Both kept an eye and mind to their watches. Ambrose’s was apparently the most accurate. He looked from its dial to the telephone just at the instant it rang.
“The president asked me to join you on an extension,” Ambrose said, “in case he has a problem with his voice.”
“Of course,” said Atherton, as politely—if dishonestly—as possible. He picked up the receiver much as he might a ticking bomb. His hand was trembling again, as it had not since the first horrible night.
“Mr. President?”
“Larry, Irving told me how worried you were. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to call before this.”
The voice was the president’s. There was a definite hoarseness, a slight lack of resonance, and an unexpected nasal quality to certain words. Otherwise it was the same as always, the exact tone, the exact inflection.
“I appreciate your making the effort, Henry, what with all you’ve gone through.”
“Should have done it before this. I look forward to rejoining you in the White House, as soon as this terrible business is over and the doctors let me. When they don’t have me sleeping I’ve been rereading the collected papers of Lincoln. Inspiring, Larry, inspiring. I’ve always admired the man, as you know, but never so much as now. It must be getting shot.” Oddly, he began to laugh at the strained, bad joke, and then began to cough.
Embarrassed, Atherton looked to Ambrose, who ignored him.
“Mr. President,” said Atherton. “Irving and I have been talking about Central America, and your communications with Managua.”
Ambrose glared. “I told him everything is well in hand, Mr. President,” he said. “Especially the military situation.”
“Yes, Irving,” said Hampton. “Well in hand.”
Atherton had to play his card now, or not at all.
“Mr. President,” he said, “some of the legal staff, and congressional staff, have raised the question of the Twenty-fifth Amendment. In light of the seriousness of your wound and length of convalescence, they …”
“What’s that? What Twenty-fifth Amendment? Uh, what was that, Larry?”
“Mr. President,” said Ambrose, speaking very loudly, as though to drown out anything Atherton might yet have to say. “We’ve tired you enough. The vice president thanks you. I thank you. I’ll see you very soon.” He hung up the phone, and glared at Atherton.
“How dare you bother the president of the United States when he’s in that condition with a question like that?” Ambrose asked. “Are you so ambitious you’d try to have yourself declared acting president at a time like this?”
“Especially at a time like this. Colonel, someone has to be president, and that man is not functioning as one.”
“All I can say, Mr. Vice President,” said Ambrose, throwing some papers into his briefcase, “is that it’s going to be a long time before you talk to ‘that man’ again.” He snapped shut the briefcase and snatched it up. “I’m going back to Camp David. I’ll contact you when it’s appropriate.”
He walked out of the room in a perfect impersonation of the head of a military tribunal departing a court-martial. A moment later a Security Council aide and army major entered and took up the map and easel. They waited for the vice president to precede them before leaving the office and locking the door behind them.
Charley Dresden nearly stumbled through the door to his office, hobbled by fatigue and the painful stiffness of several injuries. He startled Isabel, more with his appearance than the odd hour of his arrival. He feared she would think him drunk, which he still was, a little.
“My God, Charley! Have you been in a fight?”
He slumped into a chair, wincing. “With a guardrail and a ditch. I had to leave the MG in a garage up in Cupertino. It needs a new radiator and front axle, among other things. Many costly things.”
“Your face is all cut up, and your hand’s bleeding.”
He looked down to where a streak of crimson had soaked through the bandage wrapped around his left hand.
“I patched myself up with the first-aid kit they had in the tow truck. I’m worried most about my knee. It’s getting a little swollen, but it still seems to work. Most of me seems to work.”
“Didn’t you have yourself X-rayed?”
“A hospital didn’t seem in order. They have policemen in those emergency rooms, you know, and I wasn’t sure I was up to passing a blood alcohol test.”
“Where were you?”
“Visiting an old friend. A wonderful old friend. I thought I’d come back early and get a head start on a very busy day. And now it’s almost noon.”
