Presidents' Day

by Seth Margolis

  “Other than Kamalia, is there anything else he’s done to influence your husband’s campaign?”

  “He has no influence on Harry.”

  “Then it’s about after the election.”

  Her eyes lost focus for a second. “Harry is going to lose next week,” she said in a tense and tired voice. “Then all this will be moot.”

  “Sarah and I won’t be moot. We’ll still be in danger.”

  “Are you in love with her?” she said with something approaching tenderness.

  “Yes.”

  “Then don’t waste this precious time in your life on politics and conspiracies.” She seemed to drift off for a few moments, then resumed speaking in a quieter tone. “Harry and I never had time for ourselves. From the moment we met our lives were public property. We never really learned how to be intimate. Sometimes I think the public knows him better than I do because the man on the podium, bland as he may seem, is Harry Lightstone. The man alone with me doesn’t really exist, he’s nothing without an audience, or at least a reporter.”

  She reached for her drink but changed her mind and stood up. Without saying anything she headed out of the room. Zach followed like a royal attendant.

  “You’re a handsome young man,” she said downstairs at the front door. “And if you worked for Julian you must be smart, too.” She ran a hand along his arm. There was something sad and hungry about the gesture, the way her hand gently squeezed his arm, as if taking his measure. “Forget about all this, for your sake. Go to your girlfriend, let her help you through this. I can arrange for a car to take you to her. Is she here in the city with you?”

  “No, she’s—” He looked closely into her face. “She’s somewhere safe.”

  She opened the front door and he saw two secret servicemen at the curb. “Goodbye, Zach.” She made a show of kissing his cheek for the security detail.

  He left the townhouse and grabbed a cab to the hotel near his old apartment on the West Side, where he’d earlier checked in.

  Chapter 54

  “There’s a lunatic outside my townhouse who says he knows you,” Marcella Lightstone said in her fluty, unflappable tenor. The call to Julian’s cell phone came just as he and Caroline were settling into bed. “He says he used to work for you, and he’s threatening to, quote, expose everything, unquote, unless I talk to him.”

  Julian knew instantly that it was Zach Springer, and just as quickly he formulated a plan. “Is he alone?” When she answered in the affirmative he said, “Invite him in, find out what he knows, where he’s staying, where his girlfriend is. This last point is crucial: the whereabouts of his girlfriend.”

  “This is getting to be—”

  “Goodnight, Marcella.” He clicked off.

  “You need to tell me what’s going on,” Caroline said before he’d even put down his phone. Standing by the bed, wearing a floor-length satin robe, her hair pinned up, she looked as beautiful and untouchable as one of the Greek goddesses in the Met across the street. For a moment, a moment of weakness, he wanted to tell her everything, just to offload the burden, but he knew she couldn’t help him, and so there was no value in letting her in on his plans. This filled him with a heavy sadness, another thing that held no value—an enemy of value, in fact, in as much as sadness might make him weak or irresolute. So he did the only thing he could do to relieve it. He walked across the library to her and loosened the sash around her waist, exposing her flawless form. He ran his hands along her waist and stomach, noting the smooth, marblelike coolness of her skin, then up to her breasts, even smoother but much warmer. Did her patients imagine the perfect form under the sensible suits she wore to her office? Did they desire her?

  “Please, Julian, I’m worried,” she said as he continued to trace her sculpted form with his hands. “You’re distracted, you’re anxious, you’re not yourself.”

  He placed one foot behind her and gently pushed, putting her off balance. He caught her before she fell back and slowly lowered her to the floor.

  “Here?” she whispered as he tugged at his belt. He didn’t answer.

  Minutes later she whispered, “Julian, you’re hurting me.”

  He forced himself to ease up, scrambling to find another image on which to focus, for it had been Marcella Lightstone’s lips he’d been kissing, just to stanch that voice that seemed always to mock him, Marcella’s breasts he’d been nuzzling, Marcella’s body he’d been assaulting.

