by Joseph Flynn
The last time he lost consciousness.
He hadn’t really expected to ever open his eyes again. Hadn’t seen any bright light waiting for him. Or Jesus reaching out to him. The absence of either of those hopeful signs had scared him. What if there was nothing waiting for him?
Then he felt a presence nearby. Not the Savior. Someone in his room.
Another person had joined him in his fishbowl. It was only curiosity that forced him to push his eyelids apart. At first, he saw only a blurred outline. Someone tall and green who didn’t even have a face. Damn! Was that what the devil looked like? Could he really have done anything so bad he’d deserve to go to —
His anxiety activated his lachrymal glands.
Tears washed the film away from his eyes.
Now, to his great relief, he could see a doctor standing before him in full surgical garb, including a mask, a cap and gloves. But this person wasn’t Dr. Jones; she was much smaller. So was Nick. This was the biggest —
Kenny noticed strands of white hair peeking out from the cap.
“Zack?” he rasped.
The figure in green bobbed his head. Then he gently laid a gloved hand on Kenny’s leg. Kenny could feel the warmth right through the glove, the blanket covering him, and the pajama bottom he was wearing. In that one spot, he suddenly felt almost good again. He wanted Zack to put his other hand on him. Move them up and down every inch of him.
Zack said, “You could go now, if you want. But you don’t have to. You’ve still got the strength to come through this. Think about all the things you want to do.”
All Kenny could think about was how wonderful his leg was starting to feel.
Not just where Zack first touched it, but up and down.
And he thought of what Celsus Crogher had told him.
“It’s all right to sacrifice your life. It can even be noble. But you never do it unless you have absolutely no other choice,” the SAC had said.
Kenny now understood what Crogher had meant: He still had other choices.
A moment ago, he had thought all his other choices had vanished.
Then Zack had shown up, laid a hand on him and …
His eyes closed again, thinking he hadn’t seen Liesl Eberhardt yet.
He wasn’t going to let go before he did that.
Olive Street, NW
Leo Levy couldn’t have afforded the townhouse where he lived on his government salary, but he’d won five races before he’d quit the NASCAR circuit to keep his mother from having a heart attack. He’d always been real careful with his money, not cheap but not foolish. He had been told early by his daddy, an accountant, that if a man were smart he would build himself a stack of money that could start earning its own salary: that was, interest, dividends, capital appreciation and so forth.
That way, if the man ever felt like going fishing for the rest of his life, his money could keep right on working and providing him with income. His daddy told him that was how a smart man planned his life. There were, of course, things that couldn’t be planned for, like Toby Gilman crashing in the last lap of a race down in South Carolina, his car flying to pieces, a tire clearing the safety fence and killing daddy.
Leo had finished second that day, hadn’t even seen the accident.
He didn’t know his father had died until a Baptist minister came to break the bad news. There weren’t any rabbis who followed NASCAR as far as Leo knew, but the minister was compassionate enough to offer to drive him to the nearest temple if he felt the need to pray.
Sarah Levy hadn’t feared for her son’s safety before that awful day; she’d cheered him on, saying she was his biggest fan, even though Leo’s father was the only one who came to his races. Mother said all the fumes from the fuel made her weak. Following Jacob’s death, the thought of Leo ever racing again left her trembling. After learning that his mother had started to suffer heart palpitations, Leo gave up racing.
He refused to give up driving, though, or getting paid for being behind the wheel.
Looking over possible opportunities — and the state of the world — he decided that the most interesting, best paying work he was likely to find would involve driving for rich guys who might get themselves kidnapped, shot at or otherwise seriously inconvenienced.
Mother wouldn’t have to know those details.
Leo signed up for four weeks of escape and evasion driver’s ed at a school down in Florida. By the end of the course, he was offered the job of being the school’s senior instructor. He took it with the stipulation that he could leave on two-weeks notice if he found a job that really tickled him.
With his position at the school and his résumé with NASCAR, Leo interviewed at least once a week for the next six months. In all that time, he didn’t find a single man or woman he wanted to work for. It seemed to him that, maybe, every individual in the world with a net worth worthy of drawing hostile attention deserved every bit of it and more.
A few of them, if they were being chased, Leo would have pulled over, lowered the windows and unlocked the doors. Told the bad guys, “Have at him, boys.”
It was his mother, knowing she had taken her son from the life he’d loved, who came up with a solution for him. A lady friend of hers had a brother-in-law who worked for the government in a law enforcement capacity he really couldn’t talk about.
Leo liked the first part of what Mother said. Maybe he could be a getaway driver for spies on the run. He should have known better.
His mother asked him, “Have you heard about the White House Transportation Agency?”
Just what she would like: a nice safe job with a big name attached.
Chauffeuring politicians and other crooks to and from meetings.
“Mother,” Leo began. He’d rather drive South Florida scumballs.
The pay and the weather were better.
“Leo,” his mother rebutted.
“I didn’t even vote for that …” He was going to say dick, but changed it. “That guy in the White House.”
