Jim McGill 05 The Devil on the Doorstep Read online

  “Thank you, Edwina.”

  “Please give my best wishes to Senator Wexford’s family, if you get the chance.”

  “I will.”

  The assistant majority leader of the United States Senate stepped into the Oval Office, the door closing gently behind him. The president got to her feet upon seeing him. Her face reflected the weight of yet another burden being added to her endless list of concerns.

  “How is John?” she asked.

  “Still in surgery as of ten minutes ago, Madam President. I was told we won’t know anything about an eventual outcome for some time.”

  “My thoughts and prayers are with him. He was at his desk when the stroke hit?”

  She gestured to Bergen to sit and returned to her own seat.

  “Yes, ma’am. He was alone in his office, but he was on the phone to his wife at home in Michigan. Word from Senator Wexford’s staff is that Mrs. Wexford heard what she described as her husband gasping for breath while trying to speak to her. Then she heard the phone drop and immediately broke the connection and called his reception desk. Told the staffer to call the Senate medical office immediately and get help for her husband.”

  Patti Grant shook her head in sympathy. “The poor woman. She must have been terrified.”

  “She was, according to what I heard. She’s on her way to Washington right now.”

  “Commercial flight?” the president asked.

  Bergen shook his head. “A friend’s plane. She’ll make good time.”

  “Please let me know if there’s any way I can speed her journey. I’ll pull out all the stops.”

  The senator nodded. “That’s very kind of you, ma’am.” Bergen sighed. “I was told that Mrs. Wexford said John had called her just because he felt the need to hear her voice.”

  Neither of them could decide whether that was comforting or all the more heartbreaking. It would depend, they both supposed, on whether the majority leader survived long enough to see his wife again. Then, inevitably, given their professions and location, their thoughts turned to politics.

  “You’ll act in Senator Wexford’s stead as majority leader, Dick?” the president asked.

  “As long as that’s appropriate.”

  Meaning as long as he still drew breath. If Wexford either died or survived but was unable to fulfill his duties for the remainder of his term, two years, that was when things could get interesting. As number two in the Senate hierarchy, Dick Bergen might simply be the choice of his caucus to take over as majority leader.

  Democrats, however, rarely did anything the easy way.

  Senators in the numbers three, four and five spots in the caucus pecking order might want to play leapfrog. Go for the top spot. A fight would be divisive.

  The president told Bergen, “I’m new to the party, and it really isn’t my place to say whom I might prefer to replace Senator Wexford, if that should become necessary. But if you want the job and ask for my endorsement, I’ll give it to you.”

  Without ever having said so, she preferred Bergen to Wexford.

  And to the other alternatives as well.

  “Thank you, Madam President. I really don’t know how I feel at the moment. If I didn’t feel I owe it my supporters at home and in the party to stay on the job, I might retire before my term expires. I’m no kid, myself. The idea of spending time with my family holds a great deal more attraction at the moment than personal ambition does.”

  “That’s only natural,” the president said. “I’ll understand whatever your choice may be.”

  “Thank you. As long as I’m here, I should pass along the news that bills will be introduced in both the Senate and the House to amend the Constitution.”

  Before the president could respond, Edwina buzzed her.

  “Madam President, I’m sorry to intrude but Chief of Staff Mindel is here with me. I told her you’re speaking with Senator Bergen. She asked if the two of you might spare her a moment.”

  The president looked at the senator. He nodded.

  “Send Galia in, Edwina.”

  The chief of staff entered the Oval Office. She told the president, “I’m sorry to intrude, ma’am.”

  The president nodded in understanding.

  Galia turned to Bergen. “I’m so sorry about Majority Leader Wexford.”

  “Thank you.”

  The president said, “Have a seat, Galia. Senator Bergen was just about to tell me that bills to amend the Constitution will be taken up soon in the Senate and the House.”

  “To abolish the Electoral College,” Galia said.

  “That’s right,” Bergen said.

  The president asked, “Was that legislation to be introduced today?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Bergen said, “until the news about Majority Leader Wexford became known. The Senate, at my direction, will defer all business through the end of this week. The House, as my colleagues in that body tell me, will put the matter off for twenty-four hours as a sign of respect.”

  “True South went along with that?” Galia asked.

  “They didn’t want to at first, I was told, but cooler heads prevailed.”

  The president said, “The White House will have no comment on the proceedings of the House in this matter, but I’ll tell you right now, Dick, as long as both bills support a direct popular election of future presidents, and language is included in the amendment to provide for orderly and reasonable voter registration and uniform early voting dates across the nation to make the greatest voter turnout likely, I’ll support the amendment wholeheartedly.”

  Bergen nodded. “That’s pretty much what our party in both chambers has in mind.”

  Galia exchanged a silent message with the president and received permission to speak.

  She said, “May I offer a suggestion for Congress to consider, Senator?”

  “Of course,” Bergen said, if only to be polite.

  “As long as an historical change will be considered here, why not either change Election Day to Saturday or if it remains on Tuesday declare the day to be a national holiday. Also, give everyone who votes a fifty-dollar credit to apply to their federal tax liability.”

