The Nature of the Beast (33 page)
“I’ll take care of it,” Leonard promised as he pulled his radio from his pocket and headed for the exits at the back of the room.
“I’ll get make-up on the way,” Vickers promised as he headed backstage at a lope, mumbling orders into his microphone as he hustled out of sight.
Winter put his hands on his hips and surveyed the damage. He made a resigned face. “It’s just stuff,” he said as much to himself as anyone else. “Nobody got hurt. That’s what’s important. I should count my blessings.”
“Amen,” Audrey said.
“But….” he sighed. “The show must go on,” he said with an overly theatrical sigh. He nodded toward the back of the room. “Every media outlet in the country is out there,” he said with a sly grin. “I’m told there’s a coupla thousand people milling around out there in the snow.”
“It’s a zoo,” Audrey confirmed.
“We’ve still got the old studio across the street,” Winter said. “The one we used before we built this one.” He paused, rolling his eyes around the ruined room once again. “We’re going to tape over there till this gets cleaned up.”
“If there’s anything we can do…” Craig began.
“As a matter of fact, “ he said, waving a finger, “there is.” He walked around a piece of rubble. “I sure as hell can’t just go on like this didn’t happen,” he said. When nobody disagreed, Winter pinned them with a gaze.
“And who better than you two…” he began.
Looked like every single hospital employee must have signed Michael’s cast. Jackson Craig watched as Michael squealed with delight and streaked across the room. Gilbert’s mother Fran followed in not-so-hot pursuit. Jackson Craig leaned against the wall, marveling at the resiliency of children, amazed that, after all that had transpired, the little guy still had the capacity for joy.
The grandparents were on their best behavior. They’d never gotten along particularly well, but circumstances had thrown them together in a way none of them could have anticipated, so they were putting on their best faces for the sake of the kids. Singularly each couple was fine, but the arrival of grandchildren had somehow deepened the gulf of their cultural differences, and the differences between a fiercely proud Mexican family from the barrio and a pair of mid-western dairy farmers constituted a rift of major proportions. Craig recalled how Gilbert used to grouse about the difficulty of keeping everyone satisfied. Particularly around the holidays when having grandparents with wildly different traditions and who lived fifteen hundred miles apart made equity nearly impossible and enmity seemingly inevitable.
Audrey Williams and Becky separated themselves from the Madrigal clan and wandered over Craig’s way. The side of Becky’s face was completely scabbed over and she still had one arm in a sling. Otherwise she looked hale and hardy.
“How you doin’?” he asked.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Thank you for finding my brother,” she said.
“Has he… has he said anything about…” Audrey asked.
“I think he’s alright,” Becky said. “All he says is that the man was very sad.”
Craig said Williams passed a meaningful glance but neither spoke.
“I saw you guys on TV,” the girl said. “It was cool.”
“Who woulda thunk it?” Audrey mused. “Me and the big fella here… guests on the Harvey Winter Show. Boggles the mind, it does.”
Jackson Craig smiled but said nothing.
“My mother had to be sedated,” Audrey joked and then immediately wished she hadn’t mentioned mothers. Becky turned her face away. Audrey silently cursed her own big mouth. Silence settled uneasily over their corner of the room.
“Was he?” the girl asked finally.
“What?”
“Was he sad?”
Craig nodded. “Yeah,” he said after a moment’s reflection. “He was sad.”
Her voice nearly caught in her throat. “I hate him so much,” she said.
Craig thought about it. He recalled a homily about hating what a person does, rather than hating the person, but just couldn’t manage to spit it out.
On the far side of the room, Octavio Madrigal had abandoned his seat under the arched window and had walked over to Bill Fowles, who was seated on one of the flowered couches. Bill had a stroke about ten months ago and didn’t get around so well any more. He sat with his hands on top of a wooden cane and his chin resting on his hands. Octavio sat down beside him. The men began to chat.
Audrey checked her watch. Her expression was pained. “We should be going,” she said. Craig flicked his eyes at the clock on the wall.
She was right. A car service was picking her up out front in half an hour. Taking her home to Ventura for the duration of her six-week medical leave. Craig was due at Bobby’s office a half hour after that, for what was being called a de-briefing .
“Rrrrrrebecca,” Joanna Madrigal trilled from across the room. She used her hankied hand to beckon the girl to her side.
Becky hugged them both goodbye, and started toward her grandmother.
Jackson Craig and Audrey Williams made the circuit, saying goodbye and making promises they knew they probably weren’t going to be able to keep but promising anyway because that’s what you did at a time like this.
The black Lincoln Town Car was already idling in the driveway when they got downstairs. The driver loaded her luggage and then got back into the car.
She swiveled her neck and as if to check the immediate area, then looped a hand behind his head and drew his lips to hers. For a brief moment Jackson Craig was rigid and uncertain…a reaction which quickly turned tentative and then willing…and then just as quickly morphed into the heat of the moment, as he drew her against his chest, embracing for longer than what polite society considered to be in good taste.
After an extended interval, she took a step back. She watched as Jackson Craig reached to wipe his mouth and then decided against it. She smiled.
