Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 1 Page 4

  The only household help was a cleaning lady who came in every other Sunday morning — when the chief of staff wasn’t traveling with the president — and Galia kept a discreet, electronic eye on Mrs. Nesbitt every minute she was in the house. A firm referred by the Secret Service had provided the security system for her residence. Galia had introduced herself to the Metropolitan Police Department’s chief of police, explained her particular security concerns and made a generous annual donation to the chief’s choice of charities, each of them worthy and completely legitimate.

  In short, Galia had done everything she could to keep political enemies, the media and overreaching burglars at bay.

  At seven a.m. as most of official Washington continued to lie abed, she opened her front door and watched as her deputy, Stephen Norwood, pulled up in his personal Cadillac Escalade. Stephen hopped out of his seat and hurried to open the front and rear passenger doors. Galia kept an eye out for photographers lurking in the middle distance but spotted none.

  All three of the arriving guests did their parts to add to the covert air of the meeting by wearing hats and sunglasses. Galia briefly shook hands with the two men as she greeted them, and bussed the woman on the cheek. None of the arrivals lingered on her doorstep, and Galia tarried only for a moment to speak with Stephen.

  “The latest on the president?” Galia asked.

  “She’d just awakened and was speaking to Mr. McGill as I left the hospital.”

  “Kenny McGill?”

  “Also awake. His mother’s in with him.”

  Galia smiled. Thought her prayers couldn’t have hurt. “I’ll call twenty minutes before I need you to return. Then you can go home and get some sleep.”

  “Not that I need it,” Norwood said with a tired grin.

  “Of course not. We’d have to be human for that.”

  Galia stepped inside and closed the door.

  The phone rang, earning itself a dirty look, but she answered just in case …

  The president hadn’t called; it was Admiral David Dexter, chairman of the joint chiefs. He told her what he needed, asked if she might help. Galia hesitated for half a breath before complying. She informed Dexter that Erna Godfrey had told her Reverend Godfrey had dug a system of tunnels under the grounds of Salvation’s Path. She gave him the details and the name of the firm that had done the excavation. Dexter replied with a simple thank you, ma’am, but Galia heard the excitement in his voice.

  A military adventure was in the offing. Acting President Wyman was about to act.

  Galia felt uneasy. If Wyman made a mess of things … especially as an election year loomed … or if he scored a victory … well, that had implications, too.

  The only certain outcome of the call of which she might approve was that the nation’s top military officer now owed her a favor.

  She put other possibilities out of her mind as she joined her guests.

  The governors of New York, Illinois and California.

  GWU Hospital

  The president opened her eyes and saw the hospital room ceiling. She turned her head to the right and there was McGill, sitting and staring at her. His eyes looked about to overflow. He smiled and waggled his fingers at her.

  “You were supposed to give me a kiss,” Patti said. “To wake me up.”

  “I gave you six.”

  “Oh. That’s right, you’re a henchman not Prince Charming.”

  “I am, and you’re the president not Snow White.”

  “I auditioned but I didn’t get the part … please tell me Kenny’s okay.”

  McGill, still smiling, stepped over to the bed and took his wife’s hand.

  “He’s in the next room. Celsus wanted all his eggs in one corner. Kenny’s awake and talking with Carolyn.”

  Patti closed her eyes momentarily and when she opened them they were as misty as McGill’s.

  “We did well, Kenny and me?”

  “You both did great,” McGill said. He lowered the safety railing and sat on the bed next to his wife. Then he remembered there was an audience in the room. Nick and the two Secret Service special agents had their eyes on the First Couple. “Please give us a few minutes.”

  Patti nodded her assent. The big boss was awake now. She was the one who gave the marching orders. Nick opened the door for the two female agents. He said, “I’ll let your medical team know you’re awake, Madam President. How much time shall I tell them you need?”

  “Jim will let you know,” she said.

  Nick bowed his head and left.

  The agents would wait just outside the door; that was acceptable.

  “You have some terrible secret to share with me, Mr. McGill.”

  “I do. I had a tough call to make, and you should hear about it from me now.”

  Patti didn’t like the sound of that, but she kept a frown off her face.

  “If it’s not me and it’s not Kenny, who is it?”

  “It was almost you,” McGill said, and he explained.

  “Mitral valve prolapse? I never suspected, and apparently neither did any of my doctors. What did Nick say?”

  McGill told her, “No personal history, and you’d been completely asymptomatic.”

  “And he couldn’t know the extent of the risk for continuing with the procedure?”

  “No. But Kenny was a hundred percent certainty.”

  Patti blinked and tears rolled down her cheeks. She squeezed McGill’s hand.

  “In your place, I’d have done the same thing,” she said.

  “You’re not … just a little out of sorts.”

  “You’ve already told me you’d die for me.”

  McGill reminded her, “But you’re more important than I am, to just about everyone.”

  Patti smiled. “There’s a whole political party willing to argue with that. Not to mention several people named McGill. But this is the sort of question best left to minds better than those of politicians and private detectives.”

  McGill leaned forward and kissed Patti, loving her more than ever.

  She basked in the moment, too, and then asked, “How is Clare?”

