by Joseph Flynn
The French security people never heard Patti speak anything but their native tongue. Anything that needed to be said in English went directly from the president’s lips into McGill’s ear. Given this conduct, the French thought the blonde woman was McGill’s French mistress, and he had a thing for having his ears stimulated. Both of which met with their approval.
McGill and Patti stayed in the top floor apartment of a building in Saint-Germain owned by August Pruet, M’sieur le Magistrat’s father. The lower stories of the building were occupied by the Secret Service. The French government provided air patrols in the skies above the flat when the First Couple was in residence.
7
At Patti’s request, Yves Pruet joined her and McGill for a private dinner. He brought his new guitar with him. After dessert and cordials, he played the Pathétique movement of Beethoven’s Sonata Number Eight in C Minor. Patti and McGill applauded the performance con brio. The president asked Pruet if he had anything in his repertoire that would allow McGill to accompany him vocally.
McGill wondered aloud if Pruet knew “Puff the Magic Dragon.”
The magistrate turned to the president and said, “Si vous devenez jamais fatigué de cet homme, je serai bientôt disponible.” If you ever grow tired of this man, I will soon be available.
Patti laughed, but declined to translate for McGill.
He gave each of them a dubious look and said, “Okay, if the two of you don’t appreciate Peter, Paul and Mary, we can always do Elvis.”
To McGill’s great surprise, Pruet played the opening riff of “Heartbreak Hotel.”
And the president’s henchman followed with a credible knockoff of Presley.
Patti told McGill that night in bed she was sorry the performance hadn’t been recorded.
He said, “Maybe after Yves and I leave our day jobs we can work up an act.”
8
The only time Patti took off her wig while in a public place was when she and McGill visited Gabbi in her hospital room. The curtains were drawn and two agents barred the door. Patti thought it was important to meet the State Department officer looking like the president of the United States, not a Jeanne Moreau impersonator.
Patti took Gabbi’s hand in both of hers.
“Thank you for your service,” she told her.
“It was my pleasure, Madam President. Except for winding up here.”
“You’re being treated well?”
“VIP all the way. I’m just a little worried my tap dancing days are over.”
The president let go of Gabbi’s hands and looked at McGill inquiringly.
“She’s pulling your leg, I think,” he said.
Gabbi grinned and said, “You don’t often get a chance to kid the big boss.”
McGill said, “She can be cavalier because she’s planning to retire.”
“Are you?” the president asked Gabbi.
“Yes, ma’am. I was going to resign. Now, I’ve been told I might qualify for a disability pension.”
“What will you do with your time, now that you’ve given up beating giants with sticks.”
“I’m a painter, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.”
“Really? I used to be on the school’s board.”
“I thought you looked familiar.”
“She’s doing it again,” McGill said.
The president bent over and kissed Gabbi’s cheek. “She’s earned the right. Ms. Casale, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see your portfolio.”
“Ma’am?” Gabbi asked.
“Mr. McGill and I will need our official portraits painted before I leave office. I’d like you to be considered for the commission.”
Gabbi was stunned.
“I’d be honored, ma’am. Where should I send my portfolio?”
Patti took out a business card and wrote on the back.
“Straight to the Oval Office,” she said. “This’ll do the trick.”
She gave the card to Gabbi.
On their way out, McGill bent over and kissed Gabbi’s cheek, too.
“Can’t make any promises on the president’s portrait,” he said, “but for mine the fix is in.”
9
The First Couple boarded Air Force One for the trip home before dawn. The vacation in Paris had surpassed their fondest imaginings. They sat side by side holding hands in the president’s private suite.
McGill said, “I’m not trying to rush things, but after this past week, when we leave the White House and the kids are off on their own, I’m really going to enjoy traveling with you.”
Patti seconded the sentiment by kissing her husband.
She might have lingered but there was a knock at the door.
A sharp knock.
McGill tensed as the president turned toward the door.
“Yes,” she said.
Colonel Michael Kuharich, the pilot of Air Force One entered.
“An urgent message for you, Madam President, from Chief of Staff Mindel. The call was initially held because we’re about to rotate.” Pilot jargon for take off.
“Thank you, colonel. You may proceed with our departure.”
The Air Force officer saluted and backed out, closing the door.
Patti picked up the phone. “What is it, Galia?”
The past week, everything had gone smoothly. Patti had received her daily briefings, relayed her decisions, and the government and the world rolled on without her being present in the Oval Office.
But now…
Galia came directly to the point. “Madam President, Erna Godfrey was found unconscious in her cell this morning.”
The president listened to the remainder of her chief of staff’s report and told Galia, “We’ll be taking off immediately. Keep me abreast of any further developments while we’re in flight.”
She broke the connection and looked at McGill.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Erna Godfrey attempted suicide.”
“How the hell did that she do that? Wasn’t she being watched?”
“She was. That’s why she’s still alive. A visual check was being done every quarter-hour. A guard found her collapsed on the floor of her cell.”
