Jim McGill 05 The Devil on the Doorstep

by Joseph Flynn

  McGill agreed, but counseled patience. “Maxine might not want to accept the idea her parents are gone. Could take her a while to see what you have in mind is the best thing.”

  “We know. We talked about that, too.”

  “God bless all of you,” McGill said. “If there’s anything I can do to help, let me know.”

  “We will. I’m probably going to be tied up for a while. Just wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  “Thanks. Good luck to all of you, Margaret.”

  McGill clicked off, amazed at how quickly life could change. It wasn’t all that long ago Sweetie had been a single woman and content to remain so. Then she married the guy who’d rented a room to her. Now she was about to become a mother. McGill didn’t see any little girl resisting Sweetie for long.

  Putnam had come a long way since meeting her.

  The two of them should make fine parents.

  With thoughts of family in mind, McGill took his next phone call.

  “Hey, Dad, what’s going on?”

  It was Caitie, calling from L.A., he presumed.

  “I don’t know. Why do you ask?”

  “Well, a half-dozen new Secret Service agents just entered the soundstage where we’re shooting today. They talked to the producer and the director and the guy who runs security for the studio. I went to say hi to them between takes, asked what was happening. They said they got a call from Washington, and they were just being careful. Do you know the real story?”

  McGill tried to soft-pedal the situation. He and Patti had talked about increasing the kids’ protection and, of course, they noticed the difference. Caitie was just the first to speak up.

  He asked her, “The Secret Service didn’t ask you to leave the shoot or try to shut down the production, did they?”

  Separated by the breadth of a continent, he could still feel Caitie’s sudden rise in tension.

  “No, they didn’t do anything like that. Why would they … Dad, don’t let them do that, please. Everything is going great. I’m doing really well. Andrew told me so.”

  Andrew was the film’s director.

  McGill’s first impulse was to tell his youngest child there would be other opportunities. Then he thought to hell with that. Caitie shouldn’t have to suffer because of any crazed assholes.

  “Honey, with Patti’s inauguration coming up, everyone worries a little more. That’s all. As long as the Secret Service hasn’t asked you to leave or the shoot to be held up, don’t worry. But if something serious comes up and they want to move you fast, cooperate with them, okay?”

  “Okay.” Caitie’s voice softened almost to a whisper. “I shouldn’t be scared, should I? For me or anyone else here?”

  McGill said, “No. The Secret Service is the best in the world at taking good care of people.”

  “I’d feel better if Deke was here.”

  “Maybe he will be. We’ll see.”

  Then to take Caitie’s mind off the chance of facing mortal threats, he told her Sweetie’s news. Caitie squealed in excitement. So much so that she had to tell everyone on her end of the conversation that everything was all right.

  “Dad, that’s great. Sweetie’s going to be a super mom.”

  “Yes, she will.”

  “Putnam will be a cool dad, too.”

  “No doubt. But keep a good thought for little Maxine. She’s got some tough times ahead.”

  “I will. Hey, can I call her? Maxine, I mean. Introduce myself.”

  “After you talk with Sweetie, but give her and Putnam a day or two.”

  “Sure.”

  McGill told Caitie he loved her and she returned the sentiment.

  Two more calls confirmed that Abbie and Kenny had their protective details supplemented, too. McGill decided to call Elspeth Kendry and get the specifics. Before he could, Patti called him. She didn’t use her secretary, Edwina Byington, to place the call. She took the time to do it personally. That scared McGill.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  Patti told him, “The White House switchboard received a call threatening Abbie, Kenny and Caitie. The caller said if Elvie Fisk isn’t released in twenty-four hours, our children will pay the price.”

  So, as it turned out, Harlan Fisk did love Elvie.

  Ile de la Cité — Paris

  Gabbi checked the security monitor to see who’d come calling at her apartment above the restaurant named Monsieur Henri. An elegantly dressed gray-haired man was at her door downstairs. She’d never seen him before. He didn’t look threatening, but you never knew.