  “Elspeth Kendry told me she’s fine, and the little girl she helped is doing well, too.”

  “That’s wonderful. So as far as we know, all’s well.”

  McGill replayed Dr. Jones’ words. “Kenny’s not out of the woods yet, and you have to take it easy for a while. No rushing back to save the world.”

  Patti thought about that and nodded.

  “We’ll watch the leaves turn color at Camp David, all of us. We’ll let Mather Wyman take care of the rest of the world. He’s a good man.”

  Dumbarton Oaks

  Galia provided refreshments to her guests in the solarium of her home. Governor Eugene Rinaldo of New York and Governor Edward Mulcahy of Illinois went with Sumatran Sunset coffee, Governor Lara Chavez of California chose a cup of mint medley herbal tea. The three governors had come to Washington for a conference of their Democratic peers. They were planning how best to defend the statehouses their party held and how best to attack the Republican governors they considered the most vulnerable.

  Receiving an invitation to visit privately with the chief of staff to a president who had just left the GOP had proved irresistible. Unspoken, though, were two questions all the guests had occupying their minds: What scheme had Galia cooked up and why just the three of them?

  Galia had chosen a bottle of White House Ice Tea, the unsweetened version, as her beverage. Prior to the arrival of James J. McGill, the president’s kitchen had served ice tea only by the glass or the pitcher. McGill had opined it was a shame the wonderful drink couldn’t be bottled, and only a year later, the blink of an eye by government standards, it was bottled.

  The label was a tasteful rendering of the Executive Mansion with the simple description Ice Tea beneath the illustration and in fine print below that — there was always fine print in any government document — one of two words: sweetened or unsweetened.


  The ingredients of the ice tea were classified top secret by presidential order.

  In the spirit of McGill’s suggestion, the libation was available to all staffers and visitors to the White House. At one Cabinet meeting, the secretary of the treasury suggested the government produce the ice tea commercially to help reduce the budget deficit. Everyone had laughed, but Galia had seen in several pairs of eyes the recognition that the idea had merit. The more astute recognized it would not only make money, it would also show that the federal government was able to do something extremely well.

  Lara Chavez asked Galia, “How are the president and Mr. McGill’s son doing?”

  “It’s early days for Kenny yet, but the infusion was successful, and I’ve heard he was talking with his mother this morning.”

  The three governors, parents all, nodded and smiled.

  Galia continued, “The president was awake and talking with her husband the last I heard.”

  She wasn’t about to let the cat out of the bag about Patti’s episode of mitral valve prolapse. The timing, wording and delivery of that message was the president’s prerogative, and hers alone. Unless Jim McGill blabbed. No, he wouldn’t do that. Unless Patricia Darden Grant chose him to make the announcement.

  “The president has set a wonderful example to the country,” Gene Rinaldo said.

  “Amen,” Ed Mulcahy added.

  “I’ll relay your kind words to her,” Galia said.

  “When you tell her how we reacted to whatever proposal you have for us?” Mulcahy asked.

  Galia nodded. She knew Ed Mulcahy from when she headed Patti Grant’s first campaign for Congress. Mulcahy had been the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois. He had indicted, tried and convicted a large number of municipal and state officeholders. It was during his time as prosecutor that a reader of the Chicago Tribune had suggested that the state motto be changed to: Will the defendant please rise?

  Having done his best to scourge the moneylenders from the temple of government, Mulcahy had decided to see what he could do to end corruption from within. He’d won the race for governor in a landslide, and he was the linchpin for the idea Galia would propose that morning.

  She said, “In my eyes, with the exception of Patricia Darden Grant, the nominating process the two major parties have used to produce candidates for the presidency the past fifty years has been a mixed bag at best. Bill Clinton, bless him, produced budget surpluses, but it can be argued he didn’t go after Osama bin Laden soon enough or relentlessly enough. Ronald Reagan sat down with Mikhail Gorbachev and managed the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but he didn’t redirect our military to anticipate and adapt to new and different threats.”

  “You’re excluding your boss because she made history by becoming the first female president?” Lara Chavez asked.

  “That’s certainly a consideration. I also have personal and professional biases. Trying to be objective, I’d say the Grant administration has advanced some very important ideas: lobbying reform, redistribution of global defense responsibilities among our allies, the reindustrialization of our country, the most favored enterprise doctrine. In terms of turning policies into laws, we’ve faced problems.”

  “Mostly from the obstinacy of the president’s own … the president’s former party,” Gene Rinaldo said.

  “That and the efforts of some Democrats who sympathize with the obstructionists,” Galia replied.

  Her guests had to accept that point; their party wasn’t without sin.

  “My point is,” Galia said, “Reagan and Clinton were the best their parties produced for over half a century. Just imagine how much worse a mess our country would be in if some of the, let’s say, less qualified candidates had finagled their way into the Oval Office.”

  Rinaldo and Chavez smiled ruefully. Mulcahy came right out and laughed.

  “What you’re not saying, Galia,” he told her, “is that each of us certainly consider that lesser candidates have won and left us in our current mess.”

  “You’re right, Ed, I’m not saying that, and I won’t.”

