Primary Storm

by Brendan DuBois

  "Good for her."

  Barbara looked at her wristwatch, a delicate gold item that must have cost the good senator a chunk of change, some time ago. "Lewis ... I've been here as long as I can. It's ... it's been good to see you."

  "The same."

  She stood up and so did I, and there was another embrace, quicker this time around, and she said, "I just wanted to see you. Funny, isn't it? I saw you at the rally ... and, well ... you look good. I'm glad you came." The old smile. "If we're lucky, I'll make sure you get another invite. To the inauguration, next year."

  "That'd be great."

  Another touch of her hand to mine, and then she was out the door.

  I stayed behind for a while, browsing through the books, enjoying this time in a clean, well-lit place with books, all by my lonesome.

  Chapter Six

  Back home, I passed through the dwindling crowd of news media, out there freezing for the dubious possible privilege of talking to me, including one enterprising type who wouldn't move from in front of my Ford Explorer. Considering I had gotten enough law enforcement attention already --- and not wanting to dent the fender or hood of my Explorer ---I let the driver's side window down and waited. The man was thickset, balding, with steel-rimmed glasses, and he said, "First things first, Mr. Cole. I'm not a reporter."

  "Bully for you," I said.

  He passed over a business card. "My name is Chuck Bittner. I'm with Tucker Grayson's presidential campaign. I'd like to talk to you."

  I tossed the business card on the passenger's seat of the Explorer. "Sorry, Mr. Bittner. The feeling's not mutual."

  He tried to lean into the open window. "Mr. Cole, look, General Grayson is what this country needs, and I'm dedicated to seeing him elected. Just a few minutes of your time, and I'm sure you'll agree with me, and agree to help his campaign by ---"

  I raised the window and kept on driving, and when I got down to my house, there was yet another visitor, standing outside the front door. I had an urge to keep on driving, to see if I could make my visitor run into the snowbank, but I was a good boy and turned into the garage.

  I parked my Explorer, got out, and said, "Last time somebody stood there, he claimed to be a Secret Service agent. Glad to know your credentials seem to be in order. Or at least I hope."

  Secret Service Agent Glen Reynolds didn't smile at my little gibe and said, "Do you want to see them again?"

  "Nope."

  He said, "I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes."

  I scratched at my face. "Thought my attorney was pretty clear, Agent Reynolds. You weren't to talk to me without his say-so."

  "Maybe I tried to call him. Perhaps I didn't reach him."

  "Perhaps," I said.

  "Or maybe I just wanted to see if I could talk to you without your hiding behind your attorney."

  "I'm not sure if 'hiding' is an appropriate term, Agent Reynolds."

  A quick nod. "My apologies then."

  "All right. I guess we can talk away."

  I stood there, and he stood there, and he said, "Well?"

  "Yes?"

  "Can we go inside?"

  "Oh. Can you say the magic word?"

  A slight grimace. "Mr. Cole, can we please go inside to talk?"

  "Sure," I said, smiling at him.

  I unlocked the front door, went inside, and dumped my coat on a nearby chair, and Agent Reynolds followed me and sat down on my couch. From inside his coat he pulled out a section of newspaper, which he tossed on the coffee table. I saw the familiar layout and typeface of the Tyler Chronicle.

  "This article is not helpful," he said.

  "Really?"

  "Really. Not helpful at all."

  "Then I suggest you talk to the reporter. Who was it?"

  His voice got sharp. "You know who wrote it."

  "So talk to her. Why talk to me?"

  "Because of what she said in the story. Lots of juicy information and quotes about the shooting at the conference center, all of the quotes anonymous. None of them from me, none of them from the state police or anybody else officially involved in the investigation. So it was you. Why?"

  "Seemed to be the right thing at the time."

  "To interfere with the investigation?"

  "Some investigation," I said. "You thought you had it wrapped up in a nice little package with my arrest. A one-day investigation, with everything all confirmed and concluded, no more work to be done. Right?"

