Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 1

by Joseph Flynn

  “Tell me who you want,” Teddy said.

  Welborn said, “His name is Linley Boland, but I’m sure he didn’t use that name with you. Here’s a recent booking photo of him; he made the mistake of trying to steal my car.”

  “He was arrested, and he made bail?” Teddy asked.

  “Guy not only speaks English, he knows how the courts work,” Greer said with a sneer.

  Teddy ignored him and looked at the mug shot Welborn had handed him.

  He wanted with all his heart to deny knowing the man, but he didn’t even have to look at Welborn to know he had no choice in the matter. He bobbed his head.

  “Yes, I know this man but not by the name you say.”

  “What name did he use?” Welborn asked.

  Teddy didn’t want to be caught in another lie so he shrugged. “I do not remember.”

  Welborn sighed. He glanced at the Baltimore detectives.

  “You guys want to hook him up? I forgot my cuffs.”

  Beekman smiled and reached for his handcuffs.

  “Wait, wait! I know something about him.”

  “What’s that?” Welborn asked.

  “I have the number of his bank account. In Cayman Islands.”

  Teddy took a slip of paper out of a pocket and handed it to Welborn.

  “Ain’t that nice?” Greer asked. “He had it on him, ready to go.”

  Welborn said, “Why do you have this information?”

  “I owed him money. He say pay to this number.”

  “Why did you owe him money?”

  Teddy saw the trap immediately and said, “I forget.”

  “How much money did you send to this account number?”

  “I forget.”

  Welborn asked Greer and Beekman, “You think you could babysit Mr. Spaneas while I check out this bank?”

  “Happy to,” Greer said.

  “You arresting me?” Teddy asked, indignant. “But you say —”

  Welborn said, “Did I? I lied. I can do that, but you can’t.”

  Beekman smiled and told Teddy, “Nobody ever said life was fair.”

  Camp David — Catoctin Mountains, Maryland

  The pugil stick was a military training tool conceived in the 1940s. The Marines were the first branch of the U.S. military to use them. The stick had a cylindrical pad at each end. It was used to train recruits how to use bayonets and rifles as close-quarters weapons. That was, to slash, stab and club the enemy. The pad at one end was marked to represent the bayonet; the other was marked to represent the butt of the rifle.

  In training exercises, protective gear was worn. Helmets protected combatants against concussions and brain injuries. Torso padding helped to ward off broken ribs, punctured lungs and damage to other vital organs. Plastic cups shielded the genitals.

  When Captain Wolford snatched a pugil stick off the ground and charged McGill, neither of them had a helmet or torso padding on; both had thought to wear a cup. Wolford’s clear intent was to ram one end of his stick into McGill’s midsection.

  Knock him on his ass, give him a grin and help him back up to his feet.

  Show him a civilian should never mess with a Marine.

  Wolford was cat quick, but he wasn’t the quickest cat in the fight. McGill had learned through stinging practice with Uncle Ed that, given the opportunity, it was always better to evade than parry. He sidestepped the captain’s lunge.

  His shillelagh also proved a far more agile weapon than a pugil stick. Starting with an overhand, two-hand grip on the Irish fighting stick, McGill stepped to his right, out of the line of Wolford’s charge. To counterattack, he used his left hand to flick the shillelagh in an arc, moving it like a wiper blade clearing rain from a windshield.

  The stick’s arc ended on the meat of Wolford’s left forearm. Judging by the captain’s bellow, it stung pretty good. McGill wasn’t done with the man, however. He assumed that a Marine had a lot of fiber in his diet. That and the mental toughness required to be an elite combat troop. So he paid Wolford the compliment of sliding behind him and using the knobbed end of his stick to deliver a moderate blow to the calf of his right leg.

  Wolford collapsed with a thud, and McGill no longer paid him any attention.

  Vasquez, he remembered, had been described as a dirty fighter, and with Wolford out of the way he was the next man up. McGill didn’t expect the first sergeant would be polite enough to ask if he was ready.

