Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 2 Page 12

  He closed the door behind him and said, “I am.”

  Galia chose to react as a professional. “I know I advised against it before, but having seen you banished from the White House, I’ve changed my mind. It’s the smart thing to do.”

  “Thank you. I thought by tendering my resignation to you privately there would be no media notice, allowing the president and you to have a few quiet days to make your plans.”

  “Very kind of you.”

  Wyman took a sealed envelope from a pocket inside his suit coat and handed it to Galia.

  He said, “Please tell the president I remain deeply honored that she chose me to be her running mate..”

  “I will.”

  Galia put Wyman’s letter of resignation into a desk drawer. She was tempted to tell Wyman that he wouldn’t beat the president in the election, but she didn’t want her hubris to bring any divine reproof down on the president. She resolved to take Mather Wyman very seriously.

  She contented herself to say, “As you are no longer employed at the White House, Mr. Wyman, I’d better walk you out of the building.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Ms. Mindel.”

  Wyman offered his hand to Galia and she shook it.

  Wouldn’t that make a fine picture for the history books, she thought.

  Political enemies observing the best of manners.

  The founding fathers would be smiling. Or laughing.

  McGill Investigations, Inc.

  Putnam Shady was back from Omaha and other points west and sat with McGill in his inner office. Sweetie, neither needing nor wanting to know what the two of them had to discuss, waited in the outer office with Elspeth Kendry and Leo Levy.

  Putnam had just accepted a check from McGill, making him McGill’s lawyer. With the check went the task of hiring private investigator Brad Lewis of Chicago to keep an eye on Mrs. Robert Beckley of Jackson, Mississippi and, if possible, to obtain photographs of Mr. Beckley beating his wife. Then, of course, Mr. Lewis should call the police, anonymously.

  Putnam understood without having to ask that McGill didn’t want the PI to know who hired him, other than a lawyer he’d never met before. What Putnam didn’t tell McGill was that he would hire a Chicago lawyer he knew, a guy McGill had never met, to hire Lewis. Another cutout might be helpful.

  What Putnam said was, “Pretty ironic, don’t you think?”

  “You mean we’re doing the same thing Derek Geiger wanted to do?”

  “Yeah, without the taking over the government part.”

  McGill wanted the lawyer-client confidentiality privilege to protect him from any Congressional inquiry that might come his way. With Patti moving over to the Democrats and that party controlling the Senate, he was safe there. The House of Representatives, however, was in Republican hands, and the way presidential races were going in the U.S. it was easy to imagine a partisan panel trying to get at the president through him.

  As McGill’s ambitions were purely defensive, he trusted that his life expectancy would be greater than the late Speaker Derek Geiger’s had proved to be.

  That hopeful thought had no sooner crossed his mind than there was a knock at his door.

  Receiving McGill’s permission to enter, Elspeth Kendry stepped into the office.

  “We just caught someone taking pictures of your car,” she told him. “Leo is checking it out to make sure there was no tampering with it.”

  “Who’s the photographer?” McGill asked.

  “A professional colleague of yours. A local PI by the name of Maxwell Kern.”

  McGill shook his head. “Never heard of him.”

  “He asked for a lawyer and refuses to talk with us, but we’ll find out everything there is to know about him.”

  “You already know he can’t be too smart, trying to snoop my car while the Secret Service is watching it,” McGill said.

  “Yes, sir. Leo’s concerns are understandable, but the special agents who grabbed him don’t think he was trying to do anything to sabotage your vehicle. They watched him a minute or two before taking him into custody. Their judgment is he was looking to see if any personal property or papers of yours might have been left in the car where they might be photographed.”

  McGill and Putnam exchanged a look.

  Elspeth didn’t miss the silent exchange.

  She said, “Mr. Kern took pictures of Mr. Shady and Ms. Sweeney entering the building. His camera has the functionality to upload photos to the Internet. We’ll find out where he sent them, if he did, but it looks like someone is invading your privacy, sir.”

  Putnam shrugged. “My client has done nothing wrong and any communication he has with me is confidential.”

  So was any communication McGill had with his wife, the president.

  Any Congressional committee that might subpoena him was in for a tough time.

  Bridal Suite, Four Seasons Hotel — Boston Massachusetts

  After leaving McGill’s office, Putnam and Sweetie caught the first flight leaving Washington for Boston. It was Putnam’s considered legal opinion, as well as his heart’s fondest desire, that he and Sweetie not waste another minute before they got married. Hearing her fiancé’s reasoning, that he wanted to protect both of them from possible Congressional or legal snooping, Sweetie agreed.

  But she still wouldn’t consent to being married in Las Vegas.

  She was agreeable to having Pastor Francis Nguyen perform the ceremony in Massachusetts. A quick smart phone check of that state’s marriage laws showed them that they would: both have to appear at the Boston City Clerk’s Office, present a valid photo ID, report their Social Security numbers, file an intention to marry form, wait three days and pay a fifty-dollar fee.

  They called Pastor Nguyen and confirmed his availability.

