“Why not?”
“Got a directive this morning.”
“Whose directive?”
“S.A.I.C. Ishimaru.”
“Diana? What’s going on, Fred?”
The agent shrugged. “You need to see Ishimaru, Bo.”
Beyond the gate, through the cut in the orchard where the drive ran, Bo could see the main house and the yard. He saw the pool and, sitting in the shade of a table umbrella, Kate. The sight of her seemed to suck out his soul. He wanted to grab Fred Turner and throw him aside. Instead he turned the car around.
On the fourth floor of the Federal Court Building in Minneapolis, he punched in the security code for the lock on the main door of the field office. The door would not open. He tried again. Nothing. He stepped back to the bulletproof window that opened onto the reception area just inside, and he pushed the buzzer. A moment later, the receptionist, Linda Armstrong, appeared. She was a woman in her late forties, smart and trim. She’d grown up on a farm in Nebraska, and she and Bo had often swapped farm tales. When she saw who it was, her face took on a pained expression.
“I need the new code, Linda.” He spoke louder than was necessary.
“Just a minute, Bo.” She vanished again.
Diana Ishimaru accompanied her when she returned. Ishimaru opened the door.
“What the hell’s going on, Diana?” Bo said.
“In my office, Agent Thorsen.” She turned, and he followed.
Her office was not empty. Another man sat in a chair near her desk. He stood up as Ishimaru and Bo entered.
Ishimaru said, “Agent Thorsen, this is Assistant Director Bill Malone.”
Malone. Bo had never met him, but he knew him by reputation. He was reputed to possess, as a result of his long and varied career with the Secret Service, an excellent understanding of the exigencies of the job. Malone shook his hand, then indicated another chair.
“Have a seat, Agent Thorsen.”
“I’d like to know what’s going on,” Bo said.
“The assistant director asked you to sit down,” Ishimaru said.
Bo sat.
“I’ll cut to the chase, Agent Thorsen. Special Agent Chris Manning has made certain allegations concerning the appropriateness of your actions prior to and during the incident at Wildwood.”
“What allegations?”
“You’ll be receiving a full statement shortly. I’m here to convene an internal board of inquiry. I’ve directed S.A.I.C. Ishimaru to suspend you with pay pending a finding by that board.”
“What?”
“Take it easy, Bo,” Ishimaru said.
He gave her an angry look. “My ass is about to be nailed to the wall, Diana. Are you okay with all this?”
“This is standard procedure, Bo, and you know it.” Then she added, “In this, my hands are tied.”
“Bullshit. Is this why I’ve been denied access to Wildwood?”
Malone said, “Until the board of inquiry has reached a finding, we don’t want you to communicate with any of the principals involved.”
“Right. And it just happens to keep me conveniently away from the First Lady.”
“That’s another issue, Agent Thorsen,” Malone said. “One we need to discuss.”
“I’m through discussing,” Bo said. He stood up.
“Agent Thorsen,” Ishimaru said. “Sit down. We’re not finished.”
“I am.” Bo walked out the door.
He was halfway down the hall when Ishimaru caught up with him.
“Agent Thorsen, at the moment my patience is dangerously thin and your actions are very close to insubordination. We need to talk.”
“Talk about what? You know everything that happened at Wildwood. What more is there to say? From now on, Diana, if you want to talk to me, you go through my lawyer.”
“Bo—”
He didn’t stay to hear what else she had to say. If he’d remained a moment longer, he’d have put his fist through the wall.
chapter
thirty-eight
Bo drove to his apartment in Tangletown, the whole way battling against rage. Losing control of himself now was the last thing he needed. When he mounted the stairs to his apartment and discovered his door was unlocked, his mood didn’t brighten any.
Fortunately, it was Otter he found inside.
“Used the key you hide in the garage,” Otter said. He saw Bo’s dark look and added without apology, “You told me anytime.”
“Yeah,” Bo said, relenting. “I did.”
Otter was at the kitchen table with some playing cards spread out before him.
