The President's Henchman

by Joseph Flynn

  Said there was more where that came from, too, if she started sassing him.

  Battered and horrified, Merilee went to the senator, her beloved boss and the man who could fire the no-good bastard she’d been dumb enough to marry. Only Senator Hurlbert hadn’t fired Bobby. He’d looked pained she’d even brought her problem to him.

  “Merilee, I am truly sorry about your troubles, but Bobby’s got me elected twice already, and he’s going to do it again next year. I need him. More than anyone.”

  More than her. But that wasn’t all the senator had to say.

  “I’d appreciate it if you and Bobby could put on a good appearance until after the election. So you can continue to work here. After the election, y’all can get a quiet divorce if you want.”

  She stayed on, initially to fuel her fantasy that one day she would kill both her husband and the senator. She even bought a handgun. Imagined the headlines she would make. But she’d been a reporter once, and she couldn’t conceive of any murder scenario that didn’t end with her own execution. Which just wasn’t worth it.

  She turned in her weapon to a gun-collection drive and watched it get melted.

  She felt pretty much the same way about her life: It was going down the drain. She started looking through the Yellow Pages for a divorce lawyer she hoped wouldn’t be frightened by who her husband was or the fact that he had a U.S. senator in his pocket. It didn’t look like it was going to be easy.

  She also started making discreet inquiries of the bigger newspapers and TV stations back home in Georgia. Maybe if she could get a decent job away from Mississippi, that would give her a new start, a footing to reestablish herself as a person of some value.

  That was when Galia Mindel met her, while Merilee was making a trip to Atlanta, ostensibly to visit her mother. Galia, to Merilee’s dismay, knew all about her troubles.

  “People talk, and Washington’s a small town,” Galia told her simply. “How’d you like to spy for me and have a chance to screw the two bastards who fucked you over?”

  Galia’s blunt language was more than Merilee was used to, but she jumped at the chance. She stayed at her job. Kept up appearances. Divorced fuckhead after the election. Got a pot to piss in from him but not much more. And didn’t mind a bit. She lived to betray the people who’d betrayed her. In fact, she’d recruited half a dozen more congressional insiders for Galia.

  The president’s chief of staff had long ago decided that the right wing of the GOP was her boss’s biggest enemy. The wingnuts and Roger Michaelson.

  Galia and Merilee Parker looked up at the same time and “spotted” each other. Wide smiles lit up their faces. Hellos echoed across the room.

  Galia held up the dress she’d taken off the rack. “What do you think?”

  Coming over, Merilee said, “I think we’re going to have a lot of fun shopping.”

  “Dad!” Abbie yelled, a broad smile on her face.

  McGill hadn’t told any of his kids he was coming home. Leo just drove him up to Carolyn and Lars’s house in Evanston — after Deke had alerted the Secret Service and Evanston cops — and he knocked on the front door.

  He could have let himself in. Carolyn had given him a key, but that was to be used in emergencies only. So he’d respected her property rights and knocked. But he did it jauntily.

  Shave and a haircut.

  A moment later, he had his elder daughter in his arms.

  Kenny and Caitie, having heard their sister’s exclamation, were only seconds behind. He managed to embrace them all at the same time. He didn’t know what he was going to do when they got too big to encircle all at once. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Deke looking around. The street was tree-lined and peaceful enough to be a Norman Rockwell painting, but that wasn’t what Deke was thinking.

  He was thinking: four-for-one target.

  McGill told his children, “Let’s step inside and say hello to your mom. Is Lars home?”

  He shepherded them into the house and saw Carolyn step out of the kitchen, drying her hands on a dish towel. “Can a guy get a cup of coffee?” he asked.

  She laughed. “I’d have a mutiny on my hands if I said no.”

  “Lars home?” McGill asked again. “I haven’t come at a bad time, have I?”

  Carolyn told him, “Lars is working. The new store keeps him busy.”

