Sympathy for the Devil

by Justin Gustainis

  Morris looked, and found that she was right.

  "I had more to do than I'd originally planned," Libby said, "given what I found lurking on the fourteenth floor."

  "What were you working on?"

  "Several different kinds of protection spells, some wardings, and a couple of others which may or may not prove useful. One of the things I did was to enhance my ability to perceive black magic, just in case we can't get too close to Stark. Until the spell wears off, I'll not only smell black magic when it's around - I'll be able to see it, in the form of something that will look to me like thin black smoke."

  "Sounds appropriate. How long is the spell good for?"

  "It'll fade away sometime tonight. Plenty of time for us to assess Stark's nature."

  "Paper says the gates open at noon. "I'm not looking forward to standing around for three hours, but if we want to be at the front of the rope line, that's the only way to do it."

  "I know. I read the article while you were in the shower. The part that I'm not looking forward to starts at 3:00."

  "The rally, with its attendant rhetoric, religion, and rednecks?"

  "I don't mind watching preachers lead people in prayer, but it's the smug, self-satisfying way they usually do it that irks me. Also I've never understood where the idea came from that only conservatives are patriotic."

  "Well, there's always the music," Morris said with a tiny smile. "The Smoky Mountain Seven. That should be loads of fun."

  "Uh-huh. My idea of country music is the Dixie Chicks or Mary-Chapin Carpenter. Wish I'd remembered my iPod - although, come to think of it, I wouldn't bring it over there, even if I had."

  "Why not? You could be grooving to the Dixie chicks while everybody else is entranced by the authentic country sounds of the Smoky Mountain Seven, and nobody would know the difference."

  "I don't want to compromise my alertness," Libby said. "Not today. I don't know what's likely to happen, but I want to be ready to deal with it, which means I need to be aware of my surroundings at all times."

  "You're still worried about the black magician upstairs, or whatever it is."

  "Bet your ass I am. That's why I did a Far Vision spell on myself last night, as well."

  "Far... oh, you mean that thing where -" Morris curled his hands into circles, then put them up to his eyes, like binoculars.

  "That's it," Libby said. I figured finding someplace that would carry real field glasses might take us too much time and trouble. The spell will serve quite nicely - for as long as we're likely to need it."

  Under the Far Vision spell, Libby could bring her cupped hands to her eyes like Morris had done - only for her the effect would be as if she held a real pair of high-power binoculars, which would adjust to her vision automatically.

  "You have been busy," Morris said.

  Libby shrugged. "Could be it's what you suggested last night - just one of the bad guys on vacation, or traveling for business. But I'm not taking that as a working assumption."

  "Probably a good idea. 'You have to plan for the enemy's capabilities, not his intentions.'"

  "What's that, another James Bond quote?"

  "No, it's from Sun Tzu. The Art of War."

  "Appropriate choice," Libby said solemnly.

  The knock on the door of room 1408 came a little after 9:00, followed immediately by a female voice from the hall calling, "Housekeeping!"

  "Come on in!" Malachi Peters responded.

  There was the buzz of a card key in the lock, and the door opened to reveal a heavyset black woman with short, straight hair, clad in one of the tan outfits the hotel required its maid staff to wear.

  "I'm here to clean the room," she announced unnecessarily, "but if y'all want, I can check back later on."

  "No, you go ahead," Peters told her, and got up from his chair. "We were just going down to breakfast, anyway." He and Ashley left the woman to her work, squeezing past the immense cart she had parked just outside their room.

  Over scrambled eggs in the Pavilion Café, Peters said, "She came to service the room about this time yesterday, so I was hoping today would be a repeat."

  Ashley nodded. "Gives us plenty of time to... do what we need to."

  "I saw that you stored our guitar case in the closet. After watching you do your stuff last night, I figured we could leave it out anyplace."

  Even though both spoke softly, they had agreed that discretion in what they said publicly was probably a good idea.

