by Stuart Woods
“We’re encountering some weather this evening,” the first officer said, “so we’ll be leaving the seat-belt sign on for a little longer, until things quiet down. We could be encountering some severe turbulence, so I must caution you to keep your seat belts tightly fastened until we’re able to turn off the seat-belt light.”
Zeke flagged down a flight attendant who was struggling up the aisle. “Miss, would you please hand me that telephone?” he asked, pointing at the airphone.
“I’m sorry,” she replied, “but you’d need to place your credit card in the phone before the receiver will release, and I have to get to my own seat now; the turbulence is getting pretty bad.”
Zeke fished a credit card out of his pocket. “Could you do it for me?”
“All right,” she said, reaching for the card.
Zeke suddenly snatched it back. “Never mind,” he said.
The woman went to her seat and buckled herself in.
He couldn’t use a credit card. The name on it was Harry Grant, and the records would tell the cops which flight he had taken. “God damn it!” he spat.
“Sir,” the woman next to him said sternly, “I know it’s rough up here, but please watch your language!”
Zeke continued to swear, but only in his head.
Will wound up his speech and, once again, called Joe Adams and George Kiel to the podium to share in the ovation.
A little before two o’clock the following morning, a man named Walter Edmonds stood up in a bar on Melrose Avenue and, staggering a little, made his way to a nearby pay phone. He’d had too much to drink, and he already had one DUI on his driving record. He’d have to call his wife to come and get him, and she was not going to be happy about that.
He dropped a quarter into the phone and, bleary-eyed, began punching in numbers, hardly able to see the keypad. The phone began to ring. Suddenly a male voice said, “Welcome to the podium of the Democratic convention.”
“What?” Edmonds said, outraged that he had gotten a wrong number. He reached into his pocket for another quarter, and as he did so, lost his balance, falling against the phone. His shoulder struck the keypad.
The Los Angeles Coliseum was lit only by emergency lighting at this time of night. The night watchman stopped in the high seats and inserted his key into the time clock. Before he could turn the key, a fireball rose from the platform at the other end of the building, and the shock wave in the enclosed space knocked him off his feet. He sat on the floor, his back against the wall, and tried to clear his head. His ears ached from the noise and the shock wave. Before he could get up, the sprinkler system came on, immediately soaking him. A moment later, from somewhere outside, he heard sirens, and they were coming his way.
53
The van drove slowly down the street, past the row of neat houses. The Secret Service agent in the front seat spotted the number first. “That’s it,” he said, “but keep going.” He held his radio to his lips. “It’s quiet at the house; the front door is open, but there’s a screen door that might be latched. I want two vehicles in the alley behind the house; don’t go in until you hear the word from me, and use maximum caution. No unnecessary radio traffic.” He turned to the driver. “Make a U-turn and stop two doors short of the house.” He buckled on his helmet and zipped up his flak jacket.
Sixteen men—four agents and twelve in the LAPD SWAT team—hit the house simultaneously from front and rear. They swarmed around the ground floor, kicking open doors. The agent led a group up the stairs. The two bedroom doors were open, and the agent could see a bare foot across the doorway to one.
“All clear!” someone shouted.
The agent went into the room and looked at the body of the naked woman. “I want an evidence team in here, and tell them to bring a rape kit. I want swabs from the woman.” He looked around the bedroom. Except for the fact that there was a dead woman in the room and that the bed was bare of sheets, nothing seemed amiss.
The technician read from his notes: “The woman had sex, but I can’t tell you even approximately when.”
“I want semen samples for DNA.”
“There aren’t any,” the tech said. “She was douched with something that may be window cleaner. The bedsheets were in the washing machine downstairs, still wet, reeking of bleach. This is one careful guy. We haven’t been able to come up with a single fingerprint that doesn’t belong to the woman.”
“Shit!” the agent said.
Another agent came into the room. “Here’s what we’ve got so far,” he said, reading from a pad. “This Harry Grant rents an apartment in Vegas; it’s empty and extremely clean. He has a bank account with less than a hundred dollars in it, a social security number, and two credit cards, and he owns a two-year-old Lexus ES300. Here are his driver’s license and work ID photographs.” He handed his chief the pictures.
The agent looked at them. “The big moustache will be the first to go, then he’ll look like anybody. I want renderings of the photographs clean-shaven and bearded. My guess is his car is parked at a local airport, and it’s just as clean as this house.”
“The guy is a pro,” the other agent said.
The chief shook his head. “Not just a pro, a fanatic. Run these photographs against our files on militias, white supremacist groups, antigovernment organizations. We’ve got to have something on him.”
Will was lying in bed, spent and happy, having just made love to Kate. She was singing in the shower. He could not remember when he had felt so relaxed, so relieved, so unanxious. He flicked on the television.
“…and the ATF is saying that the explosive used at the Coliseum was the same type that was stolen from a construction site less than a mile away. Police and the FBI are looking for this man.” Two photographs of a sandy-haired man in his forties with a handlebar moustache flashed on the screen. “He is Harry Grant, of a Las Vegas address, who has been employed as a maintenance worker at the Los Angeles Coliseum. Police and Secret Service personnel raided the house where Grant rented a room early this morning. His landlady, Mrs. Rosa Rivera, forty-one, was found dead at the scene, having been strangled.”