  McGill thought he heard a strain in his former wife’s voice, not that the kids seemed to notice. Somehow he thought he was the cause of Carolyn’s trouble rather than Lars’s new drugstore. But she kissed his cheek and led him by the hand into the kitchen.

  When McGill sat down, Caitie hopped onto his lap.

  “Did you bring us anything, Dad?” she asked.

  McGill grinned. “Now, I’d be a poor excuse for a father if I didn’t.”

  “Let your father have a minute to rest before you start extorting treasure from him,” Carolyn said. She placed a cup of coffee next to McGill. He took a sip. It wasn’t up to White House standards, but it was familiar and more comforting.

  “All right,” McGill said. “Surprises are all well and good, but they do tend to mess up people’s schedules. Does anybody here have anything planned for today, or are you free to hang out with the old man?”

  Caitie said, “Nobody has anything to do. Except Kenny. He has a baseball game, which is pretty much the same as doing nothing.”

  McGill looked at his son, expecting a wisecracking rejoinder, but Kenny ignored his sister’s insult and told his father. “I went two-for-four last game.”

  A batting average about .400 higher than normal, but Kenny didn’t seem enthused. Just the opposite. Another kiddo in need of a talk. Good thing he’d come home.

  “Okay,” McGill said. “What I’d like to do then is take everyone to Kenny’s game, buy all the hot dogs and soft drinks you can eat and drink without getting sick, and tonight I’ll take you out to dinner.” He looked at Carolyn. “You and Lars, too, if you’re free. Everyone will get dressed up like proper ladies and gentlemen and we’ll all have a good time. How’s that sound?”

  Abbie said, “Good, Dad. But we have to give the guys time to set up.”

  The guys. McGill knew immediately what she meant. All the gun-toting bodyguards they needed to protect them from the gun-toting crazies who were threatening to kill them. A helluva thing for kids to have to deal with. It made him mad. Very mad.

  He looked at Deke, who stood in the kitchen doorway.

  “Tell everybody what our plans are.” He checked with Kenny and gave Deke the location of the game. Then he suggested a local restaurant to which everyone was agreeable. “I don’t want to see the security detail. You, Leo, and I will be the close-in coverage. Everyone else will be perimeter and invisible. Everybody’s ready to go in fifteen minutes.”

  For the first time, he felt like he was bossing people around, but he knew it had to be done. McGill set Caitie on her feet, and said, “Okay, who wants presents from the White House?”

  Kenny’s game was at Dodge Park, a recreational center on the south side of town. Word of McGill’s presence preceded his arrival. The Little League people had set up a microphone at home plate and asked him to say a few words. Players and parents looked at him like he was a movie star. Someone of more recent vintage than Rory Calhoun.

  He told the gathering, “I’m here today not as anyone special, simply as one more Little League parent. Because I’ve just come from Washington, where criticizing the next guy is the preferred sport, I promise not to criticize the umpires. And I hope you will join me in cheering for good plays and good sportsmanship by both teams. Thank you.”

  McGill thought that would take care of his public obligations, but someone asked him to lead the singing of the national anthem. Fortunately for him, and thanks to all the voice lessons his mother had given him, he was able to do a respectable job of it.

  The crowd joined in with what he suspected was more-than-usual fervor. Deke allowed a local photographer to take a picture o
f him at the mike. Everybody cheered their performance, and cheered again when the home plate umpire yelled, “Play ball!”

  They were seated behind the dugout in which Kenny’s team, the visitors, sat awaiting their first at-bats. Kenny was shaking, obviously nervous at all the attention his father had commanded and fearing that it would inevitably spill over on to him. McGill wanted to talk to him, tell him to laugh it off, but he thought that would only make matters worse.

  Then Deke went over to Kenny, took him aside, spoke to him for all of ten seconds, and went back to looking for assassins in the suburban Little League crowd. Kenny took his seat and immediately every boy in the dugout wanted to know what he’d been told. But Kenny just shook his head. It was his secret. One that apparently had rid him of his anxiety.

