Sean Patrick Riley and I sit in his rental car outside my fleabag hotel. It’s been three hours since we left Anne Brennan’s house. Three hours for me to process what I saw in the back of that sedan.
And three hours to figure out what to do next.
“You’re sure about this plan?” Sean asks me.
I sigh. “No, but I can’t think of any other. I have to do something.”
“No, you don’t,” Sean says. “Who put you in charge of saving the world? If I were you, I’d get as much money as I could out of that Russian billionaire, cut whatever deal you need to cut with the feds, and move to some island. But that’s just me.”
The guy makes a good point.
“And this whole plan of yours depends on the video,” Sean says.
“Right. Now that I know what’s on it, I can make this plan work.”
He grunts with disapproval. “You mean now that you
think
you know what’s on the video, you
think
you can make this plan work.”
That’s a bit more accurate, yes.
“I mean, you’re just making an educated guess, Ben. And if you’re wrong, you’re basically fucked.”
“Just worry about your phone call,” I say, changing the subject. “You’re sure you have the phone number?”
He groans. “I do. I’ve already read it back to you.”
He’s not used to someone giving him directions. That’s probably one of the reasons he stopped being a cop and became his own boss as a private eye.
“And you’ll use an untraceable phone,” I say.
He waves me off. “Yes. Yes, already. Don’t worry, Ben. I’m capable of making one damn phone call.”
I nod. We are quiet for a moment. At least Sean seems to be enjoying the excitement. Me, I have acid burning a hole in my stomach.
“If your plan doesn’t work,” Sean informs me, “you’re done. They’ll arrest you and bury you in a hole. You can make all kinds of wild accusations, but you won’t be able to prove them.”
All that is true, of course.
“And that assumes you survive, the odds of which are fifty-fifty at best, in my opinion.”
Never tell me the odds
,
Han Solo said in
Star Wars
as he navigated around the oncoming asteroids.
“Then my plan better work,” I say.
I stretch my arms to release some nervous tension. I’m in my boxers, staring at a stained wall in my dingy hotel room, holding in my hand a cell phone that Sean Patrick Riley gave me last night, about to make a phone call that could change everything.
The calm before the storm. Rocky, looking into the mirror before he entered the ring against Apollo Creed. Tom Cruise, before he cross-examined Jack Nicholson at the court-martial. Mikey in
Swingers
,
before he summoned the courage to call that girl from the bar, Nikki, which ended in Mikey leaving her seven or eight voice mails in a row, each one more disastrous than the previous one, before she picked up and told him to drop dead.
Okay, maybe that last one is less inspirational. But notice there are no presidents in there. Not since Detective Liz Larkin said that I learned all that presidential trivia as a way of bonding with Father. That isn’t true. I just thought it was interesting information. I wasn’t bonding with Father. Screw him. I don’t need him. I’ve done just fine without him. I’m never going to recite another piece of presidential trivia as long as I live. No more poems they liked or shoes they wore or dogs they owned.
Never again. Write it down. The only president I’m going to worry about is the one occupying the White House right now, who has breached his oath of office and is fucking with my world.
I haven’t slept, in case you hadn’t noticed. I gave up trying last night about four in the morning, and, unable to leave this hotel—with police all over the capital hunting me—I have done nothing but pace the floor in this tiny, dirty room for hours on end. It’s probably a good rehearsal for federal prison, which, if this call doesn’t go well, is probably the best outcome I can expect. The worst is a coffin.
Game on, Ben. Don’t fuck this up.
I pick up the prepaid phone. I dial the number and place the phone to my ear.
One ring. Two. My empty stomach churns on adrenaline. My hand can hardly hold the phone.
Don’t screw this up…don’t be like Mikey—
“Hello.” The word is delivered in an icy, flat tone, dripping, of course, with the thick accent.
I take one deep breath. “Mr. Kutuzov, it’s Ben Casper.”
“Ah, Mr. Casper.”
Meester Kahsper.
“We have some business to discuss,” I say.
“Do we, now? I must tell you, Mr. Casper, that I am having my doubts about you. When you first contacted me, I assumed that you had come into possession of a very important item. Now I am not so sure.”
