The Book of Fate

by Brad Meltzer

  Kicking the door open and hopping outside, we watch as the cab disappears up the lush but narrow residential street. We’re standing in front of a modest two-story conch cottage at 327 William, but as the cab turns the corner at the end of the block, we cross the street and trace the house numbers to our actual destination: the pale peach cottage with the white shutters and gingerbread trim at 324.

  Grabbing the wooden railing that leans slightly when you put weight on it, Lisbeth bounds up the weather-beaten front porch like she’s racing home for lemonade. But before she reaches the front door, her phone rings. Or rather, her colleague’s phone rings, since they switched back at the paper. “Lemme just check this,” Lisbeth says as she pulls the phone from her purse. She told her friend to only call if it was life-or-death. I look over her shoulder as we both check caller ID. The number is Lisbeth’s work line. Here comes death.

  “Eve?” Lisbeth answers.

  “Oh, thank God,” her colleague from the gardening section says, loud enough that it’s easy to hear. “Hold on, I’m patching her in right now.”

  “Huh—patching who in?”

  “Your phone call. I know you said not to pick up, but when I saw who it was . . . I mean, how’m I gonna say no to Lenore Manning?”

  “Wait . . . what? The First Lady?”

  “She asked for you—says she wants to talk to you about your column this morning.”

  I nod, telling her it’s okay, and with a click, Eve announces, “Dr. Manning, you’re on with Lisbeth.”

  “Hi, there,” the First Lady opens, always first out of the gate.

  “H-Hi, Dr. Manning.”

  “Oh, dear—you sound busy,” the First Lady says, reading it perfectly as always. “Listen, I don’t mean to waste your time—I just wanted to thank you for the generous mention for cystic fibrosis. You’re a darling for that.”

  Lisbeth is speechless as she hears the words. But for Lenore Manning, it’s standard fare. She used to do the same thing in the White House—anytime a mention ran, good or bad, she’d call or send a thank-you note to the reporter. It’s not out of kindness. It’s a trick used by nearly every President. Once a reporter knows there’s a person on the other end, it’s twice as hard for them to tear you down.

  “No, happy to help,” Lisbeth says, meaning every word.

  “Ask her if Manning went into the office,” I whisper in Lisbeth’s ear.

  “Ma’am, can I also—?”

  “Let me let you run,” the First Lady says, sidestepping with such grace, Lisbeth barely realizes she hasn’t even gotten the question out. With a click, Dr. Manning is gone.

  Lisbeth turns my way and shuts her phone. “Wow, she doesn’t miss an opportunity, huh?”

  “She’s just happy you called her an icon.”

  “She actually cares abou—?”

  “Let me tell you something: On days like today, when the wires are filled with Nico’s escape, and old clips are running from the Manning administration, she misses it more than anyone.”

  Lisbeth races back across the sun-faded porch, where a hand-painted wooden crab on the front door pinches a sign that says Crabby on more than just Mondays. She tugs on the screen door and reaches for the doorbell.

  “It’s open!” a throaty, cigarette-stained voice calls from inside, awakening a flush of old memories.

  I reach over Lisbeth’s shoulder and give the door a shove. Inside, the bitter acidic smell of chemicals drills through my sinuses.

  “Sorry, been airing out the darkroom,” a short, overweight man with a spotty gray beard and a matching head of brushed-back thinning gray hair announces. Wiping his hands with a baby wipe, he rolls up the sleeves of his creased shirt and steps a bit too close to Lisbeth. That’s the problem with White House photographers—always overstepping their limits.

  “You’re not Wes,” he says to Lisbeth with no hint of irony.

  “You must be Kenny,” she says, shaking his hand and taking half a step back. “Lisbeth. From the President’s library.”

  He doesn’t even notice. He’s far too focused on me as I step inside. Never taking his eyes off his subject.

  “The Boy King,” he says, whipping out my old nickname.

  “Popeye the Photographer Man,” I say, whipping his right back. He taps his pointer finger against the crow’s-feet of his left eye. After years of looking through a lens with his right eye, Kenny’s left is always closed a hair more.

