“Bill, I’ve hinted to you before that I operate under a pen name.”
“Yeah, I figured. But they’re saying there’s more to it than that. They say you’ve shown people valid government IDs issued to the name ’Dylan Lee Hunter’—just as you did here, by the way, when I hired you. But they say no birth records anywhere connect that name to the listed birth date. According to some attorney at the news conference, the only way that could happen is if you had a legal change of name, from your birth name to this one. There would be records somewhere that tie the two names together. However, they say they checked—and there aren’t.”
So, Trammel made good on his threat . . .
He had anticipated this moment and what he’d say when it arrived.
“Bill, I know it seems strange. There are possible explanations, though. For example, there is a way for the government to change somebody’s name, if they’re trying to protect him from harm.”
Bronowski fell silent a moment, processing it.
“What are you telling me—that you went into hiding or something, and you’re operating now under this new ‘Dylan Hunter’ identity that the government cooked up?”
Hunter didn’t want to lie. So he didn’t.
“Now, you said that, Bill—I didn’t. I’m not going to say anything more. I can only tell you, honestly, that if my real birth name came out, there would be serious danger to me, and perhaps to others, too. So, I had to go to great lengths to make sure that won’t happen.”
“How is it possible you left no tracks? Or that somebody from your past doesn’t recognize you when you’re on TV?”
“I know. It’s a real mystery, isn’t it?”
“This isn’t a joke, you know.”
“No, it isn’t. I’m telling you, bluntly and candidly: This is all about protecting my personal safety. If certain parties knew who Dylan Hunter used to be, the next time my name appeared in the Inquirer would be in the obituaries.”
He listened to Bronowski breathing heavily for the next half minute. It ended with a long breath that turned into a sigh.
“All right,” he said, his usual strident tone gone. “Given the kind of investigative work you do, I think I get it. Something you wrote in the past pissed off the wrong people, and you had to go off the grid and become somebody else.”
“I told you I won’t say another word about it.”
“Okay, then. But how the hell do we handle this feeding frenzy? I’m watching my phone buttons flashing like Fourth of July fireworks.”
“Obviously, we issue a statement right away, along the lines I just told you—but saying even a bit less. I’ll draft something for you shortly, and you can put it out under my name.”
“That won’t satisfy them.”
“Of course not. We both know the rest of the press hates the Inquirer and are especially gunning for me. They’ll keep digging. But between you and me, I’ve covered my tracks well. I’m confident they aren’t going to find a thing. It will drive them crazy, but after a while I think they’ll lose interest.”
“Yeah, yeah, but what are we going to do in the meantime? We have these bombshell articles from you scheduled, but this will be a big distraction. You’ve become the story now. This outfit at the news conference is brushing off everything you say as ‘fake news from a fake reporter.’ People will see your byline, then stop reading and ask instead: ‘Who is Dylan Hunter?’”
Since his confrontation with Trammel, Hunter had prepared for that, too.
“Which is why you’re not going to get any more articles about this from Dylan Hunter.”
“What? After we teased all these upcoming—”
“What you’ll get are unsigned pieces that you’ll instead attribute to an ‘undercover’ Inquirer special investigative unit—unnamed.”
“Oh, come on! We’ll never get away with that. They’ll know.”
“Sure they will. But they won’t be able to prove it. Meanwhile, another thing will swing the attention back in our favor.”
“And what’s that?”
“The coming stories will contain blockbuster revelations nobody will be able to ignore.”
3
When Hunter ended the call, he phoned Danika, telling her to inform all media people trying to reach him that the Inquirer would be issuing a public statement shortly in answer to their questions.
Next, he responded to a text message from Wonk, reassuring him that everything would be fine.
Finally, before drafting the short statement he promised Bronowski, he called Annie to answer the worried voice mail message she’d left. He spent the first minute calming her down.
“But now everyone knows you’re not who you say you are!”
“Annie, that was inevitable. I’ve been prepared for this day for a long time. And I can get past it, too.” He told her his plan to issue a cryptic statement hinting that, due to past threats, he had to change his identity.
“Dylan, you know that will make them even more curious about you. They’ll try to follow you and look into every nook and cranny of your life. We—”
She stopped.
“I know,” he said gently. “I’ve been thinking about that. If we go public about our relationship, it will make things a lot harder. Mostly for you.”
There was a long silence. When she spoke, it sounded as if she were trying to control anger.
“You said ‘if.’ And you said ‘relationship’—not ‘engagement.’”
“We need to think this through, Annie. Figure out the best way to proceed.”
“I thought that was settled when you gave me the ring. And then, after I returned it, you insisted and finally persuaded me to put it back on.”
“I know. Look, this is a mess. We’re both distracted with work, and we can’t resolve this over the phone. We’ll do that next time we get together. But right now, I have to issue the statement.”
“Then what?”
Trammel’s smug face swam into Hunter’s consciousness.
“Then, Annie, I go after these sons of bitches and shut them down.”
THIRTY-SIX
“It’s not working,” Carver said grimly, waving a sheet summarizing the latest public opinion surveys.
