The Next President (12 page)

his grandmother’s house. But he parked on the street, not in the driveway. He got out of his Honda, closed the door, and leaned against the vehicle with his arms folded across his chest.

A moment later Blair McCray’s pickup truck turned the corner and approached at idle speed. Just then Evan had second thoughts about being confrontational

If McCray had decided to take matters into his own hands, the only way Evan could be a better drive-by target was if he wore a sign saying

SHOOT -ME.

But Blair McCray didn’t open fire, he just met Evan’s stare. The ongoing motion of his truck forced him to look away first.

Then, on an impulse that surprised him, Evan let out a sharp whistle.

The Ford pickup stopped immediately and Evan walked over to it. Blair McCray lowered the passenger-side power window. Once again Evan could see what an imposing physical specimen he was.

“You lift weights, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Probably know some martial art, too.”

He shook his head.

“Never had a need. Scrappin’ comes natural to me.”

Evan snorted.

“Well, we’re not going to settle this with our fists, then. You mind if I get in the truck?”

McCray was suspicious, and plainly thought Evan might be trying to sand bag him.

“Step back from the door a second.”

Evan backed up half a dozen steps. Blair McCray shone a flashlight on him and told him to raise his hands above his head and turn around slowly.

The first thing Evan had to do was hold his temper, but he complied, hoping he wouldn’t be shot in the back. When he was facing the truck again, the passenger-side door was open.

“Come on in,” McCray told him.

Evan slid onto the seat and closed the door behind him.

“You want to go somewhere or just sit here?” McCray asked.

“Here is good,” Evan answered.

McCray pulled the truck over to the curb.

“Look,” Evan said, “I was thinking maybe I could get a restraining order against you. To keep you from following me everywhere. The thing is, I don’t see you paying much attention to something like that. Even if your in-law, the chief, was forced to lock you up for violating the order, there are all those other McCrays you mentioned. Some relative of yours could just take your place, and sooner or later somebody’s going to lose his patience, and who knows what might happen then?”

Blair McCray waited silently for Evan to make his point.

“I know you won’t take it on faith that I didn’t kill your cousin; in your place, I’d feel the same way. So what I’m thinking is this: Why don’t we look into Ivar’s killing together?”

At the corner of the block, a dark sedan with its lights off glided to a stop.

The man behind the wheel pointed a small directional microphone at Blair McCray’s truck.

He listened to and recorded every word that passed between Evan Cade and Blair McCray.

“You have some police experience I don’t know about?” the microphone picked up McCray asking Evan.

“Or are you just one of the Hardy boys?”

“I’m smart, I’m motivated, and I’d like to see the last of you,” Evan replied.

“If that’s not good enough for you, I’ll just start looking into things on my own.”

“You? All by yourself?”

“Me,” Evan affirmed.

Blair McCray’s eyes narrowed.

“I’ll think on it and let you know.” McCray cocked his head toward the Cade house.

“Meanwhile, you can tell your granny over there she won’t need her shotgun tonight.”

Evan turned and saw that Belle Cade was standing in her doorway and, sure enough, his sweet old grandmother held a shotgun. Evan doubted she even knew how to take the safety off, but McCray didn’t know that.

“See what I mean about people losing patience?” he told McCray.

As J. D. and Pickpocket got into the Lexus to go to Pan Pacific Park that night, J. D. noticed the bulge under Pickpocket’s jacket. Before they rolled out of the driveway, J. D. told the little thief, “Give me the gun.”

At first Pickpocket thought to crack wise, and then he considered defiance, but in the end he was smart enough to read the look in J. D.‘s eyes.

He handed over the weapon, a Clock semiauto, but insisted, “I want that back.”

“I’ll take good care of it.”

“Yeah, but who’s going to take care of me?”

“Ye of little faith.” J. D. put the weapon under his seat.

J. D. let Pickpocket out at the corner of Third and Crescent Heights, a half mile from the park. Pickpocket would walk the intervening distance. J. D. would drive on ahead and be waiting in concealment when he got there.

