My King The President (21 page)

Plus, there was Liz.
Jesus!
I had been so involved in the action of the past twenty-four hours; I had not had so much as one second to think about her. Would she be okay for a while longer under Reverend Simon Peter’s ecclesiastical roof? Was she out of her mind with worry? Fear? Loneliness?

I got out and watched the big Mercedes’ taillights float away into the darkness, leaving me and my short shadow splayed beneath the spread fan of the street light in front of Ernie Latham’s apartment house. I was instantly cold. Freezing. Monsignor Ralph had not thought about giving me his overcoat—if he’d had one. At least it wasn’t sleeting. I glanced at Ralph’s watch. 3:42 A.M. Not even Ernie stayed up this late. I walked under the arch of the building’s entrance where there was more light, reached for and pressed the button next to the name over the mailbox: E.P. LATHAM. Funny, I thought as I waited, Ernie was short for Ernest. An apt name for a newspaper editor, but what was the “P” for?

It took four tries and five frigid minutes leaning hard on the bell button before the tinny, angry voice came through the tiny grill. “Who is it?”

I leaned toward it, though it wasn’t at all necessary. “It’s me, Ernie. Jeb. Let me in, for God’s sake.”

The next few words that came through the little speaker were unprintable, then, “If you’re Jeb Willard, you’ll know the name of the secretary I had five years ago. Who was it?”

“Eleanor Roosevelt, goddammit. You never had a secretary in your life. Ernie, open the door. It’s freezing down here and I don’t have a coat on.”

The loud buzz that came in the next moment was one of the sweetest sounds I’d ever heard. With nearly blue fingers, I pulled the heavy door open and walked into the brightly lit foyer. Ten more shivering steps took me to the elevator and to the fifth floor. Ernie’s apartment was directly across the hall and I wondered what he’d think, half awake, when he looked through the peephole and saw the bald head, full beard, and white collar. The appraisal he made through the round, microscopic telescope took only another few seconds, however, and I heard the three locks being worked on in rapid succession. Must have been my bloodshot eyes that did the trick.

Ernie Latham was Felix Unger and Oscar Madison put together. All four rooms of his bachelor apartment were a combination of old-maid neatness and unbelievable clutter. The living room and kitchen were a mess, but his bedroom/study and bathroom were practically sterile, which only proved one thing. Ernie didn’t spend much time in either his living room or his kitchen. Wearing a raincoat over his pajamas, he led me through the first disaster area into the second one, brushed some newspapers off one chair and instructed me to sit down. He moved dishes, pots, pans, and God only knows what other junk out of his way until he exposed the Mr. Coffee, which, miraculously, had been pre-loaded and timed for whatever hour he considered morning to be. Soon, it was draining brown, aromatic liquid that was as welcome to me as plasma would have been to a bleeding soldier. From somewhere or other, he managed to locate two clean mugs into which he poured half the contents of Mr. Coffee and some of Mr. Jim Beam. Ernie had the grace to wait until I’d had a few sips before saying. “Okay. I’m awake enough now. Take your time, and tell me everything.”

Except for my moments of intimacy with Liz, I told him all of it, from the time I’d left his office up until ringing his doorbell. Ernie listened to it all without interrupting once. When I’d finished, he shook his head and whistled softly. “Incredible. And Cancelossi let you
go
? Just like that? I mean, you had just seen him kidnap and attempt to murder somebody, for chrissakes.”

“Think about it, Ernie. Let’s say I went to the authorities. Who’d believe it? And even if they did, what could anybody do? There’s no record of Hemiola’s trip. No body. No proof. When Bruno got through scrubbing that yacht, she looked as pristine as the day she was commissioned.”

“What about the rest of the crew?”

“I think they’d all been herded forward. The boat was on autopilot the whole time. Besides, there is one other thing, Ernie. Cancelossi’s dying. Even if the FBI managed to arrest him, he’d be out on bond within an hour, and he’d be dead long before any trial came up. Oh, he knew what he was doing, letting me go. He also wanted me to deliver Koontz to him if I could.”

“Why?”

“Sicilian revenge, I guess. He wrote the book on it. In his eyes, the Judge broke a deal. Nobody—and I mean
nobody
—does that to Sal Cancelossi and gets away with it.”

Ernie got up, poured more coffee, and said, “By the way, that priest did call me. From San Francisco. So he’s okay. What are you going to do about McCarty’s sister, leave her down in Carolina for a while longer?”

I took the replenished mug from him. “Yeah. I’m sure she’ll be safe there.”

“And what about you? What’s your next step?”

“I’ve got to get my dad out of that stockade. Question is, how? To be honest, I’m so tired and brain dead, I can’t think of any way—”

“Hold on! I know a way. What was it Cancelossi said? ‘If you do have McCarty’s diaries, use them for a swap?’ What you can do is hole up here a few days and do what you do best. Write.”

“Write?”

“Sure. I’ve got some old notebooks around here somewhere. You can sit down and compose a diary. With your talent and what you already know, you could write a passable, fairly accurate forgery. Who would know it isn’t his?”

I was far too tired to think whether or not it was a good idea. Whether it would work or not. And, even if I did do it, who would I approach with it?

As if reading my mind, Ernie reached for the bottle of Jim Beam, poured another dollop into our mugs, and said, “The only way you’d ever get into that stockade at Fort Bragg would be to make a deal with the man himself. The seventh dwarf. Cornelius Ferris. The Secretary of Defense.”

“
Now?
”

“No, of course not. First thing after breakfast, though. Look, you need some rest. Use my bed. I’ll wake you up in a couple hours.”

