by Joseph Flynn
McGill knew what Garner was getting at but he wanted to hear it in the man’s own words. So he asked, “What’s all that got to do with lobbyists getting killed?”
A weary smiled formed on the congressman’s lips. “I could draw parallels to the growing concentration of wealth in this country and the attempts to suppress the votes of people who don’t respect the perquisites of the wealthy and powerful, but my time is short, so let’s boil things down to one simple question: Who do you think the lobbyists in this town would be working for back in the day in the D.R.?”
That pretty much told McGill what he wanted to know.
Part of it anyway. The rest he’d have to find out for himself.
He got to his feet and said, “Thank you for sparing me the time, Congressman.”
He extended his hand to Garner. The congressman tried to rise to take it, but for the moment his strength was waning. He sank back into his chair and muttered, “Damn.”
“May I give you a hand?” McGill asked.
“Yes, please.”
McGill helped Garner to his feet. The effort wasn’t difficult. As he’d suspected, much of the man had already wasted away. There was little more left of him than flesh, bones and an iron will.
Standing erect, Garner leaned in close to McGill and whispered, “I don’t bother praying for myself anymore, but if there is a hereafter I’ll do what I can to put in a good word for your son. Kenny is quite the young man.”
McGill said the only thing he could think of: “Thank you.”
He knew it would have been a mistake to go hard at Garner. You couldn’t scare a man who was dying and had no family. Without incriminating himself, Garner’s history lesson and the parallels he’d drawn between the Dominican Republic and the contemporary U.S. had been an implicit admission of … the fact he was no longer fighting on the wrong side.
Still didn’t give him the right to take people’s lives.
He had the prominence to command public attention. He could have made a public but peaceful fight over the matter of government corruption. He should have —
McGill wondered if Garner’s disease or his medication had affected his thinking.
Absolving him would be a neat rationalization. The way things were going there’d be no reason to perform an autopsy on the congressman, to learn if a physical defect had produced a moral one. Without such a medical determination, McGill would have a hard time extending the man a presumption of innocence.
Despite all that, it was hard not to like the man … and now that he thought of it, to look more closely at him. Maybe Occam’s Razor didn’t apply in this case, after all.
Garner extended his hand to McGill and he shook it.
The receptionist entered the room and helped Garner back to his wake, which was seeming more appropriate with each passing minute.
McGill showed himself out. Leo pulled up a moment later. Deke opened the rear door of the Chevy for him. Settling into the back seat, he told Leo, “Take me to see my son.”
B Street SE, Washington, D.C.
Derek Geiger had decided that it would be politically unwise to continue to stay at the presidential suite at the Hay-Adams. It might send the unintended message that he intended to run for the presidency next year when he had no such ambition. He didn’t want any of his GOP colleagues who did intend to run to get that idea and start throwing darts at him. He also didn’t want anyone to get the idea he was freeloading off of party resources either. That misperception wouldn’t endear him to the party at large or to the good people of his district.
He was hardly an orphan of the storm; he could have afforded to pay for his own suite at the Hay-Adams or any other top hotel in the District, but having held public office for more than twenty-five years and having been speaker for five of those years, he’d come to feel entitled to the largesse of others. Having to dip into your own pocket, well, there was a word for people like that: taxpayers.
Geiger had thought of that little joke not long after his first election, but he’d never shared it with anyone. It was enough that the jest could make him smile when he needed a moment of uplift. He was sure someone would come to his aid and, sure enough, through the good offices of RNC chairman Reynard Dix he heard from the Brotherhood, a religious foundation that owned a large red brick townhouse on B Street and offered large comfortable rooms at nominal rents to public servants of good character.
Geiger was told the nicest two-room suite on the top floor had just come available. He was more than welcome to take shelter under the Brotherhood’s roof. He accepted immediately, not even bothering to dicker about knocking the rent down to zero. He could have gotten some big-hearted donor back home in Florida to cough up the rent money, but he’d always been careful never to look as if he were directly profiting from his political office. Paying the small sum the Brotherhood asked of him would put him on a par with the other residents. He saw the expenditure not as rent but as an insurance premium to protect his reputation.
A conservatively dressed, well barbered young man met his car at the curb, carried his bags inside and showed him to his new quarters. The Brotherhood, praise the Lord, did not eschew the use of alcohol. A bottle of his favorite scotch and two crystal tumblers awaited him as a welcoming gift.
Geiger tried to tip the young man, but his gesture was politely declined.
“Thank you, Mr. Speaker,” he said, “but if you’d like to make an offering to our ministry that would please me so much more.”
Geiger said, “I’ll do that very thing. Can you tell me where the collection box is?”
The young man smiled. “It’s in the kitchen. It looks like a great big cookie jar. There’s a slot in the top. Snacks are available in the kitchen twenty-four hours a day.”
Feed your sweet tooth, feed the kitty, Geiger thought.
Smart. Who could criticize contributions to the Brotherhood?
He looked at the phone, a landline in the sitting room. “Is that direct dial or is there an operator?”
The young man understood what he was being asked. “It’s direct dial, sir. All our phones are. That way our guests can be assured of their privacy.”
