Dark Horse
Page 43
SEVENTEEN
ELECTION TUESDAY arrived with no fuss and little fanfare. One storm front after another followed in the wake of Hurricane Les, soaking the first Tuesday in November with three inches of nonstop rain. The voters stayed home, and coupled with the fact that it was a nonpresidential election year, the turnout at the polls was a record low twenty-three percent.
By nine o’clock, broadcasters projected Mitch Dutton the winner.
Mitch sat alone in the same Hilton hotel room at the edge of the same stiff bed, remote control in hand, flipping between stations. It was on all the channels. Mitch Dutton. The winner. Each projection was followed by some vague commentary about the parade of mysteries still dogging the campaign. Beginning with the strange disappearance of Hollice Waters, followed by the tragic boating deaths of Vidor Kingman and campaign manager Fitz Kolatch, rumored to have been cutting a deal on Vidor Kingman’s luxury yacht when they had mistakenly braved the hurricane in search of friendlier ports of call.
Then there was the opposition candidate. Nobody had seen him since the debate.
Even stranger were the numbers. Mitch couldn’t help but think that had Fitz survived to see the finish line, he’d still be crunching figures just so he might understand the actual outcome. Presumed either dead or having left the county in total disgrace after that ill-fated debate, Shakespeare McCann had still garnered a clean forty-eight percent of the vote to Mitch Dutton’s fifty-two. No doubt a closer call because of the damned weather. It was just like Mother Nature to have a say in the outcome.
Connie emerged from the bathroom, dressed and ready for the victory gala that would take place three floors below. The open bathroom door threw a spotlight onto Mitch that was uncomfortable. He asked her kindly to close the door or turn out the light.
“It’s not like you to sit in the dark. Since you’re the one seeking the bright lights,” she joked. He gave her a strained smile and switched channels. Once again they were announcing the victory. “Looks like you’re a congressman.”
“Looks like it.”
Sitting next to him, she laid her head on his shoulder. He liked that. It felt right that she was there with him to share the underwhelming win. Since her return from California, they’d hardly been apart. In pieces, he’d been giving her the real story of his victory, for that’s all she could take and as much as he could give. Pieces. Eventually she would know everything. But for now, it scared her so. And with the baby on the way, neither was taking chances. Tender loving care was the order of the day. It would be so for a while.
With her makeup left to complete, she left his side with a soft kiss and returned to the bathroom. He leaned back on an elbow, forgoing the channel-surfing for a more pensive pose.
Congressman.
The TV coverage switched to a live remote at the Dutton gala, where Mitch was rumored to be giving a victory speech any moment now. If they only knew, he thought, how far from victory he actually felt.
The cameras zoomed in on Rene Craven, looking lively and spinning for the home team and Congressman-elect Dutton. The day before, she’d tendered her resignation from the campaign in a letter to Mitch. It was a professional correspondence, to the point and matter-of-fact, but read between the lines, it was a sorrowful good-bye. The campaign had crushed her. She’d lost a friend to it, and a lover. Also, in the end, no answers had been provided. No explanations to the carnage the campaign had left in its wake. And she knew enough not to ask. Mitch would never tell, plainly for her own protection.
Despite his warnings, though, she’d stuck it out. He owed her. One day he’d pay her back.
In her letter Rene described her new job. She was leaving campaign politics for commentary, accepting an offer with a Memphis television station as an on-camera political reporter. It was her, he thought. As he watched her spin for him on the hotel-room TV, she looked like a million bucks. With her silky drawl and attractive looks, the networks were sure to make offers, luring her to New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, or, God help him, Washington, D.C.
When he’d finished reading her letter, impressed with her stately ability to turn a phrase, leaving out any hint of longing or the brief affair, he thought he’d caught a bare whiff of her perfume in the envelope. He’d put his nose to it again, but only smelled the glue from the envelope flap. There wasn’t even a smudge of lipstick to be found. She’d licked it clean before sealing the letter inside. That was her way.
A knock came on the door. From the other side Murray’s familiar voice was calling for him. “It’s getting about that time, Congressman.” Mitch could hear Murray’s chuckle at the very end of “Congressman.”
“Soon enough, Murray. Thanks.”
“Okay. But the animals are restless!” Murray had already hit Mitch up for a job in the D.C. office. Mitch had promised to give it some thought.
When the TV cameras panned the crowd of hard workers and well-wishers, he tried his best to recognize the faces. Some he knew. But not a name would come to him. All those people who’d worked so diligently to get him elected. All for naught. If they only had a Goddamn clue as to what it had actually taken to win the race and the numbness it had left in the candidate’s soul. The only thing he could say for certain was that he loved Connie. That when he looked at her, there was true feeling. And the rest was just pretend. Later, when giving his acceptance speech, he would pretend to be victorious, humble, thrilled, in control, and deserving.
