“Maybe,” Lucas said. “I’ve got to talk to a guy in Mount Pleasant first.”
“Mount Pleasant . . . is what, a half hour from here? You could make it to Davenport, if you don’t take too long in Mount Pleasant.”
“I’ll try,” Lucas said.
“See you then,” Clay said, and he hurried after his candidate, who had disappeared into a silver Suburban.
SEVEN
Lucas headed back to Mount Pleasant, knocked on Joseph Likely’s door, got no answer, went back to the café he’d seen earlier in the day, and ordered the open-faced roast beef sandwich, fries, and a Diet Coke.
The whole restaurant smelled of grease and Campbell’s mushroom soup, which was about right. Lucas had eaten open-faced roast beef sandwiches all over the Midwest, the kind that came soaked in brown gravy and little bits of things you didn’t want to know about and rated this one at about sixty-nine percent.
He added a slice of coconut cream pie after he finished the sandwich, and the waitress, when she dropped the pie plate on his table, asked, “Who won?”
“What?”
“The fight. Who won the fight?”
“I did,” Lucas said, catching on. He touched his face, and it hurt.
The waitress smiled and said, “You got a heck of a shiner, that’s for sure. Shoulda put a beefsteak on it. Too late now.”
Lucas left a few dollars on the table, and went looking for Likely.
—
JOSEPH LIKELY’S FORD TAURUS was parked in his side yard, a red canoe still up on the roof, the bottom white with cuts and scratches. Lucas knocked on the screen door, and a moment later Likely came to the door.
He was a tall, thin man with a scraggly black beard on his cheeks and a down-curving mustache on his upper lip. He was older, somewhere in his middle to late sixties, Lucas thought, tough-looking, in the way of Abraham Lincoln. He was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved blue cotton shirt, and a rain-faded gold Iowa Hawkeyes Football cap. His hands were gnarled, either from arthritis or work, or both.
Lucas introduced himself and explained what he was doing. Likely said, “You told my neighbor that you were a political researcher.”
“I am. I’m looking into who might be a threat to Mrs. Bowden,” Lucas said.
“But you’re basically a cop.”
“I was. I quit a while back,” Lucas said. “Right now I’m working for Governor Henderson.”
“Yeah, but I really don’t talk to cops of any kind, actual or pro tem,” Likely said. “I wouldn’t inform on my worst enemy.”
Lucas looked at him for a second, then said, “Listen, Joe. I don’t give a rat’s ass about your political inclinations. I believe there’s a serious threat against Mrs. Bowden. If it turns out it comes from you or one of your political people, and you know about it, and something happens, you’ll be looking at the inside of a really ugly prison for the rest of your life. That ain’t bullshit—that’s the fact of the matter.”
“I don’t respond very well to threats, either,” Likely said.
“Joe, you’re thinking in slogans,” Lucas said. “You don’t talk to cops, you don’t inform on anybody, you don’t respond to threats. You’ve got to listen to what I’m saying. This isn’t make-believe. This isn’t political bullshit, or a TV show—this is a real thing.”
“Yeah, well, I suggest you talk to my attorney,” Likely said.
“What for?”
“She can tell you about the ins and outs of the law on this, and all about illegal harassment.”
“Hey, I’m not trying to harass you. I’ll talk to your attorney and I’ll tell you now what she’s going to say—if you know anything, speak up.”
“I don’t believe she’ll do that.” Likely rubbed the back of his hand across his nose, then said, “No, sir, I don’t think she’ll say that. She doesn’t like oppressive police actions any more than I do.”
“Ah, Jesus . . .” Lucas shook his head. “Give me the attorney’s name. I’ll call her right now.”
“Not while you’re trespassing on my sidewalk. I’ll give you her name and then you go somewhere else to call her.”
—
LUCAS’S SUV had been sitting in the sun and was uncomfortably hot, so he started it, and jacked up the air-conditioning. The attorney’s number that Likely had given him turned out to be a state public defender named Carmen Wyatt, whose office was back in Burlington.
Lucas talked his way past a secretary to get to Wyatt. He explained what he was doing, including his brief conversation with Bowden in Burlington. Wyatt replied that she didn’t represent Likely in any current criminal case, though she had represented him in the past, in several protest-related arrests. She would not be representing him in any negotiations about a private inquiry involving a possible election problem.
“I don’t want to seem like a jerk, but this doesn’t fall under our purview,” Wyatt said, “especially since you’re not a police officer conducting an official investigation.”
“What would you suggest?”
“I’d suggest you stop bothering Joe,” she said. “If you, as a private citizen, have a specific complaint, bring it to the attention of an Iowa law enforcement authority. If a crime has been committed, or if it’s found that a conspiracy is under way—”
“You do understand what I’m saying, right? That I’m trying to figure out—”
“Not my problem,” Wyatt interrupted.
Lucas said, “Look, I’ve explained this wrong. Let me try again. If there’s a conspiracy and if Mrs. Bowden is shot, or even shot at, and if Likely is involved, in the investigation afterwards you’ll almost certainly lose your job because you wouldn’t help me.”
