The Next President (44 page)

DeVito knew he couldn’t strong-arm Jenny to find out—but there was nothing that said he couldn’t drop a bomb on her.

“Are we done, Special Agent DeVito Jenny’s tone clearly implied that they were.

“Sure. Just one thing. If you happen to see Mr. Cade, tell him from me:

That guy he warned me about, my considered opinion is that guy’s coming after him.”

“Coming after?”

“Yeah. I think that guy wants to kill your friend, Mr. Cade.”

There—DeVito saw it. The alarm in her eyes. She still had it for Cade, even if there was some new kink in their relationship he didn’t know about.

Just as Jenny was about to question him, DeVito got up, threw her a mock salute, and left.

Let Miss Bossy run after him if she wanted the details.

Let her come clean first, tell him how come Cade had been sent down to the minors.

Still shaken by what she’d heard from DeVito Jenny returned to the phone call she’d been about to make. She tapped out the numbers to reach Don

Ward. As before, she wondered if her old friend and mentor would be alive to receive the call. She heard the phone ring once on the far side of the country and then a set of relays clicked in her ear. She knew that meant her call was being forwarded to another number. A moment later the phone was picked up.

“Don?” Jenny asked.

“I was hoping it would be you, my dear,” Hunter Ward told her.

His voice sounded so ghostly that she wondered half seriously if the phone company had call forwarding to the Great Beyond.

“Are you busy preparing for your man’s big night?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jenny replied. Then she added, feeling great guilt, “That’s why I called. I wanted to ask if there would be any last-second dirty tricks—or threats—that I should worry about.”

There was a moment’s silence. Then Hunter Ward told her in the barest whisper, “There will be no more tricks, no more threats. I’ve found him, Jenny dear. I’ve caught up with the man who wants your candidate dead.”

Jenny was stunned—and then elated.

“That’s wonderful, Don! Tell me who he is and I’ll have the Secret Service take him into custody immediately.”

“No, no. This is something I must do myself.”

“Don, how can you say that?” she asked, panic filling her voice.

“You’re… dying.”

“All to my advantage.”

“Don, please. Let’s do this right. Let me help you.”

“I’ve always loved you. Jenny.”

Those last words were spoken so softly she wasn’t sure she hadn’t imagined them, but she knew for certain that her phone connection with Don Ward had been broken.

After he’d made his call to the Gardener, the next thing the Toad did was to allow Blair, Deena, and, when he came around, Evan to use the toilet—leaving the door to the tiny water closet open, of course. Deena uttered not a word of protest but turned her back in the Toad’s direction and, after dropping her jeans, broke wind in his direction.

The Toad refused to take umbrage. Having done what he thought was necessary to make sure his captives would be reasonably comfortable, and therefore more likely to be docile, he had them reseat themselves on the sofa with Evan, Deena, and Blair positioned left to right. Then the Toad tossed a coil of clothesline and a pair of scissors that he’d found to Deena.

“Cut six four-foot lengths of line,” he instructed her.

“If you try anything stupid, I’ll shoot all three of you.”

With a scowl on her face, Deena did as she was told. The Toad told her to put the scissors and the remaining rope on the floor and kick them over to him. He then had Blair use one length of clothesline to bind Deena’s ankles together. After that, he had Deena tie Evan’s and Blair’s hands behind their backs making sure the bindings were tight and then tie their ankles together Finally, he had Deena lie facedown on the floor. With his knee on her spine and a promise to break her back if anybody tried anything, he put his gun down and bound Deena’s hands behind her back, too. With that accomplished the Toad hefted 170-pound Deena as if she was a toddler and deposited her between the two men.

The four of them had occupied the trailer for only thirty minutes, but already the air was rank with body odor, the space compressed by the certainty that death would soon be joining them. The Toad helped himself to a soft drink from Deena’s fridge and surveyed his prisoners once more.

“What’s your name?” he asked Deena.

“Fuck you, Froggy.”

“Her name’s Deena Nokes,” Blair said.

“Don’t be telling him nothin’ about me,” Deena ordered Blair.

She gave him an angry bump with her shoulder for emphasis. Then she looked back at the Toad. His can of soda sat on the breakfast bar, and he had his gun comfortably cradled in both hands on his lap. Seeing this, Deena smiled.

