The Candidate (19 page)

Mike looked up at her. She walked over to her bag and dragged out a laptop. She fired it up and gestured for him to come over as she slipped a memory stick in its side.

“I’ve been back into my vault,” she explained. “In times of need we have to dip our paws into the mud and get them a little dirty. Hodges wants to launch a new policy initiative on poverty, which is great. I’ll do it. But we need a good jab to Stanton’s jaw before the bell rings and that’s where this comes in.”

Her fingers danced over the keys and suddenly a video played. It was grainy, perhaps from some sort of conference, and there was no date. But the figure of Stanton was clear. She listened to questions from a crowd of people behind the camera. She nodded her head and then got up to a lectern to speak.

“That’s a very good point you have there. You know I think that a lot of military wives and families think that’s true. That they have a tough time at home when their husbands and fathers are away. I’ve heard some people say there’s too much emphasis on the problems the soldiers face. Sometimes the war at home is much harder to speak up for than the one being fought by the troops. We need to make sure our military families are looked out for every bit as much as our wonderful veterans.”

Mike was puzzled.

“I don’t get it,” he said.

Dee laughed. “Now watch the edited clip that you are going to pass onto your new friend Lauren at the
Horse Race
blog.”

The clip ran again, this time cutting straight into the middle of Stanton’s speech. It was shaved to just a few seconds long.

“There’s too much emphasis on the problems the soldiers face. Sometimes the war at home is much harder to speak up for than the one being fought by the troops.”

The new video ended there.

“She just doesn’t seem to understand our boys in uniform,” Dee said and shook her head. “She seems to have a real problem with those fine Americans soldiers. Thinks perhaps they get the kid gloves treatment. I find that very disturbing.”

Dee yanked out the memory stick and handed it to Mike. “Now make sure that gets in the right hands by tomorrow morning. You understand?”

Mike nodded. He understood his orders perfectly.

CHAPTER 13

LAUREN HUNCHED OVER her laptop and tapped furiously at its keyboard. Suddenly in the dim reflection of the computer screen she spotted a figure standing behind her in the busy downtown Manchester coffee shop. She could see his silhouette shadowy and blank. Then she recognized him.

“Mike Sweeney,” she said and turned around with a smile. “It’s been a few days since I saw you. Where have you been?”

Mike looked stressed and even his quick grin did not hide an itchy unease that Lauren immediately picked up on as he sat down. He appeared uncomfortable in his skin, wearing it like an ill-fitting second hand suit.

“Oh, busy, you know how it is. These are crazy times,” he said.

Lauren leaned her face into his. Her eyes scanned him like she was checking out a passport picture. “Is that a bit of sunburn on your nose?” she asked. “How did you manage to get that in New Hampshire?”

Mike felt a hot flush spreading over his face. He was flustered at her immediate questioning of him. She was far from just a pretty face, this woman. Nothing got by her.

“I’ve got something for you,” he said, ignoring her question and fishing into his pocket. He brought out Dee’s memory stick and reached over and plugged it into her computer. Lauren held his gaze, She was calm and completely in control. It was not meant to be like this, Mike thought. He should be in charge.

“Check out the video file marked Stanton,” he said.

Lauren opened up the file. An image flickered onto her screen and she bent in close to hear the audio of the brief clip of Stanton speaking. It was the edited version that Dee produced from her vault. The tinny voice echoed from Lauren’s laptop.

“
There’s too much emphasis on the problems the soldiers face. Sometimes the war at home is much harder to speak up for than the one being fought by the troops.
”

Lauren pressed repeat and played the clip again. Then a third time. Then she settled back in her chair and folded her arms across her chest. She did not smile.

“Why are you doing this, Mike?” she asked evenly. “This is the second time you’ve given me something on Stanton. First the flag burning picture and now this recording. I don’t like feeling I’m being used as part of a dirty tricks operation.”

Mike tried to shrug casually as if to pass it as simply nothing at all. Trying to disguise the knife he wanted her to plunge into Stanton’s back.

“We just think it highlights a difference between the Senator and Governor Stanton. She just does not seem to get the importance of our national security. We do. We don’t think…”

Lauren put up a hand and his words died on his tongue. “Cut the crap, Mike,” she said. “How do I know where this comes from? What is she really saying? What’s the context? This is some pretty low shit, Mike.”

Lauren looked down at the clip and played it again. Mike watched her face though and, despite her words, he knew she would take it. Briefly he was disappointed. He almost relished her admonishment and her harsh words. They were righteous, even if only for a moment, and that was a feeling he now only dimly remembered. But it was gone now. Lauren’s eyes widened as she watched the clip again and the tip of her tongue touched her top lip. He knew she thought of page views, headlines and appearances on cable news shows.

“If you don’t want it, we can put it out elsewhere,” Mike said and reached for the memory stick. She playfully slapped away his hand. Then in a whir of fingers she copied the file and handed the stick back to him. Her disapproval was gone.

“No, you’re right,” she said. “It’s all part of the national security debate.”

Mike stood up. They were on the same side now, co-conspirators in this thing that neither of them felt sure of, clinging together on shifting ground. They did not look directly at the other.

“See you around, Lauren,” Mike said. She grunted, not lifting up her head from her screen, but as he turned around she called his name. She smiled as her hair crowned her face. Once again he marveled at how pretty she was. “Yeah?”

She opened her mouth but no words came. She paused, turning something over in her mind, then she shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “See you around.”

* * *

AS MIKE drove out of Manchester his head felt it might explode. He hated himself for passing on a snippet of video that he knew was bullshit. He hated even more that Lauren spotted the ruse and then grasped at it anyway.

But as the car began to eat up the miles and Manchester faded away behind him, slumping into strip-mailed suburbs and then crowding thickets of dark green trees, his mind eased with thoughts of a new mission.

