Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 2

by Joseph Flynn

  Celsus Crogher had even been dispatched to Evanston to oversee the Secret Service detail that worked with the Evanston PD to protect Kenny, Caitie, Carolyn and Lars. In years past, none of the McGill children liked SAC Crogher, but a call home had reassured McGill things had changed.

  Crogher, he’d been told, had mellowed. Mellowed?

  Caitie had even told him, “Dad, you should see the way this guy can dance.”

  McGill wondered what the hell was going on.

  The problem with an attack on Sweetie was countered by having Deke Ky become her constant companion. He was the only Secret Service special agent Sweetie would agree to have in her hip pocket, as she put it. She said Deke was also the only one, except maybe Elspeth, she trusted not to shoot her by mistake if a gunfight broke out.

  Deke told her, “Stop it, Margaret. You’ll make me blush.”

  DeWitt said that with a shove from the president the National Reconnaissance Office had eyes in the sky watching McGill’s office building, using software developed by another spook shop to detect the presence of vehicles or individuals surveilling it as a potential target.

  “So far, no one has given your building more than a passing glance,” DeWitt said.

  Dikki Missirian, McGill’s landlord, had been used as a lure by Damon Todd the last time he and McGill had clashed. So now at McGill’s expense, Dikki’s Armenian cohort of personal security had off-duty Metro cops backing them up.

  What had to be worked out now was how to draw Todd and Crosby out into the open. That and how much space to give McGill to make the bad guys confident they could take a crack at him and get away. McGill wanted more elbow room; Elspeth wanted to give him less.

  While they wrangled about that there was also the problem of finding a suitable Secret Service decoy for Chana Lochlan. Coming up with a woman who could shoot, fight, and pass for someone once known as the “most fabulous face on television” was no easy task.

  Then the genuine article walked in, looking as fabulous as ever.

  Deke asked right off, “You know how to shoot, Ms. Lochlan?”

  Chana told him, “As a matter of fact, I do.”

  Chana informed McGill and the others, “It was part of my therapy. I’ve always been athletic, so learning hand-to-hand self-defense came naturally. I even got Graham to take jeet-kun-do lessons with me. He’s pretty good, too. But after what Dr. Todd had done to me, I still felt vulnerable. My therapist had worked through her own issues, ones similar to mine, and told me she had learned to shoot. She said she never carried her weapon, but having it at home, knowing she could hit what she wanted to, reassured her. I tried it. It helped me, too.”

  Everyone in the room looked at Chana.

  “What?” she asked.

  McGill told her, “A good cop hates putting civilians at risk.”

  She replied, “You’ve told me I’m already at risk. That’s why Graham and I have been in hiding all this time. We’re tired of it. I felt liberated when you asked me to raise my public profile to see if we could trap him. Finally, I was being proactive. I came here today to see if there was something more I could do.”

  Sweetie asked, “Is Graham downstairs? Do you have a bodyguard with you?”

  Chana shook her head. “Graham is at our home in California. He said if anything happens to me, he’ll call on some very dangerous friends and they’ll hunt Dr. Todd down like a dog. I thought it would be better if I helped you get the job done.”

  “So you came here alone?” McGill asked.

  “Got in my car and went for a drive, like anyone else,” Chana said. “But I am armed.”

  The others looked at one another.

  Daryl Cheveyo brought up a point he’d meant to raise earlier.

  “It’s possible the man working with Dr. Todd, a former undercover intelligence operative, could be feeling suicidal. He might attack without regard to his personal safety.”

  Chana shrugged. “I’m not an expert, but shouldn’t that make him easier to kill?”

  Old Canton Road — Jackson, Mississippi

  Bobby Beckley’s house went for north of a million dollars. In some places, that price tag would buy a starter house or even a tear-down. In Jackson, it had bought Bobby five bedrooms, three fireplaces and a forty-foot pool on two acres of manicured lawn and custom landscaping. Five minutes by golf cart from the first tee. Bobby didn’t have to worry about losing his Southern mansion because he’d paid cash for it, and had numbered accounts in four different countries.