  The president liked both of Galia’s ideas but she said, “Make it a hundred-dollar credit. Come down to fifty only if the other side balks.”

  The assistant majority leader, long one of the best vote counters in Congress, was running the numbers in his head. “I think we can get all of that, if we all play our cards right.”

  Telling the president she’d have to get out front and lead the way.

  Mobilize the state legislatures to ratify the amendment after it was passed by Congress.

  “Do you have something else for the assistant majority leader, Galia?” the president asked.

  “I do.” The chief of staff turned to the senator. “If you are able, sir, will you please give me your candid reading on Representative Philip Brock of Pennsylvania?”

  Dick Bergen had begun his career in national politics as a member of the House. It was widely known he kept up his contacts with colleagues who remained there. That was both a measure of true friendship and smart politics.

  It took a moment, though, for the senator to respond.

  He asked, “What I have to say will stay strictly between us?”

  “It will,” the president said, speaking also for her chief of staff.

  “I don’t like the man. He often plays the rabble-rousing buffoon, but he’s quite smart. He knew enough to distance himself from the GOP at a time when —” Bergen realized he’d just put himself in an awkward spot.

  “When even the president thought it was time to change parties?” the president asked. “That’s all right, Dick. I’m fairly smart, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Give me just a second and I’ll try to get my foot out of my mouth.”

  Both the president and Galia laughed.

  “Anyway,” Bergen continued, “he still managed to get himself elected in a district that’s been voti
ng Republican for decades. Most of us, of course, tell the voters what we hope they want to hear. But with Brock … it’s like he knows people’s worst impulses and can cozy up to them without quite crossing the line. If you look at the polls for his two runs for the House, he was way behind both times, but he won by double digits.”

  “And how do you explain that?” Galia asked.

  She had her own idea, but she wanted to hear what the senator had to say.

  “What I think is,” Bergen said, “a lot of people are ashamed to admit they like his ideas, but when they go to vote, are alone in the booth, they cast their ballots for him and his ideas with a sense of glee. Like they just put one over on everybody else.”

  Bergen sighed, as if he’d just articulated another reason why he might retire early.

  He shook hands with the president and Galia on his way out.

  When they were alone, the president told her chief of staff, “Good ideas on the amendment, Galia. So, tell me, why do we need to worry about Philip Brock?”

  Galia told the president that she’d heard from Merilee Parker.

  The chief of staff’s spy was formerly the press secretary for Senator Howard Hurlbert, founder of the True South party and the man who came within one electoral vote of winning the election. Galia told the president of Reverend Mulchrone’s benediction and Representative Brock’s speech in Virginia and the private meeting afterward.

  Then she added, “Merilee knows all the important players in Southern far right politics. She recognized two men who are active in militia movements. She also saw a former NASA project manager. These men met briefly with Representative Brock and for a longer time with Reverend Mulchrone after their public appearance.”

  The president’s face tightened. “These militias, do they advocate violence against the federal government?”

  “They’re a bit more sophisticated than most. But they are very unhappy Howard Hurlbert won’t be sitting in this office as of January twentieth, and say so at every opportunity.”

  “Which falls under their First Amendment rights,” the president said.

  “Exactly. They say they’re arming themselves to the teeth only in preparation for the day we come after them.”

  “Meanwhile,” the president said, “they interpret the law to suit themselves, and if one of them clearly violates a law, as Burke Godfrey did when he conspired to kill Andy, they retreat behind lines of armed followers and blame us when they come to grief.”

  Galia could hear the pain and anger in the president’s voice.

  The loss of her first husband remained an unhealed wound.

  The chief of staff said, “It’s bad enough when bands of yahoos go out into the woods to play Rambo, but when they have a rocket scientist giving them who knows what kind of help, it’s time to worry.”

  “Let’s not forget True South,” the president said. “A new political party is trying to shape political opinion in their favor.”

  Well, Patricia Darden Grant thought, I’m not without resources or the will to use them, either. She told Galia, “I want to see the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff this afternoon. Four o’clock.”

  Galia got to her feet and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But first, Galia?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Put all your spies on full alert,” the president said.

  “Already done, Madam President.”

  SE Washington, DC

  Sweetie met her husband, Putnam Shady, outside a construction barrier surrounding a gleaming new four-story building of rose tinted marble and gleaming glass. Only glimpses of the structure could be seen from street level, just enough to pique everyone’s curiosity. Even Google Earth and media snoops in helicopters were prevented from getting overhead looks by a black tarp stretched taut over the roof of the structure.

  A robust private security force kept busybodies, vandals and publicity seekers from either defacing or climbing the barricade. On the few occasions the private cops had to intercede they were quickly supported by Metro police. The speedy response time got reporters to ask the mayor if he knew what the building was.

  His honor would only smile and tell everyone, “You’re going to like it.”

  Trying to guess what the building was became first a local and than a national guessing game. It was rumored that everyone who worked on the building would be given a substantial bonus, but only if the news of what they’d labored on didn’t leak.

