by Joseph Flynn
Leo nodded and said, “I’ll go fetch it right now.”
Leaving McGill with Elspeth. “Would you care to share the specifics of what the president told you?”
“Of course, sir, but the president asked me to relay to you her desire to keep this information private.”
McGill nodded. “I’m very good at keeping the president’s secrets.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Elspeth, please. I’m not angry at you, even if our last conversation wasn’t all that pleasant. Feel free to talk to me like a human being not an inmate at her parole hearing.”
Elspeth studied McGill for a moment and then bobbed her head.
“All right,” she said. “The president, after consulting with the Secret Service director, has decided to make some changes in the White House security detail.”
McGill was mildly surprised he was hearing of this after the fact.
Then again Patti didn’t tell him how to work his cases and he didn’t tell her how to run the country.
“Those changes being?”
“I’m to replace SAC Crogher after next year’s presidential election. Assuming the president wins the election, I’ll head the detail in the next term.”
McGill, despite his recent contretemps with Elspeth, liked the idea.
“The president also would like, with your permission, for me to be your personal protection agent.”
Now, that one truly surprised him. Last time around, he’d been the one to select his bodyguard. Maybe, though, Patti had made her plans only that morning. He’d have to find out.
“How are things supposed to work, Elspeth? Do you still have to report to SAC Crogher for the time being?”
“No, I don’t. I’ve been promoted. I’m free to confer with SAC Crogher on matters where his experience and insight might be helpful to me, but I do not have to share everything I know with him.”
McGill kept a straight face, but he was smiling inside. Patti’s solution for providing him with Secret Service protection was a triumph of both politics and marital harmony. He got what he wanted; she got what she wanted. It was … he wondered if Galia had a hand in this. She was another master conniver.
He saw Leo pull up in the Chevy on the driveway adjacent to the helipad.
“That being the case, Elspeth, I’ll assume you’ll be the soul of discretion.”
“I know how to keep secrets, too, but if the president wants me to talk …”
McGill could live with that. “Of course. The president but no one else.”
“Not even Ms. Sweeney?”
“All right. Sweetie, too.”
“Anyone else?”
“Not until further notice.” A thought occurred to McGill. “Does Celsus know about all this?”
Elspeth glanced at her watch. “He should be getting the news right about now.”
The Oval Office
The president, seated behind her desk, asked SAC Crogher, “Would you prefer to sit or stand?”
“Stand,” Crogher said.
Just once, the president thought, it would have been a hoot to have Celsus Crogher crack wise with her. In the present circumstances he might have asked if he was entitled to a blindfold and a last cigarette. But that wasn’t who he was. He didn’t smoke, for one thing.
“Very well,” she said. “If you’re agreeable, Celsus, I’d like you to remain in your present job through the presidential election. At that point, I’m going to have Elspeth Kendry assume the SAC duties of the White House security detail.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Crogher showed neither anger nor relief. Not that the president could see.
“Might I hear your opinion of Special Agent Kendry, Celsus?”
Now, he gave the president a bit of a look, asking for his opinion after she’d made her choice. “She’s smart, she’s watchful and she’s holds up well under fire.”
He might have been describing a police dog, Patti thought.
One who, maybe, deserved to be tossed a bone.
“Do you want to stay on through the election, Celsus?”
He thought about it. “Yes, I do.”
“Because you’d have made it through virtually a full term that way?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jim had once cracked to her that Celsus Crogher wasn’t fully human, Patti remembered. She’d thought he was awful, saying that. Now she began to wonder if he hadn’t been more than a little correct. It made her want to see if the SAC could hold up under another sort of fire.
One neither his training nor his temperament would have prepared him for.
“Celsus, within the bounds of the law and common decency, would you do anything for me?”
“I’d die for you.”
“Other than that.”
Now, suspicion crept into his eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Do you dance, Celsus?”
She might as well have asked him if he baked cookies.
“No, ma’am.”
“Would you learn, for me?”
“May I speak frankly?”
Patti nodded.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked.
“Assuming I’m reelected, Mr. McGill and I will be attending all the usual inaugural balls. My husband and I will dance the first dance together. In gratitude for your years of willingness to sacrifice your life to preserve mine, I’d like to dance the second dance with you.”
That did it. She finally got to him. Celsus Crogher blushed.
The president would bet the last of the billions of dollars Andy Grant had left to her that no one had seen Crogher do that twice in the same year. Possibly in the same lifetime. She was very careful to keep a straight face.
Still, Crogher asked, “You’re kidding me, right?”
“I am not.”
“But I … don’t know how.”
The SAC was desperately looking for a way out of the trap when a thought hit him like a hammer blow: Holmes would be there. McGill would see Crogher dancing with his wife.
The thought so captivated him he did something else the president had never seen.
He smiled in the Oval Office.
“I’ll take lessons, ma’am.” He quickly added, “You won’t tell anyone?”
“It will be our secret. Of course, it would be a shame if I lost the election by one vote.”
The woman’s cunning was not to be believed, the SAC thought.
He said, “You’ve got my vote, Madam President.”