  He could have sat back, sipped bourbon and had a different hooker delivered every night for the next forty years. He partook of all those pleasures and hustling suckers out on the golf course, too. But that wasn’t enough for him.

  He wasn’t happy unless he was messing with people on a grand scale.

  There was no place better for doing that than Washington, D.C. The combination of nation-building sums of money, hordes of people who were greedier than they were smart and the pretense that each scam was for the benefit of the public provided everything a cynical predator could want.

  Bobby had no intention of resting until he was back in the thick of it. To help him in his efforts he was funneling money to a kid who’d lived in a house a quarter-mile down the street. Rupert was a smart boy who’d earned his degree in chemistry from Tulane, graduating with honors. He’d approached Bobby about getting in on the ground floor of a great business opportunity.

  Bobby knew a shitter when he heard one, and he’d learned of Rupe’s academic major from his boastful father on the golf course. He’d also heard about the kid’s run-ins with the law, ones that had been made to disappear by Daddy’s money and lawyers.

  The boy wanted Bobby to provide seed money for a meth lab. Being involved with the manufacture of illegal drugs was something he couldn’t have gotten away with even when he’d had Howard Hurlbert to protect him. Hell, you couldn’t even skate on beating up your old lady these days.

  So Bobby took a pass on going into the meth trade, but he had a counterproposal. What the world needed, he felt, were recreational drugs made entirely from chemicals that were one hundred percent legal. There could be a whole range of new leisure time pharmaceuticals.

  Something to give you extra energy for pickup basketball, something else to make music sound extra good, something to distort your girlfriend’s eyesight so she thought you had the biggest ding-dong in the world. You got your line of products patented and trademarked, hired a lobbying firm to make sure the FDA and state legislatures were on board and you’d have yourself a goldmine.

  Rupe had said that was the best idea he’d ever heard. In fact, he had one project just like that already in the works. He took the hundred grand Bobby gave him and said he’d be back with a sample in two weeks. Rupe was as good as his word. He came back with a key of crystal meth he’d colored with brown food dye, sweetened with sucrose and formed into tiny tablets. He called the product Super Brown Sugar, SBS for short.

  “You just pop a tab under your tongue,” Rupe said, “let it melt there and it’ll go right into your bloodstream, give you a real energy boost.”

  Bobby had been doing SBS ever since Rupe had dropped off his first batch.

  Couldn’t stop popping the delicious little fuckers into his mouth.

  He preferred to let them melt on his tongue.

  Damn, if they didn’t let him work for three days straight without having to sleep. He’d used the extra time to come up with some amazing plans for getting back to Washington. Hell, for taking over the whole damn place. Now, if he could only remember where he’d put his notes.

  Didn’t matter. He knew where he kept his SBS. In the fridge.

  He liked the taste of it better cold.

  On his way to his kitchen, though, he looked out through the French doors and saw somebody lounging next to his pool. At first, he thought he might have imagined seeing a stranger in his backyard. He’d seen a few things lately that hadn’t been there. His daddy, for one, who’d
died more than twenty years ago in another man’s bed with another man’s wife.

  Pure Southern Gothic.

  Only Daddy had been a shadow and had disappeared when he turned a light on.

  Out back, though, there was nothing but sunshine, and pressing his nose right against the glass didn’t make the stranger go away. It would have been okay if he’d been a neighbor who stopped by and decided to take a nap. But Bobby had never seen this dude before — some old guy with closely cropped white hair — and when he saw Bobby, he got up off the lounge chair, whipped his dick out and peed in the pool.

  Sonofabitch.

  Bobby grabbed a handy fireplace poker and ran outside. He charged the intruder, the poker cocked high over his right shoulder. He meant to split the asshole’s head like a ripe melon. The guy didn’t seem to take the threat with the least bit of concern. He appeared to be looking over Bobby’s shoulder. At the last second, the trespasser pulled a gun with a sound suppressor from under his jacket and shot.