  His face flushed. 'We followed the leads that were there. Beginning with your weapon, your fingerprints, your presence at the campaign rally. To do anything else would have been foolish."

  "Well, it seemed foolish to me."

  "Then consider yourself lucky that you don't have to worry about such things."

  "All right, I'll do just that."

  Reynolds said, "The investigation is continuing, Mr. Cole. Both into the shooting at the campaign rally and this supposed Secret Service agent who saw you the other day." He gestured to the newspaper on my coffee table. "Question I have is this. Do you intend to keep on interfering with our investigation?"

  "Guess it depends on your definition of interfering, Agent Reynolds."

  "All right. Here's my definition. Talking to the press again about what happened at the campaign rally. How's that?"

  "Fair enough," I said. "And just to let you know, my press appearances have officially ended. That sound good to the Treasury Department?"

  "That sounds excellent, Mr. Cole."

  "Glad to be of service."

  "Now, about this Spenser Harris. Do you have any information as to who he is, or where he came from?"

  "No," I said. "Do you?"

  He paused for a second, like he was debating what to tell me, and he said, "No, not a whit. We've done a canvass of what passes for a neighborhood around here, talked to the people at the Lafayette House and other nearby hotels and motels to see if someone by that name was registered. Nothing."

  "Sorry to hear that," I said.

  Reynolds said, "I'm sure it won't come as any surprise to you that we now believe this fake agent was connected with the shooting at Senator Hale's campaign rally."

  "No, it's not a surprise."

  "And you'll let me know if you find out anything about who he really is?"

  "Of course."

  "Thank you," he said, picking up the offending piece of newsprint and putting it back into his coat. He got up from the couch and I walked with him to the door, and before he left, he said, "One more thing, Mr. Cole."

  I had to grin. "You know, there's always one more thing, isn't there. You learn that at the training academy or something?"

  His smile didn't look particularly inviting. "Here's the deal. I'm in no position to tell you what to do with your personal life, but I think it would be a very good thing if you stayed away from the senator's wife over the next several days. Some of the senator's staff and supporters ... well, they may make your life difficult if such news were to be made widely known."

  "Really?"

  "Really. Even if you both do enjoy spending time at the local bookstore. Have I made myself clear?"

  "Quite."

  "Good."

  And then he left, and I went back into my house.

  I called Annie and got her voice mail and then I sat on the couch and just brooded for a bit. Somewhere out there was Spenser Harris and his friends, and I so wanted to talk to him again, to find out who they were and why they wanted me to be their patsy. But where to start? Felix was out there, sniffing around, and I knew he would do a better, quicker, and more thorough job than I could imagine. Plus, trying to poke around on my own to find out who Spenser Harris was, coupled with the publicity tagged on me with the assassination attempt, that would pretty much take care of my promise to Annie not to do anything to disturb the Hale campaign.

  So instead of spending the rest of the day on the couch, thinking useless thoughts, I went upstairs and tried to decide what kind of column I was going to write
for the June issue of Shoreline. It being January, it was hard to get in the mood to write for an issue of the magazine that would be published in bright sunshine and warm nights. Part of the fun challenges of being a magazine columnist: your writing clock is always three or four months off.

  The phone rang and I picked it up, waiting for my old and trusty Apple iMac to boot up. "Hello?"

  "Mr. Cole?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm calling from CNN and was wondering ---"

  "Sorry, not interested."

  I hung up the phone, opened up my word processing program. Looked at my blank computer screen. I suppose I could write about the annual migration of tourists to the beach communities of New England, and how their presence changed the atmosphere of these little towns, and how this caused tension between the tourists and the year-round residents. I started writing down a few thoughts but then stopped. Practically every other newspaper or newsmagazine that covered this region did the same outsiders impacting-the-locals story, and who was I to inflict another such story upon the long-suffering readers of Shoreline?

  The phone rang. "Hello?"

