The Echo of the Whip (12 page)

Vice President Jean Morrissey stepped to the lectern in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room. The newsies knew enough to come to their feet just as they would for the president. They were all well aware that Patricia Grant had said her number two would step up to handle domestic matters of state until her fate had been decided by the Senate. The prevailing assumption, though, was that the VP would handle things quietly, off-stage so to speak.

Her appearance before an overflow media contingent in the White House was a surprise. Press Secretary Aggie Wu had given the newspaper, Internet and TV people only 45 minutes notice. The stern look on the vice president’s face and the taut posture of her body said a big story was about to break; this wasn’t just a PR move by the administration.

“Please be seated,” the vice president said. Once everyone was settled and quiet, she began. “After a long and meticulous investigation, the Department of Justice has concluded that Congressman Philip Brock conspired to assassinate President Patricia Grant during a visit to Inspiration Hall in 2013. A warrant for the congressman’s arrest has been issued, but the FBI has been unable to locate him at either his Washington condominium or his home in Pennsylvania.

“Congressman Brock also owns a large property in Costa Rica. At the request of our government, Costa Rican authorities went to that property to take the congressman into custody and begin extradition proceedings. But they didn’t find him there either. Workers on the property in Costa Rica told the local authorities that Congressman Brock had been there recently but left after only one night in residence.

“It is the opinion of the FBI that the congressman knows of his legal jeopardy and is fleeing prosecution. The DOJ has been in touch with Interpol. Congressman Brock is now a wanted person by the international law enforcement community. Relevant authorities are searching to see if there are records of any other real estate purchases the congressman might have made abroad.

“In another matter of great concern, the FBI has arrested six members of the United States House of Representatives and four United States senators.”

Rumor had spread through the Washington press corps that the FBI was looking for Brock, but not that he’d been connected to the plot to kill Patti Grant. So that was shocking enough. The second bombshell that ten members of the legislative branch had been arrested left the newsies goggle-eyed. What the hell was going on? When had the country become a banana republic?

Jean provided elucidation. “The six representatives and four senators are all members of their respective bodies’ armed services committees. They are being charged with several counts of massive fraud that amount to looting the federal treasury of billions of dollars. Also under consideration is the question of whether they should be charged with complicity in the killing of Jordan Gilford who was employed by the Department of Defense in its inspector general’s office.”

Someone in the back of the room said, “Holy shit.”

Jean gave the reporter a pointed look:
Do that again and you’re out.

Everyone else in the audience got the message, too.

“The man who shot and killed Mr. Gilford, Geronimo “Jerry” Nerón, has pled guilty to the crime and is cooperating with the Department of Justice to help investigators determine who was directly involved in hiring him to assassinate a decent and brilliant man whose job it was to make sure the taxpayer’s dollars are spent honestly and efficiently. Once those individuals directly involved in the crime are identified, a determination will be made as to how far the legal liability for Mr. Gilford’s death extends.”

The vice president paused for a breath. Aggie Wu handed Jean a bottle of water. She took a sip and gave the bottle back.

“Our government has known the taint of scandal almost from its first days,” the vice president said. “In a way, that’s understandable. We’re all human; we’re all imperfect. We make mistakes. But the idea of settling our political differences with violence or enriching ourselves through massive acts of theft goes beyond simple personal flaws. Such boundless ambition speaks of a hunger for power and wealth that is destructive to democracy, and it must stop.

“In the near future, the Senate will be examining the motives of the president regarding the question of whether her actions were intended to result in a woman’s death. As you’ve just heard, four members of that body are themselves now facing criminal prosecution, as are six members of the House of Representatives that impeached the president. It seems to me that this moment of crisis is also a time of opportunity. We have to set things right for both the executive and legislative branches of our government.

“Doing only half the job would be insufficient.”

Jean Morrissey took a breath and lowered her head for a moment.

When she looked up there was a grim smile on her face.

