by Joseph Flynn
“That was fun,” she told him.
Since McGill had the clear upper hand at the moment, Ellie decided to further endear herself to him.
“There’s something a little bird told me just last night you might like to know.”
“What’s that?” McGill asked.
“You know who Auric Ludwig is, right?”
“I do.”
“Well, he knows you’re working on the shooting death of Jordan Gilford.” Ellie held up a hand forestalling any questions from McGill. “I don’t know how my source knows that, and don’t ask who my source is. I won’t tell you, even if it costs me the interview.”
McGill saw she wouldn’t be budged.
He said, “How about this: Is your source trustworthy with a history of being right?”
“Yes, on both counts. You know what Ludwig wants to do with this story, I’m sure. Abel Mays went crazy, killed all those people at Winstead and then some righteous gunman plugged Mays, not only doing justice but saving everyone the heartbreak and expense of a trial.”
“That’s the way I see him spinning it, too.”
“Then you know how Ludwig will react if you try to rewrite his script.”
McGill didn’t give a damn about that, but he said, “Predictably. When can we do the interview? The sooner, the better.”
“Tomorrow?”
“That’s good.”
Ellie gave McGill her new address and said, “Let me tell the restaurant to hold the charge on your card. It’s my turn to buy breakfast.”
Chief of Staff’s Office — The White House
Galia Mindel had no idea what people in Alaska ate in the way of breakfast pastries, but she decided to go for a WASPy selection rather than bagels and a schmear. She called the White House Mess and ordered a spread of cinnamon rolls, pecan rolls, croissants and pain au chocolat. Okay, so the last two were French baking, but they still appealed to people who liked their bread white. For drinks, she went with with coffee, tea, orange juice and hot spiced cider.
With the goodies on a sideboard, she greeted the entire Congressional delegation, all three of them, of the largest state in the nation, led them to the food and drink, got them seated around the oval table opposite her desk and told them she was glad they could come on a Sunday and short notice.
Senator Dan Carnahan, Democrat, sat to Galia’s right. Senator Tom Hale and Congresswoman Lorna Dalton, Republicans, sat to the chief of staff’s left. They all went for the chocolate pastry, but Hale had a cinnamon roll on his plate, too.
He neglected both choices to get a jump on the conversation.
“Galia, don’t think we didn’t notice there’s hardly anyone in the building. This almost looks like a covert op.”
“Most of the staff have the day off to be with their families, but the president is in the building.”
“Will she be joining us?” Carnahan asked.
“No.”
“But she knows what we’ll be discussing?” Dalton inquired.
“Yes.”
Hale said, “But you’re still trying to be sneaky here, right? If you’re trying to get our support on gun control, even after that terrible event yesterday, Lorna and I won’t be helping you. I doubt if even Dan will be on your side.”
The Democratic senator shook his head, not disagreeing with his colleague, but indicating he wouldn’t support a push for gun control. He was up for reelection in the fall.
“Well, Senator,” Galia told Hale, “the event you referred to got a little more terrible this morning. Another of the boys on the Winstead football team who were shot yesterday died. But that’s not why I asked all of you here this morning.”
The three elected representatives of the people had the decency to look dismayed by the news of another death, but they chose to get back to business without commenting on it.
Hale asked, “What’s on your mind, Galia?”
“You remember the federal public works project for which you’ve been advocating the past few years, Senator?”
“Ten years,” Hale said.
Galia knew the number as well as Hale did; she just wanted to draw it out of him. Unlike the other forty-nine states, Alaska had no federal prison to call its own. The Last Frontier shipped its felons south to Washington state for incarceration. Hale had railed against the injustice of the situation. He said Alaskans paid their share of taxes to lock up their bad guys. Why should that money and the jobs that went along with it be exported elsewhere?
He’d argued for a decade that the biggest state should have its own big house.
The other two Alaskans in the room backed that position.
“The president has seen the light,” Galia said. “Not only does she think your last request for funding should pass both Houses of Congress, she’s decided to withdraw her veto threat if you should attach the expenditure to must-pass legislation.”
A favorite legislative trick in Congress was to attach gift packages for the folks back home to legislation considered so vital to the country at large it was deemed must-pass. In this case, the mother-ship was the farm bill that supported both family and corporate agricultural enterprises, aka farms. The typical scare tactic to promote passage of the bill was that the price of milk would go to eight dollars a gallon without it.
Patricia Grant had promised to veto the must-pass legislation anyway, if it was stuffed with pork. Now, Galia was telling her small gathering of federal legislators the bill to fund prison construction in Alaska could go along as a stowaway on the mother-ship. And they’d get even more money than they had requested.
“We’ll get two billion dollars?” Hale said. “What’s the catch, Galia? If it’s not gun control, what does the president want?”
Galia shrugged. “Well, if you get public works money, and it stimulates your state’s economy, the president would like the three of you to support infrastructure spending in the rest of the country. There are lots of roads and bridges that need fixing, and lots of people who need jobs. If Alaska’s delegation, a bipartisan group, co-sponsors legislation to rebuild America and starts pushing it hard, maybe the spirit will catch on.”
