Crack-Up (34 page)

It took a primal urge to divert my attention from the pounding noise inside my head.
 
Hunger pangs sent me four blocks away, to a favorite seafood restaurant of mine along
Pennsylvania Avenue
, called Kinkead’s.
 
Hell’s orchestra followed.

The dinner crowd had begun arriving.
 
Two dozen patrons were already seated, a mix of federal bureaucrats and Italian-shoed lobbyists and lawyers, the kind of people who—along with the wait staff—just might know me well enough to recognize me.
 
But I was beyond caring about that now.

One last, decent meal—which I knew I couldn’t pay for—and then I’d turn myself over to the authorities, just as I’d promised myself—swore to myself—I would do, when it was time, when the madness arrived.
 
And now it had.
 
Clearly so.

“I’ll start off with a Sam Adams!” I yelled at the waiter, who stepped back smartly, pulling his pad to his scrawny chest.

“No need to shout, sir.”

“Sorry,” I said, lowering my voice, realizing with some embarrassment that I’d been shouting above a din the waiter couldn’t hear.

The waiter left my table.
 
I studied the menu.
 
I decided to go with the soft shell crab plate.
 
Then, whimsically, I thought of demanding from the police a few conditional terms of surrender, including the right to bring a doggy bag into jail with me.

The restaurant chatter mixed with the jarring music in my head.
 
I put the menu down and immediately sensed a pair of eyes staring at me from across the room.
 
They belonged to a tall man planted beneath a wooden archway leading into the bar.
 
The man had to be the only patron besides myself lacking a business suit.
 
He wore denim overalls, his thumbs hooking the shoulder straps.
 
His cotton shirt was checkered red and white.
 
His black cowboy hat was mashed on top.
 
He held the same stance I remembered from long ago, in an old photograph, and from more recently on the boardwalk outside the conference room of my firm.

“Pa,” I said and remained open-mouthed, gripping the ends of my arm rests.
 
But it can’t be
! I thought.
 
It can’t be
!

How was it possible, after all, that my long-lost, schizophrenic father had suddenly materialized a quarter century after disappearing without a trace?
 
Here?
 
In this restaurant?
 
Where no one knew to find me?

It wasn’t possible, of course.
 
I was sick, and I knew it, sick like my old man.

The tall figure—the hallucination, a troubled mind’s mirage—broke from its stance and approached.
 
I gripped my chair tighter—until I glimpsed the first details of the figure’s face.

For it wasn’t the face I’d been expecting.
 
It belonged to a complete stranger.
 
The stranger halted by my table.

“No, Mister Ward, I’m not your father, as you can plainly see by now.
 
Mind if I sit down?”

Chapter 36

The impersonator sat down, directly across from me, tossing his mushy black hat to the end of the table.
 
He looked to be in his late thirties, or roughly my father’s age—Alfred Ward’s age—on the day he’d gone missing more than two decades prior.
 
His strawberry blond hair—short, straight, and baby-fine—perfectly matched my father’s hair from that earlier time.
 
But the angular face, witnessed up close, did not especially resemble my father’s.
 
Most wrong of all were the eyes—hazel, not blue, too narrow, too deep-set, too calm, much too assured.

“Who are you?”
 
I said.
 
“How did you find me?”

The response came in a steely, clipped cadence, like that of
 
a Kennedy, but without the
Boston
accent.
 
“You don’t need to know who I am, Mister Ward.
 
Nor whom I represent.
 
As to how we found you, we picked up your trail days ago.
 
In
Baltimore
.
 
We’ve been on you ever since.”

“
Baltimore
?”

“We’d been tailing the local constabulary from DC, that pair of Homicide detectives you caught up with there in the parking garage, Strecker and Fellows.
 
They’re getting close to the truth now, thanks to you.”

“So you admit it then?” I said, suddenly almost lock-jawed with anger.
 
“You admit it all?
 
You and-and your people—whoever they are—have been behind this whole thing?
 
You’re the ones who switched my meds for dummy pills, and made me see and hear strange things—like naked flight attendants, like ghosts out the past—all to drive me insane?
 
And then coerced me into killing John Helms?
 
Ending his life and ruining mine?”

“Yes, sir.
 
We’re the ones behind it all.”

“Why?”

The impersonator leaned forward, his jaw hovering an inch above the table’s centerpiece, a little spray of yellow flowers in a vase.
 
“I’m going to tell you what you want to know,” he said at a lower volume.
 
“When you hear the answer, you may wonder why I’m being so frank, but I’ll get to that soon enough.”

“Why?” I repeated.