“I might as well announce now that I intend to run for the presidency in 2016. It is my fervent hope that I will not take office until Inauguration Day 2017. If I should arrive in the Oval Office before then, I guarantee the American people I will do my best to see that they have a federal government, in all three branches, in which they can take pride.”

Jean left the room without taking any questions.

Patricia Grant and Galia Mindel looked up from the iPads on which they had just finished watching the vice president speak. The chief of staff asked the president, “Did you hear what I heard? Did the vice president just declare war on Congress?”

A contemporary take on Mona Lisa’s smile etched itself on the president’s face. “That and tell them her housecleaning, so to speak, is what she’ll use to run for the presidency next year.”

The president laughed and clapped her hands in approval.

“You didn’t know this was coming, did you?” Galia asked.

The president shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”

“Do you approve of what she said, what she’s planning?”

The president laughed again. “Approve? Galia, I’d
pay
to see what Jean is going to do next. I’m almost tempted to … No, I can’t do that.”

“What?”

“For just a moment, I thought how pleasant it would be to leave all this.” Patricia Grant spread her arms to encompass the White House in particular and Washington in general. “Leave it to Jean and let her carry on the fight.”

“You mean resign?” the chief of staff asked.

“Come on now, Galia, be honest. Wouldn’t you like to get away, too? Do nothing but rest and read good books in a sunny place for a year or so. Recharge and then find something useful to do that doesn’t require endless political battles and swarms of Secret Service agents to keep all the violent loons in the world from killing you.”

“You put it that way …” The scenario the president had painted began to take root in Galia’s imagination. She had to shake herself to bring her focus back to the present moment. “You said you couldn’t do it, resign. Why not?”

“Jim thinks it would put me in the company of Richard Nixon.”

Galia nodded. “He’s right.”

“I might even make Tricky Dick look good after the other side gets done smearing my reputation.”

“They’d never stop doing that,” Galia said. “You’d become the political gift that keeps on giving. Whether it was your politics or your gender, you’d become the right’s perpetual piñata. Look how long they bashed Jimmy Carter.”

“Quite a while, as I remember. Until Bill Clinton came along to be the whipping boy.”

“Yeah, despite the booming economy and the first budget surplus in 50 years,” Galia said. “So we stay but we don’t do anything to inhibit Jean Morrissey?”

The president laughed one more time. “Hell, no. Maybe we’ll have the guys in the kitchen make some popcorn for us. We’ll put our feet up and enjoy the show.”

Sure beat dwelling on the idea the Senate might convict her.

For just a moment, Gene Beck, uncredentialed government assassin, thought he was imagining things. He’d been running along a stretch of Bee Cave Road when he saw the first of a series of billboards that seemed to be addressed specifically to him. He blinked hard to clear his vision, make sure neither his eyes nor his mind were playing tricks on him.

The first sign said:
Clean Gene …

Followed by:
You’re not invisible …

Time to get to work …

Before your world turns miserable.

Beck didn’t think for a minute that someone was trying revive Burma Shave jingles. The SOB who wanted him to kill James J. McGill was telling him that not only had he been found — right down to knowing the routes he liked to run on a given day — he was also threatening Beck with dire consequences if he didn’t play ball.

To his credit, Beck didn’t break stride or otherwise call attention to himself, and by the time he’d passed the final billboard an indignant rage burned with him. Did this asshole know who he was fucking with? He’d rip the guy’s throat out with a claw-hand grab right there in public if he had the chance.

Of course, the bastard knew enough not to come within arm’s reach.

Still, he might be watching. Observing whether Beck was smart enough to understand his message or had even noticed the signs. If Beck ignored the threat, the guy might feel he had to get closer to make his point. Come within hands-on range. Maybe not, though. He might just make good on the warning. Drop a ton of shit on Beck from 30,000 feet, move on and get some other sap to do his dirty work.

Beck turned around well short of his intended destination. He zigged and zagged on the way back to his rental house, hoping to catch a glimpse of someone following him. Thinking about things as he ran, Beck decided that his recruiter and handler, Nicholas Wicklow, wouldn’t be stupid enough to try to blackmail him.

