“Please do.” She refilled her own glass and stood up. “Now,” she said, “come with me. This one has to be great because it has to last a long time.” She held out her hand.
Stone took it and followed her upstairs.
There was a knock at Ari’s door, and he opened it to find Annie Lee standing there: Eurasian, petite, and very fetching to him. He showed her in and pointed to a chair.
She didn’t take it immediately. “What’s all that on the bed?” she asked.
“You can read it after our conversation,” Ari replied. “Your speed-reading skills will be very useful for the next few months.”
“What will we be doing?”
“We will be making Senator Joseph Box into a credible candidate for president,” he said.
“I love a challenge,” she replied wryly.
“Those things are his bio, his speeches, and pretty much everything ever written about him. The articles will point out areas of his persona that we’ll have to pay particular attention to.”
She picked up a stack of papers and sat down at his desk. “Let me read a few,” she said. She started with the bio, then continued through a two-inch stack of paper. “I’ve got the gist,” she said shortly. “Does this job pay money?”
“Ten thousand dollars a month plus room, board, and travel expenses.”
Her mouth dropped open. “That’s more than sixty dollars an hour.”
“Then you must try to be worth it. Come on, we have to go find an apartment.” He took his new checkbook and tucked it into a coat pocket. “And buy some clothes and a car.”
“Good God! Who’s paying for this?”
“A perfectly legal political action committee.”
“Which is committed to making Box president?”
“Nearly president, I think.”
“Why ‘nearly’?”
“Who in their right mind would actually want Box to be president? I think they have other motives.”
“Such as?”
“Scaring the shit out of the Republican Party. Let’s go.” Ari led her from the room and double-locked the door behind him.
“What kind of apartment are we looking for?” she asked.
“One with two bedrooms and baths, with workspace, too. I saw a sign off the Square the other day that I’d like to know more about.” They walked over to the Square, then to a side street. “There,” Ari said, nodding toward a tall, new condo building.
“Nothing cozy, huh?”
“Nope.” They went into the building to where a woman sat at a desk. “We’d like to see that,” he said, pointing to a sign that read: MODEL APARTMENT ON VIEW.
The woman looked him up and down. “Certainly, sir,” she said. She took some keys from a desk drawer and led him to the elevator. They rose to the top floor, where she opened a door and ushered them through.
There was a large living room with a dining area, an excellent kitchen, and three bedrooms. It was furnished as if it was a department store. Even kitchen utensils and tableware were in place.
Ari walked quickly from room to room. “How much to rent?” he asked.
“Seventy-five hundred, per month. Unfurnished, of course, minimum one-year lease.”
“How much for the furniture?”
“You’d have to speak with the decorator about that.”
“I’ll take the apartment if you’ll speak to the decorator and get me a favorable price for the furniture.”
The woman took out her cell phone, dialed a number, and then wandered into the kitchen to talk. Then she came back. “The retail price of everything here is thirty-eight thousand dollars, but you can buy it all for twenty-five thousand.”
“Done,” Ari said, producing a checkbook.
“There’s a security deposit of a month’s rent, and you pay the first and last months now.” She told him whom to make the checks out to, and she produced a lease and began filling in the blanks.
“Oh,” Ari said, “does that include parking in the building?”
“Yes, for one car.”
He turned to Annie. “Do you own a car?”
“No,” she replied.
“That is satisfactory.” He wrote a check for the rent and another for the furniture.
“When would you like to move in?” the agent asked, handing him the lease and a pen.
“Now,” Ari replied.
“I’ll need half an hour to clear the checks,” she said.
“That’s all right. We have some shopping to do.”
She handed him two sets of keys, he gave one to Annie and they went downstairs.
“What kind of shopping?” Annie asked.
“I’m going over to J. Press and buy some suitable clothes. Why don’t you do the same? I don’t think Harvard Graduate Student is a good look for a political operative of either gender. We need to look more prosperous.”
“J. Crew is good for me,” she said.
He signed a blank check and gave it to her. “I’ll need receipts. I’ll meet you back here in a couple of hours.”
He shopped for an hour, chose some suits, jackets, shirts, and shoes, then got his clothes marked up for alterations to the cuffs and sleeves and ordered everything delivered to the apartment. Then he got into a cab.
“Take me to a Chevrolet car dealer,” he said to the driver.
Three-quarters of an hour later, he drove a new Tahoe off the lot and to his new building. He went upstairs and smelled cooking as he got off the elevator and let himself into the apartment.
The living room was crowded with shopping bags from J. Crew and J. Press, and Annie was in the kitchen. “Hi,” she said, “I did some grocery shopping.”
31
Bob Cantor knocked, then walked into Stone’s office and sat down. “I think you’ve had enough of Sherry and me,” he said.
“Nonsense. You can stay as long as you like.”
“What I’d like is to go back to my hideout in Brooklyn and take Sherry with me.”
“Do you think that will be safe?”
“It’ll be safe because they don’t know about it,” he replied. “I’ve swept the neighborhood here for the past couple of days, and it’s been squeaky clean. I think Brooklyn will be, too. I’ve also taken a couple of trips to my house downtown, and there’s no human surveillance on it. No electronic surveillance, either, if I’m any good at what I do.”
Sherry joined them and thanked Stone profusely.
“Our stuff is all packed and in the car,” Bob said.
“You okay for money?” Stone asked.
“Oh, yeah. I’ve always got cash on hand.” He stood up and offered his hand. “Call me, if there are any developments.”
“I don’t think there will be,” Stone said, “now that Jamie’s book is coming out. Since we’ve already done our worst, we’re not a threat to them anymore.”
“I hope you’re right,” Bob said. “Just remember, revenge runs deep in the Italian character.”
“That’s what Dino keeps telling me,” Stone replied.
They said goodbye and left.
Ari sat in front of his laptop and made a Skype call. Senator Joseph Box answered. “Ari?” he asked.
“Yes, Senator.”
“Welcome aboard.”
“I’ve been following your campaign on the Internet, and I have a couple of observations.”
“I’d be happy to hear them.”
“Senator, I get the impression that you have a good memory.”
“An outstandingly excellent memory,” Box replied. “I can recite whole chapters from books that I read in high school.”
“Can you memorize a fifteen-minute speech?”
“Certainly. I’ve pretty much been ignoring the teleprompter.”
“So I have noticed,” Ari said. “I don’t want you to confuse reciting a speech from memory and improvising one. They’re two different skills, and somehow, when you improvise, too many things come out wrong.”