The Run

by Stuart Woods

  “You having any fun at all?”

  “Weirdly enough, yes. I like it when I can get in a room with fifty people and really answer their questions. Trouble is, the staff keeps pointing out that if I only talk to fifty people at a time, I can’t get elected to anything.”

  “So, my darling, how would you feel about being vice president?”

  Will sat up and stuffed a couple of pillows between his back and the headboard. “I really, really don’t want to do that,” he said. “I’d rather be slugging it out in the Senate than representing George Kiel at funerals.”

  “It might not be all bad,” she said. “Joe Adams has done it well.”

  “Doing it well is not the point,” Will replied. “The point is, that as VP, one has absolutely no power of any kind, and George is not the sort of guy who’s going to share it. I’d get about the same treatment that Harry Truman got from FDR.”

  “You forget that Joe Adams is president of the United States, at the moment.”

  “I don’t want to sit around waiting for George to kick off. What’s the news on the president?”

  “He wakes up from time to time, but doesn’t seem able to communicate. I got that from Sue Adams.”

  “I’d rather not be VP, even under those circumstances.”

  “So, you’re telling me that if Kiel nails down the nomination and then summons you to a hotel suite in L.A. and tells you that he can’t win without you and, for the good of the party, you have to be VP, you’re going to tell him to get stuffed? Lyndon Johnson didn’t want to be vice president, either.”

  “I hope I’ll have the guts to tell him to get stuffed,” Will said, “but in a situation like that, you never know, do you?”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “So, how would you feel about being the second lady?”

  “About the same as being first lady, I guess. I would do everything I could to ignore it, and as second lady it might even be easier to keep my job, or maybe even get promoted.”

  “If I stayed in the Senate, it would be even easier.”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about that,” she said. “By the way, you do remember that we have dinner at the White House tomorrow evening?”

  “I remember, and have the awful feeling that George Kiel is going to be there, too.”

  “And I’ll have to make nice with his wife.”

  “Oh, yes. Won’t that be fun?”

  “She could win a Mamie Eisenhower look-alike contest,” Kate said. “Even to the clothes.”

  “I love you when you’re catty,” he said, kissing her ear.

  “I talked to Sue Adams again today,” Kate said.

  “And how is she? More important, how is Joe?”

  “She said everything was fine. I’m not sure why I didn’t believe her.”

  Will sat up straight. “Do you think Joe is worse?”

  “I don’t know. She was chipper enough, but there was something under the surface that I couldn’t read. Still, they wouldn’t be giving this dinner party if he wasn’t all right, would they?”

  Will relaxed. “You’re right, they wouldn’t. You know, I’ve hardly given Joe a thought for the past few months.”

  “Don’t feel guilty; he’s had his hands so full that he probably hasn’t thought a lot about you, either. God forbid we should read about some incident in the papers, or start hearing rumors that he isn’t quite right.”

  “I suppose I should give some thought to what I’ll do if I do hear those rumors.”

  “What can you do?”

  “I can press him to resign, I suppose. I’m not really comfortable with the knowledge that he’s ill.”

  “But then Eft Efton would become the acting president, wouldn’t he?”

  “I suppose the country could stand even that for a few months, although it would give him a big leg up in the general election. I think he’s going to get the Republican nomination.”

  “I hope he does,” Kate said. “Wouldn’t you enjoy running against him?”

  “It would get dirty.”

  “On his part only, I hope.”

  “I hope, too.”

  “If it gets really bad, would you fight fire with fire?”

  “You mean start digging into his personal life? Not a chance. I’ll leave that to Larry Flynt and the tabloids.”

  “Eft won’t leave it to them; he’ll go all out to get anything he can on you.”

  “What is there to get?” Will asked.

  “You can’t think of anything?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever done anything in my life that I can’t defend, if I have to. There are some votes that I cast for political advantage that I’m not proud of, but I don’t think that’s the kind of thing Eft could use against me. He’s had too many of those in his own career.”

  “I have to tell you,” Kate said, “I have a sense of foreboding about this. After the Clinton mess, everybody’s fair game.”

  “Well, game, maybe, but not fair game. And the current atmosphere may cost the Republicans a lot of seats in the House.”

  “How about the Senate?”

  “I think it’s unlikely that we can get majorities in both houses.”

  “So, if you’re president, you’ll likely have a Republican-controlled Senate?”

  “Probably, so I don’t want to piss them off too much during the campaign. I’ve worked hard to build relationships with a lot of Republican senators, and I don’t want to squander that in a dogfight with Eft Efton.”

  They snuggled into bed, and she put her head on his shoulder, pressing her body against his. “How much time together do you think we’ll get if you’re president?”

  “A lot more than now,” he said, “but maybe less than we had before. I’ll do the best I can; you know that.”

  “I guess I know that,” she said.

  “There’s always Camp David and the bedroom on Air Force One.”

  She laughed. “I wonder if I could make love on an airplane full of staff, press, and Secret Service agents.”

  “We already know that the presence of agents doesn’t slow you down,” he said, kissing her.

  “It didn’t, did it?” She giggled.

  “Not in the least.”