Congressman Mitchell Dutton.
Connie called out from the bathroom. “Was that Murray?”
“Yes,” answered Mitch.
“Is it time?”
“Whenever you’re ready, sweetheart.”
He was in no hurry. He was watching the TV show that had become his biography. They were back to the bubbleheaded anchors who were waxing brilliantly about rising campaign costs and the rumor that the Dutton/ McCann fracas had topped Cathedral’s all-time spending record for a local congressional race.
No shit.
Oh, yes. The costs were high. Shoop. Hollice. Gina. Fitz. Vidor. All of them dead. A chill slipped along Mitch’s spine.
What about George “Hurricane” Hammond? Had Shakespeare really had a hand in that? Why not? Was it a setup from the very beginning?
The thought terrified Mitch, who’d tried desperately not to be terrified again since Uncle J had pulled him from the channel. He was shaking, and across the screen, images flashed that were not made for the airwaves. He was flashing back to the horrors he’d witnessed, the hell he’d crawled from to emerge victorious. And he couldn’t seem to control himself. His breathing quickened. He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. “Connie—” he wheezed. “Connie!”
In a flash she was there at his side, sliding onto the bed with him and whispering in his ear as she held him tight. “Ssshhh. It’s okay. It’s okay, darling. I’m here. It’s over.”
Moments passed and he emerged from his horrible fugue. His pulse returned to double digits, but the sweat stuck to his skin. His shirt was stained and his hands were clammy.
“What was it?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Mitch, his voice barely a whisper. “Some kind of panic. I saw—I saw death on the TV.”
“It’s over. He’s dead.”
“I’m covered in blood.”
“You’re sweating. That’s all.”
“I lost the house. It burned.”
“We can rebuild. As a family.”
“Where are the dogs?”
“They’re fine. They’re at the Wrights’.”
Mitch nodded. The reality check was over. She was there. And she was all he’d ever need. “I love you.”
“And I love you,” said Connie. “Now let’s dry that shirt. I’ll get the blow dryer.”
The telephone rang. He thought it might be Rene wondering when he’d take the podium. Between rings he picked it up, bringing the receiver to his ear.
“Yeah, it’s Mitch.”
“Yeah. And it’s
your old man.”
He was caught speechless. Six months of trading calls with the codger, machine to machine, message to message, without a whit of contact.
“Surprised, ya. Didn’t I?” said Quentin Dutton.
“You could say that. How’d you get the number?”
“Called Doc Dominguez. He said you’d be gettin’ on the TV any minute now.”
“It can wait,” said Mitch.
There was a long silence. Two men, father and son, each waiting for the other to make a move.
“Congressman, huh?”
“Looks like it.”
“Well, I’m not surprised.”
“You’re supposed to say you’re proud.”
“Well, if you’d let me get around to it.”
“I won’t hold my breath.”
“Good idea.”
Another long silence. Then it was Mitch’s turn.
“So you ready?” asked Mitch.
“Ready for what?”
“To be a grandfather?”
“No kiddin’.”
“No kiddin’, Pop.”
“Well, I’ll be…”
Was it his father, Uncle J, or some nameless schoolteacher? Mitch didn’t remember. But somewhere along the line he’d been told that history was written by the winners. The Greeks did it that way. As did the Romans, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao, Kennedy, et al. The same went for Mitchell Dutton. He was the winner in his own dangerous contest. And how he got there would be told solely by Mitch. It was his story to tell. After all, who was left to dispute it?
As the weeks turned to months, he practiced the story in his mind. Sharpening his whereabouts, his recollections, replacing the facts with his own historical fiction. Doing so eased his soul, and eventually the nightmares began to recede.
Sadly, though, nobody seemed to care. Nobody ever asked if he was anything but the duly elected Gentleman from Texas. All anybody ever wanted to do was shake Mitch Dutton’s hand and offer certain congratulations for winning a tough race. It was over. The news machine no longer seemed to work on conspiracies, only on what was next. For South County that was a series of corporate takeovers and plant closings. The only absolute remaining was that Mitch was the winner. How he’d gotten there was no longer relevant.
The legacy of Shakespeare McCann seemed to vanish as quickly as he’d appeared. The loser was rarely recalled—only in the brief recognition of a peeling bumper sticker on the back of a southbound pickup truck. His epitaph was written as the polls closed, and talk of him watered down to mere gossip. As for his populist message, that was washed away with the endless November rains.
Duck hunters found Gina’s body during the first week of December. The November rains had left the plains between Cathedral City and Houston afloat in casual water with no place to run off. Waterfowl had flocked to Mother Nature’s newest waterway while odd-shaped hunters, decked out in uniforms of camouflage and safety orange, braved the subfreezing mornings to bag their legal limits.
