Oath of Office

by Michael Palmer

  “Okay, let’s just say I’ve told you everything I can.”

  “May I ask why you approached me and not my husband?”

  “Your husband won’t believe the tape recording is real. In addition, he has too much to lose by reneging on his stance. He respected Russell Evans when he nominated him, but he’s not nearly as intensely connected to the man and his policies as you are.”

  “And how are you so sure about my feelings toward Evans?”

  “Because I read your interview in Time magazine where you talked about knowing him since you were children, and you likened him to your own father. I did extensive research about you. From what I’ve learned, I know that the comparison to your father isn’t something you would have made lightly.”

  Darlene was impressed. “Just so I’m clear—you want my help to find this girl, and then I’m to arrange a meeting between her and my husband. I would be doing this to convince my husband that Russ Evans was framed and must be reinstated.”

  “That’s correct. I also suspect he would have to arrange some sort of a presidential pardon for Margo.”

  At that moment, a small pink rubber ball arced out from the bathroom window and bounced several times across the alley before disappearing under a car.

  “That’s the signal from Kim,” Darlene said. “She and Nicole are in the bathroom. I have to get back inside. She set her foot on the bottom step, then paused. “How should I contact you?”

  Double M reached into his jacket again and took out a cell phone. “This is a disposable cell phone. Nobody will be able to trace your call to me, and you won’t be able to trace me from it, either. There’s one recent call on it. Ring that number only when you have something to report. Afterwards, please completely destroy the phone.”

  “Whatever it is you’re going through seems agonizing,” Darlene said. “I’m truly sorry.”

  “I knew you’d understand,” the man said. “I’ll take care of the ladder.”

  Darlene ascended the remaining steps, gripped the window’s edge, and silently hoisted herself back into the bathroom.

  * * *

  VICTOR OCHOA approached Darlene as she and Kim were exiting the theater. “May I speak with you a moment in private?” he asked.

  Kim had been talking nonstop about the movie, in effect allowing her to transmit a plot summary to Darlene, just in case.

  “Of course, Victor,” Darlene said.

  Ochoa escorted her to a secluded corner of the theater.

  “What’s up?” Darlene asked. Her heart was a jackhammer in her chest. She knew Victor well enough to sense that something was very wrong. His expression did nothing to dispel that notion.

  “Listen, I’m on your side,” the swarthy agent said evenly. “I have one job to do and that’s to keep you safe.”

  “And you do it well,” Darlene said, trying not to stammer.

  “Not when you sneak through a bathroom window to rendezvous with a tall muscle man in the alley behind the theater.”

  “Victor, I—”

  “It’s not my business to know all the details of your life,” he said. “But it is my business to know where you are and who you’re with. Look, I’m not your husband and I’m not here to judge you. I’ve worked for three First Ladies before you. I trusted them and they all trusted me. But if I find you’re not trusting in me anymore, if I find you’re playing games that are keeping me from doing my job, then my allegiance will have to go someplace else. Is that understood, Madam First Lady?”

  Darlene felt her throat tighten. “You won’t tell my husband?”

  “Not if you stop trying to sneak away.”

  Darlene squeezed Ochoa’s arm. “I’ll explain to you soon,” she vowed.

  “Not necessary, but I’d appreciate that.”

  “I’m lucky to have you.”

  “No, that guy you met back there is lucky,” the graying agent replied. “If I hadn’t seen that envelope come out of his pocket, he would have developed a new orifice or two in his body.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Just past the sign for Kings Ridge, the Caddy made a sudden left turn onto a poorly lit road—two narrow lanes, no dividing line, few cars. Cap was forced to drop back until their quarry’s taillights were red peas in the mounting darkness. They continued west into the day’s final blush of sunlight.

  “Getting tougher,” Lou said to Cap.

  “The only thing we have going for us is that there’s no reason for them to suspect anyone’s tailing them.”

  “If this is what Virginia’s like,” Notso chimed in, “I choose our hood any day.”

  “I hear there’s a collection bein’ taken to send you out here permanently,” George said.

