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

  “You’re not going to run to the media are you, Senator?” Hurlbert said with a sneer.

  Dan Crockett said, “Only if I hear my name attached to this madness in any regard other than to condemn it. True South, my ass.”

  Bobby Beckley let the senator out of the room.

  “I guess we can’t count on his vote,” Beau Brunelle said.

  Ten minutes later the other visitors had left Howard Hurlbert’s suite, talking among themselves in clusters of two and three. Some of them even sounded enthusiastic. Unfortunately for Hurlbert, they were focusing on Senator Brunelle’s idea of new voting blocs in the Senate and House rather than on winning the White House.

  Hurlbert’s clerical staff had been given the afternoon off to reduce the chance someone might leak the story to the media. The senator and his political mastermind slouched on opposite ends of the leather sofa in the outer office.

  “Do you think I’m going to get support from any of them?” Hurlbert asked.

  “Yes, I do. My guess is at least six, maybe eight.”

  “Because of Beau Brunelle not me.”

  “Does it matter?” Bobby asked.

  “It does if Beau wants to replace me as the presidential candidate of my own party.”

  A large part of Bobby Beckley’s job was keeping a straight face when the senator said something that revealed just what a hayseed he was. Beau Brunelle didn’t want to be president. He saw himself as a lawmaker, a lawgiver after his third bourbon. He wanted to be the majority leader, but even if the Republicans recaptured the Senate, he was fourth in seniority. If he could be the top dog of a new party in the Senate, though, that might be a springboard to get him to where he wanted to be.

  Howard Hurlbert should have known that, but he let Bobby do most of his thinking.

  “The presidency is your personal turf,” the chief of staff said. “I’ll make sure of that.”

  Hurlbert smiled. “If you weren’t so damn ugly, I’d give you a kiss.”

  “If you weren’t so damn ugly, I’d let you.”

  They settled on having drinks and toasting their future.

  Neither knowing Galia Mindel would learn of True South before the hour was out.

  The White House

  Edwina Byington was at her desk outside the Oval Office when the phone call from Senator Daniel Crockett came through. She’d met the senator on three occasions and had enjoyed his company, brief though their time together had been. Crockett possessed a wry sense of humor, not unlike that of James J. McGill.

  “Good afternoon, Senator Crockett,” Edwina said. “How may I help you?”

  “I hear you’re running a president-for-a-day show over there, Edwina. I just thought I’d ask if I could put my name in the running.”

  “Allow me to consult my copy of the Constitution, Senator. Let me see now. As the senior senator from the sixteenth state to join the Union, you’re number thirty-one in the presidential line of succession — after the Secretary of Homeland Security.”

  “I shouldn’t wait by my phone?” Crockett asked.

  “It might be a while, Senator.”

  “And I suppose that new fella up there, Mather Wyman, is busy at the moment.”

  “Yes, Acting President Wyman is in a meeting.”

  “Would it be too much to ask for you to give him a personal message from me?”

  “It would be my pleasure, Senator.”

  “Please let the acting president know there’s a plan afoot to draft him to be the presidential candidate for the Republican Party.”

  Edwina hit her mental replay button on that one. She didn’t hear any hint of a joke.

  “I’ll certainly do that, Senator. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes, please tell the acting president I’ll keep him advised of any further developments.”

  “That’s very kind of you, Senator.”

  Edwina wondered what he’d want in return.

  Mango Mary’s — Key West, Florida

  “I’ve been coming in here a while now,” the man calling himself Jackie Richmond said, “and I haven’t seen a single mango.”

  Jackie was really a car thief and a killer named Linley Boland.

  “Do you even know what a mango looks like?”

  “Sure, they’re oval, yellow and red, sometimes have a high gloss finish.”

  “You know what they taste like?”

  “Now, you’ve got me, Alice.”

  The owner of Mango Mary’s was named Alice Tompkins, but she was open to letting anyone who so desired to call her Mary. Had she known, she wouldn’t have objected to a car thief on the run using an alias. Most likely, she’d have been uneasy letting a killer live under her roof, whatever he called himself.

  But Jackie’s loan of ten thousand dollars on the night they met had taken her out of a very bad spot. So maybe she would have cut him some slack if he’d only killed a prick like the guy who had been very surprised to get all his money by its due date.

  That guy’d had other plans, but now he was shit out of luck.

  Not that Alice hadn’t gotten the feeling that the bastard might try to find whoever had fronted her the money and express his pique to that person. She might have warned Jackie about that possibility, but she liked to keep her secrets, too. As it was, she’d repaid Jackie the money he’d lent her — no need to worry about that transaction — and had let him continue to live with her rent free and bought his drinks any time he came by the bar.

  She’d expected he’d have made a move to get into her bed by now, but he hadn’t.

  He wasn’t into other guys; she didn’t get that vibe at all.

  Jackie was just … well mannered. Like he didn’t want to mess up a good situation.

  Alice told him, “Once upon a time, these premises housed a three-cot bordello. The madam and number-one working girl was …” She extended a hand to prompt the answer.

