The Next President (24 page)

“Evan,” J. D. said firmly, “it’s time you came home. As soon as you’re fit to travel.”

“I guess that means yes. I’ll have to let Blair know. But yeah, coming home is my thought, too. I didn’t like how it felt as if the world was slipping away from me when I passed out. As soon as they let me out of here, I’m going to let my lawyer know.”

“Good.”

“Hey, Dad, where are you going to be? Los Angeles or Santa Barbara?”

“I don’t know.” J. D. hesitated, then added, “I’m going to be traveling with a man who says he’s going to be the next president of the United States.”

“What?”

“I’ll explain later. You can use either house. If you want to stay in L.A.” go to the Fred Sands office in Santa Monica. They’ll have a key for you. Wherever you go, stay in touch.”

DeVito spotted J. D. among the crowd in the lobby. Celebrities of all stripes were lingering to discuss the speech. The fed closed in on J. D. like a fastmoving storm front.

“You’re a real wiseass, mister, you know that?” DeVito told J. D. “If you think I’m a pain, Special Agent DeVito take a good look in the mirror,” J. D. replied. Then he added, “By the way, did you check out your two friends who are also making nuisances of themselves?”

Having Cade ask him about Roth and Danby after the two had almost been killed made DeVito take a step back. He looked to see if Cade some how knew what had happened. But Cade just looked the way he always did.

Cool, plausible, unflappable… probably wouldn’t bat an eye if he was slitting your throat.

“Information concerning the protection detail is classified, Mr. Cade,” DeVito told him.

“Has Ms. Crenshaw spoken with you lately, Special Agent?”

“No,” DeVito said, not liking the implication.

“Well, I have the feeling she’s about to; here she comes now.”

Jenny made her way through the crowd to the two men.

“There you are!” she said to J. D.” taking his arm.

“I’ve been looking all over for you. Del would like to know if you can join him for dinner tonight.”

Reacting to DeVito grimace, she told him, “As for you, Special Agent Clarke wants to see you.”

DeVito knew when he was being told to beat it. Knew when there was nothing he could do about it. He stormed into the auditorium and went backstage, where he expected to find Clarke, but the agent in charge had already left. He was told Clarke was accompanying Orpheus back to his hotel suite. But DeVito did see Roth and Danby… and the more Cade wanted to know about them, the more DeVito wanted to know about them.

“My name’s Dante DeVito be told the crew cuts

“We know who you are,” Roth responded.

That was just the kind of crack DeVito didn’t need right then.

“Is that right, Arnold? That’s what you and your friend do? Snoop on fellow agents?”

“Only the ones who fuck up,” Danby told him.

“Where do you guys come from, huh? What makes you qualified to second-guess anybody else?”

“You don’t question us, we question you,” Roth told him.

“You question me, don’t hold your fucking breath waiting for an answer

DeVito gave each of them his class-A sneer and stomped off. More than ever, he felt there was something wrong about those two. More wrong than Cade, even, who had, after all, checked out clean.

So far.

Twenty minutes later, DeVito knocked on the door of Charlie Clarke’s command post at the Century Plaza, and this time he waited for a reply before entering. Clarke glanced up from his work.

“Take a load off, DeVito

DeVito pulled up a chair, sat, and waited stoically while Clarke made a note on a blueprint.

When the agent in charge finished, he looked up.

“I was told you went for your weapon today with the seeming intention of bringing it to bear on one of Orpheus’ surrogate speakers. I wanted to hear from you if I got that right.”

Clarke’s tone was neutral but he was watching DeVito very closely.

“That’s right,” DeVito admitted without elaborating.

“You gonna make me pull teeth?” Clarke asked.

“Look, DeVito unlike some people, I don’t have a hard-on for you. I thought I gave you a pretty decent second chance.” Clarke leaned forward.

“What concerns me now is knowing that you haven’t gone off the deep end. That you can make it to the end of this campaign in a professional manner and retire in peace and quiet. If you don’t think you can manage that, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me.”

DeVito answered in a measured voice.

“That guy, Cade, he provoked me.”

“He provoked you? I had Ms. Crenshaw breathing fire at me that you’ve done nothing but provoke him from the first time you set eyes on the man.

