"Well," Senator O'Day said, sitting up like a fussy hen in his chair, "we must address it head-on, of course. We're the greatest nation on Earth. Isn't that marvelous?"
"Yes, but what can we do?" the reporter stressed. Senator O'Day grinned his little cherub's grin and licked his darting tongue across his moistened upper lip and said a lot about money and responsibility. To sum up, he repeated once more his oft-used phrase.
After the program was through, the performance of Leonard O'Day was heralded as compassionate, understanding and bridge-building for the races. The reporter, on the other hand, was called a racist, reactionary, fascist tool of the military-industrial complex and was fired on the spot.
After that incident, no reporters dared press the senator on his specific remedies for race relations.
At the impromptu sidewalk news conference this day, the senator offered many bland "awful, just awfuls" to the press. As he did so, he glanced every so often at his pocket watch.
"Senator O'Day, it's been a week since Senator Bianco's death made you senior senator from New York," one reporter called. "What's the mood in the Senate?"
Senator O'Day licked his lips. "The sudden, unexpected death of my friend and colleague was awful, just awful. A terrible shock. We are all coping as best we can. Now, gentlemen, I really must be going."
His car was parked at the curb. A few reporters shouted more questions to him as he ducked into the back seat. Leonard O' Day was relieved when his driver shut the door.
They were pulling into traffic a minute later. "Thank God that's over," Senator O'Day exhaled as he sank into the seat. "Drive, Rudolfo."
They headed out of the city.
Leonard wasn't completely surprised the press had brought up Senator Bianco's death. It was an open secret in political circles that the family was hiding something from the public. Some were whispering the late Senator Bianco had been murdered. Head chopped clean off on his own front steps in Georgetown, a stone's throw away from the Capitol.
Although the press was starting to dig, they hadn't found out anything yet. No surprise there. Leonard Albert O'Day doubted there was anything there to find. Besides, the press corps couldn't find their fannies with both hands if they were given a month of Sundays and a picnic lunch.
The same couldn't be said for Leonard O'Day. New York's new senior senator knew exactly where his fanny was. It was sitting comfortably in the back seat of his black sedan as it raced along the highway to his upstate hideaway.
Leonard felt a deliciously familiar tingle.
This was a "Special Day". One of a few days out of the year that Senator O'Day carved out of his busy schedule just for himself. On Special Days, only Rudolfo was allowed to handle the driving chores. His trusted staff member was also in charge of the other details of Special Day. That thing that made Special Day so exquisitely special.
"Is it a nice one today, Rudolfo?" Leonard asked, unable to keep the excitement from his voice.
"Yes, sir, Senator," his driver answered.
Senator O'Day shuddered happily. His tingle tingled all the way up to his secluded estate. It was still tingling when Rudolfo passed right by the main house and slowed to a stop in front of the stables.
"The stables today, Rudolfo?" Leonard O'Day asked eagerly.
"You're the owner of a racehorse that's been losing at the track, sir," Rudolfo explained. "He's the jockey. Unless you can motivate him to win, you've got to fire him."
The rules seemed simple enough. Senator O'Day clapped his hands giddily. He loved games.
The senator got out of the car and rolled the barn door open just wide enough to slip through. Inside, the stable smelled like horse droppings and damp hay. Sunlight filtered in through open vents near the ceiling.
The smell of manure made him even more excited. This was just a minor peccadillo. As he walked along the hard-packed earthen floor, Senator O'Day knew there was nothing wrong with it. Everyone needed a way to relieve the tension. Some people played with model trains, some built ships in bottles. Some, like the senior senator from New York, diddled young boys.
Rudolfo was his procurer. Leonard didn't know where his driver found the boys, nor did he care. However he came by them, he always managed to find the freshest meat. His efforts required a huge bonus at Christmas-as much a thank-you as it was hush money. But it was worth every penny.
The role-playing was always fun. Sometimes he was a sea captain; sometimes he was Scarlett O'Hara. Today it was horses, with a young jockey to discipline.
When he saw the boy, the senator was licking his lips and thinking how much fun he could have with a riding crop.
Rudolfo had outdone himself.
The young man was blond and pale, just like Leonard liked them. The thin and wiry boy stood there in the middle of the stable, alone and defenseless. Just waiting to be punished for his losing streak at the racetrack. It would have been the perfect game if not for one thing.
"Where's your jockey uniform?" Senator Leonard O'Day pouted, jamming his loose wrists to his hips. Some kind of uniform was mandatory, no matter what game he happened to be playing. Without pants, of course.
The boy who wasn't wearing a jockey uniform didn't answer. He just stared at the senator. The way he looked at Leonard, the senator almost felt a twinge of guilt for his extracurricular activities. That lasted only until Leonard noticed the body in the nearest empty stable.
It was lying facedown in the hay, naked bottom aimed at the rafters. The dead boy wore a jockey uniform.
"Oh, my," Senator O'Day gasped.
In shock now, he turned to the young man.
The blond-haired boy with the electric-blue eyes was no longer standing. Somehow-impossibly-he was flying through the air directly toward New York's frightened senior senator.
And in the next instant the senator felt an explosion of pain in his hip as his right femur was shattered into his pelvis. He collapsed in a heap to the floor.
The pain blinded all rational thought.
His face landed in a pile of manure. In a flash that sometimes came just before the moment of death, the senator suddenly thought that he could maybe play a game where he was the cruel stable owner and he had to punish a derelict stable hand for not cleaning up all the horse droppings. He was going to bring it up to Rudolfo, but then he remembered he really was the stable owner and that his face was in a real-life pile of shit because his actual employees hadn't cleaned up properly. And then a toe crushed his other hip and a pair of dropped soles flattened his shoulder joints. By the time the foot that ended his life crushed his skull, the senior senator from New York was long past the ability to even feel the pain.
When the young man was through, Senator Leonard Albert O'Day looked as if he'd been mangled in the pounding pistons of some massive pneumatic device.
For a moment there passed a look of revulsion on the young man's pale face. His eyes grew moist with fear as he looked down on the body. The life he'd snuffed out. One moment a living, breathing thing. The next...
With a force of will far older than his years, he blinked away the image. His teacher insisted that emotions were for the weak. He would not be weak.
Reaching down, he removed the dead man's pocket watch.
Burying the brief hint of human emotion he'd allowed to seep to the surface, the boy turned from the body and padded back into the shadows. He left the stable through a back door. To find his Master.
Chapter 21
For Dr. Harold W. Smith the wait had been going on for five agonizing days. Five days of reading the papers. Five days of checking the daily computerized reports from CURE's hundreds of unwitting employees in federal law enforcement. Five days of waiting for that one, final, fateful call on the new dedicated White House line.