  “Oui?” she asked.

  “Je suis Gaspar Lambert.” M’sieur Lambert said he was from the Musée d’Orsay.

  Gabbi buzzed him into the building and said, “Please take the elevator on your right to the second floor, m’sieur.” The third floor to Americans.

  Gabbi’s kid brother, Gianni, owned the building, had bankrolled the restaurant and made the two flats above it available to the big sister he adored. Gabbi lived on the first floor — the second floor to Americans — and did her painting in the space above that.

  Gianni had a skylight installed on the top floor to provide Gabbi with an abundance of Paris’ gorgeous golden light. In his mind, nothing was too good for her. Including the best security system anywhere, one he’d designed personally.

  A computer science prodigy since middle school, Giancarlo Casale, after making his first billion, had decided he could get by on the licensing royalties from the patents he held, and decided to go into teaching. He would have been welcomed to any faculty in the world, but he decided to stay in his hometown of Chicago and work at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

  In addition to his undergrad and graduate level classes, Gianni also devoted his Friday afternoons to sixth-through-twelfth graders from the metro Chicago area. He called the class for his younger students Introduction to Magic. Its purpose was to find and nurture the next generation of American genius. Gianni said the more unlikely the sources of that genius were the happier he would be. Minority, female, LGBT, economically disadvantaged and physically challenged applicants were encouraged to apply.

  At her brother’s request, Gabbi painted murals of all manner, genders and hues of young scientists doing things that bordered on the heroic and actual magic. The murals filled the lab in which the class was held. Gabbi refused to take a penny for her work.

  She figured she owed Gianni more than he owed her.

  Gabbi also believed doing a good deed was its own reward.

  Sometimes, though, you got paid a dividend in the form of good karma.

  Gabbi figured that was exactly what happened when M’sieur Gaspar Lambert presented himself at her studio. He was the archivist at the Musée d’Orsay, the Left Bank museum that housed the largest collection of impressionist and post-impressionist masterpieces in the world. If you wanted to marvel at and understand the works of Manet, Monet, Degas, Renoir, Cézanne, Van Gogh and many others, you went to the Musée d’Orsay.

  Or, in Gabbi’s case, M’sieur Lambert brought the museum to you.

  Yves Pruet had spoken to his father, Augustin. The senior Pruet talked to a friend at the museum. The friend made a confidential request of the archivist, M’sieur Lambert, and now here he was. He’d told Gabbi it would be best if they met privately. She’d suggested her studio.

  As Lambert stepped out of the elevator, he took his bearings, starting with Gabbi and moving on to each corner of her studio. He looked at the placement of the skylight in relation to where Gabbi kept her easel and nodded in approval. He stepped up to Gabbi, introduced himself and shook her hand.

  He took two flash drives and a sealed envelope out of his coat pocket.

  She accepted delivery and said, “Thank you, m’sieur.”

  “A favor to an old and dear friend, Madam. One whom I will never be able to repay.”

  “Of course.”

  Lambert looked around again and said, “You have a fine space, but I don’t see any
paintings anywhere.”

  “I’ve been working in the United States the past two months. I put everything in storage while I was away. It’s just as well. Compared to the giants you see every day, my talent is very small indeed.”

  “That is not what I have heard. I had hoped to see some of your work.”

  “I have some of it tucked away here, if you’d like to wait a few minutes for me to take it out and find the right places to display it.”

  Lambert shook his head. “I would not put you to that inconvenience. If you ever hold an exhibition, though, please let me know.” He gave her his business card.

  “It would be my pleasure, m’sieur.”

  Lambert gave her a small bow and started toward the elevator.

  He stopped, turned and asked, “If I do not ask too much, may I know the nature of the work you did in the United States?”

  Gabbi said, “I painted the official portrait of James J. McGill.”

  “Le partisan de la présidente?” he asked. The president’s henchman.

  “Oui.”

  “Will you do madam la présidente also?”

