The Next President (6 page)

J. D. left the building keeping a discreet eye out to see if Special Agent Formerly in Charge DeVito was lurking about watching him, but he didn’t see the angry fed anywhere. Still, he couldn’t help but feel he’d made an unnecessary enemy.

He also wondered if he’d made a mistake by not accepting the invitation to the diva’s private party. But he hadn’t wanted to appear too eager. The best way to achieve his goal, he felt, was to have the campaign reach out to him.

To embrace him.

And since every political campaign was a mainline money-junkie—even one so recently threatened by an assassin—he was sure he’d be hearing from the charming Ms. Ellison soon.

J. D. was also sure he had unseen minders, but they remained invisible as his Lexus meandered through the Westside of L.A. and into Santa Monica.

When he was positive nobody was actively tailing him, he turned off San

Vicente Boulevard at 7th Street and dipped down into Santa Monica Canyon.

The house he had leased sat on a rise at the rear of a cul-de-sac. It commanded a view of any traffic that might approach its front door. Behind the pool and the garden out back, the wall of the canyon rose at a nearly vertical pitch. The owner had named the place El Refugio. The Refuge. J. D. could only hope.

He put the car in the garage and entered the house. As he walked into the kitchen he looked through the sliding glass doors to the figure seated outside at the table near the pool. The slightly built young man with the long blonde hair stared fixedly at the screen of a laptop computer. His name, truly, was John Smith. But J. D. thought of him by his trade name: Pickpocket.

Pickpocket was a hacker who lifted wallets at high-tech gatherings in the hope that he would find computer passwords among their contents. His batting average in this regard hovered around the .500 mark. Once he had the information he wanted he replaced the wallets, and the unsuspecting victims went on their way, cash and credit cards in place, never knowing they’d been relieved of their true valuables.

J. D. had caught Pickpocket with his hand on J. D.‘s wallet.

It happened at a Mac World Expo in San Francisco. The little thief had been disguised as a Japanese businessman, complete with black wig and horn-rim glasses. Pickpocket had immediately offered J. D. money to let him go without a fuss. Nobody in the busy hall had yet noticed their little drama.

When Pickpocket saw that mere lucre held no appeal for his captor, he offered something much more useful a favor.

“You make that sound like it’s three wishes,” J. D. had replied, grinning.

“You a genie?”

“Next best thing.” Pickpocket had quickly whispered who he was and what he did.

“Let me go quietly, I’ll get you into any computer system in the country.”

At the time J. D. had no desire to become a data-bank robber, but, having founded his own fortune with stolen money, he had a personal aversion to dealing with the cops. He let Pickpocket go. Then, in character with his disguise, the little thief pressed his personal business card on J. D. “I owe you one,” he said, and disappeared into the crowd.

J. D. had forgotten about Pickpocket for three years. But he’d kept his card. And when the time came that he thought a brass-balled pocket-picking computer hacker might be just what he needed, the little thief had answered his call.

J. D. slid the kitchen door open and asked, “Any Inck?”

Pickpocket held up an index finger, telling J. D. to be patient a moment longer. The hacker’s hands flew over the keyboard, and he looked at the screen as if expecting to see the meaning of life revealed thereon. But what ever appeared, it was less than expected.

“Fuck,” Pickpocket muttered. Then he looked up at J. D. and said, “Not yet.”

The little thief stood up and stretched, various joints popping audibly.

“I’ve got to get out. Away from the keyboard and the screen. I need to look at the big picture for a while. The real world, not the virtual one. Maybe I’ll get some inspiration that way. You know anyplace within walking distance where I can get a bite to eat?”

Pickpocket was a native of northern California and not familiar with the local environs. J. D. told him there were several cafes on the Third Street Mall and gave him directions.

“I’ll be back in a couple hours,” Pickpocket said. With a mock salute, he was off.

J. D. noticed that the little thief had left his laptop on the table near the pool. It sat there waiting for J. D. to probe its contents. On the face of things, this would be a perfect time to snoop on Pickpocket.

When J. D. had called on the little thief to repay his debt, Pickpocket hadn’t asked why J. D. needed him. He didn’t pry, overtly, into J. D.‘s personal life. But J. D. knew that the little thief lived to learn people’s secrets.

