The Incumbent

by Brian McGrory

  "Good," she said. "I'll see you there." She hesitated on the other end, then added, "Jack, can we keep this meeting confidential?"

  "My favorite kind of meeting," I said.

  I could see Kristen already standing on the designated corner from half a block away. Baker lay on the ground beside her, obviously exhausted by another full day of being a dog. He saw or sensed me from half a block away and pulled his face up off the curb, staring intently in my direction. I called his name softly, and he scrambled to his feet, then ran low and fast toward me, his tail wagging hard all along the way. When he got to me, he urgently ran his coarse tongue over my face in a show of thanks.

  "Ahh, a boy and his dog," Kristen said as she came upon our little reunion. "How touching."

  I said, "You saved me again. I can't tell you how much I appreciate this."

  I handed her a check, which she reluctantly accepted without unfolding.

  "I have a hunch I may have to fly out of here again soon on very short notice. Are you around?"

  "I'm always around," she said, hesitated, then added, "Is everything all right in the house? You getting used to it again? It seems so, well, bare in there."

  "I'm getting used to it," I said. "I suppose I should get used to it, seeing it is my life."

  There was silence for a moment, the two of us just standing on a lamplit street corner. After a while, she said, "I miss Katherine."

  That thought hung there in the crisp autumn air, adorned only by the gentle rustle of dead leaves and the faraway sound of a car door slamming shut. Kristen had only gotten to know Katherine for a short time. It was all so different then. Katherine and I were squeezing in our last spurts of relaxation before the onslaught of parenthood, flying to Rome for a weekend, to a wedding of a friend in St. John, up to Boston for a party in our honor with family and friends. There seemed to be a constant buzz in our lives, the air of expectation always present, the expectation being that life would always get better, that the very best days still lay ahead.

  Kristen may not have known my wife very well, but she knew her well enough, and certainly she saw all this. When she said she missed her, I knew she was sincere.

  "I do too," I replied.

  We were quiet again for a moment. She said, in a tone of voice that was different, "I saw you two once." She stopped, then started again.

  "I saw you two once when you didn't know I saw you. It was at night.

  You were on M Street, probably going to eat or something. I don't know. Katherine was really pregnant, and she stopped you while you were walking. She kissed you on the street, then stared at you and you stared back at her and it was as if there wasn't anyone else in the world. I walked by and didn't say anything and you didn't see me. I didn't want to ruin the moment. But I thought, my God, how in love are they? I've thought about that moment a lot. I think about it when I see you alone, kind of struggling but not really saying anything about it. I don't know, Jack. I'm sorry for all this. And I'm sorry for bringing it up."

  I stared at her for a moment, then away from her, off into the distance. Baker had lain back down. The night was quiet, the air feeling cooler by the minute. "Thanks," I said, softly, and I reached out and gave her wrist a squeeze as I said goodbye.

  I live near the corner of Twenty-eighth and Dumbarton Streets, in what the silver-haired grand dames of the realty circuit would call the heart of the East Village of Georgetown. Coming around Twenty-eighth, with a block and a half toward home, I noticed a large black woman sitting in a beat-up old Toyota at the curb. The car engine was turned off. The first glimpse I got of her played in my mind like a snapshot.

  She seemed so out of place, just sitting there in her car as it neared eleven o'clock on a cool and lonely Tuesday night. When I spotted her, she seemed to be staring in my direction, as if looking for something, then she turned away as soon as we met eyes. It was odd.

  Given what had happened at the Newseum, I knew this was stupid, returning to my house, walking the streets at night alone, pretending I was immune to danger when it was so painfully apparent in my recent history that I was not. But I had this stubborn Irish desire not to give in to the forces who were trying to intimidate me, or even kill me. That said, I was starting to feel afraid.

  Halfway up the block, a man and a woman stood on the street, her leaning against a utility pole, necking.

