The Next President (25 page)

Our patience is wearing thin. Your performance is laggard. We’ve hired a second contractor. First one to complete the job wins. Runner-up suffers the consequences.

A second assassin, and J. D. had to beat him in the race to kill Del Rawley or Evan would be framed for murder.

He paused to consider if this was merely a ploy to turn up the pressure on him, force him to act regardless of whether he’d have to sacrifice himself to get his target. It could be a trick. Might even be a sign that the blackmailer was getting desperate.

He would have been inclined to think so … if Donnel hadn’t been around.

If he hadn’t read that story about a possible sniper in Denver.

For the first time, J. D. had to weigh a new possibility. Running. Hiding.

Disappearing. Not just him, but Evan, too. He hadn’t thought of it before because it meant Evan would have to live his life as a fugitive. But if a second assassin killed Del Rawley, and the only alternative was having Evan convicted for a murder he didn’t commit, then it had to be considered.

Considered strongly.

In the meantime, he had a dinner appointment with Del Rawley to keep.

J. D. Cade stepped off the elevator outside of Del Rawley’s suite. The Secret Service agent who rode up with him nodded to the two agents who met him as he exited the car. Another pair stood ready in front of the door to the suite.

He was certain that more agents were stationed in the stairwells and on the roof.

One of the agents at the door spoke into a microphone at his wrist as J. D. approached, and another man opened the door from the inside. Nobody said a word to J. D. for good or ill.

Then Jenny appeared with a smile on her face.

“J. D.” how nice to see you again.” She took his arm and led him into a lavish suite.

“Nice digs,” J. D. observed.

“It’s the royal suite,” Jenny said.

“Royal?”

“The hotel offered us the presidential suite—” “But I thought that

would be a mite presumptuous,” Del Rawley con eluded entering the room. He shook J. D.‘s hand and looked him in the eye.

“You know, never give the opposition a chance to say you’re getting ahead of yourself.”

J. D. broke contact with the senator’s eyes and looked around.

“But this is okay?”

Jenny told him, “This is the only other suite the Secret Service approved for security reasons. After the attempt on Del’s life, no one would dare begrudge him his security.”

Del gestured J. D. to a conversational grouping of easy chairs. Jenny asked what she could get them to drink. Del asked for a scotch, neat. J. D. requested mineral water.

As the two men sat down, Del inquired, “You’re not a drinking man, Mr.

Cade?”

“Gave it up almost twenty years ago.” J. D. shrugged.

Rawley nodded and looked J. D. over.

“Clean living certainly seems to agree with you, Mr. Cade. You look very fit for a man… well, you must be just about my age.”

Del and J. D. accepted their drinks from Jenny. She sat down with one of her own.

“I’m fifty-three,” J. D. said.

“Two years younger than me, then. You’re not actually a California native, are you?”

“No. I was born and raised in southern Illinois. Carbondale.”

“Carbondale. That’s Senator Paul Simon’s hometown, isn’t it?”

“Makanda. Just a few miles up the road.”

“That’s right, Makanda.” The candidate leaned forward.

“I know I’m being nosy, but I like to be familiar with the people who speak on my behalf.

You don’t mind, do you?”

J. D. shrugged once more.

“I’ll let you know if I do.”

J. D.‘s candor made Del Rawley grin. He looked at Jenny.

“We have a man who speaks his mind here. It’s clear he’s not sucking up for a job in Washington.”

“No, that’s not what I had in mind,” J. D. replied.

“Good. Then you just tell me when I’m getting too personal. I’m curious about your army service, Mr. Cade. How is it that you were drafted? Didn’t you have a student deferment?”

“I enlisted, Senator.”

Del Rawley searched J. D.‘s face.

“You believed in the war?”

J. D. shook his head.

“Then why join up?”

“The war was an opportunity for me.”

“In what way?”

“I wanted to show my father I was a better man than he was.” J. D. momentarily lapsed into a memory that was plainly still potent for him.

“My father was an infantry captain in World War Two. Saw a lot of fighting. Won a Silver Star in the Battle of the Bulge.”

“You thought you had to live up to his record?” Jenny asked.

