The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear (28 page)

Tyler was adamant. “Tommy was a pro. No way he would have screwed up enough to blow up his own car by accident.”

But Jessie answered the question. “Look,” she said, holding up her phone with the video.

“No, thanks, I saw it,” Tyler said.

“Watch,” she said, and then she played back the video in slow motion, freezing it just before the explosion. “There,” she said, with a touch of glee that only a reporter with a scoop could muster after watching two people being blown up. We crowded around her phone as she cupped it to shade it from the bright sun. And there it was: just before the explosion, Tommy's left hand came out the window with an upraised middle finger to the sky.

“Jesus,” Tyler said. “He went out with a big fuck-you.”

Tyler wandered off, and I followed him. He was looking out at the Gulf, just across the beachfront highway. His usual mad glint was gone, replaced with a deep sadness. He suddenly looked a lot older. “Tommy,” he said. “I really let him down. I should have done something. Anything.” He shook his head. “To go out that way.”

Paul walked up to us. I tried to remember when the last time was that the three of us had been together without anyone else around, and it hit me that this might have been the first time. Paul put his big arm around Tyler, and when Tyler tried to pull back, he just pulled him in closer and hugged him.

Jessie had the biggest story in the country, but that didn't mean there wasn't room for one more hot item. Before I called Paul Hendricks, I checked with Sandy Morrison and laid the track for the express train that was about to leave the station. She listened, understood immediately, and signed off with “I love you, J. D. Callahan. You are almost as evil as I am.” I took it as a compliment.

Paul Hendricks assumed that I was calling about the bombing, and it took a moment to get him to focus. “Hendricks,” I said, “I've got a huge scoop for you if you will just shut the fuck up and listen.” He did. I explained to him how Eddie Basha had gone behind Hilda Smith's back and planted the fake push poll calls about abortion that were intended to smear her. “I thought it was crazy and didn't believe it at first,” I said, then gave him Sandy Morrison's number to confirm it. “You got to keep her out of it, but on background she'll talk to you. It wasn't her idea. She's just a vendor who was hired to do it. Don't blame her.”

“Is this why you left the campaign?” Hendricks asked.

“I don't want to go into that. But I know Hilda Smith doesn't know a damn thing about this. She deserves better.” That last might have been a bit much coming from me, but Hendricks was already thinking how great the story would be. For him. For his career. He was only worried about one thing. “This is exclusive, right?”

Within twenty-four hours, Joey Francis was on his way to becoming famous as “the FBI agent uncovering the secrets behind the mystery bombers,” as
The New York Times
put it. And right beside him, at least in most stories, was Walter Robinson, “the former football star turned New Orleans police detective who had been on the trail of the bomber when he exploded.” It hadn't been really difficult to talk Joey Francis into including Walter and sharing the spotlight. “It's like this, Francis,” Walter had said. “You don't have shit, and you look like the fucking idiot who couldn't find a bomber in your own backyard. Plus, you don't know a damn thing about this guy Tommy. I do. So you either look like a moron or a genius FBI go-getter, it's up to you. But the last one comes with me.”

Francis stuck out his hand and said one word: “Partner.”

That was right before I got the first call from Hilda Smith asking me to come back to the campaign. She was reeling from hearing the news about Eddie Basha's involvement in the abortion push polling and had just fired him. “I hear Armstrong George is withdrawing,” she said. “Terrible tragedy with his son. He must have been a very disturbed soul. I need you to win the general, J.D. I can't do it without you.”

I told her I'd think about it, but I knew what I wanted to do. I made one call to Ginny and asked her if she'd like to run a presidential campaign. “Fuck yes,” she said. “For whom?” I told her what was going on and that I was going to get Hilda Smith to hire her. “You're not going to come back?” she asked, shocked, but before I could get the words out that I wasn't, she was already moving on in her head. “I know how to win this thing,” she said. “We can kill that piece-of-shit Democrat.”

“There you go. Kill 'em all and let God sort it out.”

And that's how I ended up running Paul Callahan's campaign for public service commissioner. It's looking pretty good. We had a monster fundraiser at Tyler's strip club that set the record for a single event in Louisiana. Who could have guessed that a bunch of rich men would actually like the idea of having a legitimate reason to go to a strip club? What a shock. Tobias Green is the campaign chairman, and I'm pretty sure he's getting it on with our best intern from Tulane, who is quite a number. Tobias says they have a “harmonic convergence.”

“I guess that means she's fun to screw,” Jessie said when she heard Tobias's description. Amazon and I had both agreed to put the idea of a TV show on hold, at least until the election. Lately I've been thinking it wasn't such a good idea. Jessie got a nice six-figure advance for the inside story on “the mad bombers” Tommy and Somerfield and was working like a fiend to finish the book. Sometimes I'd wake up at four a.m. and she'd still be out in the living room, pacing and writing. It never bothered me, and I liked hearing her sounds. I'd moved in right after the bombing, when Hilda had left town as the Republican nominee for president. We're both busy, her with the book and me with Paul's campaign, but on Sundays she likes to take me out to her favorite shooting range across the Causeway and shoot the hell out of anything she can get her hands on. I can't shoot for a damn next to her, but I'm getting better. Tyler joins us sometimes, and the two of them duel it out. Jessie beats him a lot, but Tyler tells me, when she's not listening, that he lets her win. I'm not sure I believe it.

Next Sunday we plan to drive out to see Tyler's mom. She's been a big fan of Jessie's for years and really wants to meet her. I think they might hit it off. Tyler says he's not coming, but I think he will. Jessie reminded him that they could do some shooting in his mom's backyard. And Sundays are slow at the club. Paul says he'll come. He hasn't seen Renee in years. I think it will be a nice family get-together.

For once, I really do.

Stuart Stevens is the author of six previous books, and his work has appeared in
The New York Times, The Washington Post,
Esquire,
and
Outside,
among other publications. He has written extensively for television shows, including
Northern Exposure,
Commander in Chief,
and
K Street
. For twenty-five years, he was the lead strategist and media consultant for some of the nation's toughest political campaigns. He attended Colorado College; Pembroke College, Oxford; Middlebury College; and UCLA film school. He is a former fellow of the American Film Institute. This is his second novel.