Wire the money, and I’ll simply go away.
Love, Ricky
With time, Vann found the Dallas I-635 loop, and before long he was on the I-820 loop around Fort Worth, then back to Dallas, driving at exactly fifty-five, in the right-hand lane, oblivious to the traffic stacked up behind him. If crying would help, then he would’ve certainly had a good one. He had no qualms about weeping, especially in the privacy of his Jaguar.
But he was too angry to cry, too bitter to be wounded. And he was too frightened to waste time yearning for someone who did not exist. Action was needed—quick, decisive, secretive.
Heartache, though, overcame him, and he finally pulled onto the shoulder and parked with the engine running. All those wonderful dreams of Ricky, those countless hours staring at his handsome face with his crooked little smile, and reading his letters—sad, funny, desperate, hopeful—how could so many emotions be conveyed with the written word? He’d practically memorized the letters.
And he was just a boy, so young and virile, yet lonely and in need of mature companionship. The Ricky he’d come to love needed the loving embrace of an older man, and Curtis/Vann had been making plans for months. The ploy of a diamond show in Orlando while his wife was in El Paso at her sister’s. He’d sweated the details and left no tracks.
He did, finally, cry. Poor Vann shed tears without shame or embarrassment. No one could see him; the other cars were flying past at eighty miles per hour.
He vowed revenge, like any jilted lover. He’d track down this beast, this monster who’d posed as Ricky and broken his heart.
When the sobbing began to subside, he thought of his wife and family and that helped greatly in drying up the tears. She’d get all six stores and the $2 million and the new house with separate bedrooms, and he would get nothing but ridicule and scorn and gossip in a town that loved it so. His children would follow the money, and for the rest of their lives his grandchildren would hear the whispers about their grandfather.
Back in the right lane at fifty-five, back through Mesquite for the second time, reading the letter again as eighteen-wheelers roared past.
There was no one to call, no banker he could trust to check out the account in the Bahamas, no lawyer to run to for advice, no friend to hear his sorry tale.
For a man who’d carefully lived a double life, the money would not be insurmountable. His wife watched every dime, both at home and at the stores, and for that reason Vann had long since mastered the scheme of hiding money. He did it with gems, rubies and pearls and sometimes small diamonds he placed aside and later sold to other dealers for cash. It was common in the business. He had boxes of cash—shoe boxes neatly stacked in a fireproof safe in a mini-storage out in Plano. Post-divorce cash. Cash for the afterlife when he and Ricky would sail the world and spend it all in one endless voyage.
“Sonofabitch!” he said through gritted teeth. And again and again.
Why not write this con man and plead poverty? Or threaten to expose his little extortion scheme? Why not fight back?
Because the sonofabitch knew exactly what he was doing. He’d tracked Vann well enough to learn his real name, and the name of his wife. He knew Vann had the money.
He pulled into his driveway and there was Glenda sweeping the sidewalk. “Where have you been, honey?” she asked pleasantly.
“Running errands,” he said with a smile.
“Took a long time,” she said, still sweeping.
He was so sick of it. She timed his movements! For thirty years he’d been under her thumb, with a stopwatch clicking in the palm of her hand.
He pecked her on the cheek out of habit, then went to the basement where he locked a door and began to cry again. The house was his prison (with a mortgage of $7,800 a month, it certainly felt like it). She was the guard, the keeper of the keys. His sole means of escape had just collapsed, replaced by a cold-blooded extortionist.
TWELVE
EIGHTY COFFINS required a lot of space. They were laid in perfect rows, all neatly wrapped in red, white, and blue, all the same length and width. They’d arrived thirty minutes earlier aboard an Air Force cargo plane, and were removed with great pomp and ceremony. Almost a thousand friends and relatives sat on folding chairs, on the concrete floor of the hangar, and stared in shock at the sea of flags arranged before them. They were outnumbered only by the shaggy dogs, all quarantined behind barricades and military police.
