“How?”
“Do you know anybody at the Post, or one of the major TV stations, who you could talk to off the record? Who would never give you up?”
She nodded. “Yes. Of course. I can always feed them a tip, if you can tell me what to say.”
“I need you to give them the names of a couple of people. Russell Forte, over at the Marshals Service—and the sheriff we worked with—and Carl Armstrong in West Virginia. None of them might give much up, but if you give a good reporter a few details, he’ll be able to pry a few more facts out into the open. Especially if he talks to the sheriff.”
“Give me the details. In one minute.” She got off the couch and went into her office and came back with a legal pad. “Okay. I want to make sure I get this right.”
“Investigators from the Marshals Service found four logs with paint on them that match the paint from Senator Smalls’s Cadillac. That’s now being confirmed in a crime scene lab . . .”
He gave her the name of the sheriff and the deputy who found the logs, and Forte’s name and phone number. He added, “Marshals Service investigators have reported to their superiors that they have a lead on the truck, based on video taken the day before the murder and assassination attempt.”
“When should I feed it to them?”
“Depends on who you’re going to give it to,” Lucas said.
“Depends on when you want it out. I can give it to a friend at WJZ and have it on the air tomorrow night, or to a woman at the Post, who’d put it up the next morning . . . or both.”
“Let’s go with both,” Lucas said. “We don’t want them to miss it. Make sure you’re totally off the record.”
“What are you going to do?”
“We’re going to look for reaction . . . We’re gonna hope for one.”
* * *
—
THE NEXT DAY wasn’t quite a waste. Ritter’s truck remained parked at his apartment, with the empty space next to it. Lucas did see Ritter, arriving back at his apartment at five-fifteen in the afternoon, driving a sporty red Mazda Miata. He left again at seven o’clock and drove a mile or so to a cocktail lounge called the Wily Rat, with Lucas following behind, and with Bob, who’d been about to take over the watch from Lucas, trailing in the Tahoe.
Ritter parked and walked toward the nightclub’s entrance. Before he got there, a short, slender woman came out, looked both ways down the sidewalk, and spotted Ritter walking toward her. She trotted over to him, put her hands on his shoulders, jumped up and wrapped her legs around his waist. Ritter kissed her, and they spoke for a minute. Then she jumped down, and they walked into the club.
Bob followed them inside a few minutes later, got a beer, watched for a while, walked back outside, and told Lucas, who was waiting in the parking lot, “They’re getting burgers and beers. Met some people in there, look like military folks. Yakking it up.”
“Not much, then.”
“Not yet. My turn to watch them. Do you want me to follow them home?”
“Be nice to know who the woman is,” Lucas said.
“I’ll see if I can spot her car, get her plates.”
“Okay.” Lucas yawned. “I’m going back to the hotel. Kitten said there’ll be something on TV tonight about the assassination attempt, so . . . you might see something from Ritter. If anything happens, call. Gonna get up early. We should see something in the papers tomorrow, for sure, and all over TV.”
11
Taryn Grant didn’t see the original broadcast about the assassination attempt on Porter Smalls, but her chief of staff picked up an echo on CNN. Mabel Tate was at first bemused with the report, which was more than a little vague. Then, recalling the controversy surrounding her boss’s initial election, and with the news reports’ reminder that a woman had been killed, bemusement shifted to concern, and she called Grant at home.
Grant did not like to be called at home with anything less than end-of-the-world problems. She had a date that night with an Assistant Secretary of the Treasury (Legislative Affairs), who was on temporary career-building loan to the Treasury from JPMorgan Chase. She hoped to impress him with the plight of hapless billionaires facing unfair tax burdens.
He was a sleaze, she knew, the kind of government official who owned a specialized high-riding electric razor that kept him in permanent three-day-beard mode, and who wore custom silk dress shirts open at the throat to show off the mat of chest hair beneath, but . . .
He had his uses.
Grant definitely favored men who had uses.
* * *
—
WHEN HER PHONE RANG, she picked it up, saw “Tate” on the screen, and asked, “What?”
“Have you been watching the news?” Tate asked.
“Are we bombing somebody?”
“I wouldn’t call you for that,” Tate said. “This might be worse.”
Grant knew Tate wouldn’t call for anything trivial. She had a dressing stool in the bathroom, and she sat, and said, “Tell me.”
“There are reports on CNN that a U.S. Marshal is claiming that Porter Smalls’s accident last week wasn’t an accident—that it was an assassination attempt,” Tate said. “There’s no comment from the marshal, but there’s a comment from a West Virginia sheriff, who said the marshal and he and his deputies found some logs with silver automotive paint on them, which had been hung off the side of the truck that forced Smalls’s car off the road. They say the truck has been spotted on video, a black Ford F-250. The logs were apparently an attempt to make it look like Smalls’s truck hit nothing but trees. CNN says that Smalls is traveling to the CNN affiliate in Minneapolis to be interviewed later in the show, and that the truck is being sought.”