“His term is almost over and someone new will be needing good drivers. Maybe that nice lady from Illinois.”
Mother tossed a magazine his way. There on the cover was Patti Grant, former model and movie star and leading candidate for the Republican nomination. Woman had a killer smile, and she was engaged to the cop who solved the murder of her first husband. That was pretty cool, too. Working for people like that might be interesting.
Leo said, “Okay, Mother, I’ll look into it.”
He called the number his mother’s friend’s brother-in-law had provided.
Wound up driving for James J. McGill who’d gone into the private eye biz.
That was cool. Thank you, Mother.
The townhouse he’d bought in D.C. was a twelve-minute drive to the White House in all but the worst traffic conditions. If things got really blocked up, Leo could always turn on the Chevy’s flashing lights and sound effects. He was the driver of a certified emergency vehicle with more bells and whistles than any ride James Bond had ever —
It was the Chevy’s fall-back alarm, connected by Blue Tooth to Leo’s clock radio, that woke him from a sound sleep. He sat upright with a jolt, recognizing the note of that alarm. It meant some sonofabitch had not only broken into his garage and bypassed its alarm — and that took some real electronic smarts — but also had gotten past the Chevy’s primary security system.
If the sonofabitch kept going as fast as he’d started out, he was going to get away with a million-dollar car. Leo hit the panic button on the key fob that lay on his nightstand. This one not only created a horrible racket, it locked down both the garage and the car. Or was supposed to. Another feature allowed Leo to announce his ire to anyone caught in his garage.
“I’m coming for you, motherfucker. You best start praying.”
Leo raced from his bedroom in his boxer shorts with his key fob and his Browning semi-auto in hand.
He burst through the door to the garage, heedless of whether
someone might be waiting for him with a gun. Any child in the world would have been thrilled to see Daddy rushing to the rescue with blood in his eye the way Leo made his entrance. The Chevy, for all its capabilities, wasn’t able to sigh in relief.
But it stood right where Leo had left it, disturbed only by a few smudges in its wax job.
The overhead door, however, was raised, not lowered and locked as he always left it. Leo killed the security system and though his ears were still filled with the ringing of the alarm and the thumping of his heart he strained to hear —
A car engine turned over. He heard that clearly.
Being careful now, he poked his head out into the alley and pulled it back quick.
Nobody had shot at him, and his mind had taken a snapshot of a car racing off.
Late model Ford. Virginia plate. Start of the alpha numeric sequence: 3ATX.
Had to be stolen. Steal one car to steal another.
Leo took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
Time to call SAC Crogher, let him know what had happened.
Hope his boys could process the Chevy before the boss needed him.
WorldWide News, Washington Bureau
Ellie Booker had her news readers go over hard copies of their scripts before they would see them on their Teleprompters. She wanted their deliveries to be letter perfect with points of emphasis stressed exactly as she had indicated them. Her Ken and Barbie, as she always thought of anchors who’d been hired for looks instead of brains, would be leading off the national broadcast for the network’s Sun-up America news program.
They would be headlining a huge story that morning.
The serial killing of lobbyists on K Street.
Ellie had been the first to sniff out the killings on K Street because she had apprenticed in the if-it-bleeds-it-leads school of journalism and she worked harder than a migrant laborer. Every day she reviewed every death by violence for which the Metro cops opened a case file.
That chore was considered by most news organizations as something to be pawned off on a junior staffer. But Ellie knew from the start there was no story as compelling as one person taking the life of another. Even if the victims were poor, unknown to the public and not at all sympathetic, there could be an angle to grab headlines.
With headlines came ratings.
With ratings came status, i.e. power and money.
With status came respectability.
It was a simple progression; didn’t take a genius to figure it out.
Ellie first thought she was on to something when she spotted the death of Erik Torkelson. The man had been an attorney and a lobbyist. Had been shot on K Street. Might have been the victim of a random armed robbery except nothing in the police report had said anything about personal possessions being taken. The man had just turned forty, left a wife and two children.
Another senseless tragedy, as reported and forgotten by local news outlets.
The number of homicides in the nation’s capital was declining, but the previous year there were still one hundred and thirty-one of them. But how many of those victims, Ellie asked herself, had been K Street professionals?
Doing some digging, she’d found out Torkelson had been president of the student body at Vanderbilt and had graduated from Yale Law School. That didn’t make him Superman; bullets wouldn’t bounce off of him. But a guy like that … the odds were better his racing yacht would be sunk by a whale than he’d get gunned down on K Street.
In the next ten weeks, two more lobbyists, Robert Waller and Mark Benjamin, were also murdered by gunfire. The intervals between the lobbyists’ deaths, by Ellie’s count, were filled by seven and nine other homicides. Waller and Benjamin had profiles similar to Torkelson’s in terms of age, family and education.
Something big was going on, Ellie knew. She was sure other members of her craft with three-digit IQs must have figured that out, too. But the media play on the story had been a simple recitation of the unfortunate facts. Nobody had publicly connected the killings, though she was sure several people must be straining to do so.