Coliseum? Will thought. What was that about the Coliseum?
Kate came into the room, wearing only a towel. “Why do you look so funny?” she asked.
“It’s something about an explosion at the Coliseum,” Will said, switching to MSNBC.
Anchorwoman Laurie Dhue came on. “Secret Service sources have told MSNBC that the explosives planted under the Democratic convention platform at the Los Angeles Coliseum were probably set to go off during the speeches last night, but somehow didn’t detonate until the early hours of this morning. A Coliseum security guard was the only witness to the explosion.”
Kate sat on the bed. “It’s started,” she said.
“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Will said, getting up.
“I will if I want to,” she replied, staring at the television.
As he climbed into the shower, Will didn’t doubt for a moment that he had been the target of the explosion.
Zeke got off the bus at a crossroads, and his son, Danny, was waiting for him in the pickup.
“Hey, Daddy,” Danny said, kissing Zeke on the cheek.
“Hey, son,” Zeke said, slapping the boy on the back.
“You want to go straight home?”
“That’s good, but I won’t be there long.”
Danny put the truck into gear. “How’d your trip go?”
“Not so good,” Zeke said.
The chief of Will’s Secret Service detail sat across the coffee table, explaining what they knew. “We haven’t been able to connect this man with any organization so far, but I have no doubt that he’s a member of some group. He had a complete, verifiable identity established; that takes time and money, and Grant had no visible means of support, except a paper computer business.”
“Do you know what flight he took last night?” Will asked.
“No. Half the people on airplanes are businessmen flyi
ng alone. We’ve run down every single person who bought a ticket with cash at the airport, but he was apparently too smart for that. We don’t even know if he actually left the city. Leaving his car at the airport could have just been a decoy.”
“Do you think he was the same man who was in Santa Fe?”
The agent nodded. “No doubt of it; he was registered at La Fonda under the Grant name. Our people are checking out the room, but it’s been cleaned a couple of dozen times since he was there. The parking attendant at the hotel remembered his car.”
“What’s this about Santa Fe?” Kate demanded.
“There was a man on the roof of a hotel near the Plaza,” Will said. “I didn’t tell you about it, because it seemed so far-fetched.”
“I don’t want anything else kept from me,” she said. “I hope that’s perfectly clear.”
Will nodded. “Is the airplane ready to leave?”
“It will be by the time we get to Van Nuys,” the agent said. “We’re putting you on the Kiel campaign airplane, which takes a longer runway than Santa Monica, and anyway, we now regard Santa Monica as insecure. Van Nuys has an eight-thousand-foot runway, which is plenty. We didn’t think LAX was a good idea.”
“All right,” Will said. “We’d better get packed.”
Zeke sat in his living room, drinking coffee, surrounded by the other men in his group. The women were in the kitchen.
“That’s about it,” he said. “Somebody used the telephone line I had the stuff connected to, so I kept getting busy signals. It’s an incredibly long shot, but it happened.”
“What made it go off in the middle of the night?” one of the men asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe somebody called a wrong number. Who knows?”
“I like your technique,” another man said. “We should use it again sometime.”
“It didn’t work,” the first man pointed out.
“A fluke. I think it was brilliant, Zeke; it should have worked.”
“Shoulda, woulda, coulda,” Zeke said. “Next time, I’m going to have to use more direct means.”
“That’s gonna be dangerous, Zeke.”
“I think it was Harry Truman who said that anybody could kill a president if he didn’t mind dying himself. That goes for a candidate, too.”
“Zeke, you’re no good to us dead.”
Right now, I’m not much good to you alive, either,” Zeke replied.
George Kiel’s airplane was one of the new Boeing business jets. There were a bedroom and a shower aft, and an office adjacent. Up front there were seats for thirty-four staff and press. “Poor George,” Kate said, settling into a comfortable armchair. “Now he’ll have to fly in that fleapit you were using.”
“You don’t know George,” Will said. “With his connections, he’ll have something lined up in a hurry. I’ll bet he was on the phone to Boeing before he made his acceptance speech.”
The airplane was over Kansas on the flight to Washington when the news came that the president was dead. By the time they landed, the funeral had already been set for two days hence.
Will and Kate arrived at the house about dark.
“I’d hoped you could just rest while the Republicans hold their convention,” Kate said.
“I’ll rest,” Will said. “The funeral is just one day.”
Kate turned to the Secret Service detail chief. “I don’t want my husband killed at that funeral,” she said.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Lee,” the man replied. “The senator’s detail is of presidential proportions now, and that funeral is going to have the tightest security in the history of the world.”
“You’d better be right,” Kate replied.
54
Will and Kate were filing into the National Cathedral for the president’s funeral. The organ was playing a prelude as the huge crowd moved toward the pews, and the echo of their murmurs mixed with the music to create a somber atmosphere. They were headed toward the seats reserved for senators when Will felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to find Freddie Wallace behind him.
