by Joseph Flynn
“Okay, okay.” McGill grumbled and took the glass back. “I’ll take my medicine.”
With the impeccable timing of every truly great butler, Blessing arrived before McGill could put the glass to his lips. Dinner, he said, was ready to be served.
That being the case, there was no longer time for an aperitif.
The Royale Hotel, Baltimore
Welborn let himself into his room, thinking it was a good thing he’d taken a change of underwear and socks with him on his trip; his mother had always told him to be prepared for unexpected eventualities. The garments were enclosed in a ziplocked plastic bag; the ones he was currently wearing would be stored in it when he changed. No body odor would be transferred to the other items in his briefcase.
He’d have his shirt and slacks dry cleaned overnight, be presentable when he met —
Damn, he sorted through his case, took out his iPad but didn’t see the photocopy of the pig pin he’d taken from the file Rockelle had given to him. He’d intended to show it to Eli Worthington. He’d also planned to Google Worthington and see if he could find a picture of him online. If the man answered his door and tried to claim he was someone else, Welborn would have none of it.
Being a thorough fellow, Welborn had also thought he might find some examples of Worthington’s art online. He was hardly an art critic, but he possessed a keen eye and a relatively good mind. If the images online were the kind of art Worthington routinely did, Welborn thought he’d be able to detect if the pig pin had been done by the same hand.
Unless the pin had been done in a deliberately imitative style.
As Warner Brothers had suspected. And Worthington’s usual style was cubism.
Welborn didn’t consider that likely. People in any line of endeavor invariably worked within their comfort zone. He’d bet Worthington’s art would bear detectable similarities to the pig pin.
If only Welborn had remembered to bring the damn pig pin photocopy with him.
He’d emptied the briefcase and it wasn’t there. So where the heck had he left it, seen it last? His car. He’d looked at the photocopy just before he’d driven to Baltimore. He’d tucked it in the driver’s side visor of the Porsche.
Great. He’d get it and then go to the hotel restaurant and order his steak.
Royale Hotel Parking Structure
Fuck, Boland thought. The damn Porsche was in the very first slot in the parking structure. The one closest to the exit, which was good. But also the one closest to the valet stand, which was bad. He was good at getting into cars without a key, but he wasn’t as quick or smooth as someone opening a lock and disarming the security system with a remote control key fob.
Why the hell couldn’t the Porsche have been parked on the next level up where he could have worked on it in relative privacy?
The only thing he could do now with a valet nearby was to walk up the ramp and pretend he was one of the cheap bastards who parked his own car and didn’t bother with a valet. If he was lucky, he might actually find another car up there worth taking. Not that he was going to hold his breath on that one.
Just about every car he passed had a damn rental company sticker on it.
Clunkers in waiting.
By comparison, the Porsche was looking better than ever. Out of the corner of his eye, as he turned the corner to the next level, he saw the valet jog out of the parking structure. No one was left to man the stand at the moment. There had to be another guy on duty, Boland thought, but maybe he was taking his break. Talking to his wife or girlfriend on the phone and not paying close attention to the time.
Before he’d even made the conscious decision, Boland sprinted back down the ramp. He knew the security features on a new Porsche: engine immobilizer, wheel locks, alarm, interior monitoring. None of that mattered one little bit if you had the car’s key fob. Shielding his face with his hand so the security camera focused on the valet stand wouldn’t get a look at him, he grabbed the only Porsche fob on the pegboard.
He pivoted, raising his opposite hand to keep his face covered and ran to the Porsche. He didn’t look to see if the valet was about to drive another car into the structure. He didn’t want that guy to get a look at him either. He pressed the door-open button, heard a satisfying clunk as the locks on the doors disengaged. To his great approval, the fob had a remote engine start. He pressed that button and the sound of the car’s 3.4 liter engine firing was music to his ears.
He’d be gone before anybody could ever —
Slam him into the car and press a gun into the base of his skull.
An angry voice yelled in his ear, “Federal officer, asshole. You better not have scratched my car.”
With his ire honestly raised, Welborn could play a passable hardass.
Having no intention of going to prison, Boland’s hand darted to his own gun.
Maybe the fed would shoot him, maybe he wouldn’t.
But if he got to his gun, there was no question what he’d do.
The Private Dining Room, White House Residence
Everyone enjoyed the spicy penne puttanesca with vegan tomato sauce and calamata olives. The entree was a nod to Clare, a vegetarian. Just another thing that had changed from the way McGill remembered it. He recalled Clare as a girl who liked pepperoni pizza, had shared many of them with him, doing her best to make sure she got at least half the pie.
She hadn’t tried to keep up with him in washing down the pizza with beer, but she always had a couple, back in the days when brew came in pint cans. Of course, McGill now drank less than a quarter of what he’d consumed in college. Neither his brain cells nor his belt size would tolerate more. So why shouldn’t Clare have moderated her diet, too?
No reason at all.
It just wasn’t what he remembered.
But Patti had taken the time to find out what Clare would prefer now.
Women. God bless them.
Especially the ones he knew.
