The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller)

by Andrew Delaplaine

  “Bianca...”

  The strength and determination returned to her voice, but it also had a conciliatory, reasoned tone to it.

  “Look, Tim. Bill has devoted his whole life to this moment in time. Bill Dumaine is a career politician—and when you’re a career politician, there’s only one brass ring, and it’s the Presidency. You could take that away from him.”

  The fire returned to Tim’s belly.

  “And you couldn’t? Sleeping with his manager? Jesus Christ, give me a break, Bianca.”

  A rueful smile crossed her face.

  “You are smart, aren’t you?”

  “Smart enough to be dangerous.”

  “Just my fear,” she said.

  “Well, while you were looking at me and Bill, I’ve been watching you and Phil. To quote you: the way you look at him. The way he looks at you. When you don’t think anybody’s looking, I’m looking, Bianca. I know all about being careful. I have to be careful! I’ve always had to be careful!”

  She almost stamped her foot as she clenched a fist.

  “You should leave the campaign before this gets out.”

  “No way. I’m not bailing out on him. Do you want me to go to Bill right now? Are you going to go to him? Do you want this confrontation? Huh? I’m ready if you are.”

  “You can’t go to him about me and Phil.”

  “Watch me. You push me and I will.”

  Bianca did some quick thinking. Bill would positively explode if he found out about her and Phil. She had to buy time. Time to work things out with Phil.

  “Let’s do it this way: I won’t confront him about you if you don’t tell him about Phil.”

  “That sounds fair.”

  “He needs to concentrate on the campaign. If he’s not left alone, if we screw it up, it’s all lost.”

  “There’s no question about that.”

  “So you won’t leave, that’s final?”

  Tim pulled the sweaty running towel slung over his shoulder and wiped his forehead.

  “No way, Bianca. Over my dead body.”

  “This is not going to end well, Tim.”

  He headed toward the closed door.

  “Then it’s going to be as much your fault as mine.”

  He got to the door, put his hand on the handle and turned to her with a wink and a smile.

  “Stiff upper lip, Bianca. We’ll get through this—just be very careful.”

  She nodded and smiled as he closed the door behind, admiring his toughness.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 27

  Air Force One hurtled through the air at 33,000 feet over Kansas as it carried President Sam Houston St. Clair back to Washington from an aircraft carrier dedication ceremony in San Francisco. He was sequestered with his son, Jack Houston St. Clair, in the President’s private stateroom toward the middle of the aircraft.

  President St. Clair touched a button on the console on his curved desk.

  “Yes, Mr. President,” came through the line.

  “Jerome, let me have a gin and tonic, willya.”

  Jack spoke up.

  “Jerome, give him a double martini the way he likes it,” he smiled. “Dad, it’s four o’clock.”

  “Well, every now and then my son is right, even if he is a Democrat,” the President smiled back. “Make it a martini.”

  “Yes, sir. Bombay martini with two olives comin’ right up.”

  “And what’ll you have, Jack?”

  “The Lagavulin sixteen on the rocks.”

  “You got that, Jerome?”

  “Yes, Mr. President. Ever since we knew your son was joining the campaign, we ordered some of that in.”

  “I hope you got a couple of cases, Jerome,” said the President.

  “I believe it was a couple of truckloads, Mr. President.”

  Jack laughed as St. Clair lifted his finger off the button and leaned back in his low swivel chair. It was quiet this far back in the plane, with just a soft hum that gave any indication they were barreling through the sky at hundreds of miles per hour.

  “I’m glad you could join me in San Francisco, Jack.”

  “It was great of you to let me tag along.”

  “Well, the unit you were in was deployed off the carrier this one replaced, so I thought you’d get a kick meeting some of your old Navy buddies.”

  “I did,” Jack said, getting up and stretching, running his hand through his wavy black hair, “though we were out a little late last night and had too much to drink.”

  “No harm done. That’s what reunions are for, to let loose and have some fun,” the President smiled again, his jade green eyes identical to his son’s, and though he’d had wavy black hair just like Jack’s when he was young, he’d gone almost completely white at the age of sixty-eight. Jack had always thought he could tell what he’d look like when he got older because he looked exactly like pictures of his dad when he was thirty-six. Like twins. Only different ages.

  The door gently opened and Jerome, senior steward on Air Force One, came in bearing a tray with their drinks. Another steward followed with a tray containing little bowls of nuts and other snacks.

