Presidents' Day

by Seth Margolis

  Chapter 13

  With Independence Hall as a backdrop and his equally imposing wife by his side, Senator Harry Lightstone announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president.

  “The policies of the current administration are the policies of the past,” he shouted into a microphone. “A tax system that unfairly punishes enterprise and savings alike. Schools that are failing our kids, even after four years of steadily increasing budgets. A healthcare system in which universal coverage has led to universal confusion and higher costs for just about everyone. Embryos murdered in the name of scientific research that has led to no so-called cures. In short, freedom run amok. I say to the people of this great country, get ready for the future!” Lightstone nodded and mumbled his gratitude as he waited for the small crowd to quiet down.

  Julian Mellow, watching the live broadcast on a small television in his office, considered the irony of Lightstone announcing his candidacy in front of a building named for independence.

  “We can no longer tolerate an administration that sends tens of billions of dollars to foreign countries when our own infrastructure is literally crumbling around us. I say to the people of America, get ready for the future!”

  Julian sighed as the crowd began chanting “Light-stone, Light-stone, Light-stone.” He hoped Lightstone wasn’t considering “Get ready for the future” as his campaign slogan. And “freedom run amok” might play to the Republican hardliners, but it was a bit too memorable and would not play well to the more temperate public who voted in the general election. Even more disturbing was the isolationist message, which he’d have to nip in the bud before it sank in with voters. He was going to invest far too much, take too many risks, to have Lightstone screw up things this early. All of the Republican candidates were railing against foreign intervention, returning to their isolationist roots after the Iraq debacle. Lightstone would have to take a strong and ostensibly principled stand in favor of opposing repressive regimes. It would set him apart from the other candidates, and while it would initially cause him some problems, eventually, if Julian had his way, it would propel him into the lead.

  It was time to make his influence known. He dialed Marcella Lightstone’s cell phone number and was gratified to see her glance at her purse, right there on the steps of Independence Hall. He couldn’t hear the ringing through the television, but the senator must have: he stumbled over his words and shot Marcella an angry look before regaining his composure. Her voicemail picked up after four rings.

  “Tell the candidate to tone down the isolationist message. In fact, I’d like him to call for a more proactive role in world affairs. If I hear a shift in this direction in his public statements over the next few weeks, you won’t hear from me.”

  He clicked off.

  PART II

  TUESDAY, JANUARY 20

  Chapter 14

  “In the future, use the service entrance. I’ll come down myself and open the door.”

  Senator Harry Lightstone raised himself to his full six foot two inches. “I will come through the front door or not at all.”

  Julian closed the door to his apartment and led the senator into the library. “Plenty of politicians have come here, all of them looking for money. But if you make a habit of it one of the doormen might contact the press. It’s no secret that in buildings like this some of the staff are on the payroll of the tabloids. A presidential candidate repeatedly visiting the apartment of a well-known Wall Street figure would be a big story. They might even send a photographer to stake out the place.”

  “I have no intention of repeatedly visiting this place.”

  “We’ll see. Have a seat. Drink?”

  He saw the senator take in the room before sitting: burled walnut cabinetry, acres of leather-bound books, a genuine Aubusson rug. Lightstone was no stranger to such rooms, thanks to Marcella’s inheritance, but even he did a double take when he spotted the Picasso.

  “Boy with Mandolin,” Julian said. “Picasso’s rose period.”

  “I suppose that makes it more valuable.” Lightstone’s voice was laced with contempt.

  “It certainly made it more expensive.”

  In fact, the Picasso was the most valuable painting he had in the apartment, which also contained a dozen impressionist oils. The real jewels of his collection, of course, at least in his mind, if not on the Sotheby’s auction floor, were the portraits in the private gallery off his office on 57th Street. The Monets, Renoirs, and even the Picasso he thought of as merely decorative. “I offered you a drink.”

  The senator shook his head and sat on the sofa. Julian sat on a wing chair. “Congratulations on Iowa,” he said. Lightstone had come in third, which, given his late entry into the fray, was being described as a victory of sorts. Only in politics could a third-place showing be considered a victory; in Julian’s world, third was a disaster. Still, Lightstone was given virtually no chance of winning the all-important New Hampshire primary. Since meeting in the back of his car the day after Lightstone’s encounter with Danielle Bruneau, Julian had made no effort to contact the senator directly. With New Hampshire looming in just two weeks, that had to change.

  “What is it you want from me? You know I have no hope of winning. There are four other men in the running, at least two of whom have a better chance than I do of getting the nomination. And none of us stands much of a chance of winning the general election.”

  We’ll see, Julian almost said, but thought better of it. True, there was a sense of complacency in the national air. Paul Nessin—bland, almost phlegmatic, a former Midwestern governor—seemed to have adopted a “first, do no harm” policy that played well with the general electorate.

  “This is what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?” Julian asked. “I just accelerated your timetable.”