  “Want to do it again?”

  “Will you settle for first thing in the morning? I’m pretty bushed.”

  “If I have to,” she said.

  “Maybe we can do it in the bathroom at the White House tomorrow night.”

  “Promises, promises,” she said.

  27

  Terry Cogan drove through the flat south Georgia countryside toward Reidsville. Cogan was a smalltime Atlanta lawyer, in his late thirties, who supplemented his DUI cases and ambulance chasing with occasional investigative work, and he was pleased to have this job, even if he wasn’t sure who he was working for. He’d gotten a call from another lawyer in a big Atlanta firm, a friend of his father, who’d sometimes sent cases his way, and the man had been tight-lipped about who was instructing him. Maybe it was better if he didn’t know.

  He made his way to the state prison, parked his car, and identified himself at the front gate, his way having been smoothed by a call from a state legislator of his father’s acquaintance. Fifteen minutes later he was shown into a sparsely furnished room, and five minutes after that, a guard brought a man into the room and left the two of them alone.

  “Hey,” the man said. “I’m Larry Moody.”

  “Terry Cogan,” the lawyer replied, offering his hand. Cogan had done his homework on Larry Eugene Moody, who had bulked up in the prison gym. The young man was thirty-five, and his blond hair was thinning and creeping up his scalp; otherwise, he looked much the same as in the pictures at his trial.

  “Did Charlene send you?” Moody asked.

  “Charlene Joiner? No. I’m an attorney, and I represent some people who are interested in your case, people who are opposed to the death penalty.”

  They sat down. “I’ll tell you anythi
ng I can that’ll help,” Moody said. “I’m scheduled for October 30, and I’m getting worried.”

  “I can understand that,” Cogan said.

  “If I can just get a new trial, I know I’ll be acquitted. That nigger girl who testified against me at my trial is dead, you know; she got killed in a car wreck last New Year’s Eve.”

  Cogan had not the slightest doubt that Moody was guilty of the rape and murder of which he had been convicted. He knew that the girl Moody was referring to was a last-minute witness who’d testified that Moody had raped her when they were in high school. “I think you could be right,” he said. “I’ve read the trial transcript, and I think that, without her testimony, you’d have been acquitted.”

  “Damn right I would have.”

  “It’s a shame your lawyer wasn’t smart enough to keep her off the stand.”

  “Will Lee? He’s running for president now, did you hear?”

  “I heard. I’m sorry you weren’t better represented.”

  “Well, he did good, really,” Moody said, looking at the ground. “I didn’t tell him nothing about the nigger girl, so he sort of got blindsided at the last minute, when one of my old high-school teachers was on the stand and mentioned her. The prosecutor was all over that right away, and there wasn’t really nothing Mr. Lee could have done.”

  “So you don’t blame Will Lee for your conviction?” Cogan asked, making some notes on a legal pad. “I’d have thought you’d have been pretty pissed off at him.”

  “For what? He did the best he could, and that was damned good.”

  “Well, how about that business between Lee and Charlene?”

  Moody laughed. “Listen, Charlene likes to fuck better than anybody I ever knew. I’d been in jail for a long time, so she was getting pretty horny, and when Charlene’s horny, she can have just about any guy she wants. You ever seen her in the movies?”

  “Many times.”

  “So you know how sexy she is.”

  “I sure do.”

  “Well, let me tell you something: Charlene on the silver screen ain’t nothing compared to Charlene up close. Jesus, I get horny just thinking about it. When we were living together, I’d come home from work, and we’d do it, and we’d do it again at bedtime, and then again first thing in the morning, you know? We used to go to the drive-in movies, and we’d fuck in the back of my van, just for a change. So I know what Mr. Lee was up against when she showed up at his place that afternoon.”

  “Do you know what happened that day?”

  “Oh, Charlene told me all about it after the trial. She liked talking about it.”

  “What, exactly, did she tell you?”

  “She said she went out to the Lee farm, over by Delano, and she went back to this little house behind the big house, where Mr. Lee lived. It was on a little lake. Anyway, when she got there she saw him diving in the lake, and he was nekkid, so she got nekkid, too, and jumped in with him. So they fucked in the water, and then again inside the house, and then she did this little thing she used to do.”

  “What was that? What did she used to do?”

  “She ate some ice cream, and then she gave him a blow job.”

  Cogan blinked at the thought.

  “Let me tell you, Charlene knew her way around a cock. I mean, there’s some guys here in prison who are pretty good at it for five bucks or some cigarettes, but Charlene was the absolute queen of the blow job, and I ought to know. If she gave me one, she gave me a hundred. And that thing with the ice cream, well…“

  “I can only imagine,” Cogan said, trying not to think about it. “Tell me, Larry, do you remember whether this little scene between Charlene and Will Lee took place before or after she testified at your trial?”

  “Oh, it was afterward, I think. Charlene and I had a little spat when she wouldn’t fuck me in jail, and she wasn’t talking to me at the time. And she had already testified by then.”

  “I see. Well, look, Larry, here’s the thing.”

  “What?”

  “Just about the only grounds you’d have for appeal would be that your lawyer was incompetent.”

