the Plan (1995) (26 page)

While Thirteen Weeks was being cross-typed for a blood transfusion and pumped full of plasma, Ryan was shivering in the back of Cole Harris's speeding van.

Lucinda had Kaz on the cell phone and told him what had happened.

"Don't take him back to the Blue Rainbow Hotel," Kaz said. "Find a place, but not on a busy street. Get a room in the back and call me with the address."

They picked a downscale motel off the main drag in Rye.

Kaz arrived with Dr. Jazz at nine-thirty. Lucinda couldn't believe they had been waiting two hours for the gold-toothed man, who came jiving and bopping through the door, carrying a medical bag. His bald head was shining, his Adam's apple tromboning up and down in his stringbean neck whenever he spoke.

Kaz tried to get Lucinda to go to the restaurant across the street with Cole Harris, but she refused. She spun o
n h
im.

"I've had it with your orders and your attitude," sh
e s
aid, venting all her frustration, fear, and worry about Ryan, in a counterattack on the rumpled ex-fed.

"Hold it, lady." He tried to slow her down.

"No, you hold it. I'm not leaving and I'm not taking any more of your shit!"

Kaz knew she meant business. He finally smiled and put out his hand. "Nice to finally meet ya, Miss Alo," he said, laconically. She shook his hand, but didn't smile back.

Dr. Jazz was examining Ryan's leg. "He very sick. He pulled out de stitches, he ripped de veins. He in mighty bad shape," the doctor said, shaking his head, too concerned about Ryan to rhyme. He opened his medical bag, filled a syringe, and injected Ryan with antibiotics for infection. Then he gave him an Adrenalin shot to keep his heartbeat up. He took a blood sample in a syringe, twisted the needle valve shut, and put it in his medical bag. He cleaned the wound and resewed it, then bandaged it carefully. The entire procedure took him almost two hours. Dr. Jazz left the motel at some time past midnight.

Ryan slept fitfully while Lucinda held his hand.

He finally drifted slowly down into a deep sleep, where he dreamed of Lucinda, backlit and gorgeous. They were standing on opposite sides of a raging river, yelling to each other. "Don't come across," he screamed in the dream, but she didn't hear him and started to ford the treacherous water. Falling, she was swept away, arms flailing in the bubbling turbulence. He saw Kaz for a moment, drowning in the current, hideous in his green and yellow Hawaiian shirt, going down the stream with her, tumbling, rolling, his face appearing for a moment, the cigar soggy, still clamped in smiling teeth. And then he was on a deserted beach at sunset. He started walking, not knowing where he was going, until he saw Matt and Terry. They were sitting together on the beach, looking out to sea. Ryan came up and stood behind them.

"Can you forgive me?" he said to the two dead boys. They turned and looked at him. "It was never you
r f
ault," they said in unison. And for the first time, still deep in the delirious dream, he believed it.

While Ryan was dreaming and Lucinda was praying, Thirteen Weeks was dying.

Charles Romano was his employer of record and the hospital insurance administrator called him for verification of employment. Charlie Six Fingers called Mickey and told him that Thirteen Weeks was in the Rye hospital, that somebody had cut off his right hand. Mickey and Pula-cargo Depaulo drove up to Rye and arrived at eleven o'clock. They found the back service stairs at the hospital and climbed to the second floor where Charlie Six Fingers had said Johnny Furie was recuperating. Mickey was resolute. A guy didn't get multiple chances to screw up. He wanted the word to go out. . . . You better not fuck up if you were working for Mickey Alo. Some time shortly after midnight, as the medical shift was changing, Mickey slipped into Thirteen Weeks's room and looked down at the huge accounts receivable specialist. Johnny's right hand was now a heavily bandaged stump.

"Hey, paisan," Mickey said, touching him on the side of the neck. When he didn't wake up, Mickey grabbed the bandaged stump and squeezed hard. Thirteen Weeks moaned and opened his eyes.

"Talk to me," Mickey said to the hitter.

"Cut off my hand," he stated the obvious.

"Where is Bolt?"

