Now he felt the latex fingers tugging at his own index finger, curling it around the trigger. He heard some shuffling as the two men got into position, ensuring they were out of the bullet’s path. And, aware of how feeble this was, how uselessly impotent he was, he felt his finger curl a notch tighter, a notch tighter, a notch tighter until he could feel no more.
Washington, DC, Tuesday, 7.25am
She woke to a text message, her phone giving a perky little chime that did not even slightly reflect her mood. Maggie looked over at the other pillow to realize Richard had already left: his morning run, no doubt.
She reached for the device, aware in that small movement that she was mildly hungover. The memory of it came back to her now. She had started early yesterday evening, knocking back the Laphroaig on the phone to her sister who had told her that awful story. And then her sister’s words resurfaced. I cannot believe you work for that evil man, Maggie.
She used the Touch ID on her phone, pressing the pad of her index finger onto the circle at the bottom, which duly unlocked the device, and squinted to read the message.
It was from Crawford McNamara:
Need to see you urgently.
One thing Maggie had noticed about this man. His written communications were entirely free of the sexist banter, faux flirtation and borderline racism that made up his speech. In his emails and text messages, there was no gleeful breaking of the supposed taboos of political correctness. Smart operator that he was, he was careful to leave no trail that could indict him on page A1 of the Washington Post. He would not bequeath an incriminating email cache for WikiLeaks or anyone else to publish during the re-election campaign which, she had no doubt, he was already planning.
Maggie hunted around for some clean clothes, and was poised to revive a shirt from the laundry basket, when she found one still wrapped in dry cleaners’ cellophane. She didn’t like it, but it would do.
With no more than half a cup of coffee inside her, as well as the low throb of last night’s whisky, she was in front of McNamara twenty minutes later.
‘So here’s the deal,’ he said, before she’d even sat down. Once she had, he stood up, so that he could pace the room, circling around her, forcing her to twist her neck to maintain eye contact. She noticed a framed quotation behind his desk, rendered in the style of a New England sampler. ‘It is better to live one day as a lion than a hundred years as a sheep.’ The line was unattributed, but she knew the source. Benito bloody Mussolini.
‘A runner – not your boyfriend, someone else – was out in Rock Creek Park this morning.’
‘OK.’
‘And she’s listening to the Gabfest or NPR or some other liberal shit in her state-of-the-art earbuds, when, guess what, she trips over a pair of legs. Turns out it’s a corpse.’
‘Right.’
‘She calls the park police, because she’s a good citizen, and they identify the body and you’ll never believe who it is.’
Maggie waited for the reveal, then realized McNamara was waiting for her. She briefly closed her eyes. ‘You seriously want me to guess?’
‘I thought it might be fun. Never mind.’ Now he sat himself on her side of the desk, so that his knees, exposed and hairy in his cargo shorts, were just a few inches away from Maggie’s face. He was wearing cologne, a fairly expensive one.
‘The dead man is none other than Dr Jeffrey Frankel, of these parts.’
‘The White House doctor? Jesus.’
‘The very same. Seems he blew his brains out early this morning.’
‘Christ. Why would he do that?’
‘I don’t know. And nor do you. And nor does anyone else. Not yet anyway. But I tell you what I do know.’
‘What’s that?’
‘That as soon as this death is announced, and I mean within ten seconds, maybe five, there will be two hundred different crackheads saying it was murder. Within ten minutes, there’ll be fully fleshed-out theories assigning guilt, motive and culprit. And by tonight, maybe tomorrow morning at the latest, every asshole in America will be linking to some five-thousand-word blog titled, “The Unanswered Questions about the Death of Dr Jeffrey Frankel”.’
‘And you know this because you—’
‘—because I am the king of this world. That’s right, Costello.’ He stood again. ‘I was once the master and lord supremo of this dominion. These people are my people. The lonely virgins living in their moms’ basements who never read a conspiracy theory they didn’t believe, and who never saw a corpse within twenty-five miles of the Beltway that died of natural causes – they are,’ and here McNamara raised his arms aloft, in the manner of a TV evangelist, to mimic a Southern preacher’s accent, ‘my people.’
‘They’ll be all over this.’
‘They will love it. This is gonna give Bill O’Reilly orgasms for the next six months. I know because it’d have done the same for me and my old comrades back in the day.’
‘Not that long ago.’
‘Yep.’ He adopted a baritone, as if doing a movie voiceover. ‘“The road from the wilder shores of the patriotic right to the White House proved shorter than any of them ever expected.” But I know you don’t hold that against me. I know you’re going to do your solemn duty.’
‘Which is what?’
‘You’re going to conduct the independent investigation by the White House Counsel’s office set up by the President to look into this tragic occurrence.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. Your reputation travels before you, Miss Costello. That’s why I asked you to deal with those bimbo eruptions.’ He saw Maggie wince, but ignored it. ‘Which, incidentally, you can drop now. I’ll give that particular hospital pass to someone else. Look, I know you dug the previous folks out of some serious shit. Bottom line is, you’re a troubleshooter and we have here some major league trouble that needs shooting. Besides.’
‘Besides, what?’
‘People inside and outside know that you’re not one of us. In fact, I know you hate us. But that’s just a bonus. The thing is, you’re obviously not a loyalist. You’re not a partisan hack, everyone knows that.’ He gave her a knowing wink, which made her queasy. ‘Starting assumption of the wingnuts – I’m sorry, the concerned citizens – will be that this is a cover-up. But why would the respected Maggie Costello – loyal servant of the other team – engage in a cover-up to help this President?’
Maggie felt the old guilt rising, accompanied by its ever-present companion: a biliousness as complete as if she were on the deck of a heaving boat. ‘She wouldn’t. Because I wouldn’t. And I won’t.’
‘Exactly.’ McNamara did a kind of vertical clap, letting his hands slap against each other in a chopping motion. ‘That’s my girl! You be as independent and rigorous as you want. Do whatever it takes. Those conspiracy theories will get started in the next hour or two. Your job is to—’
‘To get to the truth.’
‘I was going to say, your job is to shut them down. To deny them the oxygen on which they feed. How you do it is up to you. But I know this phenomenon. I’ve seen it a million times. Your mission is to strangle it at birth. Don’t let me down.’