They were back in the Vox Populi conference room, the four of them, in an emergency strategy session.
“The daily tracking polls tell the tale,” Carver continued, his voice uncharacteristically subdued.”One week ago, the night of our news conference exposing Hunter, we saw the beginning of slight movement our way. The next two nights, Friday and Saturday, were better. We definitely started closing the gap with Helm.
“But Sunday the Inquirer hit back with that big story about Currents, tracing its funding from Avery’s foundation, and then showing Currents, in turn, funding anti-Helm groups. And on Monday they came out with the follow-up on me and Vox Populi, tying us to all of it. The articles are cleverly building a narrative that Carl’s campaign is part of a big conspiracy to violate campaign funding laws—that we’re illegally benefiting from charitable, tax-deductible contributions.”
He tossed the sheet onto the conference table. It spun into a water glass.
“Our momentum in the polls stopped Monday night. Tuesday, two different tracking polls showed us headed back down again. Last night, the same. Bottom line: We’re about ten, eleven points behind Helm, and the vector continues to point the wrong way.”
Sid Cunningham’s mouth was set in a grimace. “I thought your big, fancy media campaign was supposed to counter all that—make him the story, not us. Why isn’t it working? I saw negative stories about him all over the place this weekend—the Post, CNN, MSNBC—”
“First of all, Sid, the Inquirer was clever to take his name off the bylines of those hit pieces, so that he won’t continue to be the central focus.”
“Damn it!” Cunningham exploded. “Everybody knows Hunter wrote those pieces. The Inquirer is just giving him cover by saying they’re by a team of reporters.”
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Spencer was hunched over the conference table, scowling at the sheet of paper. “Exactly. I don’t get it. He and his rag have zero credibility.”
“Well, I’m afraid I do get it,” Carver replied.”The Inquirer may have no credibility among people like us, Carl, or any educated people, for that matter. But its readers represent a different demographic. And it’s a big one. Those kinds of people eat up conspiracy theories, and that’s what Hunter has spun for them. These front-page Inquirer stories have social media and radio talk shows buzzing.
“And to answer what Sid said, it doesn’t matter that we had our surrogates all over the Sunday talk shows. Nobody watches them, or believes the people on them, not anymore. Millions of people think the news media is being manipulated—”
“—by people like you,” Spencer interjected, looking testy.
“Whatever,” Carver replied, shrugging. “The fact remains, they don’t buy anything they read or hear in the media. But they do buy what Hunter is giving them, because, as I say, he’s created a compelling conspiracy narrative. And in a choice between believing him or the regular media—he’s winning.”
Trammel sat listening, studying his manicured nails with a mounting, queasy feeling of anxiety. He cleared his throat.
“So. What do we do about this, Lucas?”
He saw his own anxiety reflected in Carver’s eyes.
“Don’t worry,” the strategist said, forcing a smile. “We can turn this around. We have a lot of time. We’re still over two months out from the July convention. Even a week is an eternity in politics, because all sorts of unplanned events intervene. For one thing, every big media organization is investigating Hunter’s background, now, and something ugly is sure to surface soon. For another . . .”
Trammel stopped listening. He realized right then that Lucas had no good answers, and that his words were mere public-relations spin, empty clichés meant to reassure his paying clients and keep the cash flowing into his company.
Like the Maestro, Trammel had studied politics for decades. He might not have Lucas’s nuanced grasp of marketing tactics, but he understood the basic principles. One thing he knew is that you could not successfully sell a fatally flawed product—not in a marketplace with more attractive options.
He looked at the candidate sitting beside him. A mere pretty boy, consumed with the desire to be popular. Intellectually vacuous. Uninspiring. Fundamentally incapable of winning a head-to-head competition against a self-confident, intellectually robust visionary such as Roger Helm. Perhaps not even against a stupid, demagogic celebrity such as Tom Waller . . .
In that searing instant of realization, Avery Trammel shuddered, because he saw his lifetime dream dying. The queasy feeling increased.
He rose to his feet, unsteady, interrupting Lucas’s blather.
“I am afraid I am not feeling well,” he announced.
“Yes, I can see that,” Carver said, alarmed. “Avery, you’re shaking. Can I get you something, or call—”
Trammel waved a hand. “No, no. My driver is waiting downstairs. But I should leave. We shall have to continue this discussion later.”
Carver escorted him to the elevator, steering him by the elbow. They waited a moment before the door opened. Trammel stepped inside.
“God, Avery,” Carver said, grave concern on his face, “I hope it’s nothing serious.”
“I hope so too, Lucas.”
2
Avery Trammel sat alone, secure behind the locked door of his study, huddled with his private things.
Once again, the album lay open on the desk before him, open to that first of so many treasured photos of his youth. It was the one of himself as a small boy with his parents: black and white, slightly faded, almost sixty years old. It had been taken in some studio, long forgotten: he, standing in front, skinny legs in short pants, white socks, dark shoes, and a checkered shirt; his pretty mother seated behind him, slightly to one side; his handsome father towering behind them both. They each had a hand on him: hers, around his little waist; his, upon his shoulder.