“I don’t take threats any more than Joe does,” Wyatt snapped.
“I’m not threatening you,” Lucas said, getting even more exasperated. He was starting to sound like a broken record. “I’m providing you with information. I’m not trying to oppress Likely. I’m not threatening to arrest him—I’m not a cop. I’m looking for a little information. He’s refusing to give it to me out of a knee-jerk anti-cop attitude, or maybe because he does know something and he’s covering up. If that’s what’s going on . . . if Mrs. Bowden gets shot or even shot at and missed, and you failed to cooperate with any inquiry, including mine, you’re done. That’s not a threat. That’s what’s going to happen. If you spend more than ten seconds thinking about it, instead of hiding behind a lot of bureaucratic BS, you’ll understand what I’m telling you. Doesn’t make any difference if you get fired for real obstruction or because you’re a scapegoat, you’ll still get fired. Believe me, if something happens, there’ll be a full-on scapegoat hunt. What do you think the job prospects will be for a lawyer on the wrong side of an assassination?”
“I’m done talking here,” Wyatt said. “You have to understand that we hear a lot of vague threats—”
“These aren’t vague. And I’m not crazy—check with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St. Paul. Or hell, check my name on the Internet.”
“I’ll look,” Wyatt said. “Now I’m going to hang up.”
—
LUCAS WAS SITTING across the street from Likely’s house. He’d seen the curtain move a couple of times in a front window as he was talking to Wyatt—Likely checking to see if he was still there, he thought. Frustrating, not being a cop, and not having that weight behind his questions. What to do?
One possibility: he called Bell Wood at the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. Wood had left for the day, but the duty officer said he’d give him a ring on his personal cell and pass Lucas’s number along if Wood wanted to call back.
Wood called a minute later: “What’s up?”
Lucas explained what had happened, and then asked, “I was wondering if push came to shove, if one of your election security people could have a chat with Likely?”
“That’d be good. When you don’t have a badge, getting anything done is like wading through mud,” Lucas said.
“Then you oughta get a badge,” Wood said. “By the way, I called Henderson’s campaign people and got their hotel for the night. You’ll be getting a FedEx there first thing in the morning, with a carry permit.”
“Excellent.”
“I expect some kind of under-the-table payoff. I’ve got a steak house in mind,” Wood said.
“Count on it,” Lucas said.
—
AFTER THINKING about it for a moment, Lucas pulled the iPad out of its seatback pocket, brought up Michaela Bowden’s website. After a fund-raising riverboat ride, she’d be at the Hotel Blackhawk, in Davenport, for a public speech and then a fund-raising cocktail party.
He brought up a map program and checked distances and times. He could be in Davenport in an hour and a half, check out the meeting and party, look for gray eyes and long hair, introduce himself to all the Bowden security, and still make it back to Iowa City for the night.
He punched the Blackhawk hotel location into his nav system and was about to pull out, when the phone rang: unknown, from Burlington, Iowa.
“Lucas Davenport.”
“This is Carmen Wyatt. I talked to Joe. I told him that you were unofficial, but that you were probably right about his getting in trouble if something serious happened,” the lawyer said. “I told him that he didn’t have to talk to you, but he could listen. Then if he wanted to respond, it might save him some trouble later. He said he’d listen. Go knock on his door.”
“I appreciate it. I’ll do that,” Lucas said.
“Do not threaten him. That’s a violation of Iowa law and you have no status here,” she said. “I don’t want to wind up defending you, because I don’t think I’d like you.”
—
LIKELY WAS ALREADY STANDING at the door when Lucas came up the front walk. He pushed open the screen and said, “I’ll listen.”
They went into the parlor. The house smelled of old plaster, wallpaper, and cooked vegetables; the late-afternoon light sifted through yellowed-lace curtains, reflecting off framed modernist woodblock prints that crowded the plaster walls. Lucas told him the story, the same one he’d already told several times that day, with Likely sitting in a wooden rocking chair, nodding as he rocked.
When Lucas was finished, Likely said, “I personally can’t help you. I’ll talk to some other folks in the party, but I know everybody associated with it. This doesn’t sound like anybody I know.”
“If you could do that, I’d appreciate it,” Lucas said. “I have to tell you, I don’t have much interest in your kind of politics, but if you were to pick out any one person who you folks might vote for, it’s the guy who hired me. Governor Henderson takes your position on a number of issues and you might keep that in mind. We’re not trying to oppress anyone or mess with you guys in any way. We’re trying to prevent what could be a tragedy.”
“You don’t even know for sure if there is a plot,” Likely said. “If there isn’t, and you find this gray-eyed man you’re looking for, and given the way the world works now, he’ll be slapped in jail whether or not he’s up to something. He’ll be lucky if they don’t get renditioned to some CIA hellhole, and tortured, just in case.”