J. D. shook his head once more.

“There was always an emotional barrier between my father and me. He never treated me badly; he just never let me get close. I was told that my father had been a very happy young man but the war had changed him. By the time the fighting in Vietnam started to get everyone’s attention, my dad was already opposed to the war. He was a professor at SILL then, and he said anybody who ever opened a history book about twentieth-century war in Asia knew Vietnam was a lost cause.”

“But you didn’t believe him?” Del asked.

“I’d never read any of those books, and it wouldn’t have mattered if I had.

The war was my chance to rebel against my father. It was my opportunity to show him I could face the same kinds of trials he had… and not let any of them keep me from loving the people in my life.”

“But the army, in its wisdom, gave you a clerical job,” Del said.

J. D. nodded.

“Were you ever able to reconcile with your father?” Jenny wanted to know.

“No. He committed suicide while I was in Hawaii on R and R.”

The door to the suite opened and, under Secret Service escort, a staff of waiters brought in dinner. Del Rawley stood up.

“Why don’t we eat now? I’ve done enough prying.”

Jenny and J. D. also stood. Jenny put a gentle hand on his shoulder.

J. D. remained silent, wondering if he should feel any shame at using the story of his father’s death to bring the inquisition to an end. He decided no shame was called for. It was about time his father was there when he needed him.

After dinner, Del suggested that Jenny find some quiet place to brief J. D. about the stops on the upcoming campaign swing and what he would be asked to say and do. Once they departed, the candidate poured himself another drink and returned to his preferred easy chair.

A moment later Special Agents Clarke and DeVito entered the room. At

their request, the candidate hadn’t told a soul that they were surreptitiously monitoring his dinner with J. D. Cade. Even Jenny Crenshaw hadn’t known.

Del gestured the men into the chairs opposite him.

“Well?” he asked.

Clarke glanced at DeVito and then responded to the candidate.

“I didn’t hear a single word I thought was a lie.”

“Special Agent DeVito

“I didn’t either,” he admitted grudgingly.

“In fact, everything he said agrees with what I’ve found out about him. His father taught history at Southern Illinois University. Jefferson Davis Cade enlisted in the army straight out of high school. His father committed suicide while he was in Hawaii on leave. He didn’t tell you, but he was there with his girlfriend of the time, one Mary Ellen McCarthy.”

Del Rawley smiled pensively.

“That mean something to you, Senator?” DeVito asked.

“Jenny told me that Mr. Cade said he’d let the girl he should have married get away. Probably this McCarthy girl he was with when he got the news about his father.”

DeVito nodded, agreeing with Orpheus’ speculation.

The candidate told him, “I assume you’ve been meticulous in your investigation of Mr. Cade—all without result.”

“Yes, sir. But with all due respect, there are things you just can’t know by looking at the documentary evidence. For instance, I had no idea that Mr.

Cade’s relationship with his father had been so strained. And, frankly, that was the one thing I heard that bothered me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if his father was a combat hero—and that will be easy enough to find out—why would Mr. Cade enlist in the army and then not demand to be in the infantry?”

Del Rawley chuckled.

“You never served in the military, did you, Special Agent?”

DeVito stiffened.

“No, sir. The war was over by the time I was eighteen.

The draft had been abolished. I went to college and then into the Secret Service.”

“I’m not questioning your courage, DeVito only your knowledge of military life. Privates don’t make demands of anyone. They are the lowest form of life in the world. If the army put you in a job back then, you did it and kept your mouth shut.”

DeVito remained polite but refused to yield on his point.

“Yes, but couldn’t he have volunteered for combat if that’s what he

really wanted? He was over there when the war was just about at its peak. If he wanted to prove something to his father, wouldn’t he have been able to find some outfit that needed another soldier with a rifle?”

Del considered the question.

“Yes, undoubtedly he could have. But as you implied, there…” Rawley sighed as a host of memories returned to him.