  He wasn’t and his blood must have been up from seeing his superior officer disposed of so quickly. He swung his pugil stick at McGill’s head like he was a lumberjack about to plant his ax in a tree stump. Damn guy might have killed McGill if he’d landed that blow, but he didn’t.

  With both hands back on his shillelagh, McGill raised a roof over his head just in time; his stick formed a horizontal barricade to Vasquez’s vertical angle of attack. McGill followed through by swiveling his hips to the left and sliding his shillelagh down the shaft of Vasquez’s pugil stick, raking the fingers of the first sergeant’s left hand.

  Vasquez managed to hold on to his weapon with his right hand, but was vulnerable for that moment. McGill might have stepped back and let the Marine recognize the fight was over for him, but his blood was up now, too. What the hell had the guy been thinking, coming at his head like that? He wanted to make a name for himself? Say he was sorry afterward, things just got out of hand. But, hey, that McGill guy, he promised there’d be no courts martial.

  Too bad about him dying and all.

  McGill flicked his fighting stick in another arc.

  The knobbed end smashed Vasquez’s right hand, breaking bones.

  The first sergeant howled, dropped the pugil stick and fell to his knees.

  Sonofabitch, McGill thought, he was going to have some explaining to do now.

  Probably a good thing they hadn’t gotten to the knife fighting.

  Aspen Lodge — Camp David

  Patti Grant was going stir crazy. Sure, she still got her daily briefing. She was keeping up with the madness that raged throughout the world. Seen through the eyes of the country’s intelligence agencies, the planet was a horrific place, Guernica in the round.

  For any president who hadn’t run to become a figurehead, keeping the country safe and helping it to prosper in an equitable way wasn’t just a job, it was a compulsion. Otherwise there would have been no reason to put up with the endless bullshit of electoral politics. Patti, as compulsive as anyone who’d ever occupied the Oval Office, was determined to take one last plunge into that fetid maelstrom, if her suddenly uncertain heart allowed it.

  Closing her eyes, holding still and letting her muscles relax, she listened for any untrue beat, but the rhythm of the muscle that kept her alive was steady, strong and seemingly effortless. She saw no reason why it shouldn’t be. She’d never done drugs. Never smoked. Consumed alcohol only in moderation. Had exercised with regularity since she was introduced to hopscotch.

  So where the hell had the damn mitral valve prolapse come from?

  There was no family history of the problem.

  More important, was there anything more than the tiniest chance it would come back?

  God, she hoped not. She had to get back to work. Even if the voters, in their infinite wisdom, decided not to reelect her, she’d have to find something to do. Maybe go to work with Clare Tracy and raise money to get smart, progressive women launched into political careers. Wouldn’t that be a hoot for Jim, his wife and his old girlfriend working together?

  The two of them looking more alike than either of them would care to admit.

  Patti heard a floorboard creak. Somehow the administrator of the General Services Administration had learned of the telltale board and had inquired of the White House when a convenient time to fix it would be. Patti’s reply had been, “After I leave office.”

  So many people tried so hard to make everything perfect for the president, Patti felt, that it could really get on your nerves.

  Having hea
rd the creak, she opened her eyes and saw Kenny McGill.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know you were sleeping, Patti.”

  She smiled and said, “I wasn’t sleeping. I was looking at the world with my eyes closed.”

  Kenny grinned. “That’s cool. Sounds better than saying you were just resting them.”

  “I have to wait another five years before I’ll be old enough to say that.”

  She patted a cushion on the sofa, inviting Kenny to sit with her. She loved Jim’s children with all her heart, Kenny more than ever, but she was always careful not to overstep the line in her head that said certain behavior with them was inappropriate. Being physically affectionate in public, for example.

  Even a kiss on the cheek might be televised and disconcert Carolyn.

  Now, in private with Kenny, she felt she’d earned the right to give his hand a squeeze.