  "Yes and no," Ashley said, slicing into a sausage patty. "Her eye won't perceive it, no matter where it is. But if she trips over it, or whacks it with the vacuum cleaner, that's kind of going to force the issue. No point in making things complicated if we don't have to."

  "No, you're right. It's gonna get complicated enough, with... everything else that's on the agenda today."

  They had the elevator to themselves for the ride back up to 14. "It just occurred to me," Peters said, "that you don't need to sleep, but you eat. Doesn't seem consistent."

  "I don't have to eat, either. But I enjoy food, so why not? 'You only go around once in life, so you gotta grab all the gusto you can.'"

  "I remember that. Some old beer commercial, right?"

  "Uh-huh. I don't like beer, though. Too bitter."

  "Yeah, most American beer tastes like refrigerated piss."

  She glanced at him, smiling a little. "And you know what that tastes like? Peters, you have depths I never would have suspected."

  He reached over and delivered a brisk slap to her denim-clad ass. "I was just hypothesizing. Bitch."

  "Bastard."

  "Cunt."

  "Cocksucker."

  "Termagent."

  "Degenerate."

  The opening elevator door put an end to their obscene banter.

  As they walked to their room, he said. "I'll have to get you to try German beer. I mean the real stuff. We may make a convert out of you yet."

  "Fine with me. I'll meet you in Stuttgart's best bierstube, whatever that happens to be, um, 93 years from today. At 3:00 p.m. local time. How's that?"

  "Assuming you, me, and Stuttgart are all still here, you've got yourself a date, lady."

  Inside their freshly-cleaned room, Peters went to the window overlooking Kanawha Plaza and pulled the drapes aside. Even without looking through the rifle scope, he could see that work crews were busy on and around the stage that had been erected for the week's political events - and which would be torn down, probably this weekend.

  Maybe not, though. Starting later today, it's gonna be a crime scene. The cops may want it left in place a while longer, while they pretend to be doing something useful with it.

  He turned around to find Ashley lying naked on one of the beds, looking at him.

  "So, what do you think?" she said in what he thought of as her Body Heat voice. "Care to grab a little more gusto before we go to work on that window?"

  "You're greedy for your pleasures, lady."

  "Maybe because I'm not sure how much time is left," she said seriously. "For either of us."

  "Nympho," he said, not without affection.

  "Satyr," she replied.

  "Slut."

  "Pervert."

  "Slattern."

  "Libertine."

  "I have to take a leak."

  "Then go take it," she said. "And hurry."

  The man who was known in some circles as The Grocer's Boy believed in the value of research. You could never have too much information about a target.

  Most of the problems he was called upon to deal with (that's how he thought of his work - as 'solving problems') could not be addressed by walking up to some guy's table in a restaurant, going Bang! Bang! with a .38 and walking out again. If such a simple approach was likely to be successful, a client could find somebody who'd do it for a lot less than the fifty thousand that The Grocer's Boy charged.

  In any case, he would never carry out a job in such a reckless fashion. Shooting somebody in a restaurant was full
of hazards - witnesses, potential heroes, undercover cops, surveillance cameras - the list was almost endless. The Grocer's Boy enjoyed gangster films, but he thought that most of them represented his profession about as accurately as those old John Wayne movies portrayed the settling of the West.

  And so, research. A U.S. Senator spends a lot of time in the public eye - especially if, like Bob Leffingwell, he's running for President. There were hundreds of news items, feature stories, and interviews concerning the man - and most of these were available online. It was a lot to get through, but The Grocer's Boy was a fast reader. He could also multitask - reading, say, a New Yorker profile of the Senator while a CNN story about him played on his computer screen.

  That was how he came to be reading an article from The Economist while half-watching a recording of the Senator being interviewed by Charlie Rose. But he gave his full attention to the computer when he heard Charlie Rose say, "For a man of sixty-four, you seem to be in remarkable shape."

  "I work out every day, if I can," the Senator said, "and I watch what I eat, even though it means passing up a lot of the foods I love. As it is, I still get heartburn pretty regularly."