A father-and-son pair, the boy carrying a single-shot 410-gauge he’d just gotten for his tenth birthday, discovered poor Gina’s remains while floating decoys in the short darkness before dawn. At the shock of the awful sight, the boy dropped his new gun into the shallow water and lost it forever. After a twenty-minute hike back to the father’s four-wheel-drive, the Cathedral City Police were raised on the CB radio. The funeral was four days later.
It would be five years before Hollice Waters’s body was discovered. And though identification was difficult, an autopsy eventually revealed that foul play and a sharp knife were the causes of death. But without a suspect, the story barely made page three of the corporate-owned Cathedral Daily Mirror, Hollice’s life proving as disposable as the paper he’d written for.
There was one front-page story the newspaper was keen on, appearing only six months into Congressman Mitch Dutton’s freshman term. It was a fluffy Sunday piece on the birth of Mitch and Connie’s first child. A boy they’d named George Jasper Dutton.
Privately Mitch had declined the blood test that would prove he’d fathered the child. Neither he nor Connie cared to know the truth. They loved the child as their own and planned to buy him a pony.
Last heard from in June, Mitch was negotiating with the Hammond estate to buy ol’ Hurricane’s Virginia horse farm. The family was said to be giving the new congressman one helluva deal.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I’m grateful to those who, without their grace, wit, wisdom, friendship, and encouragement, this book would never have been written.
Karen Adams, Lou Aronica, George Woods Baker, Sharon Bernhardt, Bill Carrick, Rae Corbett, Jim Crabbe, Gary Cramer, Zachary Feuer, Carrie Feron, Lucas Foster, Mark Frost, Leonard Goldberg, Robert Gottlieb, Marge Herring, James David Hinton, Wendy Japhet, Michael Lynton, Ron Mardigian, David O’Connor, Dennis Palumbo, Gary Ross, Stephanie Ross, William Saracino, Jr., Tom Schulman, Mike Simpson, Cathy Tarr, Allison Thomas, Alan Wertheimer, Harley Williams,
and, of course, my wife.
Praise
“A POLITICAL DARK HORSE BECOMES A FRDNT-RUNNER” Las Angeles Times
A hammering fist swung overhand and into his forehead, snapping the cheap glasses at the frame. Mitch didn’t remember falling to the dirt. Only the boot that swung into his belly time and time again as he lay bloody on the ground. shuddering in primal fear. And the voice. Shakespeare McCann’s voice.
“You may got yourself a fancy campaign machine down there on the Island. But let me tell you something, Counselor, this fight ain’t over. It’s just beginning.”
“AMBITION. POWER. GREED. DECEIT. DEALS…THROW IN A LITTLE MURDER AND MAYHEM. AND YOU HAVE A TERRIFIC STORY OF POLITICAL INTRIGUE FROM AN INSIDER IN THE WORLD OF POLITICS…DARK HORSE IS A COMPELLING STORY THAT WILL LEAVE YOU QUESTIONING A LOT BEFORE YOU EVER VOTE AGAIN.” Chattanooga Free Press
Praise for
DARK HORSE
“INGENIOUSLY PLOTTED…IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT DOWN…A PEDAL-TO-THE-METAL POLITICAL THRILLER THAT IS SURE TO MAKE ITS MARK AS ONE OF THE TRULY HOT BOOKS OF THE GENRE.”
Steve Martini, author of The List
“TERRIFYING…A RIVETING TALE.”
Booklist
“A TOP-NOTCH POLITICAL THRILLER.”
Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“GRIPPING…SILENCE OF THE LAMBS MEETS THE CANDIDATE.”
Real People
“THIS SUSPENSE-FILLED POLITICAL DRAMA IS A PAGE-TURNER FROM THE OPENING PARAGRAPH.”
Abilene Reporter-News
“DOUG RICHARDSON COMBINES AN INSIDER’S VIEW OF POLITICS WITH HIS NATURAL STORY-TELLING TALENTS TO MAKE DARK HORSE AN EDGE-OF-THE-SEAT NOVEL THAT IS BOTH REALISTIC AND COMPELLING.”
Houston Tribune
“WICKEDLY SLEAZY…A DARKLY CYNICAL, OVER-THE-TOP POLITICAL SLAM DUNK.”
Kirkus Reviews
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.
A division of
The Hearst Corporation
1350 Avenue of the Americas
New York, New York 10019
Dark Horse. Copyright © 1997 by Doug Richardson
Inside cover author photo by Karen Richardson
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 96-25521
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission
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EPub Edition © MARCH 2010 ISBN: 978-0-380-97314-9
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