Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 1 Read online

  “Exactly,” Profitt replied. “And if we don’t like the direction in which that inquiry is heading, we’ll have to impeach the testimony of two Secret Service special agents, explain how it was that Speaker Geiger came to be at a wedding to which he had no legitimate invitation and …”

  “And what?” Dix asked.

  Profitt sighed. “And it’s been whispered in the House that Harlo Geiger had dirt on the speaker that she intended to use against him in her divorce proceedings. If we were to go after the other side in any Congressional investigation, I’m sure that dirt would come out. That whole circus makes the job less appealing than it ordinarily would be. Thinking about things now, I’d have to say my interest is no greater than fifty-fifty.”

  Hurlbert said, “Without a Republican Speaker, George Mossman becomes the second in line for the presidency.”

  Mossman, the senior senator from Hawaii, was the president pro tem of the senate.

  Couldn’t fool Howard, Profitt thought.

  “The party’s a mess,” he said. “The president leaves, the speaker dies …”

  And fools run for the White House, Dix thought, making sure he didn’t look at Hurlbert. He thought it might be time to update his résumé. Maybe he could speak with Profitt privately. As Hurlbert had pointed out, Profitt’s family knew when it was time to find greener pastures.

  That was when the House majority leader showed just how smart he was.

  He said, “You know, there is one way we could solve most of our troubles at a stroke.”

  “How?” Dix asked, uncertainty in his eyes.

  “Well, there is an eminent Republican the party could draft to be president,” Profitt said.

  “Draft?” Hurlbert almost choked on the word.

  He had no doubt that bastard Profitt didn’t mean him.

  “Who?” Dix asked, thinking he knew but wanting to hear it from Profitt first.

  “Mather Wyman. He’s still a Republican, isn’t he? He’s been on a winning presidential ticket. He has White House experience. He just captured Burke Godfrey without losing a man.”

  Senator Howard Hurlbert got to his feet, his face red.

  “Burke Godfrey is a friend of mine, goddamnit! He, Doak Langdon and I wrote the Support of Motherhood Act together.”

  Profitt told him, “As I recall, that piece of proposed legislation failed, and the last poll I saw said that seventy-seven percent of the American public approved of Acting President Wyman’s actions in Richmond.”

  “I won’t listen to another word of this,” Hurlbert said.

  A promise kept, he walked out.

  Dix looked across the table at Profitt.

  “Do you think Wyman would accept a draft?” he asked.

  “We won’t know unless we ask. What I’m sure of is if we run Howard Hurlbert or anyone like him against Patti Grant, we’ll lose.”

  “I’ve heard rumors the president isn’t well. Something happened to her when she was in the hospital for that bone marrow donation.”

  Profitt bobbed his head. “I’ve heard that, too, but I wouldn’t bet against Patti Grant if she lay in her grave with a stake through her heart.”

  The party chairman laughed nervously. “I don’t think I would either. But what about the twenty-three percent of the people who hate what happened in Richmond? They’re our base.”

  The majority leader said, “Our party has been moving to the right for thirty years or more. Seems to me it’s time to tack to the center. Campaign from there and then govern from the right. I seem to remember Patti Grant’s predecessor winning two elections that way.”

  “So do I,” Dix said. “Who do you think should make the first approach to Wyman?”

  Profitt placed a hand over his heart.

  “Well, I believe I am the ranking Republican in Congress.”

  Dix smiled. “Yes, Mr. Majority Leader, you are. You’ll let me know when you make your move? If the acting president were to accept, I’d have to forestall others from getting into the race. It would be best if we could keep too many people’s feelings from getting hurt.”

  Other than Howard Hurlbert’s, he meant.

  “Of course,” Profitt told Dix.

  They shook hands and the majority leader departed, feeling he had played things just right. He was a senior member of his party selflessly looking out for the GOP’s best interests. If Mather Wyman were to choose him to be his vice president, so be it.

