by Joe Gores
The president and all of the president’s men were going to western Montana. Waiting there for them, rifle in hand, would be Halden Corwin. There’d be blood on the snow that night, too.
Brendan Thorne sauntered across the opulent Mayflower lobby, a man at loose ends. Jock Number One yawned, folded his newspaper while standing up from his lobby chair. Outside the revolving door to Connecticut Avenue, Thorne set off toward the Georgetown Dock, knowing the invisible net surrounded him.
He strolled through the gathering dusk to the three-story, glass-clad restaurant. No awning-covered drinks kiosk at street level for him tonight, no beer in a plastic glass. He chose a table on the second outside level, set for dinner.
Hornrims from the library and the lady hiker with the thighs – tonight demurely covered by a mid-calf dress – took a nearby table to chat animatedly about their non-existent jobs at Georgetown University. When the waitress brought water and a menu, he spoke loudly enough for the Feebs to overhear.
‘I’d like a glass of the house chardonnay and an appetiser of fried clams to start. And a slice of lemon in my water.’
She wrote on her pad. ‘Very good, sir.’
She detoured by the Feebs’ table to leave menus. Thorne watched the brightly-lit parkway traffic on the Virginia side of the Potomac. As she returned with his wine, he saw the white tour boat line up to begin its transverse under Key Bridge.
‘Your clams will be right up, sir.’ She had a Georgia accent and mahogany skin and an elaborate corn-row hairdo.
‘Thank you. And, oh, miss, where are the rest rooms?’
‘Inside, sir, on the third floor.’
He slipped two twenties under his water glass where the two Feebs couldn’t see them, then went up the stairs to the sparkling ornate indoor restaurant. Neither stood to follow him. Past the stairs, through the kitchen to the narrow garbage-pail-lined alley behind, through the deserted not-yet completed galleria behind the bowl-shaped mall enclosing the massive fountain.
Tourists were still disembarking from the tour boat to the dock beyond the little park beyond the mall. Thorne stepped aboard four minutes after leaving his table at the restaurant.
13
Inside the enclosed cabin were a dozen rows of unoccupied benches and a steep narrow stairway leading up to the bridge. Aft, between the doors to the rear observation deck, an acned teenager in the tall paper hat was pouring hot fresh corn from the popper. The aroma filled the cabin.
Thorne chose a bench well forward where he could see the stubby gangplank. No more riders came aboard after him. The pilot climbed the stairs to the bridge. He was not over twenty years old, with a great shock of unruly blond hair.
They cast off to slide away from the dock, then turned down river toward Alexandria. A canned commentary pointed out the sights on either side of the river, but in the dark, little could be seen except moving headlights on the flanking parkways.
A mother and her ten-year-old son chose the bench ahead of Thorne’s. The boy got up on his knees to shoot through the window glass with a palmsize video camera, then sat down and pushed buttons to review his footage.
Two teenage girls sat down on the far side of the cabin, giggling and gossiping. Four more teens joined them. All wore leather jackets and jeans. One girl held up her hand and made baby-bird-opening-its-beak gestures with it. A boy bought popcorn, and shoved a handful of it into her mouth while the others laughed. They all were speaking Russian. Only in D.C.
—
The tour boat slid into its berth at the Cameron and Union Street Dock in Old Town Alexandria at seven-thirty. A Dixieland band was playing with large enthusiasm and small talent in front of the Torpedo Factory, left over from World War II and converted into an Art Center. The smell of broiling steaks from a fancy restaurant on the dock made Thorne’s mouth water. He hadn’t gotten to eat his fried clams.
Way up at the very far end of King Street glittered the George Washington Masonic Memorial. Thorne walked up toward it past Market Square and the Apothecary Museum. There were cobbles underfoot, and the old houses and office buildings of weathered and painted brick were lovingly cared for.
The foot traffic was mostly local folks out for an evening stroll. He stopped to pet a black and white springer spaniel.
‘His name is Tuxie,’ said the zaftig blonde with the dog. ‘Because his white chest is like a tuxedo.’
‘Nice name,’ said Thorne. ‘Nice dog.’
She nodded, making golden curls jump. ‘Dogs are the best people there are,’ she said seriously.
The Hard Times Cafe was halfway up King Street from the dock. Inside, booths flanked the heavy door along the front wall, none of them occupied. Behind a deserted reception desk was a bar half-filled with drinkers on this weekday evening.
