By Order of the President

by Kilian, Michael;

  “Secret Service,” the man said.

  15

  Dresden stood speechless, fighting to hold back any sign of the terror that possessed him, struggling to look merely startled. Questions without answers raced through his mind. What if the man stepped into the room? How could he hide the pistol at his back? Would he have to use it? Could he?

  The agent made a visual examination of the room with quick glances, but remained at the doorway.

  “Sorry, sir,” he said, with no real courtesy in his hard, flat voice. “But these upper floors were to have been cleared this afternoon. You’ll have to leave.”

  “I’ve been out all day,” said Dresden, amazed at the calmness of his reply. “No one told me.”

  He supposed that, after all, he might look a fairly normal business traveler—standing there in stocking feet, with tie askew, shirtsleeves rolled up and a glass of whiskey in his hand. His new briefcase was on top of the dresser, beside some newspapers. All the scene required was a copy of Penthouse or Playboy.

  “They should have told you at the desk. Anyway, you’ll have to move out at once.”

  Dresden decided a touch of indignation was in order, if he could muster it. He took a deep breath.

  “Just where am I supposed to go? Do you know what time it is?”

  “The hotel may have other rooms available on the lower floors. You may have to go somewhere else. That’s not our concern. We just want all the rooms on these floors cleared. Now.”

  “What’s this all about?”

  The agent gave him a contemptuous look. “Security.” He pocketed his badge, lingering a moment. Dresden feared the man would stand there in the open door until he was packed and ready to go.

  “Let me go to the john, will you?” Dresden said. “I’ll be out of here in a couple of minutes.”

  The agent hesitated, then grimaced, and moved away down the hall. Dresden closed the door quickly. He was packed, with both pistols rolled in his dirty laundry, and fully dressed in five minutes. He flushed the toilet, in case the agent was at the door listening. Then he left, frowning at every security agent he encountered. There were many.

  The desk clerk, apologetic, offered him a room on the fourth floor, overlooking Fourteenth Street. Dresden, expressing weariness and resignation, nodded acceptance. He would check out the next day and find a place farther from the prowls of the Secret Service. To do so now might look too suspicious. So much of everything he did now seemed suspicious.

  Dresden slept little that night, keeping his smaller pistol beneath the pillow beside him. The next morning he moved to the Embassy Row Hotel just up Massachusetts Avenue from DuPont Circle, having remembered it from the previous night’s long walk. It was at the juncture of a variety of neighborhoods—rich and poor, bohemian and professional, drug culture and straight. Brer Rabbit had his choice of briar patches. There was even a Metro subway station just at the corner, should a more distant hiding place suddenly become necessary.

  Checking his bag and briefcase, he took the Metro to a public library where he’d been told he could find out-of-town telephone books. His choice was the Manhattan Yellow Pages, and the listings for theatrical agents. He noted the names and numbers of some of the larger agencies—enough for a thoroughgoing start. Then he went to pick up his new suit at the Connecticut Avenue shop. When he returned to the hotel a room was ready for him, a very elegant one.

  First there were a great many telephone calls to make to New York. There were three entertainers who did first-rate impersonations of President Henry Hampton. The best, or at least funniest, was Reggie Sands. As Vaughan Meader had been John F. Kennedy, and Rich Little had been Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Sands was Henry Hampton, his caricature a perfect rendering of the president as stuffy antebellum Virginia gentleman with a flair for rhetorical excess. The next best was Bobby Dandridge, who gave a more rollicksome impression of Hampton made all the funnier by the fact that Dandridge was black. The most technically perfect mimicry of Hampton Dresden had ever heard was by a comic named Howie King, but he suffered from the fact that he apparently wrote his own material and it wasn’t very good.

  Dresden started with Sands, calling a major talent agency that, as he expected, didn’t handle Sands but was able to refer him quickly to the agency that did. With his call there, Dresden penetrated no further than a woman assistant. Posing as the programming chief of a major Bay Area independent television station owned by a large communications conglomerate, Dresden said his group was planning to put together an hour variety special for syndication and wanted Sands as one of the headliners.