  "Mr. Cole?"

  "Yep."

  "Mr. Cole, I'm calling from The New York Times."

  "Really?"

  "Um, yes, I'm from The New York Times and I was wondering --"

  "Well, thanks for calling, but I get the paper from across the way. At a local hotel. It seems I can't get a subscription to my residence. Why's that?"

  "Ah, Mr. Cole, I'm not calling from the circulation department. My name is George Mulvey, I'm a reporter from the Times, and ---"

  "Oh, a reporter: I apologize. I thought you were trying to sell me a subscription. But I guess you want to talk to me about a news story."

  "Yes, I do, and I'd like to know --"

  "Sorry, not interested."

  I hung up.

  Before me was the screen, still very much blank.

  Why not a story about the islands of the New England shoreline? Too often my columns had been about the actual coastline of New England, about the communities and fishing villages, and why not expand it a bit? Across the way was the Isles of Shoals --- All right, maybe not those islands, they'd been written about more than enough times. But there was Block Island down in Long Island ... nope, overwritten as well. Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard? Please. How many forests had to die to churn out copy about those two special places every year? Long Island sound again, but Plum Island had been claimed by a well-known and well-regarded novelist a few years back, and there were the islands off the coast of Maine, all one or two hundred of them, and how could I choose, and ---

  The phone rang. "Mr. Cole?"

  "The same."

  "Mr. Cole, it's Chuck Bittner again, from the Tucker Grayson campaign. Look, I really think it would be in your interest to talk to me, so that your story can get the proper attention it deserves, about your relationship with the --"

  "Mr. Bittner."

  "Yes?"

  I turned in my office chair. "You're an oppo researcher for the general's campaign, am I right?"

  That seemed to make him pause. "Suppose ... suppose I say no?"

  "Then I'm not going to talk to you for even a second."

  There was a sigh. "All right ... yes, yes, I do perform opposition research for the general. But each campaign has such researchers, and I really need to talk to you, about you and the senator's wife. It's a story that really needs to be fleshed out, and ---"

  "Nope."

  "But you said you'd talk to me!"

  "No, I said I wouldn't talk to you if you denied being an opposition researcher," I said. "But you know what? I'm still not going to talk to you, even if you did admit to being an oppo researcher."

  Then I hung up the phone. I was getting pretty damn good at it.

  All right, back to the patient and blank computer screen.

  Maybe it was time to think outside the box. Maybe I could do a column about odd aspects of history that had happened along the New Hampshire coastline that not many people knew about. Like the evidence that Vikings had settled here more than a thousand years ago. Or the case of the German U-boats that had been interned at the end of World War II up at the Porter Naval Shipyard. Or ---

  Or give it a rest, I thought. Who'd want to read offbeat stories like those two?

  Another ring of the phone. "Hello?"

  "Lewis? It's Annie. How's that sickness treating you?"

  "Sickness seems to be bored with me and is leaving. How are you doing?"

  There was pause, and I wondered if she hadn't heard me, and there was the briefest of Sighs. "Lewis ... I was talking to some senior staff here this morning. About you. And the shooting. And one other thing that somebody slipped out, a big-ass secret that only a few in the campaign know about."

  "Yes?"

  "Lewis ... I've come to know you're a man with secrets. You've not told me much about the scars you have. Or what you did at the Pentagon. Or how you ended up in a prime beachfront home on a magazine columnist's salary. You've joked and fooled around and have really never answered my questions directly, and I've put up with that. Your other ... your other assets have outweighed whatever questions or concerns I've had."

  My hand tightened on the telephone receiver. I knew where this was going.

  "So, having said all of that," she went on, "would you mind telling me why you've never told me about you and the senator's wife? Barbara? Why you decided to keep that little secret from me? Good God, I can't believe the news media have picked up on it already ... her former boyfriend being initially charged in the shooting. So far, it’s only the staff who knows this."

