The Candidate (30 page)

“Who is that woman? Are they traveling together?” he asked.

The man shrugged and smiled expectantly.

Federico cursed to himself. “There will be something extra for you if you tell me,” he said through gritted teeth. The receptionist smiled pleasantly and looked down at his computer screen.

“Lauren O’Keefe,” he said, struggling with the pronunciation of Lauren’s surname. “They checked in together but they are staying in different rooms. She is room 711, opposite his.”

Federico grunted his thanks and took out his phone. Carillo answered gruffly.

“He is here,” Federico said. “He is with a woman. I don’t know where they were today but they are staying here tonight. What do you want me to do?”

Carillo paused a moment on the other end of the line. Federico heard him breathe heavily, like some animal.

“I don’t like this, Federico,” Carrillo said, speaking his thoughts aloud, not looking for any response. “It looks like people are moving against me. Is my reward really so expensive that they would send people here to destroy me? Is that my fate?”

Federico imagined Carillo in his darkened living room weighing the fates of those around him. Planning, plotting, making a move. Once again his General was in command against hostile forces and Federico was his one-man army, dedicated to the mission. It felt good to get orders like this, rather than just make coffee and beat up the blacks who did not pay Carillo sufficient respect.

“I want to know who they are seeing and where they are going. Stick tight to them. Don’t let them out of your sight. Call me the moment you know something else,” Carillo said.

“Yes sir,” Federico said and snapped the phone shut. He smiled. He would book into this hotel tonight and instruct the receptionist to call him the moment the couple got their breakfast. He would stay on them so tight that they would not know they wore him like a coat.

CHAPTER 20

DEE KNEW SHE was only a few miles from where her candidate was being made up in a TV studio, but it felt like a whole world away. She sat with Christine and a few other senior staffers in the Hodges’ hotel room in downtown Columbia and nervously watched a huge flat screen TV in the corner of the room. The local Fox station broadcast its news report. The news anchor had already flagged up the network’s exclusive live interview with Hodges for an hour, and the time of its airing fast approached.

Dee poured herself a thick glass of scotch and offered some to Christine, who shook her head without looking at it. Dee shrugged and gulped down half of it. She needed the warmth and the buzz to kill her nerves. The anchor, a woman with a big mane of blond hair, started the lead-in to the interview.

“Do you think she’ll go for it?” Christine asked, not looking around, resting a long-nailed finger on her perfectly rouged cheek.

Dee shrugged. This was her plan and she knew the stakes were high. Swampy had dug up a grainy piece of video recording of Stanton talking at some long forgotten town hall meeting more than a year ago. For years Swampy had someone go to every meeting anyone held down here, recording away with a cell phone for thousands of wasted hours. Most of it was use less but it all went into Swampy’s files ready for a day it might be useful. That day had now come for this clip. Stanton riffed carelessly in front of a wholly white upcountry audience about the need for self-sufficiency and against benefits cheaters.

“You know,” Stanton said. “It pains me that some members of our society look for a handout when they really should want a hand up.”

It was a snappy line. One that Dee could easily admire in a different sort of contest. But she knew that putting that quote in a racially charged context could be explosive for them. In a good way. That was precisely what they would now do. Two days of Swampy’s push-polling on Stanton’s race record prepared that ground already. Beneath the surface the black community started to burn with rumors questioning Stanton’s commitment to their cause. This video would ignite that powder-keg.

Dee just needed to tee up the release so it did not seem completely underhanded. So she took the news anchor out for lunch the day before and spun a web of off-the-record comments that should prompt the achorwoman to bring up the race question they wanted. That would allow them to release the video at others’ behest. But who knew if it would work. It was lighting a bomb fuse in a rainstorm. All you could do was apply the fire and watch it burn down to the charge, hoping a steady pour of other events would not over-take it.

Now the cameras cut away to the candidate. He sat beside the anchor and she opened with a question on the latest run of bad news from Afghanistan. Hodges listened intently his eyes never leaving her and not a flicker of a smile on his lips. He oozed military competence.

But Dee felt a stab of disappointment. “Come on, you bitch. Ask my question,” she breathed.

She need not have worried.

The interviewer shuffled slightly in her seat and glanced down at her notes. “Senator Hodges,” she began. “Our news team has learned from its sources that there are a lot of racial accusations starting to float around out there about your opponent. This is the sort of dirty politics that you are supposed to be standing against. Why have you allowed this to happen?”

That was it. Dee stopped breathing for a moment. That bitch of an anchor phrased the issue more negatively than she feared, but it was out there now. It was up to Hodges to run with it like Christine promised he would.

Hodges grimaced thinly. “You’re right, this is the sort of campaigning I am standing against. Innuendo and rumor have no place in my campaign,” he said and looked firmly into the camera.

That’s good, thought Dee, he’s defused the weapon she threw at him.

“That is because we are fighting this election on the issues and the policies,” Hodges now continued, never shifting his gaze. “But when it comes to affirmative action that helps some of the weakest members of our society, I am worried about my opponent’s opinions. My campaign recently uncovered some disturbing evidence of Governor Stanton’s real beliefs. She appears to think that we are all born with the same opportunities in this country. That we all start at the same place. But I know we do not. The sad thing is I wish she were more sensitive to the realities of life for minorities in America today.”

Hodges turned back to the interviewer who could not hide a widening of her eyes.

“What are you saying, Senator?” she asked.

Hodges smiled disarmingly. “I’m saying I wish Governor Stanton could be a little more sensitive. I heard some comments she made on a video that my staff came across and they worried me. Now, if we can move onto some of the real issues pressing this campaign, I am sure we would all appreciate it.”

