The Incumbent Read online

  The Incumbent

  Brian Mcgrory

  A warning by an anonymous caller that "nothing is as it seems" sets reporter Jack Flynn on the trail of the truth, a trail that takes him first to a militia compound in Idaho and then to a workingman's bar in Boston before he realizes that the answers are hidden much closer to home. The flaws in the plot are even more glaring considering the paeans to investigative journalism and its heroes with which McGrory seasons his narrative. It wouldn't have taken Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein 10 minutes of telephone research to conclude what the author requires three-quarters of a novel to figure out. But in an election year when the candidates compete to see who can put the voters to sleep first, The Incumbent may whet the appetites of a few political junkies.

  BRIAN MCGRORY

  THE INCUMBENT

  To my father, to his memory, for teaching all those lessons with deeds rather than words

  one

  Chelsea, Massachusetts February 13, 1979

  One hour and counting until dusk, the time of the day Curtis Black liked best. The time when the distant sky left the illusion of light, but the enveloping haze provided the cover of dark. A time when if you knew what you were doing, if you knew how, and you knew why, the visual, visceral uncertainty of the moment served as your most reliable ally. For Curtis Black, it was a time of day to make his mark.

  Black shook his Johnnie Walker along the top of the rickety Formica table, the cubes of ice smashing softly against each other and the side of the glass. He did this when he was nervous, and yes, he was nervous now. His eyes drifted vacantly across the diagrams spread out before him, then out the window at the waning afternoon light, then back to the diagrams, then at his watch. He took a small sip of Scotch.

  Good help is hard to find. That's what he kept thinking, over and over again, that one thought interfering with his ability to concentrate on the task at hand. Good help is hard to find and harder still to keep.

  Kind of ironic, but the better you do, the quicker guys are to move on, to take their experience, the lessons they learned under you, and set out on their own. To succeed you have to keep moving, taking on new people, and every new person represents a new risk, every single time.

  But what else are you going to do? Go it alone? Go straight? Black took another sip and bore in on the closest diagram.

  The armored truck would come down Prince Street and take a right on Hanover, then drive two blocks through what would be relatively heavy, early rush-hour traffic. There would be a dark blue delivery van idling in the spot where the armored truck usually double-parked, but given the time of day, given the foot traffic, the pickups, the drop-offs, that shouldn't seem unusual. As a matter of fact, the last two Tuesdays, Black had sat in that idling delivery van himself, positioned in that precise spot, to watch how the armored car driver would react, and both times the driver had pulled up in front, parked, and made his pickup from the Shawmut Bank.

  It would be a two-man truck. In spite of his nerves, Black chuckled to himself at the thought. All that vulnerability, all that exposure, and just two men to withstand the world. The entire operation, from start to the safety of a successful getaway, should be over in ten minutes, maximum. Unless, of course, someone screwed up.

  Which got back to the issue of Black's nerves and this recurring thought that good help is hard to find. He took another sip of whisky and stared out the window at nothing in particular, out onto Broadway in Chelsea, where immigrants locked in a losing battle against despair drove ancient cars down the litter-strewn street. Their plight escaped Black's notice. One small mistake by any one of his five guys, he was thinking, and the whole thing could turn to bedlam in a fraction of a second, and that one fraction of one second could haunt the rest of a lifetime. Maybe even dictate a lifetime. So it comes down to the execution even more than the plans, and the execution was in the hands of five guys he barely knew. He took another pull of whisky and continued gazing out the window, his chin resting hard on the cup of his hand.

  By now, Black was oblivious to the diagrams. Rather, he was fretting about one of his men, a guy with the worrisome nickname of Rocky. The bad news was that this Rocky didn't seem to mind the name at all, at least as far as Black could see. The mildly good news was that the name came from Rocky's given name, Rocco. "Call me Rocky," he had said, jovially, that first time they had met for a hamburger and a beer over at the Red Hat. Black had just rolled his eyes. There are no resumes in this business, and no reliable lists of references. So much is done on feel, and suddenly, in the lengthening shadows of that crucial afternoon, Black didn't feel so good about this one.