“Well, you should be sure, Alex. I have the video. And I have a digital file rigged to be e-mailed to every news outlet in North America if anything happens to me.”
“I see,” he says with amusement coloring his tone. Like he doesn’t believe me.
“I want twenty million dollars wired to a specific account, Alex. And when I receive it, you have my assurance that the video will remain confidential.”
Kutuzov clucks his tongue. “No, no, Mr. Casper. I think not. My friend, I know you are trying to find this video. But I now believe that you have been unable to obtain it. I believe you were—bluffing, as you Americans say? You were bluffing me previously.”
That’s true. I was. And I’m bluffing now, too.
“I’m not bluffing now,” I say.
“Then tell me what is on the video,” he says. “Prove to me that you have a copy.”
That’s basically the same thing Craig Carney said to me yesterday, and I failed the test. I hope I pass this time. Because if I don’t, I have no way out.
“It’s a sex video of Diana Hotchkiss with the First Lady, Libby Rose Francis,” I say.
And I hold my breath. This is the moment. Right or wrong. Live or die. It sure would be nice if I actually had that damn video file.
Kutuzov releases a sigh.
“Give me your account number,” he says, sounding like he’s lost a little bit of the confidence in his voice.
I pace the room another half hour. My legs are unsteady and my limbs are tingling with dread.
Give me your account number,
Kutuzov said.
So this time, I guessed right about the video. The clues were there for me all along. Operation Delano. I was right that the original Operation Delano was a plan to blackmail President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But I was wrong about the reason.
I forgot about his wife, Eleanor. The rumors, to this day, are unconfirmed, but in many circles it’s accepted as fact that Eleanor Roosevelt was a lesbian. Stalin must have heard those rumors, too. He was trying to dig up proof that FDR’s wife was gay so he could use it as leverage at the Yalta summit—as blackmail.
In the 1940s, that would probably be damaging information.
(For the record, this doesn’t count against my moratorium on presidential trivia.)
Anyway, fast-forward almost seventy years, and it’s Operation Delano 2.0. The Russians get proof that Libby Rose Francis has a girlfriend named Diana Hotchkiss. In this day, would it be a damaging political scandal for the president to admit that his wife is a lesbian? Haven’t we come further than that as a nation?
Apparently, President Francis doesn’t want to be the test case.
And who knows what’s on that video? If it’s graphic sex—I pause here to recall all Diana’s sex toys in her bedroom closet—it would be enough to scare any politician. That, I assume, is the straw that broke the camel’s back from the president’s point of view. He couldn’t survive a video making its way around the Internet of his wife doing kinky things with another woman.
I jump at the sound of a loud rap on my door. My pulse explodes into a pounding throb.
Who even knows I’m here?
I search for a means of escape—
Suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
There isn’t a window in this place, nowhere to hide—
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door; only this, and nothing more”—
“It’s Sean!” he calls out. “It’s Sean, Ben.”
I put my hands on my knees and wait for my breathing to resume. Deep breaths, Ben. Deep breaths.
“Hey,” he says when I let him in. He takes a moment to appraise me. “What were you saying just now?”
“I wasn’t saying anything.”
“Something—it sounded like that Edgar Allan Poe poem. ‘The Raven.’”
I take a breath. “I said that out loud?”
“You did.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “Did you sleep last night?”
“Not a wink.” I close and lock the door behind him. “You’ve got an untraceable phone to make your call?”
“Yes. For God’s sake, how many times are you going to ask me?”
“That’s a big help to me, Sean. Really.”
“Think nothing of it.” Sean takes a look around my fleabag hotel room and probably thinks, well, nothing of it.
“So?” he asks. “Did you guess right about the video?”
“Yep.”
“Jesus. A sex video of Diana Hotchkiss and the First Lady?”
I nod my head.
“And you figured it out just by what you saw last night in that car?”
“I should have figured it out long ago,” I say. “But yeah, last night did it for me. And your photos from your zoom lens are even better than the view I had.”
He nods with pride. “Yeah, I got a nice, tight shot of that kiss. That was no friends’ kiss, either.”
He pulls a copy of that photo out of his bag. He showed it to me on his camera last night, but it’s the first time I’ve seen a printout of the photo.
