“The battery must be dead,” Jimmie said, pulling the door shut.
“Don’t lie to me,” Christie said, muscling his way past Jimmie. He sniffed the air. “I’m from Jersey. I can smell a lie from a mile away.”
“You know, Emma’s phone died Monday morning. Maybe we need new phones. Are we eligible for upgrades?”
“Not sure why somebody would lie about their battery being dead?” Chris Christie paced the length of the room (which wasn’t more than five paces) and spun on his heel. “Let me tell you a little story about a couple of kids named Jack and Diane. They grew up together in the American heartland. One of ’em thought he was gonna be a football star someday. The other was just along for the ride in the back of her boyfriend’s car. I think you can see where I’m going with this.”
“Is this a John Cougar Mellencamp song?”
“Maybe,” Christie said. “But just because Johnny Cougar sang about it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. What I’m trying to say is that Jack wanted to run off to the city, but Diane wasn’t having none of that. But Jack… well, Jack was restless. He left one day for LA to be the next James Deen. Became one of them porno stars out there. Forgot all about playing football, which I suppose I would too.”
“I suppose.”
“Damn right you suppose,” Christie said. “But he eventually turns to drugs. Gets in a bad way. Can’t perform no more. Life goes on, though, a long time after the thrill of living is gone. He’s depressed, and he thinks about Diane. Sweet Diane. By this point, he’s gone balls deep in hundreds of girls, but she’s still the only one he’s ever loved. He texts her, and she doesn’t answer.”
“Because her phone is dead.”
“Except that it wasn’t. She’d seen his text but ignored him. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to get all mixed up with Jack again. But that text… the more she thought about it, the more she thought about leaving her husband and kids behind. You see, for her, life had gone on too. The thrill wasn’t there either. Finally, she texted him back: ‘Sorry, my phone died. Didn’t see your text.’ But it was too late. Jack was dead. He’d taken an overdose of Viagra. His wiener exploded.”
“That’s terrible,” Jimmie said. “And this really happened?”
“I have no idea. I’m just telling you why someone would lie about their battery being dead. That’s just one reason. I could probably think of… a few more. Another kid named Tommy, used to work down on the docks. His gal Gina’s working at the diner all day. They’re both down on their luck, just trying to hold on to what they GOT!”
Christie slammed a large paw down on the desk, which rattled the fillings in Jimmie’s back teeth. The drawer slid open, and Christie peered over the desk into it. “Do you mind…?”
“Go ahead,” Jimmie said as Christie picked his phone up. He thought he saw Christie’s eyes linger on the recorder, but maybe that was Jimmie’s paranoia.
Christie held down the power button. Jimmie’s screen saver flashed on the phone.
“Cute girls,” Christie said. “These your kids?”
Christie’d been at every Trump rally to date, right behind the president… and he didn’t know who was on Jimmie’s screen saver?
“Those are the USA Freedom Girls for America,” Jimmie said. “They’re all legal. In some states.”
Christie snorted. “Looks like your battery is fine, wouldn’t you say-”
The screen went black.
Christie thrust the dead phone into Jimmie’s hands. “Keep it charged from now on, okay? Emma was trying to reach you for the past forty-five minutes. Thought maybe you’d gone home, but I said I’d check up on you. And here you are.”
“Here I am,” Jimmie said. “Do you know what she wanted?”
“A half hour opened up in the president’s schedule. He wants to talk to you.”
Jimmie plugged his phone into his charger. When he turned around, Christie was still blocking the door.
“One more thing,” Christie said, reaching into his suit jacket…
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Have You Heard the Good Word?
Christie’s hand emerged with a burgundy, leather-bound Bible. He hadn’t pegged Christie as a Bible-thumper, but stranger things had happened. Here he was, trying to recruit Jimmie over to the side of the angels. Good luck with that.
“Thanks, but I already have a Bible I don’t read,” Jimmie said.
“I know-you left it behind at the Royal Linoleum,” Christie said.
“I left it behind…?” Jimmie’s voice trailed off as it hit him: This was the Gideon Bible from his bedside table. The one he’d marked up with Morris code.
This isn’t happening, he thought. This can’t be happening.
Jimmie was beginning to have a hard time distinguishing between his imagination and reality. Maybe he’d suffocated in that tunnel underneath the wall. His comatose body could be laid out in some Mexican hospital right now while all of this was happening in his head. One long dream from which he might never wake up.
You know you’re in desperate straits when the best-case scenario is that you’re in a permanent coma.
Christie said, “I did a little security sweep, to make sure you hadn’t left any sensitive material behind. Thought at first this was placed there by the hotel, but then I saw the inscription on the inside.” Christie’s eyes met his. “The inscription from your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Her message seemed to be… of a personal nature. A very personal nature,” Christie said, handing the Bible over. “It’s fortunate I discovered it, wouldn’t you say?”
Jimmie cracked the Bible and peeked at the chicken-scratches he’d left in it. Chris Christie wasn’t so stupid as to believe this was a message from Jimmie’s mother… unless his mother was a Socialist Justice Warrior.
The book trembled in Jimmie’s hands. The fact that Jimmie wasn’t in some Guantanamo Bay dungeon right now was significant. The fact that Christie was covering for him was even more so. While Christie might have been dangerous, he hadn’t killed Lester-because if he had, he would have killed Jimmie right now and made off with the recorder.
“You’ve got three minutes to get upstairs to the Oval Office,” Christie said, glancing at his watch. “Mr. Trump can’t stand tardiness. You want to hold on to what you got, I suggest you get a move on it, Jimmie-boy.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Last Man Standing
Jimmie took the stairs two at a time and burst into the Reagan Library. His heart was pounding like he’d just hiked to the tip of the Washington Monument. His mind was spinning from what had just happened with Christie. If the White House janitor was indeed sympathetic to the Bernie bros, he couldn’t have had anything to do with Lester’s death. That left one suspect on Jimmie’s list: Corey Lewandowski.
Jimmie went out of his way to avoid passing Lewandowski’s office on his way to meet the president. He wasn’t taking a chance. The Secret Service agents who were usually stationed every twenty yards had taken off for the weekend. He picked up his speed, even as he felt the beginnings of a cramp in his right side.
Emma’s door was open. She wasn’t at her desk-probably gone home for the day like everyone else. Now that it was past five on Friday, the government was all but shut down for the holiday weekend. Jimmie raced through her office, which adjoined the Oval Office.
He glanced at the clock on her wall and saw that he’d made it-miraculously, he’d made it with seconds to spare. The doors to the Oval Office were open a crack. He threw open the double doors and was immediately tackled to the ground.