  “She told me possibly. But I’ve checked and no single artist has ever painted both portraits, the president’s and the first lady’s.”

  Lambert smiled. “Yes, but there has never been a woman president or her henchman before now. Oh, one more thing. I trust you will be able to find what you are seeking from the computer files. Please shred the envelope I gave you, unless you find the other information inadequate.”

  Gabbi gave him a questioning look.

  The archivist said with a smile and a shrug, “If you open the envelope, Madam, I would feel obliged to repay a very large bribe.”

  McGill’s Hideaway — The White House

  McGill spoke to his daughter Abbie, home in Evanston, Illinois on winter break from Georgetown University, and his son Kenny, also under his ex-wife Carolyn’s roof, along with their stepfather, Lars Enquist.

  Abbie had told him. “Dad, it’s almost like Patti’s visiting the house or something. I’ve never seen any security like this that didn’t involve POTUS.”

  President of the United States.

  “It’s not too much, is it?” McGill asked.

  Abbie told him, “Patti called and said to let her know if they laid it on too thick. So far, it’s okay.”

  McGill told his daughter, “Things will get better soon.”

  He was going to see to that personally, if he got the chance.

  “Only four more years, right?” Abbie asked.

  “Not even that for you, Kenny and Caitie. We’ll get things dialed back to, well, what we’ve come to call normal.”

  “Don’t do anything that puts you or Patti in a bad place.”

  Just like Abbie, McGill thought, always putting others first.

  “Your advice is noted. Thank you.”

  That didn’t keep McGill from thinking that this time a make-no-mistakes example might need to be made for all the bad guys to get the message. Not just for his children, but for Patti, too. You came at any of them, your affairs had better be in order.

  Abbie said goodbye and passed the phone to Kenny.

  “You doing okay, Champ?” McGill asked.

  “Doctors can’t find a thing wrong with me,” Kenny said. He was in remission from the leukemia that had almost killed him. Every time McGill heard there was no sign of a relapse, he felt a weight lifted from his heart. Then Kenny added, “Some of the girls at school, on the other hand, think I’m somewhat less than perfect.”

  McGill said, “Girls at school? You’ve lost touch with Cassidy?”

  Cassidy Kimbrough, daughter of Sheryl Kimbrough, the elector whose vote gave Patti a second term in office, had become fast friends with Kenny. The two of them had bonded over their respective life-altering traumas. Kenny’s illness, Cassidy’s burns.

  “No, not at all,” Kenny said. “In fact, I talked with her today. She was surprised when she and her mom got Secret Service protection.”

  McGill thought the fact that Sheryl and Cassidy needed protection was another reason to kick someone’s ass.

  Kenny told his father, “Cassidy asked me how I deal with it. I told her you show the special agents the respect they deserve, they’ll let you see what cool people they are. Then it’s pretty easy having them around.”

  “So you and Cassidy are good?”

  “I think we’ll always be friends. I’d like it to be more than that, but she’ll be going off to Stanford soon, and there just might be one or two interesting guys out there. It’d be dumb to even pretend we both can wait until circumstance might bring us back together.”

  McGill continued to be awed by the way his children were maturing.

  Kenny especially.

  “Having a good friend is no small thing,” McGill said.

  “I know. Just like you and Sweetie.”

  “Exactly.” Prompted by that, he told Kenny about Sweetie’s news.

  Kenny passed it along to Abbie and Carolyn and the call home ended on a high note.

  McGill spent the next half-hour looking at the flames dancing in the room’s fireplace. Patti had asked him if he’d mind losing the real thing, a wood-burning fire. She said a plan was afoot, one of her own doing, to reduce the carbon footprint of the White House. Part of the plan called for each of the twenty-eight fireplaces in the building to be switched over to clean-burning natural gas.

  If McGill liked, Patti said, that process could be stretched out for a couple years.

  McGill shook his head, but he asked that the fireplace in his hideaway be the last one to succumb to progress. His wish had been granted and at that moment the fire burned in a multitude of reds, oranges and yellows. Logs popped, cracked, fell and settled as the flames overcame them.