“This will come as a shock, Mister Ward, but John Helms was just a warm-up.
 
Yes, we wanted him eliminated, badly, but he was not our ultimate target.
 
His killing was required, but it was also done as a kind of test.
 
You were part of that test—you and the other paranoid schizophrenics we manipulated.
 
Part of a dry run.”
 
His thin, bloodless lips formed a jagged slash I took as a smile.
 
“Or a wet dry run, considering the fate of Mister Helms.”

I shook my head in disbelief.
 
“You mean to tell me this was ultimately some kind of rehearsal?
 
Rehearsal for what?”

“Our ultimate goal has always been—and continues to be—to assassinate the president.
 
The sitting president of these
United States
.”
 
The impersonator paused until a tipsy patron in the aisle had completely stumbled by.
 
“But we want the bastard taken out in such a way as to avoid any suspicions of conspiracy.
 
We want it to look like another John Hinckley.”

“Ah,” I said, recalling the quarter century-old attack on President Reagan, carried out by a mentally deranged young man trying to impress a movie star.
 
“John Hinckley, only successful.
 
Hinckley
didn’t kill Reagan.”

“Reagan came within an inch of his life.
 
Most people don’t know that.”

“But why John Helms?
 
What the hell does he have to do with the president?
 
Why did he have to die?”

“I can’t get into that completely.
 
I can tell you that one of the reasons he was targeted was because we wanted to practice on someone with well-trained bodyguards.
 
But we didn’t want to target anyone being protected by the Secret Service, such as the president’s own family members, or the VP, or certain members of Congress, or a Supreme Court justice who’s currently receiving death threats from an anti-abortionist.
 
That would, first of all, put the president’s personal security detail on high alert, especially for the mentally ill.
 
And secondly, if two major political figures were to be slain in quick succession at the hands of the mentally ill, then the talk might not just be of coincidence, but of conspiracy too.

“So we turned to the private sector.
 
We chose John Helms as our practice target because he had to be taken out anyway and because, after a careful study, we’d determined that he was the single best-protected private citizen in
America
.
 
Which was no accident.
 
Deep pockets means deep protection, if you spend your money wisely, and the man who John Helms hired to design and supervise his personal protection is former Secret Service.
 
The best in the business.”

“Gee, I’m flattered,” I said.

“You should be.”

“Why kill President Ames?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“If only that were still true, you son of a bitch.
 
How did your people find out I was paranoid schizophrenic?
 
And what about the others?
 
Jeremy Crane and Sally Anne Bilchik?”

“Also none of your business.”
 
The impersonator leaned back in his chair as my waiter stopped by the table holding a glass pot of coffee in each hand.

“Coffee?” said the waiter.
 
“Caff or decaff?”
 
My visitor shook his head.
 
I stood my overturned cup upright in its saucer, asking for caffeinated.
 
The waiter poured, then departed.

I took a sip.
 
“I think I know how you found out about my father and came up with that get-up you’re wearing.
 
My mother?”

The impersonator’s lips formed another jagged smile.
 
“That’s right.
 
A couple months ago, we sent a two-woman team down to
Charlottesville
and knocked on the door to her nursing home, posing as ‘social historians.’
 
Your mom was fairly coherent that day.
 
Happy to tell us all her old stories, show us all her old photos, including the few surviving shots of your missing father.
 
I’m afraid we stole one of them.
 
I guess you know which one.”

I took another sip of coffee.
 
The music in my sickening head had quieted to the level of elevator background Muzak for a time, but was now volubly on the rise.
 
Soon I would be trapped in the orchestra pit again, where conversation would be near impossible.
 
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re here.”

“Sure.
 
I’m here to make you an offer.
 
An excellent one, considering your plight.”

“What about my plight?”

“You won’t be able to prove you were set up, and no one’s going to care, anyway, at your murder trial.
 
It’ll be immaterial until the sentencing phase.
 
No matter what happens from here on out, you’ll soon be on death row, or spending the rest of your days on Earth incarcerated.
 
Surely, you’re smart enough to have figured that out for yourself already.”

I gave the impersonator a look I intended to be murderous.
 
“Thanks.
 
I owe you one.”

“Now, now, Mister Ward.
 
Let’s be civil.
 
Let’s be practical.
 
This is
Washington
DC
, after all, so let’s think of your fate as a legislative bill that’s going to be passed.
 
You’re a congressman and you don’t want it passed, you’re opposed, but the writing’s on the wall, so now it’s time for you to consider switching sides, to at least see what you could get out of the deal, to see what your disingenuous, belated support of the bill will buy you.”