The Echo of the Whip (14 page)

When Sweetie returned home from dropping Maxi off at school, she found a black limo parked at the curb out front. Looked like it could be either Thing One or Thing Two, the presidential Cadillacs. But the faces of the Secret Service agents standing athwart the steps leading up to her front door were unfamiliar. She knew most of Patti’s protection detail.

These people belonged to someone else.

And she was unknown to them.

“Please keep moving, ma’am,” the guy with the most gray in his hair said.

Sweetie replied, “I would only you’re blocking my front door.”

“Your name, please?” the guy asked, his tone softening slightly.

Sweetie gave him her full legal name: “Margaret Mary Sweeney Shady.”

He tapped it into his smart phone. Sweetie’s image came up, above a list of information, including, it seemed, where she might have been just now.

“You took your daughter to school, ma’am?”

“I did, and then I dropped in on an old friend, the president of the United States.”

She smiled to let the guy know she was kidding, but also to remind him she worked with Jim McGill and was, in fact, a friend of the president.

“Of course, ma’am.”

“Who’s inside my house that dragged all you people along for the ride?”

“The vice president called to ask if she might have a moment with Mr. Shady. Must’ve have happened after you left home. They shouldn’t be long.”

“They can take their sweet time, and it’ll be fine by me. I’m going inside. It’s my house.”

The senior special agent made the wise choice. “Of course, I’ll see you inside and advise the vice president that you’ve returned home.”

Sweetie could live with that. She gestured to the guy to lead on. Another agent, without needing to be told, trailed after Sweetie. She didn’t complain.

A moment later, she even smiled when she heard her husband, Putnam, call out, “We’re in the kitchen, Margaret. Come on in and join the party.”

Putnam and Jean Morrissey appeared to be having tea at the kitchen table. Green tea and honey, using the good china, with a plate of Mint Milanos as a grace note. Jean Morrissey got to her feet as Sweetie entered the room. Putnam stood, too, and gave his wife a wink.

The vice president extended a hand and said, “Ms. Shady, a pleasure to meet you.”

Jean gave a nod to the agent who’d walked Sweetie in and he left, taking his subordinate with him.

“Good to meet you, too, Ms. Vice President.”

The two women, both tall, blonde and strong, took each other’s measure. Sweetie was maybe five years older. The resemblance was not quite strong enough for sisters, but cousins to one degree or another might have been a possibility.

“Cup of tea, my dear?” Putnam asked his wife.

“Thanks, but I don’t want to intrude. I’ll just get back to my knitting.”

Jean Morrissey laughed. “Please stay. I’d like my conversation with your husband to remain confidential for now, but I’m sure you know how to keep a secret or two, working with Jim McGill and being a friend of the president.”

Sweetie nodded. “I value my privacy, and I respect other people’s privacy.”

Putnam pulled out a chair at the table and filled a cup for his wife. Once everyone was seated and Sweetie was served, Putnam looked at Jean Morrissey. “May I, Ms. Vice President.”

“Please speak freely,” Jean said.

Putnam looked at Sweetie and said, “The vice president came to ask my opinion of whether Cool Blue would support her running for president on our party’s ticket in 2016. I told her we weren’t considering a presidential campaign so soon, but it is a wonderfully intriguing idea.”

“It’s more than that,” Sweetie said. “It’s an opportunity that’s too good to miss.” Turning to Jean, she said, “I’d already decided you’d be my first choice even before you made your announcement.”

The vice president beamed. “That’s great to hear, but you don’t know what my plans are.”

“Me neither,” Putnam said.

Before Jean could say anything, Sweetie looked at her and said, “You’re going to kick some serious backside once you’re in office, aren’t you?”

Jean laughed and asked Sweetie, “Did you ever play hockey? No, it doesn’t matter. I’m sure the two of us are kindred spirits.”

“Maybe in more ways than anyone knows,” Sweetie said.

Putnam asked, “What do you mean, Sweetie?”

