"And I said, what does that mean?" Haze's voice was rising. *
"Keep your voice down, will you?" A. J. said, glancing around, but they were alone in the empty cabin.
"You telling me he's gonna kill her?" Haze was whispering.
"I don't know what he's gonna do. . . Put the fear of God into her, make her do what we want, shake some sense into her. How do I know?"
They sat in silence for a long time.
"Haze . ."
Haze was looking out the window at the rising sun. "Look at me, will ya . . . ?"
Haze finally turned, but there was no expression on his handsome face.
"This is what we dreamed of, man. This is what it's been about since grade school. You and me . . . getting where we want to go . . . in the White House, Haze, the Oval Office."
Haze said nothing, his expression hard to read in the orange light coming through the window.
" 'Member what we said when we were kids?" A. J. went on. 'Me higher the monkey climbs, the more his ass is exposed. Our ass is exposed. We gotta do whatever it takes. The White House . . . that's the prize. Maybe a man can't win a prize like that unless he's willing to step up and take it."
"How does Mickey take care of it, huh?"
"I don't know, Haze, but if you want to be President, we have to stop her. These guys are spending heavy bread. They won't stand around while your wife flushes it down the toilet."
Haze knew A. J. was right. And after the initial shock had worn off, he wasn't sure how upset he felt about it.
The plane touched down in Providence at nine-fifteen and taxied to the executive terminal. Haze and A. J. had not spoken in almost an hour. They got in A. J.'s Land Rover and drove to the governor's mansion. The streets of Providence were still clogged with morning traffic. When they parked in the garage under the mansion, it was almost ten.
"Anita's car isn't here," Haze said as they moved toward the elevator.
Upstairs, the Providence mansion was quiet. Anita's press secretary wasn't in yet. They moved down the hall and into Anita's suite. As soon as they entered, it was obvious Anita had left. Clothes were strewn everywhere, discards from a furious packing session. A . J. went into the bathroom to check the cosmetics counter.
"Gone," he said flatly, as he walked out of the dressing room.
"Whatta we do now?"
"I'll go to the pay phone downstairs and call Mickey. He's gotta stop her." He started digging in his pocket for a quarter. "You got change?" he asked.
"Use this," Haze said, taking his AT&T card out of his wallet.
"You really stink in a crisis, you know that?" "What?" Haze said, angry and confused.
"You wanna call the head of the Alo Mafia family and log it on your AT and T account? I'm never gonna pull a bank job with you, homey."
A. J. dialed Mickey's private number on the pay phone in the lobby.
"This is AJ., lemme talk to Mickey," he said to an unfamiliar voice on the phone. After a moment, he heard the slightly mechanical sound of Mickey's voice. The tinny quality, he assumed, was caused by the scrambler.
"Yeah?"
"She's not here," A. J. said.
"She's in good hands," Mickey said.
"It wouldn't be wise if she were hurt. I don't think it would look good for the man to win the nomination today and then lose his wife, all in twenty-four hours."
"You and I must be having the same thoughts. We might still need her."
"Exactly," A. J. said.
"Tell your friend, I'll take care of everything." And the line went dead before A. J. could say anything more. As he hung up, a strange revelation hit him. He had somehow become involved in a conspiracy to commit a kidnapping. In his wildest dreams, he could never have conceived of a set of circumstances that would lead him to such a venture.
A. J. had always thought of himself in a certain way--gentle and funny, a good friend who always looked for the best in people. His keen mind was his secret weapon. Albert James Teagarden, the little boy who grew up at 2341/2 Beeker Street, would never hurt anyone. That just wasn't part of the plan. Yet here he was, standing in the lobby of the governor's mansion, having just called the head of the Jersey mob to discuss the kidnapping of Anita Farrington Richards, a woman he liked and respected.
A. J. moved to the elevator and pushed the button. He stared at his distorted reflection in the polished brass door. He looked wider--wider and shorter, with shiny, yellow skin. The reflection made him look a lot like Mickey Alo.
"Talk about your defining moments," he said to himself.
The door opened and A. J. stepped into the elevator. It swallowed him like Jonah, into its mahogany, brass-railed stomach, where he wondered, for the first time in years, what had happened to that little boy from Beeker Street.
Chapter 47.
DARKNESS
THE ROOM WAS SMALL AND DARK, WITH NO WINDOWS, and the air was pungent with the smell of mildew and urine.