The three hours he let me sleep were like only three minutes. It took me another two to realize he was shaking me. “Rise and shine, Father Jeb. The President wants to talk to you.”

His last sentence was like a quick slap in the face. I jumped up, then turned, staring at Ernie, not knowing where the phone was. He pointed to the neat desk, which was actually a computer center. The phone rested on top, next to the printer. I picked it up, gulped one deep breath and spoke into it, trying to keep my voice under control. “Ms. President?”

The voice coming back at me was definitely under control. “Jeb, I’ve had a brief talk with Ernie, but I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to stay there. I’m sending a car for you and will see you myself around three this afternoon. Are you all right?”

“Fine.” The line disconnected. For another few seconds, I stood there with the phone in my hand, not quite sure I was awake enough to have heard her accurately. Ernie gently took the phone from my hand, placed it back in its cradle, then said, “Take a shower, son. You’ll feel a hundred percent better. There’s an extra toothbrush in the medicine cabinet. You like waffles?”

“More than caviar!”

“I’m glad. They’re the only things I know how to fix. They’ll be ready in five.”

The unmarked Buick showed up thirty minutes later, with two Secret Service men inside wearing casual clothes and friendly smiles. Ernie waved good-bye from the archway of his apartment house, like a relieved father sending his kid off to camp. Before we had driven two blocks, the driver, who told me his name was Franklin, informed me we really were on our way to camp—Camp David.

Chapter 20

The back seat of the Buick was comfortable. Warm, and I would have gone back to sleep immediately had Agent Franklin’s partner not started in on a rambling, sophomoric oral history of the camp. (“…And Eisenhower named it after his grandson, David…”) I didn’t have the heart to tell him I was no stranger there, having covered two of the never ending, useless string of summit meetings between the two middle east adversaries who have been at each other’s throats since practically the beginning of measured time, and will be at the end of it. Still, I listened politely while he proudly spouted off his knowledge like a guide on a tour bus, including a few colorful anecdotes no one outside his own service could know. I don’t know whether President Fordham had told them who I really was. And, if either of them thought it strange to be transporting a humble priest to the famous Presidential retreat, they didn’t let on.

We were automatically passed through the gate that looked like the entrance to a maximum-security prison. It seemed a far cry from the simple opening it had been at the beginning, back in 1942, when FDR had named the then primitive camp Shangri-La, after the Tibetan paradise in James Hilton’s
Lost Horizon
. A light snow had begun to fall, slightly obscuring the view of the neat collection of up-to-date lodges that had once been simple rough cabins, all named for various trees. Since Roosevelt, a dozen presidents—or their wives—had, over time, ordered changes; remodeling, updating and modernizing grounds and buildings alike. Eisenhower’s golf green, Kennedy’s stables (now razed), Nixon’s swimming pool, the pond, Nancy Reagan’s flowerbeds, and Buck Tyndall’s pistol range were all rapidly disappearing under virgin whiteness. Except for the Marine guards at the front gate, there wasn’t another soul in sight.

Franklin (who never told me whether that was his first or last name) and his tour-guide partner drove me straight to the lodge named Holly, no doubt thinking they would soon be back to their normal duty. I was sure they thought that since I had no luggage, I wouldn’t be staying very long. The only items I was carrying were the notebooks Ernie had given me, along with the light raincoat he’d been wearing over his pajamas. I wasn’t even wearing a hat, and I was really missing my hair!

Someone had built a fire in the wonderful fireplace, rendering Holly nice and toasty inside. Franklin showed me the two bedrooms, told me I had my pick of them, and that either he or his colleague would be in the other one in case I needed anything. I thanked him, wondering how many others like him were around, outside, out of sight. I told him any bedroom was fine, that what I needed most was a few more hours sleep, and asked if he’d give me a wake up call at noon.

Franklin’s knock on the door was prompt. To the minute.

I made myself at home, more or less. I washed my face, then wandered into the fully stocked kitchen, helped myself to two of the sandwiches already stacked on a platter, and some freshly brewed coffee, tipping my imaginary cap to not only the Secret Service’s thoroughness, but their timing as well. Carrying the steaming mug, I walked into the cozy living room, sat down at the table there, and opened the first notebook, suddenly struck by the painful knowledge that it had been a long time since I’d written anything, especially in longhand.
My rip sheet, back in my room at the Mayflower…

Pencil in hand, I stared at the blank page without a clue as to how to begin. I must have sat there like that for ten minutes or so. My coffee had cooled considerably. I closed the notebook, knowing it would be useless to start until I had a chance to stow my present thoughts in a different brain compartment and concentrate on what—or how—Mac McCarty might have written. It also came to me that I didn’t know very much about him; except for the time we’d been teammates at UNC. Hey, that was at least a place to start. I reopened the notebook and wrote:

Natural athlete/Quarterback/ strong arm/ quick mind/made good decisions under pressure
. Then, a moment or two later:
Not a buddy-buddy type/ A little aloof/ Never joined a fraternity/ Never seen to smoke a cigarette or drink so much as one beer/ Dated very little/ Studied hard/ Excellent grades. Summation: Team player and leader on the field, a real loner off the field. No
close friends!!

However, from that moment and those few sentences, I was stumped. Totally blocked. I sat there for two hours, drinking cup after cup of coffee without writing another word, frustration building inside me all over again.
Come on, Jeb, get a grip. You’re a writer, for chrissakes. Write something down. Anything. Description. Hair color. Eyes. Height. Weight. Whether or not he’d spit through his facemask, or was left handed or right handed. Anything that will bust your block…