  Jackie said, “Mango Mary. She liked the fruit.”

  “No. Not that I know anyway. No, her philosophy was man come, man go.”

  “Okay, I get it. She’d been burned by more than one jerk.”

  “Not at all,” Alice said. “She wasn’t complaining, she was insisting. Man come, man go. No dawdling. That was her business model. But she got too old for that shit and sold the place to my dad for a song. He kept the name, made a bar of it and passed it on to me.”

  “Your dad still around, fishing on a pier maybe?”

  “Be nice if that was the way things worked out after you died, but he smoked himself into an early grave. Luckies. There’s an irony, huh? Anyway, this place went smoke-free the day I dumped Dad’s ashes into the ocean, didn’t wait for the new state law.”

  Alice looked at Jackie a minute, considering his question.

  “You trying to find if I’ve got a man behind me someplace, in case I need one?”

  Jackie grinned and said, “Not at all. I was just making conversation. What I really wanted to know was if you know anything about boats. I thought if I said your dad fished on a pier, you’d say, ‘Hell, no. He fishes off his boat.’ Something like that.”

  “Why didn’t you just ask?”

  “Sometimes I like being indirect.”

  Alice could understand that. She said, “Well, now that I know, yeah, I know a few things about boats. You live on a little island like this, you’d better. Are you looking for one?”

  “I might be.”

  “What kind?”

  “That’s just it, I don’t know much about boats.”

  “Well, would you want sails, a motor or both?” Alice asked.

  Jackie’s first impulse was to say motor, but he asked, “You can get one with both?”

  “Just about any sailboat you don’t put in a bathtub has a motor. Some of them can cruise a fair distance on their motors.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good,” Jackie told. “What I’d like is a boat that can go a long way. One I could drive by myself if necessary.”

  “Helm,
you mean. Drive is what you do with a car.”

  Jackie smiled. “See. I’m learning already.”

  The Oval Office

  Acting President Mather Wyman looked at the note Edwina Byington had handed him as his meeting with Attorney General Jaworsky broke up. Both men were having second thoughts about bringing a charge of treason against Reverend Burke Godfrey. It had been Wyman’s contention that Godfrey had raised an army to resist his lawful arrest. A member of that armed force fired a shot with hostile intent at an FBI helicopter. Any person aboard that aircraft might have been killed by that shot or everybody aboard might have been killed if, say, the fuel tank had exploded.

  However, no one had been killed on either side. The U.S. military hadn’t fired a round, and the army Godfrey had raised surrendered immediately upon learning of their leader’s capture.

  To suggest that Godfrey’s army had represented a serious threat to the country was going to be a hard sell. Viewed in a historical perspective, the charge of treason became even more problematic. After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee had been indicted on charges of treason, but the government had declined to try them. Given that precedent, one that a defense lawyer was certain to raise, the attorney general was not hopeful about obtaining a conviction.

  Wyman wasn’t able to argue with him and didn’t try. He was still damn mad, though. Things could have gone far worse than they had. The death toll could have been in the hundreds. There were too many groups of people in the country with short tempers, grandiose self-images and more firepower than a World War Two rifle company. A common thread among many of these groups was they denied the legitimacy of the federal government.

  In Mather’s eyes, failing to address the problem harshly was to enable it.

  Michael Jaworsky’s suggestion was to charge Reverend Godfrey as an accomplice to attempted murder, reasoning that it was his actions that led to the shot being fired at the FBI helicopter. Wyman had signed off on the idea immediately.

  There was little satisfaction in that, though, as the precipitating incident of the siege of Salvation’s Path had been the arrest warrant issued for Godfrey’s participation in the actual murder of Andrew Hudson Grant.

  It was maddening to Wyman that he could do so little on his own authority.

  That had been when he was handed the note by Edwina.

  Senator Daniel Crockett had called to say the GOP was planning to draft him to be their nominee for president. He hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry. He crumpled the note, stuck it in a pocket and retreated to the Oval Office.

  He was tempted to have a drink, but he knew better than to start down that path.

  Instead, he picked up the phone and called the White House physician.

  “Nick, this is Mather Wyman. Is the president up to taking a phone call?”

  While the answer to that question was being pursued, Wyman’s mind went back to a message he’d spotted on Edwina’s desk calendar. A request to take a call from Jim McGill. It had been struck through. Edwina wouldn’t have done that without, what … McGill changing his mind?

  The acting president had seen a video of McGill’s press conference. He’d been polite in his assessment of the man sitting in the Oval Office, but to Wyman’s ear it sounded as if McGill had given him a gentleman’s C for his performance thus far. Sure, old Wyman, had pulled off the assault on Burke Godfrey … but it had been Galia Mindel who had found out about Godfrey’s tunnels. Made the whole plan work. Not that many knew the whole story.

  That was bound to change. Sooner rather than later.

  Then the question would be asked: What could Wyman do on his own?