“Morning, Will,” the senator drawled. “A sad day.”
“Yes, it is, Freddie. How are you?”
Wallace grinned a little. “I’ve been worse,” he said. “I haven’t had a chance to congratulate you on your nomination. Good going, boy.”
“Thank you, Freddie,” Will replied.
“Mind if I join you?” Wallace asked, sliding into a pew beside Will. “Good morning, Kate,” he said, leaning forward to speak to her.
Kate gave him a tight little smile, then turned her attention to the pulpit.
“Kate’s a little chilly this morning, isn’t she?” Wallace said.
“It’s a chilly time,” Will said.
“Anything I can do to help you in the election?” Wallace asked.
Will turned and looked at him, astonished. “Freddie, that’s quite an offer,” he said. “Are you forgetting your party affiliation?”
“Friendship is more important than politics, son. Ben Carr and I were as close as you can get, and I’ve always admired you, helped you when I could, behind the scenes, of course.”
“That’s very generous of you, Freddie,” Will said, not believing any of it. “I’ll tell you what you could do that would be good for all of us.”
“You name it, boy.”
“Help Joe, instead of me. He’s got precious little time left to serve, and I know he’d like to leave some substantive legislation behind. Help him get his package through.”
“As much as I love Joe, Will, there’s some pernicious stuff in that program.”
“It was put together with serious consultation with Republicans, yourself among them.”
Wallace shook his head. “I don’t know, Will.”
“Well, then, Freddie,” Will admonished gently, “the very least you can do for him is to stop spreading nasty rumors about him.”
Wallace looked shocked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Freddie, leave him alone. Let him finish his term and retire gracefully.”
“Will, I never said a word…”
“Listen to me, Freddie,” Will said, and his voice was no longer gentle. “The odds are at least fair that I’m going to be elected in November. I’d like to think that, if I’m president of the United States, you and I could maintain the same warm relationship we’ve always had, rather than something more…contentious.”
Wallace’s eyes narrowed. “Are you threatening me, boy?”
Will lifted his eyes from the program in his hand and turned to face Wallace.
“Yes, Freddie, I am. Joe is my friend; if you want me for an enemy, then you have only to harm him.”
Wallace was saved from replying by a sudden burst of organ music.
“Oh, look,” Will said, glancing at the program. “The first hymn is one of my favorites: ‘Standing on the Promises.’”
The audience plunged haphazardly into the rousing old Baptist hymn, and both men sang along without benefit of hymnbook.
At the reception for members of Congress that followed at the White House, Will was suddenly presented with a new attitude toward him from people of both parties; he was being treated more like a president than a senator. When it was his turn to present his condolences to the first widow in the reception line, he found himself standing next to Howard Efton. After they had both done their duty, Efton pulled him over to a window of the East Room.
“Congratulations on your nomination, Will,” Efton said, shaking hands.
“And good luck to you at your convention, Eft. Actually, it looks as though you won’t need much in the way of luck. You seem to have it just about sewn up.”
“Well, we’ll see,” Efton said. “Will, I’ve been hearing disturbing rumors about Joe Adams.”
“I’ve heard about those rumors,” Will replied.
“Where are you in all this?”
“I’m between Joe and anyone who wants to hurt him,” Will s
aid.
“I hear at least one columnist has the story.”
“It would be a grave error for any journalist to publish an unsubstantiated rumor of that sort, and it would be an even graver error for any public figure to lend credence to it.”
“You could be right.”
“Eft, we haven’t gotten over the impeachment episode yet, and this business could have the effect of making things infinitely worse between the parties. I, for one, would take the same umbrage to some published report that I would to an attack on my wife.” Might as well kill two birds with one well-thrown stone, Will thought.
“I’ll do everything I can to see that neither of those things happens,” Efton said.
“I’d appreciate that.”
Efton smiled. “Of course, anything else is fair game.”
Will smiled back. “I think we should both choose our weapons wisely, lest they cut both ways.”
“That’s good advice, Will,” Efton said. “Now, we’d better get back to the ladies.”
The two men returned to their wives, who were chatting woodenly. Will took Kate’s elbow, and whispered. “Rumors about Joe are rife,” he said. “I’ve done what I can to tamp them down.”
“I’ve just heard that Joe is going to announce tomorrow that Jim Browner is his choice for VP. Maybe that will take some of the strain off the situation.”
“I hope so,” Will said, “but I’m not going to count on it.”
55
Zeke logged on to the Internet and did a search for Senator Will Lee. Immediately, he found the campaign web site and, shortly, had the senator’s travel schedule, which the site said was updated daily. He printed the schedule and logged off.
Later, at Harv’s house, he met with his group. “Okay,” he said, “I’ve got the senator’s travel schedule for the rest of the campaign.”
“Won’t it change from time to time?” one of the men asked.
“Sure. So what I want to do is to pick an event that won’t be changed, something the senator can’t afford to miss.”