  I whispered to Baker, before we arrived within earshot of them, "I forgot that's what men and women do." The dog just kind of looked up at me, blankly. He was heeling tight, drawing his mood from mine. I think he assumed that men just mostly threw tennis balls, then took taxicabs to the airport.

  As we passed by the couple, I saw the man look at me out of the corner of his eye. I looked away quickly and thought that that, too, was odd.

  Now it felt just plain creepy on these streets that I had walked hundreds of times at every conceivable hour. Most houses seemed to be darkened for the night, the windows shut tight against the chill of autumn, their owners sound asleep. I watched shadows flicker on the ground, looked warily at movement in shrubbery, and scanned both sides of the street for any other people in parked cars. Nothing. As I neared my doorstep, the street seemed so dark, so empty, and so quiet that it was like a Hollywood stage set, void of actors and light crews.

  I pulled my keys out of my pocket, and a car rounded the corner, slowly. It was a man, alone, in a Ford Taurus or another car like it.

  He was looking in my direction as I was looking at him, and his car was barely moving at all. I fidgeted with the key in the lock and urgently pushed open the door. As I stepped inside, unnerved, I saw the car speed up and drive away. I shut the door fast, turning a deadbolt I don't think I had ever used before.

  I quickly picked up the telephone and dialed Kristen's number. Baker stood by my side, looking around anxiously and up at me.

  On the phone, one ring, then two, then three. Come on, Kristen. Be there.

  "Hello," she said.

  "Hey, it's Jack. I just wanted to make sure you got back in all right.

  It seemed kind of quiet out there."

  She gave a short laugh that seemed a mix of curiosity and gratitude.

  "Jack," she said, pausing. "I'm fine." She laughed again. "You worry too much."

  "Maybe I do." I said goodbye and hung up.

  I pulled my sand wedge out of my golf bag on the way upstairs, then laid it down beside my bed, the closest thing I had to a weapon. I wondered what the NRA and PGA might think about this. Then I drifted off to sleep, and not very quickly.

  eleven

  Wednesday, November 1

  Wednesday morning brought a fresh batch of polls to an election that was just six days away-polls that showed Hutchins holding on to a three-point lead over his Democratic rival, Senator Stanny Nichols. To be sure, this was not Lincoln versus Douglas or Truman versus Dewey.

  Hell, it wasn't even Ford versus Carter. A week and a half before, when I packed my clubs into my car and drove out to Congressional Country Club, the presidential race was a statistical dead heat, pardon the pun. But the president had received a critical shot in the arm from that, well, shot in the arm. His approval ratings had risen nearly ten points, into the mid-60-percent range. Hutchins had suffered only a flesh wound in that blaze of gunfire; but Stanny Nichols saw his political career seriously injured.

  Still, three points remained within that so-called margin of error that the boys over at Gallup always make sure we are well aware of. Despite Hutchins's good fortune, there was a sense of unease with him in the country, a lack of familiarity-and voters like to feel as if they know their president. Much of politics is about simple images, and some of that unease was erased out at Congressional Country Club when that nice paramedic was kind enough to poke Hutchins's words around and make him seem a nonchalant, combat-tested hero, cut right out of the American flag. Enough, anyway, to give him this three-point polling lead.

  Truth is, the closest Hutchins ever got to military action was pro
bably playing with his GI Joe as a young boy and watching McHale's Navy and F

  Troop on TV. And the further truth is, voters were still nagged by a sense that they didn't really know the man.

  The anxiety was evident throughout the White House. Lincoln Powers's mood was getting worse, not better. The president's campaign days were getting increasingly longer and more urgent. Aides seemed grim-faced, even in television interviews, as if the totality of events that was supposed to happen after that shooting didn't.

  Give Nichols credit for hanging tough. He had been plagued by allegations of corruption-specifically, using his standing as a United States senator to receive a highly favorable purchase price on a Breckenridge chalet from the owner of a major ski resort, one of his top contributors, and then failing to pay the appropriate tax on it.

