Below the Belt

by Stuart Woods

  “Then come in!” His voice sounded excited.

  Macher let himself into the two-story room, which was filled with pictures and books. St. Clair sat at his desk. The only light on in the room was the lamp that illuminated its surface.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” Macher said. “There were accidents on the interstate. I did the best I could, and I did call you.” He walked toward the desk.

  St. Clair beckoned him. “I had a migraine and was down for a while. What do you hear from England?”

  Macher stopped and set down the heavy case. “The family are surrounded by armed men, and have been since this morning. There was no opportunity to stage an accident, and even an all-out assault would not have worked, so I sent our people home, until circumstances have changed.”

  “Damn it!” St. Clair said. “Set the case up here.” He cleared the desk of papers and patted the desktop.

  Macher placed the case on the desk and turned the opening side toward St. Clair. “Here you are, sir.”

  St. Clair examined the case. “Jesus, it’s pretty substantial, isn’t it? How does it open?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, here’s the key.” He dug it out of his pocket and handed it to St. Clair.

  “How does it work?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, sir, I haven’t opened it.”

  “Obviously your curiosity isn’t as strong as mine.” He waved Macher to a chair across the desk from him and inspected the locks. “This brings an end to our problems,” St. Clair said, inserting the key into a lock and turning it.

  “I’m delighted to hear it,” Macher said.

  St. Clair inserted the key into the other lock and turned it. “Come November, I’ll have my man in the White House.” He set down the key and reached forward with both hands to open the case.

  Macher was looking directly at St. Clair’s face when the strong case exploded. His chair and he in it were knocked backward several feet, and he was stunned by the force. St. Clair was screaming. Macher got up on one elbow and looked at the man: he was flat against the bookcase behind him and on fire from the shoulders up. So was the bookcase.

  Macher struggled to his feet and tried to find a way to help St. Clair, but there was nothing he could do. He looked around and saw a fire extinguisher near the door to the room and ran for it. He expended the entire charge in St. Clair’s direction; when it ran out, he went looking for another and found one in the kitchenette where St. Clair’s lunches were prepared. He ran back into the room and emptied the second extinguisher. St. Clair had fallen to the floor behind his desk.

  Macher knew at once that the man was dead; his arms, shoulders, and face were stripped of clothes and his flesh was burned black. The phone on the desk was gone; he found another on a table across the room and called 911.

  “Nine-one-one operator, what is your emergency?”

  “An explosion and fire,” he replied.

  “Anyone injured?”

  “One fatality. I could use some first aid.” He gave her the address.

  “Police, EMTs, and an ambulance have been dispatched.”

  Macher hung up and began plotting how he might go to the board and be placed in charge of St. Clair’s business interests. And Nelson Knott. He couldn’t let the man think he was free to act as he pleased.

  —

  STONE WATCHED THE evening news: Ed Rawls’s book and Martha Parker’s statement took up the first ten minutes, then came this:

  “In a related story, Mr. Knott’s principal financial backer, Christian St. Clair, was killed this afternoon by an explosion in his home on New York’s Upper East Side. A business associate, Erik Macher, was slightly burned and was treated at a local hospital and released.”

  The rest of the program was taken up with interviews and political reports connected to St. Clair’s death.

  “St. Clair’s death comes at a very difficult moment for Nelson Knott,” a reporter was saying. “Knott has sequestered himself at his Virginia estate and released a statement saying that he is devastated by the death of Christian St. Clair and will have no other statement until tomorrow. He has called a news conference for ten AM, at which time he is going to have to address these accusations of the rape of two women when they were employed by him.”

  —

  STONE WATCHED THE news all evening, switching from CNN to the networks to MSNBC. He fell asleep with the TV on.

  60

  NELSON KNOTT AWOKE FROM A fitful sleep to the ringing of a telephone. The bedside clock said seven AM. He rolled over and grabbed the phone. “What?”

  “Mr. Knott,” his secretary said, “I’m getting a flood of calls from the media for you.”

  “I told you last night—refer them to the press conference at my office at ten this morning.”

  “I’ve done that. There’s something else, sir.”

  “What is it?”

  “The morning television shows are all reporting that several women have emerged, accusing you of charges similar to the one on television last night. Your attorney called and requested that you cancel the press conference this morning and not give any interviews until you and he have met.”

  Knott was unable to speak.

  “Sir, what would you like me to do?”

  “Cancel the press conference,” he replied, “and don’t call me again.” He hung up. He reached for his wife, but he had forgotten that she was in New York, shopping. He got out of bed and paced the room, naked and in a panic. It was obvious to him that his presidential bid was at an end, and Christian St. Clair was dead, so he couldn’t ask him what to do next.