She was sitting with her hands tied behind her back. Her shoulders ached and she was thirsty. Something like a napkin or dish towel had been wedged into her mouth and her jaws were taped shut. At first she had cried, but her nose became filled with mucus, restricting her breathing, and she almost suffocated. Fortunately, she realized the danger before it was too late and had willed herself, as an act of survival, to stop crying. Relax, she had told herself. Breathe slowly. After a few agonizing moments, she cleared her air passage.
Anita Farrington Richards was terrified, but she had decided that her only chance to survive was to keep her wits, stay calm, and hope to find a way to communicate with her captors, men she had barely seen.
She had left the governor's mansion at eight-thirty, put her suitcase in the trunk of her car, and driven across Providence to River Street where she intended to meet a divorce attorney named Susan Salter. Anita had set up a nine A . M. appointment, without telling anyone. She had bee n o n her way to Susan's office when a brown Camaro rear-ended her at a stop sign. She pulled over to exchange licenses when a dark shape suddenly filled the window on the passenger side. Before she could even call out, the driver's door had been yanked open and, in an instant, two men were in the front seat with her. She had started to scream, but the man on the passenger side had pushed her down, and jammed a gag into her mouth. He leaned down and whispered into her ear.
"Shut up or you're dead."
And then, with her head held down against the driver's thigh, they pulled out. She could hear the traffic and, occasionally, the man on the passenger side gave instructions to the driver.
"Right up there. . . . Halfway down the block. . . . They'll open the gate."
She had tried once to straighten her legs.
"You move, you're gonna get conked," the man had said. Then the car came to a stop. She could smell something dense and rich, perhaps oil in an open tank. A hood of some kind was put over her head before she was allowed to sit up; then her hands were taped behind her and she was led across uneven pavement. She heard a metal door open; she was pulled up some stairs and, finally, put into this room. The hood had been snapped off her head and the door closed, leaving her in darkness.
Anita tried desperately to hold on, to maintain her reason. Icy fear consumed her, periodically pushing her to the edge of sanity. Each time she struggled back. Her mind wouldn't hold still; it pinwheeled across a landscape of thoughts, sticking on meaningless details of her life, then racing off in search of nothing.
Oh, God . . . oh, God . . . oh, God . . . she chanted in her mind. What will they do to me? How can this be happening?
A. J. had sent the plane back to Memphis to pick up the rest of the press and campaign staff. He left Haze at the governor's mansion and walked across the mall to his office. He sat down in his old leather chair and tried to recapture some of the excitement he had felt only a few hours ago when they'd swept Super Tuesday. It was useless. The excitement was replaced by a terrible listlessness.
The call from Henny Henderson came in at ten pa
st twelve. He heard his secretary giving out the usual "Mr. Teagarden is not in right now." But he perked up when she said, "Would you say that number again, Mr. Henderson?"
"I'll take that, Jill," he called out.
"Oh, he just walked in. I can connect you now." And in a moment, Fudge Anderson's campaign chairman was on the phone.
"Well, I guess you're a happy guy this morning," the Republican wonk said cautiously.
"How you doin', Henny. . . . You call to set up a handball game or did you just miss me?" A. J. said to the man whom he hadn't spoken to for ten years, since Henny had called him a loose cannon in the Democratic party.
"Haze really came out of nowhere. Guess it's us against you guys now," Henny said. "I'll bet you've got the DNC spitting tacks into your picture."
"Haze is an astounding candidate. He's got a great vision for America, Henny. He's tapping into a lot of discontent."
"That's not all he's been tapping into.''
"What does that mean?"
"Does Haze know a woman named Bonita Money?" Al's stomach flipped. "Is that `money' --like, 'We're in the money'?"
"Actually, now that you mention it, 'in' is the right word, 'cause she says Haze has been screwin' her. She runs a travel agency in Florida. Apparently, Haze set up some vacations down there where he did more than lie on the beach. Want the vitals?"
"Yeah, let's hear," A. J. said, his spirits plummeting. "She's five-five, thirty-six, with platinum-blond hair and abdominals you could scrub laundry on. She says they spent two consecutive weekends together last June . . . the seventh through the ninth and the thirteenth through the fifteenth."
"Jesus, Homy, calm down. You sound so happy." "Before we let go of this, I just thought I'd call and give Haze a chance to say it ain't so."