  Charlottesville, Virginia

  Crosby and Anderson had a simple plan for Damon Todd after the three of them escaped from the Funny Farm: They would kill him the minute he stopped being useful. If it turned out he was bullshitting them about having a safe house nearby he’d become roadkill. Fling him in front of an eighteen-wheeler doing eighty and watch him become a stain on the blacktop.

  He wouldn’t be the first guy they’d done in that way.

  So they were taken aback when Todd told them, “The first thing we need to do is steal a truck.”

  “What for?” Anderson asked.

  He’d started to wonder if the little fuck was some kind of mindreader.

  “Transportation,” Todd said, waiting to see if his companions could grasp the concept. Feeling they were keeping up with him, he added, “We’ll also need to keep the truck driver alive and unmarred.”

  Anderson lost traction on Todd’s last three words.

  “No beating the shit out of him,” Crosby explained. “Or killing him.”

  “Exactly,” Todd said.

  “We’re going to kidnap someone and we’re not going to kill him? We’re not even going to muss his hair, so he can look neat when he goes home to his old lady?” Anderson asked.

  “That’s right,” Todd said.

  “You have a reason for doing things that way?” Crosby asked.

  “I do. You’ll like it when you see how it works.”

  Crosby shrugged; Anderson went along grudgingly. If they had to kill a trucker along with Todd, that was no big deal. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time was always a capital offense for everyone.

  Todd had one more detail to share. “You will have to intimidate the driver, get him to do as he’s told until we get where we’re going and I can take over.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Crosby said, “just where is this nearby safe house?”

  “Charlottesville,” he said.

  Virginia wasn’t a big state and its major college town was reasonably close. Crosby walked point keeping to woodlands; Anderson walked drag to keep Todd from trying to ditch them. They double-timed it and took little more than an hour to find a truck-stop and kidnap a driver returning to his rig from a trip to the men’s room.

  The driver was a bearded man who had to go at least two hundred and fifty pounds, but Crosby and Anderson manipulated him like he was a toddler learning to take his first steps. They got him into his cab and behind the wheel in a matter of seconds. All three of the driver’s unscheduled passengers sat in the seat behind the driver where they’d be unlikely to be seen by other motorists.

  Anderson controlled the driver with a grip that had a thumb on his cervical spine, an index finger on a carotid artery and the remaining three fingers positioned around the driver’s windpipe. Crosby saw Todd studying his partner’s technique.

  “No harder than playing a B-major chord on the guitar,” he told Todd.

  The instrument under Anderson’s hand drove exactly how and where he was told. He parked the truck behind a home improvement store on Woodbrook Drive in Charlottesville. Anderson finally let go of the driver’s neck, but grabbed a hank of hair with his other hand. Anderson shook some feeling back in his strangulation hand as the driver found his voice.

  “Please don’t kill me, I’m —”

  Todd leaned forward, put his head close to the driver.

  “I don’t want to know about your life quite yet,” he said in a soothing voice, “but we will get to that. If you do as you’re told, you’ll not only live, you’ll b
e on your way to wherever you were going within a few hours. Do you believe me?”

  “I want to,” he said, trying not to whimper.

  “Good. That’s an honest answer and a smart one. Stay that way and you’ll live, I promise you.”

  Crosby and Anderson spared each other a glance. They both admired Todd’s technique. But they hadn’t promised anything to anybody, except each other.

  “What do you want me to do?” the driver asked.

  Having accepted in some measure that he had a chance to live, he wanted to be helpful.

  Todd told him, “Your rig wouldn’t look right where my friends and I need to go. So the fellow holding your hair is going to stay with you. He’s the testy sort, short-tempered, given to spasms of violence. Just sit still and be silent and you’ll be all right. My other friend and I will be back within an hour. We’ll all go for a short ride in a car. Within two more hours, you’ll be back on the road following your normal routine. Can you manage that?”

  The driver wanted to nod, but Anderson’s grip on his hair was too tight.