“How was the trip?”
“It was fine.”
“You sure? You look like you just drank spoiled milk.”
“Bad day,” Bo said.
He went to the phone and dialed Wildwood, the direct number for the main house. The call was intercepted by Secret Service. When Bo identified himself, he was told politely that he couldn’t be connected.
“Shit,” he said as he hung up.
Otter looked up from his cards. “What’s the problem?”
“Everywhere I turn, somebody’s dropping a wall in front of me.” Bo sat down at the table. “What are you doing here?”
“I thought you could use something to keep you busy during your convalescence. So I brought you a little gift.”
Otter got up and went to the living room. He lifted a plant in a terra-cotta pot and held it up for Bo to see.
“It’s a dieffenbachia,” Otter said. “A real one. I know you like the artificial things because they don’t require your attention, but they don’t give you anything either. Now this dieffenbachia, you take care of it, water it, talk to it, it’ll give you something in return, Spider-Man. It’ll grow for you.”
Otter put the plant back in the sunlight.
Bo went into the bedroom, set his overnight case down, and laid his garment bag on the bed. He walked to the closet, cleared his shoes from the floor, and pulled back a flap of carpet. There was a safe built into the floor underneath. Bo worked the combination, lifted the door, and pulled out his Sig Sauer. He took the holster from where it lay on the closet shelf, snugged the weapon into place, and clipped it to his belt. When Bo returned to the living room, Otter took a look at the weapon on his hip and whistled.
“Big gun, Spider-Man.”
“I’m beginning to think not big enough. Look, Otter, I’ve got to run.”
“That’s okay.”
“You sticking around for a while?”
“Just long enough to water your plant.”
“Lock up when you leave.”
It was late afternoon when Bo headed to the St. Croix Regional Medical Center for his second visit with Tom Jorgenson. He never made it to Jorgenson’s room. A Secret Service agent, one of the new ones, stopped him as soon as he stepped off the elevator.
“Sorry, Thorsen. You’re not allowed up here now. Orders.”
“Ishimaru?”
“These came from Assistant Director Malone himself.”
Bo was only yards from the room, but he knew he’d get no closer now. It was useless to argue. He went down to the lobby and used a pay phone.
“St. Croix Regional Medical Center.”
“Would you connect me with room four-twenty-two B, please?”
“Just one moment.”
More than a moment passed. Bo didn’t recognize the voice that came on the line.
“Yes?”
“I’m trying to reach Tom Jorgenson.”
“Your name?”
“How about yours first?”
“This is Special Agent Pederman, Secret Service.”
“My name’s Gaines,” Bo said, figuring it was a name Jorgenson would respond to. “Hamilton Gaines.”
“Just a moment, Mr. Gaines.” Bo waited another moment that wasn’t. “I’m sorry, you’re not on the list of authorized callers.”
Bo hung up without the courtesy of a good-bye.
He stood
at the pay phone, trying to get a handle on the situation. Was this really about the incident at Wildwood? Or was the ubiquitous hand of NOMan behind the stone wall he’d encountered? His head ached, and he realized he hadn’t eaten all day and he was hungry. He decided he could think better with a little food in his stomach. He left the hospital and headed for St. Paul.
The sun was setting as Bo parked in the lot of O’Gara’s, a popular Irish bar on Snelling Avenue. The place was crowded, but he found an empty booth in the back and sat down. He had to wait a few minutes before a waitress spotted him, then he ordered a Leinie’s and a Reuben. The beer came, and he settled back. While he waited for his sandwich, he tried to put together in a coherent way the pieces of information that he had.
It was clear his worst suspicions about NOMan were correct. Tom Jorgenson had confirmed the dark turn the organization had taken, but Bo had no solid proof of its current nature, nor of a conspiracy to murder Robert Lee. The testimony of a man like Tom Jorgenson might be enough to generate a full, formal investigation, but who knew how deep the darkness of NOMan ran or how broad the shadow it cast?
