The Third Coincidence (5 page)

Suddenly she had a sense that someone had been there. Which was absurd, of course, and yet that would explain Jingles’s unusual behavior when she first came home. Had he been there while she sat naked on the edge of the bed petting Jingles? While she showered? Was he still here? Her heart slammed back and forth inside her chest like a clapper pounding a bell.

After tearing the room apart looking for the bra, without finding it, she got her 9-mm Beretta, checked the closet, and the locks on the front door and the windows. Then she slid the gun under her pillow, turned out the light, and went to bed.

7

CIA Special Assistant McCall will handpick his own squad and report directly to the president, without interference from the other intelligence agencies.

—CNN Headline News, 6:30 a.m., June 6

The skin on his cheeks and neck had been chewed by teen acne in the way aphids disfigured a young rose leaf. He had purchased a ticket to San Francisco using the name John Kimble and dressed as an ordinary traveler with a carry-on bag, just another passenger read- ing a newspaper while awaiting his flight.

He recalled his father repeatedly fulminating at the breakfast table about the Supreme Court justices and Federal Reserve gover- nors constituting the unelected government that was really
the man
, strangling the representative government put in place by our forefa- thers.

His father would have gone ballistic if he had lived long enough to see the Supreme Court set aside the people’s election and anoint their own choice for president of the United States.

The nobility of his cause excited him. Once aroused he could find calm only through sex. Because he felt more alert afterward, he believed these dalliances should be work-related, tax-deductible ex- penses.

His mother had left enough money to fund both the completion of his father’s work and the satisfaction of his cravings.

During the flight he reflected on the last few days. Events were

32 David M. Bishop

escalating just as he had expected. Years ago, as a young member of the FBI’s electronic surveillance unit, he had been a face in the crowd at a large joint CIA-FBI meeting headed by Jack McCall. When he had heard on CNN that the president would meet with McCall, he had watched the White House entrance often used for quiet meetings. He had recognized McCall when he pulled up to the security gate, and waited to follow him home. That night he had staked out McCall’s residence and saw a woman arrive. With his lap- top and her license plate, he learned her identity and address. While she had been with McCall, he went to her apartment and had not gotten out by the time she returned home.

He had fought down his desire to take her when he had seen her body in the bathroom mirror, but he could not resist the playful act of stealing her underwear. Had he killed her and McCall, the gov- ernment would have been more careful about protecting the iden- tities of their replacements. They didn’t know him, but he knew them and where they lived.

After landing in San Francisco, he took a cab to the downtown Mar- riott Hotel, paid cash and checked in as John Powell, a different alias than he had used to buy his plane ticket. In the unlikely event Mc- Call somehow picked up his trail, the ticket name could not be tracked to the hotel where they might find his fingerprints or DNA. From his room, he called an escort service and spoke with the manager, telling her he wanted a woman with medium-length black

hair and large breasts, but not the streetwalker look.

Momma had never looked cheap.

After the manager’s assurance that she would send one of her best girls, the man flopped into the overstuffed chair that accepted him as a catcher’s mitt accepted a fastball. After plopping his feet onto the cushy ottoman, he took out his laptop that held more than two years of information on the habits and movements of all the cur- rent U.S. Supreme Court justices and Fed governors, and their fam- ilies. He had also started putting together data on some of the

the third coincidence 33

leading candidates being floated in the press to replace the now de- parted justices. Also files on the rumored nominees to fill the va- cancy he had created on the Federal Reserve Board.

And there will be more. I promise.

He had bestowed the honor of being the next sacrifice for Amer- ica upon Supreme Court Justice Donald Quincy Breen. At first, bachelor Justice Breen had ranked poorly because his movements had been too unpredictable. All that had changed when Justice Breen and a Baltimore attorney, Ms. Judith Ashcroft, unexpectedly announced their wedding plans.

It had not been difficult to get information on Judith Ashcroft, a thirty-six-year-old ex-beauty queen, who had grown up spoiled by her old-money family. She believed in the government’s responsibility to care for those not capable or willing to provide for themselves. An- other family of rich pigs longing to practice largess using money taken from hardworking Americans. If she really felt that way, she’d use her own money. The media colored it a solid marital merger with the more liberal wife expected to take the edge off Breen’s rep- utation for being right of the political center.

The killing of a U.S. Supreme Court justice and his bride on their honeymoon would guarantee coast-to-coast headlines. After using his toes to leverage off his loafers, letting them drop silently to the plushly carpeted floor, he hacked into the e-mail of Mrs. Cor- delia Ashcroft, Breen’s new mother-in-law. Several days ago, in her inbox, had been an e-mail wherein Judith told her mother that she and her new husband would not, as reported by the media, honey- moon in Maui. Instead they would quietly slip away to spend June seventh, eighth, and ninth in the honeymoon cottage of a resort near Depoe Bay on the coast of Oregon.