A close-up photo of Anne Brennan, sitting inside the black sedan, planting a passionate, urgent kiss on Diana Hotchkiss.
He’s right—it’s no kiss between friends. It’s a kiss of two women who desperately miss each other. A kiss of two women in love.
Oh, Diana. I guess you’ll never stop surprising me.
The photo is enough of a close-up that you can’t see a whole lot more than their faces, but I saw a flash of orange when I peeked into the car last night, and Sean’s photo shows a bit of Diana’s clothing as well. And what seals the deal is the glint of steel on her wrist as her hand tenderly caresses Anne’s face during the kiss.
Diana was in handcuffs and an orange prison jumpsuit.
Diana wasn’t a spy working for the United States. Diana was a traitor. She secretly recorded a sexual romp with the First Lady and was selling it to the highest bidder. My guess is she was working with the Russians initially, but then got greedy and invited the Chinese in, too. Or maybe she was working with both all along, but didn’t tell one about the other. Who knows?
The details don’t really matter. What matters now is that I have to deal with it, and if I don’t do it right, I’ll either go to prison for life or be fitted for a coffin.
“What do you need from me now?” Sean asks.
I snap out of my funk. “I just want you to make that phone call.”
“Nothing else?”
“Only this and nothing more,” I say.
He doesn’t know whether to laugh or frown. “You sure you’re okay?”
“I don’t want you anywhere near the National Mall today, Sean. If this doesn’t work out, I’m either dead or under arrest. And you’ll be charged as an accessory.”
He makes a face. Telling him to stay away from excitement is like telling Kim Kardashian to stay away from a camera.
“All you’ve done so far is investigate the disappearance of Nina Jacobs,” I say. “Nobody can prosecute you for that. If you help me now, you could spend the rest of your life in prison. Or get killed in the crossfire.”
I walk over to the door and open it. Enough innocent people have died. If I’m next, so be it. But not Sean.
“Go,” I say.
He finally relents. As he passes me on his way out, he flicks the back of his wrist against my chest. “Hey,” he says.
“I know,” I respond. “Don’t get dead.”
This ends here.
I always wanted to say something dramatic like that. But guess what? When it’s really happening, it ain’t so fun.
The sky is a sheet of powder blue this afternoon, bright and serene. I’m dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt I purchased earlier today. My forehead is greasy with sweat, and my shirt is stuck to my chest.
The crowd on the National Mall is swollen today. Could be that it’s nearing the end of summer and people are getting in their vacations before school starts in September.
Or maybe there are more “tourists” than usual because some of them aren’t tourists at all. I don’t kid myself. There are probably dozens of them stationed throughout the Mall, standing at the various memorials, watching my every move, communicating with one another, ready to pull the trigger the moment they see a simple hand gesture or hear a signal uttered into a mouthpiece. I probably have twenty targets on my chest.
And I’m making it easy. I’m standing still, about twenty yards from the Lincoln Memorial, looking over the Mall. This is my favorite place in the capital—it’s an inspiration, a tribute to the courage that so many people exhibited in defense of this country and of individual freedoms. This might be the last time I ever see it.
I walk up to the memorial. But I don’t see Honest Abe today. A blue tarp has been pulled down over his statue, along with a sign apologizing for the repair work that needs to be done and promising to have the memorial ready soon. It will be a disappointment to sightseers, but there are plenty of other things to see around here.
So I sit alone, halfway up the stairs of the memorial, looking over the reflecting pool and the Washington Monument while parents corral children and snap photos, while sightseers move from one memorial honoring heroic people to another.
Once upon a midday humid, while I pondered weak and stupid
Over motives of these gentlemen so adversarial,
I sat quietly frustrated as I nervously awaited
For a visitor to meet me at this grand memorial,
An inquisitor to greet me at this proud memorial—
Only this, and nothing more.
Well, a little more than that. The caller I’m awaiting, over whom I’m ruminating, has been long deliberating how to put me at death’s door. So after careful preparation, I’ll assess the situation, and I’ll pray my presentation leads to peace and not to war.
“Hello, Mr. Kutuzov,” I say to the smartly dressed man climbing the stairs.
And if I’m wrong, I’m nothing more.