Even for a country well accustomed to foreign policy boondoggles, it was an impressive body count. Eighty Americans, eight Brits, eight Germans—no French because they’d been boycotting Western diplomatic functions in Cairo. Why were eighty Americans still in the embassy after 10 P.M.? That was the question of the hour, and so far no good answer had surfaced. So many of those who made such decisions were now lying in their coffins. The best theory buzzing around D.C. was that the caterer had been late, and the band even later.
But the terrorists had proved all too well that they would strike at any hour, so what difference did it make how late the ambassador and his wife and their staff and colleagues and guests wanted to party?
The second great question of the hour was just exactly why did we have eighty people in our embassy in Cairo to begin with? The State Department had yet to acknowledge the question.
After some mournful music from an Air Force band, the President spoke. His voice broke and he managed to summon a tear or two, but after eight years of such theatrics the act had worn thin. He’d already promised revenge many times, so he dwelt on comfort and sacrifice and the promise of a better life in the hereafter.
The Secretary of State called the names of the dead, a morbid recitation designed to capture the gravity of the moment. The sobbing increased. Then some more music. The longest speech was delivered by the Vice President, fresh from the campaign trail and filled with a newly discovered commitment to eradicate terrorism from the face of the earth. Though he’d never worn a military uniform, he seemed eager to start tossing grenades.
Lake had them all on the run.
LAKE WATCHED the grim ceremony while flying from Tucson to Detroit, late for another round of interviews. On board was his pollster, a newly acquired magician who now traveled with him. While Lake and his staff watched the news, the pollster worked feverishly at the small conference table upon which he had two laptops, three phones, and more printouts than any ten people could digest.
The Arizona and Michigan primaries were three days away, and Lake’s numbers were climbing, especially in his home state, where he was in a dead heat with the long-established front-runner, Governor Tarry of Indiana. In Michigan, Lake was ten points down, but people were listening. The fiasco in Cairo was working beautifully in his favor.
Governor Tarry was suddenly scrambling for money. Aaron Lake was not. It was coming in faster than he could spend it.
When the Vice President finally finished, Lake left the screen and returned to his leather swivel recliner and picked up a newspaper. A staff member brought him coffee, which he sipped while watching the flat-lands of Kansas eight miles below him. Another staff member handed him a message—one that was supposed to require an urgent call from the candidate. Lake glanced around the plane, and counted thirteen people, pilots not included.
For a private man who still missed his wife, Lake was not adjusting well to the complete lack of privacy. He moved with a group, every half hour slotted by someone, every action coordinated by a committee, every interview preceded by written guesses about the questions and suggested responses. He got six hours each night alone, in his hotel room, and damned if the Secret Service wouldn’t sleep on the floor if he’d allow it. Because of the fatigue, he slept like an infant. His only true moments of quiet reflection occurred in the bathroom, either in the shower or on the toilet.
But he wasn’t kidding himself. He, Aaron Lake, quiet congressman from Arizona, had become an overnight sensation. He was charging while the rest were faltering. Big money was aimed at him. The press followed l
ike bloodhounds. His words got repeated. He had very powerful friends, and as the pieces were falling in place the nomination looked realistic. He hadn’t dreamed of such things a month earlier.
Lake was savoring the moment. The campaign was madness, but he could control the tempo of the job itself. Reagan was a nine-to-five President, and he’d been far more effective than Carter, an avid workaholic. Just get to the White House, he told himself over and over, suffer these fools, gut it through the primaries, endure with a smile and a quick wit, and one day very soon he’d sit in the Oval Office, alone, with the world at his feet.
And he would have his privacy.
TEDDY SAT with York in his bunker, watching the live scene from Andrews Air Force Base. He preferred York’s company when things were rough. The accusations had been brutal. Scapegoats were in demand, and many of the idiots chasing the cameras blamed the CIA because that’s who they always blamed.
If they only knew.
