Game Bet

by Forrest, Richard;

  “You’re my date for dinner. Corner of Haverford and Commonwealth at 7:30. Liz.”

  He broke into a smile. “I think we’re halfway home.”

  “I’d like to go home now,” a truculent voice from the man on the bed said.

  “A few more hours, old man,” Cory said expansively. “Only a few more hours.”

  The feature story on the noon television news opened with a shot of Air Force One landing at Logan Airport. President Orville Crescatt’s tall, gaunt frame exited from the door at the top of the ramp and took the steps two at a time. He hurried past waiting men and women with microphones, waved and then climbed into a limousine that had driven onto the runway.

  An aide approached the waiting microphones. “The President will hold a press conference at three this afternoon in the hotel ballroom. As you all know, he will give a major address here tomorrow.”

  “What are his plans for tonight?” a female voice asked.

  “A simple family affair. He will dine alone with his daughter, Elizabeth, and then work on tomorrow’s speech.”

  “Would you say that security precautions are more extensive than they usually are?”

  “I would say so. As you know, there was a serious attempt on President Crescatt’s life not long ago. The gunman is still at large. Naturally, we have great concern over Williams’s possible presence at any presidential function.” The aide waved and hurried toward the last remaining limousine as reporters shouted questions after him in a babble of indistinguishable sounds.

  Cory switched off the small black-and-white TV set and sat looking at the blank screen for a long time.

  A brisk spring wind with north-Atlantic freshets of cold blew through Boston Harbor and up the Charles River to swirl around the corner where Cory stood.

  He glanced up at the street sign, “Haverford Street.” It was nearly 7:30.

  Ron Sawyer declined to switch off his shift to let another agent take Elizabeth Crescatt to dinner with her father. He used his prerogative as Agent-in-Charge, and would stay on duty until they returned to the brownstone from the presidential suite at the downtown hotel.

  He wasn’t quite sure what instigated his change of plans. Other agents often talked of “gut feelings,” and he had occasionally felt the same. He ticked over the day’s events to see if anything unusual caused his nibble of fear.

  It may have started early that morning when he checked the previous night’s log. The “duty log” recorded every event in the life of their charge, and usually did so in dismaying detail.

  “‘Ruby One’ [Liz Crescatt’s code name] extremely restless. Subject paced in room until well past two. Lights turned on again throughout the night. Ruby arose at five A.M.”

  Grown men’s voyeurism, he thought. Agents sitting in a living room and watching the lights under the door of a young woman’s bedroom. God, what a way to earn a living.

  Her actions toward the man with the dogs this morning were also inexplicable.

  “Who was that guy?” he had asked her during the drive to the campus.

  “You remember,” she had replied. “He’s in the Department of Foreign Languages,” she had said brusquely, and turned her attention to a textbook.

  “It’s almost seven-thirty, Mr. Sawyer. I’m ready to go now.” She smiled at him with a radiance he hadn’t noticed during the few days he’d been on kiddie duty. She was dressed in a well-tailored champagne-colored velvet pants suit. Her long blond hair was piled loosely on her head, held in place by a silver clasp.

  Ron Sawyer felt a quick churning in his abdomen, followed by a fleeting breathlessness. Oh, Christ! he thought. I’m getting turned on by a young woman who … he dismissed the thought and jerked into a militarylike stiff stance. “Let’s go,” he said with a slightly pompous air.

  I’m nearly ten years older than she is, he told himself as he followed her down the stairs to the entryway and watched the way her hair glistened in the light.

  They were in the limo and headed downtown when Elizabeth turned to him with the same smile she had given him upstairs in the apartment.

  “I want to pick up someone at the corner of Haverford Street,” she said. “I’ve invited him for dinner.”

  “Oh?” He again felt a quick turn in his gut, but this time it wasn’t sexuality. “Who is it?” He automatically slipped a thin black notebook from his pocket and was prepared to flip through the alphabetized list of approved names.

  “One of my instructors. From the foreign-language department.”

