by Chris Hauty
Martin has put a hand to the closet door pull when a car alarm begins to sound outside, its blare shattering the neighborhood’s calm. The operator releases his grip on the door pull and backtracks out of the bedroom. After a short pause, Hayley exits the closet and goes to the single window in the bedroom. Trying to slide it open, she discovers the sash is painted shut. With diminishing options available to her, Hayley turns and walks to the open door. Peering down the hallway, she sees five or six men—it’s hard to discern exactly how many from her vantage point—converging in what she knows is the home’s living room. Hayley hears the men’s voices, discussing the car alarm, as all of them apparently head outside the house. Risking that none of the men have remained inside, Hayley walks quickly up the hallway, through the living room, and into the kitchen, where she knows there is a back door.
Sinatra waits on the front porch as Bishop and Lewis walk across the front lawn, to their squawking SUV. The vehicle’s lights flash, illuminating the street with false emergency. As Martin appears on the porch, he uses the car’s remote to silence the alarm. Sinatra and the others look up and down the block, suspicious of the alarm’s mysterious activation.
“It didn’t just ‘go off,’ ” Martin tells Sinatra, who definitely didn’t need to be told this assessment. “What do you think?”
Sinatra’s posture is rigid. His intuition tells him the alarm was a diversion. He pivots on the balls of his feet and stares inside the house, seeing nothing amiss there. But then, he wouldn’t see anything amiss if the alarm was indeed a diversion. They would have already been scammed. He turns again and surveys the dark lawns and dimly lit street of his immediate surroundings. A clandestine operative for most of his adult life, Sinatra now has the very real sensation of being watched. But hanging around Scott’s house any longer than is absolutely necessary and potentially arousing the curiosity of neighbors would be unwise. He gestures silently to his men, and they troop back inside the house.
The incidents of the last few hours have convinced Sinatra that the operation is dealing with a counteragent of not insignificant talent and skill set. This revelation will require an alteration of tactics at every level, in addition to a demand for a 15 percent increase of his fee. As the realization takes hold, Sinatra begins the process of adjusting each and every future action and operational decision.
Escaping from the home through the kitchen door, which she was careful to lock on her way out, Hayley crouches in the dense shrubbery between the houses and watches the hit team investigate their vehicle alarm’s activation. Six in number. All male, between the ages of thirty and forty-five. All fit, with rigorously athletic frames. Hayley knows the species well. Even a casual observer could see the unit is composed of military or former-military personnel. The man who remains on the porch most certainly is in charge. His dark, wavy hair and melancholic expression strike Hayley as oddly attractive. As he disappears inside the house with his men, she wonders what it would be like to kiss him. She wagers he’s a good fuck, his sadness a reservoir from which he draws an off-kilter passion. She quickly dismisses the thought with a self-reprimanding urgency. No more sleeping with the bad guys.
After the men have withdrawn into the house, Hayley scampers from the bushes into the neighbor’s yard and heads toward the rear of the property. A dog barks frantically as she passes through the backyard, but dogs are always barking in any neighborhood. Hayley isn’t concerned about alerting the hit team. She finds the Prius parked on the next street over. The vehicle’s lights and engine are off, but Asher’s silhouette is visible inside. Hayley watches him watching her approach. She opens the door and climbs inside.
The expression on Asher’s face is similar to the spouse whose partner has returned home at two a.m., stinking of well bourbon, stripper perfume, and regret. “Talk,” he demands.
* * *
SHE HAS ASKED for help only three times in her life. Growing up in Lincoln County, you learn to swim or you sink. For some, opioids are the answer, but Hayley refused to take that way out. With a mother sick and in the grinding process of not quite dying, responsibility for the family fell on her shoulders. But even an independent and fiercely capable Hayley Chill might find herself in a predicament so intractable, so excruciatingly relentless, that a stranger’s charity is her only hope. Three times the need has arisen, and in each occasion, unexpected assistance was her salvation.
Among the numerous medical ailments Hayley’s mother suffered, one of the most problematic was angioedema, painful swelling of the tissues beneath the skin, and neither state nor county was willing to foot the bill required for treatment. With Cinryze costing well into the six figures, relief for Linda Chill was absurdly beyond the family’s reach. Watching her mother writhe with pain and waste away, a desperate twelve-year-old Hayley asked anyone she could for help. The only person to respond was the sixty-year-old corner grocer, who had once called the cops on Hayley’s next youngest sister when caught shoplifting in his store. Childless and a widower, the man paid the entire cost for one year’s medication and essentially saved Linda’s life.
Another occasion arose in Hayley’s first year in the army, when an unusually brutal master sergeant, wanting sex from the recruit and rebuffed, made life a living hell for her. The military is the ideal social environment for abuse of authority. There was nothing Hayley could do to escape the sergeant’s harassment short of going AWOL or physically retaliating. Going above her abuser, to a commissioned officer, would have made matters worse. With no other recourse, Hayley appealed to another sergeant on base, a man with whom she was barely acquainted but who had a reputation for fairness and decency. Master Sergeant Stanley Oakes listened calmly to Hayley’s complaints and then, without discussion or fanfare, confronted the abusive sergeant, expressing the unacceptability of his actions in no uncertain terms. The abuse ended that day, never to be repeated. An unintended but significant consequence of that small heroic act was Hayley’s career as amateur boxer.