“Bet you like to play with yourself a lot, don’t you, Froggy? That, or your women have to blindfold themselves so they can cop your joint without looking at you.”

The Toad compressed his lips.

“Bet you can snatch a housefly right outta the air with your tongue, can’t you, Froggy?”

A tic appeared at the corner of the Toad’s left eye.

Blair watched their captor carefully, taking great pains to remain still. He didn’t even want to let the guy see his muscles bunch up something that could be entirely obvious in someone with his development.

Before they’d surrendered, he and Deena agreed to play a variation of good cop-bad cop. Along with throwing away Deena’s Smith & Wesson, it was part of their plan. They wanted this plug-ugly SOB to think they were unarmed, and he hadn’t bothered to search the trailer. But, in fact, Blair’s Browning semiauto was under the seat cushion on which he sat.

It had been Deena’s idea for her to play the bad cop. She’d said she

didn’t give a shit it the bastard killed her as long as Blair got him. So she was doing her best to get their captor to focus on her while Blair watched for his chance, trying to seem like he didn’t have a hostile thought in his head. Mr.

Cooperative.

But the Toad refused to play along for the moment.

“Why’d you kill Earrel?” he asked.

“Who?” Deena wanted to know.

“The man in the bar. I saw you shoot him.”

“He was with you?” Deena asked.

“You steal his body from the morgue?” Blair put in.

“Yes to each of you.”

“Well, hell, if I’d’a known he was with you, that’d be enough right there,” Deena replied.

“But you didn’t know.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that. If I’d known, I’d’a shot you, too.”

“Answer the question.”

“I shot him because he killed my Ivar. I shot him because I saw him kill an innocent girl and her daddy.”

Interesting, the Toad thought. He’d noticed a flash of anger in Evan Cade’s eyes for the first time. He thought perhaps it was time to introduce a new line of tension to the dialogue, have his captives focus their hostilities on each other and not him.

“That young woman … let me see if I can recall her name.” Having been in on the Gardener’s planning from the start, the Toad had no difficulty in doing this.

“Prudence Laney, I believe. A friend of our young Mr. Cade here.”

Blair and Deena glanced at Evan, who looked angry and not overly concerned that he was tied up and the Toad was holding a grin on him. Blair gave Evan a small shake of his head in warning. He and Deena hadn’t risked their lives to save Evan only to have him go kamikaze on them now. The Toad noticed Blair’s concern and was amused.

“Blair McCray,” he said, and the Kentucky lawman turned to face him.

“That would make your father… Alvy McCray.”

“That’s right.”

The Toad smiled, looking more reptilian than ever.

“Did you know, Mr. McCray, that Evan Cade’s father killed your father?”

Then Harold the Toad told them all just how J. D. Cade had done it.

“I want to meet the man who saved my father’s life,” Eleanor Rawley Walker said.

Del’s family had arrived and was with him and Jenny in the candidate’s suite.

“Yes, where is Mr. Cade?” Del asked.

“I haven’t seen him all morning.”

“I’m sure we’ll see him before the debate tonight, won’t we?” Devree asked.

Jenny shook her head.

“Well, no, actually. Mr. Cade is going to be speaking tonight as a surrogate for the senator. He’ll be at a gathering of important movie people.”

That came as news to Del and he said so.

“It was something I thought of just this morning,” Jenny explained.

“I’m trying to keep a lot of people happy. I thought if Mr. Cade and Vandy Ellison were over at the Westside Studio—” “I don’t want to mess up anybody’s plans,” Eleanor said quietly.

“I’d just like to meet the man. Give him a hug and tell him I’ll always be grateful. Introduce my son to the man who saved his grandfather. It really doesn’t have to take more than five minutes.”

The other Rawleys all agreed, including the one who mattered most.

Jenny suggested, “Let me go talk to Vandy Ellison. Maybe she’ll know if Mr. Cade is free to visit with you this afternoon.”

“Thank you,” Eleanor Rawley said.

After Jenny left, Devree took her husband aside.

“You know, with you standing on an outdoor stage, even with all your Secret Service people around, I wouldn’t mind having that man, Mr. Cade, right there in the front row with us. He saved you once. Who can say it wouldn’t be a good idea to have him nearby again?”