  The assistant treated him as though he were a gas station operator who had inquired if Sands might be interested in a weekend job.

  “Mr. Sands is already under contract with NBC,” she said. “And he’s in Las Vegas through New Year’s. Who did you say you are?”

  He reexplained, asking if she might recommend any impressionist as good as Sands at doing characters like the president. She was insulted, saying there was no one in Sands’s league, but suggested the names of Bobby Dandridge and Howie King as good second-raters and someone named Frankie Ford as a last resort. Dresden thanked her, trying to sound as blasé as possible.

  Charley was certain it could not be Reggie Sands. He was too much a star, too recognizable, and had performed at fund-raisers for Hampton’s opponent in the presidential election. Still, in the insanity that had descended upon the nation in the last month, anything was possible. Dresden made some calls to Las Vegas. Sands was, indeed, appearing there, twice nightly.

  Dandridge’s agent was friendly enough, reporting that the comedian was working in Atlantic City, but he became not a little hostile at the suggestion that Dandridge might be interested in doing a President Hampton routine. “I can’t think of anything that would be in worse taste right now, can you?” he said.

  He was right, of course. At this juncture, nothing could sink a black comedian’s career quicker, or deeper. Unless the performance were given entirely in private, in a Camp David recording studio.

  But a call to Atlantic City confirmed Dandridge’s booking there. The resort manager even complained that Dandridge had already won more than twenty thousand dollars at the blackjack and craps tables.

  Next, Dresden tried the number he’d been given for Howie King’s agent. There was no answer. The call to Frankie Ford’s agent was answered almost instantly, and not by the agent but by Ford himself. He said he had a three-day gig at a Holiday Inn in Toledo, but was free after that and would be out on the coast as soon as Dresden could send him a ticket. Charley, who was using the name Larry Costa, said he would double-check the audition schedule and get right back to him.

  It was clear the president’s recording team was not using Frankie Ford. It was something of a wonder that the Holiday Inn in Toledo was.

  Howie King’s agent still did not answer on Dresden’s next attempt. He read through the morning Washington Post for a few minutes, then tried again, and then again. This time he connected. Dresden went through the full Larry Costa routine, making a significant addition. He mentioned a specific amount of money. He guessed that, even as a second-rater, Howie King probably made a fair income from nightclub work and would want at least fifty thousand dollars to appear in a syndicated television special. Dresden offered thirty-five thousand and waited for the agent to commence haggling. To no avail.

  “When did you say you’d want him?” the agent said.

  “We tape next month.”

  “Couldn’t promise you a thing.”

  “I’ll make it forty-five thousand. It’s only two days’ work, after all.”

  “I don’t care if you make it a million. Howie’s not available.”

  “You mean he has other commitments?”

  “Don’t I wish. I mean he’s not working. He’s on vacation.”

  “When will he be back?”

  “He didn’t say. He just left a message on my answering machine a couple of weeks ago sa
ying he’d been working too hard and needed to take a break. Just like that. Haven’t heard from him since.”

  “Look, we’d really like him for this show. We’ll make it fifty thousand dollars. That’s the most I can budget.”

  “And I wouldn’t accept a penny less, Mr. Costa, but I’m not kidding. Howie took a powder. Maybe he’s been on the road too long. Or maybe it’s his health. He was coming down with a cold or something.”

  “A cold? You mean he was getting hoarse?”

  “What?”

  “Hoarse. Coughing. There’s a lot of that going around.”

  “Yeah, he was a little.”

  To himself, Charley said “Bingo!” To the agent, he said: “That was a couple of weeks ago, you said. I’m sure it’s cleared up by now.”

  “You’d think, but I haven’t heard a word. Yours isn’t the only offer I’ve had to turn down. I’ve tried to reach him myself. Tried his apartment here; his place out in Hampton Bays. Tried his hangouts. He likes Miami. I tried around there, but nobody’s seen him.”