Hale was the ranking minority member on the Senate appropriations committee; Dalton was a mid-seniority member on the House appropriations committee. She wanted to grow up to be the next Senator from Alaska when Hale retired. She’d follow his lead.
Galia leaned forward, her eyes turning hard, “But I warn you, if you take the money and then sit on your hands about your half of the deal, I not only will find a way to cut your prison money off, I’ll personally manage the campaigns of your next challengers for office.”
She sat back and took a sip of tea from the cup in front of her.
The three politicians communicated with each other by rapid exchanges of looks.
They were like kids who wanted to take a daring leap but fear made them hesitate.
Then Dan Carnahan said, “I’m all for it, I’m in”
A Democrat, he didn’t have any philosophical opposition to domestic spending. If he could land the construction of a major prison back home and create jobs in the bargain, better yet. Best of all, if he could steal Tom Hale’s idea, and the two Republicans at the table didn’t back it, it would be a trifecta win.
That hope was dashed when Hale bellowed, “Wait just a minute now, damnit! This has been my idea from the start.” Seeing the put-up-or-shut-up look Galia gave him, he added, “I’m not only in, I’m the lead dog. We’ll add our prison money, Galia, and I’ll see to it all the other freeloaders on my side of the aisle are kept out. The president and Dan have to keep the Democrats in line.”
“I’m good with that,” Dalton said.
Hale gave Galia a nod. “Okay, then, Madam Chief of Staff, we’ll do our part, but if you cross us, I’ll be the one handing out the migraines.”
Galia smiled and said, “Have another sweet roll, Senator.”
The reason Alaska hadn’t been allowed to build its own federal peniten
tiary years ago was its tiny population, fewer than three-quarters of a million souls, didn’t justify the expense. It was more cost-efficient to ship their bad guys down to Seattle.
Senator Hale had always rebutted that reality by saying Alaska could help other states relieve their prison overcrowding by locking up surplus inmates from the lower forty-eight.
If all went well, he’d soon be getting his way.
But never in any way he’d imagined or would welcome.
Playa Pacifica, Costa Rica
Representative Philip Brock, Democrat of the 9th District of Pennsylvania, looked out over what he’d come to think of as his new kingdom. All 202.343 hectares — 500 acres — of it. In many parts of the United States, that amount of land might be considered a small farm. In Texas, it would be reckoned little more than a vegetable garden. But Brock wasn’t using his native country as a measuring stick.
The way he looked at things, his property was one acre bigger than the entire principality of Monaco. Like the gilt-edged jewel of the Grimaldi family, his holding featured a balmy climate, coastal mountains and a magnificent beach. Well, technically, he didn’t own the beach or even the first hundred meters of land above the mean high-tide line. That belonged to the Costa Rican people in aggregate and for perpetuity.
All that meant, really, was he couldn’t put up a hotel, a casino or a shave-ice shack on the beach or the grassland just above the sand. He was fine with that. He didn’t want to spoil the panoramic ocean views from his new hacienda anyway.
That rambling building with its central courtyard was his as certainly as any property he might have bought in Bucks County back home in Pennsylvania. Before the Russians, Indians and Mexicans moved in. He couldn’t criticize immigrants for wanting to improve their lot, though. He was doing the same thing. He’d bought his property fee simple, paid $9.5 million cash. Roughly an eighth of the money he’d salted away from his days in investment banking.
Costa Rica had a long history of being the most stable and democratic country in Central America, having declared its independence from Spain in 1821. In the intervening years, it remained a model of liberal democracy in a neighborhood rampant with a series of dictators who might have been seen as comic-opera types if they hadn’t had so much blood on their hands. The country dissolved its army in 1949, so there was no chance of it having a military coup. Twenty percent of its annual budget was spent on social services, including health care and education. And like the United States, Costa Rica had a female president.
With ironic humor, Brock thought he’d have a much tougher time plying his trade as an anarchist in Costa Rica than he did as a member of the United States Congress.
The place wasn’t quite paradise, though. There were active volcanoes. Earthquakes rumbled through every so often. Hurricanes hit the Caribbean coast — one reason Brock had set himself up on the Pacific side of the country. That was just the mischief Mother Nature might get up to.
Social problems were not unknown. Costa Rica was a transhipment point for South American drugs heading north. Domestic consumption of amphetamines and crack cocaine was on the rise. And there was tension caused by illegal immigration from other Central American countries: people sneaking into the country or overstaying their visas. Just like in the U.S.
Brock saw an opportunity in the immigration issue. He recruited Nicaraguans to work on his land. In almost every case, they were people who were about to be deported. He went to the provincial government, vouched for the people in question, promised that he had stable, long-term jobs to offer them — ones the local people would regard as too menial. His employees would become taxpayers and contribute to the country rather than take from it.
By dint of Brock’s advocacy, he found close to two hundred people not only willing to work for him, but to declare their undying loyalty to him. They did the construction of his hacienda, dug wells, tilled his gardens, cooked his meals, tended his home and, most important, defended his little kingdom against anyone with evil designs against him.
For their efforts, they were paid fairly by prevailing standards, and shared in the profits of foodstuffs sold locally and flowers shipped north to America. Brock felt sure that most, if not all, of his people would die for him, should circumstances require.