  "There are prescription meds that are pretty good for that," Rose said.

  "I suppose there are, but my heartburn isn't that serious. I use Gaviscon - I don't know if I can say the brand name on TV -"

  "This is cable," Rose said, waving a gracious hand. "Feel free."

  "Anyway, I always have a bottle of it handy. Works like a charm."

  "You don't like to take prescription drugs, do you?"

  "Not if I don't need them, of course not," Leffingwell said. "Most prescriptions are seriously overpriced, even if you have good insurance, like I do."

  "Is that why you gave those top executives of Big Pharma such a hard time during the hearings..."

  There was more. With Charlie Rose, there was always a lot more. But The Grocer's Boy didn't pay attention. He sat back in his desk chair, thinking. Then he logged off, stood, and went to fetch his car keys. He knew there was a big chain drugstore just a few blocks away.

  Twenty minutes later, he was back, and in his kitchen. Unlike many other over-the-counter antacids, Gaviscon came in only one size bottle, and there was no generic version available, both of which made life easier - well, easier for The Grocer's Boy. Shorter for Bob Leffingwell, if the plan he was formulating worked out.

  Since he'd been told that three drops was the lethal dose, and the little glass bottle Nestor Greene had given him contained much more than that, he had plenty of the deadly liquid to experiment with.

  He opened one of the bottles of Gaviscon he'd bought and used the hypodermic needle to let three drops fall into the thick, white liquid. Then he shook it vigorously, as the directions said to do before using, and poured about half the contents into a short, wide glass, the kind some people call an Old Fashioned glass.

  He took another bottle of Gaviscon from the drugstore's plastic bag, shook it, and poured the unadulterated liquid into another glass of the same size. He studied the two glasses, and their contents, closely.

  Color: identical

  Aroma: identical

  He knew better than to check them for flavor. Besides, if the poison affected the taste, by the time the Senator realized it, he would have already swallowed the dose and be on his way to cardiac arrest. The Grocer's Boy doubted they would have given him a drug with a strong taste, anyway. It defeated the purpose.

  He wanted to see if the passage of time would affect the adulterated liquid. He let everything sit there for twenty-four hours. That should be plenty long enough.

  Color: identical

  Aroma: identical

  He poured the contents of both glasses into the sink, rinsed them, and placed them in the dishwasher. Then he brought two more clean glass of the same type from a cabinet. He wanted to know if sitting in the bottle, away from open air, would affect the liquid in any noticeable way.

  He poured the Gaviscon remaining in each bottle into the squat glasses and examined the result.

  Color: identical

  Aroma: identical

  As he washed the results of his second experiment down the drain, The Grocer's boy gave a small nod of satisfaction. He had the means to solve the problem.

  What he needed now was access.

  Chapter 32

  The Secret Service agent at the door of Stark's suite, as per standing instructions, used his card key to admit Fernando Garrett into the sanctum sanctorum. There was no one in the suite's living room, so Garrett called out, tentatively, "Senator?"

  "In here." The familiar voice came from Stark's bedroom, but when Garrett walked in, he still didn't see his boss. More quietly, he repeated, "Senator?"

  "I'm in here." This came through the partly-open door of the bathroom. "Something I ate last night seems to have disagreed with me. To answer the question you're about to ask, no, it won't prevent me from giving the speech."

  "Glad to hear that, sir," Garret said, "Although I'm sorry to learn that you're not feeling well. Do you want me to send out for some Pepto-Bismol, or something?"

  "I have some of that, of which I have consumed the better part of a bottle since last night. I'll be all right. In the meantime, I know time is short. Say whatever you came to tell me - I can hear you just fine."

  This was not the first time in his political career that Fernando Garrett had carried on a conversation through the half-open door of a bathroom. Some of his clients had such bad stage fright that they'd tossed their cookies before every major speech or public event - although the idea that Howard Stark would be feeling nervous about something was a notion Garrett found absurd. The man was a rock.