“What did she do?”
The president shook her head, still trying to comprehend what she’d been told.
“No one is sure how she managed it, but she swallowed her tongue.”
McGill recoiled at the very idea.
“But she’s not dead?” he said.
It was easy to see what kind of uproar there would be if the Reverend Burke Godfrey’s wife had managed to kill herself while in federal custody. The accusations that she’d been murdered would be swift and inevitable. The political fallout would be enormous.
The fact that the president was out of the country when the incident occurred would only add to suspicions. Patti’s absence would be construed as an attempt to provide complete deniability. And if the public ever learned Patti had been cavorting about Paris disguised as a blonde, God help them all.
“Not dead,” Patti told him. “Surviving on a ventilator. No one knows if she’ll ever come off it.”
“Does she show any signs of brain function?” McGill asked.
The president’s answer was lost to the thunder of Air Force One climbing into the sky.
About the Author
Joseph Flynn is a Chicagoan, born and raised, currently living in central Illinois with his wife and daughter. He is the author of The Concrete Inquisition, Digger, The Next President, Hot Type, Farewell Performance, Gasoline Texas, The President’s Henchman, The Hangman's Companion, Round Robin, Blood Street Punx, Nailed, One False Step, Still Coming, The K Street Killer and more titles to appear in the near future.
All of these novels are available for the Kindle through www.amazon.com.
The Concrete Inquisition
Digger
The Next President
Hot Type
Farewell Performance<
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Gasoline, Texas
The President’s Henchman [1st book in Jim McGill series]
The Hangman’s Companion [2nd book in Jim McGill series]
Round Robin
Blood Street Punx
Nailed
One False Step
Still Coming
Still Coming Expanded Edition
The K Street Killer [3rd book in Jim McGill series]
On the following pages, you may read free excerpts of the first two Jim McGill novels, The President’s Henchman and The Hangman’s Companion. You may also read free excerpts of Joe’s other books by visiting his website at: www.josephflynn.com
The President’s Henchman [excerpt]
Chapter 1
When McGill was formally introduced to the White House press corps, Helen Thomas asked him how it felt to be the country’s first First Gentleman.
He responded, “I prefer to think of myself as the president’s henchman.”
The line got a good laugh from the newsies; even Press Secretary Aggie Wu grinned. But Chief of Staff Galia Mindel reacted to the remark with a mighty frown. McGill saw the look of disapproval but didn’t worry. He didn’t work for her.
Just wait until Galia learned he’d gotten his P.I. license.
And his concealed weapon permit.
She’d be about as thrilled as the Secret Service had been. They’d changed his code name from Valentine to Holmes. Which McGill had laughed at and, on the whole, considered an improvement.
Galia wasn’t likely to crack wise, though. She’d try to fight him. And lose.
McGill’s career choice came with a presidential stamp of approval.
“What exactly does the president’s henchman do?” Candy Crowley inquired.
“Things nobody else can,” McGill told her with a twinkle in his eye.
Galia didn’t like that answer either.
James Jackson McGill became a minor historical figure when his wife, Congresswoman Patricia Darden Grant (R-IL), became a major historical figure by becoming the first woman to be elected president of the United States. McGill had worked as the de facto head of security for Patti’s presidential campaign. Before that, he’d been a Chicago cop for twenty years, and the chief of police for five years in the posh North Shore suburb of Winnetka, Illinois.
It was in this latter capacity that McGill met the future president. He solved the murder of her first husband, philanthropist Andrew Hudson Grant. Cracked the case in twelve hours.
Which was why the president-elect couldn’t argue with McGill when he told her the week before her inauguration that he was going to have to find something to do while she was busy running the country. He wasn’t ready to go fishing or spend all his time cutting ribbons.
“You still want to be a cop, don’t you?” Patti asked.
“Yeah.”
“But I know you don’t like any of the federal agencies. So you don’t want me to appoint you to run, say, the FBI.”
“No.”
“Do you want to stay in Illinois? Have a commuter relationship?”
McGill shook his head. Firmly.
“So what does that leave?”
“Private license,” he said.
Patricia Darden Grant was a very smart woman. Processed information like a supercomputer. But that one stopped her cold. Long enough to make her laugh, anyway.
“You … you want to be the private eye who lives in the White House?”
McGill said, “Why not? You’re the only one who gets to break tradition?”
What could she say to that? Only: “You’ll be careful, Jim?”
“Sure,” McGill said. “Won’t do a thing to embarrass you.”
“I wasn’t talking about politics. I can always get another job. But I don’t want to bury another husband.”
McGill kissed the most powerful woman in the world, loving her more than ever, and did his best to reassure her he would be around for a long, long time.
McGill absolutely refused to have more than one Secret Service agent assigned to guard him. The head of the White House Security Detail was an unsmiling humanoid named Celsus Crogher. Although Crogher was only in his late forties, his gray hair was turning white. His eyes were the color of silicon; his skin was slate. It was as if all pigment had been pruned from his family tree. Crogher wanted McGill’s protection closer to platoon strength. The president brokered a compromise: McGill would have one Secret Service bodyguard and an armed driver from the White House Transportation Agency.