He needed a way to get back to Jorgenson. Every avenue so far had been blocked. But what if the contact came from someone else, someone of higher authority than Bo, from the White House itself? It was time to call Lorna Channing and brief her. He’d had no contact with her since before he left D.C. She didn’t even know he was in Minnesota. He took out his cell phone and from his wallet pulled out the slip of paper on which she’d written her number.
“Excuse me.”
Bo folded the paper and slid it into his shirt pocket, then he looked up.
Two men stood at his table. They wore jeans and sleeveless T-shirts, a little dirty, and work boots. They both held beer mugs in their hands. They looked like construction workers drinking after a day on the job.
“Me and my buddy here have a bet,” one of the men said. His hair was long and sandy colored, and he had a scraggly mustache of the same color. “I say you’re that Secret Service guy who saved the First Lady’s ass. My buddy bets I’m wrong.”
“Your buddy wins,” Bo said. He put the cell phone in the inside pocket of his sport coat.
“Told you,” the other man said. “Come on, Lester.”
“Now wait a minute. I seen your face on the cover of the National Enquirer, and I never forget a face. It’s…Thorsen, right?”
“Leave him be, Lester.”
“That must’ve been something out there. I mean, taking a bullet for the First Lady.”
“It was a knife,” Bo said.
“There, see. See, I told you it was him. Your glass is almost empty, man. Let me buy you a drink.”
The other guy offered Bo a look of sympathy. “Better do it. He’ll pester you till you do.”
“What’ll it be?” Lester asked.
“Leinie’s.”
“Leinie’s it is. Curtis, get this man a beer.”
Curtis headed off toward the bar. Lester sat down in the booth across from Bo.
“So. What was it like?”
“Look, Lester, your drink I’ll take. Your company I’d rather forgo at the moment.”
“Drinking alone? Bet it’s the pressure of the job does that. Seems to me I heard the rate of alcoholism and suicide is pretty high with you guys.”
“That’s dentists,” Bo said.
Curtis returned. “Here you go,” he said. He set the beer in front of Bo.
“To a real hero,” Lester said and lifted his glass in a toast.
Bo drank with them, from the beer they’d bought him.
“Come on, Lester,” Curtis said.
Lester slid a napkin toward Bo. “Say, could I get your autograph?”
Curtis grabbed his buddy by the shirtsleeve and pulled him away.
“Sorry to have bothered you,” he said to Bo.
Bo was grateful to be alone again. His Reuben arrived immediately, and the smell brought home to him just how hungry he was. He still had to make the call to Channing. He got his cell phone out again, but before punched in the number, he realized that the noise in the bar would make a coherent conversation almost impossible. He decided to wait until he was in the quiet outside O’Gara’s.
He hadn’t eaten all day, still hadn’t touched his sandwich, and the beer was beginning to affect him. He was feeling light-headed. He took a bite of the Reuben. The food didn’t seem to help. He was dizzy and getting sick to his stomach. He pulled out his wallet, dropped a few bills on the table. Hoping the fresh air might help, he made his way outside.
As he leaned against the side of the building, the sky above him flashed and thunder followed almost immediately. Bo felt the first drops of rain from a summer storm. The rain was cold and sharp, but it didn’t seem to be any help in clearing his head.
He was having trouble standing up now. He tried to remember where he’d parked his car. He pushed away from the building, and the world seemed to come at him in a slant.
“Whoa, buddy. You okay?”
The voice was familiar to Bo. Lester, who’d bought him a beer.
“Sick…” Bo managed to say.
“Come on, we’ll help you to your car.” It was another familiar voice, but more distant than the first.
Bo felt support slip under each of his arms. He tried to help them, tried to walk, but he couldn’t seem to make his legs move. He felt himself slipping, going under. But before he was gone completely, he had one lucid thought.
How did they know which car was his?
He felt the vehicle moving and he smelled exhaust. And then he was driving again. Driving the old bus. He sat behind the wheel, as he always did in his dreaming. The bus was on the river, caught in the sweep of a strong current, and he was trying desperately to turn toward the safety of the riverbank. The wheel spun uselessly in his hand. He felt himself and the others who rode with him, all those who relied on him, sweeping toward a blind curve of the river, beyond which something terrible awaited them.
