Michael Walsh Bundle (61 page)

In the old days, he would have run away. He would have endured the humiliation of being bested by a twist and being unable to do anything about it. But now he didn't have to, not any longer. As he discovered yesterday, he could do something about it. In fact, here, on this hallowed spot, he could do a couple of things, and then come back for more.

Raymond turned away from Principessa for a moment. At once, she regretted her words and her actions. The poor boy had no idea who she was. He was some lost soul, an out-of-towner, probably simple, who'd gotten caught up in yesterday's events and didn't know where to go or what to do. In fact, he most likely wasn't homeless at all. He probably had a room in one of those cheap Times Square hotels, but had been unable to get to it due to the emergency. She felt like a real heel…

“Sorry,” she said, “that was rude. I am Principessa Stanley. What's your name?”

This was a shy boy she was dealing with, she could tell that. A lot of men went all weak in the knees when they actually met her in the flesh; she was used to that. Time for a little of the old noblesse oblige.

“Raymond,” he said. “Raymond Crankheit. From Wahoo, Nebraska. You ever been to Wahoo?”

“No,” she replied, because after all why in the hell would she ever have been to some nowhere dump like Wahoo, or even Nebraska, when there were still places in South America and China and India she hadn't visited yet?

However, as it turned out, “no” was the last thing she said, for Raymond suddenly wheeled and struck her with the stock of his rifle as if he was swinging a baseball bat—another thing he had never been particularly good at, but at which at this moment he was more than proficient. The woman fell hard, soundlessly, face-first into the ground, her head bleeding. But she was still moving, trying to say something but producing only muffled noises, little bleats and whimpers, just the way the Japanese schoolgirls in those porn videos he watched for free on the Internet did.

Perfect.

He trussed her up with some of the rope in his kit, just the way the Brothers had taught him, bound her tightly. He wanted her alive, for later.

He pushed her deep into the bushes and into the hole where he had buried his weapons. It wasn't deep enough to fully cover her, but he could get a lot of her into it, including her arms, and by tamping down the dirt he could effectively immobilize her. He covered the rest of her with some camouflage they had given him, and turned her face up and looked at her. She was bloody and dirty, but that didn't really matter at this point. She was still a woman, she was alive, and this was likely as close as he was going to get to a creature like this.

Raymond Crankheit kissed Principessa Stanley as hard as he could. It was inexpert and clumsy, but he got what he wanted out of it. For the first time in his life, he knew what a woman tasted like. He took one of his spare T-shirts, ripped it apart and bound her eyes with it. The remainder he stuffed into her mouth. He pulled a plastic garbage bag over her head, and left her there, waiting for him.

He picked up his rifle and made ready to go, then stopped. Something wasn't right. He'd heard that guys who were dating always liked to have a little something of their girlfriend's to remember them, a souvenir, to wear or keep in a pocket or billfold. He went back to Principessa and slowly lifted the Baggie so that he could get a good look at her.

Her ears were shapely and well-formed, and he thought about cutting one of them off but decided against it because he didn't want her all bloody when he got back. He wanted her alive and beautiful, just the way she was now. That ruled out her nose as well, and as for her fingers, they were buried and thus out of the question.

He put the rifle down and started at the back of her head, working his way around. He did his best not to draw blood, although some of that was unfortunately necessary. Just a prick here or two. Had he been a wild Red Indian, like the kind who used to roam the plains of Nebraska? Not near Wahoo, because as anybody knew, Wahoo was near Omaha, which was on the river, but farther to the west, the Wild West of cowboy movies, which is mostly where he'd seen it, except for a drive across the state one time to visit some relative out there by Scottsbluff someplace—he couldn't remember.

It took a while, but by the time was finished he had most of her hair. Carefully, he replaced the Baggie and patted her on the head, to let her know everything was all right and that he'd be back to claim the rest of his trophies later. But it was time to go.

He picked up his rifle again. There were, he'd heard, millions of people in Manhattan, which meant that he would run out of ammo long before he ran out of targets. It would not be until later that he realized his cell phone had fallen out of his pocket and was probably buried along with the woman.

Century City—morning

If he had had time, Jake Sinclair would have enjoyed being in his new offices. All the right folks were moving to the old Fox back lot these days, including two of the major talent agencies and some entertainment law firms, to go along with the usual mixture of financial-services companies and shopping malls. Everything from the marble floors to the strategically placed Persian carpets to the art on the walls and the sculptures in the halls was the result of his taste and his choice. It was amazing how much art you could buy when half of Hollywood was feeling poor.

And here he was the one—the media mogul in a declining business—who was supposed to be feeling the pinch, not the stars who used to make twenty million a picture, and now were reduced to the relative penury of fourteen million. But it all made sense. When the stars made less, then everybody made less, including the agents, producers, the co-stars, and the writers. Hollywood may be Moscow-on-the-Pacific, at least as far as its social sense of itself was concerned, but in reality it was the purest form of trickle-down capitalism in the country. Sure, it was “high school with money,” but the high-school pecking order made a lot of sense in a
Lord of the Flies
sort of way; it quickly sorted out the winners from the losers, the beauties from the nerds, the popular kids from the dorks, and those lessons stayed with you a lifetime.