  “C’mere, Bluto, gimme a kiss,” he teases, embracing me with the kind of hug you get from an old camp friend—a deep-tissue squeeze that brings with it a flush of memories. “You look fantastic,” he says, believing every word.

  During trips on Air Force One, Kenny ran the press pool’s poker game in back. As I step inside, he’s already searching for my tells.

  “Still can’t leave it behind, can you?” he asks, tracing my glance to the New York Times on his painted Arts and Crafts-style kitchen table. On the front page, there’s a huge picture of current President Ted Hartson standing at a podium, his hands resting just below the microphone.

  “Who took that? Kahan?” I ask.

  “Arms resting flat . . . no motion . . . no reaction shot . . . of course, it’s Kahan. President might as well be a corpse.”

  In the world of podiums and White House photographers, the only real action shot comes when the President moves. A hand gesture. Raised eyebrows. That’s when the firing squad of cameras pulls its triggers. Miss that and you miss the shot.

  Kenny rarely missed the shot. Especially when it mattered. But after thirty-five years of running city to city and country to country, it became clear that even if it’s not a young man’s game, it’s not an old one’s either. Kenny never took it personally. Even the best horses get put out to pasture.

  “So how’re the twilight years?” I joke, even though he’s barely pushing sixty.

  Cocking his Popeye eye, he motions us into his living room, which is clearly more of a welcome area for his studio. Centered around a pine cocktail table surrounded by four Mission-style armchairs, the room is covered almost to the ceiling with dozens of black-and-white photographs, all displayed in sleek white matting and museum-quality black frames. As I step toward them, I’m surprised to see that while most of the photos are in the candid journalistic style that White House photographers are famous for, the shots themselves are of young brides throwing bouquets, and well-clad grooms being fed mouthfuls of cake.

  “You’re doing weddings?” I ask.

  “Six Presidents, forty-two kings, countless ambassadors . . . and Miriam Mendelsohn’s bridal party, complete with a reunion shot of her Pi Phi pledge class,” Kenny says, all excitement and no shame.

  “You’re serious?”

  “Don’t laugh, Wes—I work two days a month, then get to go sailing all week. All I gotta do is make ’em look like the Kennedys.”

  “They’re really beautiful,” Lisbeth says, examining the photos.

  “They should be,” Kenny says, straightening one of the frames. “I pour my heart into them. I mean, life doesn’t just peak in the White House, right?”

  I nod instinctively. So does Lisbeth, who reaches out and straightens another frame. Just over her shoulder, on a nearby end table, I spot one of Kenny’s most famous photos of Manning: a crisp black-and-white shot of the President in the White House kitchen, fixing his tie in the reflection of a shining silver water pitcher just before his first state dinner. Turning back to the wall of brides, I find a blond beauty queen looking over her own shoulder and admiring her French braid in the mirror. The new shot’s just as good. Maybe even better.

  “So how’s the Kingfish?” Kenny adds, referring to Manning. “Still mad at me for taking the shot?”

  “He’s not mad at you, Popeye.”

  “Really? You tell him you were coming here?”

  “You crazy?” I ask. “You have any idea how mad he is at you?”

  Kenny laughs, well aware of his social standing in the Manning hous
e. “Some laws are immutable,” he says, pulling a thick three-ring binder off the end table with Manning’s picture. “White used cars sell best . . . strip clubs only shut down if there’s a fire . . . and President Leland Manning will never forgive the man who gave him this . . .” Flipping open the three-ring binder, Kenny reveals a plastic-encased, pristine copy of the most famous presidential photo since Truman held up the Dewey Defeats Truman headline: the black-and-white Cowardly Lion shot—Manning in mid-scream at the shooting, tugged down in the pile as the CEO’s wife became his human shield.

  “God, I remember seeing this on the front page the next day,” Lisbeth says, sitting in one of the armchairs as he lowers the binder onto her lap. “This’s . . . it’s history . . .”

  “What paper?” Kenny asks.

  “Palm Beach Post,” Lisbeth replies, looking up.

  “Yep, that was me. Another few thousand dollars I’ll never see.”