“There were a lot of grunts dying back then. The way things were, most 11-Bravos—infantrymen—would have thought they’d gone to heaven if they got a job in the rear; guys who were already in the rear weren’t looking to head in the other direction. It’s not hard for me to imagine that, despite his relationship with his father, young J. D. Cade landed in-country, took one look around, and decided he liked being a clerk just fine. Not many would have blamed him for making that choice, either. I certainly wouldn’t.”

“So where does all this leave us, Senator?” Clarke asked.

“I think we’ll just accept Mr. Cade for who he is.”

“But—” DeVito began.

Del Rawley held up his hand, cutting him off.

“There is one thing I’ve been meaning to ask you gentlemen, though I know it’s highly unusual. Most likely unprecedented. But I was wondering-and I’d like to keep this strictly between us—could you provide a discreet but effective handgun that I might carry?”

“You want to be armed, Senator?” Clarke asked, surprised.

“No reflection on you gentlemen. Just think of it as a last line of defense.”

The two agents looked at each other. Clarke was transparently dubious, but DeVito responded, “If I still get a vote around here, I say yes.”

Jenny had invited J. D. to her suite for their planning discussion.

“You’re sure this will look okay?” J. D. asked.

“Remember what I said at lunch? We’re both single, we’re both over twenty-one, we’re—” “How much over twenty-one are you?” J. D. asked.

The question just popped out. It surprised him that he’d made such a personal inquiry. He warned himself to be careful—something he seemed to have to do repeatedly around Jenny Crenshaw. He resented the fact that he couldn’t be himself around her.

But then, if she knew who he really was, she’d run screaming for the Secret Service.

“I’m forty-four,” she said. Her tone was neutral but she was watching carefully for his reaction.

“Don’t look it,” J. D. responded.

“Yeah, not a day over forty-three, right?” But she smiled when she said it.

“Now, before you turn my girlish head, let’s get to work, shall we?”

“Sure.”

Jenny’s digs were far more modest than Del’s. There was a work area with a six-person conference table. Beyond that was a living room and a balcony.

The door to the adjacent bedroom was ajar.

J. D. headed for the conference table, but Jenny said, “Let’s be comfortable, okay? These long days are starting to do me in.”

She plopped down on a sofa and kicked off her shoes. She opened a three ring binder on her lap and patted the cushion next to her. J. D. took his place but was careful to leave room between her leg and his. Jenny bridged the gap with the open binder.

She outlined the itinerary for the next week: Fresno, Stockton, Eureka, San Jose, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Carmel, Newport Beach, San Diego, Palm Springs, and back to L.A.

J. D. said, “I’m new to all this, but that schedule looks pretty damn ambitious to me.”

“It has to be,” Jenny told him.

“If we can hold our momentum in California, that’ll take us to the first debate, in two weeks—and Del is just going to destroy the president once they’re on the same stage together. So the coming days could well be what determines who wins in November.”

J. D. nodded, lost in a moment’s reverie.

“What are you thinking?” Jenny asked.

“I was just wondering about the cost of ambition. Doesn’t the senator miss his family?”

“Of course he does. But after Chicago, he just won’t risk their safety.”

“Still, he must get lonely.”

“Yeah, I imagine.”

“Well, at least he still has you.”

“Twenty-four hours a day,” Jenny agreed.

“Would you happen to have layouts of the places where I’ll be speaking?”

J. D. asked.

“I like to know my environment before I go to work.”

“Absolutely.”

Jenny flipped to the back of the binder; she had floor plans and photos of the rooms.

J. D. moved in closer for a better look. His leg now touched hers and his arm rested on the back of the sofa just above her shoulders.

It wasn’t long before the campaign’s business was out of the way and J. D. Cade and Jenny Crenshaw had their hands full of each other. J. D.

kissed Jenny. She unbuttoned J. D.‘s shirt, her blouse already off. J. D. moved his head back as Jenny slid his shirt off his shoulders. She gave him a frank and admiring stare.

J. D. told her, “Now I know why people get into politics.”

“Only in this party,” she told him.

“The other party cares about nothing but money.”

“Some people find that pretty sexy, too.”

Jenny removed her bra.

“But what do they know?” J. D. asked.

He took Jenny in his arms and carried her to the bed.

“Is this all right?”

he asked, putting her down.