Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 2 Read online

  Sweetie tossed a shillelagh to Vasquez. He caught it neatly, attacked immediately.

  The session lasted ninety very hard minutes. McGill used only the stick, Vasquez changed weapons, showing a natural feel for the long staff. Both of them had bruises splashed from ankle to shoulder. McGill had a black eye. Vasquez had a broken nose. McGill would have had a slash on his left arm, probably disabling, if the knives Vasquez had used didn’t have plastic blades.

  Both men were breathing hard and the floor was getting slick with blood from Vasquez’s nose when McGill called a halt. Elspeth gave the Marine a look of warning: no late hits. Sweetie was doing the same. Vazquez politely gave Elspeth his plastic knives.

  Flashed McGill the peace sign and a grin.

  Told him, “You sure know some tough ladies, sir.”

  McGill saw the toughest of them all enter the room.

  Vasquez turned his head and saw the president. He snapped to attention.

  “At ease, Marine,” the commander in chief said. “Did you give my husband a good run for his money?”

  “Yes, ma’am. A real good run.”

  “He’s holding up all right for an older man?”

  “Probably need some ibuprofen, ma’am. Otherwise, he’s holding up fine.”

  “You came here from Okinawa?”

  Clearly, Patti had spoken with Edwina.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Take seventy-two hours leave before you fly back.”

  Vasquez gave a picture perfect salute. “Yes, ma’am!”

  The president handed the first sergeant a fresh tissue.

  “Try not to bleed too much on your way out.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The president opened the door and everyone except McGill filed out.

  “You are a sight,” she told McGill.

  “I do my own stunts.”

  “You’ll also do your best not to get hurt?”

  “I’m still willing to have Elspeth shoot people for me.”

  “Good. Will you join me for lunch in the residence, after you clean up?”

  “I will. I’d like a couple of steaks.”

  “One for your eye?”

  “Exactly.”

  When McGill got out of the shower, starting to feel the hurt, there was an envelope waiting for him on the vanity. In it was a note from Vasquez, penned by Elspeth. The Marine had talked with the Secret Service agent. Elspeth had given Vasquez a rough idea of the guy McGill was baiting. Based on that information, the Marine offered a few ideas as to the kinds of weapons someone like that might use.

  A very helpful guy, Vasquez, when he wasn’t trying to kill you.

  The Residence

  Patti was having a Cobb salad and White House ice tea for lunch.

  McGill had a steak and a baked potato. A Goose Island Lager for lubrication. He was going to have a hot fudge sundae, too. He’d worked out hard enough to pile on some calories.

  “You came to bed last night after I was asleep and you got up before I was awake,” McGill told Patti. “Either that or you didn’t come to bed at all.”

  “I did, but I was very tired and you were sleeping peacefully.”

  “You can always wake me. Any time you need to talk, I’m happy to lend an ear.”

  “I wasn’t ready, but I am now.”

  But she wasn’t, not for another two minutes by the count McGill kept in his head.

  “This time,” Patti finally said, “it’s Vice President Morrissey’s turn to be … slandered would only be the legal term. She’s being mischaracterized in a way that will play on some people’s prejudices, and will make too strong a denial anger other people. The intent is not only to cost us votes but also to play people off against each other. The hoped for result would leave the country more divided and antagonistic than ever.”

  McGill was physically drained but he felt his temper rise nonetheless.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Someone found — or stole, as Jean put it — a private photo belonging to the Morrissey family. Taken at face value, it shows Jean at age eighteen in bed with another young woman. There’s barely any skin showing. There is certainly no sexual contact taking place. There is a kiss, though. Jean kissed the cheek of her sixteen-year-old cousin, Molly, who was like a kid sister to her. She did it to comfort her. Molly died a month after the photo was taken … She died of leukemia.”

  McGill felt as if he’d been hit harder than any blow Vasquez had delivered.

  “Bone marrow transplant wasn’t as effective or accessible thirty years ago,” Patti told him.

  “Sonofabitch,” McGill said.

  “Indeed.”

  “How are you going to hit back?”

  “We’re going to try to preempt.”

  Patti told McGill that Hugh Collier had quietly passed the photo to Aggie Wu. It had been offered to him. He’d passed on it without having seen it. Then he’d thought maybe he should take a look. He requested a copy. When he saw what he had, he’d turned it over to the White House press secretary and warned her that another copy might have gone to Satellite News America.

  That news outlet would soon be hearing from the office of the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. An assistant U.S. attorney and special agents of the FBI would have a judge’s order to seize the stolen photo.

  What both McGill and Patti knew but neither of them said was there could be thousands of copies of the photo in circulation by now, and once it hit the Internet, the ballgame was over. Everyone in the world would have the opportunity to see Jean Morrissey’s private act of kindness and misinterpret it, if they so chose.

  “Who started passing out the pictures?” McGill asked.

  “As far as we know right now, Reynard Dix, the little weasel I handpicked to cast the conservative voices on a certain Internet talk show.”