  Then it was pack lightly and wing off to Boston.

  After getting the red tape out of the way, Sweetie and Putnam hid out at the Four Seasons.

  Seventy-two hours later they got themselves to the church on time.

  Putnam in his best navy blue suit, Sweetie radiant in a pearl white knee-length dress.

  Though no longer a Catholic priest, Francis Nguyen still counseled each of them, separately and together, about the seriousness of the step they were about to undertake.

  In Pastor Nguyen’s own words, “I like to make sure people get it right the first time. I don’t do do-overs.”

  Satisfied that their love was more than mere infatuation and their dedication to each other’s well-being was sincere, Francis Nguyen performed the ceremony he’d learned in the seminary, leaving out the reference to the newlyweds living their lives according to the laws of the church.

  For Pastor Nguyen, living according to the teachings of Christ was more than enough.

  Putnam vowed: “I, Putnam, take you, Margaret, to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”

  Sweetie vowed: “I, Margaret, take you, Putnam, to be my husband. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.”

  In the case of a younger couple, Francis Nguyen would have asked, as part of the ceremony, if they would lovingly accept and nurture any children God might give to them. In her private counseling, Sweetie had mentioned that it would take more than your average miracle for her to have a child, but if a miracle happened, she would certainly love and nurture any child who came her way.

  Putnam would, too, she said.

  The rings were exchanged, Pastor Nguyen gave the new couple his blessing and that was that. Francis Nguyen’s wife, Harriet, and his housekeeper, Janet, were the only two witnesses in the church.

  Back at the Four Season, Sweetie dismissed with a brief laugh the idea of being carried across the threshold of the bridal suite.

  “Thought I should ask just for the sake of form,” Putnam told her.

  “You
r respect for etiquette is duly noted and appreciated.”

  “I also thought I might show you how hard I’ve been working out.”

  Sweetie smiled. “As your personal trainer, I’ve noticed that, too.”

  “And appreciated it?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Sweetie and Putnam walked into the bridal suite.

  Before braving the first night of married life for either of them, Putnam took Sweetie in his arms and asked, “No regrets?”

  “None.”

  “After you told me about Kenny McGill’s interest, that was another reason I knew I had to move fast.”

  Sweetie kissed Putnam and led him off to the bedroom.

  No announcement of the wedding had been published in any newspaper.

  Or posted online. The gossip columnists had missed the scoop.

  Putnam and Sweetie intended to tell all the people who mattered personally — and before too very long they were going to throw one heckuva party to celebrate what they’d just done.

  H-329, The Capitol — Washington, D.C.

  Peter Profitt, Republican, eight-term congressman from the 4th District of North Carolina, sat in his Capitol office and reviewed the information that had been presented to him and decided on January 23, 2012, the first day of the second session of the 212th Congress, the time had come. After allowing the office of the speaker to remain vacant for one hundred and fifty-six days, a period of unprecedented length, and beating back ambitious colleagues who sought to usurp his place at the head of the line of succession, he decided it was time for him to become the new speaker.

  At first, nobody wanted to go near the most powerful political position in the legislative branch of the federal government. The late Derek Geiger had made a toxic wasteland of that office. There had been no shame in Geiger’s trying to consolidate power in his hands, except that he had failed. Making a bad situation far worse, he’d even tried to murder a lobbyist, Putnam Shady, for betraying him. His mania had even extended to making his failed murder attempt at the wedding of Vice President Wyman’s niece, Kira Fahey.

  It was said, though never proved, that Geiger, as long as he was in a homicidal frame of mind, also decided he would put an end to Congressman Zachary Garner and the president’s husband, James J. McGill.

  Had Geiger succeeded, he would have fallen short of John Wilkes Booth in a rogue’s gallery of American political assassins, but he certainly would have received an honorable mention.

  Just his making the attempt had been a terrible cross for his fellow Republicans to bear. It was thought that temporarily leaving the speaker’s post unoccupied was the smart move. All of Geiger’s possessions and furnishings had been removed from his offices, which were cleaned, painted and decked out with new furniture, all at party expense.

  A Catholic member of the caucus even suggested a spiritual cleansing and blessing of those spaces, but there was a dispute over the wording and in the end nobody thought it was a good idea to suggest that a member of the party had actually been in league with Satan.

  The GOP saved that kind of assertion for Democrats.

  Time being the great healer and politicians not having any great respect for their constituents’ long-term memory, members of the Republican caucus, a month after Geiger’s interment, started pestering Profitt about voting for a new speaker. If he didn’t want the job, plenty of them did.

  After two months, restless political minds had started plotting against him.

  With the passing of three months, he knew it would soon take more than threats and bribes to keep the caucus together under his leadership.

  Then, today, one hundred and fifty-six days after Geiger’s death, a sealed envelope arrived from Senator Howard Hurlbert’s office. In it were photographs of Vice President Wyman entering the White House grounds. Everyone in political Washington knew that Mather Wyman had abandoned any pretense of continuing to do his job. So what had he been doing at the White House that day?

