He shrugged. “I'll call the networks and let them know what a high roller you are.”
“Did Phil Wylie hire you?”
“You're with Nichols, right?”
“Right.”
“I Googled you.”
“Good for you. Now answer my question.”
“Greaves hired me to help him with the Wylie case.”
“To do what?”
“To shadow a couple of people.”
“A couple meaning two?”
“A couple meaning two.”
“Do I get the names?”
“That's where the negotiations start.”
“I could always come across this table and pound your face in. Would that start the negotiations?”
“I pack heat.”
“Mickey Spillane, 1948. That's an old song, pal. I pack heat, too. But I'd hate to mess up this pretty booth with your blood.”
“Two thousand dollars for the reports I gave to Wylie.”
“Believe it or not, I don't have two grand on me.”
“I want it in cash so there's no way to trace it to me.”
“You don't like to pay income tax.”
“Not only that, but selling this kind of thing, this gets around I have to think of my reputation. People might get the idea that I'm double-dealing them. You know, I get information on one guy and he pays me. And then I turn around and sell the same information to his enemy. That could put the hurt on my business.”
“And trench coats don't come cheap.”
“You don't like my trench coat?”
The waitress came with our drinks. “I told my friend here that if I worked on you long enough you'd go home with me.”
She smiled at me. “He really say that?”
“Well, he didn't say it specifically about you. He said it in a more general way. But you were included.”
“He couldn't get me to go home with him if he had an Uzi and a bag of gold coins.”
Shadows, International smiled. “You'd be a challenge but I think I could swing it.”
She shook her lovely head in disbelief and walked away.
He said, “Bitch. She just wanted to embarrass me in front of you. Wanted to make my work harder for me. Wants me to work real hard for my nookie tonight.”
Say what you want about delusional people, they're an awful lot of fun to listen to sometimes.
“Okay, rock star, let's get serious here. I can have the money for you tomorrow morning. How do I get it to you?”
“You leave it at the front desk of your hotel?”
“That sounds easy enough. And you leave the reports for me when you pick up the money. And you'll be damned sorry if the reports aren't there.”
“Man, you think I'd try and screw you or something?”
“Gosh, no. A man of your integrity?”
“So get outta here and let me work. That waitress don't want to go home with me, I'm sure I'll find some broad who will.”
“Probably a line around the block there'll be so many.”
He didn't like me much, but then the feeling was completely mutual. He worked both sides of the street and didn't make any secret about it. There are some things you just don't want to know.
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I
bought a Repairman Jack paperback in the hotel lobby. I'd been reading F. Paul Wilson since I was in college. The Jackster was his
greatest creation. I liked the idea of somebody who helped people just for the sake of helping rather than somebody who did good for self-aggrandizement. Superman kind of digs his power a little bit too much, don't you think?
I read fifty good pages. I turned out the light, expecting to get to sleep. But that didn't happen until I spent a useless half hour on a lot of what-ifs, a lot of dead ends, a lot of pointless speculation. Who'd killed Greaves? And where was the tape?
I finally got to sleep a little before midnight, but it didn't last long. The phone woke me at 12:49, according to the nightstand digital clock. My first thought was, as always, about my daughter. The parental terror that something had happened to the most precious person in your life. I rolled over, reached long, and grabbed the receiver.
“Hello.”
The voice was being filtered through some kind of electronic device. No gender. The words so muffled a few of them were lost to me. Like a bad recorded message.
“I'm picking up where Greaves left off. I have your tape and I want what Greaves wanted for it. One million dollars. I want it at nine P.M. the day after tomorrow. You'll leave it in your car in your hotel parking lot. I'll”âmuffledâ“in the front seat.” Muffled. “There will be no other contact. If you cheat in any way the tape will go to a TV station immediately.”
I hadn't even had time to wake up properly. I was in a dream state for a few minutes after the call. I knew the call was real, but it remained unreal somehow. I went to the john and took care of myself and then washed my face in icy water.
My guess was that I'd just been contacted by the person who'd hired Greaves. Maybe Greaves had passed the tape off before he'd been killed, making the search by at least two parties useless. Or maybe the
person who'd just called, Greaves's boss as it were, had been unhappy with Greaves and had killed him and taken the tape.
Whatever the case, we were back where we started. The tape in exchange for one million dollars. The way it was set up, they saw the money before I saw the tape. If the money wasn't there, the tape wouldn't be there. That simple.
I slept. Maybe it was pure escape. A retreat from reality. But I slept straight through until eight-thirty and even then I didn't want to get up, could have slept a few hours longer.
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B
y the time I got to headquarters, the staff had been at it almost two hours. I slipped into desk position and went to work immediately. The third new e-mail I opened was from a friend of mine at a large TV station. He said that there would be a new Lake spot premiering at eleven A.M. our time, that the substitution was made early this morning. Which had an ominous sound to me.
The spot would air half an hour from now. Gabe and Kate were the only two people in the office at the moment. I told them what was coming up.
“Maybe their oppo research people found something,” Gabe said. He sounded properly nervous. But there was amusement in his eyes. Though he might pretend otherwise, he'd be happy to see Warren brought down, even if it meant that Lake would win.
