“There won’t be: we’ll be tracking them. Tracking them passively, listening only, not talking to anyone. All we need is ten seconds . . . fifteen, at the outside. If the cops are too close, we reset.”
“Fifteen seconds, as long as your man doesn’t get hurt. If he gets hurt, we’re in trouble,” Grant said.
“Handled.”
“Handled how?”
Parrish laughed. “Well . . . the man we found is a fat guy. Ritter’s coat will be stuffed with Bubble Wrap, and, of course, he’ll be braced. He’s done this before, actually, when they were trying to take down a guy without it being an obvious hit.”
Grant sat back in her chair and thought it over. Parrish’s operators, supposedly the crème of American hit men, had already screwed up twice. On the other hand, she had to get Davenport out of her business. If they knew the truck that hit Smalls’s vehicle was a Ford F-250, she didn’t doubt that he would eventually find it.
“All right,” she said. “Let’s do it. No fuckups. No fuckups!”
* * *
—
GRANT WENT TO SLEEP easily enough, unaffected by any anticipatory guilt, though she grew restless at six in the morning, an hour before she usually got up. There was one thing that hadn’t occurred to her the night before and that Parrish hadn’t considered. What if Davenport decided Grant was responsible for it all . . . and he simply killed her?
He could probably do it without being caught. And he was crazy, wasn’t he? As crazy as she was?
She shuddered, tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t get it out of her mind.
Tate called at seven, as Grant was downing a double espresso. “You’ve got the Senate studio from eight-thirty to nine-fifteen. I’m rounding up the usual suspects from the local media, and as many national people as I can find. We need to talk before you go on. You should wear your best TV stuff.”
“Already there. Call Allison about hair and makeup.”
“Done. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” Grant said. “This will work for us.”
12
Bob and Rae called early, waking Lucas, to tell him that they were going to work out before starting the day. Bob added that the girlfriend had gone back to Ritter’s apartment in his car, so he hadn’t been able to get a license plate number on her.
Lucas took his time shaving, didn’t bother to look at the television, and went down to the restaurant for breakfast.
He was finishing his pancakes when he heard a man in a two-thousand-dollar suit ask a woman in a two-thousand-dollar dress, “Did you see her? Hot blond senator with a severe case of the red-ass?”
“I did,” the woman said. “The shit has hit the proverbial fan. I like it.”
* * *
—
SURVIVALISTS FANTASIZE about SHTF day, when Shit Hits The Fan—Mexico invades Arizona, the gasoline runs out, all the chickens get eaten, and anybody who doesn’t have a root cellar in the backyard fully stocked with AR-15s, camouflage hats, hunting bows, and gold coins is doomed to a life of sexual slavery or death by cannibalism.
So far, that day hadn’t happened. Except in the media.
There it happened about once a week, with the intellects at Fox and CNN howling about “Breaking News” as if the real SHTF day had finally arrived.
When the rich guy asked the rich woman about a “blond senator,” Lucas felt an eyebrow rise almost of its own accord. He’d been reading the Washington Post as he ate. There’d been a short, ambiguous article about “sources” saying that the Marshals Service was investigating the Smalls auto accident as a possible assassination attempt. Most of the story was simply recounting the accident, with not much on later developments.
But if Grant had jumped into it? That would raise more eyebrows than his. He waved at the waitress, got the bill, left money on the table, and while he didn’t trot to the elevators, he wasted no time getting back to his room.
Both CNN and Fox had already gotten past the actual news and were asking their talking heads to opine on what the senators were saying about each other. Lucas went to his laptop, entered “Taryn Grant” in the Bing search window, and got back a half dozen hits. He found a replay available on C-SPAN and watched as Taryn Grant ripped a new one for Porter Smalls.
Lucas got on the phone to Smalls. “Have you seen Grant?”
“No . . . Has she said something? Anything she says will hurt her . . . Did you see me on ’CCO last night?”
“No, I didn’t know you were on. What’d you say?”
“Look for it. It’s all over the place,” Smalls said.
“Just tell me, Senator.”
Smalls cleared his throat, and said, “Well, I had some news media call me up and tell me that these tree trunks had been found by a U.S. Marshal and had silver paint on them. I assumed the marshal was you.”
“Yeah, me, and two other marshals, and a West Virginia sheriff and some deputies.”
“Good, good, lots of witnesses. Anyway, I started getting more calls, and then CNN and a Washington TV station asked me to go down to ’CCO and make a statement for them.”
“Did you say Taryn Grant was involved?”
“No, not by name. I did say that I’d experienced this kind of thing in the past, although that was character assassination and this was real assassination, a dear friend being murdered. It didn’t take a genius to put two and two together, which is a good thing, because geniuses are a little thin on the ground in the TV media these days.”
“Anyway . . .”
“Anyway, the reporters started asking me if I was accusing Taryn Grant of trying to assassinate me. I told them that it was clear that somebody was trying to assassinate me, but I had no idea who it was. They kept trying to get me to say Grant did it, and I kept tap-dancing.”
“But you never said it wasn’t Grant.”
“Of course not,” Smalls said, “because it is.”
Lucas said, “Well, she just went on TV here and said that you’re senile and that everybody in the Senate knows it; that you were probably drunk when the accident took place, because you’re also quite well known as a secret alcoholic; that you may well be guilty of vehicular homicide, if you were driving drunk; and that you’d sent your pet marshal to try to frame her, and she wasn’t going to stand for it.”
Long pause. “She didn’t say that,” Smalls finally said. “Not really.”
“Look at a C-SPAN rerun.”
“Sounds like one heck of a guilty overreaction to me,” Smalls said.
“Given the context, that’s not what the news analysts are saying,” Lucas said. He was looking at CNN. “They’re saying that you did everything but flatly accuse her of trying to kill you. How would she overreact to that?”
“I can’t say I’m sorry,” Smalls said. “It’s out in the open now. Let’s see what happens.”
“As the ‘pet marshal,’ I wouldn’t be surprised if I got fired,” Lucas said.
“I would,” Smalls said. “Try to remember which party is in the majority right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Tweeter in Chief wades into it.”
“Oh, shit . . .”
“Keep pushing, Lucas. You’re doing good. If you or anyone at the Marshals Service needs help, call me.”
* * *
—
LUCAS CALLED RUSSELL FORTE, and as he finished dialing, he heard a knock at the door. He walked across the room, took the spitball from the peephole, looked out, and saw Rae’s face. He opened the door, waved Bob and Rae inside—they were still dressed in their workout clothes—and when Forte answered the phone, Lucas asked him, “Have you seen Grant?”
“Everybody’s seen Grant,” Forte said. “The shit has hit the fan.”
“That seems to be the general opinion,” Lucas said. “Are we in trouble?”
“Hard to tell,” Forte said. “I’ve got lines out. There’s a rumor that the FBI might want to talk to us.”
“Kick us out? Take over the investigation? That’d be all right with me.”
“Uh . . . I don’t think so. This is becoming the hottest potato in Washington, and you don’t often see the FBI stepping up to intercept hot potatoes. I have gotten a call from the director’s assistant—our director, not the FBI’s—and I’ll be talking with him later this morning.”