  “The one from the lab? The one with the beard?”

  “That’s the one,” she said, smiled, and turned to look out the window.

  “Ah, I don’t think we’ve checked him out, Miss Crescatt.”

  Again the smile, but this time there was a tightening of lines around the mouth. “I couldn’t care less, Mr. Sawyer. I am taking Thomas to dinner to meet my father.”

  He could only nod. Christ, maybe the silly broad was in love. That’s all they needed. That would account for her sleeplessness the night before and the tension he now felt within her. The last thing in the world he wanted was chaperon duty while a young healthy woman went on dates with a healthy young man who wanted … He let the thought dissipate and tapped on the window behind the driver.

  “There’s a guy we got to pick up, corner of Haverford. Miss Crescatt will point him out.”

  The driver, Frank Sommerhill, frowned. He hated breaks in routine. They all did. But he nodded and began to edge the long car into the far right lane as they approached the corner of Haverford Street.

  “That’s him,” Liz said as she pointed to Cory, who stood next to a lamppost near the corner. She put her hand on Sawyer’s arm and smiled again. “Thanks, Mr. Sawyer.”

  Sawyer leapt from the car before it had completely stopped, and walked toward Cory.

  “You’re Thomas?” Damn! He hadn’t even gotten the guy’s last name

  “Thomas Alexander,” Cory replied as he walked toward the car’s open door.

  “Ah, would you mind if I … ah.…” Cory turned to look at the Secret Service agent, who held up his hands with the palms open.

  “You want to search me, or something?”

  “That’s the general idea.” Ron tried to smile, but it came hard. He briskly and efficiently patted down Cory and then gestured for him to get in the rear of the car. Ron Sawyer slipped into the front seat, next to the driver, and they moved away from the curb.

  “Darling,” Elizabeth Crescatt said as she put her arms around Cory.

  “Who is that guy?” Frank Sommerhill asked as they drove toward the hotel near the Commons

  “Some instructor at the college.”

  “For God’s sake! Tonight?”

  “What can I do? She wants him to meet Daddy.”

  The driver shrugged. “You’re the boss. You going to give him a red badge?”

  “How the hell’s he going to dine with Diamond One without a goddamn badge?”

  The driver shrugged.

  They pulled into the basement garage of the hotel and parked in a space that had been roped off, near a service elevator. The elevator door stood open, with a Secret Service agent in the doorway.

  Hand in hand, Cory and Liz Crescatt walked toward the waiting elevator car. Ron Sawyer was about to follow, when he leaned back in the limo window. “Frank, call the college security office and see if they have a Thomas Alexander on the staff.” He hurried toward the elevator door as it began to slide shut.

  “Your dad’s suite is on the nineteenth floor,” he said to Elizabeth, and remembered his briefing. He felt the small red badge in his side pocket and reluctantly slipped it out and handed it to Cory. “You’ll need to wear this as long as you’re on the presidential floor,” he said, and wished he didn’t have to.

  There were four men by the elevator bank in the corridor of the nineteenth floor. Cory and Liz walked toward a large oak double door at the end of the hallway, where another guard stood by the entran
ce. The door guard smiled and tipped his hand in a quick salute.

  “Good evening, Miss Crescatt.”

  “Hi, Billy. How’s Laureen?”

  “Couldn’t be better.” The agent beamed as he opened the door in front of them.

  Cory and Liz entered the suite by a short hallway that exited into a large living room.

  The President of the United States stood facing a large picture window that overlooked the city and harbor.

  “I have someone for you to meet, Pop,” Liz said as they crossed the room.

  Orville Crescatt turned with a broad smile. His hand reached out toward Cory and then fell back as the smile faded.

  “Dad, this is …”

  “I know who he is,” Orville Crescatt said. “What do you want, Williams?”