  “Well, I’m sorry it’s not going to work out,” Dresden said. “Thanks anyway.”

  “Wait a minute, Mr. Costa,” said the agent. “Give me your number and if he shows up in the next few days I’ll get back to you.”

  “I’m on the road myself,” Charley said. “I’ll call you in a few days. Let’s hope he appears. We’d really love to talk to him.”

  Dresden hung up. He knew perfectly well where Howie King was, and it certainly wasn’t Miami. He was at Camp David, performing regularly—at least with his voice. All Dresden had to do now was prove it.

  But that wasn’t all. There were other questions he had to answer. It was a month now since the assassination attempt. How much longer did they intend to do this? And why?

  The Washington Post, he knew, was not about to open its clip files to just anyone who walked in off the street. But there was another resource in Washington that contained newspaper files from all over the country—the Library of Congress.

  Dresden identified himself as a free-lance writer preparing an article on the assassination attempt. The files on President Hampton’s illnesses and hospitalizations had apparently been much examined in recent days.

  He signed for the files with his own name. He was beginning to be a little cocky about that. But he made a great pose of taking copious notes from the clips, despite the swiftness with which he was able to obtain all the information he needed. President Hampton had previously been hospitalized three times—the latter two occasions involving bronchial pneumonia and some tests, stemming from unexplained chest pain, that showed nothing serious. In aggregate, his hospital time had come to eleven days. Somehow, Dresden was going to have to acquire eleven videotapes, and find the footage that was accompanying Howie King’s spurious words.

  He stepped out onto Independence Avenue, before him the Capitol and its grand, white dome rising from the leafless trees of its surrounding park. Just across the street was a newly erected security post manned by police carrying submachine guns. The sun was beginning to pale behind a veil of high cloud. Dresden still felt confident, still pleased with himself.

  He started toward the senatorial office buildings, set in a row down the avenue, pausing before the first one. There would be a directory at the guard’s desk that would tell him where he could find what he needed to know.

  Guards. There were three of them. And a metal detector. To either side, the corridor was roped off. He had his pistol in his belt.

  He paused, glanced at his watch, and then, as though remembering an important, forgotten appointment, strode outside again. On the sidewalk, his frustration colored his face. The damned gun. A pistol had taken his father’s life and now one had almost undone him. He walked rapidly away from the Capitol down 1st Street, turning right at the downhill corner. He remembered a Metro subway station, and a vast agglomeration of various newspaper boxes at its entrance. Reaching it, he stood perusing the front pages until he was sure he was alone. Then he inserted a coin and opened the Washington Times box, which was nearly full of unsold papers. He waited a moment, glancing about to reaffirm his temporary solitude, then quickly snatched the pistol from his back and shoved it deep beneath the bottom paper in the stack. He let the box door close with a slam. For the next few minutes at least, the revolver might as well be in a bank safety deposit box.

  As befitted the ranking opposition member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, Senator George Calendiari’s office was in the Russell Office Building, the grandest of the three. Calendiari’s office was, in fact, not far off the main corridor, facing away from the Capitol but toward the Mall and the western sunset. Dresden walked by the open outer door to the reception area twice, the second time lingering. The impulse he’d been barely resisting called for much more than this. His mad desire was to stroll right into Calendiari’s office and casually seat himself across the desk from his past rival, just as they had sat across from each other at the best table in Antoine’s in Santa Linda years before, when Calendiari, playing cigar-smoking young gentleman to cigar-smoking young gentleman, had taken Dresden to dinner in an attempt to talk him out of his fling with Madeleine Anderson. It had been an affable evening, with Calendiari explaining his carefully laid plans for his and Madeleine’s future and his urbane understanding of Charley’s ever-changing interest in a wide variety of women. Charley, equally as urbane and amiable, had agreed with everything Calendiari had said, and they had parted that evening something of friends. The next night Dresden had taken out Madeleine again.

