“Even killers?”
“The intelligence community,” Smalls said, sitting back and simultaneously turning to look down the concourse, as though he might spot a spy. “Listen, Lucas, there are literally hundreds of trained killers out of the military and working as contractors with the private intelligence organizations. Most of them are fine people. Patriots who have risked their lives for the country. But some of these guys aren’t so fine, and I’ve had a few of them testifying before committees. They don’t have any real limits, moral or otherwise. They live on risk. They love it. You show them Grant’s kind of money and the possibility that she might wind up in the White House? They’ll be available. That’s my gut feeling.”
“Why you and why now?”
“Because I’ve been pissing on Grant ever since the election and some of it is beginning to stick.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t piss for a while,” Lucas suggested.
Smalls grinned, and said, “I’m hiding out in town for now, and I’ve hired a couple of ex-cops to cover me. If you jump on this, maybe you’ll be able to tell me how much trouble I’m in. Be nice to know, before I get back out in the open.”
“Let me ask you a couple of uncomfortable questions . . . How’s your marriage?”
“Well, you know . . .”
“You’ve got a few bucks yourself . . .” Smalls’s financial disclosure forms, filed at the time of the election and printed in the Twin Cities newspapers, hinted at a fortune in the neighborhood of a hundred million dollars. “And if your wife thought you were about to, uh, move on . . .”
Smalls shook his head. “She knows I’m not.”
“Your daughter once mentioned something about a Lithuanian lover. If you were to die, who inherits? Would the Lithuanian lover be in line for a payday? Directly or indirectly?”
“No. My wife’s not stupid,” Smalls said. “Besides, most of the money would go to the kids, after the government takes its cut. On balance, she’s financially better off with me alive.”
“Okay.”
“Again, I would like to stay that way: alive.”
“What about your friend Whitehead? Anybody want to get rid of her?” Lucas asked.
In exasperation, Smalls jabbed his index finger into the tabletop a half dozen times, hissing, “Lucas! Lucas! Pay attention! Keep your eye on the goddamn ball here! It was Grant! No, I can’t think of anybody who’d want to kill CeeCee. She’s been divorced for fifteen years, her husband is as rich as she is, and he’s got a whole ’nother family. CeeCee has two adult daughters, nice girls, work in L.A., got all the money they need, they produce movies or some goofy shit like that. Listen: we decided to run up to the cabin at the last minute, nobody even knew we were going, somebody was watching us.”
“All right, I need to eliminate the obvious possibilities,” Lucas said. “I’ll take a look at it. You might want to call the Marshals Service director and have a chat. Not about Grant, though. Tell him you want me to review the situation.”
“I’ll do that. First thing tomorrow. As far as Grant goes: if you have to poke a stick into that wasp’s nest, be my guest. But be careful. Nobody seems to believe me, but these guys who tried to kill me, and murdered CeeCee, they’re pros.”
* * *
—
AS LUCAS DROVE HOME, he thought about U.S. senator Taryn Grant. Two and a half years earlier, she’d knocked Porter Smalls out of the Senate, beating him 51 percent to 49 percent, after what Smalls called the ugliest political trick in the history of the Republic.
Lucas had been virtually certain that Grant was behind it, working through a Democratic political operator known to be a bagman and sometime blackmailer. The man had planted a load of child porn on Smalls’s computer at his campaign office, where it was “discovered” by an intern. Lucas had proven Smalls to be innocent, but too late: Grant was elected.
All of that was complicated by the fact that the man who planted the child porn sensed an opportunity and had tried to blackmail Grant. He’d been murdered for his trouble, and three more people had been killed by Election Day. After the election, Smalls had openly accused Grant of orchestrating the murders and planting the porn.
The people of Minnesota had begun to believe him. Two years after losing the first election, he had been voted back into the Senate in the next one. That was not good when you were dealing with a psychopath like Taryn Grant, Lucas thought. If Smalls was proving to be a threat, she would kill her way into the presidency as easily as she’d killed her way into the Senate, if she could do it without being caught.
The last time out, she’d beaten Lucas. He hadn’t forgotten or forgiven. If Smalls was correct about an assassination attempt, he’d have another shot at her.
And that made him happy.
* * *
—
WHEN LUCAS GOT HOME, he kissed his wife Weather and his two kids, sent the kids to bed, told Weather about Smalls and that he’d be leaving again on Monday.
The next day was a Saturday, and since Weather wouldn’t be working and didn’t have to get up early—she was a surgeon who usually left the house at six-thirty—she took Lucas to bed and did her best to wear him out. Feeling pleasantly unfocused, they’d later sat, semi-naked, on the second-story sunporch with lemonades and looked out into the soft summer night, and she asked, “How long will you be gone?”
“Don’t know—I have a couple of friends in Washington, but they can’t help me with this.”
“Not even Mallard?”
Mallard was a deputy director of the FBI who’d worked with Lucas on a couple of high-profile cases.
“Mallard is too political. He wouldn’t want to get caught in a cross fire between Grant and Smalls. Besides, before I do anything else, I’ve got to make sure Smalls’s story makes sense. If it does, I need to talk to somebody who’s got an inside feel for the Senate. Somebody who could tell me who Grant might be talking to . . . who could hook her up with a professional killer. I need to know if there might be somebody who’d want to get rid of Porter even more than Grant does.”
“Porter is an enormous asshole,” she said. “You might have a lengthy list of candidates.”
“He made you laugh, when we had dinner that time,” Lucas said.
“He can be charming,” Weather said. “He has a sense of humor. And he’s got great political stories. But he’s also doing his best to wipe out Medicaid. And ban abortion. And run every Mexican kid out of the country. And make sure every man, woman, and child has a handgun.”
“Yeah, he’s a right-winger all right,” Lucas said. “But you don’t get assassinated for that. At least, not yet.”
“No, but if somebody did assassinate him, I probably wouldn’t march on Washington in protest,” Weather said.
“Shame on you,” Lucas said. “I gotta tell you, not being a big political brain like some of the women I’m married to, I kinda like the guy, even if I don’t care for his politics.”
She let that go, and after a while said, “Great night.”
“Yes, it is,” Lucas agreed, looking up at the stars.
“Just try not to get killed, okay?”
3
When U.S. senator Taryn Grant heard that Smalls had survived, she got Jack Parrish in her basement SCIF and screamed at him for a while. SCIF, short for Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, was where you went to discuss classified information, which this sure as hell was.
“You said it was a done deal,” she shouted. “You said it was a perfect setup.”
“It was,” Parrish said, settling on a sofa. “I didn’t tell you it was a done deal—I told you it was ninety-nine percent. Even a hundred-to-one shot comes in every once in a while, and that’s what happened.”