  With construction all but complete, it hadn’t.

  Margaret “Sweetie” Sweeney had been as curious as anyone else.

  Having the firmest sense of boundaries, though, she contented herself to wait to find out.

  But then Putnam had called and said, “That new mystery building in Southeast? How’d you like a sneak preview?”

  Also having an abiding sense of priorities, Sweetie put an obligation to duty ahead of self-gratification. So she’d told Putnam, “I’d love to, but let me see if I can clear something up first.”

  She called the office, McGill Investigations, Inc.

  Leo Levy answered. Sweetie said hello and asked if Jim was available.

  “He’s in with M’sieur le Magistrat, Yves Pruet.” Sweetie heard Leo ask someone how his pronunciation was. “That’s close enough for rock ‘n’ roll, I’m told, Margaret. You want to leave a message?”

  Some secrets Sweetie couldn’t share even with Leo or Deke.

  Welborn and Celsus were about to put their butts on the line.

  The fewer people who knew about that the better.

  She wondered what the guy from Paris was doing in town.

  Jim had told her all about what had happened over in France.

  “Tell him I’ll get back to him, Leo.”

  “Will do.”

  There, Sweetie thought. Now she could meet Putnam with a clear conscience. She drove over to Southeast, parked and saw him standing, mid-block, outside the construction barrier. She walked over and gave him a kiss. He knocked softly on the barrier and a door Sweetie hadn’t even noticed opened. An armed guard nodded to Putnam and said, “Please step inside quickly, Mr. Shady. You, too, ma’am.”

  They complied and the guard closed the door behind them. Sweetie felt as if she’d crossed the threshold to a dazzling new world. The lines and proportions of the building she beheld all but took her breath away. What really captured Sweetie’s attention, though, was when they went inside and she saw a row of paintings on an interior wall.

  Sweetie glanced at Putnam and turned back to the paintings.

  “Monet,” she said. “Manet, too. Is that a Modigliani?”

  Putnam walked up to his wife’s side. “It is.”

  Sweetie put a hand on Putnam’s shoulder.

  “What is this place?” she asked.

  “The world’s next great art museum.”

  “And how did you get us in here?”

  Putnam said, “It was my idea, sort of.”

  “What?” Sweetie asked, suspecting a joke was at hand.

  “Really. Well, sort of. I wrote a guest column for the Post maybe eight years ago, suggesting how the overprivileged might do a a bit of good for the American public. Never thought it would amount to anything. But …” Putnam gestured at the building.

  “Don’t tell me it’s going to be named after you,” Sweetie said.

  Putnam laughed. “The Putnam Shady Museum? No.”

  “Well, what’s it going to be called?”

  With a broad smile, Putnam said, “Inspiration Hall.”

  Grand Street — Manhattan

  The man known to the French police as Laurent Fortier sat on a stool in a SoHo loft and watched an artist, currently calling himself Giles Benedict, complete a painting. It was hard to say which of them had the better critical eye when it came to evaluating a forgery’s proximity to an original work. Fortier got to his feet and stood shoulder to shoulder with Benedict.

  “What do
you think?” the forger asked, wiping off his brush.

  Resting on an easel, the canvas Benedict had just completed glowed gold and green, a field of ripe wheat, under an intense blue sky filled with crows. Next to it stood the Van Gogh masterwork from which it was taken. Not the double-square painting that hung securely in the Amsterdam museum named after the artist, but a smaller preliminary study, one the artist sold for the price of some paints, the material for the larger canvas and perhaps a meal.

  The study for “Wheatfield with Crows” was officially listed as missing. Not stolen. That classification got things exactly backward. Until the early 1990s, the painting had been the property of a family of diamond dealers in Antwerp. They’d taken great pleasure in owning the painting and keeping knowledge of their possession a closely, but imperfectly, held secret.

  It was the first painting Laurent Fortier ever stole.

  Being new to his craft at the time of the theft, Fortier had been forced to kill the diamond dealer’s groundskeeper who had foolishly stationed himself in the driveway, hands on hips, between Fortier’s automobile and the road on which the thief intended to flee. There were still times when Fortier would awaken from a sound sleep with the image of the man’s shocked face in his mind, that awful moment when the groundskeeper realized the car speeding toward him was not going to stop and his life was at an end.

  In Fortier’s career of more than twenty-five years, that was one of only two times he’d had to take such a drastic measure to make his escape. The second life he’d taken to remain at liberty had been on his most recent theft.

  He saw the two killings as bookends. The mistake of a beginner. The clumsiness of a professional in decline. He hadn’t told anyone, because there was no one to tell, but he was all but finished with his work. There was little else to accomplish.

  He would live out his days in comfort and self-satisfaction, knowing there had never been an art thief to match him. Likely never would be anyone to compare. Only Benedict could come close. But even he was an implementer not a creator.

  “It’s marvelous,” Fortier said of Benedict’s effort. “Except you left out one crow.”

  Depending on interpretations of Van Gogh’s suggestions of birds in flight, the accepted number of crows in the painting was thirty-seven.