Barring a wiretap, Geiger thought. Still, who knew he was there?
He asked, “No one has passed the word I’ll be staying here?”
“No one from the Brotherhood, Mr. Speaker. If you haven’t let anyone know, your presence here will be your secret, until you meet the other residents of the house. Whether they might speak of seeing you here I can’t say.”
That was something to consider, Geiger thought.
“You don’t make space available to Democrats, do you?”
The young man had to repress a laugh. He said, “No, sir, we don’t.”
The speaker liked that. He was sure he could keep any members of his own party from revealing his whereabouts. Reynard Dix knew better than to talk. Not that Geiger knew secrecy would be important.
He just thought it was a good idea to keep as low a profile as possible.
Seeing as he was planning to have that treacherous bastard Putnam Shady killed.
GWU Hospital
McGill noticed first thing that Kenny now had some sort of intravenous line entering his neck. The sight would have made his heart sink if his son hadn’t smiled upon seeing him and given him a thumb’s-up. Such a display of courage, McGill decided, would have to be returned in kind. By force of will more than anything else, McGill offered a smile and made a fist and held it high.
Be strong.
Kenny mirrored his father and it took all the restraint McGill could muster not to show any fear. He took his notebook out and quickly wrote a message in block letters. Zack Garner sends best wishes. He held it up to the window of his son’s isolation room.
Kenny had to squint a bit to make out the words but once he did he raised his fist again. With any luck, McGill thought, Kenny would never learn what Garner had done. In the meanwhile, McGill would use any means available to ral
ly his son’s spirits.
The gowned and masked doctor and nurse in the room nodded to McGill and drew a curtain across the window. They were about to do something that might upset the family. That might in turn upset the patient, and nobody wanted that.
McGill turned to look at Carolyn who had been standing just behind his right shoulder. He saw the brave face she had put on crumple and tears fell from her eyes. McGill embraced her, stroking her hair, hoping to confer a sense of comfort he didn’t feel. He walked his ex-wife to the lounge at the end of the corridor.
They sat side by side. Carolyn made no lamentation. There were other patients and family members on the floor to consider. Nobody needed to be reminded of the dire situations facing the patients there. She just cried silently until the energy behind her fear momentarily flagged. McGill did everything he could to keep his own emotions in check.
“What did you write?” Carolyn asked. “What did you show Kenny?”
McGill let her see the message.
“He’s the man Kenny thought was in his room?” Carolyn asked.
“Yes.”
“You spoke with him?”
“I did. He’s dying; doesn’t have much longer. What he told me was he would plead Kenny’s case to Saint Peter.”
That almost broke Carolyn up again, but she got a grip on herself.
“He’ll do that before he explains his own life?” she asked.
“That’s what he said.” McGill wasn’t about to tell Carolyn what Garner had done.
Carolyn nodded. She, too, would take help wherever it might be found.
“What’s with the line going into Kenny’s neck?” McGill asked.
Carolyn did her best to compose herself, to be informative.
“It’s called a central line, a venous catheter. It’s used to administer the drugs Kenny has to have before the BMT.”
McGill, given his work background, had long had to decipher acronyms.
“Bone marrow transplant?”
“Yes. The central line eliminates the necessity of separate needle sticks each time Kenny gets an IV drug. They have to be very careful to keep the line clean so it doesn’t become a source of infection.”
“Jesus,” McGill said before he could catch himself.
Carolyn took his hand, “Yeah, everything has to go just right because they’re going to use that same line to infuse the donated marrow cells.”
McGill took a moment to say a silent prayer.
Carolyn wasn’t done giving him reasons to worry.
She said, “Jim, even if the whole procedure goes according to plan, the possible side effects of the chemo drugs include liver, lung and heart damage.”
McGill squeezed his eyelids shuts but tears seeped out anyway.
Carolyn put an arm around him and whispered into his ear: “Remember, Kenny’s one of the lucky ones. He has a donor. Other kids don’t even get that far.”
Q Street NW, Washington, D.C.
“That woman means to do us in entirely,” Sir Edbert Bickford said.
The media mogul usually stayed in the best suites in the most expensive hotels, but as a boy he’d worked doing farm chores on family land. He could still rough it if he had to, not that moving into his nephew’s guest room with its fifteen hundred thread count Egyptian cotton bed linens was exactly a hardship.
Sir Edbert, Hugh and Ellie were mulling the attorney general’s announcement regarding the jeopardy in which broadcasters airing deceptive political ads would find themselves: being charged as criminal co-conspirators and losing their FCC licenses.
In a nutshell: going to prison and going broke.
If he weren’t the target of the draconian measures, Sir Edbert would have admired the president’s ruthlessness. Outside of royal and noble families who had lived in more robust times, you rarely saw a woman willing to be so merciless with her enemies.
As if she were reading his mind, Ellie Booker picked up on that very point.
“Maybe she means to do that more specifically than we think,” she said.
Both Sir Edbert and Hugh looked at her, inquiring minds wanting to know.
“Meaning what?” Hugh said.