  “Oh, I don’t think he was incompetent; Charlene said he was real good at it.”

  “Larry, I’m talking about his being incompetent in the way he represented you at your trial.”

  “You mean, if I said he did a bad job, I might get a new trial?”

  “Possibly,” Cogan said, not looking at Moody. “Now, think back, Larry: Isn’t it just possible that you did tell him about this witness, this black girl who said you raped her in high school?” Cogan didn’t wait for Moody to respond, but plowed ahead. “And that maybe he could have done something to exclude her testimony, and because he didn’t, you got convicted? I mean, if I had been representing you, I think I would have anticipated that and gotten her evidence excluded as irrelevant, or called other witnesses to refute her testimony.” He watched Larry Moody closely for his response, and he thought he saw a little light go on in the eyes.

  “Well,” Moody said, his eyes narrowing, “now that you mention it, I think I might have told him I’d been falsely accused of raping that nigger girl. Nothing ever came of it, you know. There wasn’t nothing to back up her story, just her word against mine. Even my old teacher said on the stand that she never believed I raped the girl.”

  “Well, it would help if you could remember exactly when you told him that and what the circumstances were,” Cogan said. “Your story has got to be credible, you know; you’ve got to be believable. Think back and see if you can remember exactly when you told Will Lee about this black girl’s accusation.”

  Moody massaged his forehead for a moment. “I got it!” he said. “It was the first time I met with him, in the Greenville jail. I’d just been arrested the day before, and the judge appointed Mr. Lee to defend me. He came to see me, and he asked me all sorts of questions about my background and where I was when that girl got murdered, and all that, and then he asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell him, anything he should know. And that was when I told him.”

  “What, exactly, did you tell him that day?”

  “I told him I’d been falsely accused in high school by this nigger girl—of course, I didn’t say ‘nigger,’ because Mr. Lee was a real liberal, you know.”

  “So, he did know before the trial about this incident, and he didn’t take any steps to protect you from the testimony of this potential witness?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. I remember, now; I told him about all this that first time I met him.”

  Cogan was writing as fast as he could, now. “Tell me, Larry, how often are you and Charlene in touch these days?”

  “We write letters now and then, although I’m not much of a letter writer. She always writes me back, though, and once in a while I call her out in California, when I can catch’er at home. She’s been trying to get me a good lawyer for an appeal, and Mr. Lee wouldn’t do it.”

  “Charlene asked Will Lee to file an appeal for you?”

  “Yeah, she did.”

  “And he wouldn’t?”

  “No, he wouldn’t, the son of a bitch,” Moody said, looking angry.

  “But Charlene and Will Lee are in touch with each other?”

  “Yeah, she said she talked to him on the phone.”

  “Do you know if Charlene and Lee have met recently? I mean, have they gotten together? Maybe had sex? Think carefully, now.”

  Moody’s eyes narrowed again. “Well, I couldn’t prove it, and Charlene didn’t exactly say that, but I kind of got the impression, you know? You want me to ask Charlene the next time I talk to her? She’ll tell me if she’s been fucking him, I know she will.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea if you ask her straight out, Larry. I mean, if she flat-out denied it, then it would be hard to prove. Sometimes it’s better if you don’t know all the actual facts of a thing, you know?”

  “If you say so, Mr. Cogan.”

  Cogan tossed his legal pad into h
is briefcase and stood up. “Well, Larry, it’s been good to meet you.”

  Moody pumped his hand. “Do you think you can get me a new trial, Mr. Cogan?”

  “I can’t promise that, Larry, but I will look into it. I think it’s just possible that the people I represent might find it to be a good thing for you to have a new trial. I’ll be in touch.”

  Cogan drove back toward Atlanta, excited. He had been repelled by Moody and his blatant racism, but he might get more work out of this case than he had expected, so he could stand that. He resisted the temptation to use his car phone. He’d ask for a face-to-face meeting when he got back to Atlanta.

  28

  Will and Kate were delivered to the White House by a Secret Service car and escorted by an usher to the Blue Room for cocktails. There was a larger crowd than Will had expected, and a number of them were people he had not expected. George Kiel was there, as he had predicted, but so were Howard Efton, the Speaker of the House, looking uncomfortable in a tuxedo, and Robert Mallon, the governor of Arizona, who was Efton’s chief opponent for the Republican nomination and, Will thought, the eventual vice-presidential candidate for the Republicans, on a slate with Efton.

  “Well, I’ll be,” Kate murmured, looking around.

  Susan Adams approached and kissed them both. “We’re so glad to see you,” she said. “This is the first time we’ve entertained at the White House since the first lady insisted on exchanging quarters with us.”

  “Any news on the president’s condition?” Will asked.

  “He’s as before, and the first lady thought that, since Joe is now running the country, we should be living in the White House. Certainly, neither of us would have ever suggested it; it was presented to us as a fait accompli.”

  “I think the first lady was right,” Will said. “This is where you and Joe belong.”

  “Joe’s on the other side of the room, spreading joy,” Sue said. “I know he wants a private word with you before the evening’s over.”