She took a deep breath, looked at Jean and then at Putnam, “I mean, after much thought and counseling, I’ve decided to stop being any kind of a cop. Maybe it wasn’t my fault that Erna Godfrey is dead, but it was my idea that led to her death. I still want to be of service, though, so I’ve decided to —”

“Run for some sort of office,” Jean said with a tone of certainty. “You intend to go into politics.”

Sweetie looked at the vice president and they both felt an intuitive connection.

“Only in a very small way,” Sweetie said, “but since I live in Washington now and this is where Putnam and I will be raising our daughter, I thought maybe I could run for a city council seat.” She turned to look at her husband.

Putnam Shady thought he had heard it all in Washington.

Nothing could surprise him — until just now.

He told Sweetie, “Maybe we should talk about this later.”

“Sure,” Sweetie said.

“Or I could get out of your way right now,” Jean suggested, getting to her feet.

Putnam stood and extended a hand. Jean shook it.

“Ms. Vice President, it’s been a pleasure meeting you. Cool Blue intended to wait and see how well we fared in the near term before putting up a presidential candidate, but I like the idea of your joining the party at the top of the ticket. I’ll speak with Darren Drucker about it, if you’d like me to do that.”

“I would,” Jean said. “But let’s keep this from going public for the time being.”

“Right. Before you go, I’d like to get your take on another interesting idea that came my way quite recently. How would you feel about Cool Blue recruiting Native American candidates to run for Congress?”

The vice president nodded. “Seems like a natural to me. Only I’ve heard from some indigenous people that they preferred to be identified by the names of their tribes or bands.”

“Learn a new thing every day,” Putnam said.

Confirming his point, he turned to look at Sweetie.

Carina Linberg had just finished a day’s writing when her phone rang. Had that happened even a minute earlier, she would have let the call go to voice-mail. In fact, she was a bit surprised she hadn’t muted the ring tone. She didn’t like to be disturbed when she was working.

As it was, she picked up the instrument and said, “You have good timing.”

It wouldn’t be just anyone, however. The software for the system rang through only pre-approved numbers. The caller had to be one of a select few business contacts or one of an even smaller number of people who interested her personally.

That was when she saw the caller’s name on the ID screen: Yates, Capt. Welborn.

She added merrily, “Stuck in rank, are you?”

“By my own choosing,” Welborn replied.

“Is that so?”

“I had to fight off a promotion to major.”

“Of course. You should be a colonel by now.”

“And how are you Carina? I kept looking for your TV show, ‘Woman in Command,’ but I couldn’t find it, not even on Netflix.”

She sighed. It was only fair that he should jab her after she’d been so catty with him. “I’m afraid that project sank after Sir Edbert Bickford took his fatal plunge. I did get paid, though, quite a bit of money for handing in one ne’er-to-be produced script.”

“So do you still have your boat?”

“
Irish Grace
and I are inseparable. It’s where I do all my work.”

“That work being?”

“Under the guise of a pen name, I write novels, the naughty kind ladies are ashamed to admit they love.” She told him her
nom de plume.

“That’s you? I’m surprised poor old
Grace
isn’t your dinghy these days.”

“I’m faithful ’til the end, though I wouldn’t hold it against you if you weren’t.”

“Kira and I just took the twins to meet the queen at her palace in London.”

“Swell, but what are you doing for fun on Saturday night?”

Welborn laughed. “Come on now. As a glamorous woman with a huge and growing fortune, you must have no end of gentlemen admirers.”

“The money looks fine and gets more appealing all the time, but I’ve gotten way too much sun on my boat the past few years.”

With a note of concern, Welborn asked, “Skin cancer?”

“Not quite that bad, but my wrinkles are hideous. Though there are a few spots I’ve kept shielded if you’d care to take a look. Or did you call just to remind me how much younger you are?”

Welborn chose not to comment on the offer of a peep show. “I called because I need a bit of help from someone who might know how military spooks work, and I thought a former Air Force intelligence officer who worked at the Pentagon might be a good place to start.”

“I used to have some knowledge of that kind of thing, but what they’re up to these days I really couldn’t say. I’m not even supposed to say what was going on way back when.”

“Might be something here you could use for a book, if you make a few judicious changes.”

