The Echo of the Whip (13 page)

John Tall Wolf told Jeremy Macklin they could wait in the SMPD substation at the airport, but the tabloid reporter opted for the observation deck instead. The day was clear and the Santa Monica mountains stood out in sharp relief. Palm fronds rustled in a light breeze. The beach and the ocean were a short drive to the west.

“I appreciate what you’re doing, believe me,” Macklin said, “but, damn, I’m going to miss this place.”

“Picture postcard day,” Tall Wolf agreed. “Feel free to change your mind.”

Macklin laughed. “Like I have a choice. Besides, I already paid for the charter flight and the landing fee here at the airport.”

“Yeah, you might as well go.”

Back at Macklin’s office, Tall Wolf had explained to the reporter that he needn’t fear being locked up in some grim foreign prison for years.

“Why not?” Macklin asked.

“Because it would be so much simpler just to kill you.”

The reporter’s mouth fell open, but he remained speechless. Couldn’t find a word to rebut Tall Wolf’s point. Eventually, though, he managed to ask the obvious question: “What do I do now?”

Tall Wolf said he had an idea, and that led the two of them to the airport.

They were awaiting the arrival of an executive jet.

Seemed an unnecessary risk to Tall Wolf to expose themselves to public view and conceivably a sniper shot, but he didn’t see any vantage point where a shooter might set up. Besides, nobody knew they were going to the airport, and he hadn’t seen anyone following them from Macklin’s office. In the real world, bad guys needed time to work out their plans like anyone else. They didn’t just step out of a shadow for the convenience of the script.

The only person Tall Wolf had ever met who didn’t appear to be bound by the shackles of mundane reality was Marlene Flower Moon. She seemed able to come and go with the ease of a breeze. She also often knew things without having a perceptible source of information.

Then again, Tall Wolf thought his co-director at the BIA might be the human manifestation of a supernatural being known to Native Americans as Coyote.

He wondered if he should ask Marlene for help sorting out this new situation.

Not yet, he decided. He didn’t want to owe Coyote a favor.

He told Macklin, “I never got around to asking you about Mira Kersten.”

“The political talking head? What about her?”

Tall Wolf decided how best to order his questions. He took out his phone, set it to audio record and asked, “Do you know of any paparazzi who’ve taken an interest in her? If so, who are they and what’s the attraction? Is there any special man in Ms. Kersten’s life? If so, who is he? Is there any dissonance between Ms. Kersten’s public persona and her private behavior?”

That last inquiry drew a laugh from Macklin. “You mean is she two-faced? Hell, in this town or any other, what public figure isn’t?”

“So you do know a thing or two about her?” Tall Wolf asked.

Macklin nodded. “Look, paparazzi suck the blood of celebrities who sell tabloids in supermarkets. Ms. Kersten, from the photos I’ve seen of her, isn’t bad looking but she’s no movie star, model or even TV newsbabe. She gets people elected to offices most other people don’t think about twice a year, if that. Or she used to. Now she
talks
about getting people elected to those same boring jobs.”

“So why would any paparazzo bother with her?” Tall Wolf asked.

“Well, here’s the thing, if one half of a couple is a cipher to the general public maybe the other half isn’t. If that’s the case, you might have a Cinderella story going.”

“Okay, who’s playing Prince Charming here?”

“That’s the reason a handful of the more enterprising ambush jockeys have been sniffing around her. They want to know, too. So far, no one has found out, but the rumor persists. Of course, Kersten might just be screwing with their heads for her own laughs.”

“Okay, but what’s the speculation about who the man might be?”

“Someone who shares her liberal views, someone in show biz with the good looks to prove it, and someone who is a more than a bit younger. That’s one of the big hooks: the reversal of the older man, younger woman roles. It plays right into the fantasies of the supermarket shopper.”

Tall Wolf wouldn’t argue with that but he pursued another angle. “Could there be any tangible benefit to Ms. Kersten? Any way such an association might advance
her
career?”