McGill chased his last bite of penne with his last sip of Sonoma County Zinfandel. Another red drink, minus the quinine, and one that he had to admit went well with pasta. Continuing the color theme, dessert was raspberry sorbet.
The dinner conversation had been kept light, a mixture of reminiscing and updating, Patti was content to ask the occasional elucidating question, learning things about her husband she’d never known. None of them too shocking, some of them quite funny.
Like McGill and Clare playing an April Fool’s joke on DePaul’s president, the Reverend Emmett O’Malley. They’d had a mock copy of the Chicago Tribune printed up and left it on his desk. The headline read “Vatican Signs Contract with Nabisco to Bake All Eucharistic Hosts in U.S.” A subhead added, “Deal with Mogen David to Provide Communion Wine Pending.”
Showing he was a guy who could take a joke, O’Malley admitted to the university community he bought the first headline and only caught wise when he read the second.
“We were years ahead of The Onion,” McGill said.
“Yeah, but we were too scared to keep going,” Clare told Patti.
The president understood the subtext. “You mean, no one ever found out the two of you played the prank?”
McGill and Clare looked at each other and laughed.
“What?” Patti asked McGill. “What else did you do?”
“You have to remember,” he told her, “kids can be heartless in their humor.”
Clare said, “Finding out who had left the phony newspaper on Reverend O’Malley’s desk became a campus obsession for the remainder of that spring semester. Students and faculty were all trying to solve the mystery.”
“But nobody did?” Patti asked.
McGill told her, “We felt our own pressure. You know, when you’re dying to tell someone a secret.”
“So Jim figured out a way to relieve that pressure and still keep our secret,” Clare said.
“Give,” Patti told him, “or I find a new henchman.”
McGill held up his hands in placation. “Okay, but remember
I said Clare and I were much meaner back then; we’re much nicer people now, aren’t we?” Clare nodded. “What I did was find out which of the priests on campus was Reverend O’Malley’s confessor.”
Patti said, “You didn’t?”
Both McGill and Clare nodded.
“That was mean,” Patti said, “telling the one man who couldn’t reveal your secret.”
Clare admitted, “I’ve sometimes felt guilty about that.”
“Me, too,” McGill said. “That’s why when I asked Reverend O’Malley to baptize Abbie I told him it was us. Sent word to Monsignor Casey, his confessor, too.”
Clare said, “You did?” She smiled. “I’m glad.”
“Didn’t want either of us to be on the bad side of Saint Peter when the time came.”
Patti yielded on red and had champagne served as an after-dinner drink.
The three of them took their drinks standing in front of the room’s fireplace.
Patti raised her glass to McGill and Clare. “To old and dear friends, may we ever hold them close.”
All three touched glasses and drank. Then both women looked at McGill. It was time to make the choice that had gone unspoken all evening: Who would McGill ask to be Kenny’s marrow donor?
He looked at Clare and smiled.
“You don’t have to say anything, Jim,” she said. “I understand.”
He kissed her cheek and turned to his wife.
“I’d be forever grateful if you’d help Kenny.”
Patti kissed her husband. “It would be my honor.”
She looked at Clare and McGill, a gleam of mischief in her eye.
“What?” McGill asked.
“I was just thinking. It’s funny, the two of you keeping that secret so long.”
“Funny how?” Clare asked.
Patti said, “Well, if I wasn’t able to act as Kenny’s donor, I can’t imagine anyone I would prefer to you, Clare, and I think Jim would feel the same way.”
McGill nodded, waiting to see where his wife was going.
She asked Clare, “You’ve consented to act as the donor for the young girl who needs the same, well, recipe as Kenny?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I’ve been in politics too long,” the president said, “but I just had an idea, might sound a little devious, but I think it could make both of us feel even better about what we’re going to do.”
McGill couldn’t take the suspense.
“Come on, Patti.”
She looked at her husband. “What I thought was, if Clare and I donate at the same time, we let the doctors decide whose marrow goes to which child, and they never tell anyone.”
Clare’s jaw fell. McGill’s surprise was no less evident.
“Why do that?” he asked.
“That way,” Patti said, “each of us can think, if we so choose, that we’ve helped two children not just one. It’s a gift multiplier.”
McGill said, “It’s also a way to share credit.”
“Yes, it is,” Patti said.
Tears welled in Clare’s eyes. She threw her arms around Patti.
McGill embraced them both.
Baltimore Central District Police Station
Welborn told the cops the moment the guy started to squirm he knew he had two choices. Put a round into the bastard’s skull or put him down without killing him. Using the gun would have been the safer choice. If an SOB was willing to steal someone’s car, there was no telling what he might do to avoid taking the rap. On the other hand, the bullet could easily have gone straight through the jerk’s head, taking bone, blood and brain with it, and continue gore laden right into Welborn’s new car.
Even if the physical detritus was removed, the vibe would still be bad and driving the Porsche would never be fun again. Killing somebody could also blunt the joie de vivre of getting married in little more than a day from now.
That was the way Welborn explained things afterward.
As he sat with two BPD detectives in the station on Baltimore Street.