Wicklow had accepted Beck’s vetoes of legitimate jobs he hadn’t wanted to do. He’d had to. If Beck ever went public with what he was doing for the government, Wicklow would go to prison, too. Well, that would be Wicklow’s fate if someone higher on the DIA’s organizational table didn’t kill Beck’s handler first to give the military spook shop plausible deniability.

Hey,
the big-timer could say,
I didn’t know Wicklow had gone renegade.

Still, Wicklow must have told his superiors about the jobs Beck had accepted, the ones that had worked out just fine. From the Pentagon’s point of view anyway. The bastards Beck had killed wouldn’t have agreed.

Maybe Wicklow wasn’t feeling so good about things these days either. What if some DIA muckety-muck had Wicklow killed preemptively,
before
Beck had been tasked with knocking off the president’s husband? That would eliminate any link between Beck and the DIA, and if Wicklow was already dead from some innocuous cause, say a fall off a ladder, it would look a lot less suspicious than if he died after Beck had made an accusation against the DIA.

With Wicklow the victim of an accident, any charge Beck might make against the military’s spy shop would be dismissed as a paranoid delusion, publicly accepted as such, and after a suitable length of time Beck might suffer his own mishap. No, that
would
look suspicious. It’d be better if he just disappeared.

Of course, Beck knew, he wouldn’t be safe even if he somehow managed to kill James J. McGill. If you agreed to play the part of Lee Harvey Oswald, you could be sure Jack Ruby was waiting in the wings. At that moment, Beck couldn’t see any good way out for himself.

The best he could do was buy time.

He at least had to
look
like he was going to kill McGill.

McGill took Mindy Crozier, the security guard from the fertility clinic, to breakfast at Canter’s Deli on Fairfax. He’d once taken his younger daughter, Caitie, there when he’d gone to visit her during a movie shoot she was doing at Paramount, not far away on Melrose. Both of the young women had chosen the deli because it offered breakfast 24 hours a day.

It was closer to lunch time but Mindy ordered the banana pancakes. She’d had to keep a dental appointment before meeting with McGill. He went with a BLT and kettle chips. Deke Ky, sitting alone at a table opposite McGill’s booth and keeping an eye out for any menace greater than a plate of high cholesterol, asked for a cup of coffee which he didn’t touch.

Nobody working at the deli kvetched about such a stingy order taking up a table. They remembered McGill and the tip he’d left from his last visit. More than one staffer asked where his cute daughter was, and mentioned that they were still behind the president. McGill’s heart warmed on both counts.

Once they were left alone with their meals, Mindy said, “It must really be something, being married to the president, huh?”

McGill noticed Deke tilt his head ever so slightly, the better to hear the response.

He said, “Being married to my wife is the highlight of my life; her being the president is another matter entirely.”

“Yeah, but the two of you never would have met if she hadn’t gotten into politics, right?”

McGill gave the young woman a look. Her eyes looked tired from being up all night, but otherwise she was the picture of youth and health. Clear complexion, freshly polished teeth, trim figure but not a workout fiend. A Girl Scout just coming into full bloom.

In some ways, she reminded him of his older daughter, Abbie.

She responded to McGill’s silent examination by saying, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to get personal. I just thought I should read up on you a little, after you said you’d like to talk with me. Hope that’s all right.”

McGill smiled. “It’s more than all right. It’s what any good cop would do, check out the other guy before you put yourself into an uncertain situation.”

“Thanks, but I’m not so sure about becoming a cop anymore.”

“No?”

“Unh-uh. I’m not so sure I’m even going to keep working security much longer.”

“Because of what happened at the clinic,” McGill said.

“Yes. The paramedics who came to take me to the hospital? The older one said getting hit by a taser is the closest thing to knowing what it’s like to be struck by lightning.”

“You check that out, too?” McGill asked.