“Your beautiful suit. It’s ruined.”
There were huge tears at one knee and elbow. The suit coat was smeared with blood, oil, and grime.
“Yes. I’d better tidy up a little. We can’t go to lunch with me looking like a derelict.”
“What do you mean ‘lunch’?”
“At Antoine’s. As far as I’m concerned, I won my bet. I proved my point, on television, no less. Or didn’t you watch me on ‘The Jimmy Moon Show’?”
“Yes, Charley. But the president was on the radio this morning. Jim Ireland called up to crow. He said he’d be magnanimous in victory and have the police withdraw that warrant. He said he was even going to pay off your tab at Antoine’s, in honor of your never being able to have one there again. He was quite the smart ass.”
“We’ll have lunch. That alleged radio interview doesn’t change anything. It can’t possibly be real.”
“Charley, are you loco? I’ve been taking calls all morning from every screwball in California. There’ve been UFO people, Kennedy conspiracy people, Manson family people, right-wing nuts, left-wing nuts, and every other kind of nut. One woman complained that the FBI had hidden a microphone in her vagina and wanted you to find it. Other people have called saying they’re from the FBI, or the Secret Service, or the CIA. A lot of people just called up to swear at you. You’re not very popular, Charley. I wouldn’t go into Antoine’s if I were you. And I’m sure as hell not going there with you.”
“Did I get any serious calls?”
“You bet. Mr. Bolger called from the amusement park.”
“I’ll get right back to him.”
“Don’t bother. He said he called to tell you he doesn’t want you to handle his account. Freddy came by for his pizza commercials. I gave them to him.”
“How could you? I didn’t write any.”
“I did. I took some copy from a couple of years ago and just changed a few of the words. Freddy said it was fine. What can you say about pizza?”
“Thank you.”
The phone rang. Isabel answered quickly, listened with some exasperation, replied in a long stream of near-violent Spanish, and hung up.
“See?” she said. “You’re even getting Chicano screwballs.”
“Anyone else? A call from a Mrs. Calendiari?”
“No. Your friend Charlene Zack called. Said she’d call back. But I don’t think you’d better hang around for any more calls. Why don’t you stay home for a few days? You’ve got no work to do. And besides, you should see a doctor. If you hang around here, someone’s going to throw a rock through the window or something. My brother Tomas said I should get out of here. I think he’s right, Charley.”
“Very well. Can you give me a ride to Tiburcio? I’ve got to try to start my other car.”
“Sure, Charley,” Isabel said. She lived on the west side of Santa Linda, and it wasn’t all that far over the hill into the Heather River valley and the Tiburcio Canyon.
“We’ll take the electric typewriter,” he said. “You can use it at home, for whatever you need to. We’ll get a fresh start next week. No sense leaving it here to get wrecked.”
He stood up, finding himself in severe pain. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to help me with the typewriter, Isabelita.”
“I’m going to have to help you with you, Charley. I’ll come back for the typewriter.”
She drove a s
even-year-old Chevrolet that her brother, a mechanic, had carefully selected for her. It needed paint, but, to Charley’s knowledge, had never once broken down. She drove very swiftly and expertly, glancing nervously at him from time to time, smiling when he caught her at it, but looking worried when she returned her attention to the road, even more so when her eyes went to the rearview mirror. The calls that morning must have been quite frightening.
The shade of the tall eucalyptus trees reached for them as they wound into the canyon. The striking beauty of the little town and its majestic surroundings had a distracting, relaxing effect on Isabel, but Dresden was stricken with quite another impression. Tiburcio now seemed strange to him, a different place, one he had experienced only vaguely. He felt for no explicable reason a foreigner, an outlander, almost a time traveler—though he had left the town only twenty-four hours before.
Isabel started bearing to the right, following the main road into the town center, but Charley motioned her left onto a cutoff, onto the back road. Rumbling over an old, steel-reinforced wooden bridge, they climbed a sudden hill and then followed twists and turns until at length they came to the steep hillside that harbored Charley’s house and yard. The sunshine on the gravel of his drive and turn around was warm and bright.