He’d finally told York of Lufkin’s warnings, and York understood completely. Unfortunately, they’d been through this before. When you police the world you lose a lot of cops, and Teddy and York had shared many sad moments watching the flag-covered coffins roll off the C-130’s, evidence of another debacle abroad. The Lake campaign would be Teddy’s final effort at saving American lives.
Failure seemed unlikely. D-PAC had collected more than $20 million in two weeks, and was in the process of hauling the money around Washington. Twenty-one congressmen had been recruited for Lake endorsements, at a total cost of $6 million. But the biggest prize so far was Senator Britt, the ex-candidate, the father of a little Thai boy. When he abandoned his quest for the White House he owed close to $4 million, with no viable plan to cover his deficit. Money tends not to follow those who pack up and go home. Elaine Tyner, the lawyer running D-PAC, met with Senator Britt. It took her less than an hour to cut the deal. D-PAC would pay off all his campaign debts, over a three-year period, and he would make a noisy endorsement of Aaron Lake.
“Did we have a projection of casualties?” York asked.
After a while Teddy said, “No.”
Their conversations were never hurried.
“Why so many?”
“Lots of booze. Happens all the time in the Arab countries. Different culture, life is dull, so when our diplomats throw a party, they throw a good one. Many of the dead were quite drunk.”
Minutes passed. “Where’s Yidal?” asked York.
“Right now he’s in Iraq. Yesterday, Tunisia.”
“We really should stop him.”
“We will, next year. It’ll be a great moment for President Lake.”
TWELVE OF THE SIXTEEN congressmen endorsing Lake wore blue shirts, a fact that was not lost on Elaine Tyner. She counted such things. When a D.C. politician got near a camera, odds were he’d put on his best blue cotton shirt. The other four wore white.
She arranged them before the reporters in a ballroom of the Willard Hotel. The senior member, Representative Thurman of Florida, opened things up by welcoming the press to this very important occasion. Working from prepared notes, he offered his opinions on the current state of world events, commented on things in Cairo and China and Russia, and said that the world was a lot more dangerous than it looked. He rattled off the usual statistics about our reduced military. Then he launched into a long soliloquy about his close friend Aaron Lake, a man he’d served with for ten years and whom he knew better than most. Lake was a man with a message, one we didn’t particularly want to hear, but a very important one nonetheless.
Thurman was breaking ranks with Governor Tarry, and though he did so with great reluctance and no small feeling of betrayal, he had become convinced through painful soul-searching that Aaron Lake was needed for the safety of our nation. What Thurman didn’t say was that a recent poll showed Lake becoming very popular back in Tampa-St. Pete.
The mike was then passed to a congressman from California. He covered no new territory, but rambled for ten minutes anyway. In his district north of San Diego were forty-five thousand defense and aerospace workers, and all of them, it seemed, had written or called. He’d been an easy convert; the pressure from home plus $250,000 from Ms. Tyner and D-PAC, and he had his marching orders.
When the questions started, the sixteen bunched together in a tight little pack, all anxious to answer and say something, all afraid their faces might not get wedged into the picture.
Though there were no committee chairmen, the group was not unimpressive. They managed to convey the image that Aaron Lake was a legitimate candidate, a man they knew and trusted. A man the nation needed. A man who could be elected.
The event was well staged and well covered, and instantly made news. Elaine Tyner would trot out five more the following day, then save Senator Britt for the day before big Super Tuesday.
THE LETTER in Ned’s glove box was from Percy, young Percy in rehab who got his mail through Laurel Ridge, Post Office Box 4585, Atlantic Beach, FL 32233.
Ned was in Atlantic Beach, had been for two days, with the letter and with the determination to track down young Percy because he smelled a hoax. He had nothing better to do. He was retired with plenty of money, no family to speak of, and besides, it was snowing in Cincinnati. He had a room at the Sea Turtle Inn, on the beach, and at night he hit the bars along Atlantic Boulevard. He’d found two excellent restaurants, crowded little places with lots of young pretty girls and boys. He’d discovered Pete’s Bar and Grill a block away, and for the last two nights he’d staggered from the place, drunk on cold drafts. The Sea Turtle was just around the corner.