  Reading the incomprehension on Lisbeth’s face, I explain, “Since Kenny was working for the AP at the time, they made all the money from the reprint sales.”

  “Hundreds of newspapers and forty-nine magazine covers—all for bubkes,” Kenny says. “Meanwhile, that college kid NASCAR hired to take some shots for their Web site? He was freelance, lucky schmuck. Made $800,000—eight hundred thousand—and he missed the shot!”

  “Yeah, but who’s the one who got the Pulitzer for the full sequence?” I point out.

  “Pulitzer? That was a pity vote,” Kenny interrupts. “I didn’t squeeze the shutter in a hail of gunfire. I panicked at the noise and accidentally hit the button. Manning’s only in three of the frames.” Turning back to Lisbeth, he adds, “It happened so fast, if you looked away and then looked back, you missed it.”

  “Doesn’t look like you missed anything,” Lisbeth says as she turns past the first page of the book and stares down at the double-page spread of contact sheets filled with sixty or so tiny black-and-white shots, each one barely bigger than a postage stamp.

  “If you keep flipping, there should be six more—eight rolls total, including reaction shots,” Kenny says. “I’ve got most of them blown to 8 x 10, but you said the library was looking for some new angles, so . . .” From his pocket, he pulls out a photographer’s loupe—a small, round magnifier to see the details of the photos—and hands it to Lisbeth.

  For a half second, she forgets that she introduced herself as library staff. “No . . . no, that’s great,” she says. “With the ten-year anniversary of the shooting coming up, we just want an exhibit that does more than reprint the same old stuff.”

  “Sure, that makes perfect sense,” Kenny says dryly, his Popeye eye narrowing as he calmly stares me down. “With two years to go, it’s much smarter for you to come all the way to Key West than to have me make a few copies and mail them to you at the library.”

  Lisbeth freezes. So do I. The Popeye eye is barely a sliver.

  “No bullshit, Wes. This for you or for him?” Kenny asks. He says him in that tone that people reserve for God. The same tone we all used during our days in the White House.

  “Me,” I say, feeling my throat go dry.

  He doesn’t respond.

  “I swear, Kenny. On my mom.”

  Still nothing.

  “Kenny, please—”

  “Listen, that’s my phone,” Kenny interrupts, even though the house is dead silent. “Lemme go grab this call. I’ll be upstairs if you need me. Understand?”

  I nod, holding my breath. Kenny pats me on my scars like a godfather, then disappears up the staircase, never looking back. It’s not until I hear his upstairs bedroom door close that I finally exhale.

  Lisbeth pops open the notebook’s binder rings with a metallic thunk. “You take the loupe—I’ll take the 8 x 10s,” she says, unlatching the first eight sheets and sliding them my way.

  Kneeling over the cocktail table, I put the loupe over the first photo and lean in like a jeweler studying a diamond.

  The first shot is a close-up on the limo just as we pulled into the pits of the racetrack. Unlike the video at Lisbeth’s office, the background here is crisp and clear. But the camera’s so close up on the car, all I see are the backs of a few NASCAR drivers’ heads and the first row of people sitting in the stands.

  One picture down . . . 287 to go . . .

  62

  We’re looking for Kara Lipof,” Rogo said, stepping into the messy room that was as wide and long as two side-by-side bowling lanes.

  “Two to the right,” a male archivist with a phone number written on his hand said as he pointed his thumb two desks away.

  Housing all eight archivists in a shared space with nothing but a metal bookshelf to separate each desk from the one next to it, the room was littered with paper on every desk, shelf, chair, computer monitor, mini-fridge, and window ledge. Fortunately for Rogo, the paper didn’t cover the plastic nameplate on the front of Kara’s desk.

  “Kara?” Rogo asked warmly, always preferring to charm.

  From behind her desk, a woman in her early thirties with auburn hair and a trendy floral-print blouse looked up from her computer screen. “Can I help you?”

  “I hope so,” Rogo replied, adding a smile. “I’m Wes Holloway—from the personal office. I spoke to you yesterday about Ron Boyle’s files.” Before she could register any difference in Wes’s and Rogo’s voices, Rogo added the one thing guaranteed to get her attention. “The President wanted to know if you’d pulled them together yet.”

