My King The President (9 page)

“No, nothing’s wrong. Just that I forgot to ask you about something while we were driving. I was kind of distracted, I guess. Anyway, one time Mac mentioned a man he called ‘Old Sarge.’ Any idea who he might have been talking about?”

I hung up, shook my head to clear away growing fatigue and the image of her face. Dialed another number. “Walt? It’s Jeb. Sorry to call you at home.”

“This is a tough one, Walt, even for you. I want you to backtrack over the years since Tyndall was elected the first time, and find any nationally prominent and powerful men who have died between then and now. I’m looking for six or seven names. I already know one, but he’s still alive.”

“Right, and Walt, this next one may be tougher. See if you can hack your way into military files and dig out one Master Sergeant Mackenzie, Joseph, U.S. Army. May be retired by now. I need to find out where he is.”

I paid for my gas and got back on the road, this time really enjoying a kind of second wind. Finally, I felt like I was back in the old saddle again, winging it the way I always had, and looking forward to tomorrow. I turned the radio on, pushed buttons until I found the nearest public radio station, and listened to the rest of somebody’s good performance of Brahms’ First, which lasted until the eight o’clock NPR news.

“…And the entire nation is reeling yet again with the tragic news of the apparent suicide of former First Lady, Jean Tyndall. Information is still very sketchy at this hour, but police sources tell us the body was discovered around six o’clock this evening in the master bedroom of her Watergate apartment by a maid. Death was by hanging. We will certainly pass on further details as they become available. In other news…”

I managed to get Cal’s Chevy onto the shoulder without wrecking it. It took me fifteen minutes more before my hands stopped shaking enough to drive the rest of the way to Washington.

Chapter 8

Thurmond Frye and one of his men were already in Ernie’s office when I got there at eight. I took one look at Ernie’s face, which was dark as an anvil cloud ready to explode. Something had come down, and it wasn’t anything good. I had no idea how bad it was until Ernie looked at the FBI men and said, “Gentlemen, would you mind stepping outside a few minutes? When I have to fire a man, I like it to be one on one.”

I kept my mouth shut until Frye and his man took seats at a desk not more than fifteen feet from Ernie’s glass cage, their backs politely turned to us. “You’re going to can me before I write my first piece?” I said.

“Before you write your first word! No, don’t bother taking off your raincoat and hat; you’re not going to be here that long. What the hell were you
thinking
about, threatening the Judge? In case you forgot, it’s not against the law to help get a President elected. Not only has Koontz burned up the phone lines all morning, he’s sicked the FBI on me—and you. Why didn’t you
tell
me you had McCarty’s diaries? No, don’t answer that. I don’t want to know. I can’t tell anybody anything if I don’t know anything. Besides that, the owner of this rag, unlike her saint of a mother, has no personal connection, political or otherwise to Ms. You-Know-Who, and even if she did, she’d still want your head on a platter. Maybe mine, too.”

“I see. The reach of Ezekiel Koontz’s influence is as deep as it is long.”

“And on top of it all, Jean Tyndall had to go hang herself last night! I got a heap of misery coming down on my head this morning without having to fend off a big lawsuit.”

“There won’t be any lawsuit, Ernie. Koontz is bluffing. I got just the rise out of him I wanted.”

“Yeah? Well, not at this paper’s expense. I’ve been told not to let you write one single word. You’re outa here. As she put it, if you darken the door of this newspaper again, I’m to be thrown out along with you, and neither one of us will ever find another job anywhere.”

“Talk about the baby and the bath water. What about our other arrangement?”

“Can’t be helped. You’re on your own.”

Ernie Latham is the only journalist I ever met who could write and talk at the same time. During his tirade, he had scribbled a note, and turned it around so that I could see it.

GOOD LUCK/STAY IN TOUCH

As soon as he knew I’d read it, he deftly slid it under his desk calendar. “Those two guys out there were here an hour ago waiting for a piece of you, too. I think they mean business.”

Since I had nothing to lose, I thought it best not to have to tell Frye, or anyone else, that there were no diaries. Nor did I want to talk to anybody but Cal about Jean Tyndall. I needed to buy some time, and stood there a minute trying to think of a way to dodge Frye and his assistant. One crazy idea finally came to me. It had worked once before. Might again. “Ernie, I don’t want to talk to those guys out there just now. Is Dean Pittman still on the sports desk?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Could you do me favor and call him? Ask him to meet me in the first floor men’s room. Also, after I’m gone, please call my Dad at the Mayflower. Ask him to meet me at the dock.”

“Okay.” He reached for the phone and I walked out to face Frye. “Now, guys, I’ll answer all your questions, but first, I have to go pee. Be right back.”