  CHAPTER 20

  Ron Sawyer sat uneasily before a turkey club-sandwich in the hotel coffee shop. He had just personally delivered a man he did not trust, to the President. There was also a nagging sense of recognition concerning the university instructor—a dim feeling that he couldn’t place. To further complicate matters, he felt a distinct electricity between himself and Liz Crescatt. He had to quickly dismiss both thoughts. The worry over the teacher with the beard had to be forgotten because it was too late. A mutual feeling between him and Ruby One was dangerous to his future career in the Service.

  Frank Sommerhill slid into the booth opposite Sawyer and signaled for a waitress. “Checked with campus security. There is a Thomas Alexander who is an instructor in the language department. Russian, they said.”

  “Alexander?”

  “The language.”

  Ron forked a slab of turkey meat out from under its covering of toast and picked at it without appetite. “Alexander ran the language lab yesterday. Ruby One left her cubicle to talk to him. I checked the log back for a couple of months. That seems to be the only time she ever talked to the guy until today.”

  “So? He scores fast. Forget it, Ron. If the guy’s not clean, it’s too late now.”

  “Beautiful thought.”

  Frank Sommerhill ordered a hamburger deluxe and coffee. “You want me to call someone to relieve you?”

  “No. I’ll finish the shift. Frank, you’ve been on kiddie duty all year. Does Liz date much?”

  Frank looked across the table at him with a raised eyebrow. “Is this security talk, or are you interested?”

  “Security,” Ron snapped.

  “She hardly ever dates. It’s almost as if she weren’t interested in guys.”

  “She’s straight.”

  “Hell, yes. I think the security crap annoys her on a date.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. Frank, who has the rogue’s gallery this trip?” He referred to a massive collection of photographs and dossiers of known security risks, assembled according to the President’s itinerary.

  “Nevins. He’s domiciled in nineteen-twelve.”

  Ron pushed away from the table. He left his food nearly untouched. “I want to flip through it. I’ve seen that guy somewhere before.”

  Frank Sommerhill bit into his recently delivered hamburger. “Go ahead.”

  The President and Cory Williams were twelve feet apart. Liz Crescatt stood at an equal distance to the side as if to complete the triangle.

  The wide living room with its mass of windows overlooking the city was familiar to Cory. He realized that last year the bank he worked for had rented this same suite as its hospitality headquarters during the Mortgage Bankers’ Convention. He nearly laughed at the irony.

  “I’m surprised you recognized me, sir.”

  “You’ve haunted me for years. You were quite a bit younger in those days and without the beard, but I remember.”

  “The hearings,” Cory said softly.

  “Yes. When I was chairman of the congressional subcommittee investigating your father. You sat, every single blessed day, in the front row, directly behind your dad and his lawyers.” Orville Crescatt sat in a high-backed wing chair and crossed his legs. His eyes never left Cory. “I watched the disintegration of a young man’s love as the hearings progressed.”

  “Yes, that’s what happened,” Cory said in nearly a whisper.

  “I could tell the day your father’s guilt was absolute in your mind. I saw it in your face, and you looked at me with hate. I knew then that I had won. If you were convinced, so was the country.”

  “And it made you President.”

  “You would be extremely naïve to believe that.”

  Liz Crescatt seemed bewildered at their exchange. “Daddy, I did what I thought was right.”

  “Why did you bring him?”

  “I believed what he said.”

  Orville Crescatt sighed. “And to think the Secret Service completely restricts my life and yet a would-be assassin is delivered right to my private quarters. Boggles the mind, doesn’t it, Cory?” There was a trace of a smile on the President’s face.

  “On their behalf, it took some arranging.”

  “I assume they are still efficient enough to see that you did not arrive with a weapon?”

  “They searched me.”

  “What do you want with me? And my daughter?”

  “I want to explain to you the facts I told your daughter.”

  “Explain what?”

  “What happened to me in Deerford.”

  “I know what happened to me in Deerford. I was nearly shot.”

  “I know, sir. May I give it all to you? I feel that it’s important to all of us.”

  Orville Crescatt glanced down at his watch. “You have twenty minutes.”