And the machine that lay so conveniently close at hand might well tell him how far Pickpocket had penetrated the life and times of his mysterious employer

But J. D. was an experienced hunter. He recognized a snare when he saw one.

And having fallen into one trap already was more than enough for him.

A little over two months earlier, on a Tuesday, the first day of July, life as J. D. Cade had known it came to an abrupt end when he picked up his morning mail. Among the postal odds and ends, he found a manila envelope postmarked Lake Charles, Louisiana but when he opened it he was certain it had been forwarded from the dead-letter office in hell. Inside were three eight-by-ten black-and-white photos, the first of which showed Alvy McCray dead, broken, bloodied, and suspended upside down in the compressed cab of his pickup truck.

J. D. had opened the envelope as he stood in the doorway of his Santa Barara home. His first impulse upon seeing the image ofAlvy’s mortal remains was to snap his head up and look for the marksman lining him up in his sights. His second reaction had been to bolt inside his house and slam the door behind him. With his back against the wall, he looked at the other two photos and was not surprised by what he saw. He half expected a hail of gunfire to slam into his house.

Even when it didn’t happen, he was under no illusion that the threat was any less real. He knew there had to be somebody—some minders—watching him. Otherwise there was no point in mailing the photos to him. If he’d been off sailing to Tahiti, his mail—and those goddamn pictures—would just be gathering dust at the post office. Somebody had to be around to make sure he was picking up his mail.

J. D. could all but feel the life he’d built for himself slipping through his fingers. More than thirty-three years had passed since Alvy’s death. In that time J. D. had settled in California, married, co founded L-A-B Fashions with his wife, grown rich, become a father, and raised a son he loved more than life. He’d divorced amicably, sold his share of the business to his ex, and watched his boy go off to college in his old hometown.

But this… this was an assault on the very foundation of his being. And it was only just beginning.

The second envelope came a week later, postmarked Paris, Texas. It contained a clipping from his hometown paper, the Southern Illinoisan, about the accidental electrocution of one Ivar McCray. McCray reportedly had been building a pipe bomb when he died. He was described as a biker who allegedly was attempting to extort money from a local merchant named Barton Laney. With the clipping were two color photos. One showed McCray’s gruesomely twisted corpse—and next to it muddy footprints with clearly defined tread patterns. The other photo was a candid shot of his son, Evan, taken at a sidewalk cafe with one foot resting on the opposite knee. The tread pattern of his sneaker was identical to one of the footprints found next to Ivar McCray’s body.

J. D. had no trouble remembering that Evan’s girlfriend was named Pru Laney, and he had no doubt that the deceased McCray was a member of the clan his family had fought for so long.

The third envelope, postmarked Americus, Georgia, came the following week—and the contents made clear just what was expected of him. There was another photo. This time it was of presidential candidate Senator Franklin Delano Rawley. Along with the photo, J. D. had been sent a PCR-a personal communications resource.

The PCR had first appeared just after the turn of the century. A lineal descendant of the cell phone, it included functions for paging, e-mail, web browsing, and global positioning homing The last feature was what made the PCR all but ubiquitous by 2004. Global positioning homing allowed parents whose kids carried PCRs to know where their offspring were at all times. Jealous spouses were also among those most insistent that their loved ones carry a PCR.

J. D. realized that his PCR also had been provided for peace of mind:

Someone wanted to know where he was at all times. That, and keep in touch.

When he turned the unit on he found he had e-mail waiting. A message crawled across the PCR’s screen:

www.crossftdfrs.com 8:00-8:10 P.M. PDT 7/15/04 When he accessed the Web site on his laptop that night at eight o’clock, he found the schematic drawings for the McLellan M-100 sniper rifle. Put that together with the picture of the man who’d just locked up his party’s nomination to be president and it wasn’t too hard to figure out what somebody wanted from him. Put both those things together with the earlier mailings he’d received and there was only one choice for J. D. Cade.

He downloaded the plans for the rifle before they would disappear at

8:10.

