“Why do you imagine that? You need to have the rocks in your head changed. Why would I?”
“It’s the only thing you can do.”
T.C.’s face grew red as his anger built. “You wouldn’t have him drop weight on me? I have my friends, too, Paul.”
Paul leaned in toward T.C.’s chair. “Normally I wouldn’t see him or speak to him for any favor, and neither would I ask him to use his power against anyone on my behalf. But don’t forget that we’re talking about my family’s safety. This is one hundred percent personal. If anything, and I do mean anything, happens to my family, you won’t have to worry about what Jack McMillan does. There won’t be enough of you left to do anything to.”
T.C. stood, his face ablaze in vein-popping fury. “You’re threatening me? You fuckin’ asshole. Don’t you dare threaten me, you one-eyed, hobbling son of a bitch!”
“You’re right. Don’t give it to me because Jack can have you sweeping the Capitol steps with a toothbrush. Do it because you owe me this much as an ex-agent. Do it because you owe your agents loyalty and retribution for this loss. And do it because you can’t let any man hold your agency hostage. Think up your own reason-you’re creative. But you will do it.”
T.C. exhaled slowly and cracked his knuckles thoughtfully. “I’m sorry, Paul, but I can’t. I will promise you that I’ll deal with Martin-with assistance from the Bureau.” T.C. smoothed his jacket and turned toward the door. “Enjoy your visit, Paul. See some monuments. Get yourself laid.” T.C. winked at Paul. “Must have quite a load built up after living on that mountain all this time.”
“Just a second, T.C.,” Paul said as he crossed over to the door to the second bedroom and opened it wider. A distinguished-looking man in his seventies entered the living room and took a seat on the couch. T.C. Robertson’s face went as white as his teeth. “I’m sure you know Senator Stanton.”
“Well, this is a surprise.” T.C. was fighting to recover, but the realization that the man had been listening to the conversation was devastating.
“I bet,” Senator Abe Stanton said as he lit a cigar the size of a small log and exhaled a plume of smoke that covered the well-known face from T.C.’s view. “Now, we’re here to discuss what Paul wants,” the head of the Senate Appropriations Committee said. “And if it’s all the same to you, Thackery, we’ll just keep this between the three of us. It’s my opinion that mentioning this to Mr. McMillan, or anyone else, would be completely unnecessary and might have unpleasant consequences for one of us. Sit,” the senator commanded.
T.C. sat and smiled nervously, his face hardly darker than a sheet of typing paper.
“Interesting conversation you were having,” Senator Stanton said. “I for one am thrilled you’ve agreed to help Paul.”
“Paul makes a lot of sense, as usual,” T.C. said, nervously wiping at his brow with a napkin he lifted from the coffee table.
The senator blew a spinning smoke ring toward the television set and fixed his eaglelike eyes on T.C. “Have one of mine. It’s Cuban. What Castro smoked before his bout of throat cancer, I understand.” He reached into his pocket and removed a case, opened it, and held it out to T.C. T.C. took a cigar, sniffed it, and chewed the tip off, picked it from his tongue and placed it into the ashtray beside him. He lit the cigar using a lighter that was beside Paul’s cigarettes and inhaled the first puff.
“God, that’s excellent!” he said grandly. “I love a good cigar.” He was beginning to recover.
“I like to imagine I’m putting the torch to Castro’s crops.” Senator Stanton laughed and winked at T.C. “I bet I could get ten years for lighting this outside the room here.”
T.C. puffed on the cigar and listened to the inevitable.
8
Paul had spent the following day meeting with members of the DEA and poring over the files of agents whom T.C.’s personnel manager had deemed fit for the team and available. He had finally narrowed it to ten possibles. That evening he had dined at La Cote d’Or again, this time with the owner of the restaurant. They had sat and sampled wines for several hours, and a taxi had delivered a rubber-legged Paul to the Willard at one A.M. Paul staggered to the elevator, maneuvering among the ghosts of U. S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, Abe Lincoln, and George Armstrong Custer, all of whom had walked through this same lobby. Paul opened his door and dropped his clothes, like a trail of bread crumbs, as he meandered to the bedroom and fell headlong toward the mattress, asleep almost before he hit the bed.
Paul awoke certain that he was not alone in the suite’s master bedroom. There was the faint scent of cologne in the air, a difference in the patterns of air flow. Just enough that a man who had slept alone, and in the absence of commercial fragrances, for several years would pick it up. Just enough for an alarm as he fought toward consciousness. He didn’t move but lay still and let his eye take in the fact that the door was open and he had closed it before he went to sleep. Then he heard the breathing of someone beside the bed, and he was trying to decide how to move when the presence sat down in the armchair by the window.
“You’re awake,” the unfamiliar voice said. “If I planned to harm you, you’d surely be in the hereafter by now.”
The man in the chair twisted the knob on the floor lamp and was illuminated against the dark walls.
Paul rolled over and felt on the table for his eye patch. He located it and put it over the right socket as he sat up. “Who the hell are you?”
The man seated in the chair was tiny, no larger than a ten-year-old child with fifty extra pounds, and skin the pallor of the recently deceased. He had a round, bald head, and his features were remarkable only for their blandness. The eyebrows were light hints of hair above the washed-out blue eyes. He wore heavy framed glasses with lenses that seemed to suggest the body was being piloted by a far smaller being. The face, except where the glasses compressed, was almost perfectly round, and the mouth was a thin line between pink, fleshy lips. He was dressed in a green V-neck sweater and bright-blue pants. He wore twin golf gloves over remarkably small, round hands. There was a battered and old-fashioned briefcase beside him on the floor. The shoes were canvas Converse high-tops that were in no danger of touching the floor.
“Who are you?” Paul demanded. “How did you get in here?”
“My name is Tod Peoples. I picked the lock on the outside door.”
“You picked the electronic lock?”
“Well, no, actually I had a pass key. But I can pick locks.”
“Are you armed?”
“No, but I certainly could be if I chose,” he countered. He locked his small hands to the arms of the chair. “My man outside is.”
Paul couldn’t tell if the dwarf was kidding or not.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Peoples?” Paul asked.
“I’m here to help you.”
“Not to help me sleep.”
“No, you were sleeping fine on your own. Call me Tod.” He crossed his ankles and let his legs swing a few times.
Paul lit a cigarette. “Was I snoring?”
“Cigarettes,” Tod said, like a disapproving teacher.
“They’ll stunt my growth?”
“They’ll kill you. Ever heard of free radicals?”
“Stop, you’ll scare me. Doesn’t anyone worry about themselves anymore?” Paul inhaled and expelled a plume of smoke. Then he crushed out the cigarette. “Lighten up, Tod Peoples, it’s my room, remember? You’re one sight to wake up to.”
Tod frowned. “I’m not sensitive about my height or my appearance. I am aware of what I look like.”
“That’s good. I figure my appearance, much like my breath, is other people’s problem.”
The little man smiled for the first time. “Yes, we share something there. That’s true, isn’t it? I mean, we look fine to ourselves. Amazing how often people are shocked that a man with my power isn’t a ringer for Clark Cable or Cary Grant.”
“So what is it you plan to do for me?”
“I am a friend of friends of yours.”