  "We've got some new numbers in," Garrett said to the doorway, "and they're very encouraging. You're ahead of Leffingwell in Virginia by three points, and nationally by two - although that second figure is within the margin of error, so it's hard to say for sure."

  From inside the bathroom, Stark groaned loudly.

  "Senator? It's still pretty good news."

  "I know," Stark's disembodied voice said. "That was the diarrhea talking. Go on."

  "In the five primaries set for next weekend - Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, and Rhode Island - You're ahead of Leffingwell in two, less than four points behind him in two more, and your only third place is in Arizona, which is practically Martinez's back yard."

  "He's still strong, despite the so-called bimbo eruption?"

  "Yes, sir, they like him down there. First Latino to make a serious run at the Presidency, and all that. But the scandal has hurt him some, nationally. The numbers prove that."

  "All right, thanks. How long do we have?"

  "We need to leave in five minutes, sir, if you want to be behind the podium on time."

  "No problem. I'll--uhh!"

  "Senator? If you need a little more time, I can probably -"

  "No, it's okay, Garrett. I feel better now. I'll wash up and join you in the hall in a couple of minutes."

  "Very good, Senator. I'll see you shortly." Garrett turned and went out, and a few seconds later came the sound of the suite's door opening and closing.

  Less than a minute later, the suite door opened and closed again as Stark left to give his speech to the assembled throng in Kanawha Plaza, and whatever else awaited him that afternoon.

  A little later, Mary Margaret Doyle appeared in the doorway of Stark's bathroom, the knees of her blue business suit dirty and her makeup a ruin. She walked a little unsteadily across the living room and toward her own bathroom, intending to wash her face, repair her makeup, and gargle away half a bottle's worth of Listerine. Then she would try to find a Secret Service agent to drive her to the rally.

  Libby Chastain leaned sideways and said in Quincey Morris's ear, "Pity that I was so busy with other things last night that I forget to figure out a spell for sore feet - that, and maybe a potion for an uncomfortably full bladder."

  Morris tilted back his hat
, which kept sliding down over his eyes. It was a straw boater with images of Stark, the American eagle, and the flag alternating on a banner that circled the crown.

  Their strategy of ultra-early arrival at the park had paid off. The two of them stood just behind a length of cord wrapped in red, white, and blue velvet. It was one of a long series of such barriers stretched between portable metal poles that ran the length of the macadam-covered walkway, opposite the cascading fountain that was the Kanawha Plaza Corporation's pride and joy. Uniformed police officers strolled up and down the length of the rope line, to keep over-eager Stark supporters from crossing the insubstantial barrier and posing a security risk. When Stark came by, of course, he would be accompanied by the Secret Service detail.

  "Are you going to be okay?" Morris asked.

  Libby gave him a tired smile. "Sure, I'm just bitching. A woman's right, you know - I think it's in the manual."

  "A Woman's Operating Manual? Now there's a book I'd like to read, sometime."

  "No chance, buster. It's strictly F.F.E.O."

  "Meaning?"

  "For Female Eyes Only. Anyway, what's a little discomfort compared to saving the world - or whatever it is we're doing here."

  There were vendors everywhere selling Stark campaign memorabilia, and Morris had suggested that he and Libby get some on their way into the plaza. "Protective coloration," he'd called it.

  So Morris had his straw hat, and they each wore a button nearly the size of a saucer, featuring a photo of Stark looking resolute, with words around the edges following the button's contours. Above Stark's picture it read, 'Howard - the President we need NOW.' Below the image were the words, 'It's the STARK truth.' Libby also had a smaller button pinned to the light jacket she wore. Its message, superimposed over an image of the flag, was 'Make the STARK choice.'

  She saw Morris motioning to a vendor who was making his way slowly through the crowd. He was blocking her view, so Libby couldn't see what the man was selling. She did observe Morris handing over money in return for another button that he pinned to his shirt. Then he turned around so Libby could see it.