  Lightstone stood up and crossed the room to the Picasso. He stared at the painting for a long while. The young boy seemed to return the gaze with what Julian thought was a vaguely sardonic look, his half smile inscrutable, eyes narrow and doubting. Had Picasso deliberately painted the boy’s expression that way to mock future admirers of the work, a succession of plutocrats who the artist must have sensed, even in 1905, would bid up the value of the painting to absurd heights? Or had Picasso merely captured what the boy actually looked like? It was a great painting, truly, the only one in the apartment Julian could stand to look at for any length of time.

  “I suppose I knew going in that politics was all about compromise,” Lightstone told Picasso’s boy, as if justifying himself to a young constituent. “I think they even teach you that in Poli Sci 101.” Lightstone turned away from the Picasso. “But I never quite realized just how many compromises there would be, one after another.”

  Beginning, Julian suspected, with a loveless marriage to the astonishingly wealthy Marcella Kollan.

  “I don’t think I’ve made a purely disinterested decision since I first ran for the House. Every issue comes freighted with a quid pro quo.”

  “Don’t tell me you entered politics to change the world.”

  “You’d probably laugh if I said I did.” Julian said nothing. “Yes, I did think I could change the world,” Lightstone said. “It’s true. A government that worked for the people, not against them. A country where the markets, not Washington hacks, determined the course of events. And yet a fairer America, where everyone’s interests were acknowledged and respected. I grew up in the sixties, as you did. Some of my colleagues turned against the ideals of that age; if anything, they became more hardened in their beliefs. But for me, the sixties were about self-expression, individual possibilities. I didn’t share the ideologies of the protesters and hippies, but I caught their idealism, their passion.”

  “Did Marcella share your passion?” He couldn’t quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

  Lightstone moved toward him. Julian could see the conflicting forces inside him, contorting his otherwise handsome if bland face into something tense and throbbing and almos
t ugly: one force urging him to take a swing at Julian, the other urging restraint. Restraint won out, as Julian knew it would. He’d never invest in a loose cannon.

  “It was a different decade for her,” he said in a tight voice.

  “What drew you together, then, if not ideals?” Julian had no interest in the answer, which he already knew, but he anticipated the discomfort the question would cause, and it was important for Lightstone to understand who held power in their relationship. Lightstone seemed about to speak but then didn’t. His face went slack, his shoulders sagged. Julian had succeeded in degrading him a bit, but while he felt a sense of victory he had no taste for it. It was as if he’d answered a deep hunger with bad food. His mind flashed forward nine months, to after the election. Would he feel nourished then?

  “Is something the matter?”

  Julian looked up to find Lightstone standing inches away, looking down his long nose at him. He’d almost forgotten he was there.

  “Yes, everything is fine.”

  “You looked like you were going to be sick.”

  He stood up and felt momentarily dizzy. “I want you to adjust your foreign policy message,” he said when he felt steadier.

  “What?” Lightstone wheezed, imbuing the word with gallons of Wasp indignation.

  “All the candidates are talking an isolationist game, including the president. I think you can make a mark by raising the possibility of a more fully engaged America.”

  “That’s utter nonsense.” More Wasp indignation. “The reason no one’s talking about an activist foreign policy is because the voters have no stomach for it. Not since Iraq, Libya, Syria.”

  “The situation in Kamalia, for example.”

  “What about it?”

  “Laurent Boymond is a monster. Why isn’t anyone speaking out against him?”

  “The world is full of monsters.”

  “And I want you to speak to the voters about this one.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. You want me to make a campaign issue about Kamalia? Do you think there are ten voters in this country who even know where Kamalia is? Let alone care about its tin-pot dictator.”

  “His prisons are overflowing with dissidents who are routinely tortured. Thousands of innocent people have disappeared in the two years since he took power. Illegally took power. He nationalized every major industry and is diverting every cent they produce into his own accounts.”

  “Do you propose that I advocate invading Kamalia?” Lightstone’s lips curled into a smirk.

  “Of course not. I want you to talk about Kamalia as part of an overall policy. Zero tolerance for despots, something like that.”

  “I’ll be laughed out of politics.”

  “You’ll be laughed out of politics if the public sees you and that giantess in a San Francisco hotel room.”

  Lightstone considered him for a moment, his face as red as Picasso’s mandolin boy. “This is about your son,” he said quietly.

  Julian angled around him and headed for the door. “It’s late. You know what you have to do.”

  “Jesus Christ, I get it now. This is about your son. He married that black model. She was from Kamalia, wasn’t she? And he was killed there. I’d forgotten that.”

  “I hadn’t.”

  “My God, this whole thing, that…that person in San Francisco…announcing my candidacy…it’s all about him?”

  “What it’s about is getting you elected.”

  “Julian, none of this will bring your son back. You do understand that?”

  His sympathetic tone brought Julian to the point of retching.

  “Go home to your wife.”

  “I don’t have a prayer of getting the nomination, don’t you see that? And it wouldn’t matter anyway, because nothing I do will make a difference to your son.”

  “You can let yourself out. And remember to use the service entrance next time.”

  Julian left the senator in the library. As he crossed the long front hallway, or gallery, as it was invariably called in real estate listings, he saw Caroline standing just outside the dining room. She looked stricken and disapproving.

  “Don’t do this,” she hissed. “You’ll bring us down. You’ll destroy everything.”