Thorne took a booth and asked for a draft beer, a bacon cheeseburger, and fries. If Johnny Doyle didn’t show, at least he’d get a chance to eat. He’d just leaned back on his bench with a sigh of repletion when a shadow loomed over him. Doyle, red-faced and disheveled, with a slight slurring of his words.
‘Thorne! What the hell are you doing here?’
Thorne got to his feet and stuck out his hand. Johnny took it. His palm was moist.
‘I was at the Georgetown Dock and saw the Old Town tour boat and jumped aboard. Let my buy you a drink.’
‘Let me get mine from the bar. I was in the can.’
He came back, half-empty glass in hand, sat down across from Thorne, and leaned confidentially across the table.
‘No crap now, Thorne, how’d you end up at the Hard Times?’
Even high, he was no fool.
‘I wanted to thank you for those phone logs.’
‘What phone logs?’ Doyle dead-panned. He motioned with his empty glass. ‘I’m shelebrating the end of my career.’
Thorne caught the waiter’s eye, made a circular gesture for refills. ‘I guess I’m not following.’
‘You heard about the president’sh barnstorming tour?’
‘It was on Fox News Channel.’
‘Full-court press. Front men out an’ everything.’
‘Hey, that’s great! Since you were a front man during—’
‘No, it’s shitty. I pissed the Old Man off just suggesting I be one of them.’ He downed half his new drink, lifted his eyes to meet Thorne’s gaze. ‘I know I drink too much, but it’sh never interfered with my work. It’sh those two pricks, Crandall and Quarles. They’re ass-lickers an’ they’re probably queer for each other an’ they’re always tellin’ the Prez I’m unreliable.’
‘I thought all three of you were with the president in Minnesota during his years as governor.’
‘Yeah. Good times. Me an’ Jaeger an’ Crandall an’ Quarles an’ Nisa…’
He shook his head. ‘Beau’ful, shmart p’litically. She an’ me usta be buds. Tol’ each other things.’
‘Why didn’t she join Wallberg’s presidential campaign?’
‘He was bangin her while he was gov’nor, ’fore an’ after she married Mather. Was Wallberg broke it off, when he shtarted his run for president. Y’know, knight errant, sittin’ up over ’is armor, regain his purity, all that shit. She was cryin’ an’ let it shlip when I asked her wha’ was wrong…’
Regaining his purity might have been what he told Nisa, but the truth would have been different: fear that the affair might be discovered under the intense, minute scrutiny any presidential candidate was subjected to by the media. Thorne realized he hadn’t been listening; Doyle was staring at him, blear-eyed.
‘Was ’nother reason, too. Our wunnerful Chief of Staff, Kurt fuckin’ Jaeger, had th’ hotsh for her. She turn’d ’m down cold, he started goin’ af’er campaign workers, lottsa complaints. Sho…’ Doyle chortled. ‘Early days o’ th’ campaign, black pimp in LA named Sharkey shtarted findin ’im black local hookersh anywhere, any time, din’t mind gettin’ beat on.’
Nothing in any of that for Thorne. He asked, ‘Why’d Nisa rejoin the campa
ign after Wallberg got the nomination?’
‘Couldn’ shtay ’way. Pol’tics in her blood. Draf’ed his speeshes, worked out th’ campaign shtrategy…’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Ol’ Wallberg, he foun’ out Corwin was after ’em, he dumped ’em both. Cold. C’n you b’lieve ’at? An’ they got dead. ‘Coursh mosta Wallberg’s big idealsh jus’ bullshit. While he was shtill th’ Guv he tol’ us he was shcared some guy knew somethin’ could do him outta the pres’dental nomination…’
Couldn’t have been Corwin. He and Wallberg, kids in high school together, sure. But Wallberg’s father was the mayor of Rochester – those early years were an open book. Still, if Mather heard Wallberg’s remark and thought Corwin was that threat, he might have thought Wallberg would owe him if he…
‘Was Damon Mather there the day he said that?’
‘Can’t ’member. Whatta fuck differensh it make now?’ He lurched to his feet, staggered unsteadily toward the men’s room.
Was there anything useful in all these drunken character assassinations? Yeah. Something was hidden in Wallberg’s past.