Show people were so easy to manipulate, it was like a vacation.

But on this day Jake Sinclair had no time for self-congratulation. He had a very important meeting with the woman who would be the next president of the United States, especially if she continued to play ball.

He moved quickly from the private elevator through the public halls, where his employees could see him—a general needed to be seen from time to time—and past the ranks of video screens displaying live television feeds, his newspapers' stories as they were in the process of being written, and the websites that had latterly become such a large part of his operations.

Angela Hassett was waiting for him, standing in his office and watching one of the video feeds intently. When she became president, it was he who would have to show up early for appointments, and get used to being kept waiting, but at the moment he was delivering a Hollywood power message, which was that the more important person in the meeting dictated the schedule and the other person took it and liked it. “Ms. Hassett,” he said as he swept into the room, “so sorry to keep you waiting. You know the traffic in this town.”

Truth was, traffic had nothing to do with it, but Jake Sinclair always liked to make an entrance, and so he affected that L.A. air of frazzled bemusement, as if the torture of being confined in his new Mercedes during the commute from Los Feliz to Century City was akin to spending ten years on Devil's Island, except you didn't actually have to do the time. “Can I get you something to—”

“Mr. Sinclair,” she interrupted, “Neither of us has time for coffee, Diet Coke, or bullshit. So let's get started, shall we? What do you make of what's going on in New York?”

Angela Hassett was, he had to admit, a rather striking woman. Her photographs didn't do her justice, and just the way she moved and tossed her head revealed the coquette beneath the frosty exterior. Sinclair understood at once that here was a woman for whom “by any means necessary” was not just a slogan but a way of life. He liked her: they could do business together. They were soul mates.

“A terrible thing, of course,” he said blandly.

“I mean about the cease-fire, or whatever it is. I want to know everything you know about it.”

“Perhaps we should speak privately,” he said. As his people moved toward the door, she flashed the same look at her people, who quickly got the message and similarly headed toward the exits. “I agree,” she said.

The door closed. They were alone. He dropped the pretense of bonhomie. “I don't know,” he said. “We're working on it. In fact, we have our best reporters in the field. But I gather the gunmen, whoever they are, have gone to ground.”

“Does Tyler have anything to do with this?”

“How would I know?”

“You're supposed to be the media mogul, not me. All I'm doing is running for president.”

Her tone was beginning to piss him off. “Then how can I help you, Ms. Hassett?”

She didn't like his tone any more than he'd liked hers. “There's no point in wasting any time, Mr. Sinclair,” she said frostily. “We both know why I'm here.”

“Call me Jake—”

“Mr. Sinclair,” she continued, ignoring him. “What we have is strictly a business arrangement at this point. You have something I need and I have something you want. Need and want are not the same thing in order of magnitude, which means that at the moment you have me over a barrel, hierarchically speaking. That will change come November, but for the nonce let us simply say that thus far things have worked out well, I am here to accommodate you.”

Sinclair smiled. He liked a woman—or a man, for that matter—who got right to the point. There would be no time-wasting jockeying as the two adversaries sorted out whose dog was bigger. Things were clear.

“I don't have to tell you that Jeb Tyler is weak and that he's in trouble. Neither do I have to tell you why. He's weak because he's a fool and a coward. All his life he's played it safe by playing it down the middle; he thought a smile, a shoeshine, and a nice haircut could take him as far as he wanted to go, and up until last year he was right. But events and circumstances have a way of dislodging the best-laid plans, and now he's in over his head and sinking rapidly. I can beat him. I know it, you know it, and he knows it. All he needs is a little push.” She glanced at one of the televisions.

“Tell me something I don't already know.”

“I can guarantee you a place at the table.”

“As I said…”

The coquette disappeared. “Don't fuck with me, buster. You and I both know that your media empire is being held together with spit and bubblegum, and if you don't get some tax breaks and subsidies from the feds, you're screwed.” She gestured around the room, with all its expensive furnishings and its panoramic view of this part of Los Angeles. “You're William Randolph Hearst minus the girlfriend and the castle, but if things don't turn around, you're going to end up just like him—bankrupt and impotent…So now that I've got your attention, let's talk turkey.”

Sinclair wasn't used to being spoken to like this. Usually, whoever was unfortunate enough to be sitting across from him in a negotiation was the one on the receiving end of the obloquy, but this woman had waltzed into his office and taken command. Jeb Tyler was in more trouble than he knew. “I'm all ears,” he said.