Pan Pacific Park lay between the parking lot of the Farmer’s Market on

the west and Gardner Avenne on the east. It ran from Third Street on the south to Beverly Boulevard on the north. A running track at street level formed the boundary of the park, encompassing the playing fields and the picnic area that were set in a hollow a dozen feet downslope.

J. D.” Clock in hand, slipped into the park from Beverly Boulevard, the opposite end from where Pickpocket would appear. The park was illuminated, but just barely. Light poles were placed far more widely than on the street and their candlepower was considerably lower. They dispensed small islands of light amidst a far larger sea of darkness.

J. D. carefully made his way through the unlighted area to the midpoint of the western boundary. From there he could see to both Third Street and Beverly Boulevard, and he could look across the width of the playing field to the backs of the houses on Gardner Avenue that abutted the park. Not ten minutes after he settled into place, he saw the little thief arrive on the Third Street side of the park.

Pickpocket had told J. D. that he wasn’t given a specific point in the park for the rendezvous; he was just supposed to walk the track and he would be contacted. Looking at the setup now, J. D. felt a moment of regret that he’d taken the handgun from Pickpocket. He wouldn’t have wanted to step into such a situation unarmed.

Even so, he thought it was better for both of them to have the weapon in his hands.

J. D. watched Pickpocket enter the park carrying the backpack with his twenty thousand dollars. The little thief walked with a jaunty step, hands in his jacket pockets, just as if he was out for a stroll without a care in the world.

Or as if hands in pockets? the sneaky little bastard had a backup weapon.

Pickpocket had made it to the long straightaway that paralleled Gardner Avenue when a movement on Beverly Boulevard caught J. D.‘s eye. A light gray sedan was pulling in behind his Lexus. From his angle, he could see two figures sitting in the front seat, but they were too far away for him to distinguish their features.

Just then a deep growl reached J. D. from across the width of the playing field. He snapped his head around to see Pickpocket stopped dead in his tracks on the jogging track, directly opposite J. D. He was standing in a halo of light and seemed to be talking to somebody in the darkness just beyond it.

J. D. couldn’t hear the little thief’s words above the continuing growl of the dog.

At least he hoped it was a dog.

He took a quick look back at the sedan. Two male passengers were getting out. He couldn’t worry about them now. He’d told Pickpocket

he would protect him and that was what he was going to do. He crept forward, staying in the darkness, just as Pickpocket received visitors in his cone of light. One of the new arrivals was a young woman with hair the color of a maraschino cherry. Red was a girl. She was no bigger than the little thief and maybe even an inch shorter. The other new presence was some sort of mastiff that looked as though it could swallow both of the humans at a gulp and have room for several more just like them.

The woman dropped the leash that connected her to the animal. J. D. brought the Clock up to firing position. It would be an extremely long handgun shot even for him. But he thought that even if he didn’t actually hit the dog, he might get the animal to charge him. Then he could dispose of it at a more practical distance.

The monster didn’t attack Pickpocket, though. It sat right down on its haunches. And the woman extended a hand to Pickpocket, who shook it.

With the dog no longer snarling, J. D. was able to hear Pickpocket and the woman laugh. They sat down on a bench next to each other like long-lost friends and fell into animated conversation.

J. D. decided to give it a few minutes to make sure things didn’t go sour.

After that, he’d depart. When everything continued to go well, J. D. looked back to Beverly Boulevard. He didn’t want to lose his car to thieves. But the two men—one dark-haired, one blonde, he could now see—weren’t stealing his car. The dark-haired guy was standing at the front of the gray sedan looking into the park. His gaze appeared to be directed at Pickpocket and his new lady friend. The blonde-haired man was in a crouch, barely visible behind his standing companion. He seemed to be fiddling with the front end of their car.

Then, quick as a snake, his arm shot out and he put something under J . D.‘s rear bumper. IfJ. D. had looked away for a second or had a different angle on the men, he’d never have seen it. The two quickly returned to their car, backed up to have room to clear the Lexus, and pulled out to disappear down Beverly Boulevard.

