“Maybe you should just ask,” Dreidel blurts.
“Who, Manning? Oh, right — I’ll just run up and say, ‘By the way, sir, I just saw your dead buddy — yeah, the one whose assassination wrecked your entire presidency. Oh, and since he’s alive, while I’ve been slaving for your ass every single day since I got out of the hospital, why’d you lie to me for over eight years about the single worst moment of my life?’ Yeah, that’d be genius.”
“What about the Service?”
“Same difference. Boyle could’ve never disappeared all those years ago if he didn’t have their help. The last thing I need is to shout from the roof that I’m the one to blow it all open. Until I know what’s going on, better to keep things quiet.”
Dreidel leans back in his wicker chair. “When you saw Boyle backstage in that dressing room, you think he was trying to kill Manning?”
“Kill him?”
“Why else would he come out of hiding after almost eight years? Just to say hello?”
“I guess, but… to kill him? Isn’t that—?”
“Kaiser Soze,” Dreidel interrupts. “Greatest trick the devil pulled off: convincing the world he didn’t exist.” He looks back up at me, and I swear there’s almost a smile on his face. “Man, can you imagine? Being legally dead but still alive? Y’know how much freedom that gives you?”
I stare down at Dreidel’s room key and try hard not to picture the fluffy white bathrobe that comes with it.
“Maybe that’s what Boyle wanted all those years ago,” he adds. “Just a way out.”
I shake my head but still catch the deeper point. The only way to understand what’s going on is to understand Boyle. “So where does that leave us?” I ask.
“Us? This ain’t my disaster.” He laughs as he says it, but he’s definitely not joking. “C’mon, Wes, you know I’m just joking,” he adds, knowing I get the point. Like any great political trickster, his first move is to remove his own fingerprints. It’s why I called him in the first place. He spent almost four years by the President’s side, but you’ll never find him in the background of a single photograph. No one’s better at being invisible, which is, right now, the number one thing I need if I plan on finding out the truth.
“Got any connections with law enforcement?” he adds, already two moves ahead. “If they can take a peek at Boyle’s background—”
“I’ve got someone perfect for that,” I tell him. But he’s glancing over my shoulder, back toward the entrance to the restaurant. Following his stare, I turn around to find the black woman with the braids. She’s traded the bathrobe for the other Palm Beach uniform: white slacks with a pale orange designer T-shirt. All set for a day on the town.
“Listen, I should run,” Dreidel says, already out of his seat. “Just be smart about this.”
“Smart?”
“Careful. Be careful. Because if Manning is in on this…” He takes another look around, then leans in close. “You thought America turned on him before? They’ll crucify him, Wes. Seriously. Crucify.”
I nod. Across the restaurant, his girlfriend shoots us a look. “And while we’re on the subject, Wes. I’m happy to keep your secret — just promise me you’ll keep mine.”
“O-Of course. I’d never say a word.”
He turns to go, leaving me with the bill. “By the way, you interested in forking over five hundred bucks and coming to my fundraiser tonight?”
I shake my head in disbelief. “Dreidel, how much did your soul cost when you finally sold it?”
“You coming or not?”
“I would, but I’ve got a Manning event tonight.”
Dreidel nods and doesn’t linger. He knows who always comes first.
As he heads for the door, I decide not to turn and stare at the girl. Instead, I hold up my spoon and use the bottom of it as my own little fun-house mirror. Over my shoulder, I spot Dreidel just as he approaches her. He doesn’t reach out to hold her hand until he thinks they’re out of sight.
“Excuse me,” someone says over my left shoulder. I turn, expecting to see the waiter. Instead, it’s a blond guy in a black T-shirt. And a U.S. Open baseball hat.
“Wes Holloway?” he asks, opening his wallet to show me an FBI badge. “Terrence O’Shea. You have a few seconds to chat?”
15
Breakfast bell’s ringing, Nico. French toast or western omelet?” asked the petite black food service woman with the vinegar smell and the pink rhinestones set into her pink fingernails.
“What’s for dinner?” Nico asked.
“You listening? We’re on breakfast. French toast or western omelet?”
Putting on his shoes and kneeling just in front of his narrow bed, Nico looked up at the door and studied the rolling cart with the open tray slots. He’d long ago earned the right to eat with his fellow patients. But after what happened to his mother all those years ago, he’d rather have his meals delivered to his room. “French toast,” Nico said. “Now what’s for dinner?”
Throughout St. Elizabeths, they called Nico an NGI. He wasn’t the only one. There were thirty-seven in total, all of them living in the John Howard Pavilion, a red brick, five-story building that was home to Nico and the other thirty-six patients not guilty by reason of insanity.
Compared to the other wards, the NGI floors were always quieter than the rest. As Nico heard one doctor say, “When there’re voices in your head, there’s no need to talk to anyone else.”
Still down on one knee, Nico yanked hard to fasten the Velcro on his sneakers (they took away the laces long ago) and carefully watched as the food service woman carried a pink plastic tray filled with French toast into his small ten-by-fifteen room, which was decorated with a wooden nightstand and a painted dresser that never had anything but a Bible and a set of vintage red glass rosary beads on it. The doctors offered to get Nico a sofa, even a coffee table. Anything to make it feel more like home. Nico refused, but never said why. He wanted it this way. So it looked like her room. His mom’s room. In her hospital.
Nodding to himself, he could still picture the stale hospital room where his mother lay silent for almost three years. He was only ten when the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease hit… when one faulty gene in her brain ignited the CJD protein that eventually kick-started her coma. When the diagnosis first came back, she didn’t complain — not even when young Nico asked why God was taking her. She smiled, even then, and respectfully told him that’s how it was written in the Book. The Book of Fate. Her head was shaking, but her voice was strong as she told him never to argue with it. The Book had to be respected. Had to be heeded. Let it guide you. But it wasn’t just respect. She took strength from it. Security. No doubt, his mother knew. She wasn’t afraid. How could anyone be afraid of God’s will? But he still remembered his father standing behind him, squeezing his shoulders and forcing him to pray every day so Jesus would bring his mom back.
For the first few weeks, they prayed in the hospital chapel. After six months, they visited every day but Sunday, convinced that their Sunday prayers would be more effective if they came from church. It was three years later that Nico changed his prayers. He did it only once. During a frozen snow day in the fist of Wisconsin’s winter. He didn’t want to be in church that day, didn’t want to be in his nice pants and church shirt. Especially with all the great snowball fights going on outside. So on that Sunday morning, as he lowered his head in church, instead of praying for Jesus to bring his mom back, he prayed for him to take her. The Book had to be wrong. That day, his mother died.