Sympathy for the Devil (27 page)

"I thought your boss was
simpatico
," Libby said.

"She is, but
her
boss isn't, and
his
boss even less so."

Libby sighed. "Say what's on your mind, Colleen."

"I want you to look into this, Libby. For the Sisterhood."

"I'm not refusing, but I wouldn't even know where to begin. I didn't go to the FBI Academy, remember? I'm not an investigator."

"No, but you've got a buddy who is."

"You mean Quincey."

"I do, indeed."

Libby chewed her lower lip for a few seconds. "That's not a terrible idea, Colleen. But money's an issue."

"It is?"

"I'll do it
pro bono
, since it's for the Sisterhood. But Quincey does this stuff for a living, and I happen to know he hasn't worked in a while. He'd probably take it on as a favor to me, but I'm reluctant to ask. I owe him enough, as it is."

"You mean your life, and all that."

"That's exactly what I mean."

"Um. What do you think Quincey would charge for a job like this?"

Libby told her.

"Well, that's not unreasonable, considering he's a specialist. Look, let me talk to Rachel. The Sisterhood has a fund for emergencies, and this may well qualify, considering the possible implications."

"There's a fund? Where did
that
come from? We don't pay dues, or anything. At least
I
don't."

"Me, neither. But quite a few of the Sisters have successful careers, and they've been generous, over the years. I don't know how much is in there, but there certainly ought to be enough to pay Quincey's fees and expenses. Your expenses, too, for that matter."

"So, I should talk to Rachel?"

"No, I'll do it, since I'm the one proposing that we hire your boyfriend."

"He's not my boyfriend, Colleen. You know that."

"Just an expression. I should have an answer for you later this evening, then you can get in touch with Quincey. Sound good?"

"All right, Colleen. I'll talk to you later."

Libby's flight back to New York didn't leave until morning. As she unpacked her suitcase, she hummed quietly to herself. Any fan of old cowboy music would have recognized the tune as
'Back in the Saddle Again.'

Quincey Morris leaned back and looked at his old friend.

"So, okay," he said to Masterson. "Let's see what we know. We've got a member of the U.S. Senate, who also happens to be one of the strongest contenders to become the Republican Party's candidate for President -"

"Yeah, about that," Masterson said.

Morris looked at him. "What?"

"I don't know how much attention you've been paying to the campaign so far -"

"Not much. I've had other stuff on my mind."

"All right, but you might want to take a good, hard look at how Stark got to
be
somebody with a real shot at the nomination."

"There's only one way, isn't there?" Morris said, frowning. "You run in the various state primaries and pick up delegates for the national convention. The guy with the most delegates at the convention is the nominee. End of story."

"Yeah, except when this particular story started, Stark was at the back of the pack."

"'The Un-Magnificent Seven', right?"

"Uh-huh. And if you were going to rank their chances, Howard fucking Stark was the consensus choice for number seven."

"Seriously?"

"A year or so ago, there's seven of them, with Stark as ass-end Charlie. Then what's-his-name, Brooks, gets electrocuted in his house, and suddenly there's six."

"I don't remember anybody claiming there was something hinky about the guy's death. It was supposed to be some kind of freak accident, right?"

"That's what everybody says. Leaky pipe, water on the floor, defective light switch and
bzzzz
- Ron Brooks is off to that great quorum call in the sky."

"And you figure he had some help along the way. Based on what evidence?"

"Bear with me, Quincey. It only makes sense if you look at the whole picture."

"Okay, then." Morris spread his hands. "Paint me a picture."

"So Brooks is an accidental death, and the seven becomes six. Then Frank Chesbro blows his brains out, just before the the Iowa caucuses."

"Really? I don't remember that."

"You don't? Jesus, Quincey, it was all over the news."

"This was in January?"

At Masterson's nod, Morris said, "That explains it. I had some other stuff going on then. Took up all of my attention, for a while. Why'd this fella do himself in - anybody know?"

"Well, I'm pretty sure the photos of him sucking dick had something to do with it."