“Shit! I didn’t need to hear this.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no, I mean I didn’t need to have this happen. But you did right to call,” Grant said. “The problem is, it could dredge up all that old crap around the election. The marshal is named Lucas Davenport. Was he mentioned? Was he on the show? He’s definitely out to get me.”
“No, they didn’t mention his name. They called somebody at the Marshals Service headquarters, who had no comment. A spokesman for the Justice Department said the matter is being reviewed at the highest levels, which means they don’t have a clue. Since it’s Smalls, and a woman is dead—and, even worse, she’s a rich woman who gave lots of money to Republicans—I imagine there’ll be a lot said tomorrow.”
“Goddamnit. Listen, monitor this for me, all the channels, and call me at eleven o’clock. I’ve got a date, but I should be home before then—and if it’s urgent, call me anytime,” Grant said. “If you have to bring a couple of people in, go ahead. I’d like to see some transcripts of the major shows.”
“We can do it. Because of the . . . controversy . . . what should I do if they start looking for a comment from you?”
“I’m not available. I have no knowledge of the incident. If you can, go deep off the record with reporters you can trust and suggest that Smalls has a history of alcoholism that he has successfully covered up. This might be part of another cover-up. If he was drunk when the woman was killed and he was driving, that would make him guilty of vehicular homicide.”
“Do you think he was?” Tate asked.
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” Grant said. “I know that he does drink a bit; I’ve seen him tipsy. The point is, to fuzz things up.”
“You got it,” Tate said.
* * *
—
WHEN TATE was off the phone, Grant went back to her mirror for a minute, working on her eyelashes, thinking about the news reports, and when she was done with the mascara, dabbed on a touches of Black Orchid perfume, and called Parrish.
He hadn’t seen the news, either. When she told him about it, he said, “Give me some time to check around. I’ll handle this perso
nally. No blowbacks.”
“I said it before: it’s Davenport we have to worry about. If he goes away somehow, we’re in much better shape.”
“I’m handling Davenport. It’s already under way.”
* * *
—
IF THE TREASURY MAN thought he was going to get laid by a beautiful blond Minnesota senator, he was mistaken. He made some of the usual eye and touching moves that men thought were good ideas when dealing with desirable women, but Grant, as a long-legged blonde, and one of the heirs to a multibillion-dollar fortune, had been inoculated against that kind of bullshit from the time she was eight.
Still, the night developed profitably for the both of them. When the Treasury guy realized that Grant was looking for an insider, not a piece of his ass, he slid into negotiating mode, and they spent their time over cocktails, and cocktail napkins, where they outlined possible beneficial changes to the tax law.
Not really fun, but not uninteresting, either.
They’d finished dinner, and were drinking the last of a four-hundred-dollar bottle of white Bordeaux, when Grant’s cell phone buzzed: Tate.
“I’ve got to take this,” she said. She turned away from the Treasury guy, and said, “Yes?”
“An update. Smalls had a press conference. Every TV station in the Twin Cities was there. Parts of it will hit the major networks, and Fox and CNN. He didn’t mention any names, but he said that violence had been used against him before and that he wouldn’t let it shake him. Three different reporters tried to get him to say your name—they mentioned you, asked if that was what he was talking about. He smiled: might as well have said your name. He never did, but everybody got the point.”
“Goddamnit. I’m going to have to say something. Work it for me. Remember what I said about seeing him tipsy, drunk—see if you can work that in. If he’s going to get in my face, I’ll get right back in his.”
“I’ll get some ideas together, but it might not be the wisest move. There are other ways to get in his face.”
“Give me those, too.”
She went back to the Treasury man with a smile. “Porter Smalls is getting in my face about his drunken accident last week. If you want to witness a traumatic castration, watch me on the news tomorrow.”
He laughed, and said, “I believe you ahead of time. And I’ll be watching.”
* * *
—
GRANT WAS HOME at eleven when Tate called again. “Talked to my guy at PBS. They’re sucking wind on the story, and they liked that thing about Smalls’s drinking problem and the questions that might raise. I don’t know if it’ll do us a lot of good, but it will fuzz things up, like you said. I’ve also got them checking up on this Davenport’s record—he sounds like a trigger-happy right-winger; he’s killed a whole bunch of people . . .”
“I don’t want to mess with a nice story line, but Davenport actually worked for Elmer Henderson.” Henderson was temporarily out of office but had been the governor of Minnesota and the extremely liberal Democratic vice presidential candidate in the previous election.
“Oh . . . Well, basically, who gives a shit,” Tate said. “We can still frame him as an attention-seeking killer. That should create more fuzz.”
“I knew there was a good reason I hired you,” Grant said. “Keep thinking about this. The more fuzz, the better. See you in the morning. I’ll be making a statement.”
She was tired but checked with Parrish. “Still working on Davenport?”
“We need to talk. Ritter got back to me a couple of hours ago. We’ve done some work . . .”
“Are you at your house?”
“Yes.”