“Ooh. You remember when I said I wished you had a bit of the rascal in you?”

“I do, but we’re not talking about that kind of personal failing here,” Welborn said.

“Damn. Still, you’re not just leading me on about the story material, are you?”

“No. If you have some contacts from either your military or reporting days who might be willing to chat, you could say you’re researching the idea on your own.”

That was another reason Welborn had called: to keep himself at a careful distance.

Carina recognized that immediately and laughed. “First, you’ll have to promise you’ll come visit me in prison.”

“How about I promise you won’t go to prison, not for helping me anyway.”

“You know what?”

“What?” Welborn asked.

“I think you are a rascal in your own way, and I’d feel better about all this if you were a colonel.”

“But —”

“Unh-uh,”Carina said. “If you expect me to believe you can keep me out of the pokey, show me you can manage another good trick. Like a big jump in rank, overnight.”

“You want me to become a colonel by tomorrow?”

“Yeah, let’s see what you can do.”

“I may have to look elsewhere for help.”

“Okay, maybe a captain is all you were ever meant to be.”

“I’m thinking of moving my family to Los Angeles and writing for television.”

After a moment of silence, Carina said, “That would rankle, if you succeeded at something I couldn’t. All right, I’ll tell you what. Become a major by tomorrow, since you say that rank was already offered to you, and that will show me that you’re still wired into the powers that be.”

Welborn sighed. “The things I do for my country.”

After hearing a polite knock at his office door, Chief Justice of the United States Craig MacLaren said, “Come in.”

Associate Justice Daniel Crockett entered the chief’s inner sanctum and closed the door behind him. “Celia said it’d be okay to drop in. I caught her just as she was heading for home. Otherwise, she’d have buzzed and announced me. I said I didn’t think we needed to stand on formality.”

“If this is just a casual call, Daniel, you won’t mind if I offer you a drink,” MacLaren said.

Crockett grinned. “There are times when I’m sitting on the bench that I wouldn’t mind a drink.”

The chief nodded. “Every judge’s dirty little secret. You still drinking that Van Winkle stuff?”

“It comes from Kentucky,” said the former senator from Tennessee, “but I’ll choke down a glass anyway.”

“Very hospitable of you.” The chief went to his liquor cabinet, found the right bottle and poured two fingers for each of them. He handed Crockett a glass and retook his seat. “So you simply dropped in to chat, Daniel? Shoot the breeze about your minor aches and pains or how the kids are doing in their new professions?”

“Sorry to disappoint, Chief. No physical miseries to report. My offspring are cruising along like fate doesn’t have any nasty tricks in mind for them.” Crockett put his glass down and steepled his hands in divine supplication on the latter point.

“Good. So then, what brings you around?”

Crockett reclaimed his glass. “I don’t know if any our brethren or …” For a moment, Crockett looked stumped. “What’s the female equivalent of brethren?”

“The girls,” MacLaren said with a laugh.

Crockett chuckled. “Oh, yeah, that’d win the hearts of the female members of the court.”

“We’ll keep it our secret. I have the feeling you’re here to speak confidentially anyway.”

“Yes and no. I was asked by our colleagues to let you know they’re already chafing under the increased security that’s been imposed upon us as a result of the threat on your life. The others would like to know if the Court Police and the FBI have made any progress with their investigation. Justice Kern said there are cops everywhere but under her robe with her.”

“They’d like to be there, too,” MacLaren said, “but I told them our spouses might object.”

Crockett ignored the jest and focused on the point. “Has Mrs. MacLaren objected?”

“Not to the increased security. She wants more, if anything. What she’s raising hell about is the idea that things have come to this state of affairs. It’s understandable, she feels, that the president needs massive protection, but the president is a singular figure. A lightning rod, if you will. But the court is equal in number to the starting lineup of a baseball team.”

“And we don’t even appear in a pack of trading cards with a sheet of bubble-gum included,” Crockett said with a grin. “Where that analogy breaks down, though, Chief, is your office is as unique as the president’s.”