McGill Investigations, Inc. — Georgetown
Sweetie was waiting for McGill in his office on P Street. So was the building’s landlord, Dikki Missirian. He beamed at McGill and shook his hand.
“You are well, my friend?” he asked. “The president, your son, your family?”
McGill said, “We’re all fine, Dikki. How are your wife and son?”
Dikki showed McGill, Sweetie and Elspeth two wallet photos of his family.
They were professionally taken shots of smiling people, but they left McGill with a sudden chill. Three years ago, Damon Todd had used Dikki as bait to lure him into an ambush. And McGill still hadn’t gotten around to warning him.
“Dikki, not to alarm you, but do you know how to use a gun?” McGill asked.
Despite McGill’s cautionary words, Dikki uneasily took his hand back as if he might need it to fend off bad news.
“I am a peaceful man. I have always been. Before I go into business, I wish to be a poet.”
McGill saw Sweetie and Elspeth were giving him looks, Sweetie’s knowing, Elspeth’s questioning.
“Do you know anyone who knows how to use a gun?”
“My father. He is, was, a colonel in the Armenian army, a hunter of terrorists.”
“Your father is still alive?”
“Yes, of course. He is in Washington. I bring him here after he retires. May I ask why —”
McGill said, “Damon Todd has escaped. Your father is still fit?”
“Vigorous,” Dikki said, bobbing his head. “He has friends in the Armenian community here, also former soldiers.” He leaned forward, closing the distance with McGill. “Do you really think …” He didn’t want to complete the thought.
Being at the mercy of a madman was not a memory easily revisited.
McGill said, “I think it would be a good idea for you to have some protection until Dr. Todd is back in custody.”
“Yes, yes, I agree.”
“I should have thought to tell you earlier,” McGill said. “I’m sorry.”
Dikki waved off the apology. “I talk with my father immediately.” He started for the door, then stopped. “Will you and your friends require refreshments?”
“We’ll make do,” McGill said.
“Dumb,” McGill said, sitting behind his desk. “I don’t know how I could have forgotten to warn Dikki.”
Sweetie and Elspeth sat opposite him.
“Maybe you had one or two other things on your mind,” Sweetie said. “I did, too. But you’re right, the two of us would be kicking ourselves if something bad happened to Dikki.”
Elspeth asked, “Do you think Mr. Missirian’s father and friends will be up to the job?”
“We’ll have to rely on you to check that out, Elspeth. Military counterterrorism sounds like a pretty good credential, but somebody at State or the Pentagon should be able to tell you if Armenia is any good at it.”
“Dikki seems to think well of his father,” Sweetie said.
Elspeth told her, “Parental respect is pretty automatic over there. I’ll see what I can find out. I’ll be in the outer office.”
She left McGill and Sweetie to themselves.
“You’ve made peace with Elspeth?” Sweetie asked.
McGill told her about the new arrangements Patti had made.
Sweetie liked them. “Smart woman, that president.” Switching gears, she asked, “Kenny was all right about you leaving Camp David?”
“Once Carolyn arrived, he was. She asked if she could have a little private time with him, and then you called. Lars is going to bring Caitie out this coming weekend. I’ll pick up Abbie from school. Patti will come if the world doesn’t intrude. We’ll all be together. You’re welcome to join us, of course.”
“That’d be good,” Sweetie said.
McGill asked, “We’re not forgetting about anyone else who needs to be protected, are we?”
“I don’t think so. Chana Lochlan has made herself scarce. Daryl Cheveyo shows up for his classes at Georgetown and has otherwise made himself invisible.”
McGill thought about that. “I don’t think Todd would try anything at the university, not with Abbie’s Secret Service detail on campus.”
“Maybe he would,” Sweetie countered. “Two potential targets in proximity with only one security detail between them. Divide and conquer is always a popular way to go. I’ll talk with Deke about it.”
McGill said, “No, I will. I don’t want to leave things between us where they stand now.”
Sweetie nodded. “Good idea. Just make sure the two of you don’t have a shootout.”
McGill grinned. “Do my best. Now tell me about this new potential client of ours, the one you didn’t think we should take on without my in the flesh approval.”
“She should be here any minute now,” Sweetie said. “Her name’s Ellie Booker. Remember her?”
McGill sat back, surprised.
“You and I never met her, but Welborn told us about her. She and Hugh Collier tried to do that ambush interview with me here. She’s a WorldWide News producer.”
“Used to be,” Sweetie said. “She quit.”
McGill knew of Ellie Booker’s subsequent claim to fame.
“She was the one who clocked Burke Godfrey and took the call from Mather Wyman.”
“Uh-huh, and now that Godfrey has died and Ms. Booker has been subpoenaed by Godfrey’s lawyer, Benton Williams, she thinks she’s going to be sued for wrongful death and maybe prosecuted for manslaughter. She wants us to find exculpatory evidence and pull her out of both fires.”
McGill shook his head. “Not for all the money on K Street.”
“That was my feeling, too. But she said she has something else to offer.”
“What?” McGill asked.
Sweetie said, “Ms. Booker says if we help her, she’ll tell us just how Sir Edbert Bickford, Hugh Collier and WorldWide News plan to smear Patti during the presidential election.”