  He went into his study and looked out the big windows with their view of the Virginia countryside. It was pouring rain, and the wind was whipping the trees on his lawn. It seemed a metaphor of what had suddenly happened to his life, and there was nowhere to go from here.

  He sat down at his desk, still naked, opened a drawer, and removed a beautiful, handmade .45 semiautomatic pistol, one of a considerable collection. He racked the slide, thumbed the safety off, put the barrel into his mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  —

  STONE OVERSLEPT, not waking until nearly nine o’clock. The TV was still on to MSNBC, and Mika Brzezinski was speaking into the camera and a banner beneath her read: “Breaking News.”

  “The Virginia State Police, called to the home of Nelson Knott, found him at his desk, dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. His death came after multiple reports of accusations of rape by former female employees of his company. Thus ends perhaps the shortest presidential campaign in American history.”

  The phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Stone, it’s Ed Rawls. I’m back on Islesboro, at your place. Just got in.”

  “Have you heard the news?”

  “I’ve heard nothing else,” Ed said. “I’m in your living room, and it’s on right now.”

  “You heard about St. Clair, too?”

  “Yeah, at bedtime last night, in Augusta.”

  “Ed, do you know anything about that explosion?”

  “Well, I know that if you don’t follow the proper procedure when you open a strong case, you get a strong reaction.”

  “Did you mention that to the people who took the case from you?”

  “Nope. They didn’t ask me.”

  “Ed, there’s something I’ve got to know.”

  “I’ll help if I can.”

  “What was in the strong case?”

  Ed chuckled. “Nothing. Not a thing.”

  “And for how long had that been true?”

  “Well, I emptied it before I left it with Joe Adams,” Ed said. “I was trying to finish my book at the time, and I needed a red herring to keep people busy and off my back until it was done.”

  “Did Joe know it was empty?”
/>
  “Nope, he never asked me what was in it.”

  “And all the time it was in my possession, it was empty?”

  “Yep. You never asked me, either.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I am happy to hear from readers, but you should know that if you write to me in care of my publisher, three to six months will pass before I receive your letter, and when it finally arrives it will be one among many, and I will not be able to reply.

  However, if you have access to the Internet, you may visit my website at www.stuartwoods.com, where there is a button for sending me e-mail. So far, I have been able to reply to all my e-mail, and I will continue to try to do so.

  If you send me an e-mail and do not receive a reply, it is probably because you are among an alarming number of people who have entered their e-mail address incorrectly in their mail software. I have many of my replies returned as undeliverable.

  Remember: e-mail, reply; snail mail, no reply.

  When you e-mail, please do not send attachments, as I never open these. They can take twenty minutes to download, and they often contain viruses.

  Please do not place me on your mailing lists for funny stories, prayers, political causes, charitable fund-raising, petitions, or sentimental claptrap. I get enough of that from people I already know. Generally speaking, when I get e-mail addressed to a large number of people, I immediately delete it without reading it.

  Please do not send me your ideas for a book, as I have a policy of writing only what I myself invent. If you send me story ideas, I will immediately delete them without reading them. If you have a good idea for a book, write it yourself, but I will not be able to advise you on how to get it published. Buy a copy of Writer’s Market at any bookstore; that will tell you how.

  Anyone with a request concerning events or appearances may e-mail it to me or send it to: Publicity Department, Penguin Random House LLC, 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  Those ambitious folk who wish to buy film, dramatic, or television rights to my books should contact Matthew Snyder, Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 98212-1825.

  Those who wish to make offers for rights of a literary nature should contact Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit, 445 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10022. (Note: This is not an invitation for you to send her your manuscript or to solicit her to be your agent.)

  If you want to know if I will be signing books in your city, please visit my website, www.stuartwoods.com, where the tour schedule will be published a month or so in advance. If you wish me to do a book signing in your locality, ask your favorite bookseller to contact his Penguin representative or the Penguin publicity department with the request.

  If you find typographical or editorial errors in my book and feel an irresistible urge to tell someone, please write to Sara Minnich at Penguin’s address above. Do not e-mail your discoveries to me, as I will already have learned about them from others.

  A list of my published works appears in the front of this book and on my website. All the novels are still in print in paperback and can be found at or ordered from any bookstore. If you wish to obtain hardcover copies of earlier novels or of the two nonfiction books, a good used-book store or one of the online bookstores can help you find them. Otherwise, you will have to go to a great many garage sales.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Stuart Woods is the author of more than sixty novels, including fifty consecutive hardcover New York Times bestsellers. He is a native of Georgia and began his writing career in the advertising industry. Chiefs, his debut in 1981, won the Edgar Award. An avid sailor and pilot, Woods lives in Florida, Maine, and New Mexico.

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  facebook.com/StuartWoodsAuthor

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