She is pissed at you, DeVito She told me about her plan to make you a bathroom monitor and I’m beginning to see the wisdom of it.”

“I think she’s fucking Cade.”

Clarke rubbed weary eyes.

“So what’re you saying here, DeVito He’s Mata Hari, only he’s got a dick?”

DeVito clenched his teeth.

Clarke told his subordinate, “My money says you’ve already done a background check on Mr. Cade. Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“And do you have any proof he is anything but a wholehearted supporter of and generous contributor to Orpheus’ campaign?”

“No,” DeVito snapped.

“You checked him out down to the brand of toenail clippers he uses, didn’t you?”

“Everything I could find.”

“Even so, the man almost provoked you into going for your weapon.”

DeVito said nothing. What could he say? That Cade had pissed him off right from the start? That the more the SOB got involved in the campaign, the madder it made him? He couldn’t say that. So there was only one way he could go.

“Cade told me that our two snoops Roth and Danby have been watching him, too. You know what that’s all about, Charlie?”

“Evan Cade says he’s leaving? Leaving town?”

“Leaving the state,” Blair McCray told Carbondale chief of police Billy Edwards.

“Going back to California.” The two men were talking in Edwards’ office in the municipal building.

“Well,” the chief said philosophically, “there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it.”

Blair asked, “Still no luck on connecting Evan Cade to the footprints left at the scene of Ivar’s death?”

The chief shook his head.

“We both know that we’re never going to find the shoes that made those prints. Those suckers are long gone by now.”

That had been Blair’s original opinion, too. But now he reconsidered whether the shoes had, in fact, been destroyed.

“Unless somebody is framing the kid … Then I bet those shoes are sitting in a plastic bag somewhere.”

The chief gave his in-law a cool look.

“What? You’re literally waiting for the other shoe, or shoes, to drop? Have you really come around to taking Evan Cade’s side?”

“He said he saved my life last night.”

“Said?”

“Told me there was a biker with a Bowie knife about to cut my gizzard out.”

“But you didn’t notice?”

“I didn’t actually see the guy. Or the knife. I was pretty busy right then.

But Evan said he bounced a beer bottle off the sucker’s noggin. I do

know from looking at E van’s injuries that he caught one helluva punch to the face, and he must have dealt out a couple of good licks himself, the way his knuckes were cut up.”

“He was in the middle of a brawl. He didn’t have any choice but fight.

Doesn’t mean he saved your life.”

Blair shook his head.

“You know how it is when somebody says something like that. You can tell right off if he’s lying. I think Evan Cade is telling the truth.”

“Peace comes to the Cades and McCrays,” the chief snorted.

“Will wonders never cease?”

“Come on, Billy,” Blair told the chief.

“You’re not blood. You’re an inlaw.”

“With my wife that’s close enough.”

“Maybe we’ve been looking at the wrong end of things here. The story was that Ivar intended to pay back some merchant who wouldn’t go along with a protection scheme, right?”

“That’s right. Local man who owns four gas stations—whose daughter just happens to be Evan Cade’s girlfriend.”

“Was his girlfriend.”

“Well, sure, if he’s leaving town and not taking her with.”

“No, I mean right now. While we were riding around yesterday, he told me that Pru Laney dumped him. On the advice of her daddy’s lawyer.”

Chief Edwards saw the two possibilities to be found in that nugget of information.

He went with the one that he liked better.

“Maybe the lawyer didn’t want the stink of Evan Cade’s situation to rub off on her.”

“Or maybe her daddy’s got his own problems and his lawyer’s going to blame Evan Cade for them. What’s that gas station owner’s name again?”

“Barton. Barton Laney.”

“Sorry,” the kid behind the counter at the gas station said, “Mr. Laney’s not here.”

Blair McCray had just gone 0 for 4. Hadn’t been able to find Barton Laney at any of the gas stations he owned.

“You know if he’s sick or out of town?”

“Didn’t hear anything like that.”

“So he’s working. But he isn’t at any of his places of business.”

“If you say so.”

Blair thought for a minute.

“Who deposits the day’s receipts, you or him?”

The kid’s eyes flattened with suspicion. He reached under the counter.