  'We knew each other in college," I said. "Just for a while. It was ... I didn't think it was that important, Annie."

  Another sigh. "I'm working on a campaign for a man who might be the next president of the United States, and you used to date the future first lady when you were in college. And you didn't think to tell me?"

  "I was ... it just didn't ... well, to tell you the truth, I didn't think Senator Hale was going to make it this far. So I didn't think it was worth bringing up."

  Annie said, "Nope. Not good enough. I think there's something else. And once you figure it out, do me the favor of telling me. All right?"

  It was my turn to sigh. "Sure. Look, there was no secret agenda, it was just ---"

  "Lewis, you're a man with secrets. Most times it's charming. This isn't one of those times."

  "I hear you."

  "Thanks. Look ... we'll be pretty busy over here tonight. I don't think I'm going to make it over to your place later."

  "Oh. I see."

  "No, really ... we're busy. I'll see if I can't come over tomorrow. All right?"

  "That would be great."

  A few more words here and there, and then she hung up. Before me again was the blank screen.

  The hell with it.

  I was done for the day. The next morning I went for a quick walk across the street to the Lafayette House to get my morning newspapers. Being in such an isolated location, newspaper delivery was out of the question, and since I got my mail from a post office box --- which meant the usual drive into town --- I most always got my newspapers from the gift shop at the Lafayette House.

  The air was sharp and crisp as I walked up my driveway.

  Hands in my pockets, I carefully made my way up to the hotel's parking lot, trying to decide what to say to any die-hard members of the fourth estate who might still be on stakeout duty. But when I reached the parking lot, I hated to say it, but I was disappointed. No one was waiting for me. The reporting hand, having writ, had obviously moved on to another story.

  I took in a deep breath of the fresh sea air. Some other story was no doubt out there, being chased by the dedicated men and women of the news media, and I was now content to be left alone.

  I went across Atlantic Avenue, up to the white colossus that was the Lafayette House, and then strode into the marble and glass splendor
of its lobby. To the left was the gift shop, and I left a few seconds later, with five newspapers under my arm, after exchanging the usual pleasantries with the gift shop manager, a retired air force chief warrant officer named Stephanie Sussex. She had short gray hair, old-fashioned black-rimmed glasses that were bowed like cat whiskers, a black turtleneck adorned by a simple gold crucifix, and the same old joke.

  "Still reading for five people?"

  "Looks that way, doesn't it."

  She rang up my purchases and said, "Least you could do is make 'em pay for it. Have a good one."

  "Thanks," I said. "I'll try."

  I liked the feeling of the newspapers under my arm. I know that we are in a new world of computerized information, with most of the world's newspapers now available with the click of a keyboard or a mouse, but I still like the feel of newspapers in my hands. It just feels more real. Besides, the computer geniuses who brought us to this brave new world still haven't come up with a way of devising a personal computer that you can easily carry into the bathroom when the need arises.

  I went through the parking lot on my way back, seeing a panel truck at the north end of the lot. JIMMY'S ELECTRICAL SERVICE, FALCONER, it said on the side of the truck, and I felt bad for Jimmy, having to hump his equipment up to the hotel.

  Down the driveway I went, and back home, there was someone waiting for me at the doorsteps to my house, sitting there, legs stretched out, looking quite comfortable. It looked like the fourth estate hadn't given up quite yet in their quest to interview me. I came down the driveway, focusing on my footwork, making sure I didn't slip and knock my skull against a piece of rock outcropping. I looked up once, and my visitor was still there, sitting patiently. Well, he could be as patient as he wanted. I certainly wasn't going to say much when I got to the doorway. I was done with the news media. The primary election was just a few days away, and I was going to keep my head down, ignore the senator's wife, and make nice with Annie Wynn after our last discouraging phone call.

  When I got to my house, I stopped, as if the snow about my feet had suddenly turned into ice, keeping me still.

  For before me was Spenser Harris, fake Secret Service agent.