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “Good.” Todd turned to Crosby. “Shall we go?”

  Crosby looked at Todd, then shared a silent exchange with Anderson.

  Both of them thinking Todd had them arm-barred, proned and at his fucking mercy.

  Metaphorically, yeah. But easier, even, than they’d grabbed the trucker.

  Unless they wanted to kill him right now. Having seen what he’d already accomplished, getting them this far, they didn’t. It would be to their advantage to do it later, if the prick didn’t outsmart them.

  Crosby said to Todd, “Well, yeah, we better, if we’re going to keep to your schedule.”

  He opened the cab’s door.

  Before leaving, Todd told Anderson, “Be nice.”

  Todd and Crosby were back in fifty-five minutes, Crosby driving a late model Range Rover Evoque, shiny and black. Anderson wanted to keep on disliking Todd, and he succeeded, but he couldn’t contain a growing respect for the guy. There had been missions he and Crosby had been on where someone as smart as Todd would have come in damn handy.

  Crosby lowered his window and gestured to Anderson to bring the driver to the Rover. The man was nervous being transferred to a new vehicle, but he didn’t do anything stupid and Anderson managed to get them both into the back seat without any problems.

  Crosby said, “You’re going to like this, my friend.”

  “Me?” the driver asked.

  “Yeah, you, too.” Crosby’s voice was full of good humor.

  The driver relaxed. Anderson got a bit of a grump on. Things were going too damn well. It upset his fundamentally pessimistic worldview. Some bad shit had to happen soon.

  If it didn’t, how was he supposed to have any fun?

  The big house sat on one hundred and seventy acres of wooded land. It was a white two-story Colonial with a horseshoe driveway. Of the four men in the Rover, only Todd had ever stayed in any home approaching the grandeur of this one, and even he had never owned anything so nice.

  He had a key to the front door, though, and he opened it to the others.

  Inside, sitting in the lotus position before a fireplace burning a blue gas flame, was Fletcher Penrose, a gray-haired man wearing white silk pajamas. He was oblivious to the strangers who entered his home. His silence and immobility scared the trucker; Anderson put his hand on the trucker’s neck.

  Lightly, Todd was pleased to see.

  Even better, that was enough to calm the fellow.

  Todd said, “There’s no need to feel alarmed, Mr. … You may tell me your name now.”

  “Lydell Martin,” he said turning to look at Todd.

  “The man you see in front of you, Mr. Martin, was once a bright but underachieving graduate school student. After working with me, he learned how to apply himself. To want to succeed. Now, he teaches both economics and computer science at the university nearby. He’s a renowned academic and a highly successful day-trader in stocks or other instruments. He owns this house, the car we arrived in and many other things. He’s single, but he enjoys the company of a number of accomplished women, without committing to any of them. Do you have any questions, Mr. Martin?”

  “Is he alive?”

  Todd chuckled. “Very sensible. All the riches in the world aren’t worth a damn, if you can’t enjoy them. Go ahead. Look at his face. See if he looks alive to you. Touch him, gently, if you want. See if he’s still warm.”

  Martin took advantage of doing just those things.

  Anderson paid particular attention to him as he did.

  “He’s alive all right. So what do you have planned for me?”

  “Do you like to hunt, Mr. Martin? Are you any good at it?”

  The trucker nodded. “I like to go out in deer season. I get my share.”

  “How would you like to hunt for opportunities to improve your life and be even better at it than you are at killing deer? I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to buy a place like this, but I guarantee your life will improve substantially.”

  Now, things seemed to be going too well to Martin, too.

  “You ain’t the devil, are you?”

  Todd laughed. Even Crosby and Anderson grinned.

  “No, I don’t want your soul or anything else, except your friendship. Ninety-nine percent of your life will remain yours. You won’t even remember anything that happened tonight. But sometime in the future I might call on you, and then you’ll do everything I ask of you.”