During the day Ned watched the post office, a modern brick and glass government job on First Street, parallel to the beach. A small, windowless box midway from the floor, 4585 was on a wall with eighty others, in an area of medium traffic. Ned had inspected the box, tried to open it with keys and wire, and had even asked questions at the front desk. The postal workers had been most unhelpful. Before leaving the first day, he had stuck a two-inch strand of thin black thread to the bottom of the box’s door. It was imperceptible to anyone else, but Ned would know if the mail was checked.
He had a letter in there, in a bright red envelope, one he’d mailed three days earlier from Cincinnati, then raced south. In it he’d sent Percy a check for $1,000, money the boy needed for a set of artist’s supplies. In an earlier letter, Ned had revealed that he had once owned a modern art gallery in Greenwich Village. It was a lie, he had not, but he doubted everything Percy said too.
Ned had been suspicious from the beginning. Before he answered the solicitation, he had tried to verify Laurel Ridge, the fancy detox unit supposedly holding Percy. There was a telephone, a private number he’d been unable to pry out of directory assistance. There was no street address. Percy had explained in his first letter that the place was top-secret because many of its patients were high-powered corporate executives and top-level government officials, all of whom had, in one way or another, succumbed to chemicals. It sounded good. The boy had a way with words.
And a very pretty face. That’s why Ned kept writing. The photo was something he admired every day.
The request for money had caught him by surprise, and since he was bored he decided to make the drive to Jacksonville.
From his spot in the parking lot, low behind the steering wheel of his car, with his back to First Street, he could watch the wall of boxes and the postal customers as they came and went. It was a long shot, but what the hell. He used a small pair of foldable binoculars, and on occasion caught a stare from someone walking by. The task grew monotonous after two days, but as the time passed he became more and more convinced that his letter would be retrieved. Surely someone checked the box at least once every three days. A rehab clinic with patients would get plenty of mail, wouldn’t it? Or was it simply a front for a con man who dropped by once a week to check his traps?
The con man showed up late in the afternoon of the third day. He parked a Beetle next to Ned, then am
bled into the post office. He wore wrinkled khakis, white shirt, straw hat, bow tie, and had the disheveled air of a would-be beach Bohemian.
Trevor had enjoyed a long midday break at Pete’s, then slept off his liquid lunch with an hour nap at his desk, and was just stirring about, making his rounds. He put the key in Box 4585 and removed a handful of correspondence, most of it junk mail, which he threw away as he flipped through the letters on his way out of the building.
Ned watched every move. After three days of tedium, he was thrilled that his surveillance had paid off. He followed the Beetle, and when it parked and the driver walked into a small, run-down law office, Ned drove away, scratching his temple, repeating out loud, “A lawyer?”
He kept driving, down Highway A1A, along the shore, away from the sprawl of Jacksonville, south through Vilano Beach and Crescent Beach and Beverly Beach and Flagler Beach and finally to a Holiday Inn outside Port Orange. He went to the bar before he went to his room.
It wasn’t the first scam he’d flirted with. In fact, it was the second. He’d sniffed the other one out too before any damage was done. Over his third martini he swore it would be his last.
THIRTEEN
THE DAY BEFORE the Arizona and Michigan primaries, the Lake campaign unleashed a media blitz, the likes of which had never been seen before in presidential politics. For eighteen hours, the two states were bombarded with one ad after another. Some were fifteen seconds, little softies with not much more than his handsome face and the promises of decisive leadership and a safer world. Others were one-minute documentaries on the dangers of the post–cold war. Still others were macho, in-your-face promises to the terrorists of the world—kill people simply because they are Americans, and you will pay a very dear price. Cairo was still very fresh, and the assurances hit their mark.
The ads were bold, put together by high-powered consultants, and the only downside was oversaturation. But Lake was too new to the scene to bore anyone, not now anyway. His campaign spent $10 million on television in the two states, a staggering amount.
John Grisham Page 11