McGill interviewed several men and women for each position. In the end, he picked Secret Service Special Agent Donald “Deke” Ky. The son of a Eurasian Vietnamese-American mother and an African-American GI father, Deke had tightly waved black hair, blue eyes behind epicanthic folds and skin the color of a new penny. Leo Levy was a self-described good ol’ Jewish boy from North Carolina. Long and lanky, with a face out of the Levant and an accent out of Andy Griffith, he’d driven the NASCAR circuit before getting into government work.
Both men had exemplary records, and each took a solemn pledge never to rat out McGill for anything he said or did. Celsus Crogher and Galia Mindel were not to be privy to any of the doings of McGill Investigations, Inc. Beyond that, Deke and Leo were to let McGill know if they detected any government busybodies snooping on him.
Starting in February, just after Patti’s inauguration, McGill walked all over Washington, D.C., like a rookie cop learning his new beat. Before meeting Patti, he’d visited the city only once, as part of an American Studies course at Saint Ignatius College Prep. Deke Ky walked between McGill and the street. Leo Levy idled along in a supercharged and armored black Chevy sedan a half block behind.
As often as not, McGill went unnoticed. When people did recognize him, they usually just smiled and called out hello. The exceptions were the elderly and the kids. Both groups wanted to talk with him, not infrequently from a distance of a few inches.
The kids’ questions were easy to answer.
Did he think the president was pretty? Gorgeous.
What sports teams did he like? The DePaul Blue Demons.
Had Michael Jordan played better in Chicago or Washington? Chicago.
Was he going to be president, too, someday? No. One president per family was enough.
The elderly had more serious matters in mind: war and peace, the economy, the environment, crime, immigration. Almost without exception they would rest a hand lightly on his arm as they spoke.
When an opinion was called for, McGill did not bob and weave. His answers were sincere and plainspoken, but he did preface whatever he had to say with: “Please understand, this is just my opinion, and I’d appreciate it if it stays between us.”
Nobody went running to the newspapers with McGill’s words of wisdom.
Quite often the old folks also asked for his help. With Social Security. Medicare. The Veterans Administration. At first, McGill didn’t know how to help. So he took people’s names and phone numbers and promised to get back to them. Soon, though, Deke carried with him a BlackBerry that stored the names and direct phone numbers of every top administrator in the federal and district governments. McGill passed them along to those in need of assistance.
And added, “Tell them Mr. McGill said you should call.”
Hoping he had the clout people imagined he did.
It turned out he did, and that was how his walking tours became news. Someone let it be known how helpful he’d been. Soon it became impossible for him to go out without a media horde at his heels and a throng of supplicants in front of him. No good deed went unpunished.
He had to start traveling in the back of Leo’s Chevy.
By the time the cherry blossoms appeared, he knew his way around town, at least a little. And he found office space to rent on P Street just above the Rock Creek Parkway. The building was a rehabbed three-story ivory-brick structure. It housed a commercial recording studio, A-Sharp Sound, on the first floor, and a small accounting firm,
Wentworth and Willoughby, on the second. W&W actually moved down one floor to accommodate McGill Investigations, Inc. The Secret Service explained that in the event of an emergency Mr. McGill might have to be evacuated from the roof of the building by helicopter.
McGill apologized to the other tenants for all the bother he’d caused — which included the feds investigating every employee of both existing businesses back to infancy to see if he or she might be a threat to McGill’s life — and compensated his new neighbors with tickets to a Redskins game or a Kennedy Center performance, per their preference.
On the morning in May when McGill arrived for his first day of work, there was a line down the hall. By ten o’clock, the queue ran down the staircase to the ground floor and out the front entrance. The building’s owner, an astute Armenian immigrant named Dikran Missirian, quickly rented several café tables complete with Cinzano umbrellas. He provided complimentary sparkling mineral water and gourmet coffee to the crowd waiting to see McGill.
Business cards were exchanged all around.
Dikki made several valuable business contacts that day.
McGill netted not a single client.
Without exception, the ladies and gentlemen waiting to see him were lobbyists. Sugar, sorghum, and sweet corn were among the foodstuffs they represented. Trucks, trains, and planes were just a few of their preferred modes of transportation. Albania, Algeria, and Angola were but the beginning of the countries whose interests they advanced.
None of them had a criminal matter or even a straying spouse to investigate.
All of them offered retainers, six-to-seven figures per annum, in the event they might someday need professional investigative services. McGill politely listened to each of them and respectfully turned down all of them.
He explained that he worked cases.
Couldn’t take money on the mere possibility that something might come up.
Didn’t say he’d never sell access to his wife, the president, but everybody seemed to understand. Most of them were gracious about being rejected. They’d given it the old college try and were happy just to meet him and shake his hand.