It was only a question of who found the angle first.
Grabbed the headline.
Then last night Bruno Bettman came through for Ellie big time. Bruno worked front-door security at Metro Police headquarters. During his shift, everybody entering the building had to walk past him. Visitors had to be signed in; cops had to show their IDs, even if they were flashed perfunctorily. Most cops didn’t think anything of continuing their conversations like Bruno wasn’t even there. He heard all sorts of stuff.
Like yesterday when two homicide dicks named Meeker and Beemer walked by talking about how the bodies of all the dead lobbyists had been found with little pins stuck on them that looked like Porky Pig. And later when an Air Force investigator, name of Captain Welborn Yates, said he worked at the White House, came by and wanted to see homicide Lieutenant Rockelle Bullard, Meeker and Beemer’s boss.
So maybe Yates and Bullard had talked about Porky, too.
Ellie almost got wet she was so excited by the news Bruno had provided.
She paid him two hundred bucks a week — itemized as a miscellaneous expense to accounting — to call her from a prepaid cell phone and feed her tidbits. She didn’t let on to Bruno that he’d done anything out of the ordinary, didn’t want him getting greedy.
Now that she had the Porky Pig pins linking three dead lobbyists she had something to go on the air with, and demand to know if the latest lobbyist to be killed, Brad Attles, the speaker’s personal divorce lawyer, had also been pinned.
Ellie had to get her story out first thing that morning, because Attles’ death had to be putting terrible pressure on her competitors to break the story soon. But they didn’t have the Porky Pig angle to play. Didn’t know to ask what the White House’s interest might be.
Unless that fucker Bruno was on someone else’s payroll, too.
No sooner had that disturbing thought occurred than her segment’s director, sitting next to Ellie in the control room, told her something far more upsetting.
“The president is going on the air in five minutes. We’re bumped.”
“No, goddamnit!” Let the other networks get out of the way of her scoop, sure. That’d make her look even better. But —
The director had his phone in hand, was listening to someone else besides her.
He said, “New York says, yes, we’re going with the president. She could have news on terrorism or we might have gone to war somewhere.”
“Bullshit. We’d have had advance word on that kind of stuff.”
The director started to reply, but Ellie stepped out of the control room. She was calling Hugh Collier. If he didn’t support her, she’d call Sir Edbert Bickford. Get his nibs, himself, to back her play.
That or walk out and find a new place to work.
Where the men were as ballsy as she was.
Goddamn Patti Grant. What was she going to announce in the dog days of August?
That it was National Boating Safety Week?
The Oval Office
The president sat behind her desk in a dark blue Chanel business suit. A subtle string of pearls and her wedding band were her only accessories. Her hair and makeup were perfect. The lighting was flattering. Her notes lay on the desk in front of her.
She wouldn’t need them though. She’d always been able to memorize her lines.
But the stack of paper was important as a prop.
Shuffling it gave her reason to pause in her delivery.
Let people think about what she’d just said.
Avoid delivering her speech with an unblinking stare.
Galia stood to the president’s left, just outside of the camera’s frame. She, not Patti Grant, was the one who seemed on edge. The chief of staff kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
Without looking at her, the president asked, “Low impact aerobics, Galia?”
The chief of staff stopped moving, let her
shoulders relax. There was no turning back now. She was as much to blame for the present moment as anyone else. She had relayed Bob Merriman’s idea that the only way for the president to be reelected was to run as a Democrat. Instead of being insulted, the president had laughed.
She had said, “Give Bob credit for intestinal fortitude. It takes more than a little guts to suggest something like that.”
“It certainly does, Madam President,” Galia said. “But —”
“But he’s right? He very well may be. But Bob is forgetting one of the most basic rules of both Washington and Hollywood: You have much more leverage when people come to you than when you go to them.”
And that was what the president’s announcement was all about: leverage.
“Good luck, Madam President,” Galia said, stepping back.
“Thank you, Galia.”
A moment later, Patricia Darden Grant was speaking to the nation.
“Good morning. I asked for a few minutes of your time today to explain to you why I am leaving the Republican Party.”
United States Capitol, the Speaker’s Office
“Sonofabitch, did you just hear that?” Derek Geiger asked.
The television was on in the speaker’s suite as the president made her unprecedented announcement. Richard Nixon had left office, resigning the presidency before he could be impeached, but no president had ever left his party while still in the White House.
Went to show, Patti Grant wasn’t just another one of the boys.
“I did,” Putnam Shady said with a grin.
“You think it’s funny?” Geiger was annoyed by Putnam’s smile.
“I think you’d better record what she has to say.”
The speaker put his moment of pique aside and punched a button on his remote. The DVR’s red light appeared as it started to record whatever the president might say next. They hadn’t missed a thing because Patti Grant had paused after dropping her bomb. A pro, she didn’t want people’s exclamations to obscure her follow-through.