  If only Todd had been present, Martin might have tried to squirm out of any deal. With Crosby and Anderson on hand, the trucker understood that killing him was still an option. There was only one thing for him to say.

  “Sign me up.”

  Todd administered an injection of ketamine-hydrochloride to Martin. Fletcher Penrose, like all of Todd’s friends had firm instructions to keep a supply on hand at all times. The accepted use for Special K, as it was known on the street, was as an anesthetic, but Todd had found it to be ever so useful in hypnosis.

  He took the trucker deep into a K-hole, a state likened to an out-of-body experience, and learned his most secret longings and instructed him as to the best psychological approaches for achieving his goals. Martin was told to forget everything that had happened to him after arriving at the truck-stop. He would tell anyone who asked that after he got back on the road he started to feel dizzy so he pulled off to sleep. He would pass any physical he was asked to take and the episode would be passed off as a one-time thing. He would go about his life with a brighter attitude and fresh insights. His relationship with his wife and children would improve and …

  The only thing he had to remember from that night was a phrase that would place him entirely under the control of Damon Todd.

  Crosby came back to Fletcher Penrose’s house after getting Martin back on the road and saw Todd was working on Penrose. The professor was talking back, but clearly not in a conscious manner. He told Todd he had no complaints; he had everything he’d ever wanted.

  Anderson had been watching, but he broke off to join Crosby.

  In a soft voice, looking back at Todd, Anderson said, “This guy is fucking spooky. You really let that damn trucker go?”

  “Sure did. Sucker looked like he had his brain washed, dried and permanent pressed to me. He’ll check in with the story Todd gave him; he doesn’t know shit about you and me. We just fucking vanished.”

  “Yeah, if everything works right.” Anderson couldn’t embrace optimism no matter what.

  Dropping his voice further, Crosby said, “We could kill both those guys in ten seconds. Take whatever money’s in the house and be gone. Is that what you want?”

  “That’s what I should want,” Anderson responded. “But, as usual, that smartass has a better idea. He says he has friends all across the country. We should just tell him where we want to go and he’ll set us up. All these people, he says, will be as happy to help us as this
guy here is.”

  Crosby said, “That’s damn impressive. What does he want to do?”

  “Stay right here. The professor has a smaller house out in the woods, only two bedrooms, but it’s almost right on the James River and we’re real close to the Shenandoah National Forest.”

  Crosby said, “Lots of wilderness. Guys like you and me could hide out a long time.”

  “Yeah, and there’s one last thing.”

  “What?”

  “Todd’s got a job for us.”

  “That being?” Crosby asked.

  “He wants us to kill someone for him, only he says it won’t be easy.”

  Crosby grinned. “That’d make it a mission.”

  “It would,” Anderson said, “but he had me at kill someone.”

  Casa Marina, Key West, Florida

  Carina Linberg sailed her fifty foot Hunter, Irish Grace, solo from Newport, Rhode Island to Key West. The vessel had been purchased with the money she had received for listening to a pitch from a Hollywood producer. He’d told Carina he wanted to make a movie of her autobiography, Woman in Command, the story of a female Air Force bomber pilot and the political-sexual struggles she had faced. He’d pay her a million dollars just to hear him out. Before the producer could get so much as one word into the substance of his pitch, she told him he had to put every detail of the proposed deal in writing, sit down with her lawyer, and put the million dollars she’d get for listening to him into an escrow account.

  The producer said, “Talk like that makes me hot.”

  “Start a phone-sex company for masochists,” she told him.

  The guy loved that, too. He followed through on the idea, using a front company.

  After the producer had jumped through the specified hoops and her lawyer told Carina the money was hers as soon as she listened to what the man had to say, they took a meeting at the Grille in Clarke Cooke House, Newport. She listened earnestly to what the producer had to say. The idea of someone making a smart movie from her book did have its appeal, but in the end she had to say no.

  Carina wanted final approval for both the script and casting.