Jim McGill 04 The Last Ballot Cast, Part 2 Page 8

  Damn thing started going flat like a blown tire. The cop had to kill his motor or it would have driven him right under the water. Jackie slammed his throttle to full speed and steered around the cop and Irish Grace. He wanted to give Carina goddamn Linberg the finger as he passed, but he saw she not only had her top back on, she had a rifle in her hands and looked like —

  Shit! She hit the Whaler with her first shot.

  Jackie crouched on the far side of the console, steered with one hand and kept going.

  He’d gone maybe a quarter mile straight out to sea before he dared to get back in the captain’s chair and look behind him.

  Goddamnit, Irish Grace was chasing him. Didn’t look like it was gaining on him, but it was sure as hell keeping up. How the hell could it do that? Then he remembered, the sailboat had a motor, too. With the combination of the sails and the motor, it might be able to keep him in sight.

  If the wind picked up, maybe it’d even be able to catch him. No, it definitely would catch him because if the wind rose the sea would, too. No way was Jackie going to try to go fast in big waves. As it was, he couldn’t hide around a bend in the road or duck into an alley. He fucking hated trying to make a getaway on the goddamn ocean.

  The only thing he could do was, what? Get over the horizon maybe?

  Then Jackie saw a boat way the hell off to his left. It was moving fast, getting bigger every time he blinked his eyes. Which he had to do because the Whaler was moving fast enough to make his eyes water. Every time he cleared his eyes, the damn boat on his left looked bigger.

  He knew about speed; that sucker was really moving. What scared him was it looked like it was coming straight at him. Like he was a goddamn target.

  No, like he was a meal.

  Now, he could see the color and the lines of the boat bearing down on him. It was white with a big dark space in the middle of the bow. Looked like an open mouth. He half-expected to see teeth flashing any minute. The fucking thing was going to eat him alive.

  And there was not a damn thing he could do about it.

  Jump over the side? The way he swam, he’d maybe go twenty yards before he went under.

  He could see two of the pricks on the deck of the white boat now. Those fucking slavers Cap’n Thurlow had ratted him out to. Why hadn’t the cops locked them up? Why were they so hellbent on making him pay? It should have been fucking Alice they were after. He’d just been a guy who stopped into a bar, tried to do a favor for a broad. He was innocent, goddamnit.

  He hadn’t done anything to deserve this.

  The last thing Jackie Richmond, aka Linley Boland, ever did was throw an empty revolver weighing less than two pounds at a fifty-five-foot yacht weighing twenty tons and moving at forty-five knots. The Carcharodon crushed the Whaler like it was a Dixie cup, turned a homicidal car thief into a bloody pulp and then flew a hundred feet through the air.

  Mass and velocity were both on the side of the yacht but a hydrofoil catamaran running on plane was not designed to ram a solid object weighing over four tons without suffering its own fatal consequences. Spectacularly deficient seamanship was on rampant display that day in the waters off Grand Cayman Island.

  Welborn Yates and Carina Linberg saw the stunning collision and regarded the aftermath for a length of time neither of them would later be able to specify.

  Carina spoke first. “That was the bastard who killed your friends, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you know the madmen on that yacht?”

  “Only saw them once.”

  “If I wrote something like what just happened, what would you think?”

  “That I’d rather see it on the page than on the water.”

  Carina leaned against Welborn and he put an arm around her.

  Thinking she might need a moment of comfort.

  But she said, “I don’t know. Might make a good movie sequence.”

  When they got back to the marina, Welborn’s phone rang and he got another shock.

  Kira was calling to tell him, “I’m pregnant.”

  Indiana University — Bloomington, Indiana

  Cassidy Kimbrough and two friends from high school, Jeff Banks and Lindsay Fitzpatrick, were walking through the IU campus on their way to meet Sheryl Kimbrough. They stole glances at the college students and checked out classroom buildings. Jeff and Lindsay wanted to enroll at the state’s flagship university.