  “You’re looking good, kiddo,” Patti said.

  Kenny stroked his scalp. “Yeah, if you like fuzzy cue balls, I guess.”

  Patti laid a chaste kiss on the top of his head.

  “That fuzz is going to grow out, and when it does Liesl Eberhardt will swoon.”

  Kenny shared a sly smile. “I was just Skyping with her, keeping up on things at home and …” He looked around, as if spies might be lurking. “Liesl asked me if I’ll be home in time to take her to our school’s Christmas dance.”

  “Does that work with your recovery program?” Patti asked.

  “I should be all right to travel before the dance.”

  “Timing is everything. Well, almost. Sometimes it helps to have a friend who can guarantee you a seat on an airplane.”

  Kenny’s eyes got big. “Your plane?”

  “Well, maybe your father’s.”

  That was an even bigger surprise. “Dad has a plane?”

  “I can usually find one for him when he needs one.”

  “That is so cool.”

  “Being president has its moments, but it has more headaches.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’d tell you but it’d make your hair fall out.”

  Kenny recoiled in mock horror and then laughed.

  Patti took his hand again and kissed it. He leaned in and kissed her cheek.

  “I want to tell you how grateful I am,” Kenny said, “but I don’t know the words. I’m going to find them someday and then you’ll know.”

  “I think I have an idea, but I’ll wait patiently.”

  Out of the blue, Kenny asked, “You think Liesl is being nice to me just out of … not pity since I’m getting better, but sympathy?”

  Patti shook her head. “Not a chance. I think it’s more like that old song lyric: You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. Liesl didn’t lose you but I’m sure she’s smart enough to see what might have been. Now, she’s glad to have a second chance.”

  Kenny nodded; he could accept that.

  “You know, Patti, I don’t worry about myself anymore. The only thing that scares me these days is the thought that something bad might happen to someone I love.”

  Patti nodded. “That’s a threshold we all cross. You got to it early.”

  Kenny put his arms around Patti and whispered to her, “I love you.”

  Hadn’t taken him any time at all to find the right words.

  Fifth Avenue — Midtown Manhattan

  Ellie Booker, on her way to a meeting with her new literary agent and a prospective publisher for her book, told the figure she felt looming up behind her, “I’ve got a knife.”

  Be damn awkward if the guy turned out to be a cop, she thought.

  She needn’t have worried.

  Hugh Collier told her, “And I have a rapier-like wit.”

  Ellie looked at him as he stepped up alongside her, matching her pace.

  “What do you want?”

  “Shouldn’t there have been an ‘asshole’ at the end of that question?”

  “Goes without saying,” Ellie told him.

  “True enough. To answer your question, I’ve come to ask how Uncle and I might beg your forgiveness.”

  “You can’t. Not now, not ever.”

  “Very well. If forgiveness is off the table, how might we buy the story of what happened at Salvation’s Path? Uncle said to offer you double the sum any other publisher might offer. Having seen how deeply we’ve hurt you —”

  Ellie glared at him. “Pricks like you and your uncle can’t hurt me. If you knew how I’d been worked over …” No, fuck that, she decided. She wasn’t going to tell him about her childhood. If she did, Sir Edbert would make a book out of that. She told Hugh, “You sent me into trouble and left me there. There’s no forgiving that. There’s no working with anyone who betrays me.”

  If I had any decency, Hugh thought, I wouldn’t be bothering this woman. But decency was an alien concept to him and he asked Ellie, “Might it salve your feelings if I said we’d treble any offer you receive elsewhere?”

  Ellie stopped and turned to face Hugh.

  “Here’s what I’d like you to do. Take a left at the next corner. Head for the East River. Along the way, grab the two biggest shit bags you can find. Tuck one under each arm and when you come to the river jump in. See if you can walk along the bottom all the way to Queens. If you don’t make it, I’ll write your eulogy. How’s that?”

  Hugh sighed. “I’ll have to ask Uncle if I can quadruple any other offer.”