  The bullet passed so close to Bobby’s head he felt it go by. He heard a grunt behind him and a body fell. Bobby skidded to a stop and turned to look. Rupe lay in a growing puddle of blood on the pool apron. In one dead hand, the kid from down the street held a gun. In the other, he held the bag of SBS Bobby had ordered.

  The thought hit Bobby then. Not only was Rupe dead, the secret of how to make SBS might have died with him. Bobby roared and whirled to smite the stranger. Only the bastard plucked the poker from his hand and shoved him into the pool.

  Bobby got a mouthful of water and, from the taste of it, some pee, too.

  He popped to the surface and was immediately struck by the poker the intruder threw at him. His forehead split open and blood ran into Bobby’s eyes and the pool. Stunned, partially blinded and having trouble keeping his head above water, Bobby wailed, “Who are you? Why are you doing this to me?”

  The intruder lowered himself into a crouch. He was a mean looking sucker.

  He said, “Frank Morrissey was my guest. No one fucks with my guests’ privacy.”

  That was it? As far as dirty tricks went, that was kid’s stuff.

  Bobby could not believe it … especially when the guy took a large water-filled baggie out of a pocket. There was something moving inside it.

  “What the hell is that?” Bobby cried.

  “Aquatic pit viper,” the intruder said. “Just a baby, but he still has a hemotoxic bite. Orients himself to blood in the water.”

  Bobby added to the urine content of the pool.

  “No, don’t. Please.”

  The intruder opened the baggie.

  Knowing his fate was sealed, Bobby did what came naturally.

  He tried to take others with him. “Roger Michaelson helped me.”

  The bastard dropped the snake in the pool.

  “Reynard Dix, too.”

  Bobby tried to outswim the snake and lost.

  He was bitten on the neck before he could also blame Howard Hurlbert.

  Greyhound Bus Terminal — Oakland, California

  Arn Crosby decided it was time for Todd and him to put some miles between them. Not stop working together. Just make sure they both didn’t get caught or killed at the same time. They would stay in touch electronically. When Crosby went for McGill, Todd would be able to watch the same way they had watched Anderson, by means of a web cam.

  But this time Todd would do more than observe. He’d have Crosby’s back.

  Warn him if he saw trouble coming. Let Crosby decide in real time whether to go for the kill or abort the mission.

  The former CIA operative would lay the groundwork for his attack as he crossed the country by bus, making sure as he went that they hadn’t already given away their location. Crosby suggested that Todd abandon the BMW in favor of another vehicle. Todd declined. He felt the risk at this point would be greater in obtaining a new car, and he wasn’t about to buy a used vehicle from a private seller.

  “You might be right, Doc,” Crosby said. “Olin and I might have passed our best-used-by date while we were in The Funny Farm. If you don’t hear from me in four days, you’re on your own. Go after McGill or forget all about him, it won’t matter to me.”

  Todd only nodded. The two men didn’t shake hands.

  Crosby got on the bus to Salt Lake City. Todd started driving to Lake Tahoe.

  He thought Crosby’s plan stood a better chance of success than Anderson’s had. It was also more likely to result in Crosby dying rather than being taken captive. Todd had come to agree with Crosby that death would be the preferable alternative.

  Todd didn’t want to be incarcerated again. He didn’t want to have to take refuge in another personality. If he couldn’t kill McGill, if he couldn’t possess Chana Lochlan, what would be the point of going on? Assuming Crosby didn’t succeed, he would need his own plan to get at McGill. By the time he approached the western slope of the Sierra Nevada he thought he had an idea that might work.

  He used the handsfree phone in the BMW to call the number Jaime Martinez had given him.

  McGill Investigations, Inc.

  After seeing how Chana Lochlan shot — very well, thank you — Elspeth Kendry still had a critical point to make. “If you draw your weapon, you use it. You don’t deliver a corny speech, you just shoot.”

  “To kill, I assume,” Chana replied.

  Elspeth nodded. So did Sweetie. And Deke.

  “You, too?” Chana asked McGill.