  A mile … then another. Now there were no cars coming the other way, and only darkness between them and the glowing red peas. They bounced across a railroad track and rolled past several white-painted corrugated hangars with NO TRESPASSING signs mounted to the outside walls.

  Cap cut the Chevy’s headlights, plunging the car into darkness. The blackening sky made it difficult to follow the winding stretch of road that snaked around low hills and paralleled a small rill on the left. Soon, though, the curves straightened out and the landscape turned flat again. On both sides now, there was nothing but corn.

  “So, Welcome, where do you think they’re headed?” Cap asked.

  “No idea,” Lou replied.

  “Is this the way to John Meacham’s house?”

  “No. We’d be headed in the opposite direction if that’s where they were going. It looks like all there is out here is farmland.”

  Notso pointed out the window. “Zat wheat?” he asked.

  “Is wheat green, Notso?” George answered. “Do you even know what wheat looks like?”

  “I know what wheat look like,” Notso said, folding his arms across his chest in a pout. “Look, man, it’s dark outside. Quit ridin’ me.”

  “Well, it’s corn, you big goof. Acres and acres of fuckin’ corn.”

  Lou glanced out at the stalks on both sides of the road, rippling in the light night breeze like a vast emerald ocean.

  Cap decelerated. “I think they’ve turned left,” he said.

  He waited a few seconds before catching a flicker of the sedan’s taillights through a path cleared in the corn. A minute later, he made the same turn. Tailing the Caddy was becoming more challenging.

  “All this corn is making me hungry,” Notso said, rubbing his ample belly.

  George turned around. “Seriously, Brite,” he said. “Could you please talk about somethin’ other than food.”

  “Jes sayin’ I’m hungry is all,” Notso answered. “Why y’all buggin’ me so bad? Can’t a man want to eat?”

  “No!” Cap and George said in unison.

  For a few minutes, they rode in silence.

  “Anyone ever hear the expression ‘knee high by the Fourth of July’?” Lou asked.

  “I have,” Cap said. “It has to do with corn. My gramps used to grow it in a corner of the backyard of his place in North Carolina. It means something like if the stalks weren’t knee high by July fourth, the crop would be bad.”

  “Exactly,” Lou said. “That’s what I remember, although I have no idea who I heard it from. Well, it isn’t July yet, but that corn is certainly way higher than my knees.”

  Cap turned left again, this time onto a gravelly dirt road. The stalks on each side towered upward like a ghostly army. Rocks, coupled with potholes and the gathering darkness made driving without headlights tricky. Lou felt every jolt of the low-riding Prizm as it struggled to negotiate the uneven terrain.

  George pointed up ahead. “They’re turning again,” he said.

  “I got ’em,” Cap replied, swinging the car onto an even narrower dirt road that was carved into a seemingly endless expanse of corn.

  “You sure you can find your way out of here?” Notso asked, looking around anxiously.

  “There’s always a way out,” Lou said, pattin
g the hefty man’s shoulder.

  Notso was rubbing the gold handcuffs pendant he wore as if the miniature manacles were rosary beads.

  Again, the car jostled from side to side as the wheels found more ruts.

  “Shit,” Notso said.

  “What is it?” Lou felt a tingle of alarm.

  “I dropped my gun.”

  Before anyone could comment, he reached above his head and flicked on the car’s interior light.

  “Notso!” Lou yelled, covering the light cap with his hand and quickly flicking the switch off. “What are you doing?”

  “Sorry, man,” he said, “but I got to find my gun.”

  “We told you to leave it in your holster.”

  “I got nervous, so I wanted to be sure I could get at it.”

  Lou glanced up just in time to see the sedan’s taillights, perhaps a quarter mile ahead, go dark. Cap pulled over to the edge of the narrow road, car wheels crunching corn stalks underneath, and shut off the engine. Save for the white noise of insects and the swishing of the corn, the silence was heavy. After a minute, his window open, Cap restarted the engine and inched forward. Ahead, the blackness intensified.

