampered by the pills.
He could hide the letters, then kill himself. His suicide note would place the bulk of the blame on his father. Death was not an altogether unpleasant prospect; no more marriage, no more bank, no more Dad, no more Bakers, Iowa, no more hiding in the closet.
But he would miss his children and grandchildren.
And what if this Ricky monster didn’t learn of the suicide, and sent another letter, and they found it, and somehow Quince got himself outed anyway, long after his funeral?
The next lousy idea involved a conspiracy with his secretary, a woman he trusted marginally to begin with. He would tell her the truth, then ask her to write a letter to Ricky and break the news of Quince Garbe’s suicide. Together, Quince and his secretary could scheme and fake their way through a suicide, and in the process take some measure of revenge against Ricky.
But he’d rather be dead than tell his secretary.
The third idea occurred after the Valium had settled in at full throttle, and it made him smile. Why not try a little honesty? Write a letter to Ricky and plead poverty. Offer another $10,000 and tell him that’s all. If Ricky was determined to destroy him, then he, Quince, would have no choice but to come after Ricky. He’d inform the FBI, let them track the letters and the wire transfers, and both men would go down in flames.
He slept on the floor for thirty minutes, then gathered his jacket, gloves, and overcoat. He left the house without seeing the maid. As he drove to town, flush with the desire to confront the truth, he admitted aloud that only the money mattered. His father was eighty-one. The bank’s stock was worth about $10 million. Someday it would be his. Stay in the closet until the cash was in hand, then live any way he damned well pleased.
Don’t screw up the money.
COLEMAN LEE owned a taco hut in a strip mall on the outskirts of Gary, Indiana, in a section of town now ruled by the Mexicans. Coleman was forty-eight, with two bad divorces decades earlier, no children, thank God. Because of all the tacos, he was thick and slow, with a drooping stomach and large fleshy cheeks. Coleman was not pretty, but he was certainly lonely.
His employees were mainly young Mexican boys, illegal immigrants, all of whom he, sooner or later, tried to molest, or seduce, or whatever you’d call his clumsy efforts. Rarely was he successful, and his turnover was high. Business was slow too because people talked and Coleman was not well regarded. Who wanted to buy tacos from a pervert?
He rented two small boxes at the post office at the other end of the strip mall—one for his business, the other for his pleasure. He collected porno and gathered it almost daily from the post office. The mail carrier at his apartment was a curious type, and it was best to keep some things as quiet as possible.
He strolled along the dirty sidewalk at the edge of the parking lot, past the discount stores for shoes and cosmetics, past a XXX video dive he’d been banned from, past a welfare office, one brought to the suburbs by a desperate politician looking for votes. The post office was crowded with Mexicans taking their time because it was cold out.
His daily haul was two hard-core magazines sent to him in plain brown wrappers, and a letter which looked vaguely familiar. It was a square yellow envelope, no return address, postmarked in Atlantic Beach, Florida. Ah, yes, he remembered as he held it. Young Percy in rehab.
Back in his cramped little office between the kitchen and the utility room, he quickly flipped through the magazines, saw nothing new, then stacked them in a pile with a hundred others. He opened the letter from Percy. Like the two before, it was handprinted, and addressed to Walt, a name he used to collect all his porn. Walt Lee.
Dear Walt:
I really enjoyed your last letter. I’ve read it many times. You have a nice way with words. As I told you, I’ve been here for almost eighteen months, and it gets very lonely. I keep your letters under my mattress, and when I feel really isolated I read them over and over. Where did you learn to write like that? Please send another one as soon as possible.
With a little luck, I’ll be released in April. I’m not sure where I’ll go or what I’ll do. It’s frightening, really, to think that I’ll just walk out of here after almost two years, and have no one to be with. I hope we’re still pen pals by then.
I was wondering, and I really hate to ask this, but since I have no one else I’ll do it anyway, and please feel free to say no, it won’t hurt our friendship, but could you loan me a thousand bucks? They have this little book and music shop here at the clinic, and they let us buy paperbacks and CD’s on credit, and, well, I’ve been here so long that I’ve run up quite a tab.
If you can make the loan, I’d really appreciate it. If not, I completely understand.
Thanks for being there, Walt. Please write me soon. I treasure your letters.
Love, Percy
A thousand bucks? What kinda little creep was this? Coleman smelled a con. He ripped the letter into pieces and threw them in the trash.
“A thousand bucks,” he mumbled to himself, reaching for the magazines again.
CURTIS WAS NOT the real name of the jeweler in Dallas. Curtis worked fine when corresponding with Ricky in rehab, but the real name was Vann Gates.
Mr. Gates was fifty-eight years old, on the surface happil
y married, the father of three and the grandfather of two, and he and his wife owned six jewelry stores in the Dallas area, all located in malls. On paper they had $2 million, and they’d made it themselves. They had a very nice new home in Highland Park, with separate bedrooms at opposite ends. They met in the kitchen for coffee and in the den for TV and grandkids.
Mr. Gates ventured from the closet now and then, always with excruciating caution. No one had a clue. His correspondence with Ricky was his first attempt at finding love through the want ads, and so far he’d been thrilled with the results. He rented a small box in a post office near one of the malls, and used the name Curtis V. Cates.
The lavender envelope was addressed to Curtis Cates, and as he sat in his car and carefully opened it, he at first had no clue anything was wrong. Just another sweet letter from his beloved Ricky. Lightning hit, though, with the first words:
Dear Vann Gates:
The party’s over, pal. My name ain’t Ricky, and you’re not Curtis. I’m not a gay boy looking for love. You, however, have an awful secret, which I’m sure you want to keep. I want to help.
Here’s the deal: Wire $100,000 to Geneva Trust Bank, Nassau, Bahamas, account number
144–DXN–9593, for Boomer Realty, Ltd., routing number 392844–22.
Do so immediately! This is not a joke. It’s a scam, and you’ve been hooked. If the money is not received within ten days, I will send to your wife, Ms. Glenda Gates, a little packet filled with copies of all letters, photos, etc.
John Grisham Page 10
