The Devlin Deception: Book One of The Devlin Quatrology (33 page)

“I do. But for 20 million euros, we expect proof of death.”

“He does not guarantee that. But you know that no one has ever
been disappointed in his results.”

“Then we must accept his terms.”

“And your principal knows that his life is collateral for the
final payment once the job is done, I trust?”

“He does.”

“He understands we would have no problem taking out a
televangelist, even in the heart of Houston, right?”

“He does.”

“Even if he has a family.”

“He understands.”

“Now give me the email address and password for the account you
set up, and the instruction card that got you here.”

The man handed her an envelope and a 3x5 card, which she put in her
purse.

“Your principal also understands that with the thin information
on the target that you've provided, this may take a while?”

“He does, and he wishes he could give you more.”

“My principal can work with what you've given him.”

“Good.”

“When the job is done, you'll find a message in the Drafts
folder of the email account you provided, and the final payment will
be due within 24 hours in the bank account that he will provide in
that message. And under NO circumstances are you to send that
message anywhere, but just change it with the single word 'Sent' in
the body, NOT the subject line, and save it back in the Drafts
folder.”

“I understand.”

“Once we have received the final payment, we will scrub that
message and the account, which will let you know that we have
finished and our arrangement is complete … until the next time
you need his services. Then you can contact us as you did this
time.”

“I understand.”

“Any questions or concerns?”

“No.”

“Good. The Reaper appreciates your business and thanks you for
thinking of him. Now walk away.” He did. “Good; at
last, a professional.”

-62-

Five Months Earlier

Sunday, August 14, 2011

10:35 a.m.

Bonita Beach, Florida

“That was an incredible scene, Pam, very visual, with strong
images, almost photographic, just like you said. I liked it a lot.”

“I'm glad, Jake. But?” Pam floated on her noodle, right
in front of Jake, floating on his two, bicycling his legs under the
water.

“But I can't see Donne getting tangled up in – oops; I
mean involved in something that graphic. He just doesn't have any
interest in sex … at least as I've written him so far.

“Don't get me wrong. That may change, but I think his filters
are pretty ingrained.”

“Like most people's are.”

“Yup, if you define 'most' as anything above 51 percent.”

“In this case, I mean probably around 92 percent.”

“92? How'd you come up with that number?”

“Uh, I just pulled it out of the air. It seemed about right.
I mean, it could be 87 or 94, but somewhere in there. Why?”

“That's a number I've used for years.”

“For what?”

“Stress reduction.”

“What? How?”

“Stress reduction. I think that about 92 percent of most
people's time is spent doing relatively routine, not emotionally
charged, stuff, like laundry, sleeping, cooking, driving, all that
kind of routine and boring stuff – well, not boring in the
negative sense, just routine. So you don't have to worry much about
that, and you can focus your energy on making the other eight percent
as good as you can. I'd rather put energy into that small eight
percent than the whole hundred. So it's a lot less stressful.”

“So if --”

“OW!!!! What the hell?”

Jake swiveled to see who had cried out. He saw Christopher and Paige
Davenport, an elderly couple who walked in the water every day,
believing that the salt water was good for their arthritis. They
were about eight feet from Jake and Pam.

“What is it, Chris?” Paige asked, worried.

“I just banged my toe on something down there. Christ, I knew
we should have bought those water shoes.”

“What did you bang it on?”

“I don't know. Can you hold these for a second?”

“Sure.” He gave Paige his hat and sunglasses and ducked
under the water, coming up a moment later with a large chunk of
coral, about double the size of a football.

“Oh my god, it's huge, Chris.”

“I'm gonna take this in to shore so nobody else gets hurt on
it.”

“Hey, Chris, I'm going in; I'll take it,” said a female
voice behind him.

“Oh, thanks --” Chris turned to see who it was “--
Sheila.”

“No problem.” She started toward the shore, coral in
hand. “This'll look great in my garden; I'm doing a Neapolitan
style with it. Thanks, Chris.”

“No, thank you, Sheila.”

She continued to shore, carrying her newfound treasure.

“So, Chris – what's wrong?”