When Doyle shambled back, Thorne said, ‘Y’know, Johnny, that FBI guy, Hatfield, is sure making my job a lot harder by denying me access to the documents I need.’
‘Yeah. I ’member you ashkin’ bout th’ forensicsh an’ provenance on the murder weapon. Crime schene. Gun.’ Doyle put a finger alongside his nose. ‘Jush leave it to ol’ Johnny.’
Thorne walked him home to his apartment on Cameron Street two blocks from the Hard Times Cafe, caught the last tour boat to Georgetown at ten o’clock. He walked back to his hotel.
The watchers were on duty outside. He could almost hear their collective sigh of relief when he showed up. They hadn’t tossed his room and they probably wouldn’t tell Hatfield he’d been in the wind for almost six hours.
14
The next morning, Thorne got an e-mail message from Victor Blackburn on one of the hotel computers maintained for guests.
Where the hell you been the last six years or so? I’m still at Benning, getting fat and lazy. Last physical, I could muster only 75 pushups. Remember when we could do 200 of those mothers without breaking wind?
Halden Corwin. In certain circles, that pussy is a sort of legend. I would have liked to go up against him in his prime. Came from a dysfunctional family, drunken father, submissive mom. Between the lines, his old man probably beat on the boy when he was drunk.
Rochester High School, always in trouble, good at sports. He and Wallberg played hockey for a local amateur team called the Mustangs. Both graduated in June, 1965.
Wallberg went to the University of Minnesota, Corwin started Rochester junior college in September, wild-ass kid just turned 18.
New Year’s Eve, 1966, Corwin had a fatal drunken stolen-car hit-and-run accident. Judge gave him a choice: volunteer for Vietnam or serve a stiff jail-sentence for vehicular manslaughter.
He chose ’Nam. Married a girl named Terry Prescott the day before he left. Did three tours in country, the last two as a long-range sniper behind enemy lines. Exceptional behind the gun. At various times, he took out four gook officers with 1,000 yard shots.
When Vietnam ended, he came home to Terry and in ’73 they had a daughter, Nisa. But peace-time Army couldn’t hold him. In the mid-’70s he went the soldier-of-fortune route. The records are sketchy. Maybe Nigeria. Maybe Angola. Maybe the Sudan. Maybe Biafra. Maybe all of them. Maybe none. Maybe yes, maybe no, maybe bullshit.
State department tried to pull his passport, but, no proof. Dropped off the screen. No other official records I can access without other agencies knowing someone is looking. If you’re after Corwin, cream his ass. Fucker hadn’t ought to be that good. Buy me a drink sometime and tell me how it turned out.
So Corwin’s wife, Terry, had been his girlfriend when he and Wallberg were playing hockey together. Wallberg knew the wife, years later had an affair with the daughter. Creepy, but that’s all: Corwin never saw Wallberg again after he went to Vietnam.
Hide in plain sight. Thorne felt a tingle. He wouldn’t wait for Doyle to come through. He’d tell Hatfield he was going into the field again, and fly out the next day.
Janet Kestrel waved her thanks to the grizzled rancher who had given her the ten-mile lift on California 120 from Groveland to the River Store at Casa Loma. The River Store was a brown rustic wooden one-story building with a steepled shingled roof covering the store, a deli, and the AQUA River Trips office and store room in back.
Above the roofed and railed porch was a wooden coffee cup and saucer painted light blue, and a big blue sign with ESPRESSO DELI – River Store in blue and gold lettering. An American flag was angled out from one of the porch’s support pillars. The only vehicle in the parking area was a three-year-old Suzuki SUV that belonged to the store’s proprietor, Sam Arness.
‘Hey, Janet.’ Arness was a bulky man with a gray handlebar mustache, long hair in a ponytail, jeans and boots and a faded mackinaw. ‘Jessie’s at the Pine Mountain Lake Campgrounds, Flo’s on her way in. She’ll give you a lift to the Put-In Spot.’
She missed her 4-Runner’s four-wheel drive that could take her down five miles of incredible dirt track to the Tuolemne River thousands of feet below. Riding sedately down with Flo just wasn’t the same.
‘So I’ve got time for a cup of coffee.’
‘And a Danish,’ grinned Arness.