MacLaren downed his drink. “It is, and here I thought it was a great honor. To answer your question, I don’t know how close our minders are to setting us relatively free.”

“How real does the threat feel to you, Chief?”

“It seems real, unreal and surreal. Having all the cops crowding us tells me they think it’s serious, and they’d know far better about such things than you or me. Even so, there are moments when I have to shake my head and say, ‘Come on, this can’t be happening.’ And then there are brief periods when I feel like I’m an actor in a movie, only I don’t know if I’m a character who survives or gets it in the head.”

Crockett grunted. “That last possibility is worrisome. You might be a survivor and the poor sap next to you gets shot by mistake.”

MacLaren laughed.

“That’s funny?” Crockett asked.

“You just brought an image to mind, Daniel. My sitting alone hearing arguments with eight cardboard cutouts of my colleagues joining me. See what I mean about surreal?”

The associate justice grinned. “That is sort of funny. So is the idea, no disrespect intended, that you’ll play a pivotal role in the trial of the president. You administer oaths or affirmations to the senators who will decide the innocence or guilt of the president. Otherwise, you’ll sit there and look solemn.Your role is more ceremonial than judicial. That and to make sure the president
pro tem
of the senate — the vice president of the United States, one of those nasty politicians — doesn’t get to preside.”

“In this case the president
pro tem
would be Jean Morrissey,” MacLaren said. “Wouldn’t that be interesting, to see her as the ringmaster of this circus?”

“That’s a colorful characterization — circus — isn’t it, Chief?” Crockett asked.

MacLaren got up and fetched the bottle of bourbon, poured each of them another drink.

He left the Pappy Van Winkle on his desk, as if the bottle might be tapped yet again.

“You’re a constitutional scholar, Daniel. Tell me what happened in the matter of the Senate trial of President Andrew Johnson, a Democrat, in 1868. Not the outcome, but how the Republican majority in the senate interacted with Chief Justice Salmon Chase.”

Crockett knew the answer but felt uneasy about where MacLaren might be going.

“Chase claimed the authority to decide procedural questions on his own. The Senate majority overruled him twice.”

“Right. Jumping ahead to the 20th century Senate trial of President William Clinton, Democrat, what happened when Chief Justice Rehnquist decided
he
could rule on procedural questions?”

“The Republican majority neither objected to nor overruled the Republican chief justice.”

MacLaren sipped his drink. “Funny how those things can work out, isn’t it? You’d almost think political calculations were at work. What would you guess might happen if I started to issue rulings in the trial of Patricia Grant, what with my being a Democrat like the president, and the senate having a Republican-True South majority?”

Crockett sipped from his own glass. “Chief, I think they’d bat your rulings right back in your face.”

“So do I.” MacLaren put his glass down and lowered his head for a moment. When he looked up at Crockett, his eyes were filled with blue-steel resolve. “Daniel, I’m not going to ask you if you think the president is guilty of the charge the House has filed against her.”

“No, sir. That would be improper.”

“I won’t tell you how I feel about the matter either.”

“Very wise, Chief.”

Leaning forward, closing the distance between them, MacLaren said, “But I will tell you this: If the people on either side of the aisle expect me to sit mute and let this matter become a political show trial, they are in for the surprise of their lives.”

Crockett would dearly have loved to know the specifics of what MacLaren had in mind, but he knew better than to ask.

He finished his drink, put his glass down and offered MacLaren a wry smile.

“I’m sure it’d be must-see TV, Chief, if we allowed a camera in the court.”

The associate justice was about to get up when the chief gestured him back into his chair.

“Hold on a minute, Daniel. Allow me to do a bit of research here.”

The chief scooted his chair over to his desktop computer and tapped a flurry of keys. Crockett couldn’t see what appeared on the screen, but he saw the chief nod. He was satisfied with what he’d found.

Turning back to his colleague, he said, “Daniel, the feminine equivalent of brethren is — no kidding — sistren.”

“Never heard of it.”

“My dictionary tells me the word fell out of common usage until just recently. It was revived by feminists. So, you see, you can put a new spin on old customs.”

Crockett understood the chief had more than a dusty locution in mind.