  McGill and Carolyn looked at their son, then at each other.

  They had room to talk quietly because the bleachers had been taped off ten feet to either side of where they sat and three rows up. Abbie and Caitie were sitting with their friends to McGill’s right, halfway up the bleachers.

  “I thought Abbie was the one who needed to see me.”

  “She is,” Carolyn said. “Now Kenny is, too.”

  “Caitie’s okay?”

  “She’s irrepressible.”

  “Great. But I would have said the same about Kenny.”

  “He was. Until his friends’ parents heard about the Secret Service joining the army of bodyguards, and they started getting worried. You can’t blame them, but they won’t let their boys get near Kenneth McGill. There was even some talk that the baseball team might ask him to leave until the danger had passed. I think this was going to be his last game. I don’t know if your being here has changed that or not.”

  McGill closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.

  He opened them again when Carolyn gave him a nudge. Kenny was up, batting third. That was a change. He’d always batted eighth or ninth. McGill hoped his son hadn’t been moved up in the order just to please him. Kenny didn’t need the pressure.

  Not that he seemed to be feeling any. He was still calm after listening to Deke. In fact, he looked at Deke, then at McGill before he stepped into the batter’s box. He gave his father a nod. After which he promptly hit the first pitch right back up the middle, a line drive that made the pitcher duck to save his life.

  McGill leaped to his feet, yelled, and shook his fist in the air.

  Sitting down again, he said, “That was worth the trip, right there.”

  Carolyn smiled and nodded.

  McGill asked quietly, “Did I cause a problem between you and Lars?”

  She looked at him. “I think so. Meeting you back in the sixth grade. Running into you again right after college. Yeah, I think you’re the problem. That or me thinking I could ever be successful at being a cop’s wife. One of the two.”

  “Could you boil that down a little?” McGill asked.

  The next batter popped out and the side was retired. Kenny took the field, playing first base. The other side of the diamond. McGill nodded to Deke, who went over, ready to sacrifice his life for the younger McGill if necessary.

  “I told Lars about the gun, the one I have,” Carolyn said.

  “He wasn’t happy.”

  “No. He’s really been very good about all the other people with guns who’ve suddenly entered our lives, but he doesn’t like me having one.”

  McGill kept quiet.

  “Ironic, isn’t it?” Carolyn asked. “Now, I know how you felt all those years. Only I don’t want my marriage to Lars to end the way yours and mine did.”

  “No, I don’t want that, either.”

  “I haven’t worked out what I’m going to do, but since you popped in on us, I’ve been thinking maybe you can take the kids to dinner by yourself, then take them over to your house. Maybe having a night alone, just Lars and me, we can come to an understanding. Would that be okay?”

  “That’d be fine,” McGill said, and he squeezed Carolyn’s hand.

  They ate at Wolfgang Puck’s on Maple, had Ben & Jerry’s carryout ice-cream cones while strolling downtown Evanston, and after they couldn’t agree on a movie they all wanted to see, went home to McGill’s house. The experience of stepping through his front door — after Deke had given the high sign — reminded McGill of tasting Carolyn’s coffee. He found the house he’d taken such pride in buying now struck him as incredibly humble — but entirely familiar and welcoming.

  Life at the White House was far grander than anything he’d ever experienced, but there was an air of unreality about it. Like winning a stay at a five-star resort in a contest. The glitz was great, but you knew it was only temporary. Real life was comfortable furniture that could use a professional cleaning.

  McGill made popcorn in a frying pan, and they watched Tom Petty in a repeat of a Soundstage show on Channel 11.

  Caitie was the first to fall asleep. His youngest, unlike most children, never fought parental directives telling her to go to bed. She found great comfort, even delight, in her sheets, blankets, and pillows. When McGill and Carolyn had looked in on her when she was little, they frequently found her sleeping with a smile on her face.