  “Nothing will be destroyed,” he muttered without stopping to look at her. He walked directly to their bedroom, then to his bathroom, where he closed the door behind him. He leaned against the sink and stared at the mirror.

  “Matthew,” he whispered, for it was his son’s face he most often saw when he looked in the mirror, as much as he saw his own. And in the image he saw reflected back at him, young and idealistic and bright with hope and love—all the qualities he’d lost, if he’d ever really had them—he found all the encouragement he needed for the greatest, grandest, most audacious transaction of his long and illustrious career.

  Chapter 15

  Billy Sandifer threw his toolkit over the chain-link fence that “protected” the hangar area of the Barrie, Maine, airport, and then climbed over it. There were no commercial flights into Barrie, and most of the small planes that used the single runway were worth less than a two-year-old SUV, and less useful. Billy had flown commercial to Augusta from LaGuardia, rented a car, and driven about an hour south to Barrie. It was dark when he landed, and he didn’t see many lights on the side of the road as he drove, underscoring the sense that he had traveled to the end of the earth.

  He quickly found what he was looking for, the Beech King Air 200, a twin-engine turboprop. Parked next to a dozen or so two-seaters, the Beech looked like a large bird surrounded by bugs. He zigzagged toward it, hiding behind the smaller planes in case anyone was there. The hangar was closed.

  He had to crouch to fit under the Beech. At the back of the plane he found what he was looking for: a small metal inspection plate. He took a screwdriver from the toolkit and unfastened the four screws that secured the plate. He shone his flashlight into the opening and made out the stainless steel cable that ran through the fuselage, connecting the elevator control system to the flight deck.

  He shifted the flashlight until he found the bellcrank that connected the cable to the elevator controls. A guy at Williston named Max had been a pilot for the Medellín drug cartel, ferrying coke from Colombia to makeshift airstrips in Florida until he’d been forced by bad weather to land on Key West, where DEA agents had taken him into custody. Drug running was the least of his offenses, it turned out; Max was wanted for a drug-related murder rap in Brooklyn. When Billy had met him he was six years into a life sentence without parole. They’d had many angry discussions about the evils of global corporations and the country’s unfair drug laws. Lifers always appreciated visitors, the more unexpected the better. Max had been very happy to see Billy last week and had enthusiastically suggested several ways to sabotage a small plane when Billy told him about the “corporate pig in Texas” whose unspecified company plane needed to go down. Billy had liked the elevator controls angle the best, since, unlike fucking with the electronic controls, it didn’t involve breaking into the plane itself. Max had even sketched the bellcrank mechanism for him.

  He found the point where the bellcrank was attached to the cable with a castellated nut secured by a cotter pin. He used a pair of pliers to pull out the cotter pin and then loosened the nut almost to the end of the bellcrank. It would hold during takeoff, but the vibration of the plane in flight would quickly cause it to drop off entirely, at which point the pilot would be unable to control the pitch of the plane. He quickly resecured the inspection plate, switched off the flashlight, and moved out from under the Beech. Before climbing over the fence he turned back to look at the plane. It appeared to glow in the faint moonlight, giving off a solid, almost arrogant sense of security. By tomorrow it would be scattered in pieces across the White Mountains.

  WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 21

  Chapter 16

  Julian Mellow was watching the Knicks on television when news of the crash came through on the
bottom-of-the-screen crawl. Caroline was next to him on the bed, focused on Interpersonal Foundations of Psychopathology, typical bedtime reading for her. He switched over to CNN and saw live footage of smoke spiraling up from the wreckage of a plane. It seemed to have lodged on the side of a forested hill. The anchor sounded appropriately somber.

  “Preliminary reports from the Barrie Airport, where the Beech King Air jet took off only minutes before the crash, indicate that there were four people on the plane, including one pilot. We emphasize that these are preliminary reports. While we can confirm at this point the identity of the passengers on the plane, we cannot confirm that anyone has died, although it doesn’t appear from this vantage point that there are any survivors. There are at least two or three ambulances standing by, but as of now they haven’t left the scene.”

  “Would you mind turning it down, Julian?” Caroline said without looking up from her book. He ignored her and focused on the television, which continued to broadcast a live feed of the crash site, with voiceover commentary from a CNN anchor.

  “One thing is clear. If Senator Moore was on the plane, then this crash is both a personal tragedy for Charles Moore and his family and a game-changing disaster for the Republican Party. Senator Moore was widely regarded as the frontrunner for the nomination, the man with the best chance of unseating Paul Nessin.”

  Caroline laid aside her book. “Senator Charles Moore?”

  He nodded and they watched the broadcast in silence. Sometime after midnight CNN confirmed that the senator had been one of the four people on the plane, and that there were no survivors. Julian used the remote to turn off the television. He’d been wondering how this moment would feel. He closed his eyes and focused inward, which he rarely did, trying to detect something that felt like remorse or guilt or perhaps even fear. He found none of it. True, there was no trace of exultation, either. Just the gratifying sense that things were progressing according to plan, not unlike the feeling of bland satisfaction he felt in recent years when a deal went as planned—documents filed on time, decisions made at appropriate points, funds transferred smoothly into the proper accounts.