“Damn,” McGill said.
The flea-bitten cliché was true. Everybody had his price.
Mango Mary’s — Key West, Florida
The Florida legislature, like all the others in the U.S., was in the pocket of the gun lobby. The difference was Florida’s legislators loved being there. In the face of the shooting of an unarmed teenager by wannabe cop cum neighborhood watch crazy, protestors around the nation demanded that the state rescind its “stand your ground” law. That, however, did not deter one good ol’ boy in Tallahassee from sponsoring a “notches in your gun” resolution that would give an official commendation and a plaque to any citizen who had “permanently taken three or more bad guys off the street with righteous shootings.”
The gun lobby’s top man at the capitol advised the legislature’s leadership that maybe they should wait on that idea a little while. Not kill it, mind you. Just table it.
That being the milieu in the Sunshine State, nobody stepping into Mango Mary’s was in the least alarmed to see bartender Jackie Richmond take out a Beretta M9, field strip it between two paying customers and clean and lube the semi-auto handgun. There were nods of approval. A clean well-maintained gun was one you could count on in an uncertain world.
As long as Jackie had raised the subject, eight other patrons at the bar and nearby tables took out the weapons they carried as a practical exercise of their second amendment rights, and they moved on to use the first amendment the way it was intended, by discussing the relative merits of their choice of firearms.
The tourists present, those who didn’t know if Florida had reciprocal concealed carry agreements with their home states, felt left out.
Except for the few, probably from San Francisco, who got up and departed.
The guy with the Landshark Lager to Jackie’s immediate left suggested, “Probably be best you don’t cut off anybody’s drinking privileges for a while.”
Jackie saw the twinkle of humor in the beer drinker’s eyes and grinned.
The guy to his right knocking back shots of José Cuervo told Jackie, “You ought to take care of your weapon before you open. What’d happen somebody came in here lookin’ to rob you right now?”
Jackie looked around at all the weapons on display.
“One or more of you guys could shoot him,” he said, “and I’d buy the house a round.”
All the guys at the bar and several more at tables who’d heard that raised their glasses and their guns in salute. Jackie said, “See, we’re all playin’ on the same team.”
“Okay, you got a point, but let’s say maybe you picked a slow moment to clean your weapon,” the Cuervo drinker said.
Jackie had his M9 back together by now. He jacked a round into the chamber and set the weapon on the bar. For the sake of discussion, though, he said, “Yeah?”
Cuervo said, “The bad guy comes in at exactly the wrong moment. What’re you gonna do? Ask him to wait up a minute?”
“I might,” Jackie said, “if he looked like his mama taught him some manners.”
Landshark chuckled.
Jackie said, “If he looks like some low-life, shoot-first asshole, I’d grab for this.”
The moment Jackie reached under the bar, three morons wearing Bus Milbaugh masks, sporting the bloated physique of the radio ranter, too, and holding Glocks with extended clips stepped into Mango Mary’s in a neat little V-formation.
The way they came to an abrupt halt, it s
eemed they were not expecting to be met by a roomful of guys with their own weapons. For a frozen moment, darting eyeballs were the only things that moved. Then from under a table a spunky mongrel belonging to a drinker growled and dashed toward the intruders.
The lead Bus Milbaugh saw the animal coming his way and pointed his gun at it.
“Oh, hell, no!” the dog’s owner shouted, reaching for his revolver.
By that time, Jackie held the Winchester carbine loaded with .44 caliber rounds that he had stashed under the bar. He got the first shot off, dropping the Bus in the one-pin spot. After that, the whole room erupted in gunfire. Jackie listened from where he’d dived on the floor behind the bar, his arms crossed over his head.
The firefight probably lasted only a matter of seconds, but it seemed to Jackie as if the shooting went on for most of the day. After it stopped, he heard a dog woof and then whine as if its heart were broken. As the dog continued to keen, Jackie counted to sixty. Then he took a peek over the bar top.
All three Bus Milbaughs were down and motionless. Other than leaking blood.
The dog was licking the face of a guy with a gun in his hand who looked dead, too. Counting from left to right, Jackie saw at least three more patrons who’d bent their last elbow at Mango Mary’s. Six more, including two women, were bleeding and moaning. Eight more appeared unhurt, and four of those held smoking guns in their hands.
“All clear,” Jackie said, hoping he had that right.
In the distance, but getting closer fast, he heard sirens.
What the hell was he going to do now, he thought.
That was when he saw Alice gesture to him from the hallway that led to the office in back where she’d been taking a nap. Grabbing both the Winchester and the M9, he rushed over to her, hurried her toward the back door.
“Listen close now,” he said. “I’ve got to get these guns out of here. I’m not supposed to have them.” He squinted in thought for a moment. “Not even in Florida, I don’t think.”
Alice looked at him, surprised that anyone couldn’t own a gun. Then she remembered: “You got a criminal record? You’re a felon?”
The thought that she’d been working, living and sleeping with someone like that almost made her swoon. Giving Jackie time to think of a lie and take hold of her so she didn’t fall.