  “Stop, Cap,” Notso said with authority.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I’m gettin’ out to walk on ahead of you. They might call me Notso Brite, but that don’t mean I make the same mistake twice. I got hearing like a shark.”

  “What in the hell are you talkin’ about?” George said. “Sharks live in the fuckin’—”

  Notso was already out on the road, gun in hand, lumbering ahead through the night.

  Cap followed for a few minutes, then pulled to the side and cut the engine. He, Lou, and George joined Notso in front of the Prizm and moved cautiously ahead.

  “Will you put that gun away?” George snapped at his cousin. “Who do you think you are, Arnold Schwarzenegger?”

  Cap shushed them harshly. “Stop talking and listen.”

  Insects and corn. Nothing else. Insects and corn.

  Notso did not stay silent for long. “It sure is quiet out here,” he said in a reasonably hushed tone. “Spooky quiet. Man, I couldn’t sleep a wink if I didn’t hear sirens and car horns all night.”

  Lou grinned. Over the years, the urban theater had taken up residency in his soul, and he often said as much to Renee when she suggested that he move to a neighborhood more conducive to raising Emily.

  Cap had wandered over to the corn. He snapped off an ear and inspected it. Then he pulled back the leaves and held it up to capture what little bit of light existed where they were. “Weird,” he mused.

  “What?” Lou asked.

  “I remember my grandpa telling me that each corn stalk makes one ear, but this one has four and—”

  There was no chance for him to say more.

  Two gunshots pierced the blackness.

  Lou looked ahead at Notso, thinking the big man had mistakenly fired his weapon, but Notso was looking around, confused.

  Three more gunshots rang out.

  “Run! Scatter!” Cap cried.

  Another shot.

  Notso groaned loudly, doubled over and clutching his stomach, and stumbled into the corn, Cap following. Lou and George thrashed into the jungle on the opposite side of the road. Stalks lashed at Lou’s face and arms as he plunged into the blackness.

  There were more shots, coming from not far away.

  Then, from somewhere across the road, Lou heard Notso Bright’s voice. A single, grunting, agonized word. “Shit!”

  CHAPTER 28

  Lou stumbled into the dense corn, quickly losing his footing and falling hard. Air exploded from his lungs. Thick stalks snapped in half with a sound like breaking bones as jagged edges sliced his face and arms. Dust coated his mouth and throat.

  Gunfire seemed to be erupting from all directions, piercing the darkness with flashes of light. Crawling deeper into the corn, Lou had become separated from George. Movement of the stalks tipped the gunmen as to where he was, and instantly, bullets snapped through the leaves overhead and slammed into the ground close enough to spray clumps of dirt into his face.

  Pivoting his body, Lou flattened himself in a deep furrow between two rows. Then, lying motionless in the dark, he listened.

  “One’s down,” a gravelly voice called out from somewhere behind him.

  “Stay cool!” The angry warning emanated from just a few feet to Lou’s right.

  “We’re closing in on two of them!” the first man yelled back.

  Lou kept still and forced his breathing to slow. He sensed movement. The man was on the move.

  Moments later, Lou heard Notso Bright groaning in pain and crying out.

  “I’m shot … Cap, help me … Ca—!”

  Two quick shots cut him off, and then there was silence.

  “Got him for real, this time,” the gravelly voice cried out.

  Lou’s heart sank.

  “Let’s get some light on this situation.”

  Floodlights affixed to widely spaced poles flashed on, creating a shadowy, artificial day. Lou could see almost everything around him. He was readying himself for a dash deeper into the corn, when he heard three quick pops of gunfire from his right, accompanied by the sound of shattering glass. The two spots nearest him went out instantly.

  “One of ’em has a gun! He just shot out two floods.”

  Lou managed a cold smile. George must have brought more than a camera with him.

  “Hey, Welcome, that you?” the man closest to him called out. “Your fat black friend is dead. Toast. You should have stayed at home, because you’re next!”

  It was strange for Lou to hear his name called, but not surprising. Clearly, his mounting suspicions about Kings Ridge had gotten someone’s attention.

