“He should have been guarding you. That’s what he’s paid for.”
“Tim, don’t irritate me.”
And Isaac sailed out of the room, holding Mrs. Markham’s hand.
“The Citizen’s up and running,” Boyle sang into his mike, and the Secret Service had to clear a path for Isaac and prevent reporters from crushing him.
“Mr. Sidel, do you believe in the stars?”
“Ah, the real question is: Do the stars believe in me?”
“But don’t you and the president share the same astrologer?”
“Ladies and gentlemen, Mrs. Markham is just a friend.”
“Who’s your biggest hero, Sidel?”
“AR,” Isaac said without a bit of hesitation.
“AR? Did he die at the Alamo?”
“Nah. He was a gambler, the king of crime. Arnold Rothstein.”
“Rothstein,” Seligman hissed into Isaac’s ear. “You’ll sink us, for Christ’s sake.”
And Boyle steered the whole menagerie down one flight to the mental ward, where Isaac was stopped by an army captain and two MPs.
“Sorry, sir,” the captain said, “but you can’t go in there. It’s off-limits, even to vice presidents.”
“Do you have a phone, Captain?”
Isaac rang the White House, screamed until the switchboard put him through to President Cottonwood.
“Isaac, I’m on the crapper. What the hell do you want? I thought we’d finished talking.”
“I found Mrs. Markham. You owe me one. I’d like to get into the mental ward and see Billy Bob, but the captain says no.”
“Who’s Billy Bob?”
“The man who tried to shoot up the Menger.”
“But he’s a nutcase. I can’t interfere.”
“Aren’t you commander in chief?”
Isaac handed the telephone to the captain, who listened, mumbled a few words, put down the phone, and saluted Isaac.
“Captain,” Isaac said, “Mrs. Markham goes with me.”
“But the president said . . . ”
“Do I have to call the White House again? It’s absolutely critical that Mrs. Markham meet with Billy Bob.”
The captain unlocked the gate to the mental ward.
Seligman seemed chagrined. “Isaac, shouldn’t I—”
“No,” Isaac said, and swept Mrs. Markham through the gate without Tim or Martin Boyle. They’d entered a kind of no-man’s-land, a long, long corridor, with an MP marching in front of them.
“Isaac, I’m touched,” said the astrologer, “that you took me into the cave with you.”
“Shut up,” Isaac said. He grabbed Mrs. Markham and pulled the bandage off her nose. She didn’t scream. Nothing was broken or bruised.
“You’re an actress, aren’t you, playing Mrs. Markham?”
The roly-poly woman nodded her head.
“Poor Tim. Thinks he’s bugging the White House. Calder has the best National Security boys. He lets Tim record whatever traffic he wants Tim to hear. What’s your name?”
“Amanda . . . Amanda Wilde.”
“You come into our camp with your little bona fides, and you’re paid to unravel me. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Wilde?”
“Yes . . . but I’m not married. I’m only—”
“Where did you pick up your astrology?”
“From a book.”
“But you warned me at the Menger Bar . . . about Billy Bob.”
“An actress’s intuition. I felt—”
“Wait a minute. Is Billy Bob Archer an actor, too? Does he come from your own little company? Or is he one of Calder’s commandos?”
“I don’t . . . he shot you, didn’t he?”
“A trifle. Calder could have risked a little flesh wound . . . if he had a marksman on his hands.”
“At the Menger? Where people could . . . ”
The MP brought them into a tiny cell that was isolated from the rest of the ward. Billy Bob Archer wasn’t lying in bed. He sat in a leather chair, with his arms and legs shackled, and Isaac wondered if he was caught in the middle of some crazy drama.
“Billy Bob, remember me?”
“Yeah.”
“Why would God lend His eye to you?”
“He didn’t lend. I’m God’s only eye.”
“Then the Lord Himself is blind.”
“That’s right, Mr. Fancy Pants. And I’ve got to lead Him out of the darkness. Who’s the fat girl?”
“My astrologer.”
The shooter smiled. “Then she knows that you were born in God’s house.”
