The phone was still buzzing, louder and more insistent. I reached over from my chair and tapped the ON button.
On the phone’s picture screen, the features of James J. Halliday took form.
“Good evening, Meric,” said the President.
I glanced from the phone to the TV, where the President was saying, “I understand that automation has taken many jobs, but that’s just a short-term situation…”
“Good evening,” I said to the phone image. “Your brother’s out there walking on water.”
“That’s Johnny for you,” said the President. “He loves it.”
“You don’t?”
“I’m not much for crowds. I’ve always preferred Hamilton to Jefferson.”
I squinted hard at the phone screen. The wine was making my head thunder.
“It won’t do you any good to try to figure out which one I am. You can’t tell by looking, and I’m not going to spell it out for you”
“Why’d you call?” I asked.
The President said, “I wanted to make one final appeal to you to call off this ridiculous press conference tomorrow afternoon.”
“No deal,” I said.
His face hardened. “You’ll never get to it. You understand that?”
“Doesn’t matter. The story will pop.”
With just a hint of exasperation, “You still don’t seem to understand, Meric, the power in my hands. By tomorrow afternoon those tapes you mailed out will be destroyed. The people who’ve been working with you will be silenced. It won’t work, Meric. It’s doomed.”
“Then why call me?”
“Because I’m not a willful slaughterer. I don’t want to kill anyone…”
“Tell that to your deceased brethren. Tell it to the General, I’m sure he’ll understand.”
“Meric! Don’t force me to act.”
“Mr. President… this nation has survived an awful lot of stupidity in the White House. We’ve had ignoramuses for Presidents, we’ve had innocent do-gooders and out-and-out crooks. But I’m not going to willingly allow a madman to take the job.”
“You’re a fool, Albano.”
“I know it. And I’m scared shitless. I don’t want to die. But I can’t step away and let you take over. I literally cannot do it! Understand that? Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t. What the hell good would it be to live, if I couldn’t live with myself?”
“We’ve already got Ms. Clark,” he said flatly. “And Solomon’s…”
I didn’t hear the rest. I felt as if I’d been quick-frozen into solid ice. From somewhere far away, I heard my own voice, grim and tight, whisper, “No deal. It doesn’t matter. No deal.” And I hated myself for saying it.
I’ve never seen James J. Halliday’s face look so ugly. “All right, Albano. You won’t make it through the night.”
The phone screen went blank. I clicked it off. On the TV, James J. Halliday was saying: “That’s what the Presidency is for—to listen to the problems of the whole nation, not just one section or one state, and then to take actions that will solve those problems.”
They had Vickie. And I wouldn’t, couldn’t, make a trade for her. I don’t know how long I sat there, trying to rationalize it. But the simple truth was that Vickie wasn’t as important to me as nailing the Halliday murderer. And my own skin.
I realized that my apartment was no longer safe. Especially with Hank gone. But where the hell was there safety? My eyes fixed on the TV screen again. That vast crowd. Out there, they’d never be able to get to me. I could blend in and disappear.
And besides, I thought,that’s James John out there. If I can get to him and stick with him for the next eighteen hours, we might both make it out of this alive.
SEVENTEEN
But first I had to get out of my apartment alive.
I peeked through the window shutters and saw people walking along the street outside, and the usual solid line of parked cars. Could be an army of hired assassins out there. And I didn’t have a car; I’d have to get the door guards to call a taxi for me.
I paced the living room fretfully for a few minutes, certain that I couldn’t stay in the apartment, scared at the thought of stepping out into the open, trying not to think about Vickie and what might be happening to her.
Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer. I went out into the corridor, after a careful peek from my door, took the emergency stairs two flights up, walked all the way across the building to the elevators on that side, and rode down to the laundry room. The garage was one more level down, and if anybody was waiting for me, he’d at least have a scout down there. And out in the lobby.
Tiptoeing back to the delivery ramp behind the laundry room, I looked out into the night-shadowed driveway where the trucks pulled up. There was a gray minibus parked out there, with two men sitting in the cab.
Good Christ, I thought, they really are out there waiting for me!
I hurried down to the laundry room. Alex, one of the night security guards, was whistling down the hall toward the guards’ locker room.
“Hi, Mr. Albano,” he said cheerfully. “Washin’ somebody’s dirty laundry?” He laughed uproariously at his own joke; he knew my job, and knew that I could take a kidding.
“What’re you doing down here?” I asked.
“Gotta take a leak. Hey, you been watchin’ those protesters on TV? That’s a helluva crowd they got out there. Your boss is talkin’ to ’em.”
“I know.” Then the sudden inspiration came. “Alex… do you have a spare uniform in the locker room I could borrow?”
“Huh?”
Thank God he had a sense of humor. I told him it was a joke, and paid him fifty bucks for his extra cap and jacket, and the loan of his car. I promised to leave it at the cab stand three blocks down the avenue.
“Will you take care of the ticket I get when the Pee Dees spot it at the cab stand?”
“Sure.”
He trusted me. And my fifty dollars. So, with my heart hammering, I drove slowly out of the garage, wearing the guard’s cap and jacket.
Sure enough, there was a blocky-looking character at the exit gate.
The lights weren’t all that brilliant down in the garage although the area around the exit gate was lit better than I would have wished for. The man, whoever he was, kept the gate’s bar down so that I couldn’t pass thoroughly. He stared hard at me.
“Where you going?”
I tried to imitate Alex’s accent as best I could. “Gotta get Mr. Kent’s pree-scription.” And I made a booze-swilling motion that helped to hide my face.
He grinned and reached into the gate booth. The bar swung up and I drove out onto the avenue, very careful not to squeal the tires. I parked at the cab stand, left the cap and jacket on the front seat of the car, and took one of the cabs.
“You ain’t supposed to park there,” the cabbie said as I opened the rear door.
I ducked inside. “It’s a joke I’m playing on a friend,” I said.
His black face, staring back at me in the mirror, wasn’t at all amused. “Some joke,” he grunted.
The crowd around the Capitol was so huge that the traffic cops wouldn’t let us get within five blocks of the Hill. Or stop. They kept waving us on, until we were detoured down Virginia Avenue, halfway to the goddamned Navy Yard. The driver fumed and grumbled up front while I fumed and fretted in the darkness of the back seat.
He wormed through endless lines of parked buses up along Sixth Street Southeast and got as close as the Library of Congress Annex. The police had sawhorses and fire trucks blocking off the streets beyond there.
“Close as I can get,” the driver said.
I gave him a twenty. “It’ll do.” I felt a little annoyed that he didn’t even go through the pretense of trying to make change.