Stranglehold (2 page)

I walked over to the small desk. The surface of it was covered with a plastic-like coating. Never mind that the blond desk wasn't worth saving. The coating had done its job. It had stopped the small pool of blood from leaking onto the floor.

In the bathroom I found traces of pink water in the white sink. In the waste can I found a balled-up motel towel. It was stained bloodred.

I went back to the bed and the suitcase. I'd been careful not to touch anything except the doorknob. I was tempted to open the suitcase. I took out my handkerchief and started to drag the case closer to me when somebody knocked on the door.

I didn't say anything. I heard my heart in my ears. Finally, in singsong, a Latina voice said: “Cleaning rooms. You want it done now?”

A voice I didn't own or control said: “No thanks. Later.”

“Aw right.”

I let my heartbeat slow before opening the suitcase. Inside I found a jumbled mess. I covered my hand with the handkerchief and started pulling things out to examine them. The clothes ran to two T-shirts, two sweatshirts, two pairs of jockey shorts, two pairs of socks, a pair of jeans, and then a range of toiletries from toothpaste to razor blades to pocket combs to mouthwash. There were four paperbacks, Camus and Sartre and Kerouac and William Gibson. I pictured a college student, though the owner could be older, of course. Stuck in a corner was a business card. I brought it up to my face so I could read it in the bad light. I didn't like what I saw at all.

Larson-Davies was a group that specialized in opposition research.
Detective work using not smoking .45s and bourbon but newspaper files and the Internet. They were ruthless and very good. For most of us in political work, elections are a contact sport. There are no saints in our business, just degrees of sinners. The Larson-Davies group believed in mortal combat. When their oppo people go after the background of their opponents, they rarely fail to dig up at least a modest scandal—or something that can be spun in the media as a scandal. They have helped bring down two or three senators once considered unbeatable.

Beneath the logo on the card was the name Monica Davies. Like Greg Larson, she was a former gossip columnist. She made considerably more money outing politicians than she ever made outing action heroes.

I'd learned something by coming in here, but I wasn't sure what as yet. How did Susan Cooper tie into the blood and the shabby suitcase and the business card?

The door was difficult to close. I had to jerk it hard before I heard the lock click. I put my head down the way people do in a perp walk and headed to my rental car. The temptation was to run, but I forced myself to just move quickly. Only when I got behind the wheel did I look to see who might have seen me. The walk was empty. The cleaning cart was in front of an open door but there was no sign of the woman.

I started the car and drove away. I rolled the window halfway down. I needed the breeze to dry me off. Even the tops of my hands gleamed with sweat.

All the way back to campaign headquarters, my mind kept flashing on that splash of blood on the desk. And the bloody towel in the waste can.

Earlier that morning, after an hour in the hotel gym and a light breakfast, I had driven over to the Reelect Susan Cooper headquarters in the business district of Aldyne. I'd picked up a rental car as soon as I got off the plane last night. I'd been here once before, but I wanted to spend some time seeing the downstate city of eighty thousand and I preferred to do it alone. When you've got a tour guide, your impressions end up being theirs as much as your own.

I was here because the man I'd put in charge of the campaign, Ben Weinberg, was having problems with his candidate. This was the only time in the eight years we'd worked together that he'd asked me for any real help. I had a sense of how unhappy Ben was when I swung the rental car behind the large one-story building that had previously been a warehouse but was now our campaign headquarters. He was leaning next to the back door and he was smoking a cigarette.

Ben had played fullback at Northwestern. He'd kept in reasonably good shape for a man who slept five hours a night, had two marriages in
his past, dined mostly at McDonald's, and had tried every possible gimmick to quit smoking. Last week he'd told me that he'd been off the smokes for five weeks and felt that this time he was going to make it. He waved at me with a burning cigarette in his fingers.

The morning was clear and bright. It was just after seven-thirty. I walked over to him and said, “You want a pep talk?”

He smiled. “Nah. Wouldn't do any good, anyway, Dev. This thing is spooking me and I don't know what to do about it.”