Jaynie.

He had to see her.

It was too long since his mother’s phone call alerted him to her overdose and he had done nothing. He put his private life aside in favor of Hodges’ cause. But not now. Corinth Falls was just a four hour drive from here, across Vermont and into upstate New York. He would start to make it right. He was supposed to head straight to Washington to look up some of Hodges’ old army comrades from the 1980s. But that could wait until after he took this detour. Swinging by Corinth Falls would not even take him far out of his way.

Normally Mike drove with the radio on to relieve the tedium of the journey with the sounds of music or chat. He caught up on the news or even tuned into a religious channel, lulled by the mesmerizing rhythms of some far-off pastor’s voice. Not this time. Now he relished the simple silence of the car, the straightness of the road ahead and the sense that he escaped the bubble that held him in its grip for countless weeks. Now he felt he could think properly again at last, not just about the latest development in the campaign. He wondered what lay ahead of him in Corinth Falls’ hospital. What would Jaynie be like? He dreaded to think of her lying in some awful ward, tubes coming out her arms. But it would not be the first time. He wondered if she used the money she took from him to buy the drugs that almost killed her and his foot slowly sank onto the accelerator and sent the car racing down the road ahead, forward in time but back into his past.

The outskirts of Corinth Falls, nestled in its little river valley, looked like they always did. He took an early exit so he could enter on an old country road and not the main drag. He always liked cresting the rise of a hill above town that gave a view of the place, snaking along its valley, still dominated by the giant hulks of a half dozen factories and steel mills long since closed. Mike pulled the car over onto the side of the road. It was too cold to get out but he looked at the lights below him as the sun – hidden somewhere behind a thick blanket of cloud – dipped below the horizon. The city lights switched on, twinkling in the growing twilight, and he absorbed the view, as familiar to him as his own face. He closed his eyes and remembered his childhood here as a bright and distant land despite its troubles. For a long time Jaynie was the sun that illuminated it. He leaned his head forward onto the steering wheel and shut his eyes. Suddenly the task ahead loomed like a mountaintop. He did not want to do this, he thought. But, with a physical heave, he put the car into gear and drove towards home.

* * *

THE HOSPITAL waiting room was quiet. The whitewashed walls were faded, though clean, and the smell of fresh disinfectant pervaded the air as Mike walked into reception. Only a handful of people sat in the chairs either sitting alone or huddled together. There was no rush of patients here, not until the bars closed and the casualties from the fights started to trickle in. The receptionist glanced up from reading a paperback novel, looked at Mike quizzically, and perhaps sensed immediately he was now an outsider.

“I am looking for Jaynie Collins,” he said. “She was admitted a few days ago.”

The receptionist glanced at her computer. “She checked herself out this morning,” she said, with a tone of disapproval. She had obviously seen the reason Jaynie was admitted. Drug overdoses were not exactly uncommon here but old moralities held hard.

“I can’t give you her address,” she said, a sharp edge in her voice.

Mike turned around and stalked out. “No need,” he muttered.

He got back in the car and drove out into the hills above the north side of town. There were a few scattered subdivisions and trailer parks up there and that is where Sean said Jaynie lived for the past year. She moved there after selling their old marital home to buy a dilapidated trailer out in the woods. The rest of the cash, he knew, she steadily blew on her habits. He drove up a narrow road, eventually slipping and sliding on an icy track crowded overhead with black tree branches stripped of leaves. Mike fought with the steering wheel as it lurched from side to side and gradually brought the careering car to a halt outside a white half-wide trailer. There was a beat-up Ford outside that Mike recognized as Jaynie’s sister’s old car. The place looked a mess, but he expected that. At least a light was on. He got out of the car, pulled his jacket tight around him, and walked up to the cheap, plastic door.

Mike was possessed with a sudden doubt. What was he doing here? It felt like picking at a wound, peeling off a thick scab of pain, just to see how it felt. And at this moment it felt bad. But he walked on and rapped on the door. There was nothing; just silence and a chilling wind buffeted his ears. He turned to go when the door creaked open and Jaynie’s face appeared, blinking her eyes slowly as if she had just awakened. She looked startled to see Mike and for a second he thought she would smile, that the sweet Jaynie who appeared at his door in New Hampshire would emerge again. But, like a thundercloud sprouting from a summer sky, a look of fury creased her brow.

“Mike! What the fuck are you doing here?” she asked.

Mike stepped back. “I heard you were in the hospital. I thought”

She did not let him finish his thoughts before she attacked. “Get out of here. What do you care? People should mind their own business.”

Behind her Mike thought he heard a thud back inside the trailer, the hint of someone moving around. Jaynie heard it too and a look crossed her face, part fear, part something else Mike could not explain. A dealer? A lover? Someone was back there. Jaynie saw Mike react and reached out a hand to push him in the center of his chest.

“Get out of here, Mike,” she said. “I don’t want to see you.”

He stepped back, but his foot caught on a patch of ice and he fell backwards. He tried to twist around but he only skidded more and the wind was knocked out of him as he fell onto the ground. An explosion of color filled his mind as the wound on his head from Guatemala sprang open anew. His eyes lost focus and when they found it again he saw Jaynie look down at him in horror. A trickle of blood crawled down his forehead.

“Mike?” she said and when he blinked and looked at her a momentary expression of relief crossed her face. It was rapidly replaced by a sneer.

“Go away.” She slammed the door and from inside Mike heard the heated sound of raised voices. He hauled himself to his feet, feeling frozen and bruised, and staggered back to his car, certain in the knowledge he made a terrible mistake coming back to Corinth Falls. He got in the car, shivering, and slowly guided it back the way he had come, headed towards the distant blinking lights of a world far away from Jaynie’s trailer.