“Muchas gracias, Isabelita,” he said. “I’ll call you first thing next week.”
“Charley.” She put her hand on his, holding him in the seat. “Just listen to me a minute. I like you a lot, okay? A lot. I think you’re a very smart man. My brother Tomas thinks you’re a loser and a screwball, but I know better. You made a lot of money two years ago and gave me a lot of it and I’m very grateful. My little sister’s going to college thanks to you.”
She leaned closer. Her dark eyes had never seemed so large, or earnest.
“But Charley. Something’s gotten into you and you gotta get rid of it. You’re drinking worse than I’ve ever seen you. You’re paying no attention to your work. You’ve got your mind set on this screwball idea of yours about the president and you won’t let go. You drive all over the place like a crazy man and now you almost got yourself killed. You gotta let go, Charley. You’ve gotta snap out of this before it’s too late. If you don’t, you’re never going to get any work in Santa Linda again, or anywhere. They’re going to make you into a joke. And I’m going to have to quit and go to work for some computer company. I don’t want to do that, Charley, but I will.”
He pulled free his hand, but only to squeeze hers. “Don’t worry, Isabelita. You won’t have to.”
“Take care of yourself, Charley. See a doctor.”
He lingered on his porch as she drove away, then withdrew into the sanctuary of his house. It, too, seemed strange and different—long his habitation, but now a very temporary one, merely the place where he had languished for the years that had interrupted his relationship with Madeleine Anderson. This was most importantly Charlene Zack’s house, the abode she had shared with him for so long, yet would do so now with a sort of stranger. He was someone else. He was the man he had been, the fearless young fellow from the East who would take California by storm and return to his homeland a conqueror. He no longer belonged in this place, but he knew not where to go. Or how.
There were further retreats for him, still, sanctuaries within sanctuaries—his whiskey, his mountainside, the deliriously remembered ecstasies and tendernesses of the night before, memories that belonged to him and no one else, that would forever be his most priceless possession now. He would resort to them. But first he must indulge a sudden, raging compulsion.
When he had left Maddy’s house it was with the firm resolve to honor her request, to let their happy ending be an ending, to let her recross the barrier that had separated their lives. During the night drive along the mountain ridge, until it had been truncated by his mindless accident, he had allowed himself no thought of ever speaking to Madeleine Anderson again. But now, beset by fatigue, pain, and love, he could think of nothing else.
He went to the phone by his favorite chair and window and dialed the number rapidly, but there was no answer after six rings. Calming himself, he dialed again with the utmost care and slowness, this time letting the ring repeat itself seven times, and then ten. To no avail.
She was gone, en route to Washington. He had no idea of her ultimate destination or how he might discover it, and her. It was a problem he must postpone. She was likely still on an airplane, with hours of flying over this enormous country still to go. So he went to his whiskey, his mountain slope, and his reveries. Drinking against the increasing pain in his leg, he remembered savoringly the look and feel of hers. He remembered the softness of her voice, and her touch. Reminding himself of her hair ribbon, he took it from his coat pocket as he might a religious relic. He put it softly to his bloodied cheek. Again he drank. In the sunlight he dozed, and then slept. The sun had moved to the other side of the canyon and long shadows were climbing toward him by the time he awoke.
This would not do. He was a man who lived by actions. Whatever his future with Maddy Anderson, there were more immediate matters to attend to.
Beginning with guns.
While fetching his best scotch from the bedroom bureau drawer where he kept it, he noticed that Zack had again taken his pistols, as she had done the last time he had fired one in the house. On that occasion she had hidden them in a burlap sack stuck behind a board in the garage. Knowing her nature, he guessed that this time she would do something as different as possible. After a few minutes pondering he ruled out the house. It was too small to afford many hiding places. That left this end of the property, either the flower garden or the lanai.