"That's pretty damn nice of you. Why didn't you just run right to the press with it?"
"I would have, but Fudge wouldn't let me. He said he wanted to give Haze a chance to deny it first. That's why I called. We could fit in some handball, too, if you want, but I think you're gonna be too busy trying to bury this turd before it stinks up your campaign. However, you should know, behind Ms. Money, we have a line of bimbos queueing up."
"You're a real prick!"
"I didn't fuck those girls, A. J. I'm just the poor messenger. If it wasn't for Fudge's sense of fair play, you would have been reading this blind in the papers tomorrow."
"I'll have to talk to Haze. I'm sure this is just a publicity seeker."
"Right. Well, we're gonna take it to the news guys at nine A. M. tomorrow, unless you can give us a reason not to. That's 'reason,' spelled A-L-I-B-I."
"Gimme a number."
They exchanged phone and beeper numbers, then hung up. A. J. leaned back and looked out across the mall at the governor's mansion.
"Shit," he finally said, then lunged out of his chair and headed over to find out what he already knew was true.
Haze didn't deny it. He sat in his office in the statehouse and looked glumly out the window.
"Were you there? those two weekends in June?" "yeah. ... Anita was having the hysterectomy in New York. I flew down to Florida."
"Great. Your wife is getting her uterus ripped out while you're playing tonsil hockey with this platinum-blond travel agent. Jesus!"
"Look, AJ., it happened. Okay?"
A. J. sat down and looked at Haze for a long moment. "I can't believe this. Yesterday, we were sweeping twenty states on our way to the White House, and today, my life is caving in on me."
"Your life?"
"Okay . . . your life is caving in on me."
"Look, I can't stop her from talking."
"Were there witnesses?" A. J. asked in desperation. "I'm not a complete fool."
They sat without speaking and listened to the grandfather clock measure time. Then A. J. pushed himself out of his chair and walked slowly across the room toward the door.
"Where are you going? Whatta you gonna do?"
A. J. looked at Haze, the beginning of a desperate plan forming in his mind. He'd gone this far, he reasoned, why not go all the way? "If we can't stop this girl, then we gotta get somebody else to stop her."
"Not Mickey. You can't have this guy kill half the people I know."
"No, not Mickey. We'll get Henny Henderson to stop her."
"Why would he stop her . . . ? He found her."
"He'll stop her if it's in his best interest to stop her. We have to create a situation to convince him it is." A. J. walked out of the governor's office, leaving Haze confused.
Five hours later, they met at the same gas station parking lot. Mickey Alo was alone behind the wheel of the same motor home.
"This better be good," the mobster said.
"It is," A. J. answered as he climbed in beside Mickey and they headed up the highway.
They pulled off the road at a scenic outlook near the same raging river where they'd first met. Mickey set the brake, got out from behind the wheel, and moved to the back of the coach. A. J. made no effort to follow.
"This is your powwow. I drove all the way from Jersey, I hadda borrow this fucking parade float from Pelico. You wanna tell me what's so important we gotta go camping together?"
A. J. looked up from the tassels on his loafers and out the window.
"Okay," he started slowly, not looking at the mobster. "On the political front, we're doing great ... but we got problems on the home front. Haze has . . . well, he's been indiscreet. He's had more than one liaison with several different parties. The assignations have been brief but carnal."
"Listen, stop looking out the window. Okay? I'm over here. Second, stop talking like Bill fucking Buckley. Say what you mean. . . . Haze is out banging available pussy. Is that it?"
"Was. Haze was out banging available pussy. I told him after we met you, and decided to get in this thing, that he'd have to take the cure. And he has."
"Who knows about this?"
"Well, that's the problem. Pudge Anderson's campaign chairman, Henny Henderson, called and told me about some travel agent in Florida that they've got their hands on. He hinted there's more than one woman in the wings. I confronted Haze and he acknowledged it. They're gonna go to press with it in the morning."
Mickey got up and moved to the sofa, his mind playing the angles. "So, what happens?" he finally said.
"You saw what happened to Gary Hart with Donna Rice, and you saw Gennifer Flowers take a bite out of Clinton. This will be worse. The conservatives and the moral Right will crucify him. Unless . ." He stopped and forced himself to swing his gaze back to Mickey.
"Unless what?"
"Unless we create a reason Henderson and Pudge can't use it."