Puzzlement lasted only a second. Revelation struck like a thunderbolt.

J. D.‘s minders!

They’d finally crawled out of the woodwork.

Special Agent Dante DeVito was the last person in Rawley campaign headquarters that night. Earlier in the day he’d written the apology note he’d sworn he would never write. He figured that since he didn’t have a stroke right then and there, he ought to be good for the next forty years.

What really galled him, goddamn Jenny Crenshaw hadn’t even broken a sweat getting him to do it. She’d just called him into her office and told him to sit down.

“I’ve spoken with Del about you,” she said.

“For reasons of his own, he’d like to keep you around. But he said you are to use no more hidden cameras in this office or anywhere else.” DeVito reddened, unaware that little secret had been exposed.

“He also supported the idea that you will write a note of apology to Mr. Cade, which I will deliver to him.”

Jenny leaned forward on her desk and looked at DeVito intently.

“Del and I are far too busy to be nagging you about taking care of this obligation, Special Agent. You might think that if you delay doing it, we’ll forget about it. So here’s the deal: You will write your apology this minute or… well, since your career is already in the toilet, I’ll have you follow it.

From now on, you’ll be the special agent in charge of securing men’s rooms for the campaign. You will spend each and every on-duty hour in the company of commodes, urinals, and their attendant odors. If you prove adept, maybe we’ll let you hand out towels.”

Jenny slid a sheet of campaign letterhead and a pen toward DeVito

“If you prefer,” she said, “you may use this stationery for your resignation.

I’ll make sure Del accepts it.”

DeVito was sorely tempted to do just that, but he refused to give that ball buster the satisfaction. He wrote his apology in eleven words.

Mr. Cade:

I acted unprofessionally. I’m sorry.

Special Agent Dante DeVito

“Thank you, Special Agent,” Jenny said.

“You may carry on with your duties.”

That was just what DeVito intended to do. He might have to do it very late, like now, or very early. Times when nobody else was around. He’d just have to be history’s first covert Secret Service agent.

Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. The service, in fact, often did things that protectees and their entourages knew nothing about. He’d simply be the first to take that idea one step farther and do things his bosses knew nothing about.

He was going to check out anybody and everybody who struck him as being in any way wrong. He’d do it off the books, and he’d take it as far as he saw fit. There would be no interference from Charlie Clarke, who

was really running the protection detail now, or from Miss High-and-Mighty, Jenny Crenshaw.

As for that smart-mouthed Cade character—whom DeVito held responsible for the humiliating note of apology—if he dared show his face anywhere around the campaign again, DeVito would get to know him better than his proctologist did.

In fact, the folder in front of him contained the first of the data he’d collected on the man. Now, if Mr. Romeo Cade made Jenny Crenshaw swoon when she delivered the damn apology—the way he had that Ellison bitch falling all over him—DeVito had no doubt the file on J. D. Cade would continue to grow.

It was a calculated risk, but J. D. left the homing device in place. Doing that would allow his minders to find the Refuge. Removing it, though, would let the minders know that he was on to them. Perhaps they’d even guess that he had seen them put the bug in place. He didn’t want to give either of those things away.

Once he was home, J. D. lay in bed in the dark, looking up at the ceiling.

He was all but alone in a city of millions. His only companion was a young thief who digitally finessed people out of their property, and even Pickpocket didn’t know the purpose for which he labored. Everyone J. D. had talked to in the past ten weeks, he’d deceived in one way or another. Even his son. But how could he reveal himself to Evan?

Hey, Ev, guess what Dad has planned? He’s going to kill someone. Who?

The man who otherwise might become the next president.

He could imagine his son withdrawing from him in horror, withdrawing from him forever, if he ever told him the truth.

But son, I’m doing it for you. That’s more than my father ever did for me.

His father. Landon Cade. He remembered his father holding him in his arms exactly one time. On his fourth birthday. Holding him and hugging him and singing “Happy Birthday.” He even remembered kissing his father then. Smearing frosting from the cake all over his dad’s face, and him laughing about it. There were photos of that day in the family album.