"Dear God," Morris said. "Yeah, I reckon that'll do it, all right."

"Happened when he was in college. I don't know if Chesbro was gay, or just trying it out back then. But he was unwise enough to let somebody take pictures."

"
Unwise
is right."

"Person or persons unknown dug up those photos and provided them to that piece-of-shit rag
The National Tatler
. They put little black bars over the naughty bits when they published, but pretty soon the original photos were all over the Internet, and the black bars disappeared."

"Destroyed the poor bastard, and his family too, I reckon."

"That's for sure. I mean, there's stuff you can do when you're young and maybe explain away later - like DWI, or smokin' some weed."

"Especially if you don't inhale."

"Especially that. But you can't get caught with another dude's cock in your mouth, even if it was forty years ago, and expect to be President. Not yet, anyway."

"I think I'm starting to see where you're going with all this," Morris said. "Okay, so Chesbro's dead, and that leaves five, including Stark."

"Two more of them are alive, physically, but in serious trouble politically. In Lunsford's case, somebody dug up evidence -"

"Person or persons unknown, again?"

"The very same - or, at least, I'm betting it is. Anyway, Lunsford's apparently got a history of plagiarism."

"That sounds like something else from college days," Morris said. "Ancient history."

"Some of it is, some isn't. True, he seems to have lifted parts of his senior thesis out of some guy's book. But the other instance is a lot more recent - like last year."

"Even so, I wouldn't think too many people outside of academia give much of a damn about plagiarism, Bat."

"They do when it's in the speech announcing that you're gonna run for President."

"Guess I can see how that
would
make a difference."

"Apparently, big chunks of his speech are identical to one that was given by Glenda Jackson."

"The actress?
Elizabeth R
, and all that?"

"That's the one. She quit acting and ran for Parliament about twenty years ago. Been there ever since."

"Yeah, I guess if you're going to rip off somebody's speech, it would be better to use one from another country, especially an old speech. Folks over here probably wouldn't even notice."

"Except for 'person or persons unknown.'"

"He does get around, doesn't he? Or they do."

"All the way down to New Mexico, too. Looks like he found some bimbo who used to bang Ramon Martinez on a regular basis, back when he was a state rep."

"That's right, I saw something on TV last week," Morris said. "Slipped my mind completely. I'm trying to think - there's some kind of smoking gun, isn't there?"

Masterson nodded. "Looks like Martinez was paying her rent for a while, and a couple of times he wrote out checks. The bimbo made photocopies."

"Did she? And kept them all this time? My, my. Well, it's not quite as good as having the guy's jism on a dress hanging in your closet, but it ain't bad, either - unless you're Ramon Martinez, that is."

"Martinez isn't dead yet, and neither is Lunsford - politically, I mean. But they've both dropped in the polls, big time. And guess whose numbers have been looking better and better?"

"Wouldn't be Howard fucking Stark, by any chance, would it?"

Masterson nodded slowly. "You got it in one."

"Okay, Bat, I admit it looks like a pattern. But apart from the first guy, who might have just been a freak accident, it looks like nothing but old-fashioned dirty politics. You don't need the Forces of Darkness for that. Or if you do, then they've been at it for a hell of a long time, no pun intended."

"Yes and no. Sure, coming up with dirt on political opponents probably goes back to ancient Greece, if not farther. But where did
this
particular dirt come from? All these guys have been in politics a long time, which means they've made a lot of enemies. But nobody has found this shit, until now.
Nobody.
"

Morris sat there, staring at his now-empty tea mug without really seeing it. Finally, he said, "All right, let's say that this pattern of nastiness is so unlikely that we'll put a question mark on it. We'll add it to the other things we know, which include a voice you overheard that didn't sound human, Stark's face undergoing a momentary change that may have been unnatural, Stark receiving an apparent burn from contact with the consecrated hands of a Catholic priest, the burn healing unnaturally fast and said priest dying shortly thereafter, in a particularly gruesome fashion. Is that a fair summary?"