“Come over, we’ll talk.”
“Give me twenty minutes,” Parrish said. “I’ll come on foot.”
* * *
—
PARRISH SHOWED UP, dressed all in black nylon, with a black-and-green-camouflage baseball cap and running shoes; he looked like a crow, Grant thought, as he came down the basement stairs. The housekeeper had let him in, and Grant watched the computer pad that showed the door sealed at the top of the stairs. And that Parrish was carrying a gun.
He dropped onto the sofa opposite her desk, and she could suddenly smell him: he’d jogged over.
“What have you got?” she asked.
* * *
—
“I’VE HAD JIM RITTER in St. Paul the last two days doing . . . observations. We’ve found a situation that may work for us and that will take Davenport out of Washington. If he’s as bright as you say, he might suspect something, but he’d never be sure.”
“The longer he’s out of Washington, the colder the whole situation becomes. Two weeks, and it’s cool. A month from now, nobody’ll care.”
“Exactly. We needed to find a particular guy in St. Paul or Minneapolis and we found him.” Parrish outlined what he had in mind, and Grant closed her eyes as she listened, the better to visualize Parrish’s proposal.
“If there are cops too close . . .” she said when he was done.
“There won’t be: we’ll be tracking them. Tracking them passively, listening only, not talking to anyone. All we need is ten seconds . . . fifteen, at the outside. If the cops are too close, we reset.”
“Fifteen seconds, as long as your man doesn’t get hurt. If he gets hurt, we’re in trouble,” Grant said.
“Handled.”
“Handled how?”
Parrish laughed. “Well . . . the man we found is a fat guy. Ritter’s coat will be stuffed with Bubble Wrap, and, of course, he’ll be braced. He’s done this before, actually, when they were trying to take down a guy without it being an obvious hit.”
Grant sat back in her chair and thought it over. Parrish’s operators, supposedly the crème of American hit men, had already screwed up twice. On the other hand, she had to get Davenport out of her business. If they knew the truck that hit Smalls’s vehicle was a Ford F-250, she didn’t doubt that he would eventually find it.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s do it. No fuckups. No fuckups!”
* * *
—
GRANT WENT TO SLEEP easily enough, unaffected by any anticipatory guilt, though she grew restless at six in the morning, an hour before she usually got up. There was one thing that hadn’t occurred to her the night before and that Parrish hadn’t considered. What if Davenport decided Grant was responsible for it all . . . and he simply killed her?
He could probably do it without being caught. And he was crazy, wasn’t he? As crazy as she was?
She shuddered, tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t get it out of her mind.
Tate called at seven, as Grant was downing a double espresso. “You’ve got the Senate studio from eight-thirty to nine-fifteen. I’m rounding up the usual suspects from the local media, and as many national people as I can find. We need to talk before you go on. You should wear your best TV stuff.”
“Already there. Call Allison about hair and makeup.”
“Done. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Grant said. “This will work for us.”
12
Bob and Rae called early, waking Lucas, to tell him that they were going to work out before starting the day. Bob added that the girlfriend had gone back to Ritter’s apartment in his car, so he hadn’t been able to get a license plate number on her.
Lucas took his time shaving, didn’t bother to look at the television, and went down to the restaurant for breakfast.
He was finishing his pancakes when he heard a man in a two-thousand-dollar suit ask a woman in a two-thousand-dollar dress, “Did you see her? Hot blond senator with a severe case of the red-ass?”
“I did,” the woman said. “The shit has hit the proverbial fan. I like it.”
* * *
—
SURVIVALISTS FANTASIZE about SHTF day, wh
en Shit Hits The Fan—Mexico invades Arizona, the gasoline runs out, all the chickens get eaten, and anybody who doesn’t have a root cellar in the backyard fully stocked with AR-15s, camouflage hats, hunting bows, and gold coins is doomed to a life of sexual slavery or death by cannibalism.
So far, that day hadn’t happened. Except in the media.
There it happened about once a week, with the intellects at Fox and CNN howling about “Breaking News” as if the real SHTF day had finally arrived.
When the rich guy asked the rich woman about a “blond senator,” Lucas felt an eyebrow rise almost of its own accord. He’d been reading the Washington Post as he ate. There’d been a short, ambiguous article about “sources” saying that the Marshals Service was investigating the Smalls auto accident as a possible assassination attempt. Most of the story was simply recounting the accident, with not much on later developments.
But if Grant had jumped into it? That would raise more eyebrows than his. He waved at the waitress, got the bill, left money on the table, and while he didn’t trot to the elevators, he wasted no time getting back to his room.
Both CNN and Fox had already gotten past the actual news and were asking their talking heads to opine on what the senators were saying about each other. Lucas went to his laptop, entered “Taryn Grant” in the Bing search window, and got back a half dozen hits. He found a replay available on C-SPAN and watched as Taryn Grant ripped a new one for Porter Smalls.
Lucas got on the phone to Smalls. “Have you seen Grant?”
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