Standing in the doorway, I look back toward the living room, through to the kitchen. Both rooms are empty. Bits of dust turn silent cartwheels through the air. I recheck my briefcase. The George Washington book is still there. I tell myself I’m being paranoid. But as I leave, I pull hard to close the door-twice-and dart into the cold, which freezes my still damp hair.
Waiting for me idling in the street is a powder blue 1966 convertible Mustang that clears its throat and lets out the kind of hacking cough that comes with lung cancer. The car’s old, but in perfect shape. Just like the driver inside, whose head is bobbing to the country music.
“C’mon, old boy… y’know I hate this neighborhood!” Tot shouts even though the windows are closed. At seventy-two years old, he’s not rolling them down manually.
Racing for his car, I notice a thin man with a plaid green scarf walking his dog-a brown dachshund-on the opposite side of the street. I know most everyone on the block. Must be someone new. I can’t think about it now.
Tot is far more than just my ride. He’s the one who trained me on the job. And encouraged me to buy the house. And the only-truly only-one who doesn’t bust my chops about Iris, but will always listen when I talk about whatever new set of old postcards I uncovered at the flea market. He’s my friend. My real friend.
But he’s also an archivist-since the very last days of LBJ’s administration, which makes him the oldest, most senior, most resourceful researcher I’ve ever met. So as I hop in his car, open my briefcase, and hand him the tattered copy of George Washington’s dictionary, he’s also my best hope of figuring out whether this damn book could possibly be worth killing for.
15
There were faster ways for Dr. Stewart Palmiotti to get to work. As the President’s doctor, he had a prime parking spot on West Exec. Not a far one either. Up close. Closer even than the spot reserved for Minnie. And Minnie was the President’s sister.
From there, it was just a short walk through the West Wing. There was no need to take the long way around and walk past the Oval. But after that call last night… Palmiotti had been White House doctor for over three years. He’d been Wallace’s dearest friend for over three decades.
Palmiotti wasn’t some twentysomething novice. Rather than getting close, where he’d be spotted by the morning swirl of staffers and secretaries, he strolled casually past the Roosevelt Room, which had a clear view of the Oval Office’s front door. Even back when he was governor, Wallace was always at his desk by at least 7 a.m. Even the day after he buried his mom.
Palmiotti glanced at his watch: 7:27. He looked over at the Oval. There were no suit-and-tie agents standing guard outside the door. The President still wasn’t in.
No reason to panic just yet.
From there, Palmiotti picked up the pace and made his way back outside, eyeing his own breath as he rushed down the West Colonnade and past the Rose Garden, whose snow had been melted away by the gardening staff. With a sharp left through the French doors, he stepped onto the long red-and-gold-trimmed carpet of the Ground Floor Corridor.
“He’s still up there, huh?” he called out to Agent Mitchel, the uniformed Secret Service agent who was posted outside the private elevator on the left of the corridor.
Mitchel nodded, but the mere fact that the agent was there told Palmiotti that the President was still upstairs in the Family Residence.
“He’s gonna be in a mood, isn’t he?” Mitchel asked as Dr. Palmiotti headed to his own office, the White House Medical Unit, which sat directly across the hall from the elevator. Most staffers thought the Medical Unit was poor real estate, too far from the Oval. But as any doctor knew, the real action always happened at home.
“Depends,” Palmiotti lied, well aware that from the phone call last night that something must’ve happened. “We know where he is?”
For a moment, the agent stood there.
“C’mon, I’m just trying to figure out what kind of day we’re gonna have,” Palmiotti added.
He wasn’t stupid. After three years, he knew the Service protocol by now. To maintain some level of privacy, there were no agents or cameras allowed in the Residence. But to maintain some level of safety, the Service wired the floors of nearly every room up there. They did the same in the Ovaclass="underline" Weight-sensitive pressure pads under the carpets let them know exactly where President Wallace was at all times.
“Workout Room,” Mitchel finally said, referring to the small room on the third floor installed by President Clinton.
Palmiotti rolled his eyes. The only time Wallace worked out was when he had something that needed working out.
“This from what happened last night?” the agent asked.
“Sorry?”
“I saw the call log. President called you at three in the morning?”
“No, that was nothing,” Palmiotti said. “Same as always-just pulled his back again.”
“Yeah, always his back,” the agent said. “Though if that’s the case, you really think he should be working out right now?”
This time, Palmiotti was the one who stood there. The Secret Service wasn’t stupid either.
“Oh, by the by-Minnie’s been looking for you,” the agent added, referring to the President’s sister.
Nodding politely, Dr. Stewart Palmiotti glanced down at his watch: 7:36. A new Wallace record.
“This something we should worry about, Doc?” the agent asked.
“No,” Palmiotti replied, staring up at the red light above the elevator, waiting for it to light up… waiting for the President of the United States to come downstairs and tell him what the hell was going on. “I’m sure he’s just running late.”
16
"Entick’s Dictionary?” Tot says, reading the embossed gold letters on the cover of the book as we weave through the morning traffic on Rockville Pike.
“Ever hear of it?” I ask, lowering the radio, which is pumping with his usual playlist-old country music by Willie Nelson, Buck Owens, and at this particular moment, Kenny Rogers.
“Don’t you touch The Gambler,” he threatens, slapping my hand away. He quickly turns back to the book. “Looks like it’s… or at least what’s left of it is…” He’s blind in his right eye, so he has to turn his head completely toward me to see the book’s torn-away spine and the missing interior pages. It’s the same when he drives (which, legally, he can)-always with his head turned a quarter-way toward the passenger seat so he can get a better view of the road.
Most people think Tot looks like Merlin-complete with the scary white beard and the frizzy white hair that he brushes back-but he’s far more of a Colonel Sanders, especially with the gray checked jacket and the bolo tie that he wears every day. He thinks the bolo tie makes him look modern. It does. If you’re in Scottsdale, Arizona, and it’s 1992.
“… I’m guessing pre-nineteenth-century-let’s say about…” Tot rolls his tongue in his cheek, already loving the puzzle. Even his blind eye is twinkling. The only thing that gets him more excited is flirting with the sixty-year-old woman who runs the salad bar in the cafeteria. But at seventy-two years old, Aristotle “Tot” Westman could have worse weaknesses. “I’d say 1774.”
“Close-1775,” I tell him. “You’re losing your touch.”
“Sure I am. That means you guessed… what?… Civil War?”
I sit there, silent.
“Look at the threading,” he says, running his finger down the exposed spine and the mess of exposed thread. “By the nineteenth century, it was all case binding-all machine production-two boards and a spine, then glued to the pages. What you have here is… this is art. Hand-stitched. Or was hand-stitched before someone gutted it. Is it one of ours?”