  The three of them tried to be inconspicuous. Hoped they didn’t get pegged as high school kids and teased about it. Told to get their backpacks back where they belonged.

  They needn’t have worried. Either they were beneath notice or their educational betters were feeling charitable. They were allowed to pass freely through the college environs as if they belonged. The day was sunny but the first nip of real coolness was in the air. Not cold enough to cause shivers but sufficiently chilly to put a spring in your step.

  By Midwestern standards, it was a great day to be outside.

  That thought had no sooner occurred to Cassidy than Jeff pointed to a vehicle coming toward them on the adjacent campus road and asked, “What the heck is that car doing?”

  It was a 50s Chevy, restored to a showroom finish. That was eye-catching enough. But it was the way the car moved that had everyone looking at it.

  Lindsay said, “It looks like it’s dancing.”

  There were three kids in the front seat of the car, two girls and the boy behind the wheel. Maybe they were IU students, maybe other high school kids on campus and goofing off. They were bouncing up and down, snapping their fingers and swaying back and forth, listening to music sealed inside the car by its raised windows.

  The cool thing was, the car had as many moves as the kids did. Dipping its front end. Doing a side to side shimmy. Jumping ahead a few feet, then backing up the same distance. Like the “D” on its transmission stood for dance instead of drive. People on the sidewalk started dancing, too, clapping their hands in rhythm with the car as it passed. Then someone opened up a residence hall window and started cranking out tunes.

  The car responded like it had heard the music and its movements became more exaggerated.

  Then the rear windows slid down and fireworks shot out.

  People cheered and Cassidy was about to say, “Cool!”

  But that was when she saw a look of fear come over the face of the kid behind the wheel. A ball of fire erupted in the back seat, the Chevy shot forward and the girls inside screamed. This wasn’t part of the act. Cassidy felt the terror of the kids in the Chevy and screamed in sympathy with them.

  A heartbeat later the car slammed into the back of a parked delivery van and in seconds the whole thing was engulfed in flames.

  Still screaming, Cassidy ran toward the car. Jeff tried to grab her, hold her back, but she pulled free. She was the second person to get to the Chevy. A tall guy with blonde hair edged her out. The interior of the car was a furnace. The blonde guy yanked the driver’s door open and jumped back as flames shot out at him.

  Cassidy had to keep him from falling as he stepped on her foot. He gave her a look and then went right back to the car. He reached in and grabbed the driver, had him halfway out when Cassidy took over and pulled the driver the rest of the way. The two girls were screaming and scrambling to crawl out the open door, getting in each other’s way.

  Both girls’ hair was on fire.

  The blonde guy got the two of them out with one big tug.

  Cassidy somehow caught one of the girls, let her fall to the ground and began beating out the flames in the girl’s hair with her bare hands. Then somebody picked Cassidy up and was running with her like he had a football under his arm. Before she could ask him what the hell he was doing, she heard people yelling, “Get back, get back!”

  Then she was on the grass with someone lying on top of her and she felt a clap of thunder, loud and hot, like maybe she’d been hit by lightning, too.

  She didn’t know what the heck was going on, but when she
heard a swarm of sirens shrieking, she knew things had to be bad. Then whoever had been on top of her rolled off and there was Mom, her eyes filled with tears and a look of horror on her face.

  That was the moment Cassidy first felt fear.

  Seeing her mother’s shocked reaction.

  “Mom?” she asked.

  Meier’s Tavern — Glenview, Illinois

  The place on Lake Avenue looked like an old-fashioned road house and it caught Anderson’s eye. He told Crosby and Todd, “I need a cold brew, some hot beef and a place to tap a kidney.”

  Needing no further justification, he pulled into the gravel parking lot.

  Crosby and Anderson had exchanged their Red Sox caps for White Sox caps. Both of them knew Cubs caps were more prevalent on Chicago’s North Side and the city’s northern suburbs, but they thought the blue caps with the red C looked lame, and what self-respecting team would have a cute little cubbie-wubbie for its mascot? Pathetic.