  The danger now was so tantalyzingly near. Charley stepped across the threshold and up to the receptionist. She looked as though she might have just walked off the campus of any state college in California.

  “Hi,” said Dresden, smiling. “I’m from Santa Linda. They told us back at your district office that we could get passes to the public galleries here.”

  She was friendly, but did not smile back. “Yes sir, that used to be the case. But the public galleries are closed now. You know, because of all the trouble.”

  “Are you sure? They told us we could get passes here. Is the senator in? We met him last year, at the county fair.”

  It occurred to Dresden he was much too well dressed to be playing such a rube, but the discrepancy seemed to escape her. She was very young.

  “The senator’s out of the country,” she said. “In Brussels.”

  “Brussels?”

  “For the NATO meeting. I’m sorry, sir. Maybe they’ll open the galleries again after all this quiets down.” She brightened. “In the meantime, you know, you can watch the proceedings on television. See if your hotel has C-Span.”

  He smiled again, backing away. “I’ll do that. Thank you. Thank you very much.”

  He took a deep breath of freedom once out in the street, walking away as quickly as was seemly and possible with his injured knee, turning the first corner he came to. His idiocy knew no bounds. Doubtless every staffer in Calendiari’s office read the local California papers. How many headlines might that receptionist have seen—“Ad Exec Kills Common-Law Wife,” “Love Triangle Spurs Double Murder,” “Love Slaying in Tiburcio Hills”—how many front-page pictures? He must stay away from this place. There would come a time and need to talk to George Calendiari, but not soon, and not here.

  A few people were on the street near the subway entrance, but none paying any attention to the newspaper boxes. As calmly as possible, Dresden reopened the one for the Washington Times, taking a copy from the top and reaching underneath the stack for the pistol. It was still there, but the hammer caught on something as he attempted to pull it forth; caught, and then suddenly released with a loud, terrifying report, the gunshot’s echoes rattling along the building walls.

  Dresden’s impulse was to turn and run in a frantic descent of the escalator steps moving into the dark, slanted subway tunnel. But a survivor’s instinct stayed him, constrained him to take his paper and let the box door snap shut, lo
oking up as startled as everyone else. He saw three Capitol policemen hurrying down the street, guns drawn. Like others, Charley stared at them, anxiously, inquiringly, but they rushed past. One halted at the subway entrance, his movements all urgency and uselessness as he whirled about in search of the sight of a fleeing gunman, then hurried down into the tunnel depths. After waiting a moment, Dresden followed, standing content on the slowly moving escalator step as he watched the policeman’s back disappear far below.

  Back at the Embassy Row, he remembered that Maddy had said she and Calendiari had a house in McLean, Virginia. He called information, but the number was unlisted. He called the senator’s office, but the receptionist refused to give out the number—and made him nervous. He quickly hung up.

  As a youth growing up in Westchester, when his father had been sufficiently affluent for the family to dwell on the social periphery of the upper class, Dresden had been able to learn many things about his betters, especially debutantes. One was that they had their own system of communications, of phone listings and addresses.

  Gulping the rest of his drink, he pulled on his coat and hurried out the door. There was still time before the library closed.

  “Could you tell me where I might find a copy of the Washington Social Register?” Dresden asked the woman behind the desk.

  She stared at him. He wondered how much his breath smelled of bourbon.

  “Sir, they no longer publish Social Registers by city. They stopped doing that years ago. It’s all in one big volume now. For the whole country.”

  His Westchester life was so long ago.

  “That’s what I’m looking for. Where can I find it?”

  She glanced at her watch and then directed him to the appropriate shelf.

  It was a thick and heavy volume, so resembling a telephone directory it belied its own exclusive purpose. He thumbed through the pages quickly, looking for the Calendiaris, and finding none whatsoever. He looked through all the names beginning with “CA,” to no avail. He looked through all the Cs. He looked through the Andersons, and the Andersens. Nothing.