The third occasion of Hayley’s requiring the compassion and help of her fellow man is tonight. Sitting beside Asher Danes in his six-month-old Prius, Hayley decides she cannot battle alone against the forces confronting her. As much as she prefers complete independence, Hayley possesses few resources to control her present situation. By any estimation, she needs Asher’s help.
She relays the full story to Asher as he drives them back to the city from Falls Church. “The boot print below Peter Hall’s dash window was suspicious. Scott trying to kill me confirmed that suspicion, to say the least.”
“Confirmation of what?” he asks.
“That Peter Hall did not die from natural causes. Why kill the president’s chief of staff? I’m not sure. Perhaps it means there’s a conspiracy to undermine the administration, or even to assassinate the president himself,” she tells him, struggling for clarity and failing.
“That’s a bad thing?”
Hayley responds to his glib inquiry with only a look. Asher adopts a different but no less skeptical tack. “So who’s behind this mysterious plot of indeterminate nature? The Deep State?” he asks, as if about the Easter Bunny.
Hayley ignores his incredulity. She only needs Asher’s assistance, not his affirmation of what she knows to be true. “I don’t think Scott Billings was actually Secret Service.” Again she ignores his arched eyebrows and sidelong look. “If they were willing to kill Peter Hall, what’s to stop them from assassinating the president?”
“And why am I hearing about this now?” he asks with some justification.
“I was trying to protect you, Asher. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, save your apologies. It’s not like my feelings are hurt or anything. It just surprises me someone of your intelligence wouldn’t see the need of collaborators. I mean, you are just an intern.”
“Thanks for reminding me,” she grinningly tells Asher. “Hiding in a closet with that military-trained assassin seconds from opening the door, I almost forgot.”
“W
ho the hell are these guys?”
Hayley shrugs. “I was kind of hoping you might help me figure that out.”
Previously in Hayley’s life, when she had made the rare appeal for help, assistance was given without comment or complaint. There is something about her demeanor that suggests the request is genuine and of great urgency. When Asher had been sitting in his car waiting for Hayley to emerge from Scott’s house, he had brooded on this aspect of the intern’s character, on what had compelled him to step out of his comfortable life and into hers. Asher Danes, Harvard grad and aspirational presidential candidate, wanting for nothing and able to go wherever he pleases, contemplates putting that extraordinary freedom at risk.
“Of course I’ll help you,” he tells her. “But need I remind you of our worrisome lack of qualifications for the job?”
Hayley reaches into her jacket and withdraws Scott’s tablet, with its signature Rolling Stones decal.
“Whose is that?” Asher asks her, already knowing the answer.
“What were you saying about qualifications?”
“You’re crazy!”
“Maybe,” Hayley confesses.
“That thing better be turned off,” Asher warns her.
Hayley rolls her eyes. “Turned it off inside his house.”
Asher reaches for the ignition. “Are we done here?”
Hayley nods. Despite their unequal status within the West Wing hierarchy, she has quickly established dominance in their relational dynamic. “We’re done.”
Powered up, the Prius pulls away from the curb and silently zips up the dark residential street. He waits until he’s gone a couple blocks before he dares turn on the headlights.
Later that night, Asher walks through the mostly dark condo on Water Street, switching off lights and checking the entry door’s dead bolt. Outside the condo’s enormous windows, limited traffic has resumed across the Key Bridge. Once Asher has finished buttoning up his place for the night, he pauses to watch Hayley sleeping under a blanket on the couch. Her breathing is slow and steady, a fact that seems to please the nurturing side of her host.
He leaves the living room and walks down the hallway of polished concrete to the master bedroom. This room also boasts a lush view of the river and Key Bridge. A Savoir No. 2 bed—favored by Winston Churchill, Bram Stoker, Marilyn Monroe, and John Wayne, to name a few—dominates the expansive room, which is otherwise sparsely furnished. Generously proportioned twin walk-in closets contain an extensive wardrobe. Asher goes to the window and gazes out at the bridge. Reaching into his pocket, he retrieves his phone and places a call.
“Hello?” an older man answers.
“Hi, Dad,” Asher responds, his voice suddenly sounding very young.
“Hey, bud, what’s up?” Asher’s dad seems genuinely pleased for this unexpected call from his only son.
“Not much. Same old thing, you know. I just wanted to check in.” Asher’s need for comfort, familiarity, and reassurance is unabashedly laid bare.
“Sure, of course. I’m glad you did. Great to hear your voice, son.”
Asher allows himself an almost imperceptible sigh of relief. It’s good to have loving parents.