  Add to that his lack of national experience. When all of the major Democrats took a pass on the race because they assumed they'd be running against Hutchins's popular predecessor, Wordsworth Cole, Nichols was the only one who stepped in to fill the void. In another time, in another place, he would have been known as the sacrificial lamb. Here, he was the Democratic nominee.

  After Cole died, Nichols had suddenly become a contender, legal problems and all. Smartly, he made the press a major issue in his campaign, saying it was time that the news media stopped hindering the rich dialogue of a great nation with two-bit tattletale stories about old and misreported events. It was a message that seemed to resonate with the voting public.

  Meanwhile, Hutchins did his very best at playing the delicate role of national consoler, and his very best was pretty good. He had performed flawlessly in his brief tenure as president. He paid public respect to Cole almost every day, every chance he got. At the same time, in policy decisions, he made clear what he would always call his

  "respectful" differences. One of them was in the area of day care.

  Hutchins quickly signaled to Democratic senators that he would sign legislation restoring federal subsidies for child care, a decision, analysts later said, that would allow welfare mothers to return to work in greater numbers. Even the most conservative of commentators agreed with him that to create a foundation for a society without welfare, the government had to help poor people get out of the house.

  Next, in an impromptu press conference in the press cabin of Air Force One, a correspondent from the Associated Press asked Hutchins about his opinion on abortion. It was the first time he had been asked about the issue as president. Until then, he never had the inclination or the reason to let his feelings be known.

  "What the hell business is it of mine what a pregnant woman does to herself?" Hutchins growled at the reporter, in a voice that harked back to Lyndon Johnson. "Do I want her to have an abortion? God, no.

  That's not good for anyone-not her, not the fetus, probably not even for society. Am I willing to tell her you can't do this or that with your own body? No again. That's just not what I'm in public life to do."

  His answer sent shock waves across the country. The prolife groups, who had always assumed that since Hutchins was a Republican vice president, he was on their side, went ballistic. They arrived in Washington en masse for an enormous protest on the Ellipse, carrying buckets of what they said were dead fetuses that they flung over the iron fence of the White House onto the South Lawn. The mainstream Republican Party was uneasy about his stand but quickly realized there was nothing anyone could do about it, and Ted Rockingham, ever soothing, worked his myriad personal friendships to help calm so many nerves. The nominating convention was already over. Hutchins was president, and like it or not, he was their candidate in the November election. And now he was three points ahead.

  My desk telephone jarred me back to reality. It was early yet to be at work, evidenced by the fact that, at 8:30 A.m." I was alone in the bureau. As I reached for the phone, I prayed that this would finally be my conversation with the anonymous source.

  "A little less than a week out from Election Day victory, and there you are on the sidelines, and we're giving you the chance to come on over here and get in the game." It was the voice of Lincoln Powers, sounding a little less southern and lilting than it usually did.

  "You know what it's like to drive through the White House gates to work every morning?" he asked. "You know what it's like to be quoted in all the major newspapers every day, as someone who matters? You know what it's like to have a whole staff of assistants to help you out, worshipful little things who'll do whatever it takes to make you happy?"

  "Anything, huh?" I said, playing along, being a guy. I added, "Look, Mr. Powers-"

  "Please," he interrupted urgently, "you call me Link."

  "Lincoln," I said, "the president asked me to carefully consider my decision, so I am doing just that."

  Powers said, "Absolutely no rush. Meantime, I thought we might get together for breakfast or lunch, talk it all over in a little more detail, the plans I have for you over here."

  I said, "That would be really nice, and helpful as well. But things are really pretty rough for me right now."

  "I'll have my secretary call you," he said. "We'll set something up for tomorrow or Friday. Maybe you come over here and eat in the White House mess, see how the whole thing feels."

  God only knew where the next two days would find me, but I didn't want to say that to Powers, so I replied, "Good, let's see how the days play out. Thanks for thinking about me."

  "Before you go, just one more thing," he said, his voice changing, his tone becoming more serious.

  "Sure," I replied.