“That doesn’t happen—”
“Bullshit. You need to open your eyes and look around, Mr. Davenport. This country isn’t what it used to be, even twenty years ago. People are herded around like sheep, and willingly go, because the government’s got everybody scared to death about terrorism. Three thousand people died at nine-one-one fourteen years ago. That’s terrible, but we’ve way overreacted. We’ve hired tens of thousands of anti-terrorism secret agents and fought two major wars and all kinds of brushfires because of it, and we’ve gotten to the point where we actually torture people, torture people, in the United States of America, and in the meantime, more than thirty thousand people die every year in highway accidents and we can’t even lower the speed limit to fifty-five. Open your eyes—there’s some real terrorism, of course there is, but the government’s using it as an excuse to put its thumb down on everybody.”
“I can’t tell you how little interest I have in politics,” Lucas said. “Fixing things is up to people like you. All I’m doing is trying to stop a potential assassination.”
“But don’t you see, you’re part of the whole problem . . .”
Lucas stood up. “If you could talk to your friends and see if anyone knows this lady and her gray-eyed son, I’d greatly appreciate it.”
“I’ll do that, but you should spend some time looking into your own soul, and thinking about your part in this vast conspiracy that’s coming down on us all,” Likely said.
“I’ll do that,” Lucas said. “Use my card, though, and call me if you hear anything, even if it doesn’t seem like much.”
—
LIKELY TOOK HIM to the door and watched as Lucas pulled away from the curb, then touched the cell phone in his pocket. He didn’t really believe in cell phones, but he’d gotten old, and he still liked to ramble around in the woods on his own. If he had a heart attack out in the woods, or on the river, having a cell phone was a practical kind of comfort.
Even as he touched it, though, the thought occurred that he shouldn’t use it to make the call to the mother of the gray-eyed boy. Davenport was certainly a government agent of some kind and they’d be watching his phone. What he needed was a pay phone.
Where, he wondered, would he find a pay phone in this day and age?
Something a person like himself should know . . .
—
THE PAY PHONE was hanging on the wall at Walmart.
Likely walked half the aisles in the store, looking for anybody who might be watching, and saw nothing suspicious. Of course, there were cameras. He’d have to take the chance, he decided.
He’d found Marlys Purdy’s phone number in his files, hoped it would still work. After one last look around, he dropped some quarters in the phone and dialed. Marlys said, “Hello?”
“I don’t want to say my name or your name, but you come to my house every three months with pies. You know who this is?”
“Yes?”
“There was a man here looking for you and a gray-eyed son,” Likely said. “All he had was a description and a poor picture of the man. He thinks you may be conspiring to . . . do something to a . . . lady candidate. I’ve got to be careful here, no names.”
“I understand. Does he have names?”
“No. All he has is some basic descriptions. He said the candidate from the North saw you and a fellow he believed was related to you, and passed along the description. If he starts asking around among our people, he’s going to find you. I won’t ask if . . . you know . . . you’re planning something. I’m already in enough trouble, lying about not knowing you.”
“I appreciate that,” Marlys said.
“You better more than appreciate it. Your action isn’t . . . appropriate. That’s not a strong enough word, but you know what I mean. I won’t ask if you’re planning something, but I’ll tell you, if you are, you better quit it.”
“Things are getting desperate. Everything is out of control,” Marlys said, a pleading note in her voice. “If we don’t do something now . . . four years from now may be too late. We can already see how things are going this year, and we have to do something this year.”
“Mar . . . I’m sorry, that’s crazy talk. You have to stop and think,” Likely said.
“You think I haven’t thought about this? I’m more scared and more worried than you are, Joe, but not about myself. About the whole country—”
“Careful about names . . .”
<
br /> “I’m sorry. But look—we need to talk about this. Maybe I’m too isolated out here,” Marlys said. “The only place I get to talk serious politics is the beauty salon.”
“I’ll talk anytime you want—but you know what my position has to be. No violence. No violence. Violence is the true root of all evil, worse even than money. If John Kennedy hadn’t been killed, if Lyndon Johnson hadn’t taken us into Vietnam, can you imagine what this country could be? If Reagan—”
“Old fights, old fights,” Marlys said. “But . . . let’s talk. There’s time. I’ll talk to my boy, see what he thinks. Maybe even come by tonight, if I can find a babysitter for my granddaughter.”
“Okay. Let me know, soon. I think . . . this is all very troubling.”
—
LIKELY GOT OFF THE PHONE and felt himself creeping around the store, waiting for a hand on the shoulder. Nothing happened. He bought a roll of Bounty paper towels and a pack of paper plates and slunk out the doors, heading back home.
Checked around the parking lot for watching faces; scanned the rearview mirror in the car. At home, walked from window to window . . . Nothing. That didn’t mean they weren’t out there.
EIGHT
The Hotel Blackhawk was an older building in downtown Davenport—excellent name for a city, Lucas thought as he parked the truck—with a political bustle going on in the streets around it, cars and buses jamming things up, the sound of a band somewhere nearby, a police siren off in the deepening twilight. He’d come up along the Mississippi, and could still feel the presence of the river as he walked across Third Street to the hotel.
He’d called Norm Clay on the way north and Clay said that a woman named Sally Rodriguez would be waiting for him in the lobby with a campaign badge. “She’s short, brunette, gorgeous, and unavailable,” Clay said.
“I’ve heard rumors of a thing called campaign sex, which doesn’t count,” Lucas said.
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