He gave her a big loopy grin she’d never seen before and then deadpanned, “I believe we now find ourselves in violation of the ‘anti-fraternization’ clause.”
She laughed out loud. “Over the past few days, we’ve disobeyed the direct orders of our superiors on numerous occasions, disrupted security at the world’s busiest airport to the point where they shut it down for an hour and a half, then appeared on smut television to talk about it…” She paused for effect and rolled her eyes. “Without official authorization, I might add. I’m bettin’ we’ve got way bigger problems than a little kiss.” She waved a dismissive hand. “Hell, if you recall, we weren’t particularly popular to begin with.”
Craig opened the car door for her. She slid inside, and then looked up at him and smiled. “See you at the airport Tuesday night,” she said.
He stood on the asphalt and watched as the black Lincoln slid noiselessly into traffic and disappeared.
Dan Rosen’s secretary Marlene Stanwick handed him an untidy stack of paperwork and started her usual one-foot-in-front-of-the-other swoosh toward the office door. Rosen dropped the folder onto his desk with an annoyed slap.
“Is this everything?” he demanded.
She stopped swooshing and turned to face him.
“In all probability, there’ll be more on the machine before I get back to my desk,” she predicted.
Rosen wanted to curse, something crude and multi-syllabic. But, in deference to Marlene’s old-fashioned sensibilities, he swallowed it.
“Thanks,” he growled.
Marlene shot Bobby Duggan a quick ‘my.. aren’t we crabby today’ glance and then resumed her exit. They waited for the door to hiss closed behind her.
“Goddamn it,” Rosen groused. He rifled through the paperwork and grabbed a handful. “Book offers: Random House. Harper Collins. Little Brown.” He tossed a handful of pages to the floor and pulled out another handful. “HBO wants to do a mini-series.” He flicked the pages with his fingernails. “Six parts.” Another page waffled to the carpet. “ABC wants to buy exclusive rights in all media.” More pages made the trip to the rug before he slammed a hand on top of the remaining pile. “There’s even one in here somewhere for the rights to Action Figures,” he said with an annoyed shake of the head. “Action Figures!” He looked at Bobby Duggan in amazement. “What the hell is going on here? We’re supposed to be a clandestine governmental agency. Secret! Like in Secret Service. We can’t be on the front page of the frigging newspaper every day.”
Bobby shrugged. “They’re celebrities, Dan. Wednesday they’re doing
Good Morning America
in New York. Then it’s the talk show circuit. Leno on Friday. Joy Behar the day before.” He pointed his palms at the ceiling. “Somebody opened a Facebook account for ‘em. They got three and a half million hits in the first twenty-four hours.”
Rosen was in full denial. “We need to put a stop to this,” he insisted. “This is ridiculous.”
“Actually, it’s a hell of a strategy. Just the kind of thing I’d expect Jackson to come up with if he found himself backed into a corner.” Bobby threw a hand in the air. “He knows we can’t touch either of them as long as this hoopla is goin’ on. They’re going to play this out in the media.” He absent-mindedly brushed at his cowlick and grinned. “They’re national heroes,” Bobby said. “The deadly duo who saved Harvey Winter. No way we want to be on the other side of this. We probably better jump on board. Ride the lightning while we’ve got the chance.” Bobby wandered across the room. “And to make matters worse, they were good. Credible. Telegenic.”
Rosen made a rude noise. “I’ll suspend both of them pending an internal investigation of their conduct. That’ll put an end to this foolishness.”
Bobby brushed the notion to the ground. “I spoke to the AG’s office this morning. We can’t order them not to appear on television. If they were on duty, we could assign them to the hinterlands, arbitrarily classify their assignments and be done with it. But they’re not. They’re on leave. She’s on medical leave and he’s on personal leave, both of which are legitimate. What they do with their own time is strictly their business. As long as they don’t reveal state secrets or otherwise run afoul of the classification system, they’re pretty much entitled to do whatever they damn please, so there’s just no point in suspending either of them. All it would accomplish is to make us look petty and stupid and small.”
Dan Rosen cut the air with an angry hand. “Those two cowboys can’t possibly become the face of this agency. Can’t happen. Not on my watch anyway.”
“It’s a done deal, Dan,” Bobby drawled. “It’s already happened. You and me…we’re just sitting around the cracker barrel talkin ‘bout yesterday’s news. We’re lockin the barn after the horse already done been stole. Next thing you know those two are going to have their own reality TV show.”
“Where are they now?” Rosen asked.
“Jackson’s getting his family’s life back in order. Finding a new facility for his father and such and sundry. Williams ran up to Ventura to be with her mother, who, I’m given to understand, went apoplectic at the sight of her only daughter on the Harvey Winter show. They’ve got reservations flying from LAX to JFK on Tuesday evening. Aisle seats, across from each other.”
“And there’s no way we can put a stop to this?”
“Nothin’ legal,” Bobby assured him.
Rosen cursed at some length and then folded his arms so tightly across his chest that his thick torso began to vibrate.
“Shakin’ like a hound dog tryin’ to pass a peach pit,” Bobby thought.
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