  "You didn't get this from me, and this may not be worth anything at all, but I know for a fact that the FBI has assigned a couple of agents to look into any possible connection between Tommy Graham and Mick Wilkerson and the assassination attempt."

  The revelation stunned me. Graham was Stanny Nichols's campaign manager. Mick Wilkerson was his longtime chief political strategist.

  Together, they were the brain trust that had catapulted their candidate to the Democratic nomination. Perhaps this is what my anonymous source meant when he told me that nothing was as it seemed. Perhaps my anonymous source actually worked in the Nichols camp.

  This didn't gel with anything else I had, but it was something to keep in mind.

  "I appreciate the heads up," I replied, trying to contain my surprise.

  "As I said, this didn't come from me."

  As I hung up, I saw Havlicek pull up to his desk on the other side of the room, then neatly lay out his autopsy photographs and report around his computer, either to get everything within reach or to inspire himself. You could never tell with this guy. I, meanwhile, eyed my phone, picked up the receiver to make sure it was working, then began etching out questions on a yellow legal pad.

  "What are you doing?"

  That was Peter Martin, arriving at my desk, somewhat more at ease than usual.

  "Nothing," I said, feeling like a little kid just caught stealing his sister's crayons. I still hadn't told him about this anonymous voice, and I had no plans to until I got something concrete.

  "That's some hit Havlicek has for morning, no?" Martin asked, in a question that explained his good mood.

  I said, "It's a great one. I'm going to work the telephones to see if I can help him out on my end. Otherwise, I'll be prepared to jump in and do anything I can in terms of follows. I suspect there'll be many."

  "Good. I've got to tell you, I know we're in the throes of battle and all, but Appleton's none too happy about putting a story on the front page of the first edition yesterday, then having to pull it off. He's all over my case about it."

  He let that sit out there for a minute, until I said, "I'm sorry. It's entirely my fault. I'll send Appleton an e-mail or give him a call and tell him as much."

  "No need. I've got us covered on it," Martin said, shaking his head.

  I kept going anyway. "Look, Peter, I screwed up. I know I did. But I think someone was intentionally trying to screw me up, and t
hat someone might be the militia leader and the FBI. This could be a much larger story, an exclusive story, because I made that mistake."

  Martin started wringing his hands together, as he sometimes does when a veteran senator announces he's not seeking reelection or the president pocket vetoes a piece of tax legislation. He said, "Go on."

  I told him what happened. I told of the talk with Nathaniel, of the phone call with Kent Drinker, of the, well, encounter with the kid named Bo at the Dew Drop Inn. "The obvious question is, why is an assistant director of the FBI paying a house call on one of the nation's emerging militia leaders a couple of weeks before a presidential assassination attempt in which the militia is blamed, at least initially?"

  Martin rolled up a chair and sat down beside my desk. He said, "To concoct a story. That's what you think, right?"

  I replied, "Well, maybe. But that presupposes that Drinker would know about an assassination attempt, doesn't it? So doesn't that become a little far-fetched?"

  "That it does. So why else?" He paused, looking at me, and added,

  "Because Drinker had a tip about an assassination attempt? He wanted to check it out with the militia. That's still a good story, no?"

  "Could be," I said. "But then, why the coordinated story lines now about this guy in Wyoming, Billy Walbin?"

  We both sat there, baffled. My head hurt from thinking, hoping, waiting for this anonymous source. This wasn't so much journalism as algebra-trying to fit all the figures into a complex equation.

  I said, "Havlicek and I were bouncing around the idea that this thing could have been staged, you know, like maybe some eleventh-hour election ploy."

  Martin looked at me for a long moment, then shook his head. "I don't think there's any way," he said. "I think I know this city pretty well. I think I know politics pretty well. And I can't even imagine that anyone would dare pull such a stunt, and that it could be kept secret." He paused and added, "it would be one thing if Hutchins were down by ten points with less than two weeks left. But this thing was neck and neck. He didn't need anything this dramatic."