“Is that why you came after me with a cannon, Billy Bob? What’s my birthday got to do with God?”
“A May baby is a mournful baby. . . . She knows.”
Isaac inched up to the leather chair. “What does she know? Does God live at the White House? Does He have dreams in the Oval Office? Did Calder Cottonwood hire you?”
The shooter started to cry. “You’re desecrating me. I had a mission. To shoot your eyes out. And I failed . . . on account of the fat girl.”
“What the hell is going on?”
The ward’s chief resident arrived in Billy Bob’s cell. He was furious with Isaac, this army psychiatrist who was also a colonel. Trevor Welles. He had the whitest hair Isaac had ever seen on a man.
“This is a psychiatric ward, Mr. Mayor. It doesn’t welcome nonsense.”
“Aw, Doc,” the shooter said. “Don’t pick on the May baby.”
“Do I have to gag you again, Corporal Archer?”
“But I want to hear what the fat girl has to say. Did you see God at the Menger, missy?”
Amanda blinked. “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m not sure.”
Isaac kept looking at Welles’ uniform: it seemed a little too familiar. “Colonel, did Billy Bob steal your tunic and wear it at the Menger?”
“Yes.”
“How did he get his hands on it?”
“Is this an interrogation? You shouldn’t even be here. . . . He broke into my locker.”
“And got past two MPs at the big gate?”
“This is a hospital, not a prison.”
“Did you coach him, Colonel Welles? Did you scrub him proper, lend him a rodeo gun?”
“Sir,” the colonel said, “you will have to vacate this ward immediately.”
“Not until I say good-bye to Billy Bob.”
Isaac bent over the leather chair, kissed the shooter on the forehead. “My poor sweet Bob.”
Then he clutched Amanda’s hand, marched past Colonel Welles and his white, white hair, and got to the gate. His shadow, Martin Boyle, was on the other side of the thick, brutal wire. His hands were twitching. “You shouldn’t have gone in there all alone.”
“Alone?” Isaac said. “I had Amanda to protect me.”
There was still a mob of reporters near the gate.
“Mr. Sidel, Mr. Sidel, did you meet with the crazy assassin?”
“Billy Bob’s not an assassin. He mistook me for someone else.”
“Who, sir?”
“A heavenly angel,” Isaac said, and turned to his shadow.
“Call our driver, Boyle. Tell him to rev up the bus. We’re getting out of San Antone.”
* * *
The bus appeared outside the medical center in nine minutes. Isaac hopped aboard with the reporters who were covering his romp through Texas. He had a secretary and a small staff, but he almost never used them. He had no deals to cut. He wasn’t a political strategist, like Tim. He was a hooligan with a gun. He got into fistfights. He had scars all over his body, like God’s own warrior. He watched Amanda, waited until she sat down. He didn’t want to panic his astrologer. And he didn’t have to signal to Tim.
Seligman approached Isaac, sat down.
“We have to dump the bitch. . . . Isaac, she’s in the public eye. My people checked. She’s a plant.”
“Timmy, darling, did they also check that your wire at the White House is a piece of fiction? Calder has
his own script. He sucked you in.”
“That’s a lie.”
Isaac stroked Tim’s ear. “The ruckus at the Menger was a little assassination party. Amanda must have balked at the last minute. . . . Use your bean, Tim. How did Billy Bob waltz out of a locked facility in a colonel’s uniform . . . and who supplied the cannon?”
“If it was Calder, I’ll kill him. And I’ll grab the bitch, make a citizen’s arrest.”
“You’ll do nothing, Tim. We can’t prove a thing. Calder will laugh at us. Then he’ll grind me into the dirt. We’ll look like amateurs, hurling assassination theories at the president of the United States. . . . What’s our next stop?”
“Houston,” Tim said.
“Good. Wake me when we get there.”
And the Citizen fell fast asleep.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1999 by Jerome Charyn
This edition published in 2012 by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media
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THE ISAAC SIDEL NOVELS
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Part One
Citizen Sidel (The Isaac Sidel Novels) Page 17