He also made certain to gather friends in the upper reaches of Costa Rican society and government. He donated to medical charities. He helped fund cultural institutions. He wrote letters recommending students of families rich and poor to U.S. universities. In short, he did everything he could to create the image of an agreeable American.
Someone whose presence in Costa Rica would be stoutly defended.
Perhaps even against the government he purportedly served back home.
What no one could save Brock from, though, were the whims of fate.
When he read the New York Times online that morning he saw a mention that skeletal remains had been found at the C&O Canal National Historical Park and they tentatively had been identified as those of a missing Jordanian diplomat, Dr. Bahir Ben Kalil.
It wasn’t the discovery of the bones that puzzled Brock, it was how quickly they had been connected to Ben Kalil. Who could have done that? There was no mention in the short item that Ben Kalil had been a victim of foul play, but the cops had to have seen clear evidence of that. He’d bashed the guy’s skull in. So whoever was leading the investigation — and with the death of a diplomat that would have to be the FBI — was being cagey.
Flipping off the conventional wisdom, Brock decided that he would be safer in Washington than Central America. He needed to see what the feebs knew and determine whether he could influence the outcome of their labors. Perhaps point the finger of blame at … well, whoever best suited his purposes.
Besides that, of course, he still had a government back home to topple.
He was on the afternoon flight north from San José, as planned.
Chapter 9
Florida Avenue NW — Washington, DC
Just to see what would happen, on the third night after Sweetie and Putnam had brought his orphaned niece, Maxine, home, Sweetie had crept out of the bed she shared with Putnam and made her way down to the basement apartment, her original home in the townhouse.
The first thing that happened was Sweetie fell asleep.
Not so deeply that she wasn’t awakened by the feeling someone was watching her. She opened her eyes, squinted against the glare of an unexpected light and quickly raised her hands to ward off a possible attack. No assault came. Maxine stood at the side of Sweetie’s bed, clutching a stuffed toy lamb against her chest. Sweetie released a deep breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding.
Maxine said in a small voice, “Did I scare you? I didn’t mean to.”
Awaiting a reply, she put her right thumb in her mouth.
Sweetie shook her head. “It’s all right. I just wasn’t expecting a visitor.” A thought occurred to her. A former cop, Sweetie always made sure all doors were locked before going to sleep. “How’d you get in here, Maxi?”
The child had told Sweetie and Putnam that was her preferred nickname.
Maxi took her thumb out of her mouth, reached into a pocket on the lamb’s shirt and held up a key.
“Putnam said this is my house now, too. He showed me all the keys and how to use them.”
Sweetie smiled. When she and her husband had first met he’d been a collector of bad habits and a firm believer in situational morality. Now, he’d become a champion of the downtrodden and the unhesitating surrogate father to a niece he hadn’t known to exist four days ago. More than just a shining example of the power of redemption, he was fast becoming the moral pillar on which his new family depended. One of them, anyway.
Still in cop mode, Sweetie asked, “How’d you know I was down here?”
“I looked everywhere else.”
“Did you wake up Putnam?”
Maxi shook her head.
“Why did you want to find me?” Sweetie asked.
“To make sure you were okay.” She popped her thumb back into her mouth, but took it right out again. A sheen formed on her eyes. “I miss my mama and daddy. I don’t want to …”
A rush of tears left the thought incomplete but obvious.
The poor kid didn’t want to lose anyone else.
Sweetie swung her feet off the bed and reached out to Maxi.
After a moment of reluctance, the girl hurried into Sweetie’s embrace.
“Honey, Putnam and I aren’t going anywhere. We’re going to be around a long time.”
Please, God, Sweetie thought.
Maxi asked if she could sleep with Sweetie, who thought it would be better to go back upstairs. After making a promise of longevity, she thought it best not to give her husband a heart attack. Waking up and finding the two of them absent from their usual resting places just might turn that awful trick.
Back upstairs, Maxi asked if Sweetie could lie down with her until she got back to sleep.
That was where Putnam had found the two of them, his heart never feeling better.
On the morning after the shooting at the Winstead School, Putnam saw Sweetie in their kitchen sitting at the breakfast bar with a cup of tea in front of her. Putnam, already shaved and showered, took the adjacent seat. He was wearing the latest in fashion from Under Armour: T-shirt, workout shorts and moisture-wicking socks.
At one time, he’d have hidden his doughy body under baggy sweats.
Now, he was almost sleek. Had just ordered new business suits.
He felt worthy of chiding his mentor in physical fitness.
“Hearty breakfast you’ve got there, Margaret.”
“Being Sunday, and I’ve already fasted for and returned from early Mass, I added an extra spoon of honey,” she told him. “Besides, it’s all I have the stomach for.”
“Yesterday’s shooting?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been thinking what if it had happened at Maxi’s school,” Putnam said.
Sweetie nodded. She and Putnam were in the process of adopting the child they’d been bequeathed, literally. In their will, the late Lawton and LuAnne Shady, requested that Putnam and his wife (if any) take in Maxine to raise to the best of his ability.