  Rocco Manupelli was a Vietnam veteran, an ex-con, and a former Mafia wiseguy who had done three years in the Walpole State Prison for armed robbery. Black had convinced himself that it might be good to work with a guy who had done time, because a guy who had done time will do absolutely anything not to do more, including getting something right, listening to the plans, not freelancing at the scene. But when they met, Rocky made only a passing reference to his stint in jail, and it wasn't even a negative one. He had made mention of how much exercise he had in prison, all that weight he had lost, as if he had gone to a frigging health spa. It was as if he hadn't minded, as if jail was as good as anything else he might have done, and remembering that fact was now beginning to scare the bejesus out of Curtis Black.

  He took a final sip of whisky, draining the glass. He wanted more but wouldn't allow himself any. The goal was to calm his nerves, not dull them. He had to be aware, to be on top of his game, even if everyone knew that the best part of Curtis Black's game was in the planning, not the execution. One of his old cohorts, out on his own now (aren't they all?), used to say that his planning was always so precise, so exhaustively researched, that a trained ape couldn't screw up the scene. Indeed, it was so good that Black never saw fit to carry a gun.

  All that would do was add ten years to the jail term on the off chance he was ever caught, and the guys who worked for him, they were carrying anyways.

  He focused for a moment on the traffic jerking up Broadway, at the elderly and unemployed walking along the gum-stained sidewalk, so slowly, because they really had no place they needed to go. He shook his glass once more, listening to the reassuring sound of the ice, then slid the tumbler along the tabletop just out of reach and bore in on the top diagram, envisioning the Wells Fargo security guard pushing a dolly carrying a duffel bag filled with cash. Everything goes right, and three men in ski masks jump out of the back of the blue van and surround him. A fourth man appears from across the street, comes up from behind, and disarms the second guard, who is standing beside the truck. Black would be directing the operation from the driver's seat of a getaway car, barking orders into a tiny microphone that the others could hear through their own earpieces. The idea was to keep the operation simple, let the men do their work, say nothing confusing. In a matter of three minutes, the men should be off the street and in the car, no shots, no worries. They'd leave the stolen van behind.

  The knock on the door downstairs startled Black, even though he had been waiting for it. He looked at his watch and saw it was 4:25 P.m.

  Right on time. He picked up a photograph resting on the windowsill and smiled wi/lly at the three people who were smiling back at him-a woman sitting on a sofa, holding the arms of a toddler who was courageously standing for the first time, and a man, a younger version of himself, kneeling nearby on the living room rug.

  He pulled himself up from the metal chair, knocked his fist once against the top of the table, and ambled down the steep, crooked stairs to open the door. One hour to showtime.

  one

  Present Day Thursday, October 26

  It's always odd, meeting someone famous. On
television, they never look at you, unless they're giving a speech or staring at the camera in a commercial, and in those cases, they are perfectly made up, every hair in place, rouge spread across their cheeks by artists who make lucrative livings helping people appear better than they actually are.

  In newspaper pictures, they are staring down or straight ahead or off at some distant point, dead still, like a corpse. But in person, their eyes move as if some mannequin has sprung eerily to life. They have blemishes, hair is out of place, and your blood races the first few times they use your name.

  It was like that on a perfect autumn dawn amid the rolling hills of Congressional Country Club, the type of day when the air is as crisp as an apple and the bright red and orange leaves look as if they were painted by the hand of God himself. It was just after 6:00 A.m."

  Thursday, October 26, when I wheeled my five-year-old Honda Accord into a space between a hunter green Jaguar and a Lexus. Before I could even pop the key into my trunk, a rather becoming woman flashed a Secret Service badge at me, spoke my name, and asked apologetically if I would raise my arms while she scanned my body with a handheld metal detector.

  A couple of older members happened by, glanced at my car and at the agent frisking me, and shot me a look as if I must be some horrible criminal-or perhaps worse, a trespasser.