"Don't know. He cut off my hand," he said again. "This fucking guy can't be working alone," Mickey said softly.

"I saw him coming into the house, through the front window, with the girl in the picture."

"What picture? Whatta you talkin' about?"

"The painting in your house."

Mickey's disgust at Lucinda turned his insides cold an
d h
is face empty.

Thirteen Weeks saw the expression and knew he wa
s l
ooking into the eyes of the devil. It was the last thing he saw.

Mickey ripped the pillow out from under Johnny's head, put it firmly over his face, and held it. Thirteen Weeks struggled to get the suffocating softness off his nose and mouth. His stumpy wrist pawed helplessly, trying to grab the pillow with remembered fingers. In a few brief moments, he stopped fighting. Like a light going out, he plunged into blackness.

Chapter
37.

AFTER DR. JAZZ LEFT, COLE HARRIS WENT ACROSS THE street and got a cup of coffee at a truck stop. Cole had had a few words with the rumpled, cigar-chewing man whom Ryan called Kaz. His journalistic instincts told him he was onto a big story.

For most of his life, chasing stories had been Cole's only passion. He valued it over everything else in his fifty-six compulsive nit-picking years. At his core he was an investigative reporter, an IR.

He had started doing journalism as a corporal in Vietnam, filing personal action stories with Stars and Stripes. Cole had eventually taken small-arms fire in his foot when an airfield in the Delta had been overrun by VC in '63, and he'd come Stateside and mustered out.

Shortly after, he had found a job on his hometown rag, The Detroit Free Press, where he worked the crime beat.

Because of his dogged pursuit of minutiae, Harris had been extremely successful. In the early 1970s, he'd been hired by UBC to try broadcast journalism. He covered everything from the Cold War to Meyer Lansky's failed attempt to get into Israel.

His career had flourished until he'd tried to do a crim
e s
eries on the mob's secret ownership of Atlantic City's gambling casinos. Cole had found enough hard evidence to call several casino gaming licenses into question. The news desk at UBC had killed the series for unexplained reasons. Cole had refused to drop it, despite a direct order to do so by the senior vice president of news, Steve Israel. Two weeks later, he'd been called into Israel's office.

"Your work is not up to the caliber this news division demands," the bald, young VP of the nightly news had said.

"You kidding me? I got two Pulitzers. . . ."

"Sorry. We had a discussion in the morning meeting yesterday and the executive producers agree."

"This isn't about my professionalism; this is about the fact that I don't want to drop the Atlantic City story," he'd said, his natural newsman's paranoia going ballistic.

"Just clear out your desk. Give your press pass and badge to Security."

Cole had left Israel's office and had gone to his office on the edge of the Rim and sat there, thinking about it. He suddenly felt so completely frustrated and outraged that he exploded up to his feet and charged back across the Rim to the conference room where the "morning meetings" were held each day at ten A . M
.

The huge conference room, as usual, was jammed. Seated around the large table were the vice presidents of news practice, news coverage, as well as the VPs of business affairs and finance.

Steve Israel, senior VP of news, ran the meeting. Also attending were the senior broadcast segment producers, the director of the political unit, the anchors for the two news mags, as well as Brenton Spencer of the nightly news, the political analysts, and all senior political correspondents.

Cole burst into the room. "You guys oughta be ashamed of yourselves," he said to the startled "big feet."

"Cole, this isn't the time" Steve Israel snapped.

"The Alo family has a silent ownership in two Atlantic City casinos. I've got good proof . . . witnesses who'v
e s
een meetings between Mickey and his father Joseph and members of the Murphy Hotel syndicate. I've gone back and looked at tax records of the Murphy family. These guys owned furniture stores in the eighties. How the hell did they get the money to do a leveraged buyout on two hotels and a casino carpet joint?"

"The decision has been made."

He'd been escorted by Security to his office, where his badges and network press pass were removed from his desk before he could even hand them over. A news staffer was sent to get a box and Cole loaded his stuff inside.