She nodded. “I did the research, if that’s what you mean. A taser packs 50,000 volts. Lightning, they think, could go as high as a billion.”

“Amazing anyone survives that.”

“Sure is. Even a 50K jolt like the taser can mess with a person’s memory or keep her from thinking straight. But I’m clear-minded enough to know I don’t ever want to get tased again. Or shot either.”

“Perfectly sensible,” McGill said.

“Kind of chicken-hearted, too.” Mindy made a couple of clucking sounds. Her eyes brightened when McGill laughed. “I read that you and the special agent over there have both been shot, and you both stayed on your jobs.”

“Sure, but everyone knows women are smarter than men.”

“I don’t know about that. We make mistakes, too. We just usually keep ours more private.” She grimaced and shook her head. “Only a few of us cartoon characters get their heinies zapped when they’re supposed to be holding down the fort.”

McGill grinned. He liked Mindy’s spirit “Don’t be too hard on yourself. You were set up.”

That assertion changed her mood in a hurry. “What do you mean?”

“Dr. Hansen told me you need to correctly hit a seven-key sequence to open the door the thief used to enter the clinic.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, that’d mean there are 5,040 different possible combinations just using the numbers on the keypad. But there are two more keys, an asterisk and a pound sign. So now we’re talking hundreds of thousands of combinations.”

Mindy saw where McGill was going. “But whoever zapped me got it right on the first try.”

“Someone tell you that?” McGill asked.

She shook her head. “I checked the digital log.”

“Good for you. Does the log keep a record of when people hit the wrong keys and have to start over?”

“Yes, it does. You get only two tries to get it right or someone inside has to let you in. Usually, that happens only when there’s been an office party and somebody had a little too much to drink at lunch.”

“So what does it say that the thief got it right the first time, other than he hadn’t been drinking?” McGill asked.

“He knew the code and practiced,” Mindy said. “It wasn’t his first time; he’s a pro.”

“Right. Now, the code for the keypad, how often is it changed? Regularly, I hope.”

“Yes, first of every month.”

“Does the new code come from someone in the clinic or someone at the security company that installed the system?”

Mindy blinked twice. “I don’t know.”

“You think you could find out, discreetly?”

She thought about that. “Yes, I think I could.”

“The LAPD is going to look into the source of the code, too. They’ll investigate to see how many people had access to it.”

“Then why do I need to look? Just to help you?”

“Pretty much. But I think the thief is most likely not an Angeleno. If he lives outside the city, that’ll mean the LAPD will have to get another police entity involved. Who knows how much importance they’ll place on the theft? The whole thing might go into a figurative deep freeze, and the guy who zapped you can rest easy.”

Mindy frowned. She didn’t like that idea.

McGill had another unhappy thought for her.

“You should be prepared to have Detectives Zapata and MacDuff consider you as a suspect, a person who knew the code and might have provided it to the thief.”

“Me? But I got —”

“Your heinie zapped? Yeah. What could be better cover for an accomplice? You’re young and healthy. Chances were you wouldn’t be permanently hurt.”

“How do you know how healthy I am?” she asked.

McGill let her work it out.

“You checked up on me, just like I did with you.”

He nodded. “I even looked at your extracurriculars in high school and college. No drama club or acting classes. Some people can lie effectively without any training, but I don’t think you’re one of them. I don’t think you were in on the theft either. I can’t say how the local cops will feel about that, though.”

Deke caught McGill’s eye. “Here comes the LAPD now.”

Zapata and MacDuff had just entered the deli. They spotted McGill and headed his way.

Deke got to his feet, screening McGill and Mindy from the cops.

“You don’t have to help me if you feel uneasy about it,” McGill told Mindy, slipping her one of his business cards. “But if you’d like to lend a hand, I’d appreciate it. You don’t have to say anything to the cops about that, but otherwise play it straight with them. Okay?”

She nodded and slipped his card into a pocket.

“Will you stick around if they start asking me questions?” Mindy asked.

“Sure,” McGill said, “if that’s what you want.”

“I do.”