The President's Henchman

by Joseph Flynn

  “Why the hell not?” Crogher demanded.

  Winston Strawn, the head of the uniformed detail at the northwest gate, who’d last seen Holmes, was feeling less flip than he had been earlier. Not that he could have done anything to prevent McGill from leaving … but he was beginning to worry.

  “The cabbie hasn’t responded to repeated calls from his dispatcher. So we don’t know where he is, or if Holmes is still with him, or if not where Holmes was dropped off.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Crogher muttered. “Did you ask about this guy? Get his story.”

  Strawn nodded. “The company owner gave us his name and background. Bharat Singh. From India.”

  “A Muslim?” Crogher asked.

  “Sikh. Described as a good family man. Going to college part-time. Dependable.”

  “Yeah, dependable. Except we can’t find him when we need to. Call Metro PD. Tell them we want this guy if he’s on the street. Want him right away. But approach with caution because we don’t know if —”

  Crogher’s cell phone rang. Someone calling to cheer him up, no doubt.

  The president.

  “Special Agent Crogher? My husband isn’t answering his phone.”

  “No, ma’am. He’s not in the White House.”

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “No, ma’am. He left in a taxi approximately forty minutes ago. Destination unknown.”

  “Try looking for him at his office on P Street.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “I’ve just heard from the CIA. They’re en route.”

  “I’m leaving right now, ma’am,” Crogher said, racing toward his car.

  McGill looked at Damon Todd, and asked simply, “Want to talk?”

  His eyes had adjusted to the low light coming through his office windows. He’d had a good look at the man. His appearance was extraordinary. Capable of frightening small children or intriguing grown women. The man’s eyelid muscles were clearly defined.

  When Todd didn’t respond, McGill added, “I mean, as a psychiatrist, you must have had any number of people telling you their problems. But who do you get to open up to?”

  Todd laughed. “You mean, would I like to confess?”

  McGill shrugged. “If that’s what you feel like. You’re in no legal jeopardy if you do. There’s no one here but you and me. Anything I can assert you can deny.”

  Todd remained silent.

  “Okay, let’s start with something safe,” McGill said. “I saw a photo of you and Chana when you were younger …” McGill paused as he saw Todd tense. “… You used to wear eyeglasses back then but you don’t now.”

  Todd relaxed, seeing no threat in this.

  “You could be wearing contact lenses, but I don’t think so. I’m betting laser surgery. LASIK. Do I have that right?”

  Todd nodded.

  McGill said, “Sure, because it’s obvious you believe people are perfectible. Just look at you.” He held up a pacifying hand as it looked like Todd might jump out of his chair. “Hey, I meant that as a compliment. I mean, all my life I’ve tried to stay in shape, but compared to you I look like a powdered donut.”

  “I work very hard,” Todd said, settling back in his chair. “At everything I do.”

  “I respect that. So what I’d like to know is how can we talk without you getting upset. Because I’d really rather not shoot you. I’ve put enough holes in the plaster as it is.”

  “You want me to incriminate myself,” Todd said. “I’m not stupid.”

  “Of course not. Let’s talk about something else. What do you think of the president?”

  Todd looked nonplussed. Then he laughed again. “You mean, your wife? I don’t pay much attention to politics if you’re hustling my vote.”

  McGill laughed, too.

  “No, I was wondering what you think of her as a person. You know, someone who was a model, an actress, a philanthropist, a widow, and a president. What do you make of someone like that?”

  Todd took the question seriously.

  “She’s obviously an exceptional person. High intelligence, formidable willpower, an effective and purposeful self-image … aided and abetted by a very attractive appearance. Which, for a woman of her age, she must maintain by a vigorous effort.”

  “She swims and works out daily,” McGill said.

  “Commendable.”

  “She’s not without flaws, though.”

  Todd was intrigued. It was always fun to learn people’s weaknesses. Especially the flaws of the high-and-mighty. “Such as?” Todd asked.