  Jerome, a black man in his late fifties with hair almost as white as the President’s, put the President’s martini glass down in front of him and then poured the martini from an ice-cold stainless steel shaker. He stuck a toothpick holding two olives into the glass, and then placed the Lagavulin in front of Jack.

  “Not too many ice cubes,” he said.

  “Not in a single malt, absolutely correct,” said Jack.

  “You haven’t seen Jerome in a while, have you, Jack?”

  “Not since I spent so much time on Air Force One picking up people for Sofia’s funeral.”

  There was an awkward silence as they all thought of the President’s late wife, who’d died suddenly of ovarian cancer early in the term.

  The President cleared his throat.

  “Those were sad times, Jack, very sad times.”

  “Anything else, Mr. President?”

  “Thanks, Jerome, no.”

  Jerome nodded and the two stewards left.

  “So, Jack, we’re alone now. Tell me what’s so urgent you couldn’t tell me over the phone.”

  Jack flipped the gold latches on a thin, silky smooth leather valise Francesca had bought him at the Prada store in Bal Harbour and pulled out a slim file, tossing it onto the President’s desk.

  “This,” he said, sipping from his rocks glass etched with the Seal of the President of the United States.

  The President tapped the thin file with an index finger, squinted and looked at Jack with a devious smile.

  “I get a million files a day, Jack. We employ thousands of experts in every field to read them before they ever get to my desk.”

  “You don’t want ’em to read this,” said Jack with a chuckle.

  “So why don’t you just sum it up for me, huh?”

  Jack had a Cheshire cat’s smile on his face as he leaned forward and rested his arms on the desk.

  “What would you say if I told you I knew something about Bill Dumaine that nobody else knows? Something that would destroy the Mowbray-Dumaine ticket if it got out?”

  The President leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk.

  “I’d say I’d be very anxious to find out what that ‘something’ is, Jack.”

  “Dumaine is sleeping with one of the guys in his campaign.”

  Jack leaned back with a self-satisfied smirk on his face.

  The President leaned back, too, but he wasn’t smiling. He stared at his oldest son, his mouth agape.

  “What? Are you kidding?”

  “It’s his Body Man, a guy named Tim Harcourt.”

  “My God,” said St. Clair, draining his martini.

  “Shocked?”

  “The last thing that shocked me was when I won the Presidency, son.” He processed the information. “But this comes in a close second.”

  He touche
d a button on his console.

  “Yes, Mr. President?” came Jerome’s voice.

  “I’m going to change my drink to the Scotch Jack’s drinking, Jerome.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  “How do you know any of this, Jack?”

  “You remember that Secret Service agent I helped out on a case a few years back?”

  “Yes, you saved his life. Agent Rodriguez. You had something going with his sister, didn’t you?”

  “I had something going with every woman in Miami, Dad.”

  St. Clair laughed.

  “So, tell me the details.”

  “He called and asked me to come see him when he was in Miami on leave. Said it was urgent. So I went down, we had a little lunch in Little Havana, and he told me.”

  “How would he know?”

  “He’s chief of the detail assigned to the Dumaine campaign.”

  “I didn’t know that,” said the President softly. “On such twists of fate are battles won and lost,” he almost whispered.

  “He was very conflicted. He betrayed his oath—”

  “The oath that requires him to keep his damn mouth shut,” the President finished the thought for Jack.

  “Yes. Well, he was conflicted, naturally, Carlos being a really good guy. But he feels a greater sense of loyalty to us because, well, you’re from Miami…”

  “And you saved his life in a tough situation that would have ruined his whole family.”

  “Yeah, all that.”

  “So he thought we might find this information useful during the campaign?” said the President, opening the file folder and skimming it.

  “Right.”

  “Where’s this Harcourt from?” asked St. Clair.

  “San Diego,” said Jack.

  “What’d he do before he got involved with Dumaine?” asked St. Clair. “Politically, I mean.”

  “He was a scuba diving instructor when he got out of college, no indication of anything unusual up till then,” said Jack. “Then he went to Australia for a couple of years. I’ve got somebody checking up on what he did out there.”

  “Lotta gay bars in Australia and San Diego?”

  “There’re a lot of gay bars everywhere, Dad,” said Jack, raising his eyebrows, knowing his dad was not that dense.

  “So when he got back from Australia?”

  “Did a year of law school.”

  “Where?”

  “Georgetown. Dropped out and got a slot as a paralegal on the staff of the—”

  “Don’t tell me, the Foreign Relations Committee.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Jack, “the Foreign Relations Committee.”

  St. Clair got up and walked around the cabin. He zipped up the Navy blue windbreaker all Presidents wore when they were aboard Air Force One.