Janet had missed last year’s stint as a white-water guide on the Tuolemne, and she was glad to be back. She loved going down the narrow, fast, twisting river in a rubber raft. It was a level four ride, which took great skill to keep from coming to grief on submerged rocks. But she would abandon the river for good if she heard from Charlie Quickfox at the Sho-Ka-Wah Casino.
What they would be talking about skirted the illegal, and since Hatfield could never quite escape the paranoid suspicion that the Justice Department’s internal security bugged their own agents’ offices, he arranged to meet Ray Franklin at the Lincoln Memorial. Beltliners wouldn’t be found dead there unless they were squiring around out-of-town visitors. It was crowded with shrieking, running school kids from shit-kicker towns like East Jesus, Nebraska, and Dismal Seepage, Arkansas. Small chance of anyone seeing or overhearing them anywhere near there.
They stood side-by-side overlooking the long skinny Reflecting Pool that fronted the Memorial: two random strangers contemplating the placid water. Roy Franklin was a field man, plain and simple, six-foot, hard-bitten, in his element behind the sights in a hostage situation, almost ill-at-ease in a suit and tie. Hatfield spoke without looking at him.
‘Your buddy Thorne is flying to Minneapolis tomorrow, then driving north to Portage where Corwin had his cabin.’
Ray shook out a Marlboro, lit it, sucked smoke greedily into his lungs. He didn’t appreciate Hatfield’s ironic comment about buddies. Without ever having met him, he hated Thorne’s guts. The bastard had made him and Walt Greene look bad by finding the way Corwin had eluded them in the Delta and in King’s Canyon. By making them look bad, he had made their whole Hostage Rescue/ Sniper team look bad.
‘That asshole. He’s not going to find anything there. In November we were all over that place like flies on shit. Even checked for hollowed-out logs and loose stones in the fireplace. Talked to that hick doctor with his one-man clinic who patched Corwin up, talked to the bank manager, the Catholic priest, the protestant minister… Nobody knew anything, except the bank manager. He said that when Corwin left, the doctor bought the cabin to fix up and rent out this spring. End of story.’
‘Even so, go to Minneapolis and put a GPS transmitter on the car the AIC Minneapolis will give Thorne to drive.’
‘Why don’t I try to get audio on his interviews as well?’
‘We don’t want to alert him to the surveillance, Ray. I just want to know where he goes. Anyway, what’s he going to learn? You’ve already talked to the same people he’ll see.’
Corwin never tried to anticipate his shot, it had t
o just sort of… happen. Through the scope he could see, a thousand yards away, the white cambium where his round had hit the oak tree. If it had been a man, it would have been dead.
He maneuvered himself to his feet, worked his left leg for the three-mile walk back to the cabin. Tonight he would e-mail Whitby Hernild that he would be leaving. Driving the seven miles into town was a needless risk. Around here, people knew him.
Within ten days, Gustave Wallberg would be standing at a podium on a platform in a mountain meadow, his minions about him, beginning his speech. What odds that he would finish it?
The clerk gave Thorne a nine-by-twelve envelope when he stopped at the Mayflower’s massive front desk to say he’d be away for a few days. He stuck it into a topcoat pocket so the watchers outside wouldn’t see it, opened it in the taxi on the way across the Potomac to Reagan National. From Doyle, obviously.
The Delta crime scene data. The .357 Magnum had been purchased by Damon Mather in a St. Paul gunstore in mid-March of the previous year, probably for self-defense when Corwin turned up alive. Which greatly increased the odds that Corwin had been right, Mather had shot him. So why hadn’t Damon shot when Corwin stormed the houseboat? The only fingerprints on the weapon were Corwin’s. The ultimate irony: Mather and Nisa had been murdered with their own firearm. How had Corwin gotten it away from them?
Thorne put the report away. From the doctor at Portage, he hoped to learn how debilitating Corwin’s injuries had been. In ’Nam Corwin had been a thousand-yard assassin. Would those injuries prevent him from going for the sniper’s shot against Wallberg?
15
Since Hatfield couldn’t resist peering over his shoulder, Brendan Thorne didn’t check the vehicle awaiting him at the Minneapolis airport – a Crown Vic, of course – for the GPS transmitter he knew would be hidden on the car’s underbody. Without visual surveillance the GPS tracker was useless anyway. He would just be going exactly where they expected him to go. He just hoped to learn things they didn’t expect him to learn. Things they hadn’t learned in their own interviews.