Ben is sartorially challenged. Even in the best of clothes he looks rumpled. And he looks happy about it. A big, smart man whose necktie is never cinched at the throat and whose suit coat is rarely seen. The face fits the form, a comfortable composite of kind brown eyes, a mouth quick to smile, and a nose that had been broken in a few bar fights. He's of the old school of consultants. He's not coiffed and polished and ready for sound bites. He started out working in school-board elections back in Winnetka. That was when he was first married and had twin daughters. Then he got involved in local politics and then state politics, and then he ended up asking me for a job. He was my most important employee. We had one major thing in common: Our obsession with the job had left us without wives. I ate at McDonald's a lot, too.

“I appreciate you coming down, Dev.”

“I just hope I can help.”

“You had dinner with Susan that one night in Chicago. She said she really enjoyed it. Maybe she'll tell you what's going on.”

“Her stepmother's no help?”

“Natalie Cooper? The Dragon Lady? Not hardly. Most of the money comes from her and she doesn't let you forget it. She keeps threatening to fire me.”

“Yeah. Natalie said something like that to me, too. About both of us. That's another reason I came down here. I figured things must be getting rough.”

“It's getting a little tighter than we'd hoped, for one thing. You always
said that Duffy was going to be a lot tougher than we thought he'd be. And you were right. And then with Susan . . .”

He flipped his cigarette into the air like a missile. We both watched it arc and then splash down on the concrete alley that ran alongside the building.

“I've got some coffee going,” he said. “Let's go inside.”

Just as he said that, a silver Aston Martin swung into the parking area behind the headquarters. A blond man waved at us as he pulled in and parked. I didn't recognize him until he was out of the car and walking toward us, one of those compact, handsome men who would look good modeling expensive suits. Like the gray one he was wearing. His name was David Manning and he was Susan's husband.

“I was on the way to the foundation and I thought I'd stop in and warn you, Ben.” He said this with a hint of amusement in his voice. “Natalie's coming over here this morning. She wants to see the new commercials.” When he reached us, he put out his hand to me and we shook. “Good to see you again, Dev.”

Manning was one of those guys you shouldn't like but did despite yourself. He'd known Susan in college. His looks made him popular, something that compensated for his background as the son of an alcoholic mother who'd raised him mostly on welfare. He now worked for Natalie as the head of the Cooper Foundation, the nonprofit that her late husband had established to do many, many good works. From everything we'd been able to learn about Manning, he didn't have to work very hard. The heavy lifting was done by his staff. He was around to look good, be charming, and represent the foundation around the country. He gave good TV. He was Natalie's paid boy, so much so that he sided with her as often as he sided with his wife. The relationship between stepmother and daughter had always been combative. Manning's boyish blandness allowed him to calm them both down when the need arose. But he never forgot who handed him the check twice a month.

“Thanks for the warning,” Ben said.

“I shouldn't have been so flip about it,” Manning said, apparently feeling guilty for making a joke about Natalie. “She just wants to make sure we win, Ben. That's all.”

I was trying to concentrate on the conversation, but just then I saw a hawk riding the air and looking magnificent as hell doing it. In my days as an investigator for army intelligence I'd spent some time in the Rockies working on two different cases. I'd started to envy birds, serene and self-possessed.

I dragged myself back to the conversation. “How's Susan?”

Manning shifted position. In terms of interrogation body language I could see that I'd made him uncomfortable. “Just very busy. And just can't shake that cold of hers.”

“She has a cold, David? Since when?”

“Really? You haven't heard her sniffling, Ben?”

“Oh, that. I figured she was using cocaine.”

Manning smiled. “Don't say that around any reporters. Duffy's trying to play up her past.”

“The polling we've done, her past doesn't seem to matter all that much. Less than ten percent say it's a concern.”

I said, “We're having a little trouble with her, David.”

“Oh? Trouble?” And he shifted position once again.