He was smiling in that photo. The expression always looked so alien to him, because he could never find photos of himself smiling in his later youth or adulthood.
Avery Trammel came here often to look at this photo, and the others of his childhood with his parents. It felt like a quest to discover, or rediscover, something missing. He was self-aware enough to understand what he sought, of course.
It was only in these moments that he could summon, if only faintly, any memory of the feeling of love.
In more than a half-century since the photo was taken, he had been surrounded by many people. They made their presence felt upon him in many ways, just as he made it a point to stamp his own presence upon them. He interacted with people constantly—commercially, socially, sexually. However, not emotionally. Not deeply so, in any case. Since his youth, there remained a sort of barrier between himself and others, leading to a superficiality of interaction, an absence of intimate connection, which left him feeling distant. A part of him, the dominant part, had long ago become a remote observer of others, and not a full participant with them.
He was also sufficiently self-aware to understand why.
If the photo album reminded him of his last connection to the feeling of love, the scrapbook beside it reminded him why hatred had taken over in its place. For the loss of love and the birth of hatred were of a piece.
Avery Trammel slowly turned the pages of both volumes, pondering the course of events that had, at last, brought him so close to the end of this long journey.
He began life as Avis Tremills, son of an English-born father, John Avery Tremills, and his American-born wife, Eileen Rogers Tremills. John Tremills’s parents had immigrated to the United States when his father was assigned to manage the New York office of a London-based bank. But like so many, the bank was hit hard by the Depression. The Tremills family suffered long unemployment and grave financial hardship. Though extremely intelligent and an exceptional student, young John could only afford to attend City College of New York, where he studied civil engineering.
There—like thousands of bright young men and women traumatized by the economic brutality of the Depression—John became radicalized and joined the Communist Party. At age twenty-five, during a demonstration, he met a fellow Communist, Eileen Rogers. They eventually married and, not long after the end of the war, their only child, Avis, was born. The family moved into a little ranch house on Long Island, where John had found a job with a small defense contractor, while Eileen taught high school history.
With the move to Long Island, John and Eileen stopped attending Party meetings and demonstrations, or even arguing politics with family and co-workers. To everyone’s surprise, they abruptly became completely apolitical, it seemed, and began to spend far more time socializing with neighbors, many of whom were John’s co-workers at the company.
For little Avis, it was an idyllic childhood. Their suburban neighborhood had plenty of boys his age to play with. His parents got him a caramel-colored cocker spaniel puppy that they named Taffy. His parents also liked to travel. They often took weekend family trips to a camp in the Adirondack mountains, where they met and befriended other families and their children. His father took him fishing in a little boat on a blue lake, while his mother prepared picnics that they enjoyed afterward on its shore, cooking their catch over a campfire. Sometimes, Avis got to take exciting train rides with them, too, accompanying his father on business trips to big cities like Chicago and Boston and Washington. Whenever John had to hurry off to some meeting, Eileen would take Avis to art museums and libraries. Sometimes, in the evenings, they even attended plays and symphony concerts.
From his earliest years, his mother had introduced him to music, then reading and the world of books and music. Astonishingly precocious, by age four he had learned how to read and do simple arithmetic, and he could identify pieces of classical music and name their composers. Eileen Tremills
was a wonderful mother and teacher, and Avis loved her dearly.
But he idolized his father. John Tremills was a tall, masculine presence who taught him to throw and hit a baseball, took him to Yankees games, showed him how to use tools, and explained the inner workings of radios and early television sets. John also took up a hobby, becoming an avid, skilled amateur photographer. He showed Avis how to take pictures with the funny, heavy box camera he had acquired. Then he bought a lot of chemicals and equipment and built what he called a “darkroom” out in their garage, where he developed the pictures. He installed a heavy metal door on the darkroom, and secured it with a large padlock, explaining to Avis that he had to prevent anyone from coming in and ruining his pictures.
One evening while playing with Taffy in the back yard, he heard his father’s car turn into the driveway, returning home from work. He ran around the garage to find his father lifting a strange-looking contraption from the trunk of their big Buick. Entering the garage behind him, he asked what it was. His father, startled, turned and told him it was just a piece of testing equipment for a machine at work. He took it into his dark room and locked it away, because he said it was expensive and he did not want it to be stolen.
They enrolled Avis in a local elementary school when he was five. By then, he was already so advanced that the school was compelled to let him skip first grade. He still knew more than his classmates, though. To keep him from becoming bored, his mother would give him extra lessons at home, then send him to his room with homework. He would finish quickly and bring his work downstairs for her to check. Sometimes he would interrupt them in quiet conversation in the dining room, and they would look up, surprised. “Don’t sneak up on us like that,” his father would say, and then they would all laugh.
But sometimes he would hear them whispering in nearby rooms, or, waking up late at night, he could make out their voices behind the closed door of their bedroom, saying things he could not quite understand, in tones that seemed either harsh or worried.
WINNER TAKES ALL: A Dylan Hunter Justice Thriller (Dylan Hunter Thrillers Book 3) Page 36