  McGill extended his hand to Patti, trying to transfer to her what little strength he felt at the moment. She took it and held tight for a moment. Then she let go.

  “Hold a comforting thought for me,” she said. “I’ll be back tonight before you go to sleep. Between now and then there’s a presidential debate waiting for me.”

  McGill had planned to attend the debate, but with his new black eye …

  Greenberg Theatre, American University — Washington, D.C.

  The debate between President Patricia Darden Grant and former Vice President Mather Wyman had reached the end of its first hour. The moderator was the university president Dr. Vincent O’Neal. His function was to see that the debate kept to the mutually agreed upon ground rules.

  The debate would last for two hours. There could have been as many as eight topics of fifteen minutes duration or there might have been one topic of debate that consumed the entire two hours. As it was the candidates decided to give thirty minutes each to the economy and national defense. As he had at every fifteen-minute interval, O’Neal asked whether the two candidates wanted to continue with the topic being debated or move on.

  Both candidates had to agree to continue a topic already under debate.

  Representatives of the two campaigns had compiled the list and sequence of the topics to be debated. In the second and final presidential debate, the topics would be selected by the public. Otherwise, the structure would follow the same rules.

  O’Neal was tasked with making sure neither candidate tried to dominate the discussion either by the raising of a voice or the status of current government position. Given the mutual respect between the president and her former number two, O’Neal had to rap no knuckles in the first hour.

  The debate was streaming live on the Internet and was available to any broadcast entity on the planet that cared to televise it. The estimated viewing audience for the evening was well over a billion people worldwide.

  O’Neal introduced the third point of debate. “What role does personal character play in determining whether a president is a success or a failure? Please specify the element
s of character you feel are most important and tell the country how you exemplify those traits better than your opponent.”

  Wyman said, “Courtesy is very important, and that’s why I insist the president go first.”

  The audience in cozy Greenberg Theatre laughed.

  Patti gave them time to enjoy the moment.

  Then she said, “Thank you, Mather, but I believe it would have been more courteous to ask me if I’d like to go first.”

  The president got her own laughs and more than a few female cheers.

  “I would happily have said yes. So with your kind permission I will begin.”

  Wyman gestured for her to proceed.

  Patti looked past the cameras at the people in the audience. “The most important quality for any president to have is bedrock courage. When you ask to assume responsibility for the welfare of more than three hundred million people you cannot be timid.”

  She turned to Wyman. “Mather Wyman is a courageous man. When I had to invoke the twenty-fifth amendment and hand the powers of the presidency over to him, I felt confident that he would do a fine job and he did. He put a swift end to an act of lawlessness at the Salvation’s Path Church in Virginia, and he did so with a minimum of force and no lives lost. I applaud what acting President Wyman did.”

  Patti Grant put her hands together and the audience followed with enthusiasm.

  Wyman, however, knew that criticism would not be lagging far behind.

  “There are other kinds of courage, however,” the president said, “and that’s where I think I have the upper hand. Half the world’s population — the female half — knows it takes real bravery to think you can win a job that only men have ever held. To make a plan to do that, to put in the backbreaking work and to come out on top, you have to wake up fearless and go to bed just as resolute. There’s no end to the people who will tell you it just can’t be done. You’ve got to have the courage to prove them wrong. As president, you also face a multitude of voices — many of them in Congress — who tell you the things you want to do to help the American people just can’t be done. You’ve got to have the courage to prove them wrong, too.”

  The audience applauded loud and long.

  Both Patti and O’Neal knew it was time to let Wyman have his turn.

  He got off to a good start by being gracious.

  Wyman said, “Never doubting for a moment that all the president’s words were completely sincere, let me say she’s a hard act to follow.”

  The laughter was loud enough to sound bipartisan.

  “Courage is essential to any president who hopes to succeed, and let me commend the president for saving the life of young Kenneth McGill. As we all know, Patricia Darden Grant put her own life in peril to save her stepson.”

  The round of applause was for the president, but it also helped everyone warm up to Wyman.

  He went on, “As important as courage is, I think judgement matters more. A president has to be able to see the whole world while understanding the circumstances of any given American, any of you here with us or the millions of us across this great land. Individually, collectively and even globally, the president has to understand the world he confronts and choose the best way forward.”

  The president made a note. It was a subtle movement, but Wyman paused to look at her. He knew the moment he did it that he’d made a mistake. His reaction was that of a subordinate looking to see what the boss was doing.

  Trying to recapture his thoughts and regain his rhythm, Wyman took a drink of water.

  “In my view,” he said, “I have the better sense of judgment. It comes from experience. Some might call the way I look at things practicality. Sounds pretty boring but it avoids taking unnecessary risks, the kind that might cause the economy to melt down and throw people out of work. It refrains from sending our armed forces to fight other people’s conflicts. It focuses on providing life’s basic necessities, because once we have what we need to get by then we have the freedom to dream, to reach for more distant opportunities that require not just our skills and talents but also our passion.