  “Well, there are many people who think the second time she wed, she married beneath herself.”

  Todd snorted. “Very ingratiating. And equally transparent.”

  “She’s infertile,” McGill added.

  “A physical deficit beyond her control. Unless the condition was caused by venereal disease.”

  McGill shook his head.

  “Then it’s no one’s fault, certainly not hers.”

  “True. But it causes her emotional insecurity.”

  Todd leaned forward. Not to bolt, but with real interest.

  “I could help her, you know.”

  “I try to fill that role myself. I’m a layman, of course, but I’m devoted to her. There’s pretty much nothing I wouldn’t do to make her feel better. I’m sure you know what I mean.”

  Todd sat back without offering a response.

  “You feel the same way about Chana Lochlan, don’t you?”

  Once again Todd sat mute. But he clenched his fists.

  McGill switched his gun to his left hand and opened a desk drawer with his right. From the drawer he took a stapler, a stopwatch, a box of pushpins, a coffee mug that said WORLD’S BEST DAD, a polished stone paperweight etched with the words, “Let’s rock!,” and a silver cigar holder, sans cigar, that he’d been given on the occasion of Caitie’s birth. He laid these items out in a row across his desktop. Todd watched carefully.

  His interest grew keener when McGill put his gun into the drawer.

  “Perhaps you’ll feel more comfortable talking now.”

  Todd smiled wolfishly, a predator presented with a plate of lamb chops.

  “I should point out two things,” McGill said. “I didn’t shoot you earlier even though I could have. And at close quarters I could kill you with any of the objects within my reach.”

  Todd laughed once more. He didn’t believe McGill.

  Max Lucey came out of his bathroom at A-Sharp Sound after a protracted bout of abdominal spasms and diarrhea. He’d gone to dinner that night with his ex-wife, at her invitation and at her apartment, and they’d eaten Mexican. His ex, Maria Esperanza Ignacia Ramirez Lucey, knew her way around a Tex-Mex kitchen like nobody’s business.

  But that night her cooking had hit him like seven courses of ExLax.

  Made him wonder if their parting had been as amicable as he’d thought.

  He got back to his studio and saw the flashing light. Someone was at the front door. He poked his head out of the studio and took a look. Couldn’t see anyone standing there. But the light stubbornly kept on flashing. What the hell was going on?

  He went to the front door, opened it, and found Dikki Missirian lying there looking like he was dead. At that moment, Max was glad he didn’t have anything left inside to lose. Then he saw McGill’s Post-it note. He dragged Dikki inside, found a pulse, called 911.

  That accomplished, he went his Post-it note instructions one better.

  He got the .45 he kept at the back of the store and went to see if he could help Jim McGill.

  McGill said. “So you think I’m no longer a threat?”

  “Not to me,” Todd said.

  McGill chose not to debate the point at the moment.

  “Then you should feel free to answer my questions,” he said. “Because you can dispose of me after we talk. Right?”

  Todd was still suspicious, but his ego forced him to agree.

  “What do you want to know?�
�� he asked.

  “Well, the point I was getting at earlier about my wife. She’s not perfect, even though she might seem that way to a lot of people. But the imperfections, at least to me, are further endearments. And seeing her overcome life’s hurdles and evolve new roles for herself is very rewarding. But you don’t view things that way, do you? You want to, what, machine away a person’s flaws? Manufacture a better self. March your little creations out into a brave new world.”

  “Most people have a lot of room for improvement,” Todd said. “Most of them don’t have the inner resources or the help of a caring companion to make strides on their own. And a brave new world would surely beat the hell out of the one we have now.”

  McGill shrugged. “You’ve got a point, up to a point … but you went about proving it the wrong way.”

  Todd leaned forward, a beautifully defined cheek muscle twitching.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I think you would have done better if you’d continued to look like the academic you once were. But you met Chana, saw what she’d done with her body, the anorexia athletica, and something in her obsession appealed to you. A physician friend of mine told me the male counterpart is called bigorexia. Guys develop bodybuilder physiques and still think they’re not big enough. You haven’t done that exactly, but you’re somewhere in the neighborhood.”