A big bump threw him upward and he hit his head. He half-woke and opened his eyes. There was dark all around him, and the smell of exhaust and water on hot metal, and the rattle of the undercarriage as it negotiated old pavement, and the hiss of tires on wet asphalt. He wondered dreamily, Where am I?
• • •
He woke again to the feel of hands and the sound of voices.
“That’s right, Thorsen. Time to go night-night.”
They lifted his legs and turned him so that he was sitting up, more or less. Bo saw a line of lights like a string of bright pearls against the black throat of the night and the rain.
“Come on, buddy. Just a few steps and you’re there.”
They helped him up. He stood unsteadily. He looked back. At first he saw a huge, gaping mouth. Then he understood that it was a car trunk. They’d lifted him out of a car trunk. That seemed odd. But they were helpful.
“You can do it, Thorsen. That’s right. A step at a time.”
Rain fell against his face, cooling and refreshing. The fresh air felt good after the stuffy car trunk. The air carried on it a familiar scent. The dank, muddy smell of the Mississippi River.
“There we go.”
They leaned him against a metal railing. Bo looked down. In the flash of lightning, he saw the river far below him, black and shiny for a moment, then lost in the dark again, and the rain.
He knew where he was. His old stomping grounds. The High Bridge over the river. In the shadow of that bridge, he’d lived with his family of runaways in the old bus.
“Damn it, Curtis, hold on to him.”
“It’s the goddamn rain. He’s slippery as an eel.”
Bo felt them grasp him low around his hips. He knew he was about to travel again on the black river he’d driven so often in his nightmares.
But this was no nightmare.
Bo gathered himself around that small, hard realization and acted without thinking. His body moved in the way he’d trained it for nearly two
decades. He yanked his arm loose and delivered a hard kick to the knee joint of the man to his right, who went down howling. The other man Bo struck with a forearm blow to the middle of his face, and a fountain of blood squirted into the rain. Bo lurched away from the railing toward the car that sat idling on the bridge.
“Christ, don’t shoot him,” one of the men hollered.
Bo tumbled into the car parked at the curb, and he slumped over the wheel. As he jammed the stick into gear, the front door on the passenger’s side popped open. He hit the gas, and the car shot forward. Behind him, someone screamed a curse.
Bo sped across the bridge into St. Paul. He was sleepy, barely able to keep his eyes open or his foot on the pedal. The car swerved across lanes. He mounted the bluff to Summit Avenue and headed west along the rain-swept street between rows of big, fine houses.
Where? he tried to think.
Not to Tangletown. They would look for him there.
Then he thought of Diana Ishimaru. She lived on East River Road, less than a mile from Tangletown. All he had to do was stay awake for a few more minutes and he would be there.
He drifted, heedless of stoplights. Dimly, he understood that it must be very late because there was almost no traffic. On East River Road, he tried to remember which house was hers. In the dark and the rain, it was hard to tell. He pulled to the side of the street, and the front right wheel jumped the curb. He jerked the door handle and tumbled out onto the pavement. He stumbled up the walk to the front door, leaned against the clean white wood, and pounded.
The porch light came on. The locked clicked, the door opened, and Bo fell forward. A man caught him and stood him up.
“Diana?” Bo said.
“Ishimaru? Diana Ishimaru? She lives next door.” The man swung his hand in that direction. He wore a white robe and an angry look.
Bo took a couple of steps back into the rain and almost toppled over.
The man said, “Drunken asshole,” and slammed the door.
Bo crossed the wide lawn, tramped through a flower bed, reached the porch of the next house, and hit his fist against the door.
Diana Ishimaru answered immediately. Despite the hour and being dressed in a red chenille bathrobe, she looked wide awake.
“Bo? Jesus, come in out of that rain.” She reached out and took his arm.
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