Approximately two miles away from 3303 Water Street, the executive mansion at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is similarly dark at this late hour. Few lights burn within. In the second floor of the executive residence, Richard Monroe is asleep in the president’s bedroom, overlooking the South Lawn. His wife of forty-one years rarely stays in the White House, preferring their thousand-acre estate in upstate New York. Monroe’s best-selling memoir, covering the entirety of his illustrious and colorful military career, brought him many things, the least of which was the home in Woodstock on Ohayo Mountain Road. The president misses Cindy’s company tremendously, but such are the sacrifices one must make for country. Never once in his life suffering the torment of insomnia, POTUS sleeps soundly.
On the ground floor of the executive residence, a sole Secret Service agent exits the entrance leading into the Diplomatic Reception Room and stops in the empty driveway. He withdraws a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and matches from another, lighting up and taking a luxurious pull of tobacco smoke. The rain from the day before has moved to the east, and a near full moon occasionally appears from behind the fragmented clouds scuttling low across the night sky, illuminated like feathered showgirls by the city’s lights.
4
THE BEARDED MAN
Vehicular traffic across the Key Bridge remains closed in the morning, creating commuter delays on both sides of the Potomac. Recovery of a vehicle from the river normally would have been performed the night before, just within a few hours of an accident, but jurisdictional squabbles delayed the operation. Who would pay for the recovery was the primary though not only disagreement. The border between the District of Columbia and Virginia is drawn on most maps on the Virginia shoreline with the river, but DC city officials were able to obtain maps that suggested a different boundary line down the middle of the Potomac. Because Scott’s car was reported by witnesses to have gone over the bridge just past midway of the span, with the broken balustrade as obvious proof, those same budget-minded city officials argued that recovery was the Old Dominion’s responsibility. Virginia State officials were forced to appeal to the District’s nonvoting representative in the Congress to calm emotions and determine the ultimate outcome.
Now, at the District’s expense, a twenty-ton truck-mounted crane with 33.5-meter-long boom has been moved into position as dozens of city transportation officials, police, and US Secret Service agents and authorities look on. Divers in the water have attached steel cables to the BMW sedan. With a signal from a hard-hat-wearing transportation official, the crane’s operator throws controls inside the cab that begin to raise Scott’s car from the river’s bottom. The vehicle quickly appears, water cascading from its cracked windows. The crane gracefully swings the car over to just above the bridge’s deck and gently lowers it to wheels down.
Four city detectives approach the sedan, Scott’s body plainly visible behind the wheel and still entangled in the seat belt. Two senior Secret Service agents accompany the homicide detectives. Because of the freakish nature of the accident, it had been the decision of the police that Scott’s body, carefully inspected by police divers the night before, would be removed only after it and the vehicle were thoroughly investigated by detectives. That decision, as well as delay in recovery of the BMW sedan, is fated to be reported in minute (and embarrassing) detail by reporters from the Washington Post, a relatively minor incident that exposed deficiencies in DC governance and, again later, in a much bigger political exposé.
Almost at the same time Scott’s body is being photographed dozens, if not hundreds of times, inside his drenched BMW 335i sedan, seat belt wrapped tightly around his neck like a noose, Asher is driving to work with Hayley. They had stopped first at her place in Rosslyn so she could get some clothes, prevailing upon the building’s resident superintendent to use his duplicate key to get inside her studio apartment. Wearing her own clothes and heading to work brings a sense of well-being and orientation to Hayley that is almost intoxicating.
“You know, I’m not the world’s biggest Monroe supporter,” Asher said, making his confession warily.
“I suspected as much.” In fact, Hayley has been shocked by how many people inside the West Wing seem to be soft in their support of the man for whom they all worked.
“Is that a problem?”
“No. But wouldn’t it make more sense to work for one of his political opponents? Why work for him if you oppose his agenda?” Hayley asks the obvious question.
“Exactly.”
“You’re thinking of leaving?” Hayley asks Asher.
“Almost since my first day,” he admits to her. “What he said he stood for during the campaign and what he’s actually trying to do while in office are completely different. Monroe’s rolling back every progressive initiative made in the past seventy-five years!
”
“Apparently, the majority of the voters support those rollbacks.”
“Electoral majority,” Asher corrects her.
“This is the democratic system our country has espoused since its founding. Regardless of personal beliefs, my priority is the service and protection of that political system, not the man,” Hayley says.
“Did you have that written on an index card or something?”
She ignores his remark, prompting Asher to ratchet up the cynicism.
“Don’t forget, Hitler was democratically elected.”
“Richard Monroe isn’t Adolf Hitler,” she reminds him calmly.
“Correct. No mustache.” Asher places two fingers under his nose, clownishly mimicking the German fascist. “The man’s a danger to the nation, and I’m beginning to wonder if removing him from office isn’t the only way to save it.”
“A little shrill, don’t you think?”
“No. Not really.”
Hayley sighs, striving for patience. After all, she needs his help. “What if the shoe was on the other foot, Asher? What if forces were arrayed, behind the scenes and from within our own government, to undermine or remove a president whose agenda you supported? What would you call a movement like that? A coup d’état?”