  “When the president speaks of courage, she’s also talking about daring. She dared to run for the presidency and won. Her place in American history was assured by that victory. But since then she’s also dared to leave the party that helped to make her the president. She’s now running on the opposition party’s ticket. It’s reasonable to assume she would finish out a second term as a Democrat, but precedent says that’s not a sure thing.

  “If the people here and across the country want to elect a Democrat, the president is your candidate. But if you want someone you’re sure will still be a Democrat at the end of the next four years, you might be out of luck.”

  The Wyman partisans in the auditorium applauded.

  The Grant partisans waited nervously to hear what their candidate had to say.

  “Vice President Wyman’s memory is off just a bit. The way the last presidential election went, I won more votes from independents and Democrats than Republicans. Certainly, there were Republicans who voted for me and I thank them for that. I had hoped the party would rally around me, but opposition from Republicans in the House during my first term only grew in intensity.

  “In the words of one senior GOP member of Congress, I was ‘an accidental president.’ If it hadn’t been for the sympathy vote I received after my dear first husband, Andy Grant, was killed, I never would have been elected.”

  The crowd booed that assessment. O’Neal asked them to remember their manners.

  The president continued, “I was asked by the former head of the Republican National Committee if I planned to run for reelection. At the time, my favorability rating was sixty-three percent, but my own party, of that time, didn’t assume it might be good for them or for me to want a second term. I think it’s fair to say my former party left me before I left it.

  “If you look at Mather Wyman’s record both as the governor of Ohio and as a member of that state’s legislature, you’ll see his positions on several important issues were well to the left of where the Republican Party is today. I think it would be a serious error of judgment to think the Republicans in Congress will rally around their current nominee any more than they did for me. Either Mather Wyman will toe the hard right line or he will become a figurehead.”

  O’Neal looked as if he was about to toss the ball back to Wyman but —

  Patti said, “Just one more thing, please. Speaking on the matter of judgment, Vice President Wyman said that a president has to understand the world he confronts and choose the best way forward. From my experience in the Oval Office, I can say sometimes there is no best way forward to choose. Sometimes you have to create a new way forward. That’s where courage is required. The same kind of courage Democrats had when they made me their nominee, and as long as they continue to show that bravery I will be with them to the finish and every inch along the way.”

  Patricia Darden Grant’s backers jumped to their feet and applauded.

  She gave Mather Wyman a cool look and he knew just what it meant.

  By bringing up his days in Ohio, she had reminded him he’d told her he was an Eisenhower Republican. That same day, he’d told her he was gay.

  The president would not break her promise and expose him, but her paean to courage was her way of telling him he didn’t even have the guts to let the voters know who he truly was.

  The remainder of the debate did not go well for Mather Wyman.

  Howard Hurlbert chose not to take part in the presidential debates. In truth, Tom T. Wright decided he would not participate. He knew his handpicked candidate would not be able to speak extemporaneously on the same level as his opponents. He’d been groomed over his long career in politics to regurgitate talking points. At best, he’d sound stiff. At worst, he’d remind people he was still looking for a running mate.

  The joke going around the country had it that Howard Hurlbert’s vice president would be the guy right behind
the last man drafted by the NFL.

  Tom T. figured the best way to present Howard to the voting public on debate night would be at a party in his New Orleans’ bar where there would be plenty of free food and drink, and folks would be feeling real happy. The debate between the president and Mather Wyman would be on TV sets throughout the bar. Howard would offer his responses to points made by Patti Grant and Mather Wyman.

  Not that he’d come up with his own jokes or observations. His lines were being fed to him via the iPad he held in his hands. They came from a poly-sci professor who hadn’t quite made tenure and a standup comic fresh out of rehab, working from Tom T.’s office.

  As an act, it went over just fine with the crowd at the bar. To reach a wider audience in the desired demographic, Tom T. had pursued his own innovative media strategy. He’d bought time on the Real Movies for Real People Channel. RMRP featured a lot of early Eastwood, early Arnold and Sylvester and everything Vin Diesel had ever done.

  Howard Hurlbert, broadcasting live from New Orleans, was a hit with action movie fans, too.

  RMRP started playing unpaid reruns and offered Hurlbert free time to do five more broadcasts from New Orleans before Election Day.

  Inevitably, his YouTube video went viral.

  Several brewers and distillers vied to become official campaign sponsors.

  Tom T. told them to wait just a little while.

  McGill Investigations, Inc.

  With the presidential election less than two weeks away, McGill, Sweetie, Elspeth, Daryl Cheveyo and Byron DeWitt were trying to work out the best way to lure Damon Todd and Arn Crosby into a trap without McGill or anyone else getting killed. All of them were sure that overconfidence on the part of the bad guys would no longer be one of their advantages.

  There were other problems, too. The possibility still existed that Crosby might go after Sweetie first, hoping to make people look the wrong way at the wrong time. Everybody else McGill cared about had protection by the platoon.