"You guys are working for a bunch of assholes," he'd said as he loaded his desk into the cardboard box. "A free press is the cornerstone of democracy," he lectured the uninterested security men, who were watching him closely, making sure he didn't remove any company property. "If this news division won't run valid stories, exposing power brokers and criminal conspiracies, then it's lower than whale shit," he'd said, half shouting, as he slammed notebooks and leather folders into the box. The last things to go in were his two Pulitzer citations and a pen and pencil set given to him last Christmas by C. Wallace Litman , engraved TO COLE HARRIS, THE BEST OF THE BEST. C. WALLACE LITMAN. He grabbed the box and, with one security guard holding each arm, they escorted him out of the building.

He'd tried to get employment at other networks, but Steve Israel had scorched the ground around him. Nobody would touch him.

Cole had run out of money and for two months had been living in the back of his van in the driveway of Carson's house, eating his meals with his brother and sister-in-law in the cramped dining room, wondering whether he should end it all. He had bought a gun and twice found himself holding the weapon in a shaking hand, wondering if he could put it in his mouth and pull the trigger. But something had stopped him. As he sat in the diner, the reason reached up and grabbed him. . . . If he killed himself, the y w ould have won. They would have beaten him. His compulsion to win had somehow saved him.

Cole's ex-wife had told him when she was divorcing him that his strongest link was attached to his weakest and that was why she couldn't stand to live with him. It was the one thing she'd said among all the hurled insults and invectives that had made any sense. Cole was humorless and he was driven. His strong link was his compulsion to be right. That compulsion had made him a tireless researcher and had won him two Pulitzers. His weak link, he had come to find out, was that same compulsion. He drove people crazy. Systematically, he had driven away all the soft, nourishing contacts in his life and was left with the bony remnants.

Then he felt a presence standing over him and looked up to see Solomon Kazorowski, with an unlit, soggy cigar in his mouth, glowering down at him.

"I think maybe we need to share some info." Kaz sat down heavily and looked at the newsman, who was dressed in neatly pleated pants with a blue shirt, tie, matching suspenders, and tweed coat. Despite this perfect ensemble, Cole had only a few dollars left in his pocket. His newsman's instinct took over.

"Let me buy you a cup," he said, pulling out two bills, wondering if he could pump this sorry piece of ex-government beef for some information, without giving up any of his own. Kaz had exactly the same agenda.

They played mind poker for two hours, giving little bits of information to get back little bits, trading shreds like beggars. Each wondered how he could use the other to his own advantage. Gradually and begrudgingly, they gained respect for one another.

Chapter
38.

THAT SAME DAY, A HUNDRED MILES NORTH, NEW HAMPshire voters were going to the polls. A
. J
. knew that Haze was going to win big. The question was, How big? Since the defining event in New York, Haze was the frontrunner, tracking in the high 50 percentiles. The message had scored. The question wasn't, Would he win New Hampshire?--but, Would he win it bigger than any candidate in modern history?

Even better news was that the Super Tuesday states were all polling their way. A
. J
. had been told that Senator Skatina was going to drop out if he did less than 20 percent in New Hampshire, and A.]. was pretty sure that was going to happen. Skatina had "managed the damage" stemming from the mob allegations as best he could, but they'd slowed him down and hurt him. The other candidates were DOA in New Hampshire and would probably pull out, too. It was pretty damn hard to get political funding if you're losing elections and trailing in the polls. A candidate needed over 20 percent to qualify for government matching funds.

The way A
. J
. had it figured, a week from today, after Super Tuesday, Haze should be running unopposed, excep
t f
or a few favorite-son candidates. He'd be virtually assured of the Democratic nomination.

A
. J
. had called a strategy meeting in his Manchester hotel room with Malcolm, Vidal Brown, Carol Wakano, and Ven and Van. He'd left Haze off the list because more and more he'd been fighting with Haze for center stage in strategy sessions. He felt it would also be a good idea for Haze to get Anita back from Providence. A few articles had already appeared speculating about the candidate's missing wife. A . J
. knew they were barely speaking, but he was urging Haze to make an effort to patch things up before Super Tuesday. He desperately needed some photo ops with Anita.