In the hotel parking structure, he’d simply whipped his elbow around, planted it hard on the thief’s ear and dropped him like the sack of shit he was. Leaving him where he fell, Welborn called 911 and waited for the local cops, taking the time to get his Air Force OSI credentials out so they’d know he was one of the good guys.
The two patrolmen, who arrived ninety-seven seconds later by Welborn’s watch, saw that they had a fed involved in an altercation with a civilian. They called for detectives. The detectives, hearing the fed claim he worked out of the White House, directly for the president, called the district commander, Major Pettigrew. They found him at a rehearsal dinner for his daughter’s wedding.
Leaving Welborn to think, rehearsal dinner?
He knew he and Kira had been forgetting something.
Then one of the uniforms called out, “Got a gun here.”
The cop was looking under the opposite side of the Porsche from where the thief had hit the ground. Welborn could only conclude the gun was what the thief had been reaching for. If the asshole had been a bit quicker or he had been a little slower …
There was a depressing thought.
Detective Greer asked Welborn, “You carry a backup?”
Welborn said, “No, just my duty weapon.”
Greer and his partner Beekman had wanted to take that from Welborn.
He’d told them that wasn’t going to happen.
As no shots had been fired, they couldn’t push the matter.
Beekman asked Welborn, “You hear the gun hit the floor when you dropped this guy?”
“I heard his head hit, but that’s all. I was a bit charged up.”
“Not so much you didn’t just clock him,” Greer said.
“No, not that much.”
Beekman said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky just this once and find the mope’s fingerprints on the weapon.”
One of the paramedics on the scene brought the guy around. Asked him how many fingers he was holding up. The answer was two, but the guy mumbled, “Can’t tell.”
“You know your name?”
The guy was still trying to focus his eyes, but he said, “Linley Boland.”
He thought about that for second and as he did he became aware of all the hard faces looking down at him. “What’d I say?” he asked.
“Linley Boland,” Beekman told him.
“What’d you ask?”
The paramedic said, “Your name.”
“That’s my stage name.”
“You’re an actor?” Greer said.
“Yeah.”
“Never heard of you,” Beekman said. “Anybody else hear of Linley?”
No one had. He said he did dinner theater out west. Vegas once or twice.
That got Welborn’s attention. He looked closely at the man. The guy didn’t like Welborn’s scrutiny at all.
“Real name’s …” It took him a second to remember the name on the ID he was carrying. “Stephen Tully. My head hurts something awful. What happened?
The paramedic said the guy needed to get to the emergency room fast; he might have bleeding in his brain. The detectives sent the uniforms with Stephen Tully. Told them to await word as to whether Mr. Tully would be arrested.
Greer and Beekman confirmed with the valet that Welborn had arrived at the hotel with the Porsche, had shown him his Air Force ID and asked that his car be parked where he could leave the premises without delay. The valet identified the Porsche key fob as the one Welborn had given him and told the detectives he’d put the fob up on his pegboard and it had been unattended for no longer than two minutes.
That last detail came haltingly, but the valet knew better than to lie.
With Welborn’s permission the two cops opened the Porsche and found his registration card. Ownership of the vehicle and his federal standing earned him a measure of deference, but he’d still had to go to the station and give his statement.
Welborn told the cops about forgettin
g something in his car just after checking in and going to retrieve it. He declined to say what it was he’d forgotten. As he approached his car, he saw the man calling himself Stephen Tully attempting to steal it. He drew his weapon, grabbed Tully, put his weapon on him and announced his status as a federal officer.
Tully attempted to struggle and Welborn hit him with an elbow to the head.
Then he immediately called 911.
Major Pettigrew arrived, had Welborn repeat his story and asked, “You got a phone number for the president where she’ll pick up and verify who you are?”
“I do, but I don’t like to bother her. Would you settle for her husband?”
The cops all laughed at that, but the major nodded.
“Yeah, that’ll do. I think I’d enjoy talking with that guy.”
Welborn made the call and was greatly relieved when James J. McGill answered.
His conversation with the major lasted less than a minute but it satisfied the district commander. Welborn wished the man’s daughter well on her upcoming nuptials. The order was given to place Stephen Tully under arrest on suspicion of attempted auto theft.
Tully was arraigned in night court, having regained his wits and sense of balance. Earlier, while waiting for treatment in Maryland General Hospital, his phone rang and the cops let him take the call, listening in, hoping to learn something. They heard Tully say, “Yeah, yeah. Good,” and not a word of the other end of the call.
But the news couldn’t have been better for Tully.
Teddy Spaneas had just told him two hundred thousand dollars had been deposited in his off-shore account, and he could expect an equal amount for McGill’s Chevy.
Tully told the judge he’d been drinking, must’ve thought he was in the hotel where his Porsche was parked and walked into the wrong parking structure where a terrible mistake happened. The judge asked for the name of his hotel.
Putting a hand to his bandaged head, Tully said, “I’m working on that, your honor.”
The judged laughed, but he didn’t consider it impossible the man in front of him was telling the truth, not after what he’d seen in twenty years on the bench. And Mr. Tully had no criminal record. Even so, he set bail at twenty-five thousand dollars.