“Good. Here's my offer. I'm making this only once, so listen carefully.” Abruptly, she rose. “Where's the bathroom?” she inquired. Sinclair indicated a door off to one side. “Will you follow me, please?”

Puzzled but intrigued, he followed her into the loo. Like any self-respecting executive washroom, it was equipped with a shower, a bidet, and a wide selection of toiletries, only some of which had been filched from various hotels in Cannes and Tokyo.

She closed the door. “Don't get any bright ideas,” she said, reaching past him and into the shower. With a quick turn of her wrists, she turned the mixer on full force. The water gushed forth, a vivid realization of old man Mulholland's famous exhortation when he opened the floodgates of the dammed, siphoned water from the Owens Valley and told Los Angeles: “There it is. Take it.”

“It's not that I don't trust you,” she said, “but I don't trust you.” She pulled him close to her. The steam from the hot water was already turning the confined space into a steam bath. Sinclair felt the beads of sweat mingle with the water vapor as it rolled down his face and down his chest.

“All my life, I've been fascinated with puzzles,” said Angela Hassett. “Codes, ciphers, what have you. Not crosswords or Sudoku—real puzzles. They were my hobby as a kid and so they've remained. In another life, perhaps I would have gone into the CIA or the NSA, but I chose another path.” She moved even closer, so he could hear her over the running water. “Still, my love remains constant.”

They were very close now, her face close to his, her mouth near his left cheek. He thought about kissing her, then reconsidered the impulse. There would be plenty of time for friskiness later, if it came to that. Imagine, fucking the President of the United States! He was starting to gain a new appreciation for Judith Campbell and the rest of JFK's mistresses.

“So, the way I see politics, is that it's a giant puzzle. In order to win, you have to fit all the pieces together. But you don't have infinite time; you have to get it right and you have to get it right under fire. Any election can be won or lost depending on which day the people vote. On which news comes out when. Stories get timed, then launched. He's a drunk, she's a slut. She had an abortion when she was fourteen; he's a recovering drug addict who did time in that rehab clinic in Park City and the only people who knew were Hollywood types. He has a taste for little boys; she for little girls. Scandals are not what they used to be, but they can still be potent. It all just depends on how you fit the pieces together.”

Sinclair was getting to be pretty uncomfortable now, but what was he going to do? Ask permission to leave the bathroom? They were in there for a reason, and that reason was, she didn't trust him, didn't trust him not to monitor their conversation, not to record it, not to keep it as a weapon against her, or at least an insurance policy, against such time as he would need it, against such time when they, like thieves everywhere, would fall out and turn on each other. He hoped that day would never come, but he was too smart and too experienced and too cynical not to allow for its possibility. And so, he knew, was she.

“So what's the deal?”

She pushed back a bit, and ran her fingers through her hair, then wiped her face. “You take him down with everything you've got. His past as an ambulance-chaser. How he put doctors out of business all over Louisiana until poor pregnant black women were hitchhiking from Lake Charles to Houston to drop their babies somewhere half-civilized. How he's probably gay.”

She watched his eyes closely to see how he'd react. Surely he knew, or at least suspected. Everybody did. It was the worst-kept rumor in Washington, the first bachelor president, with his great reputation as a womanizer, the ultimate get for every single gal from Bethesda to Escondido, all a sham.

“You can't prove it,” said Sinclair. “Nobody can.”

“What does it matter? All you have to do is raise the question. What does he have to hide?” She moved back in closer, this time for the kill. “And what about the Edwardsville fiasco? What about that dead reporter? What about his embrace of Islam? If any of those crazy mujahideen get near him, he's as good as dead—why aren't they telling us about this threat to national security? Can we really afford such a man in the White House, in the Oval Office? It's time for a change.”

She placed both hands on his cheeks, then slowly moved them up the sides of his head until her fingers were now running through his hair, gently tousling it.

“And what's in it for me?”

“You'll be the last man standing,” she said. “My administration will make sure of it.”

Sinclair made one last attempt to find and assert his manhood. “But the same could be said for you. Nobody knows anything about you. Your past is a closed book, your records sealed. All you are is—”

“All I am is a fresh new face. All I am is not Jeb Tyler. And considering what's going on in New York City right now, that's all I have to be.”

She had him there. “I guess we have a deal, then,” he said. Jake Sinclair had never met anyone quite like Angela Hassett.

“Then let's seal it.” She tilted her face upward, and her lips found his. She was hungrier than he expected, and they stayed that way for a while, longer than necessary for a business deal, not quite long enough for anything else to happen, leaving the promise hanging in the air.

She broke it first, pulled back and just stood there, looking at him. He broke the awkward silence:

“What about your husband?”

She laughed, then tossed him a towel with which to wipe his face. “Don't try to fuck me, Jake,” she said.

She turned off the water, turned toward him. He wasn't sure what to expect, but whatever it was it wasn't this:

A slap across the face, hard.

“If you ever keep me waiting again,” she said, “I'll kill you.”