“Sorry, Paige; it's throbbing, hurts like hell.”

“Let me see it.”

Chris lifted his right leg to the surface, where Paige held his foot
and peered at his big toe.

“Oh, Chris, it's already swollen. And is that – yup,
there's a tiny trickle of blood. Let me – oops.”

“Ow.”

“I'm sorry; my hand slipped. I'm sorry. Does it feel broken?”

“I don't think so. But I'm not sure I can keep my body in this
position much longer.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.” She let his foot go and it sank back
into the water; he sighed in relief.

“I think you'll need a bandage on that.”

“Not if it's gonna squeeze it.”

“No, but if we put it on carefully, it'll help.”

“I used to have some in my fanny pack, but not now.”

“I'll bet they have some up at the office. I'll go get one,
okay?”

“The office is next to --”

“I know where to go. Be right back. Go in and dry it off as
best you can, okay? Got something for the blood?”

“Yeah, I've got some tissues in my pack, I think.”

“Hey, Chris,” Jake said, “let me help you out.
Where's your stuff?”

“Thanks, Jake. We're just up there.” He pointed to a
couple of chairs on the sand, a few dozen feet north of Jake and
Pam's spot.

“Okay; let's go. Keep off that toe. I know how bad those can
hurt.”

By the time Paige got back with some bandages, Chris had managed to
dry his foot almost completely, although it was still a bit moist in
some places. Jake and Pam stood by, watching, ready to help if
needed.

Paige carefully began applying the bandage to Chris' toe.

“Yow! Easy, easy.”

“I'm sorry, Chris. I've got to put it on just right or you
could get a blister. Hey, quit twitching, okay?”

“Sorry.”

“There; all done. Feel okay, hon?”

“Well, I'm not writhing in ecstasy, but it does feel better.”

Paige looked over at Jake and asked, “Where would something
like that come from? How could it get exposed like that?”

Jake frowned and then said, “Maybe that storm we had last
month. It dug out the sand here by the shore and built up the sand
bar out there. Next storm, it'll probably reverse itself.”

“So not a volcanic eruption or anything?”

Jake laughed. “I don't think there's ever been a volcanic
eruption in the Gulf … well, not since the Ice Age, at least.”

Chris said, “Thanks for your help, Jake. I tell ya, being 83
can suck.”

“No problem, Chris. Hope it heals soon. Take care. See ya
later, Paige.”

As Pam and Jake headed back to the water, Pam said, “They
seemed like a nice couple.”

“Yup. I don't know 'em too well; I've only talked with 'em a
few times.”

“They seem very much in love.”

“They do? Yeah, I guess so. Sorry. I was thinking if I could
use them in the book somehow.”

“Like how Donne could – oh, that reminds me. There's a
typo in his first speech, when he legalizes gay marriage; you left
the 'I' out, so it was 'marrage,' r-r-a-g-e.”

“I meant to do that.”

“You did? Why?”

“It's Donne's sop to the religious right, just so they can't
bitch that he's legalizing gay marriage; same thing, all the same
rights and all, but it's got that one tiny little semantic
difference. So if they bring it up, he can argue that's not exactly
the same.”

“What do you mean, 'if' they bring it up? You're writing it.”

“I'm not sure if it's worth writing out all the stuff I'd need
to to get into and through that argument; I'm not sure yet how Donne
would feel about me doing that, either. We don't always agree on
every – I'm sorry; that sounds crazy. It's just how I do the
writing sometimes.”

Pam raised en eyebrow and said, “Really? What do you mean?”

“Well, remember that he's got two czars, one for anti-hubris
and one for unintended consequences, Cissy and Cody.”

“Right.”

“Okay. So I play a sorta mental game with them and Donne. If
I have a problem with some issue, I call the three of them up and ...
now, this is the part that might sound a little crazy ... and stick
them in a sort of boardroom, give them the issue and let them argue
it out. This is just imaginary, okay?”

“Okay,” Pam said, a bit hesitantly.