  “Julian, stop.”

  He ignored her until he had his release, then got up and left his wife on the floor in the study.

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 26

  Chapter 55

  Victor Carron lived in a grand home about forty-five minutes north of Manhattan. At heart it was a standard suburban center-hall colonial, painted white with black shutters. But like a computer morph of an ordinary home it stretched in all directions, becoming enormous, outsized, monumental. Billy Sandifer, who had parked his rented car a quarter mile away, guessed that it had six or seven bedrooms, and at least as many bathrooms. It was one of about a dozen giant houses in a new subdivision—a down-market term for a string of one-acre, lavishly landscaped plots.

  The late morning autumn light was flattering to the neighborhood and to the Carron mansion, surrounded not by saplings but fully mature trees, no doubt transplanted fully grown at unimaginable expense. The fall foliage was on fire, the preternaturally green lawns jangly with red and yellow and orange leaves skittering in the gentle breeze.

  Victor Carron, chief investment officer of Searchlight Investments, had received a call over the weekend from Julian Mellow, telling him not to come to work Monday morning; the publicity surrounding the vice presidential scandal was too intense, so his presence would be disruptive—just stay at home, answer no questions, and sit it out. Carron’s wife, Julian had told him, a cardiologist at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, would presumably not take the day off. But if she did, Julian had wanted to know, Billy would deal with it, right?

  Right.

  And the two young kids would more than likely go to school, same as always, never mind the scandal. But if they were at home, Billy could deal with that, right?

  Right.

  And if there were household help, Billy could deal with—

  Right.

  “Don’t fuck up again,” Mellow told him. Billy rubbed his left shoulder, where the bullet had hit him. Zach Springer had fucked up, not killing him in the water when he had the chance. Now he was back in New York, had even visited Marcella Lightstone. And Sarah was nowhere to be found.

  He’d do what he had to, but as he approached the front door of the house, which he was pleased to note could not be seen from the street, thanks to a row of meticulously trimmed hedges, he hoped Victor Carron would be alone. In fact, he was guessing that was the case. The house exuded emptiness, despite the window curtains and shades. For all its grandeur, there was something eerily still and one-dimensional about it, like an exterior set for a movie that could be dismantled in an hour.

  He tucked in his shirt and slicked back his hair with his hands, trying to transform himself into a credible emissary from the second or third richest man in America, and rang the doorbell. After a few seconds he rang it again, then again. Had Victor Carron disobeyed the great Julian Mellow and left the house?

  “Who’s there?” came a man’s voice from the other side of the thick wooden door.

  “Julian Mellow sent me,” he shouted and immediately heard a lock opening.

  Victor Carron was a slightly built man, about forty, whose dark, suspicious eyes and beakish nose suggested a wary, predatory intelligence, just the face you’d want on a man who managed your wealth. His still-thick hair, slicked back from his face, was silvering around the edges, which added to the aura of sleek control. He had on a blue-checked flannel shirt, more Brooks Brothers than Land’s End, and khaki slacks.

  “You’re alone,” Carron said, disappointed. “When Julian told me he was sending someone I figured th
ere’d be a whole team of lawyers.” His eyes ranged up and down, taking in Billy’s black sweatshirt, blue jeans, running shoes—not the attire of a lawyer dispatched by a mogul to defend an investment wizard.

  “Short notice,” Billy said as he stepped inside an airy, two-story foyer dominated by a grand staircase. A lawyer-foyer, it was called, he’d read that somewhere; always double height with some sort of giant overhead lighting fixture and a staircase out of Gone With the Wind. He could see similarly outsized rooms opening off the lawyer-foyer and felt angry resentment rising inside him, the muscles in his arms tensing almost painfully, as if they wanted, on their own, without instructions, to tear down the banister, smash the huge globe on the chandelier, rip the face off the lord of this phony-ass manor.

  It had been satisfying, back in the day, desecrating the ill-gotten homes of the undeserving rich. It had been fun.