  She was getting fairly tall, but McGill was pleased to see that he could still carry her upstairs to her bedroom. He laid her down, gave her a kiss, and told her to change into her PJs. She mumbled okay, but by the time he got to the door she’d already pulled her comforter over herself and fallen asleep fully clothed.

  He went back and pulled off her sneakers but otherwise left her as she was.

  Kenny was waiting for him in the hall outside as he closed Caitie’s door. Abbie was downstairs in the kitchen. She’d insisted on washing the popcorn dishes. McGill took Kenny into the boy’s bedroom. Kenny sat on his bed; McGill sat on his son’s desk chair.

  “You want to tell me what Deke said to you, or is that private?”

  “No, it’s not private, not from you.”

  Kenny’s team had lost the game, 2–1, but he’d had three of their four hits.

  Kenny told McGill, “Deke said even Secret Service agents get scared sometimes, but they can’t show it, and they never let their fear get the better of them.”

  McGill nodded.

  “I’m glad he’s the one watching out for you, Dad.”

  McGill smiled. “Yeah, me, too. Leo’s not bad either.”

  Kenny lit up. “Yeah! I didn’t know he was a racecar driver. Maybe that’s what I should be. I mean, if Mom won’t let me join the Secret Service.”

  “Or,” McGill suggested, “maybe you should get good grades, become a snappy dresser, polish your manners, and see if you can’t marry a girl who’ll become the president. Then you can have a lot of cool guys working for you.”

  “Well, if the girl looked like Patti, that wouldn’t be too bad.”

  Hearing his own words, Kenny had the grace to blush. McGill laughed and told his son good night, promising to look for a way he could keep in touch with his friends.

  He went to Abbie’s room and waited for her, sitting on the edge of her bed. When she came, he was surprised at how mature she seemed at only fifteen. God, but some young man was going to be lucky when he found her. If McGill didn’t scare him away with threats of what would happen if he ever made Abbie unhappy.

  “What can I do for you, sweetheart?” McGill asked.

  She raised her arms and let them drop, stuck for an answer. She sat next to her father.

  “I don’t know, Dad. At first, I thought there had to be some way you could get rid of those jerks who’d even think of hurting Kenny and Caitie and me. Kill them if you had to.”

  She looked at her father to let him know she was serious.

  “But then I thought if you killed them, that’d only make other people mad. And if you killed them, too, there’d be still more. That’s when I realized how many people there must be in the world who do bad things for no reason other than they can’t get their own way. Maybe I’m not so great myself,
thinking I could kill people.”

  McGill put his arm around his daughter.

  “You’re a great kid. Do you know what your name means?”

  “Gives joy,” Abbie said softly.

  “That’s right, and that’s just what you’ve done your whole life. To your mother and me and everyone who’s ever had the pleasure of knowing you. That’s pretty great.”

  Tears started rolling down Abbie’s cheeks.

  “Then why would people want to kill me?”

  McGill sighed and held his daughter closer. She buried her face on his chest.

  “Because there are bad people in the world. That’s what you’ve come to realize. It’s a realization that scares everyone sooner or later. But you also have to understand that defending yourself doesn’t make you bad … even if you have to kill someone to do it. Both morally and legally, it’s permissible to defend yourself. To whatever extent is necessary.”

  Abbie looked up at him.

  “Is that why Mom has a gun now?”

  She surprised him with that one; he’d have thought Kenny would be the first to find out.

  “I got home from visiting my friend Becky early the other day. I heard Mom arguing with Lars while I was still outside.”

  McGill told her honestly, “Your mother is afraid she’ll be the last line of defense for you and your brother and sister. She wanted something she could fight back with; Lars is having a problem with that.”

  “Can I have a gun, too?”

  McGill winced and shook his head. “Kids with guns is very a bad idea.”

  “What about Dark Alley then?” she asked.

  She surprised him with that one, too. Like a good male chauvinist, he’d thought maybe he’d teach Kenny someday, but it had never occurred to him that either of his girls would want to learn. Dark Alley was vicious. But maybe vicious was exactly what Abbie had in mind.