  The suite at the far end of the nineteenth floor was filled with half a dozen shirt-sleeved men who wore pistols strapped to their bodies.

  Ron Sawyer sat on a twin bed with a large leather case by his side. The case was filled with file folders and books of photographs. He opened the case.

  A hand clapped his back. “How do you like kiddie patrol, Sawyer?”

  Ron looked up in slight annoyance. “It’s all right,” he replied noncommittally.

  The other agent smiled. “They used to call it diaper duty, but with the body on Liz Crescatt, I can think of another name.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You noticed, heh? That girl’s got a body that doesn’t stop.”

  “Uh huh,” Ron replied, and looked back at the files. He blushed. He had noticed.

  He took out the first file and began to thumb through it.

  When Cory finished, Orville Crescatt leaned back in the wing chair with his fingers tented in front of his face. His eyes were half closed. Across the room, Liz Crescatt sat on the edge of her chair. She leaned forward in anticipation.

  “I’m convinced,” Cory said in conclusion, “that this so-called Committee is a true conspiracy. It is well organized and possessed of nearly limitless resources. They intend to kill you and have the Vice-President succeed to the office.”

  There was heavy silence in the room when Cory finished. The President leaned forward. “If I were to buy your theory, my only recourse would be to isolate myself in some safe haven such as Camp David.”

  “I would suggest that as prudent,” Cory replied.

  “Which would destroy my Crusade to reach the people. In that case, in a partial sense at least, Mr. Williams, the ends of your so-called Committee would have been realized. I would be isolated, cut off, and ineffectual in any political sense.”

  “You never have been satisfied with Vice-President Collins, Daddy,” Liz said.

  Orville Crescatt smiled at his daughter. “What President has ever been satisfied with his Vice-President? He was selected out of political expediency. I needed certain conservative support from the right wing of my party. I took Collins as the lesser of a great many other evils. That doesn’t mean that I’m convinced that Collins is so greedy for my job that he’s planning my demise.”

  Cory felt a nervous energy within him. He leaned forward intently. “That’s just it, Mr. President. C
ollins might not even be a part of the Committee. It may be that they feel he can be manipulated toward their ends. Is that possible?”

  “Collins can be manipulated toward any end recommended by the last person to speak with him.” The President smiled. “Rather candid, aren’t I? Of course, I’ll deny that statement; but then again, Cory is hardly in any position to publicize our conversation.”

  “You must believe me, Mr. President.”

  Orville Crescatt walked to a window and clasped his hands behind his back. He looked out over the city lights winking toward the horizon. “Remember Shakespeare’s play with a similar theme?”

  “Julius Caesar,” Liz said automatically.

  “Of course,” the President said without turning. “They came to Caesar before he was to attend the Senate that fateful day. They talked of conspiracies.”

  “‘Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once,’” Liz Crescatt intoned.

  “Exactly.” Crescatt faced them. “When I ran for this office I accepted the inherent risk of assassination. Like everyone else, I’ve wondered about other political deaths. I never bought the Kennedy conspiracy theories, but I did wonder about the Martin Luther King murder. You must understand, Cory. I am unable to accept your premise without corroboration.”

  “There is none, sir.”

  “I have a job to do and will continue to do it.”

  “Until they kill you,” Liz Crescatt said.

  “You needn’t go with me tomorrow, Elizabeth.”

  “I said I would. After Mom died, I said I would be your hostess and accompany you whenever you wished.”

  “Such commitments can be broken.”

  “I believe him, Daddy.”

  “You’re not the President, Elizabeth.”

  The man in Toledo waited impatiently for the connection to be established. “Boston.”

  “King’s Bishop to Queen’s Pawn three.”

  “Check.” Identities had been established. “This is Rook.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It must be tomorrow. All pieces necessary to accomplish check and mate must be utilized. We are behind schedule.”

  “We have no backup for safety.”

  “Pieces that reach the end of the board can convert to Queens. Queens have all the power necessary to offer protection. I say again, I wish maximum effort tomorrow.”