First Family (18 page)

Quarry closed and locked the door and then sat down next to his son and unrolled the set of plans on the floor.

“I’ve already gone over this with Carlos, but I want you to understand it too, just in case.”

“I know,” his son said, as he wiped down the barrel of his favorite deer rifle.

Quarry rattled the papers at him. “Now this is important, Daryl, no room for screwing up. Pay attention.”

After thirty minutes of back-and-forth, a satisfied Quarry rose and folded up the plans. As he patted them back into a long tube he kept them in he said, “Almost crashed the damn plane I was so broke up about Kurt.”

“I know,” Daryl replied, a tinge of fear in his voice, for he knew his father was an unpredictable man.

“Would’ve probably cried if it’d been you. Just wanted you to know that.”

“You a good man, Daddy.”

“No, I don’t think I am,” said Quarry as he left the room.

He went up to Gabriel’s room and called through the door, “You want to go along with me to see Tippi? I got to stop on the way to visit Fred.”

“Yes sir, I will.” Gabriel put down his book, slipped on his tennis shoes, and spun his baseball cap backward on his head.

A bit later Quarry and Gabriel edged up in front of the Airstream
in Quarry’s old Dodge. On the seat between them was a box with a few bottles of Jim Beam and three cartons of unfiltered Camels. After setting the box on the wooden steps going up to the Airstream, Quarry and Gabriel lifted from the bed of the truck two crates containing some kitchen-preserved vegetables, ten ears of plump corn, and twenty apples.

Quarry rapped on the door of the old, dented trailer while the cat-quick Gabriel chased a lizard through the dust until it disappeared underneath the Airstream. The old, wrinkled man opened the door and helped Quarry and Gabriel carry in the provisions.

“Thank you,” said the man in his native tongue as he eyed the crates.

“Got more than we need, Fred.”

When the Indian had come here, he’d never told Quarry his name, he’d just shown up. After a couple of awkward months Quarry had started calling him Fred and the fellow had never objected. He didn’t know what his Indian friends called him, but that was their business, Quarry felt.

The two other Indians were inside. One was asleep on a raggedy couch that had no legs and no springs, allowing the man to sink nearly to the floor. His loud snores indicated this did not bother him in the least. The other man was watching a comedy show on an old fifteen-inch television Quarry had given Fred a few years ago.

They cracked open the Beam, smoked, and talked while Gabriel played with an old mutt that had adopted Fred and his Airstream and sipped on a bottle of Coke Fred had given him.

When Quarry occasionally stumbled over a Koasati word, Gabriel would look up and supply it. Every time he did so, Fred would laugh and offer a sip of Beam to Gabriel in reward.

And each time Quarry would hold up his hand. “When he’s a man he can drink, but I wouldn’t advise it. Does more bad in the long run than good.”

“But you drink, Mr. Sam,” Gabriel pointed out. “A lot.”

“Don’t model yourself after me, son. Aim higher.”

Later, they drove on to see Tippi. Quarry let Gabriel read from
Pride and Prejudice
.

“Kind of boring,” the boy pronounced when he’d finished the long passage.

Quarry took the book from him and slipped it in his back pocket. “She don’t think so.”

Gabriel looked over at Tippi. “You never did tell me what happened to her, Mr. Sam.”

“No, I never did.”

S
EAN HAD TALKED
to David Hilal again, catching him out in the parking lot as the man was heading home. Tuck’s partner had not had much to add to what he’d already said. Yet he calmly answered each and every query as he leaned against his car and simultaneously read and typed messages on his BlackBerry.

When Sean brought up the issue of the buyout, however, his tone changed. He thrust the BlackBerry in his pocket, folded his arms across his chest, and scowled at Sean.

“What exactly was I supposed to buy him out with? I put all my money into this firm. I’m hocked to the limit. I couldn’t even get a loan to buy a car right now.”

“He said you made a lowball offer.”

“We talked about something like that, but the key is, it was the other way around.”

“Him buying you out?”

“That’s right. For the lowball offer.”

Okay, which one’s telling the truth?

“Why would you think of bailing out before the big contract award? Tuck says that would add millions to the value of the firm.”

“It absolutely would.
If
we win it. But it’s not a lock. We have proprietary technology that I think is the best out there. That’s the reason our prime contractor teamed with us. But we’re up against some big players with their own products that are very close in performance and reliability to ours. And the world of government contracting is not done on a level playing field. The big guys skirt the rules, throw the cash around. And because they usually have an
inside track they also buy up the most sought-after talent and the little guys get stuck with the scraps. And I don’t want to bail out, but I’m running out of money. And if we don’t win the contract, the firm will be worth a lot less than the offer he made me. We might have the inside track right now, but like I told you before, the president of the United States’ brother-in-law having an affair with Cassandra isn’t helping matters. That gets out, we’ve got problems.”

“He said there was nothing between him and Cassandra.”

“Really? Then ask him where he stayed when he was down there. I’m sure he’ll have some handy excuse.”

“You said before you didn’t think Tuck would kill his wife, but you don’t sound like you love your partner all that much.”

“I don’t.”

“You didn’t mention that before.”

“Didn’t I?”

“I’m a great note-taker. So, no, you didn’t.”