  Todd began to grind his teeth, and his jaw muscles bulged.

  “That’s why the CIA had its doubts about you. I’ve heard they think your work has possibilities. It’s you they wonder about. Tell me, were you bullied as a kid?”

  Todd leaped to his feet, but no sooner was he upright than the paperweight from McGill’s desk whizzed past his head, ticking his left ear. Cracking the plaster wall behind him.

  McGill said, “You’d better sit back down.”

  “Man with a gun coming out of the ground-floor shop,” Crogher’s driver, Carstairs, said in a low, tense voice.

  “I’ve got him,” the SAC responded, jumping out of the car before it had stopped moving. He put his weapon on Max Lucey, who was just turning to face him. “Secret Service. Drop your weapon.”

  The command hadn’t been loud. But it carried the tone of authority Max remembered from his days in the military. He first ceased all movement. Then he slowly placed his .45 on the sidewalk and raised his hands.

  Crogher and Carstairs quickly hustled Max back into his shop. There they found Dikki’s unconscious form and got Max’s story, including the facts that an ambulance should be arriving soon for Dikki and that Max had been on his way upstairs to help.

  Crogher quickly reached the 911 dispatch center, identified himself, said there was a possible hostage situation involving the president’s husband developing. He ordered that the first ambulance, already on its way, cut its siren and flasher. The paramedics were to park a block away and bring a stretcher on foot to take away an unconscious male.

  Additionally, two more ambulances were to be sent and park a block away. They were to be ready to come to McGill’s P Street address at a moment’s notice.

  With that taken care of, Crogher turned to Max for a quick briefing on the approaches to McGill’s office. He was just about to decide his next step when Carstairs interrupted.

  “Sir,” he said, “the CIA is here.”

  Daryl Cheveyo, wearing his halo brace, had entered the shop. He and Crogher looked at each other.

  Both of them said, “You!”

  Todd was back in his seat. He looked at the remaining objects on the desk in front of McGill. He hadn’t even seen McGill pick up the paperweight, much less throw it at him. But the polished rock had been the most obvious weapon to use against him, and now it was out of McGill’s reach. The other items available to McGill couldn’t possibly be as dangerous.

  Could they? He decided to think about that a while. McGill still wanted to talk.

  “Aren’t psychiatrists supposed to undergo their own analysis?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Todd answered.

  “Did you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You get as mad at your therapist as you did at me just now?”

  Todd just smiled. At something only he’d ever think was funny.

  When he didn’t elaborate, McGill asked, “You tried to advance your ideas to academia?”

  “I tried to the point where I would have been ostracized if I’d persisted further.” Now, there was more than anger in Todd’s voice; there was genuine hatred.

  “And you knew, of course, that other men of great vision had been similarly rejected by the pedestrian thinkers of their time.”

  “Yes!”

  “So you took your work underground. That’s the part I don’t understand.”

  “What do you mean?” Todd demanded.

  McGill leaned forward. “I mean, why didn’t you have the balls to say, ‘Fuck all you ivy tower pinheads. I’ve conceived a valuable therapy. I’ll prove it not in clinical trials but in the real goddamn world!’”

  For the first time, Todd seemed uncertain of himself. “I … I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Look, you’re a doctor. You’ve got an actual M.D. from a reputable school, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you have credibility. Legitimate professional standing. Why not set up shop in, say, California? They’re receptive to new ideas out there; self-improvement is the local pastime. Let me correct what I said earlier. Looking exactly the way you do right now, you’d be a sensation in Southern California. You could open a clinic in, say, Palm Springs, and you’d have all Hollywood and half of Silicon Valley breaking down your door. You could probably even wangle an exception for a new therapeutic use for ketamine hydrochloride.”