  Todd stuck with his Nike cap.

  They asked for and got a table off to themselves. The waitress didn’t seem to care what team they rooted for and was happy to take their orders. Anderson was delighted the place had beer from Dortmund, Germany.

  Todd, Crosby and Anderson had done a casual single-pass drive-by of James J. McGill’s house in nearby Evanston and Patti Grant’s walled mansion in slightly more distant Winnetka.

  A sign on McGill’s lawn warned that a security firm protected the premises.

  The Grant mansion’s wall was unmarred by commercial signage.

  The Secret Service didn’t advertise.

  As they’d passed McGill’s house, Anderson said, “You can bet your ass no other house in town will get a faster response from the local cops.”

  Todd thought about that. “Maybe we should throw a rock through a window and see just how fast that response is.”

  “They’d know it was us,” Crosby said. “You want to let them know we’re reconnoitering?”

  “Who’s McGill’s wife?” Todd asked.

  Crosby and Anderson looked at each other.

  “You want to make it look like it’s a political thing?” Crosby asked.

  “The woman must have made some enemies leaving the Republicans and joining the Democrats,” Todd said.

  They’d all read everything they could find on McGill, the president and McGill’s family.

  Knowing your enemy was always the first step.

  Anderson said, “Maybe I should go to a novelty shop, see if I can find a nice smooth stone they could put an elephant decal on.”

  Todd liked that.

  “They’d still suspect us,” Crosby said.

  Todd replied, “They’d suspect but they couldn’t know. It would be a little psychological jab.”

  “That’s not bad,”Anderson said, “and we might learn something.”

  Todd said, “Gathering information is the purpose of this little excursion, right? We might even divide our forces and see if a rock through McGill’s window rings an alarm at the president’s home.”

  The two former covert operatives looked at each other.

  Despite their initial misgivings and knowing that Todd had fucked with their heads, their respect for the little bastard continued to grow.

  Anderson said, “Tell me something, Doc. You think you’ll be happy if we get McGill?”

  Todd etched a bleak smile on his face.

  “Will I take pleasure in the doing of it? No. The satisfaction will be in knowing he’ll never thwart me again.”

  Meaning he wouldn’t have to look over his shoulder as he pursued Chana Lochlan once more.

  Crosby spoiled Todd’s mood by saying, “There’s always someone ready to fuck with you.”

  “That’s just the way the world is,” Anderson added. “You finish killing commies, up pop the jihadis.”

  Todd didn’t want to hear it. He got up and went to tap a kidney.

  In the wee hours of the morning, Anderson threw a rock through McGill’s living room window. The response was very quick. But not quick enough to catch Anderson.

  There was no response at the president’s lakeside mansion that Todd and Crosby could see.

  They were back in their Ottawa hideout by dawn.

  Calder Road — McLean, Virginia

  Senator Howard Hurlbert’s second home, the one he used while Congress was in session, sat on a two-acre lot in the uppermost reaches of the northernmost state of the former Confederacy. To some Southerners, it might as well have been Newfoundland. Especially the way nearby stretches of the Old Dominion had been infested by Yankees and had taken to voting for the goddamn Democrats.

  Hurlbert took pains to point out to his constituents in Mississippi that Robert E. Lee, the most revered general the South had ever known, had been born just (eighty-nine miles) down the road at Stratford Hall. Hurlbert’s residence also had the pleasing look of a southern gentleman’s property with a white picket fence, green lawns, a curving flagstone driveway and a pale yellow house with powder blue shutters. Out back was a four-car garage, converted from a coach-house.

  An apartment above the garage served as the living quarters for the African American couple who cooked and cleaned for the senator.

  Appearances were everything for Hurlbert. He believed people voted with their eyes. If they liked what they saw — that was, if you looked like what they wished they looked like — you were in. Look good and you could get away with spouting all sorts of hokum.

  Within limits.

  The senator believed the wishes of Tom T. Wright exceeded those limits.