He glanced at his watch and saw that it was six, an hour before his escort companion would arrive. In the classified section of the local paper he found a private party trying to sell a used Chrysler van. He agreed to the seller’s asking price, subject to his seeing it the next morning. After that he dropped to the floor and did fifty

34 David M. Bishop

pushups and fifty situps. Then he went into the bathroom and washed his armpits and crotch.

At seven sharp he heard a soft knock, and opened the door to see a naked leg slide out through a slit in the woman’s floor-length coat. “Hello,” she said, before smiling. “I’m Kitt.”

Her voice made him think of a hot fudge sundae. A perfect open- ing act before tomorrow’s main event.

chapter 8

Highly placed sources report that NSA Director Quartz told President Schroeder: We don’t need McCall.

—Washington Times, Editorial Page, June 6

He left the downtown San Francisco Marriott feeling contempt for the beautiful people living in their high-priced, ocean-view man- sions, while the disadvantaged lived in vacant buildings and drove grocery carts stuffed with their possessions through back alleys. His father believed America could no longer remain a country of op- portunity. That America must become a country of obligation. The government had to care for its citizens and assure equality for all. Once he had restored representative government, America would enter an expanded age of social engineering.

The cab he had hired outside the hotel took him to the home of the man from whom he had agreed to buy the used van. After check- ing to be sure the brake and taillights worked, he paid the full price in cash, telling the seller he was in a hurry and would return to- morrow to complete the transfer of the title.

Yeah, right.

Despite a cool ocean chill, while crossing the Bay Bridge he low- ered the driver’s window to taste the salty air. From there, he moved onto Interstate 80 north toward Sacramento.

Near Sacramento he again veered north, taking I-5 toward Port- land, Oregon. When the interstate angled eastward, the sunlight col- lided with his windshield. He slammed down the visor while, at the

36 David M. Bishop

same time, cursing a woman driver who had sped down an on-ramp and cut in front of him. He honked his horn. Her arm snaked out her window to give him the finger. He stuck his head out, and with the wind rippling his cheeks, yelled, “Fuck You!”

When he calmed down, he smiled. His life was right where he wanted it. No job. No identity. As loose a life as a yacht freed from its anchor. He had done his research, and he now had the time to do what he had long known was his reason for being.

He parked facing east in a rest stop south of Grants Pass, Ore- gon, and slept behind the wheel. When the rising sun woke him, he got back on the road. Later, he turned off the interstate and pulled into the first gas station where he was told that, under Oregon law, drivers could not pump their own gas. A stupid law, but his mother would have loved it. She always hated to pump gas. Said it made her hands smell.

While driving, he pictured the resort where he would meet up with Justice Breen and his new bride. He had not been there, but the resort’s Internet site was chock-f of pictures, including a map of the grounds. Even pictures taken inside the honeymoon cottage where he would join the newlywed’s celebration.

Two hours later he stopped for lunch, then continued north until exiting to make a toll-free call from a pay phone at a rest stop near Salem, Oregon’s capital. The crunch of the gravel near the phone booth reminded him of the sound of Santee’s Jaguar skidding off the shoulder of the road just before smashing through the guardrail.

“Resort at Depoe Bay, how may I direct your call?”

“I’m interested in reserving your honeymoon cottage.” The re- ceptionist put him on hold and his ears were instantly filled with the sounds of “Come Fly with Me
,”
sung by Steve Tyrell.

The song stopped. “Reservations. This is Peggy. How may I help you?”

Her voice had a smiley tone like the voice of his mother’s favorite singer, Doris Day. He moved close to the booth to shield out some of the road noise.

the third coincidence 37

“Peggy, my name is John Kimble. My fiance and I are consider- ing your resort for our honeymoon.”

“I’m sure your bride will love it here. Our honeymoon cottage is beautifully appointed and secluded near the rear of the property.” He imagined Peggy to be a woman who, through sitting all day,

had a bottom three sizes bigger than her top. “It does sound special,” he said.

“Thank you. What dates would you like?”

“It’s a bit last minute, but June seventh, eighth, and ninth.” “Oh, I’m so sorry. As you said, it is short notice. Those nights

have been booked. May I offer any other dates?”

“I doubt any other dates would work, but if they will, I’ll call again after talking with my fiance.”

Before leaving the Salem area he stopped at a chain discount store where he purchased a white long-sleeve shirt, a bow tie, a red baseball cap, and a roll of duct tape. At the checkout counter he threw in a Lou Rawls CD, paying cash for everything. A few minutes later he began drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and singing a duet with Rawls of “Fine Brown Frame.”

In Portland he took the Burnside Street exit to a part of town where research indicated he could purchase a gun on the black mar- ket. For the buy he wore boots with higher heels, a hat, and thick- rimmed fake glasses that would not distort his contact lenses. A 9-mm Colt 2000 with a fifteen-round magazine and a noise sup- pressor, came high. The seller took him to a location where he could test fire the weapon.

After completing the purchase, he returned to the interstate and went back the way he had come. At the junction for Highway 20 he turned west. This route would take him through lightly populated areas, bringing him out in the coastal town of Newport, Oregon, about ten miles south of Depoe Bay.