Macklin laughed. “Everybody looking out for number one is another universal truth. If the lady was an actress there might be a bump in the number of roles she landed, if her sweetheart has that kind of juice. But, hell, what I’ve heard is the TV station that airs Ms. Kersten’s political talk show is going to pull the plug any day. Its audience is smaller than what you get with infomercials. I don’t know
anyone
who has the pull to keep it on the air.”

Both men turned their heads as they heard the approach of jet engines.

A sleek executive jet started to make its descent into the airport.

“Your ride,” Tall Wolf told Macklin.

“Your sure this is going to work?” the reporter asked.

John had called his cousin, Arnoldo Black Knife, president of the tribal council of the Northern Apache reservation in New Mexico. With just a bit of dickering they’d worked out an agreement to stash Jeremy Macklin in a cabin that featured both electricity and indoor plumbing for at least a month and no more than a year. Macklin would pay a market rate rent and would serve as volunteer editor on the newspaper of the rez high school.

Arnoldo would also see to it that no one from outside the rez would be allowed to arrest Macklin. Would even hide him if the feds pressed their case. The FBI had exclusive jurisdiction on reservations for charges of murder and certain other serious crimes. How an interpretation of a shadowy violation of the Patriot Act might be resolved was anybody’s guess.

But if Arnoldo said Macklin would be safe for a year, Tall Wolf trusted him to keep his word. Macklin bought in because he had no better choice.

Tall Wolf saw Macklin onto the plane, exchanged an embrace and a few words with Arnoldo and then returned to his car. He called McGill first thing and mentioned that he’d gone to see a tabloid Internet reporter.

Then he told the president’s husband, “I tried to call you earlier. Got sent to your voice mail three times. You haven’t checked your messages, I guess.”

“No,” McGill said. “I was interviewing the security guard from the fertility clinic, and then at her request I kept her company while the detectives from LAPD questioned her. I’m pretty sure they’ve eliminated her as a suspect in the clinic robbery.”

“How about you?” Tall Wolf asked.

“I’ve definitely eliminated her.”

“Because?”

“It’d be out of character with everything I’ve learned about her, and there’s been no recent legal or medical crisis in her life that would cause her to commit a crime out of desperation.”

Tall Wolf was tempted to ask what sources McGill used to glean his information, but he decided he’d rather not know if the man could tap into law enforcement or national intelligence databases.

He only said, “Your relationship with LAPD remains amicable?”

“Zapata and MacDuff were annoyed that I got to sit in on their interview and that it was conducted in a deli instead of their office, but I made a point of telling Ms. Crozier to cooperate fully with the police.”

“And you had Special Agent Ky nearby,” Tall Wolf said.

“Yes, I did,” McGill replied. “Anyway, I had my phone off for a couple of hours. So what’d I miss?”

Tall Wolf told him the details of his interview with Jeremy Macklin.

“The man received two phone calls that scared him badly. One threatened him with a government covert rendition if he published information he said he’d received only minutes earlier. The first call frightened him, too.”

“What’d the first caller say?” McGill asked.

“He said someone is on his way to kill you.”

McGill fell silent for a moment.

Allowing Tall Wolf to add, “I imagine someone in your position has received more than one death threat, but for the time-being I think you probably should leave your phone on.”

Unlike her predecessor, Celsus Crogher, Elspeth Kendry, the Secret Service special agent in charge of the presidential protection detail, was known to sleep at night. She’d even snatch cat-naps in her office after having pulled an all-nighter. With Holly G. — the president’s code name — having been impeached by the House and about to be tried by the Senate, every homicidal loon in the country with a political axe to grind seemed to think he now had license to announce that he was going to save the country the time and expense of going through the Constitutional remedy for removing a wayward president.

By God, he was coming to get her.

And there were droves like that.

Many of the threats were sent directly to the White House and signed with real names. Some of the criminally indignant were so certain they were acting on God’s orders they included their home addresses. Those were the easy ones to arrest. The attorney general made his own public statement: Anyone who threatened the life or well-being of the president would be tried and if convicted would serve a very long sentence in a federal prison.

Testing that warning, Destin E. Conden, the owner of a wholesale plumbing supply company and proud possessor of a messiah complex, posted a YouTube video showing him with his AK-47. He said, “I’m gonna shoot that damn woman and anyone who tries to stop me.”