There were no fresh diggings in the garden. The space behind the loose bricks in the lanai base yielded nothing. The wooden mulch bin contained only mulch. There was an old refrigerator set at the back of the lanai that had never worked in all the years he had owned the house. He found the handguns in a cardboard box stuck behind some plant food boxes in the useless freezer compartment. Her six thousand dollars was in there as well.
It would be just as well to leave everything where it was. Then Charlene would not be provoked and he would be content knowing exactly where his weapons were. He would take just one, a small .32 caliber automatic, which he could keep easily at hand beneath his mattress or behind some books in his bookcase. This was California—Tiburcio. There’d been murders here, and junkie homosexual motorcycle gangs.
He started down the slope to the house and discovered he was not alone. His neighbor, Mrs. Mercredes, a dark-haired woman passing from middle age to elderly, was at her fence. His bloody face, torn suit, whiskey bottle, and pistol stuck in his belt did not seem to faze her. She spoke as calmly and simply as passing the time of day, though her subject was not a happy one.
“Charley, was that you shooting off a gun night before last?”
“I guess it was, Mildred. I’m sorry.”
“Herbert’s arthritis is hurting him bad lately, and he has a hard time sleeping. You woke him up in the middle of the night, and he never was able to get back to sleep.”
“I’m really sorry, Mildred. I didn’t know. It won’t happen again.”
“I don’t mind during the day, Charley. But not while Herbert’s sleeping. It’s hurtin’ him really bad.”
“Don’t worry.”
He reminded himself to buy Herb a bottle of Frenet Branca, the only really effective treatment he’d ever known for arthritis.
His next mission was the Armstrong-Siddeley. He and Danny Hill had reassembled the ancient car’s engine, but it had not been started in days. He slid behind the wheel and, with a prayer to the gods of fools and antique cars, turned the slightly bent key and depressed the starter button on the dirty floorboard. It produced only a groan. He waited patiently, then tried again. Three diminishing groans were followed by silence.
There was nothing for it but to wait for Danny Hill to come home from work. There was no place to do that but the Tiburcio Saloon and Grocery.
>
Steve Copley had reached Gettysburg just ahead of Kreski, in time to have the contents of Huerta’s toolbox set out neatly like museum exhibits, which someday they might be. He had managed, with his agency’s famous if not always effective efficiency, to have the Spanish of the letters translated into computer-typed English. There were three: one to a friend or colleague identified only as Emiliano, one to the nation of Honduras at large, and one to his dead wife, Dolores. They were all political—stridently anti-Communist—ending with proclamations of devotion to General Diaz, the Honduran president, and the government cause.
The pistol was expensive, a top-of-the-line Remington .38 caliber six-shot revolver, fully loaded, with a six-inch barrel and a box of cartridges. The currency was in neat, bound stacks of hundred-dollar bills, quite crisp and new. Making the only immediate contribution he could, Kreski put arriving aides to work tracing the bills’ serial numbers through Treasury headquarters in Washington.
“Walt,” said Steve. “Let’s take a walk.”
It was a pleasant afternoon for it. They went out onto the battlefield, halting finally by an old brass cannon, rendered green with age, one of a battery facing the Confederate lines. Letting his eyes follow the line of the barrel toward the distant horizon of dark trees, Kreski could almost sense rebel soldiers there. He turned to look at Copley’s handsome, well-groomed face.
“Bushy Ambrose is right,” Copley said, running his hand back and forth over the top of the cannon.
“About what?”
“The investigation. We’ve got a big pile of paper and it’s nearly all bullshit.”
“What do you mean?”
“You were up in New York today. Those Hispanics we busted—they’re strictly a narc case, aren’t they?”
“That’s my belief.”
“Precisely. The firearms we recovered in New York were a plant, Walt. A ridiculously obvious plant.”
By Order of the President Page 20