  Jerome came in and left the drinks behind.

  “And from there, it was just a quick jump into the campaign after Dumaine announced he was running for the nomination.”

  “How do you want to move on this, Dad? If you leak it, it would tear him to shreds.”

  St. Clair went back behind his desk and opened a humidor on the credenza behind his chair and pulled out a cigar. He sat down heavily and lit up.

  “Damned Cuban embargo.” He savored the cigar. “You know, Bill Dumaine is the darling of the U.S. media right now. But the media, it’s a two-edged sword, and they eat their young without thinking.”

  “They’d rip him apart, all right.”

  St. Clair took a long sip from his Lagavulin.

  “Funny thing about the media. They think they’re so powerful. I wonder if they know how much we use them when they think they’re using us. They do have enormous power, don’t get me wrong. But they use it like a ten-year-old uses a machine gun. They’re effective shooting people down, but they don’t always know if they’re hitting the good guys or the bad guys.”

  “What do you mean?” said Jack.

  “Okay, let’s say Bill Dumaine is the man who ought to be—by all that’s right and good—the next President, whether he was running against me instead of Mowbray or not. Let’s say he’d be the next guy in line if Mowbray beat me. And assume that that would be a good thing.”

  “Yeah?” said Jack.

  “But let’s say the media, thinking only of the sound bites they need for tonight’s news—and we all know that’s all they think about—bury the poor sap because if he’s sleeping with Tim Harcourt, it’s news, baby, and they kill him. What happens to the country?”

  “They get another four years of you,” said Jack.

  With a cynical—but also a sad—smile, the President nodded.

  “Now, let’s say you’re Bill Dumaine. This—this—rumor comes out, comes out of nowhere—that you’re queer. That you’re gay, and running for Vice President of the United States. How do you defend against that?”

  “If it never happened, if he never had anything going with this guy, how could he prove he didn’t?” said Jack.

  “And if he does have something going with the kid, he’s stuck, too.”

  “Exactly. Just the fact that they jog together every morning could be used in the leak. They’d crucify him.”

  “You think Agent Rodriguez will feed you more on a regular basis?”

  “I asked him to, just in case you needed it.”

  “Just what I was thinking. If we need it later, then we’ll think about this business very seriously.”

  “So I’ll keep at it,” said Jack.

  “Yes, of course. And Jack: keep digging, dig deep, but very discreetly. If we need it, we use it. But only when the time is right.”

  “Okay.”

  “It’s still early in the game.”

  “True,” said Jack.

  “Now, remember we talked about you coming up to stay with me in the White House to help with the campaign?”

  “I’ve thought it over and think it sounds like a great idea. Things are slow for me in Miami over the next few months, so if you need me, I’m yours. I can always go back for a day or two as needed.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear. I’m not looking forward to going up against Mowbray. I’ll need all the help I can get.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  St. Clair leaned forward confidentially.

  “I know it’s a little tough for you, Jack, being a staunch Democrat and all.”

  “Well…”

  “I’m not kidding. I know you have serious differences with me on a hundred different policy matters.”

  “Listen, Dad. Stop. I’m your son first, a Democrat second. A very distant second if we’re gonna keep score, okay? I’ll do whatever I can to get you reelected.”

  “All right, then. If you’re okay with it.”

  “I’m okay with it.”

  The President and Jack were halfway through their second round of drinks when the console buzzed.

  “Yes?”

  “You called for Mr. Clougherty and Mr. Lizniak, sir. They’re outside.”

  “Send them in.”

  Jerome opened the door and the President’s chief of staff, Francis Clougherty, and Nathaniel Lizniak, counsel to the President, came in.

  “Have a seat, boys. Jerome! Get these men some drinks. My son says it’s cocktail time, so give them a drink. And I’ll have another one.”

  Less than a minute later, Jerome and another steward came in with drinks, a bourbon on the rocks for Lizniak and a full pot of coffee for the teetotaler Clougherty.

  “Is it fresh-brewed, Jerome?” asked the always nervous Clougherty.

  “Why—” Jerome started before St. Clair interrupted him.

  “Of course it’s freshly brewed, Francis. They know how you only drink freshly brewed American coffee,” said the President.

  “Just a habit,” Clougherty shrugged. “All those AA meetings.”

  “What’s it been, twenty years?”

  “Twenty-three, actually, Mr. President,” Clougherty demurred.

 
“We have some business, Mr. President,” said Lizniak.

  Jack raised his refilled glass.