  McGill had taken Todd to the mountaintop and shown him the kingdoms of the world. The metaphor must have been lingering in his mind after Sweetie had covered the topic with Caitie. Unlike Jesus, though, Todd didn’t command his tempter, “Get thee hence, Satan!”

  He looked positively dazzled by the possibility McGill had laid before him.

  “You never thought of that?” McGill asked.

  “No, I wish I’d talked to you sooner.”

  Then it occurred to Todd he could still have the glorious future McGill had described. Who the hell needed the CIA? He could be famous. Wealthy. Revered. All he needed to do was kill McGill and go West.

  McGill read him like a book. Knew what was coming.

  “Just tell me one last thing, okay?” he asked.

  Todd was impatient now, but felt he owed McGill that much. “What?”

  “When you spoke intimately with Chana, what did you call her?”

  Todd hesitated. Revelation would be betrayal. But then Chana had betrayed him. And McGill wouldn’t live to talk about Todd’s perfidy.

  “Gracie,” he said. “Just like her father did.”

  “And her ex-husband, Michael Raleigh, whom you killed in Hawaii. Even after he’d divorced Chana and remarried. What was the problem there? You just couldn’t stand him coming between you and her in such a meaningful way? Hell, you were even threatened that I took her on as a client, weren’t you?”

  Obviously, Todd was. He charged McGill. His mouth was wide in a shout of rage. McGill was ready for him. The open mouth was unexpected, but it provided a wonderful Dark Alley opportunity. He flipped open the top on the box of pushpins and flung them at Todd. Several hit Todd’s face, but these were mere pinpricks. Four or five, however, went straight into his mouth. At least one lodged in the back of his throat.

  Choking on a pushpin caused Todd’s lunge at McGill to come up short. He landed atop McGill’s desk, scattering the objects that had been placed there. McGill plucked the stapler out of the air. He hit the stapler’s release button and the top half swung back. That feature made it convenient for stapling large stacks of paper. Also for swinging the office tool like a blackjack.

  McGill’s first blow, a backhand, took Todd squarely in the forehead, a staple lod
ging in a crease in the bone. Todd started to stagger back onto his feet, and McGill caught him with a forehand winner, stapling his left ear to the side of his head. Todd reeled and fell heavily onto his backside. He was down and still gagging but not out. He pulled his ear free from his skull and then, as McGill watched in morbid fascination, he stuck his fingers into his mouth and started pulling out pushpins. Damn guy didn’t know the first thing about fighting, but he wouldn’t quit.

  McGill opened his desk drawer and took out his gun.

  “I just went to confession,” he told Todd. “You going to make me go back and tell the priest I had to kill someone? How about a little consideration here?”

  Todd wasn’t interested in McGill’s moral dilemma. He dug the last pushpin out of his throat. He pushed himself to his feet. He smiled at McGill, bleeding gums turning his teeth red.

  “Shit,” McGill said.

  Then, like the voice of God, Celsus Crogher commanded, “Freeze! Secret Service.”

  In a much more reasonable tone, another voice from the outer office added, “CIA, too, Dr. Todd.”

  Todd looked in the direction of the newcomers. Then back at McGill. After a moment’s indecision, he muttered something under his breath. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he blacked out, falling to the floor.

  No one was in a hurry to come to his aid. After a minute, Crogher sent Carstairs to fetch a bucket of water. The SAC, himself, did the honors of dousing Todd.

  When his eyes opened, Todd was changed. All the fight had left him. So, too, apparently, had the persona of Damon Todd. A young boy’s voice asked anxiously, “Who … who are all of you? Where am I?”

  McGill thought if the guy was that good an actor, he really belonged in Hollywood.

  The CIA in the halo brace stepped forward, and asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Danny … Danny Templeton.”

  “Do you know where Dr. Todd went?”

  “Who? Why are all these men pointing guns at me?” Danny started to cry.

  Daryl Cheveyo got Danny to lie on his stomach and allow Crogher to cuff his hands behind him. Then the SAC pulled Danny to his feet.