Kate said, “Don't we have anything, Dev? We really need to fight back with something powerful. Everybody knows that Lake gets a lot of money under the table from lobbyists.”
“If that was a crime,” I said, “you couldn't get a quorum for a vote in Washington. We need something a lot stronger, something that's unique to Lake.”
“Any idea what he came up with?” she asked.
“Wish I did.”
“This could blow us right out of the water.” The glee in Gabe's voice was unmistakable.
“I know, Gabe. You're going to start crying any minute now.”
“Hey, what's that supposed to mean?”
“Forget it.”
I turned around in my chair, faced my screen, and went back to work. Difficult to concentrate. Most politicians come to think they're irreplaceable. That's why term limits have never gone anywhere. The divine right of kings has nothing on most pols in our country. They have manipulated the laws so that getting rid of them is virtually impossible. It can be done, but it usually takes a major seismic shift in public attitude to do it. And it usually comes as a surprise late in an election cycle. The last debate started us on our downward slide. And we hadn't recovered yet. Maybe this new commercial would contain a charge that would knock us even lower.
“It's almost eleven,” Kate said. “I'll turn on the TV.”
The three of us grabbed quick coffees and stood in front of the TV, pagans before a false god.
The spot was scheduled for 11:08, premiering on a statewide talk show that had a large audience.
The first seven minutes were spent with the host asking two female reporters which candidateâNichols or Lakeâheld the most appeal for women. One of them laughed and said, “Neither.” Then they got down to some serious assessing of the implications in the question. Both were manly men, though Lake was the manliest. Both were intelligent men, though Nichols was the most intelligent. And then came the health question. One of the reporters said that that was “the wild card.” And the other agreed. “I really felt sorry for Senator Nichols and what happened to him at the debate. But it made me wonder about his fitness to serve.” That was reporter one. Reporter two said: “He just looked so old
and frail suddenly. That's probably being unfair. You can look old and frail when you're eighteenâif you're sick enough. But this was the image that a lot of people took away from that debate. That here was this old man being helped by this younger, more vital man. This is one of those times when health really becomes an issue.”
The spot opened on a long shot of a man swimming laps in an Olympic-size indoor pool. We go into a medium close shot of the man swimming toward us now. The man is Jim Lake. We cut to Lake rising out of the water like a sea creature, water pouring off his tight, muscled body. And the voice-over accompanying all this: “A swimmer in college. A winner in Congress.” And then suddenly a long shot of Lake, surrounded by a six- and seven-year-old mixed-race group in swim trunks on the edge of the same pool, Lake demonstrating swimming strokes. Now they are all in the pool, Lake swimming slightly ahead of the pack, still showing them how to swim. “A family man, a fit man, a man who never tires of fighting for the right things, the good things in American life.” And we end on a freeze-frame of sea creature Lake in all his trim, muscled glory coming up out of the pool again.
“Motherfucker,” said Laura, who'd come in just as the spot had started to play.
For half a minute or so, hers was the only comment.
Gabe said, “I thought he played football in college.”
“He was out one year because of an injury, so he swam,” Kate said.
“What'd you think, Dev?”
“Corny and obvious, but it keeps on message that Warren is a broken-down old man too tired to do anybody much good.”
“That's such bullshit,” Teresa said, coming through the door. “I watched it out front with the volunteers. I should do a spot about how virile he is.”
“Yeah,” I said. “If you could work the phrase âsex machine' in there a couple of times, that'd be helpful.”
Teresa blushed, as if just now realizing what she'd said. “Well, you
know what I mean. This is ridiculous. Somebody put something in his drink. He's fine now.”
“Do you think they'll stay with this health thing for the rest of the campaign?” Laura asked me.
“Unless we can force them off it. Put them on the defensive.”
“Is that possible?” Kate said. “Do we have anything that could do that?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I need to talk to Warren. Anybody happen to know where he is?”
Teresa said, “He's between TV interviews. He should be back here in another half hour or so.”
“Great. Thanks. Guess I'll get back to work.”
Teresa came over and said, quietly, “We could lose this, couldn't we, Dev?”
No point lying. I nodded.
“They blame him for that stupid drug he took. It's not fair.”
“No, it isn't. But it's politics.”
Then she said what was
really
on her mind. “Maybe we should've accused Lake right away. You know, of hiring somebody to put the drug in the drink.”
Her voice still wasn't loud, but it was enough that everybody heard her. Everybody started paying attention to the conversation now. Everybody knew what she was saying. That this was my fault because I'd told Warren we shouldn't make any kind of accusation until we could prove it absolutely.
“If you're asking me if I handled it correctly, Teresa, maybe I didn't. Maybe I should've suggested that we go on the attack. Make Lake the bad guy right away. But we had no evidenceâand we still don't.”
“People make unsubstantiated claims all the time, Dev.”
“Al Sharpton comes to mind. I don't think I want to throw in with him, do you? Bush, Cheney, people like that? They made a lot of unsubstantiated claims, too.”
“You're being silly. If you think you made a mistake, you could at least admit it.”