  “Yes . . . of course,” Kara said, fidgeting with the piles on her desk. “It’s just . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were coming to pick them up.”

  “You said there were 36,000 pages to copy,” Rogo added, keeping the smile as he repeated the details Wes gave him. “We figured if we came down here and flipped through them first, we’d save you on the Kinko’s bills.”

  Kara laughed. So did Dreidel, just for effect.

  “You have no idea how much you’re saving my life right now,” Rogo added. “Thanks to you, I’ll actually live to my twenty-third birthday. Okay . . . twenty-fifth. Twenty-ninth, tops.”

  “Don’t go turning me into a saint just yet,” Kara said, pulling out a thin manila folder. “Faxing you a crossword was one thing—but if you want access to Boyle’s full file, I need an official FOIA request, plus authorization that—”

  “See, that’s the tickle,” Dreidel interrupted, putting a hand on Rogo’s shoulder and trying to get him to step aside. Rogo didn’t budge. “If the President makes an official request, people take notice. They start thinking something’s happened. That there must be news with Boyle’s case. Next thing we know, Boyle’s family wants to know what the government’s hiding. We say nothing, they say everything, and that’s how conspiracies are born. So how about saving all of us the migraines and instead treating this as an unofficial request? As for authorization, I’m happy to sign for it.”

  “I’m sorry . . . do I know—?”

  “Gavin Jeffer,” Dreidel replied before she could even finish the question. “Y’know . . . from here . . .”

  Pointing a finger down toward her desk, Dreidel stabbed a piece of library letterhead just next to where his name appeared along the left margin.

  To this day, it was Dreidel’s greatest get. In order to build the Manning Library, a separate foundation was set up with a board of directors that included the President’s closest friends, biggest donors, and most loyal staff. The select group included Manning’s daughters, his former secretary of state, the former CEO of General Motors, and—to almost everyone’s surprise—Dreidel. It took surgically precise phone calls and begging in all the right places, but those were always Dreidel’s specialties.

  “So the files?” he said to the archivist.

  Kara looked to Rogo, then back to Dreidel. The way she flicked her thumb against the edge of the manila folder, she was clearly still on the bubble.

  “Kara, if you want, call the President’s office,” Dreidel adde
d. “You know Claudia’s number.”

  “That’s not what I—”

  “It’s not like we’re talking about NSC staff,” Dreidel said, continuing to pound away as he referred to the National Security Council. “Boyle’s domestic.”

  “And dead,” Rogo said, bouncing on his feet to keep the mood upbeat. “C’mon, what’s the worst that happens? He suddenly comes back to life?”

  For the second time, Kara laughed. For the second time, Dreidel pretended to.

  “And you’ll sign off on it?” she asked Dreidel.

  “Gimme the form and I’m your man. And if it makes you feel better, I’ll have President Manning write you a thank-you note personally.”

  Shaking her head, she stood from her desk. “This better not get me fi—”

  Rogo’s phone rang in his pocket. “Sorry,” he said, fishing it from his pants and flipping it open. Caller ID said PB Sher. Off. Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office.

  “I’ll catch up in a second,” he said to Dreidel and Kara as they headed for the door. Turning to the phone, he answered, “This is Rogo.”

  “Hey, fatty, we missed you in court today,” a man teased with a high voice and unforgivable New York accent. Rogo knew it instantly. Deputy Terry Mechaber. Palm Beach County’s number one writer of illegal U-turn tickets . . . and Rogo’s oldest friend in law enforcement.

  “Yeah, receptionist was sick, so I had to stay back and kiss my own butt this morning,” Rogo replied.

  “That’s funny, because I just spoke to your receptionist. Sounded like her lips were just fine—especially when she said you’d been gone since this morning.”

  For a moment, Rogo was quiet. “Listen, Terry—”

  “I don’t wanna know, I don’t wanna hear, I don’t wanna read about it in tomorrow’s paper,” Terry said. “And based on this fight you’re picking, I don’t even wanna see the bad TV movie with the scene of me passing this along to you.”