"Yeah, more or less."

"Okay, then." Morris leaned back in his chair. "So, my question for you is, 'What do you want me to do about it?'"

The demon calling herself Ashley leaned forward until she was looking over Peters' shoulder. The computer monitor in front of them contained the schedule of Republican primary elections for the next month.

"How're we going to do it, Peters?" She spoke in the same matter-of-fact tone she used when suggesting delightfully perverse sexual acts. "How do we off this cocksucker?"

Without taking his eyes off the screen Peters said, "How can somebody so beautiful also be so vulgar?"

She went over and flopped into a sitting position on the edge of the bed, the winter sunlight turning her hair golden. "I suppose you could say that I come by it honestly. And only in this stupid Puritanical culture are the two things considered mutually exclusive."

Ashley was dressed in tan yoga pants and a loose-fitting gray sweatshirt that said 'All Souls Parish Choir' on the front.

"No argument from me," he said, scrolling down the page in front of him.

"But my question remains - how do we do it?"

"Better question: how do we get away with it?"

"Well, yes, that too."

"'That, too'," he repeated. "Easy for you to say. You can probably discorporate at will, leaving me to face the guns of the U.S. Secret Service alone."

"Peters, listen to me," she said. Some exasperation had crept into her tone. "This body I have created is solid flesh and blood, as you have reason to know. If somebody shoots me in the right spot, the body will die, and my essence will be returned summarily to Hell, a journey I am in
no hurry
to make."

He held up a pacifying hand. "Okay, no offense, I didn't know."

"Well now you do, and you'd better know this, too: the same thing is true for you."

"Yeah, I figured that."

"So, if we don't succeed in this little mission of ours, getting shot dead by the Secret Service is going to be the very
least
of our worries."

"It's not like I need any more motivation, Ashley," he said. "Astaroth gave me all I could ever want, my first night back on Earth. But can we agree it would be a very good thing if we could assassinate Stark,
and
not get killed ourselves,
and
not get sent to prison for 99 years? Sound reasonable?"

"Of course it does, sweetie - which is why I keep asking how best it can be done. How would you have managed it back in the old days, when you were the CIA's answer to 007?"

"Not me, I was never that suave. And I never was assigned a target anywhere near as important as Stark is over here, or as well-protected."

"How about a bomb?" she said. "It shouldn't be hard to determine where's he's going to be speaking a few days in advance. His PR people would probably be happy to tell us. A couple of pounds of Semtex, in a shaped charge, maybe. The technology they have these days, we could set it off from a half mile away, and then go out to lunch. You're buying, since you've got the magic wallet."

Peters was shaking his head before she'd finished speaking. "No - no bomb."

She looked at him, one elegant eyebrow raised.

"Two reasons," he said. "One is, they've got dogs that can sniff out explosives, and if those poochies aren't trained to recognize Semtex, then somebody's not doing his job."

She made a face. "I hadn't thought of that." Then she brightened a little. "See? That's why Astaroth picked you for the job. What's the other reason a bomb's no good, by the way?"

"I was sent here to kill Stark. Fair enough - Stark isn't even human anymore, not really. And if he gets into the White House, some real bad shit's going to happen. But a bomb will most likely take out a bunch of innocent people, and I'm just not gonna do that."

"You're serious," she said, as if she didn't believe he was. Or maybe she just didn't want to.

"Damn right, so to speak."

"Peters, you and I have both been in Hell. And if there's anything we should both know down to the marrow of our borrowed bones, it's that there
are
no innocent people."

"You can split semantic hairs any way you want, Ashley. I don't know what role I'm supposed to play, in the ongoing battle between Heaven and Hell. Astaroth says I'm here to do Hell's bidding - well, the bidding of one faction. But he's a demon, and I hear they lie a lot, no offense to present company. Or, could be that's what he
thinks
is going on, but it's more complicated than that. Maybe I'm not here on Hell's business, after all - or not exclusively. Maybe I've actually got a chance at, forgive the expression, redemption."