"What kind of reason?"
"What were you planning to do with Anita?"
"Anita has decided to take a long trip. She's going to be leaving the country. She may come back after the nomination is secured; she may not. It's gonna be up to her. Right now, she's thinking about it."
"What if Anita meets with tragic circumstances?" A. J. blurted out.
"You been watching too much television."
"What if she was chartering a plane and flying to meet Haze in Ohio where we're doing a press conference tonight. The plane could have problems. . . ." He stopped, unable to finish the thought because Mickey was smiling at him.
"Jesus, you're not who I thought you were at all."
A. J. looked away and tried to finish. "Haze will cry on national TV. We'll stretch it out . . . we'll make it play for a month, maybe longer. The funeral is the cover of Time magazine. Haze will do the eulogy. He'll talk about a thirty-year love affair. He'll make trips to her grave and the nation will mourn with him."
"How does that keep them from parading these whores?"
`They can't. Pudge will look like an asshole if he starts to attack a man who is grieving for his wife. I promise you. It'll hurt him worse than Haze."
They were quiet for a minute; then A. J. went on. "It cleans up two problems at the
same time. Anita goes away and so does her divorce threat. Also, our internal poll shows the public finds Haze a little distant. This will create sympathy for him and warm up his image," A . J. said, using the logic Ryan had given him in the bar back in Iowa. "Pudge won't dare throw his bimbo grenades," A.]. concluded, suddenly feeling trapped in the motor home, wanting to escape the stuffy environment.
"Okay, rent a plane. We'll rig something that won't look like sabotage."
"What about the pilots?"
"Not even remotely important, Albert. People are meat machines. Sometime they have fiscal or emotional value. If they don't have either, they don't count." He pointed his finger at A. J. and pulled an imaginary trigger. "Bang," he said. "No venue, no value."
"Shit," A. J. said, softly.
Mickey dropped A. J. back at the gas station. The wonk stood next to his car as Mickey looked at him from the steps of the motor home. "Rent the plane with campaign funds. Have it standing by at the executive terminal at the Providence airfield at six-thirty tonight. I'll take care of everything else." Mickey smiled at him. 'This bothers you, doesn't it?"
A. J. pulled his coat around him and nodded.
"Lemme give you something to comfort you," Mickey continued. "Right this second, approximately five hundred people are stepping off the planet . . . Some of them are dying in car wrecks, some are having coronaries, some are committing suicide. Dipshit passengers on the train to glory. While they're leaving, the maternity bus is pulling up, letting off a thousand new idiots. They're screaming and sucking in their first breaths, shifting their first loads. Net gain: Five hundred people. Ninety percent of them will turn out to be worthless assholes. One less here or there won't make a bit of difference."
"You're a sociopath. . . ."
"Welcome to the dark side of the planet, Albert." Mickey closed the door of the motor home and drove off.
A. J. stood in the gas station, feeling cold and alone.
Chapter 48.
CRASH
MILO DULEO HAD SEEN MORE THAN HIS SHARE OF DEATH. He'd learned to fly in the Navy. He'd had the dangerous but important job of monitoring the Russian-Afghanistan war in his supersonic high-flying Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird. He would streak off at stratospheric heights, the wing cameras whirring as he took surveillance photos along the Afghanistan border. He had been shot at dozens of times but had finally gone down when he got jumped by a squadron of Yakovlev 38s. He'd been taking an adrenaline ride against orders, streaking low through narrow valleys, the huge rock outcroppings racing past on both sides. Before he knew it, he was dodging ASM rockets and, finally, took one up the tailpipe and had to eject over hostile territory. He'd been lucky and run into a Mujahedin scout patrol, and was returned after two months to his carrier. He'd been asked to stand for a naval review and was found to have lost his aircraft unnecessarily. The decision ended his gonzo years. He found a home in commercial aviation, but grew bored with it and took a job flying Joseph Alo's Lear-55. With the Alos, he was occasionally asked to do some dick-puckering work, and he lived for those jobs. . . . Like the time they'd grabbed a black drug dealer with the unlikely name of Napoleon Outlaw and pushed the sorry son of a bitch out of the Lear without a parachute, forty miles out over the Atlantic Ocean ... Not exactly the same as dodging MiG-29 Foxbat missiles, but at least with the Alos, he still had a chance to pump a little joy juice.
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