  With a shrug he walked off. Ellie watched him go. He crossed to the west side of the street and then continued to head south along Fifth Avenue. Giving him a decent lead, Ellie set off to get to her meeting. After yapping with Hugh, she had to pick up her pace to make it to her meeting on time.

  She hadn’t gone a quarter-block when she heard someone else coming up from behind.

  This guy was moving fast.

  Christ, she thought, had Hugh flashed a sign to someone?

  The broad won’t play ball, dump her in the river.

  She wouldn’t put it past Hugh or Sir Edbert.

  She whirled and proved she did, indeed, have a knife. Not a switchblade. That would have caused her too much grief if a cop caught her with one. But the blade of her knife did release with just a flick of the wrist.

  Anywhere else, someone rushing at a woman who pulled a knife might jump back. Not in New York City. Ellie found herself looking at someone who looked like he’d been born at the confluence of the Tigris and the Euphrates. He grinned at her knife.

  Told her, “I got one just like that, lady. Only mine’s twice as big.”

  Ellie was about to say, Yeah, but it’s not in your hand.

  But then the guy asked, “You Ellie Booker?”

  Like a rube, she admitted she was.

  The guy said, “You’ve been served.”

  And he impaled a subpoena on the blade of her knife.

  Broadening his smile, he said, “Have a nice day, lady.”

  Ellie turned to watch him go.

  And saw Hugh Collier had doubled back on the other side of Fifth Avenue.

  He’d seen the whole thing.

  Camp David — Catoctin Mountains, Maryland

  McGill peeked through a living room window as he arrived at Aspen Lodge and saw Kenny embrace Patti and saw her hug him back. Even as someone close to both of them, he wasn’t about to interrupt that moment. A Secret Service Agent posted outside the front door watched McGill do his Peeping Tom number, but didn’t say anything.

  Taking note of the guy, McGill gave a nod and got one back.

  He stepped away from the building wondering if the word had spread to the rest of the presidential security detail that he’d fired Deke and told Elspeth to take a hike. Sure it had, he thought. You couldn’t bottle up that kind of news. Not in Washington. Never at the White House. He’d probably caused no small amount of resentment among the troops.

  Might even have affected their willingness to die for him.

  Oh, well, he got along without
them before he’d met them.

  Have to get along without them now.

  He headed off for a walk in the woods. Maybe he could bop a bear with his shillelagh. Drag its carcass back and have someone make a rug out of it. Outrage the environmentalists as well as the guys with the Uzis.

  He chuckled at the idea. Hoped he’d be able to maintain his sense of humor in the coming days. He had the feeling he was going to need it. What he needed even more, though, was a long talk with —

  “That some kinda club you got there, pal? You got a permit for it?” The voice was pure Chicago cop. Female variety.

  McGill turned with a bright smile on his face.

  “Sweetie! I was just thinking about you.”

  “Everybody tells me that, so it must be true.”

  She stepped forward and extended her left hand.

  McGill took it, examined her ring and kissed her cheek.

  “It’s beautiful. I’m very happy for you, Margaret.”

  “Did you ever think you’d see the day?”

  McGill nodded, “Yes, I did. You have too much heart to keep it to yourself.”

  “That’s the way it works, huh?”

  “If it’s the real thing.”

  Sweetie bobbed her head. “It’s real. So what are you doing out here, playing Mountain Man McGill?”

  “Problem is, I haven’t been playing well with others. Thought I’d stay out of people’s way for a while. But you managed to find me.”

  “The special agent on the door at Aspen pointed me in the right direction. So other than firing your minions what misdeeds have you accumulated?”

  McGill told her about his sparring misadventure.

  “You’re beating up on Marines now?” Sweetie asked. “Don’t you know service people are very popular?”

  “I respect them, too, but not to the point of letting one crack my skull.”

  “The guy was really trying to do that?”

  “My widow and fatherless children would be weeping right now. You’d be hunting the guy down.”