  And that was when it hit him. There should have been a beam of heavenly light and a choir of angels singing. All the good stuff that accompanied an epiphany.

  He could campaign for any issue he deemed important.

  Not as a would-be freshman filling one of the four hundred and thirty-five seats in the House of Representatives, but as a man running to be president. He took Dan Crockett’s message out of his pocket. His party wanted to draft him.

  Serendipity.

  That was the moment when a contrary thought struck.

  He’d told the president he was gay.

  McGill’s Hideaway — The White House

  “I got the word,” Patti told McGill that night.

  The two of them sat next to each other on the leather sofa holding hands.

  The ambiguity of what the word might be made McGill uneasy. “What word?”

  “I’m officially a medical mystery. The best heart doctors in the country can’t figure out what happened to me. No, that’s not right. They know what happened, the mitral valve prolapse. What stumps them is that there was no sign of a problem before the episode and there hasn’t been any sign of a problem since. Consultation is now going global.”

  “Maybe it was an allergic reaction to the anesthesia,” McGill said.

  Patti laughed. “Very good. That’s one hypothesis. Where did you study, doctor?”

  “Mother McGill’s kitchen apothecary shop.”

  “My compliments to Mom. Might you have any other theory?”

  “God was busting my chops? Seeing how I’d react in a tough spot.”

  Patti leaned in and kissed her husband. “Passed with flying colors. My network of spies tells me Kenny is making very good progress.”

  “He is. He said he’s looking forward to seeing you. Told me not to come back unless you’re with me.”

  “He did not.”

  “Maybe I was reading between the lines.”

  Patti said, “I thought it best to let the family have the first crack.”

  “You are family,” McGill told her, “now more than ever.”

  “I’ll try to remember.”

  McGill’s thoughts moved on to the other critical element of what his wife had just imparted to him: She’d heard from her network of spies — and she had several of them, operating worldwide. She hadn’t been speaking figuratively.

  “What else did you hear?” he asked.

  “That Celsus overstepped and you, possibly, overreacted.”

  A spark of temper flared inside McGill. He quickly put it out. Not only had Patti proved her love for him beyond any doubt, saving Kenny’s life at the risk of her own, she was also smarter than him. He’d be foolish not to heed her advice.

  “I was steamed,” McGill said, “but I’ll try to follow the McGill family motto.”

  “That being?”

  “Get over yourself.”

  “Words to live by. Leo quit his government job but would like to go to work for McGill Investigations, Inc.”

  McGill looked at Patti and smiled. “He got himself out from under any obligation to rat me out. That was a slick move.”

  “Only if you hire him.”

  “Of course, I will. He’s the best driver in town. Your spies really found this out?”

  “No, Sweetie called me. She and Putnam are engaged. They bought rings.”

  McGill’s jaw dropped. “Sweetie is going to become … Sweetie Shady?”

  The two of them laughed.

  “Isn’t love grand?” Patti asked.

  “It is.”

  “At the risk of ruffling your feathers, may I ask a question?”

  McGill nodded, waited, silently vowed to keep his feathers in perfect trim.

  “Regarding Damon Todd, is the reason you want to go after him simply because you can? After you were unable to directly help Kenny, the thought occurs there might be a connection. You really don’t need to revalidate who you are. Not to me. Not to anyone who loves you.”

  McGill hadn’t worked that out for himself, not consciously.

  But he couldn’t argue with Patti’s analysis.

  “Chana Lochlan needs to be warned.” Something he hadn’t done yet, damn it.

  “Agreed.”

  “Daryl Cheveyo, too.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what do you p
ropose I do with myself?” McGill asked.

  “Accompany me for a month in the country.”

  Camp David, he knew. The plan was to bring Kenny there, too.

  He could do far worse than watch two people he loved get well.

  Still, he said, “I could still help catch Todd on a consulting basis.”

  Holly G smiled. “I believe that was how Sherlock Holmes worked, Holmes.”

  3

  September, 2011

  The White House — Capt. Welborn Yates’ Office

  So much for cutting your honeymoon short and rushing back to work, Welborn thought. He’d had all of one day chauffeuring James J. McGill about after he’d dismissed Deke Ky and Leo Levy. Word on the grapevine was that he’d also passed the word to SAC Crogher and Acting President Wyman that they could lump it if they didn’t like it, the way he’d sent the Secret Service packing. When the man went on a tear, he didn’t take any prisoners.

  Of course, then the president must have made McGill see the light of reason and bundled him and his son, Kenny, off to Camp David. Which left Welborn without much to do. Anything to do, really.

  He came into the office each day and read law enforcement journals.

  Hoping he might learn something useful and keep his brain from shriveling.

  Kira, on the other hand, was thriving. Her de facto father was now the man in the Oval Office, and he seemed to enjoy talking with her. Welborn didn’t ask if Mather Wyman was sharing any state secrets with Kira because he didn’t want to be told he didn’t have a need to know. When his eyes glazed over and refused to read any more articles on the proper escalation of force when placing someone under arrest …