  “Are you alone?” Billy asked as casually as he could.

  “We thought it was important to maintain as normal a schedule as possible, for the children,” he said. “My wife is a cardiologist; she has post-op rounds to make…”

  “Servants?” he asked, and could tell from Carron’s subtly pained reaction that no respectable lawyer would have used that word. “Household help?”

  “We have a cleaning lady, she sleeps out, and we told her not to come today.” The phone rang from somewhere nearby. “It never stops ringing. I don’t answer it.”

  “Reporters?”

  “Mostly friends. The press doesn’t have my landline or my cell. Not yet. Do you want coffee? Let’s work in the kitchen, I’ve outlined a strategy for refuting this whole thing, which is total bullshit, by the way, I assume you understand that going in.”

  The kitchen was vast and, to Billy’s untutored eye, vastly impractical, the refrigerator a long and circuitous trek around a marble-topped center island from the stove, the sink a similarly wasteful journey from the large breakfast table. For some reason Billy found the kitchen’s impracticality particularly offensive. The pistol seemed to leave his jacket pocket on its own.

  “What the hell?” Carron shook his head, more incredulous than alarmed; perhaps it was the surreal quality of the past day that made the appearance of a gun pointed at his head seem like just one more bizarre and soon-to-be-resolved incident.

  “Get your car keys.”

  “What?”

  “Your car keys.”

  As if in a trance, Carron walked to a drawer near a door at the far end of the kitchen and found a set of keys.

  “Which way is the garage?” Billy asked.

  “You’re not from Julian Mellow.” The color had drained from Carron’s face.

  “The garage,” Billy said, and slowly raised the gun to Carron’s head. “I’ll kill you right here if I have to.”

  Sweat bubbled up on Carron’s forehead as tears began leaking from his eyes. But he seemed unable to move.

  “Watch my index finger, Vic.” Billy slowly, carefully flexed it on the trigger.

  “Okay! Okay. Garage.” Carron backed away slowly, then turned and walked to a door at the far end of the room. This led to a laundry room the size of the living room of an ordinary house (more resentment at the obscene waste of space), and then, through another door, to a three-car garage.

  “Where are we going?” Carron asked.

  Billy shut the door. The garage, illuminated only by faint light through a small window at the far side, contained a single vehicle, a gleaming silver Lexus SUV (gas-guzzling pig car). Billy’s finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Get in the car,” he said.

  “Who are you?” Carron’s voice was an octave higher, and his face, even in the dusky garage, glowed with perspiration. “Is it money? I can get you what you want.”

  “Yeah, I see that.”

  Carron smiled uncertainly. “How much do you want?”

  “Get in the car.”

  “Is this about the vice president?”

  “What do you think?”

  “But I didn’t do anything. I never had any contact with him, no one did. This is a plot.” A deeper intensity of terror flashed across his eyes. “Are you with the government?”

  “Not the government. Get in the car.”

  Carron opened the door.

  “Now get in and start the engine.”

  After a brief hesitation Carron used a remote to open the garage doors and pressed the ignition button. Billy glanced around and noted the two concrete steps from the garage to the laundry room door.

  “Get out,” he said.

  “I don’t—”

  “Get out.” Carron’s right hand reached for the ignition. “No, leave the car on.” Carron got out and stood between Billy and the Lexus. He was several inches shorter than Billy, which was good, but he’d have to be very accurate for everything to work as planned.

  “Back in the house,” Billy said.

  “But the car…”

  “I doubt fuel efficiency is something you worry about,” Billy couldn’t help saying.

  Carron smiled weakly and moved toward the door. Just before he placed his right foot on the first of the two concrete steps, Billy smashed the pistol into his right temple. After a long moment in which Carron seemed frozen in a standing position, he crumpled to the floor, his head hitting the concrete with a thud that would have been sickening, if Billy were susceptible to such a feeling.