“And then I let them go back down into my subconscious and work
it out, sometimes just overnight, sometimes as long as it takes. I
mean, I gave them the Medicare/Medicaid challenge a couple of months
after I first started this whole thing, and they hashed it around
until this past May … or maybe June … before they
popped the idea of the HSAs up into my conscious brain, just as I was
waking up one morning.

“And then, if I'm quick enough, I'll grab my notebook and write
out as much as I can remember, stick it with my other notes, and then
finally write out either a speech, a question at a press conference
or a discussion with somebody to get that out.

“Like that meeting he had with the guy from HHS-OIG, the guy
going after Medicare fraudsters.”

“Yeah, I remember that. Jim something, right?”

“Yeah. I don't remember his last name now. That was written
way before the HSA idea popped up.”

“You know that HSAs have been around for a long time, right?”

“Yeah, and they fit with Donne's basic premise of returning
power and choice to the individual, to the people. So he made them
– I mean, I made them the cornerstone of his policy on
Medicare.

“And Cody, of course, reminded Donne that whenever there's a
chunk of money anywhere, somebody somewhere is going to be looking
for some way to steal it. So he's always got to build in safeguards
against that. But I don't want to get too overly arcane in writing
the book; I mean, it's boring enough as it is.”

“For some people, Jake. I find the whole idea fascinating.”

“But you've been on the inside and you've got a pretty high IQ.
Most people haven't been and don't.”

“'Most people' being 51 percent or 92?”

Jake chuckled. “I don't know; somewhere between. Like Chris
and Paige there. They're pretty typical of people their age, and I
keep people like them in mind in figuring out what Donne might do and
what the unintended consequences might be.”

“And that's where Cissy and Cody come in and they all toss it
around?”

“Right. For example, most retirees like them aren't getting
any income at all on their savings, and for a long time there was a
floor of five percent on money market funds and --”

“I remember that.”

“So what happened to make that go away? I don't know. But if
Donne, for example, were to mandate a five percent floor again, that
would help them, but who would get hurt and what other ripple effects
would there be? And how would that fit in with his basic principles?
And who'd get pissed off enough to take out a contract for his
assassination?”

“Why assassination?”

“So there's some drama and action in there. And he sticks to
his guns, so negotiation and lobbying don't work, so they go
extreme.”

Pam thought about that for a moment and then said, “How about a
really good betrayal? Wouldn't that add some drama?”

Jake winced and said, “Oh, Pam, you're getting ahead of me
there.”

“You've already got one of those? I didn't see it.”

“Haven't written that part yet. And sorry, can't tell you …
at least for now.”

Pam fake-pouted again. “Okay, Jake; guess I can live with
that.”

Jake said, “Sorry.”

Pam leaned back on her noodle again and let her body float. “Ahhhhh.
This feels so good. The water is a perfect temperature, maybe even a
teeny bit too warm.”

“I think the news said it was 88 degrees, but this does feel a
little warmer, maybe 88 and a quarter – no, 88 and
three-eighths. Last summer we had a whole week where it was 95; now,
THAT was too warm, not even refreshing. But that was really
unusual.”

“How cold does the water get in the winter?”

“In the what?”

“The winter.”

“What does that word mean?”

“Oh, Jake, c'mon; you know.”

“Okay. Last February it got down to 58.”

“58? Geez, that IS cold.”

“When I lived in Boston – well, Cambridge, actually, when
the Atlantic got up to 60, we thought that was great. Late August.”

“And now?”

“Below 80 or 81, I only go in if I really gotta go …
in.”

“Well, you sound spoiled, Mr. Devlin, suh.”

“Yup, I am that … and gloatingly so.”

“Well, that's a new record.”

“A new record? What new record?”

“I'm sure that was longer than three and a half minutes of you
being serious.”

“Oh, god,” Jake said, slapping his forehead. “I am
going crazy. I knew I shouldn't have eaten that
tofu-salami-and-chocolate salad.”

Pam chuckled. “Ah, he's baaaack.”

“And he needs to get baaaack on shore and write some notes down
before he forgets 'em.”

“I'll join you; I could use some sun time.”

“You've actually got a pretty good tan already.”