Jack tried not to look too surprised, but Paulette was turning out to be very unlike the person he had expected. And yet she hardly knew her sister.
The world is a weird place.
“Got good news for you,” said Juan.
“You found our man?” said Paulette.
“Si.”
“Can you take us to him?” said Jack.
“No.”
“Why not?” said Paulette.
“He is hiding.”
“From who?” she said.
“Todo el mundo.” The whole world.
Jack said, “My guess is that he knows the FBI is using him as bait. That’s why the bureau released him-to see if the man who hired him as a decoy comes looking for him again.”
Paulette didn’t disagree. “Did you talk to him, Juan?”
“Claro. Turns out he’s a friend de un amigo of a friend.”
Jack calculated that as a friend, once-Hispanic and twice-gringo removed. “Did he tell you anything about the man who hired him to meet me outside the museum?”
“Un viejo.”
“How old of an old man?” said Jack.
“In a wheelchair.”
“A wheelchair?”
“Si. A chair. With wheels. Tu sabes? Or you no speak English?”
Paulette swallowed her laughter.
“Yes,” said Jack, “I know what a wheelchair is.”
“Did your homeless friend tell you anything else about the man?” said Paulette.
“He like Anthony Hopkins.”
“He’s like Anthony Hopkins?” she said. “Or he likes Anthony Hopkins?”
“He is him. That character in the movie.”
“You mean he’s a Hannibal Lecter?”
“No. The other one.” Juan started dancing, arms up over his head, humming to the tune of Zorba’s famous Sirtaki.
“You mean Anthony Quinn,” said Paulette.
“Si, si. El Griego.”
The Greek.
A volunteer from a local shelter passed by with cups of hot coffee. Juan called to her and was about to bolt. Jack needed to get to his morning meeting anyway, so with Juan’s assurance that he wasn’t forgetting to tell them anything, Jack and Paulette bid him good-bye and walked back toward the White House. At the corner, facing the Executive Mansion, Jack and Paulette exchanged glances.
“What do you think?” said Jack.
“I think the man who sent that e-mail to you also sent that e-mail to Chloe. I think if we find out what was actually inside Chloe’s e-mail, we’ll find out why he shot her.”
“But that was your theory even before we talked to Juan.”
“Right. A theory. Now I’m convinced it’s fact.”
“How’d you make that leap?”
“It makes perfect sense that the shooter would be in a wheelchair.”
“Why?”
“Something broke down between him and Chloe. He needed to eliminate her and deal with you instead. He instructed her to walk to a bus stop where he could drive by, make the hit from his car, and make a quick escape. A clean job and a clean getaway for an old man who can’t walk.”
Jack considered it. “That actually makes some sense.”
“Of course it does. You factor in the way the FBI has shut down the flow of information to both you and me, and it makes even more sense. The guy has something on President Keyes. Maybe he told it to Chloe, and she didn’t pay him for it. He killed her before she could go public and make his secret worthless. Now he’s looking to sell the same information to you-with the promise that, if your father is confirmed as vice president, it will make him president.”
“I don’t follow that last part. If he has some dirt on the president, why not just blackmail him or his supporters? Why come to me, the son of the vice presidential nominee?”
“I haven’t figured that one out yet. But this much I can compute: right now the FBI is pulling out all the stops looking for an old Greek man in a wheelchair. We should be, too.”
“How many of those can there be in Washington?”
“No idea,” she said.
“Me neither,” said Jack. “But something tells me we’re going to find out.”
Chapter 15
Jack was surrounded by lawyers.
He counted thirteen in all. They were gathered in the walnut-paneled courtroom on the ninth floor of the law offices of Carter and Brooke, the high-powered law firm that would be the Washington muscle behind Jack and Harry at the confirmation hearings. It was a moot courtroom, used primarily for dress rehearsals of important trials, and Jack could only imagine what kind of corporate skulduggery had been tested here. Yes, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my client did routinely fly its crop dusters while the migrant workers were in the tomato fields, but surely those company-issued sombreros offered more than enough protection from any cancer-causing pesticides. Theories abandoned, cases settled, egotistical corporate executives convinced not to testify at the real trial only after being shredded by their own lawyers in mock cross-examination.
Today was the mock grilling of Harry Swyteck, as eight-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyers played the role of congressional representatives and White House chief of staff Olivia Thompson ran the show.
“For the last time,” she said, groaning. “Please frame your responses to avoid open disagreement with the administration. President Keyes supports a complete ban on assault weapons.”
“I don’t,” said Harry. “I’m against any law that pushes us closer to becoming a nation where only criminals have guns.”
“Dad’s right,” said Jack. “Imagine if this country had laws against obscenity. Only prostitutes could have sex.”
And so the tap dance began-and it continued well beyond dinnertime.
Daylight was short in December, and it felt much later than 7:30 P.M. as the limo carried Jack and his father back across town. The driver dropped Harry first for dinner with Agnes at a Moroccan restaurant. Jack was dead tired, but if he returned to the hotel and hit the sack now, his eyes would probably pop open at 3:00 A.M., and he’d be left staring at the ceiling until sunrise.
“Could you take me toward Massachusetts Avenue?” he told the driver.
“Sure. Whereabout?”
Jack removed a business card from his wallet. “Number One Observatory Circle.”
“The vice presidential mansion?”
“Yes.”
“Right away, sir.”
Jack knew from the news coverage that the late vice president’s widow was in town packing up the Grayson family possessions. Jack had not spoken to Marilyn Grayson since the post-burial gathering at her home in Georgia. He’d kept her business card, however, and in light of the past several days’ events, her unsettling words to him about the circumstances of her husband’s death seemed almost prophetic: “With the direction your father is headed, you might have some questions too. If you do, call me.”
He dialed from the backseat of the limo, the tinted windows turning even blacker as they sped away from the lights of downtown, through the nighttime in Dumbarton Oaks Park. The call went to her cell, and when she answered, he introduced himself as “Harry Swyteck’s son Jack.”
“How nice to hear from you again, Harry Swyteck’s son Jack.”
Perhaps he was reading too much into her joke, but it felt like a friendly warning never to fall into the trap of giving up your own identity in this town-a reminder that he was Jack Swyteck first, not someone’s son.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I’ve been thinking about the conversation we had at your home, and I have-”
“Questions?” she said. “So soon?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“When would you like to talk?”
“I’m actually in your neighborhood right now, if that’s not too short notice.”
“I’d be pleased to have the company. I’ll tell the Secret Service to let you in.”
Built originally for the superintendent of the naval observatory, the Vice Presidential Mansion had all the hallmarks of late-nineteenth-century Queen Anne architecture, from its signature round turret to the broad veranda wrapping the ground floor. Jack was cleared at the gate, and the limo took him up the long driveway to the entrance. Marilyn Grayson greeted him at the door, and Jack stepped into a foyer that was large enough for a piano and its own fireplace. It was filled with corrugated boxes.