Just what woman he meant was made clear by the photo of Patricia Grant with a bull’s-eye superimposed atop her face. The picture was affixed to the wall behind Conden. On the wall next to the picture was a copy of the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia, featuring the state motto:
Sic Semper Tyrannis.
Thus Always to Tyrants. John Wilkes Booth’s cruel farewell to Abraham Lincoln.

The second visual reference might have been an attempt at misdirection, though not much of one as Conden was a resident of neighboring Maryland. It might also have been he didn’t think his home-state motto
Fatti maschil, parole femine
— Manly Deeds, Womanly Words — carried the same sense of theatrical menace.

Whatever the case, Conden was so cocksure of the righteousness of his cause that he put his money where his mouth was. “Now, I know I’m not alone in gunning for this horrible woman, but I’ve got $10,000 that says I get her before any of you other boys do. If you do beat me to the draw, though, I’ll pay you that money gladly.”

Conden was arrested less than thirty minutes after his video was posted. The video was taken down but not before the FBI received a call asking if the bounty would still be paid even if Conden, you know, got himself arrested. The FBI told the caller to drop by and they’d see what they could work out.

Jesus, Elspeth thought when she got that report, thank God so many of these fools were so stupid. Problem was, they weren’t
all
morons. Some of them had the smarts to match their malice. They were the ones who kept Elspeth awake most nights.

She was just about to catch forty winks on her office couch when her phone rang. She might have let it go through to a duty officer but she saw Holmes’ name come up on the caller ID. James J. McGill, as much of a pain in the ass as he might otherwise be, never called frivolously. He took the president’s safety very seriously, even if he was cavalier about his own.

She answered the call.

“SAC Kendry, sir. How may I help?”

McGill said, “I’ve just been informed about a possible threat to my life.” He provided the details. “This one might be serious, Elspeth. Much as I hate to do it, I think I’d better ask for someone to back up Deke. Just one special agent, someone good, but I don’t want a brigade.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get right on it.”

She went immediately to Galia Mindel and the two of them proceeded to the Oval Office.

The president listened closely to what her husband had told the SAC.

For her part, Elspeth asked that a brigade be sent to protect McGill.

The president vetoed that.

She sent Elspeth instead.

Ed Whelan had once been in love with Alfa Romeo Spiders, ever since seeing Dustin Hoffman and Katharine Ross in “The Graduate.” But after he and his leading lady, Mira Kersten, got divorced, he switched to Porsche Boxsters. He’d briefly considered stepping up to the Porsche 911 for its quicker acceleration and greater cachet, but he decided the Boxster was as far as he could go and still pretend that he held nothing more than a middling position in Washington’s pyramid of power.

The pretense of being something less than he was, though, had worn thin.

So had the hair at the crown of his scalp, damnit. He’d never been vain about his appearance before because he’d effortlessly held on to his small-town-boy good looks. True, he’d first noticed the incipient bald spot when he’d celebrated his fortieth birthday, six years ago. But noticing it had been a fluke, an unexpected alignment of two mirrors had provided a glimpse.

He couldn’t say he deliberately avoided looking at dual mirrors from then on, but even his hair stylist didn’t show him his haircut from the rear view any more, and he didn’t have to ask why. He certainly didn’t
request
to see the extent of the defoliation back there.

What really grated on him was the more hair he lost the more he wanted a 911. Maybe even a Tesla Model S. Zero to 60 in just over three seconds. He wouldn’t stop with just a fancy car either. He’d need high-end houses, at least two, a summer home in Newport and a loft in Manhattan. Possibly a villa somewhere warm and fashionable as well.

Owning an executive jet would probably be a hassle, what with needing a place to base it, upkeep and having pilots on the payroll, but he could see signing up for a good lease.

He could also see that he was feeling a powerful need to compensate not just for losing his hair but coming to acknowledge that his grand plan for conservative political dominance wasn’t as foolproof as he’d thought in years gone by. He’d seriously underestimated the willingness and ability of the liberals to fight back.