  The garage was already filling up with fumes, so Billy had to work fast. He went back into the house and, in the paneled library, found a wet bar—the rich were so predictable. He donned a pair of leather gloves and took a bottle of vodka, Carron’s drink of choice, according to Julian Mellow, and brought it back to the garage. From his pocket he removed a small funnel, which he inserted into Carron’s mouth, then filled it slowly with vodka. Blood had begun oozing from the right side of his head onto the battleship-gray floor. Billy continued to slowly fill Carron with vodka. When he’d poured three drinks’ worth he capped the bottle and put it down. He lifted Carron’s limp body and angled it so his head brushed the top step, leaving a bloodstain on the sharp corner. Then he positioned him so that the scenario would make sense: Carron gets in his car, restless after a morning pent up in his McMansion, unsteady from all the vodka, realizes he’s forgotten something and gets out of his car, only to stumble, hit his head on the step, and fall down, unconscious, on the garage floor, where he dies of carbon monoxide poisoning. Or maybe he’d been trying to kill himself—assuage his guilt—and had fallen when the car fumes began to take effect.

  Billy reached into the car and pressed the remote to close the garage doors. He reentered the house, closed the door behind him, found a glass in the kitchen that he filled with a finger of vodka, and left the glass and bottle on the counter. He started to leave but had a thought. He took the funnel out, placed the thin end in his mouth, and poured a small amount of vodka—Ketel One, an expensive brand he’d never tried—down his throat. It was good, like burning silk, a realization that angered him as much as anything. It cost twice as much as regular vodka and it really was good. Fuck.

  He put the funnel back in his pocket and left the house. By the time he started his own car, several minutes later, he had no doubt that Victor Carron was dead.

  TUESDAY, OCTOBER 27

  Chapter 56

  “We have made the decision to move on Saturday.”

  Sophie scanned Rémy Manselle’s small living room, so crowded it reminded her of a rush-hour subway in New York. All memories of New York felt like bulletins from a life lived in another, distant era by another person; their unreality always disoriented her, like a spell of dizziness. She had to force herself to focus on the moment, on the twenty or so faces, all of them male, looking at her, waiting for instructions.

  “We will move on the palace at eight thirty,” she said. “From every possible direction. In small groups, no more than two or three, to avoid detection. We need a final head count. Guy?”

  “I will hav
e ten with me.”

  “Étienne?”

  “Six.”

  “Max?”

  “Six.”

  And so on, as she polled the room to determine how many each comrade had managed to round up for their cause. She kept a running tally in her head, and when everyone had spoken she announced the result.

  “Ninety-five,” she said. “We have more than enough weapons here. Between now and Saturday morning, you are responsible for distributing them to your comrades. Bring a car and drive it directly into the garage. There you will get what you need.”

  Under Rémy’s garage were just over two hundred assault rifles, a king’s ransom of weapons paid for by Matthew’s father, perhaps the only man who hated the Boymond regime as much as she did. Even her comrades didn’t burn with hatred the way she and Julian Mellow did. They wanted freedom and liberty and justice, as did she. They wanted power, which didn’t interest her. But she would never have risked her life for such abstract principles, nor would Julian Mellow have invested his money in them. What she wanted was to dig her knife into the heart of Laurent Boymond, to watch his face as she twisted it, to feel his warm blood on her hands. For her, revenge was the least abstract of emotions, the most tactile. Since Matthew’s murder, only the image of Le Père suffering at her hand had the power to incite her.

  “Do we have a chance?” someone asked, pulling her back into the room. She rubbed her hands together and was almost surprised to find them dry. “They say the palace is guarded by more than two hundred men.”

  “On Saturday, most of the cabinet will be meeting for a ceremony in the Chambre d’Etat. The south gate will have been left open and unguarded. There will be a skeleton crew on duty, just enough to keep the government from noticing that the usual contingent of guards is absent. It is the perfect opportunity. The government does not usually meet on a Saturday, a day when the streets around the palace are empty.”