  But their expressions changed abruptly when a man in golf cleats came clicking across the parking lot, looking all loosey-goosey with a putter in one hand and a can of Coca-Cola in the other. "Jack," he called out to me from about ten feet away in a voice as familiar as Sinatra. "Jack, Clay Hutchins. It's a pleasure to meet you."

  The introduction was hardly necessary, but I wondered what else you do if you're him: Clayton Hutchins is the president of the United States.

  He was taking a break from the rigors of a heated election campaign to play an early-morning round of golf. Me? I'm a Washington-based reporter for the Boston Record, and if you ask my editors, a pretty damn good one. If you ask me, a very damn good one, but I'm trying to get that problem in check. And what was I doing playing golf with the president at his private club in one of the wealthiest towns in Maryland? Good question. One day I called his press secretary on a story about presidential pardons, a few days later I'm summoned off the campaign trail and onto a golf course with the president himself. I suspected I'd find out the reason soon enough.

  "Mr. President, the pleasure is certainly mine," I said, somewhat flustered, reciting words I had rehearsed in the car on the way. "I'm quite honored by the invitation."

  "What do you say we hit a few putts before we head out, Jack," the president said.

  Some sort of valet in a jumpsuit came running up and grabbed my golf bag. An advance man spoke into a walkie-talkie, and in the distance a caravan of golf carts moved around the practice green. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the female Secret Service agent politely shooing away the two members who had given me the evil look, and I turned and graced them with a sizable smile.

  As I walked toward the putting green with the president, past the ancient, graceful clubhouse, a man in a pair of knickers, a brightly colored argyle sweater, and a golf beret happened out the front door.

  The president leaned in toward me and whispered, "What a complete horse's ass, but he's the best the pro tour could do for me this week."

  Louder, in that booming voice of his: "Jack, I want you to meet Skeeter Davis. Skeeter, this is Jack Flynn. He's the young man I told you about earlier. Skeeter's going to give us a few tips today, turn us into pros. Right, Skeeter?"

  We all made proper introductions and swapped small talk and a few one-liners, though I fear mine weren't all that funny, tempered by some loose butterflies floating uncharacteristically about in my stomach.

  On the practice green, I retreated to my own little corner to take measure of the situation. Here was the president of the United States, in a pair of rumpled khakis with a navy blue polo shirt and a drooping yellow V-neck sweater, treating me like his new best friend. And Skeeter Davis, one of the country's foremost golf champions, ready to give me lessons. There were a dozen golf carts lining the green, some with burly Secret Service agents talking into their wrists and listening through clear plastic earpieces. Two other carts carried four agents dressed in full black Ninja jumpsuits, armed with what appeared to be surface-to-air missile launchers and laser-trained automatic rifles. Over in the distance, on the other side of the caravan, were a few members of the White House press corps, mostly photographers with zoom lenses. There was a lot to think about here, but most of all, what I was thinking was this: Please don't duck hook my first drive into the woods.

  "You boys ready?" the president boomed. His voice was like steel, meant to last, maybe even at times make history. He held his hand up toward the brilliant blue sky and briefly looked around at the pageant of colors that made up this fall morning. "It's going to be a memorable day."

  On the tenth hole, Hutchins cut to the point. By then, he had already sliced six, maybe seven balls deep into the woods, in places where no federal employee had ever gone before. I started to wonder if the Secret Service agents were wearing their considerable gear to protect themselves against an assassin or Hutchins's errant golf shots. And after each ball floated aimlessly over the tree line and into the woods, I'll be damned if Skeeter Davis wasn't right there saying,

  "Excellent swing, Mr. President. Let me just make one small suggestion." I swear to God, Hutchins could have sliced a ball through the windshield of a school bus and caused forty third-graders to careen off a cliff. The air would soon be filled with the sounds of ambulance sirens, and later, mothers wailing over the greatest misery they would ever know. And Davis would have said, "Nice swing, Mr. President. If you'd allow me to make one small suggestion."