“Fine. I’m not in the habit of trashing my partner to people I don’t even know. But it’s hard not to, to tell you the truth.”

“Why?”

“Let’s just say he’s rubbed me the wrong way.”

“Care to give an example?”

“Would you believe me if I told you?”

“I’ve got a very open mind.”

Hilal looked off for a few moments before glancing back at Sean. “This is sort of embarrassing, actually.”

“I’m very much into maintaining confidences.”

Hilal popped a piece of gum in his mouth and started chewing and talking fast as though beating up on the gum and grinding his teeth were giving him the juice to confess everything. “Last year’s Christmas party? We’d won a nice little contract. Nothing to write home about, but we splurged anyway to keep up morale. Booze, band, fancy buffet, and a private room at the Ritz-Carlton. We spent too much but that was all right.”

“Okay. So what?”

“So Tuck gets shitfaced and makes a pass at my wife.”

“A pass? How?”

“According to her, by grabbing her ass and trying to stick his tongue down her throat.”

“Did you see it?”

“No, but I believe my wife.”

Sean shifted his weight to his right foot and drilled Hilal with a skeptical look. “If you believed your wife, why the hell are you still partners with Tuck?”

Hilal looked down, obviously embarrassed. “I wanted to kick his ass and walk out the door. That’s what I really wanted to do. But my wife wouldn’t let me.”

“
She
wouldn’t let you?”

“We have four kids. My wife stays home. Like I said, everything we have is tied up in this business. I’m a minority partner. If I tried to pull out, Tuck could screw me, leave me without a penny. We couldn’t survive that. We’d have lost everything. So we swallowed our pride. But I have never let my wife be in the same room with Tuck since then. And I never will. You can talk to her if you want. Call her right now. She’ll tell you exactly what I just did.”

“Was Pam at the Christmas party?”

Hilal looked surprised for a moment and then nodded. “Right, I see where you’re going. Yeah, she was there. Dressed as Mrs. Claus if you can believe it. Bright red hair and skinny. I think some people were laughing
at
her not
with
her.”

“You think she saw Tuck messing with your wife?”

“The room wasn’t that big. I think a lot of people saw it, actually.”

“But no visible reaction from Pam?”

“They didn’t leave together, I can tell you that.” Hilal paused. “Look, anything else? Because I’ve really got to get home.”

Sean walked back to his car. The principal reasons he believed Hilal were twofold. First was “Cassandra” being the password on Tuck’s computer. And second was Tuck’s claim that he was having financial troubles and Hilal was trying to take advantage of that. After his meeting with Jane and Tuck, Sean had taken a much harder look at Tuck’s financial records he’d found on the hard drive. The man had a stock and bond portfolio worth in excess of eight figures,
and outstanding debts at less than a quarter of that amount, so his cry of poverty was total bullshit. Yet if they knew he had cracked Tuck’s hard drive, they also had to know he would find that lie out. But sister and brother had still tried to snooker him. Sean put that aside and turned to the next obvious questions.

So why did you come back early, Tuck? And what were you doing for almost an hour between the airport and your house?

On the drive back to his office, he called Michelle. She didn’t answer. He left a message. He was worried about his partner. Yet he had spent much of his time worrying about her. On the surface she was the most rock-solid person he’d ever met. But he’d learned that rock had a few cracks if one poked at it deeply enough.

He drove home, packed an overnight bag, zipped to the airport, and paid an exorbitant walk-up fare to snag a flight to Jacksonville that was leaving in an hour.

He needed to talk to Cassandra Mallory. In person.

He got a phone call on his way to Washington Dulles Airport. It was his linguistic friend, Phil, from Georgetown University. “I’ve got someone who is familiar with the Yi language. If you want to send me a sample of what you’re talking about I can let her look at it.”

“I’ll e-mail it to you,” said Sean. When he got to Dulles he sent the sample. He walked to the security gate praying the letters on the arms would lead to something. But the more he thought about it he didn’t see how that was possible. As Michelle had rightly pointed out, the sample wasn’t even in Chinese.

He stared down at the picture of Cassandra Mallory that David Hilal had e-mailed him. She clearly had all the tools with which to tempt a man.

As the fifty-seat jet swept into a clear night sky, Sean hoped this trip was not taking him in the opposite direction of where he needed to go to find Willa.

Every day that went by without the little girl being found meant it was far more likely they would discover her body instead of her.

J
ANE
C
OX LOOKED OUT
the window of the First Family’s living room. Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania was in the middle of the capital city. And yet for those who called it home it might as well have been in a different solar system. There was no one on earth who could fully understand Jane’s life other than the families who had inhabited this house, tying their fate to the office of the presidency. And even for some of these folks, times had indeed changed. Even as recent a president as Harry Truman could walk around town with only a single guard accompanying him. That was unthinkable now. And there had never been as much scrutiny over the smallest act, the fewest words, or the slightest gesture as there was now.

She could understand why some First Ladies had become addicted to drugs and alcohol or been clinically depressed. She stayed away from anything except the occasional glass of wine or a beer on the campaign trail when the photo op required it. Her only constant drug had been pot when she was in college and a snort of cocaine during a post-college jaunt to the Caribbean. This had thankfully gone largely unnoticed at the time and was never reported later when she had undertaken the long journey from liberated student to First Spouse.