  There was a sudden, intense rustling of corn from some distance away to his right, and moments later the gunman shouted, “Drop it, asshole!… I said drop it!”

  He had George.

  “Welcome,” he called out a minute later, “I’ll give you until five to show yourself! Then I’m gonna blow this little sucker’s head off.… One…”

  Lou judged the killer to be some twenty feet directly in front of him. After rising slowly, he remained hunched over as he moved ahead.

  “Two…”

  “Lou, the motherfuckers shot Notso!”

  “Three…”

  “Fuck you! Go ahead and shoot me, you prick!”

  In the eerie glow from one of the remaining spotlights, Lou could see the gunman’s broad back, one shoulder, and the gun he held pointed at George’s head.

  “Four…”

  “I’m not afraid of you, you fat—”

  Blood running down from gouges in his forehead and neck, Lou had moved as close to the man as he could chance.

  One … more … step … and …

  “Five!”

  Ten feet away, George was on his knees. His glasses had been knocked off, and Lou sensed the frustration and anger in his eyes.

  But no fear.

  “That’s it, Welcome. His blood is on your—”

  Bellowing, Lou exploded from his crouch like a football lineman.

  The gunman whirled awkwardly and George rolled at his legs, connecting just below his knees. The man managed two quick shots, but he was off balance, and the slugs slapped harmlessly into the soil.

  Driven by a burst of adrenaline and countless hours of sparring, Lou’s fists came up. He landed a powerful left-right-left combination to the larger man’s jaw, snapping his head from side to side like a puppet’s. His knees already wobbly, he dropped his gun and staggered backwards. Lou launched himself again, pummeling his face and the center of his chest.

  Both men went down, Lou on top, still hammering downward with as much power as he had in him. It was as if he were punching stone. The man, with at least a four-inch and fifty-pound advantage, reached up and grasped Lou by the throat. He was a beast, and his ham-hock hands were pure power. Lou tuc
ked in his chin to protect himself, but too late. His trachea and larynx were seconds from collapsing.

  Still on top, he slammed his forehead down onto the man’s nose. Blood burst from both nostrils, but incredibly, the killer’s grip hardly lessened. His teeth were bared in a snarling rictus, and Lou’s vision began to dim. Grinning obscenely, he rolled Lou onto his back. Thick dollops of blood splashed down into Lou’s eyes.

  He landed two more wild blows, but the behemoth simply squeezed harder. Lou’s flailing weakened. It was over. Images of Emily and Renee, his father and brother took over his thoughts. At the instant his vision went completely dark, he heard a loud gunshot followed by a muffled cry of pain from on top of him. The flow of blood from the man exploded into a fountain, and he toppled limply to the ground.

  Gasping, Lou could only lie where he was.

  Finally, he managed to turn.

  The huge killer lay motionless beside him, blood soaking through the groin of his trousers. Then Lou realized that the top of his head had burst open as well.

  George knelt nearby, smiling proudly. “I couldn’t find my thirty-eight,” George said, “but this damn water buffalo had a cannon. Just look at this thing. This is some serious firepower.”

  Groaning, Lou forced himself to his knees. George’s bullet had gone straight up between the man’s legs and had blown off the top of his head.

  Serious firepower, indeed.

  “Nice shot,” Lou understated.

  “You all right, Welcome?” George asked. “You look like something Jason got ahold of in Friday the Thirteenth.”

  Lou pawed at the gore on his face with the sleeve of his jacket. It took some work, but gradually his vision cleared. “I’m okay, thanks to you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry about your cousin.”

  “I can’t believe this has happened. We gotta find him. He’s not dead. I know my cousin, Welcome. He’s not dead!”

  “We’ll look for him as soon as we can,” Lou said, knowing in his heart what they would find. “We’ve got to get back to the car. We can call for help, provided there’s any reception.”

  “How many you estimate are out there, not countin’ him?”

  “I’m guessing four. Could be five. Stay low, George, and try not to fire that thing anymore unless someone’s about to kill me again.”