  The photo of Wyman exiting the building in the company of Galia Mindel seemed to answer the question. He’d submitted his resignation. He’d done so on the sly. Or so he thought.

  With the offices of both the vice president and the speaker of the House vacant, the next man in line to become president was the President Pro Tem of the Senate, Senator George Mossman of Hawaii, a Democrat.

  Peter Profitt would have been derelict in his duties to his party if he allowed that to happen. He put out a call to his caucus, and with only a few grumbles, and no direct challenges, his fellow Republicans elected him the new speaker of the House.

  A press release alerted the media.

  Being a true believer in a better life after this one, Profitt did not want to have to explain himself to the Almighty for wishing another person ill. He didn’t hope to see Patricia Darden Grant taken before her time. He just wanted to be in the right place in case she was.

  He didn’t think the Lord would have any problem with that.

  4

  February, 2012

  The Oval Office

  In the president’s opinion, the prospect of Howard Hurlbert defeating both her and Mather Wyman was so remote that she hadn’t lost a minute’s sleep worrying about it. Whether her former vice president might beat her was another matter. He’d never lost an election, having been elected to four consecutive terms in the Ohio legislature, two terms as that state’s governor and as her running mate in the last presidential election.

  Mather was smart, experienced and successful — and he was a man.

  His gender still counted with many voters and not all of them men. There were countless women who preferred to have a man do the heavy lifting for them. Perhaps an even greater number of women would choose to have a man do such dirty work as sending young military personnel into harm’s way. Knowing they would never risk the lives of their own sons or daughters in a foreign conflict, many of these women, if only subconsciously, excluded a member of their own gender from doing the same.

  The way the president read the electoral landscape, though, the voters with traditional sensibilities were being supplanted by the rising generations, young-to-middle-aged men and women who had matured with a truer sense of gender equity.

  It was to this segment of the electorate that the president’s thoughts turned, and even to a large number of the baby boomers. That demographic leviathan was rapidly graying, but in their heart of hearts many of them considered themselves to be “forever young.” What the president had in mind should appeal to their sense of sticking it to the man.

  The president paid her chief of staff the respect she was due for compiling a comprehensive list of vice presidential possibilities. She read the file on each candidate thoroughly. Then, in keeping with the idea she’d formulated earlier, the president asked Galia the obvious question.

  “Where is Jean Morrissey’s name?”

  “Madam President?”

  “The woman I want as my running mate, remember?”

  Of course, Galia remembered. She’d merely been hoping that —

  “Galia,” the president said, “not only is Jean my preference as a running mate, it makes political sense to bring her on board now. Doing so will eliminate one of my primary opponents, leaving only Roger Michaelson for both Jean and me to beat up on.”

  Galia had to nod grudgingly.

  “Giving Jean several months of White House experience would also make her a more formidable running mate in the general election, and there’s no way I could ask someone else simply to fill in until November, and then have Jean on the ballot with me.”

  “No, you couldn’t. You’d look foolish.”

  The president said, “I really did read through your list of possible VPs carefully. I didn’t see anybody I liked better than Jean.”

  Galia said, “It’s just such a big risk, two women.”

  “It’s also the next logical step. More important, it’s what I think would be best for the country. Can you trust me on this?”


  What choice did she have, Galia thought. Resign?

  That would look great, wouldn’t it? First Wyman going and then her.

  It would give the entirely incorrect impression that she thought the Grant Administration was a sinking ship. And she was a rat leaving it.

  Galia couldn’t abide either of those perceptions.

  “Yes, Madam President,” she said. “You have my complete trust.”

  Then she added, “It will likely be three women running, not just two. Mather Wyman has feelers out to Governor Rosalinda Fuentes of New Mexico to be his running mate. Initial word is she’s lukewarm about the idea. But if you bring Governor Morrissey on board, she’ll look like your heir. Governor Fuentes wouldn’t be able to claim your mantle.”

  “No, she wouldn’t. So what do you think, Galia?”

  “I think it boggles my mind, women holding three out of four top spots on the two major party tickets.”

  “Makes up for lost time,” the president said. “Now, if we can only coax Howard Hurlbert to add a belle to the True South ticket.”

  Galia laughed … but she couldn’t rule out the possibility.

  FBI Headquarters — Washington, D.C.

  McGill and Sweetie brought Daryl Cheveyo with them when they stopped in to see Deputy Director DeWitt. The former CIA shrink grinned when he saw the Andy Warhol rendering of Chairman Mao on the deputy director’s office wall.

  Cheveyo shook hands with the deputy director and told him, “It’d be funny if that print of Mao was a Chinese counterfeit.”

  “Not when you consider its price tag,” DeWitt said, but he smiled as he said it.

  He got everyone seated around a small conference table and provided each of them with a bottle of Poland Spring water and a glass.

  McGill took a sip and told DeWitt, “I recently asked Chana Lochlan to help me mess with Damon Todd’s head. Then it occurred to me to ask an expert if that was a good idea. I got in touch with Dr. Cheveyo and he agreed to help me.”