  Well, for what it was worth, my game was on, not that anyone really noticed. The Secret Service were looking for trouble. Davis was looking at Hutchins. Hutchins was looking at God knows what, but it wasn't me. Not until the tenth tee, when he asked Davis in a polite but imploring tone, "Skeeter, could you grab us all some lemonade out of that cart over there?"

  As Skeeter made his way off, Hutchins turned to me with a businesslike look on his face and asked in a voice that sounded uncharacteristically timid, "How would you feel about coming over to the White House after the election, taking over as my press secretary?"

  Jesus Christ. I was about to open my mouth, but to say what, I didn't know. Luckily, Hutchins cut me off just as I began to stammer.

  "Look, you know my situation. I have no doubt I'm going to win this election. I'm two points up in our internal polls right now. That's off the record, I hope. But I haven't had the chance to actually govern yet. I have a staff I inherited, and they have no loyalty. Me to you, I don't think most of them are all that good. Not my type, anyways. Pointy-heads. Intellectuals. Wingnut conservatives. Think they know everything, when all's they know is what they read in those far right journals of theirs or get from all that hot air on the Sunday morning gabfests. I've got to get my own people around me. People I respect."

  He paused, checking, I think, to see if his sales pitch was having any impact. I was still in shock, not sure myself if it was or not.

  Skeeter came back, carrying three cups of lemonade over ice. After the brief talk of politics and such real-world considerations as career moves, he suddenly looked ridiculous in his knickers, knee socks, and sweater, like he was the host at some golf theme restaurant on the Grand Strand in South Carolina.

  "Ah, you're a real man of the people, Skeeter," Hutchins said, grabbing his lemonade. Skeeter beamed, missing the irony. To me: "We'll finish this conversation later."

  Hutchins then pushed a tee into the moist turf, took one of those funny half practice swings that some golfers do, then stroked his best drive of the day, the ball soaring a good 220 straight down the fairway before gently bouncing along the tight grass like a little lamb trotting across a dewy meadow. Davis seemed to be about to have an orgasm, s
houting, "Perfect, Mr. President. Perfect."

  I got up and duck hooked my drive hard against a tree ninety yards out, and from the sounds of it, the ball hit about four more pines as it zigzagged deeper into the woods.

  "Would have made that offer earlier if I had known it would help me this much," Hutchins said, a twinkle in his eye. And as I made my way down the fairway, disgusted with my drive and bewildered over where this day was taking me, I couldn't help but begin to like the guy, or at least respect his ability to look for good staff.

  "You're starting to suck, Jack."

  That was the president, on the fourteenth tee, after I hit my fourth consecutive drive into the woods. He nurtured a reputation as a guy who liked to speak his mind, a no-nonsense businessman who had inexplicably flourished in the house of mirrors known as national politics, all the while remaining as blunt as he had when he started out a political neophyte in the state capital of Iowa a mere ten years before. He wasn't much different out here, and these words were spoken with a lopsided grin and a dose of self-satisfaction.

  Golf is like a political campaign, and a good political campaign is like life. You can devise great strategies and practice until you can't even see straight, but the game is long, and hazards will arise that you can never predict. There will be twists and turns that will torture the soul, ups and downs to test every cell of your very being, some of them absurdly unfair. And in the end, simple perseverance is often the key to who wins and who loses, who sits in the White House and who appears on Visa commercials in the Super Bowl, the lovable, powerless failure.

  I bring this up because how could I predict on this day that the floor would fall out of my game because of an offer to be the presidential press secretary, one of the most visible jobs in America and a position that would eventually lead to great fortune for anyone who did it with even a modicum of success? There would be eventual book contracts, a sprawling office with plush carpet and a private bath heading the public relations division of a Wall Street investment house, grossly overpaying appearances performing punditry on network television. Not to mention that while you're at the White House, you might be able to work for what you believe in, perhaps even do some good for the country, if only for a short time.