  He told Bobby Beckley, “You read a Huey Long speech to most of the people back home, they’d think it was Karl Marx talking. There is no way I can do what that man wants.”

  The senator’s color was high, but that was due to more than a hot temper. He’d finished his third Woodford single barrel bourbon and was pouring his fourth. Beckley knew he’d have to cut him off soon or there would be no talking to him.

  He took the senator’s glass from him with a polite, “Thank you, don’t mind if I do.”

  Hurlbert understood his old friend was exercising a measure of judgment he lacked.

  He still didn’t like it, though, and sat pouting on a nearby sofa.

  Beckley lowered himself into a facing armchair.

  “Senator, how did your family come into its money?”

  “Reginald Hurlbert made our fortune in the early nineteenth century.”

  “Yes, but how did he do that?”

  “He was a —” Hurlbert bit his tongue. He’d been about to say a progressive farmer. “He was ahead of his time in the production of cotton.”

  Beckley smiled, sipped his bourbon and spoke in a soft voice. “Senator, your esteemed ancestor was one of the many cotton farmers in the South who stole the design of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin.”

  “He did no such thing!”

  “Mrs. Hurlbert told me he did. Said she heard it from you.”

  The senator reached for the glass in Beckley’s hand. He pulled it back.

  Falling back on the sofa, Hurlbert said, “You haven’t told anyone, have you?”

  “No.”

  “What I told Bettina was he improved on Whitney’s design.”

  “Ah, well, that makes all the difference. But let’s look at his source of inspiration. Eli Whitney was born in Massachusetts. He was a graduate of Yale. By the standards of his day or any other, I doubt he was a good ol’ boy. But that didn’t stop Reginald from taking a good idea and running with it, did it?”

  “No.”

  “After the Civil War, Reginald’s son, Denton, took over the land holdings and while others were bemoaning the loss of their slaves and failing to bribe the Yankees so they could hold on to their land, he moved ahead as a pioneer of new methods of cultivation, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “So both men took chances with something new.”

  “They did.”

  “In your own way,
you’ve followed in their footsteps by starting a new political party.”

  Hurlbert knew he was being flattered. Didn’t need to hear any more puffery. He got straight to the point.

  “You really think we could get away with peddling southern populism?” he asked. “In this day and age?”

  “I think it’s a damn fascinating idea, especially when it’s backed up by a hundred million dollars. I also think smart people make a sharp turn when they see others running straight off a cliff.”

  Beyond that, Beckley thought their little chat with Tom T. Wright might have been an elaborate trap set up by Galia Mindel. God only knew how she could get a New Orleans billionaire to play her little game, but there wasn’t much he would count as out of reach for that woman.

  Hell, he’d have loved to come up with an idea that devious.

  So what he was going to do was spend a small chunk of the senator’s leftover campaign funds from his last election on a raft of private investigators. He was going to cover everyone he could think of from Galia Mindel right on up to James J. McGill. Have them followed and photographed. Point some directional microphones their way, too.

  That’d be damn risky, of course. Especially with McGill having Secret Service protection. But, hell, he was running an empty suit as the presidential candidate from a new party. His career was already a hot rod racing toward the railroad tracks. Seeing if he could get across before the train nailed him. Funny damn thing, that was just the way he liked it.

  Not that he’d share either his thoughts or his sentiments with the senator.

  He tossed the bourbon down his throat and got to his feet.

  He had to start the ball rolling, but he left the old man with one last thing to chew on.

  “You don’t feel comfortable trying to sell Tom T’s ideas, Senator, you let me know who else wants to give you his kind of money.”

  WorldWide News — Washington, D.C.

  A security guard accompanied Ellie Booker to her old office. She’d told the drone at the lobby desk that she’d like to talk with Ethan Judd. She was sure every tight-assed little J-School grad with clean fingernails and untarnished ideals was trying to see the man these days. She’d read about Judd shit-canning most of the old staff. Not just the on-air talent, but the producers, the writers, even some of the hair and make-up people.