“Ben tells me she disappears sometimes without telling anybody where to find her. And she's lost her edge a few times in debates and interviews.” I tried not to sound confrontational. It wasn't easy. I'd learned that Manning was good at evading direct questions.

“She's had some problems and Natalie's aware of them. She'll probably ask you for a little advice about it, in fact.”

“You're her husband, David.” This time I sounded angry and meant to.

“I'd rather let Natalie talk to you about it, Dev. And anyway—” He glanced longingly at his car, the golden chariot that would take him far from us and our questions. “Anyway, I need to get to the foundation.
I hope it goes well with Natalie. Wyatt'll be with her. He's good at keeping her calm.” Wyatt was her husband.

He had a nervous smile for each of us and then hurried to his car. We watched him go. He even gave us a wan little wave just before he backed out.

“I can't help it,” Ben said. “I feel sorry for him.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said. “That's quite the family he married into.”

“A soap opera that doesn't need any writers.”

“Oh, God, I'd forgotten that one.” A conservative columnist had written a piece about Natalie's various “difficulties” with the campaign consultants she'd used on Susan's first campaign. She'd gone through three different firms. He'd come up with the soap opera line and it was, unfortunately, a good one and a true one.

“Well, let's go inside and I'll rip up your innards with some coffee I made.”

I'd had plenty of Ben's coffee in my time. He wasn't kidding.

Within half an hour the headquarters was open for business. The front part of the building was for the public and was manned by volunteers. In the rear was a long, narrow office for paid staffers. If you've ever worked for a newspaper you know what a campaign office is like: phones, faxes, computers; men and women who are the modern-day version of camp followers. Only in this instance they're following campaigns. They're political junkies who get paid for their obsessions. Both parties have them; neither party could function without them.

The modern political campaign has gone high-tech, of course, but it still serves the old masters. On any given day a campaign manager and his staff deal with a long list of jobs—fund-raising, Web sites, direct mail, grassroots organizing, yard signs, writing speeches, interpreting polling, dealing with the press, endlessly revising the candidate's schedule, and trying to chase down any persistent rumors about the opposition, most of which turn out to be bullshit. There's a lot of disinformation coming from both camps, disinformation meant to confuse the other camp and make
them waste time trying to make sense of it. Then there are the staff wars. Some groups gather for a particular campaign function smoothly, a real team. Others are warring factions that can seriously damage a campaign or even destroy it.

In the three hours I sat at my computer in Ben's office that morning, I saw nothing but professionals going about their jobs efficiently and cordially. This was a testament to Ben's judgment. He'd chosen his people carefully. I checked on the other campaigns my firm was working on. There didn't seem to be any serious problems with any of them. The only trouble was here with Susan Cooper's sudden, mysterious loss of interest in her campaign.

I spent some time up front, too, meeting the volunteers and getting their assessment of the campaign thus far. During the day the volunteers tended to be retired women and men. A new category had recently been added—the unemployed. With the economic disaster facing the country these people divided their time between looking for work and trying to help the candidate they thought had a genuine interest in helping them improve their situation.

I was just wrapping up a phone call with one of our people who was spending the day at the state capital when somebody peeked in the office door and said, “She's here!”

He made it sound as if we'd just been invaded. And he wasn't far from wrong.

Natalie Dowd McConnell Cooper Byrnes was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 4, 1960. Despite the fact that she remarried after the death of her second husband, Senator John Cooper, she continued to use his last name. Her family had been prominent both before and after the Civil War and had moved easily into national politics. Her great-grandfather, her grandfather, and her father had all served as senators. Natalie Dowd was so much of an elegant beauty that a famous portraitist named Ralph Hodges fell in love with her in the course of painting her for the family's mansion wall. She'd been fifteen at the time, and Hodges forty-six. A rumor still persisted that they'd mated up. Natalie loved the attention. Not every Southern debutante found herself in the pages of
People
and
The National Enquirer
. Her father allegedly hired a man to murder Hodges but was dissuaded by his wife. Hadn't the family reputation suffered enough already?