Del was not about to tell Devree that he’d learned from Special Agent DeVito that J. D. Cade was a marksman with a rifle. He wasn’t going to get into any of the unsettling facts about the head of his protection detail, about Garvin Townes, or about his suspicion that the president himself might be in on a plot to assassinate him. Nor did he intend to share with his wife the fact that, except for the moment, he carried a gun these days.

So he responded with a politician’s answer.

“Let me talk to some people, Devree. Then I’ll let you know.”

In a bar filled with fair hair, freckles, and faces as Irish as shamrocks, J. D. took the Asian-American gent coming out of the men’s room to be Tom Hayashi. The reporter had told J. D. to meet him at Molly Malone’s, a bar on Fairfax just off Sixth. He’d said J. D. should have a pint if he was a few minutes late. When J. D. had arrived and hadn’t seen his man, he’d ordered

a ginger ale. The bartender had looked affronted but served him nonetheless. Then he’d told J. D. his money was no good in the bar, but neither was the bleedin’ swill in his glass.

Hayashi motioned J. D. over to a corner table.

“Favorite watering hole of yours?” J. D. asked, sitting down.

“Love my Guinness,” the reporter replied as a waitress placed a pint of stout in front of him and departed. Hayashi raised his glass, “Health—and the devil take our enemies.”

J. D. raised his glass.

“I’ll drink to that.”

The two men put their glasses down and looked at each other frankly.

“You’re the man who saved Senator Rawley, all right,” the reporter said.

J. D. nodded and responded, “Try as I might, Mr. Hayashi, I don’t see the Irish in you.”

The reporter laughed.

“My stepfather’s name is Desmond Walsh. He’s a wonderful old guy who stepped in and saved the day for my mother, my sister, and me when my dad died. He gave me three loves: the use of language, the folly of men’s ambitions, and stout.”

“Sounds like a fine man.”

“Made me who I am today,” Hayashi said. Then he got down to business.

“Who do you want me to find for you, Mr. Cade?”

“Can we keep my identity private in this matter?”

Hayashi chewed his lower lip for a moment and looked at J. D. “I think it might be interesting to know you, Mr. Cade. So yeah, this one’s on me.”

“The man I want to find is Garvin Townes.” J. D. spelled out the name.

“You think he’s traveling with the president?”

“He may be.”

“Is it okay to ask what Mr. Townes does?”

J. D. thought about that and an idea occurred to him.

“Right now he’s got a spot with the Treasury Department. Heads a unit called Departmental Internal Management and Oversight.”

“D-I-M-O?” Hayashi asked.

“D-E-I-M-O-S. Are you going to the debate at the Bowl tonight?”

“Sure.”

“You know if they’re going to take questions from the media?”

“A formal Q-and-A hasn’t been decided yet. But that doesn’t mean someone with a strong set of lungs can’t shout out anything that comes to mind.

What might come to mind, Mr. Cade?”

“Ask the president what job he has in mind for Garvin Townes if he’s reelected.”

“That’s where the story is? The job this guy’s getting?”

“Story might be in how the president reacts to your question.”

The reporter looked at J. D.” rubbed his chin, and then smiled again.

“I like you, Mr. Cade. I get the feeling you’re hanging your ass out here, but I don’t know just how. It’s going to be fun finding out, though.”

“I’m glad I could brighten your day. You might enjoy thinking about this, too. If you can’t find Townes’ name on any official roster of the president’s entourage, run a count of the rooms the president’s part has booked. See if there’s one more than they should need. Look for something like that or any similar discrepancy.”

“This Townes guy likes to stay in the shadows.”

“It’s pretty much his life… when he isn’t writing his memoirs.”

The reporter’s eyes opened wide. He knew what he’d just heard. J. D. Cade either had in his possession or had read the bio of some spook who might be getting a big job from the president if he got reelected. But Hayashi also knew better than to expect J. D. to come across with something like that right away. He had to prove himself first.

“Did you know you were followed here, Mr. Cade?”

J. D. shook his head but kept his face impassive.

“A friend of mine told me while I was in the men’s room.”

“You had me watched as I arrived?”

The reporter shrugged.

“I’ve made a number of people mad at me over the years. My Irish friends are well versed in the subject of getting even; they like me to take certain precautions before meeting someone who calls out of the blue. They look out for me.”