“Not bad, Watson,” Micah whispered. “You should do this professionally.”
“Anyone with him?”
“Nope. All alone,” Micah said. “Something happened up there, though. Kid’s got his tail between his legs. Like he got dumped.”
“Is he leaving the hotel?”
“Nope again. Headed for the restaurant in back. I’m telling you, he really looks terrible… I mean, even more than those Frankenstein marks in his face.”
“That’s a shame,” O’Shea said as his car curved into the horseshoe driveway of the main entrance. “’Cause his day’s about to get a whole lot worse.” On his right, the car door sprang open and a valet with blond hair offered a slight tip of his hat.
“Welcome to the Four Seasons, sir. Are you checking in with us today?”
“No,” O’Shea offered as he stepped out of the car. “Just grabbing a little something for breakfast.”
13
Hunched forward in a big wicker armchair, I stir my coffee with a silver spoon and watch my reflection swirl into oblivion.
“Is it really that bad?” a voice teases behind me.
I turn just in time to see Dreidel enter the hotel’s open-air restaurant. His black hair is gelled and parted. The boyish bangs are long gone. Combined with his monogrammed white shirt and antique wire-rim glasses, it’s clear he’s mastered the art of sending a message without saying a word. Right now he’s selling confidence. Too bad I’m not buying.
Ignoring the foamy waves of the Atlantic Ocean on our left, he puts a hand on my shoulder and crosses around to the oversize wicker seat next to me. As he moves, his hand runs from my shoulder to the back of my neck, always holding tight enough to reassure.
“Don’t use his moves on me,” I warn.
“What’re you—?”
“His moves,” I repeat, pulling away so his hand’s no longer on my neck.
“You think I’m—? You think I’d pull a Manning on you?”
Dreidel was with him for almost four years. I’m going on nine. I don’t even bother to argue. I just stare back down at my overpriced, still-swirling coffee and let the silence sink in. This is why the in crowd turns on him.
“Wes, what you saw up there—”
“Listen, before you say it, can we just spare ourselves the awkwardness and move on? My bad… my fault… clearly none of my business.”
He studies me carefully, picking apart every syllable and trying to figure out if I mean it. When you shadow a President, you become fluent in reading between the lines. I’m good. Dreidel’s better.
“Just say it already, Wes.”
I stare out across the open terrace and watch the waves kamikaze into the beach.
“I know you’re thinking it,” he adds.
Like I said, Dreidel’s better. “Does Ellen know?” I finally ask, referring to his wife.
“She should. She’s not stupid.” His voice creaks like a renegade floorboard. “And when Ali was born… marriage is hard, Wes.”
“So that girl up there…”
“Just someone I met at the bar. I flashed my room key. She thinks I’m rich because I can afford to stay here.” He forces a grin and tosses his room key on the table. “I didn’t realize you had so many money addicts in Palm Beach.”
This time, I’m the one who’s silent. A waiter approaches and fills Dreidel’s cup with coffee.
“You guys talked about divorce?” I ask.
“Can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Why do you think?” he challenges.
I look over at the file folder that’s lying between us on the table. The handwritten tab says Fundraising.
“I thought you said you were down here on business.”
“And that’s not business?” he asks.
A few months back, Dreidel called the President to tell him he was running for State Senate in the 19th District in his home state of Illinois. But when it comes to impending elections, “happily married father” polls far better than “recently divorced dad.”
“See, and you thought you were the only one with problems,” Dreidel adds. “Now assuming that was Boyle, you want to hear how he cheated death, or not?”
14
I sit up straight in my chair. “You actually found something?”
“No, I called you here to waste your time.” With a deep sip of coffee, Dreidel’s a different man. Like anyone in the White House, he’s always better when he’s in control. “So back to the beginning… the real beginning… On the day the two of you got shot at the speedway, you remember how long the drive was to get you to the hospital?”
A simple question, but I don’t give him an answer.
“Just guess,” he says.
I grit my teeth, surprised by how hard the memory hits. I can still see the ambulance doors closing on Boyle…
“Wes, I know you don’t want to relive it, I just need—”
“I passed out,” I blurt. “From what they said, the ambulance took about four minutes…”
“It was three minutes.”
“Pretty fast.”
“Actually, pretty slow considering Halifax Medical Center is only a mile and a half from the speedway. Now guess how long it took for the ambulance that drove there with Boyle, who was — no offense — a whole lot more important than you were to the administration, not to mention far more injured?”
I shake my head, refusing to play along.
“Twelve minutes,” Dreidel blurts.
We sit in silence as I take it in.
“So?” I ask.
“C’mon, Wes. Twelve minutes for a speeding ambulance with a critically injured White House senior staff member to travel a mile and a half? The average person walks faster. My grandmother walks faster. And she’s dead.”
“Maybe they got stuck in the panicking riot outside.”
“Funny, that’s exactly what they said.”
“They?”
From the briefcase that’s leaning against the side of his chair, Dreidel pulls out a bound document about half as thick as a phone book. He drops it on the table with a thud that sends our spoons bouncing. I recognize the congressional logo immediately. Investigation into the Assassination Attempt on President Leland F. Manning. Congress’s official investigation into Nico’s attack. Dreidel leaves it on the table, waiting to see if I pick it up. He knows me better than I thought.
“You never read it, did you?” he asks.
I stare at the book, still refusing to touch it. “I flipped through it once… It’s just… it’s like reading your own obituary.”
“More like Boyle’s obituary. You lived, remember?”
I brush my hand against my face. My fingertips rise and fall in the craters of my scars. “What’s your point?”
“Play the numbers, Wes. Two trains leave the station at almost the exact same time. Both race for the hospital. It’s a matter of life and death. One takes three minutes. The other takes twelve. You don’t see a problem there? And if that weren’t enough, remember what the real security screwup was that Congress ripped our doctors apart for?”
“You mean bringing the President’s wrong blood type?”
“See, that’s where they always got it wrong. When Congress did their investigation, they tore out what little hair they had left in their heads because they found pints of O-negative blood along with the President’s B-positive. Naturally, they assumed someone made a mistake and brought the wrong blood. But knowing who you saw at the speech that night — well, guess who else happened to be O-negative?”
“Boyle?”
“And that’s how he pulled off his big magic trick.”
“It wasn’t a magic trick,” I insist.
“No, you’re right. But it was an illusion.” Waving his left hand back and forth in front of me, he adds, “You’re so busy watching the moving hand, you completely ignore the sly hand’s misdirection.” From his right hand, he drops a quarter on the table.