  Lost in the hypnotic visuals and sounds, McGill thought about the problems, life and death matters, facing his wife, his children and himself. He didn’t arrive at any immediate answers. But by the time Patti joined him, he’d thought of a couple questions to ask her.

  She had Blessing, the head butler, roll in a cart with a tea service. Silver teapot. White House china and, bless her, a plate of Mint Milano cookies. While Patti poured the tea, McGill put another log on the fire.

  He sat on the leather sofa next to his wife and asked, “Chamomile?”

  “Yes.”

  “With just a drop of honey?”

  “Yes. I believe I know most of your preferences by now.”

  “You do and you’re kind enough to indulge them. Will the chrysin in the tea clash with caffeine in the cookies?”

  Chrysin was an organic compound that relaxed muscles, relieved anxiety and led to deeper sleep. Caffeine was an alkaloid that acted as a stimulant. The stuff people used to put off sleep.

  Patti said, “My hope is you’ll have two cups of tea and one-and-a-half cookies. Tilting the balance in favor of a restful night.”

  “You’ll have the other half-cookie, so we don’t waste any food?”

  “I will. The Secret Service is welcome to the rest of the cookies.”

  “Speaking of which, everyone we love is well guarded.”

  Patti nodded. “Elspeth is coordinating. She just gave me the word.”

  Reassured on that point, McGill picked up the one Mint Milano he could call his own. Patti broke another one so neatly he couldn’t tell which piece was bigger. He would have taken the smaller part, but that was no longer an issue.

  McGill asked one of the two questions he’d thought of earlier.

  “If I’m not asking for classified information here, do you keep a personal schedule that even Galia knows nothing about?”

  “I do,” Patti said, “but I never put it in writing.”

  “So no one can happen upon it by either accident or design.”

  “Yes.”

  McGill finished his cookie and picked up his tea cup.

  “Are you going to ask me why I do that?” Patti asked.

 
“I can make a pretty good guess.”

  “You know me that well, do you?” Patti finished her half-cookie, offered the remainder to her husband, watching him closely.

  “Any time we’re together, I pay strict attention.”

  “Are you saying you can’t take your eyes off me?”

  “My eyes and many other things.”

  Patti laughed. “You’re incorrigible, and please don’t ever change.”

  McGill made short work of his snippet of cookie. He said, “My guess is, whenever you can, you carve out a little time for yourself in your head. If at all possible, when the moment arrives, you seize it and push it into your real-world schedule.”

  Patti took a sip of tea and looked at McGill.

  “If you were a spy, I’d have to have you shot.”

  “If I were a spy, I’d defect immediately. You wouldn’t even have to ply me with Mint Milanos.”

  “I’ve heard that you were easy,” she said.

  “Only for you.”

  “So why did you need me to reveal my last remaining secret to you?”

  “Putnam arranged for Yves Pruet, Odo Sacripant and me to get a special early look at Inspiration Hall tomorrow morning. I’ve read your official schedule and the one Galia keeps. There’s nothing on either one about you visiting the new museum either before or after the official opening. I thought that was odd, as The Grant Foundation is a major donor to the place.”

  “And being a detective you solved the mystery,” Patti said.

  “So you are going to visit.”

  “Yes. I had an impromptu appearance in mind, to see the building and the art collections. My idea was to tell you and Elspeth tomorrow. Be there and gone like a will o’ the wisp. Keep the mystery of the place intact until the official opening.”

  McGill took that in, did a walk around the information.

  Patti knew her husband as well as he knew her.

  “You think there might be an attempt made on our lives when we visit Inspiration Hall?”

  McGill took Patti’s hand and said, “If we’re right and there will be an attempt to keep you from being inaugurated for a second term, we’ve got to ask what’s the best target for the bad guys to hit before January twentieth. I was thinking they’ll want to go after something that has special meaning for you. Like the museum Andy’s foundation helped to build.”