Dee did not hear the anchor’s next words. She stood in the middle of the hotel room, danced a little jig and giggled uncontrollably. She reached down and tried to grab Christine’s arm but the candidate’s wife flinched away. Dee pumped a fist in the air.

“He hit it out of the park!” she yelled.

Hodges’ comments would have pricked the ears of every news reporter watching and they would soon start calling. Then the campaign would release their video to anyone who wanted it. Dee stared at her Blackberry. She held it up in the room and watched all the other staffers’ eyes turn to it, including the media director. Dee motioned for her to get her phone out too.

“It won’t be long,” she said.

And it wasn’t.

Less than 90 seconds passed and Dee’s phone started buzzing. So did the media director’s. Dee laughed and tossed the phone to another staffer.

“Everyone who calls gets a copy of the video emailed to them,” she said. “Even if it’s a telemarketer dialing a wrong number and trying to sell you insurance. Take down their email address and send them that tape.”

Christine looked over at Dee. Her face masked whatever emotions lurked under that surface, like a mirror-smooth sea.

“Does it bother you that you just played the race card?” Christine asked. She seemed to be studying Dee’s reaction, a little like a scientist looking at a specimen she was about to dissect. Dee was surprised that the sensation slightly unnerved her.

“Look,” Dee said. “We haven’t played anything. Stanton made those comments, we didn’t. You know what sort of audience she was talking to? A bunch of white folks up in the mountains. They know what she means when she’s talking about people cheating on benefits. It’s code. We’re just deciphering it for general consumption.”

Christine seemed unimpressed.

“You really believe that, Dee?”

Now Dee got angry. “I’ll tell you what I believe,” she said, leaning in a little closer than she planned. She got a buzz of satisfaction when Christine flinched slightly. “I believe that this is going to knock ten points off Stanton’s support with blacks in this state. That’s enough to have us sliding for home plate.”

Dee walked out of the room. How dare that woman take a moral high ground with her? After all Christine was instrumental in getting Hodges to play along and commit to getting the video out there. Dee stood in the corridor, suddenly aware she was alone, sealed off from the frenzy of activity in the hotel room. It was quiet, just the low buzz of the artificial lights above her. She took a series of deep breaths, getting back her center and her sense of calm. Then she smiled.

This is the final stretch, she thought. I can see the finish line and we’re in the lead. No mistakes and we’ll win. No mistakes and no surprises.

* * *

MIKE AND Lauren’s shoes clip-clopped loudly on the marble floor of the hotel lobby as they walked out into the heat of day and toward their rental car. Behind them, a mere twenty yards or so, Federico watched their every move. He wore a hat pulled low over his eyes. A sheen of stubble now grew over his chin, giving him the hint of a beard. He walked slowly and looked for a sign that they spotted him. He was confident they did not.

They climbed into their car, laughing with each other like young lovers, and drove off. Federico quickly jumped in his car to follow them. He was lucky. A morning traffic jam snarled the road just a few hundred yards from the hotel and his target was already marooned in a sea of vehicles. He relaxed and enjoyed the sensation of the chase.

It brought back many memories of tracking and following a human target through the streets of Guatemala City. Even after so many years in that stink hole of Livingston, the pursuit was still as natural as walking. He was good at it too. The General always knew that.

A steady trickle of distant names and faces flowed through Federico’s mind. There was the priest out in the suburbs. The union leader in the coffee warehouse. The teacher from the village near his own home town. All of them were problems he solved. He recalled them like looking back on his school days. A brighter period that was more full of life than his current circumstances. He had purpose then. A sense of a life fulfilled by a cause. It was the best of times.

The traffic started to clear and he wormed his way forward to just a few yards behind his target. He opened the glove box and saw the dull metallic glint of the gun. An old fashioned revolver, but reliable and well-oiled. He took it out and rested it on the passenger seat beside him like an old friend and comrade. He liked to imagine the weapon too was full of happy thoughts; of a joint purpose rediscovered back in the fight. Federico whistled a marching tune, repeating the chorus over and over as the car ahead drove in the direction of the slums.

Federico had not been in this part of the city for many years, but the pursuit was easy. The roads were so pitted and crowded that they barely went above the pace of a slow jog.

He could follow these people on foot and be able to pull off his mission. Finally the car ahead parked outside an old church, half-hidden by the slum buildings around it and his targets went inside.

Federico remained seated and reached across for his revolver. He tucked it into the back of his waistband and got out of the car. A gaggle of kids watched from a nearby corner, no doubt eyeing his potential worth as a target for begging or someone willing to pay for them to look after his car. The largest of them sauntered over.

“I’ll clean your car,
señor.
It is all dusty from the
barrio
,” he said.

Federico ignored his offer and pointed at the church. “What is this place?”

The child was silent. Federico toyed with the idea of grabbing him by the throat. But he did not want to create a scene. He handed over a single quetzal note and repeated his question.

“San Gabriel,” the child said.

Federico frowned. Why on earth would these Yankees come to this place?

“Who is the priest?” he asked. The child was silent for a moment as he mulled over whether to ask for more money, but something in Federico’s stare made him rethink his strategy.

“Father Gregorio Villatoro,” he said.

Now Federico understood. He squinted through the sunshine and the dirty adobe walls of the old mission. He had not heard that name in a long time. But he knew it. He could not forget it. How could he? He shooed away the child and got back into his car, feeling the weight of the gun at his back. It felt even stronger and more comforting than before. Then he pulled out his phone and waited for the General to answer.