J. D. Cade had been shooting rifles his entire life. Passing on a marksman’s eye and teaching him to shoot had been the only gifts his father had given him. J. D. had shot in the woods of southern Illinois as a boy; he’d shot in the army; and for the past twenty-five years he’d been a member of the Rancho Durango Gun Club, where he took target practice twice a week.

Six years earlier, in 1998, Jack Wesley, the manager of the club, had come up to him and asked if he’d like to enter a shooting contest back East. The entry fee was five hundred dollars, Wesley told J. D.” but all the money was going for a very worthy cause.

A little boy named George Thompson had been stricken with leukemia.

His only hope was a bone marrow transplant. The boy’s daddy was “Lethal” Leonard Thompson, the legendary army sniper. He’d fallen on hard times, so his friends had set up a charity shooting match to pay for his little boy’s medical expenses. Jack thought J. D. might like to take part.

J. D. begged off. But he said he’d like to make an anonymous contribution if Jack would forward it for him. J. D.‘s cashier’s check for twenty-five thousand dollars didn’t reveal his identity. Jack

Wesley, an old friend of the Thompson family, thanked him profusely. Then he told J. D. it was a shame he didn’t feel like competing, because he was one of the finest freehand shooters he’d ever seen.

Three months later J. D. got a phone call from Leonard Thompson.

The old sniper told him not to be mad at Jack Wesley; he’d made him reveal J. D.‘s identity. Thompson felt he had to share the news personally that the transplant had been a success and Georgie was going to make it.

Thompson also told J. D. that a friend of his named Walter Perry lived up the coast from J. D. in Santa Cruz. Perry was George’s godfather. He was also a master gunsmith, and he’d told Thompson to pass the word to J. D. Cade that if there was ever anything he could do for him in the way of gunsmithing, just give him a call. Thompson gave Perry’s phone number to J. D. All of that made J. D. feel very good, but word of Leonard Thompson’s gratitude soon filtered out. Thompson was a much-revered figure among long-range shooters, and if he’d seen fit to thank J. D. Cade personally, why, a host of others wanted to extend their appreciation, too. As late as last year, complete strangers had come up to J. D. at the firing range to shake his hand and tell him what a fine thing he’d done.

Oftentimes they would linger to watch him shoot.

After six years J. D. traveled to the Santa Cruz workshop of Walter Perry and called in the debt of gratitude. He laid the drawings for the M-100 on the artisan’s worktable and asked Perry if he could build the weapon for him.

The gunsmith knew of the M-100; knew that private ownership of it was illegal;

knew J. D. was asking him to commit a crime.

He also knew he’d given J. D. his word, and that his godson was alive and well thanks, in part, to this man. Walter Perry told J. D. where and when he’d be able to pick up his weapon. Not that Perry would be there to deliver it. Not that he would ever admit building it. J. D. said that was just the way he wanted it—and before he left the gunsmith he purchased another custom-made weapon, a single-shot .22 in the guise of a Mont Blanc pen.

The first thing J. D. had had Pickpocket do for him was simple enough. He had him clone the PCR he’d been sent. With the clone, however, J. D. could disable the homing function, and unlike the original, it was able not only to receive e-mail but to send it as well.

Pickpocket’s next task was more complex. J. D. supplied him with his personal Rolodex database and asked him to look for links between any name in it and the populations of Lake Charles, Louisiana; Paris, Texas; and Americus, Georgia.

“Also,” J. D. told Pickpocket, “hack into the system for the Rancho Durango Gun Club, retrieve the guest list for the past six years, and look for connections to me and/or our three southern towns. Then look for extremist groups that might be operating in or around the three towns.”

“Extremist groups?”

“Klan, Nazis, whatever.”

Pickpocket grinned. Whatever J. D. was up to, it was going to be interesting.

J. D.‘s pursuit of his blackmailers was rudely interrupted on the first day of August when he received an invitation-sized envelope postmarked Birmingham, Alabama. In it he found a piece of card stock. On the card was a line drawing done in the style of the children’s game hangman. A stick figure with a head, torso, and one leg was dangling from a noose. In the space below was printed E— — —.

Evan. His son was being threatened again, and J. D. was being told to get to work.