Patricia Grant had fallen more or less into a defensive crouch, as he’d thought she would, but he hadn’t anticipated the emergence of a bare-knuckle brawler like Jean Morrissey. Then again, Patti Grant might be playing things just right. She was the one who’d picked Morrissey to be her new vice president and had given her unprecedented say over domestic policy.

The president must have had, at the very least, an idea how her number two would respond to being given the opportunity to strike back at a Congress threatening to remove her boss from office. After all, Jean Morrissey hadn’t been the captain of her school’s debate team; she’d been the enforcer and the high scorer on the ice hockey team.

He probably shouldn’t have been surprised at Morrissey’s fighting spirit.

For just a moment, Whelan wondered what the VP would be like in bed.

He quickly decided to push that thought aside.

The damn woman was scary enough fully clothed. She had Whelan’s nominal boss, House Whip Carter Coleman of Oklahoma scared shitless. Him and Speaker Peter Profitt of North Carolina.

Both men had spoken to Whelan shortly before he’d decided it was time to scoot down the road from Carmel. In what he now thought was a totally inadequate Boxster. Profitt had been even more wrought up than Coleman.

“You can see how this might play out, can’t you?” the speaker asked.

Whelan could foresee several scenarios, but he asked, “What do you have in mind, sir?”

“Well, goddamnit, Jean Morrissey already has half our caucus soiling their britches. They’ve read between the lines of her statement from the White House. If we’re out for the president’s blood, she’ll be out for ours. And with those goddamn fools on the Armed Services Committees in both chambers looking like they’ve stolen billions, there’s good reason for all of us to be scared.

“Of course, if we go ahead and convict Patti Grant, that’ll make Jean Morrissey president. The first thing she’ll do is pardon her predecessor, just like Jerry Ford did with Nixon. That’s bound to raise calls in the House for the new president’s impeachment.”

Whelan couldn’t help but add color to that picture.

“And you’d be next in line for the Oval Office, Mr. Speaker.”

“If you think I’d take the job that way, Ed, you’re not the genius we all hope you are. If Jean Morrissey becomes commander in chief and we try to take her down, too, she’d probably have the military round us all up and pack us off to Guantanamo.”

“Or beat all of us to death with a hockey stick.” That popped out before Whelan could stop himself. He was mildly pleased that the joke drew two nervous laughs.

Still, the speaker and the whip’s fear was real. Things were going exactly the opposite of the way Whelan had predicted they would. His side was getting weak-kneed and queasy and liberals were the ones acting like they had brass balls. Even the women.

“We’re counting on you to get things turned around, Ed,” the speaker said, as if he’d been reading Whelan’s mind.

And somewhere in the back of Whelan’s mind he heard his old boss, a previous speaker, laugh and tell him, “Serves you right, being in this fix, you turncoat bastard.”

Feeling a sense of defiance toward the ghost of his past, Whelan said, “Gentlemen, you can count on me.” He left things there.

Scanning his smart phone as he headed south on the Pacific Coast Highway, Whelan found the locations of two stops he wanted to make. Stop one was a high-end hair stylist. His first request was beneath the talents of artists working there: Shave his head.

He wasn’t going to fight the damn bald spot; he would embrace it.

Whelan’s second appeal called for artistic judgment, and all three stylists working in the shop offered their considered opinions on the question: What type of facial hair should Whelan grow to balance his newly denuded pink scalp. The consensus was a modified goatee. To the classic lines of the beard covering the upper lip and chin, he was advised to add a razor thin line of growth extending along the jaw line on either side of the face to the mandible and up to the points opposite his earlobes.

Whelan had his doubts. Then they showed him the look on a computer illustration and he thought, “What the hell?”

His only misgiving was he probably should have grown the beard first.

At the moment, his head looked a bit egg-like.

That didn’t stop him from going to a Tesla dealership a mile away.

When a fine-looking saleswoman greeted him with a nonjudgmental smile and asked if she might be of help, Whelan said, “I’d like to buy a Batmobile.”

She laughed and replied, “Oh, we can do much better than that.”