Dean Pittman and I are the same height, build, and have more or less the same complexion. In the past, people at the
Post
had often gotten us mixed up. He was already inside the men’s room when I got there. “What’s up, Jeb?”

It cost me twenty bucks, a good hat and a brand new London Fog raincoat, but when he left, doing a credible hundred yard dash to the front door, I figured it would take Frye and his buddy at least two, maybe three blocks to run him down, only to be triple pissed when they realized they had chased the wrong guy. That was plenty of time for me to snatch Walt from his desk and hustle to the parking ramp. The Plymouth made it out, and all the way to Georgetown with me hunkered down in the back seat. Walt pulled into the parking lot of the Sheraton and stopped the car before he said anything, bless him, and then asked me who I was running from.

I climbed from the back seat to the front. “Walt, I don’t want to get you into any more trouble than I probably already have. With Ernie, I mean. Look, you’re a really bright guy, and you must have already realized I’m working on something pretty important, and in the process, I’ve made some people just a tad upset.”

“Like Judge Koontz?”

“Like Judge Koontz and the FBI! If I told you anything more, much as I’d like to, I could put you between a rock and a hard place, and I don’t want to do that. I hope you understand.”

“I’m not
that
good, Jeb. I don’t know.”

“Never mind, I’ll find out. There is one other thing. Could you set up a computer in my hotel room? Maybe tie it into yours at home?”

“Sure I can, with about a thousand bucks.”

“Ouch. Well, it’ll be worth it, I think.” I figured Walt could find a better bargain on a computer than Cecil could, so I wrote him a check on the spot. “How soon could you—?”

“Not a problem. Maybe by tomorrow.” He grinned at me. “First thing, I’m going home and call in sick. Won’t fool Ernie Latham, but what the hell.”

“Good man. Listen, I may not be at the Mayflower when you get everything ready. Here’s my room key. I can get another one when I get back.”

I went inside the Marina office and asked the Harbormaster if he’d heard anything from
LAST WORD
. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Cap’n Tyson called in first thing this morning. Weather permitting, they should get here before dark tomorrow.”

My worried looking father drove up twenty minutes later. “Where the devil have you been? I’ve tried two dozen times to call your room.”

“Relax, Cal. Come on, lets have an early lunch, and I’ll fill you in.”

The Marina restaurant served decent shrimp salads. I hadn’t realized how hungry I was, and ate two of them before we started talking. I say we, but it was yet another of my solo recitals. Cal listened to my considerably edited version of from Liz’s appearance to my improvised escape from Frye without comment, his frown growing deeper by the minute.

“…And, Walt’s getting me a computer. By the way, I just checked, the boat should be here by tomorrow night.”

“When did you hear about Jean Tyndall?”

“On the way back from Carolina. No
way
that woman committed suicide, Cal.”

“The newspapers said she left a note. Hand-written, saying she was depressed and ‘couldn’t live any more without her beloved husband’, something like that.”

“I don’t care what the media says. That note has to be a phony. She was no more depressed than her pet goldfish. She hated him, remember? So, somebody offed her, but why?”

“Because she knew something they didn’t want to come out?”

“Right. What really bothers me the most, though, is what she said about Tyndall nearly turning the country into a police state.”

Cal toyed with his coffee spoon. “He’d made a good start at it already, hadn’t he? Sum up, pal: A soldier or border patrolman every hundred yards along the entire Mexican border? Marines and National Guardsmen running and guarding the twenty new Federal tent prisons in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico? Navy personnel checking every passenger coming into the country by plane, ship, or pony cart? Army and Air Force searching every purse, suitcase, and golf bag, not to mention the people carrying them, in every airport in the country? M.P.’s and Shore Patrol by the thousands walking the streets alongside beat cops? Plus all the stuff we most likely
don’t
know about. You tell me.”

“Question is, how far was he going to take it?”

“Who knows? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. What did his wife call him? My King? Any number of a million people could have wanted him dead. But if Judge Koontz and his buddies helped him get elected, why would they want to kill him? Nothing makes sense. At least not yet. Maybe your old friend Frye was right. Maybe there really isn’t anything behind these conspiracy rumors after all.”

“You don’t believe that any more than I do, Cal.”

Cal shook his head. “Well, if Mac McCarty didn’t have a personal grudge, why did he do it, then? He was, by your account, a very smart, stable man. Loved his family more than anything. Unless he had a big money problem nobody knows about yet, there’s nothing in his background to suggest somebody blackmailing him into such a desperate deed. Who could have been pulling his strings hard enough to make him pull the trigger?”