  “The death panel is unanimous. No half measures now.”

  “All right then.”

  She walked out the door and down the stairs. McGill caught up with her and, shillelagh in hand to continue his bad knee ruse, was the first to step out into —

  The view of a guy across the street pointing a cell phone at him, taking a picture of him and Chana standing close to one another in the building’s doorway. The guy was grabbed at the corner of the block by two Secret Service agents and thrown into the back of an unmarked car. He was gone in a matter of seconds.

  But well after he’d have been able to empty a clip of ammo into McGill and Chana if he’d been carrying an automatic weapon instead of an iPhone.

  “Not reassuring,” McGill said. His body mike was supposed to pick up his every word.

  He opened the back door of his Chevy and let Chana enter the back seat of the armored vehicle first. Leo was just putting his Beretta back in its holster as McGill got in and closed the door behind him. He said, “Damn near plugged that fool, boss.”

  “Won’t happen again.” Elspeth’s voice told McGill through his ear bud.

  That made him feel better than if she’d said sorry.

  Elspeth sounded pissed and was undoubtedly going to chew some Secret Service ass.

  That made McGill feel better, too.

  “You still up for all this?” he asked Chana.

  She tapped her chest with a fist. Like everyone else she was wearing body armor.

  “He’d have gone for center mass, right?”

  “If he knew what he was doing.”

  “You’re right. It’s the klutzes that’ll kill you.” She gave McGill a smile. “No harm, no foul. Let’s hope the picture that jerk took turns out blurry.”

  With that, they set off on an ordinary day of work for a television journalist. With a presidential election drawing near, Chana was putting together an hourlong show on people who weren’t going to vote, asking them why not and what might get them to change their minds and cast a ballot. They’d meet up with a camera operator and a sound man and start shooting interviews around town.

  McGill would make sure Chana didn’t try to chat up Arn Crosby or Damon Todd, and watch out for incidental hazards. All would go well.

  A moving ring of Secret Service agents encircled them, Elspeth Kendry would exercise her judgment as to just how tight the cordon should be at any given moment. She’d gotten McGill to respect her decisions by asking Margaret Sweeney, in McGill’s presence, whether he’d trusted her
in the days when they were both Chicago cops.

  “Absolutely,” Sweetie said.

  Elspeth had given McGill a look that said it all. So what’s the deal, buddy, there’s only one woman in the world you can trust to look out for you?

  Until that very moment, McGill’s answer would have been yes.

  But Sweetie was giving him a look, too, and a wise man knew when to adapt.

  “All right,” he said.

  Now, he was hoping he wouldn’t regret his decision.

  He was glad Sweetie would be monitoring their every move by means of the Metro Police Department’s closed circuit TV cameras. He thought it was a good idea that they had air support, too. In spite of all the backup, McGill said a silent prayer none of the good guys would get hurt.

  The Peninsula Hotel — Chicago, Illinois

  Todd heard from Crosby the same morning McGill and Chana had their unwanted picture taken. On his way east, Todd knew he could not return to the secluded farmhouse in Ottawa. He was also looking at things from a different point of view now. He didn’t know whether he had a long-term future anymore. If he didn’t, he wanted to spend his remaining time living as well as he could. So he chose a five-star hotel just off the Magnificent Mile as his place to lodge.

  His room had a view that encompassed both the city’s skyline and Lake Michigan. The room service was superb, and the long list of amenities included Wi-Fi. So his iPad’s connection to the Internet was rock solid, and the link Crosby had sent him was plugged directly into the live transmissions of the Metro Police Department’s CCTV cameras in Washington, D.C. Even better, Todd could choose which of the cameras interested him most at any given moment.

  He had Crosby on the phone, both of them using throwaways.

  “How did you manage to hack the D.C. cops?” Todd asked.

  “I didn’t. I’m not that good. But I know where to find people who are, and I had something to barter.”

  Todd said, “Something you can tell me?”

  “At this point, why the hell not? I traded the hack for Putin’s cell phone number.”