Blair told him, “If there’s a panic button under there, that’s one thing. If it’s a gun, don’t even think about it.” He showed the kid his badge.

The kid left his hand where it was.

“That says Paducah, mister. You’re not even in the right state.”

“Don’t I know it. But I am working with your local cops, and all I’m looking for is a way to find your boss. I thought if he comes by at the end of the day to get his money to put in the bank, I could meet up with him.”

“Wouldn’t that make you a little nervous, somebody you don’t know wants to meet up with you and a bagful of your money?”

Blair laughed.

“You put it that way, yeah. Look, call the cops if you want.

I’ll wait right here. But don’t call nine-one-one because this isn’t an emergency. Just use the business number.”

“I don’t know it.”

“You got a phone book, don’t you? Look it up. And don’t worry … I won’t make any sudden moves.”

A phone call to the Carbondale PD was enough to reassure the clerk that Blair wasn’t a stickup man, but it didn’t get the Kentucky cop any closer to finding Barton Laney. So he called Evan Cade in his hospital room.

“Hi. You feeling any better?” Blair asked.

“Sure. The flowers you sent picked me right up.”

“I didn’t send you any ” Blair realized Evan was jerking his chain again, but this time it made him laugh.

“That was pretty good, Cade. You had me there for a second.”

“I am feeling better,” Evan admitted.

“Less woozy.”

“Listen, I’m still working this thing. Trying to look at it from another angle And I’m wondering if maybe there isn’t something you know about Bar ton Laney you haven’t told me.”

Evan wasn’t quick to respond.

“So there is something. Well, if you’re gonna take off, Cade, wouldn’t it be a good idea to have someone back here doing something that might help you?”

“Barton Laney has four gas stations,” Evan told Blair, “but he used to have eight.”

Then Mr. Laney’s wife got sick, Evan added, and the Laneys were uninsured He had to sell off half his business and borrow against the rest in a losing fight to keep his wife alive. When Evan first met Pru there was a question whether she’d even be able to continue at the university. But just a few months ago Pru had told him that things were getting a lot better. She’d be able to stay in school and her dad was paying off his debts.

“Then up popped Ivar,” Evan said.

Blair realized that Evan wasn’t insulting him; he was seeing if Blair understood what had happened.

“How would Ivar have known things were looking up for Barton Laney?”

Blair asked.

“If Ivar had been extorting money from the man, and he’d tried the scheme, say, a year earlier, all Laney would have had to offer would be a stack of unpaid bills. So how would Ivar have known when to strike?”

“And where did Barton Laney get the money to eliminate his debts?” Evan added.

A moment of silence ensued, during which Blair came to a hurtful conclusion.

“Sonofabitch. Ivar was mixed up in something.”

“And when he died under suspicious circumstances, who better to blame than a Cade?”

“Yeah,” Blair agreed quietly.

“That guy we were looking for, the one Deena wants to find…”

“Yeah, he’s the one to talk to, all right,” Blair agreed.

When J. D. returned to the Refuge, he took Pickpocket’s laptop out of the safe in the den. He booted it up and accessed stickyfingers.com. He hoped that there would be a response to his request for information about Roth and Danby, but there wasn’t. There was no sign that the request had even been read.

You out there, Red? J. D. keyed into the computer. Is John still with us? He waited several minutes without getting a reply. Pickpocket’s private chat room had the air of an abandoned property.

You’re probably just busy, both of you. But if you have the opportunity, I could really use your help. In addition to my prior request, there’s someone else I’d like you to check out for me. His name is Donnel Timmons….

He described Donnel as the owner of an auto-parts business, having contracts with Ford and GM, probably living and working in the greater Detroit area. He asked for all the information they could find on the man—but he didn’t mention Donnel’s service in the PANIC unit or his connection to the Rawley campaign.

J. D. didn’t want the cyberinvestigation to come too close to him.

Assuming Red and Pickpocket were even still available to help him.

J. D. had just returned the little thiefs laptop to the safe when the PCR beeped. He had e-mail. He briefly hoped that his computer wizards

had chosen that means to get in touch with him. But when he read the message he saw it was from the blackmailer—upping the ante.