Ellie said, “Look at the spectrum of the media in this country that would ordinarily give Patricia Darden Grant the hardest time, politically and otherwise. Fox and us. Fox is having serious trouble in the UK, and the Justice Department is making rumblings of starting investigations of them here. So they’re hardly in fighting trim. That leaves us.”
Ellie paused to get three bottles of beer from the fridge: Little Creatures.
Her favorite. She opened them and set them out. Took a swig from her bottle.
“If Fox sinks of its own troubles, and Patti Grant does in WorldWide News, she’ll not only have an easier time getting re-elected, she’ll have clear sailing advancing her agenda in a second term. The hard right would have no champion to slam her ideas, her character.”
Hugh said, “You’re forgetting talk radio.”
Ellie shook her head. “Jungle drums. A medium for true primitives. Standing alone, talk radio’s power would be greatly diminished, and that’s if the companies that own those stations have the nerve to maintain their hard right stances after we’ve been done in, as Sir Edbert has so succinctly put it.”
Ellie took another pull on her beer.
“I think Patti Grant means to go after every broadcaster who dares to challenge her new edicts, but my money says she’ll be gunning for us above all others. She nails WorldWide News, she’s won the war. Come to that, she gets us to knuckle under, she wins.”
Sir Edbert asked, “Shall we steal some tin cups and stake claims to the street corners where we’ll do our begging?”
Hugh smiled. It was rare to hear Uncle make a joke — if he was joking.
Ellie said, “That or we find a way to hit the president hard before she can make her new policy accepted wisdom.”
“Something tells me you’re planning a counterattack right now,” Hugh said.
“Mulling one over,” Ellie admitted.
“Tell us,” Sir Edbert ordered.
“There’s not a hint of scandal in the president’s life. As a young woman working in both modeling and acting she displayed a restraint mature beyond her years. She never overindulged in alcohol, never used illegal drugs. She was never sexually profligate. She didn’t fritter away the large sums of money she earned. She married well the first time — to Andrew Hudson Grant — and cultivated a public image that allowed her to enter politics so successfully she’s now president.
“The great tragedy of her life was Andy Grant’s murder. The quick apprehension of the killers must have been some comfort, and it led to her second marriage with James J. McGill. Even when she experiences heartbreak, this woman comes out of it, if not ahead of where she was, at least equal to her previous standing.”
“We know all this,” Sir Edbert said. “It gets us nowhere.”
Hugh took a hit of his beer and smiled. He sensed what was coming.
“Patience, Uncle. I believe Ellie is just getting started.”
Ellie nodded. “I am. I believe the president has gotten a pass on critical scrutiny most if not all of her life. What were things like growing up for her? How did she get along with her parents? How did she do in school? Did she ever cheat on an exam? Did she have some sort of preferential admission to Yale? Was the only powder applied to her model’s nose pancake make-up, really? Did she sleep with any producer or studio executive to get a movie part? How did she meet Andy Grant? Did he do anything crooked to make his pile of money? Is the philanthropic foundation he started being operated on the up and up? Did James J. McGill have any inside help to solve Andy Grant’s murder so damn quickly? Did any traitors in the pro-life movement help him? Was everything about the arrest and trial of Erna Godfrey handled properly? Was Erna Godfrey coerced into making her recent statements implicating her husband and other unnamed pro-life figures?”
Ellie took a b
reath and smiled.
“Doubtless you gentlemen can come up with questions of your own.”
“Were the president and McGill lovers before Andrew Grant died?” Sir Edbert said.
“Are the two of them putting any foundation funds to personal use?” Hugh added.
“Very good,” Ellie said. “We’ll compile an exhaustive list.”
“And after we’ve done all our spadework?” Sir Edbert asked.
“We’ll present our findings in the light that serves us best. We invent a new form of political literature: the unauthorized, preemptive attack biography. If the president is going to take modern media away from us, we’ll go Gutenberg on her.”
Sir Edbert Bickford beamed at Ellie.
Forget about marrying the girl, he thought, adopt her.
Hugh proved his mettle, too. “In concert with the book, we’ll do a week-long series of television specials covering and reinforcing its claims. There are no regulations against doing book reports, are there?”
“And the book’s publication and the TV specials’ airings will occur in the last month before next year’s presidential election, giving Patricia Grant no time to recover,” Sir Edbert concluded.
He smiled at Hugh and Ellie. It was gratifying to the old man that the rising generation showed such promise. As regarded their work, that was. As to their drinking habits —
“Enough of this bloody beer,” he said. “This calls for a toast. Hugh, you’d better have some decent champagne on hand.”
Hugh smiled and nodded. “As it happens, Uncle, I do.”
GWU Hospital Parking Lot
Welborn Yates sat in the Porsche Cayman that Kira had given to him and that Linley Boland had failed to take from him. He felt as if he should have the car detailed. True, the bastard who had killed his friends hadn’t had time to enter the Porsche, but he’d laid his hands upon it. Left his fingerprints on it. That kind of soiling could not be tolerated. Having every square millimeter of the machine scoured and polished would be just the thing.