  “But you do have an idea, Galia, how we might find better candidates on both sides,” Rinaldo suggested.

  Lara Chavez smiled slyly and said, “Oh, I know. No more little states holding the first primary elections, the way we do now. From this point forward, we start with the most populous states.”

  Mulcahy shook his head. “That’s not quite the idea here. If population numbers were what mattered most, we’d have Governor Hendry of Texas and Governor Thomason of Florida in the room with us. But then they’re both Republicans.”

  Galia said, “Consider them to be here in spirit. If we come to an agreement, they’ll follow along close behind us.”

  Mulcahy persisted. “Come on, Galia. Time to spill the beans.”

  Galia nodded. It was time; she pitched her idea.

  “What I’m thinking is, letting small states with sparse populations go first in the primary election process allows marginal candidates with extreme ideas to advance their causes in the national spotlight. The candidates themselves don’t stand a chance of being elected, but their pernicious ideas are advanced in presidential debates.”

  Rinaldo said, “So you’re proposing we help you stifle the free expression of ideas?”

  Galia smiled. She always liked having to sell her own ideas to a tough crowd.

  “What I’m saying, Gene, is just because you can sing in the shower doesn’t mean you’re ready to, or have a right to, go onstage at Carnegie Hall.”

  Eugene Rinaldo liked the allusion of New York being the standard for the big time.

  Galia knew he would. She continued in the same vein, turning to Mulcahy.

  “You can tell a joke that cracks up your poker buddies? That doesn’t mean you’re ready for the main stage at Second City.”

  Lara Chavez anticipated what was coming next. She said, “You do summer stock in Ottumwa, you’re not ready for your close-up in Hollywood.”

  Galia nodded. “Exactly. Candidates who have to start out in populous, ethnically and politically diverse states, will have to offer platforms that are broadly appealing. Workable. Doable when they get to Washington and have to make compromises. Progress will be slow and steady. Demonization of the man or woman on the other side of the aisle will be risky.”

  Mulcahy grinned and said, “All that sounds great, Galia. Normally, I’d ask at this point ‘Who do we have to kill?’ But I know the answer: Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Question is, will they — or our two major parties — sit still for it while we execute them?”

  Galia said, “If I can get the three of you to go along with me, they won’t have any choice.”

  She told them her plan in detail. The governors discussed the idea privately for an hour.

  Then they all toasted their commitment to each other with White House Ice Tea.

  The Funny Farm

  Danny Templeton woke up with his hand on a boner. It took him a second to realize the erection belonged to him. He couldn’t remember the last time his cock had been hard but, boy oh boy, it sure felt good. Just giving it a light stroke made him tingle all over. If he kept going —

  He didn’t. He looked around. There were three other beds in the new room where they had put him. There was a man in each bed. All of them seemed to be asleep. None of them was moving, not more than the occasional dream twitch or two he remembered seeing in his dog, Beau, back home.

  Thinking of his Golden Retriever was almost enough to make him cry. He wanted so badly to return home. He didn’t understand why these people were keeping him at this strange place. He didn’t know why they kept asking him questions when he didn’t know the answers to any of them. Sometimes they kept him up way past his bedtime. Sometimes they gave him so little to eat his stomach hurt. They were mean to him all the time and he didn’t know why.

  He cried himself to sleep just about every night.

  Then, yesterday, something happene
d. They stopped being mean to him, didn’t take him into that awful room where they asked all their crazy questions. They asked him what he’d like to eat more than anything else. He didn’t get his hopes too high, but he told them: a double cheeseburger, a big basket of fries and a chocolate milkshake with whipped cream and a cherry on top.

  Wasn’t more than twenty minutes later he got exactly what he’d wanted.

  Along with the food, they brought him three graphic novels. Immortals, Watchmen and … one of those Japanese comic books with naked women. The words were all written in those little boxy lines instead of regular letters, but the pictures were all there in bright colors, and they showed everything.

  Danny almost forgot about his cheeseburger. But his stomach rumbled and reminded him how hungry he was. He put the Japanese book under the other two and finished his meal. He wanted to look at the pictures of the women some more, but he got the feeling it would be dangerous to do that. At least right out in the open where he was eating.

  When he finished the last sip of his milkshake, two of the men who usually took him to the questioning room came and got him. His food started to turn sour in his stomach as he thought about having to answer questions he’d answered a million times before. That or tell them he didn’t know what they were talking about.

  This time, though, they hadn’t taken him to the questioning room. They took him outside. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out of the building where they kept him. The air was warm and wet just like at home in the summer. The sun on his face almost made him swoon, and having just eaten he wanted nothing more than to fall on the grass and go to sleep.

  They wouldn’t let him do that, though. They marched him into a house that looked like it had been built a real long time ago but had been kept up real nice. He didn’t know why but he got the feeling somebody rich owned it or had at one time. The two men walked him into the house, showed him a room with a big TV and lots of books, even some more of those dirty Japanese comic books. He was told the people who lived in the house had to agree what to watch on the TV. If there were any arguments about that, the TV would stay off. Books could be read in that room or taken to the bedroom.