Ace In The Hole wc-6 Page 7

  With fingers without feeling Sara replaced the receiver in its cradle.

  She'd fled her room in tears, trusting in her small size and a certain knack of invisibility that had served her well at various points in her career to hide her in the mob. At first it worked. When they paged her in the lobby, it set a fresh pack of reporters baying after her, hungry to worry bones from which Hartmann's bland denial hadn't filleted the last scraps of meat.

  Is Hartmann telling the truth? Why did Barnett's announcement specify you? What's your connection to the Bar- nett campaign? The questions split half and half between trying to get her to admit she'd hit the rack with Hartmann and trying to get her to admit she'd conspired with the fundamentalists to wreck the senator's good name.

  Part of her ached to use the proffered forum, to announce, Yes, I slept with Gregg Hartmann, and I learned that he's a monster, a covert ace who makes people into puppets. Cowardice intervened. Or was it sanity? Her revelationsallegations, was the only way they would be viewed-were extravagant enough without turning them into Midnight Sun headline fodder.

  She turned her face away and said, "No comment." And swallowed whole the steaming chunks of abuse: "Where do you get off trying to pull that shit? The public has a right to know. You're a journalist, for Christ's sake." Finally a cocktailer in leotards and one of those short black skirts took her by the arm and steered her here, into the office of the manager of the Marriott's lounge.

  The receiver clicked home with the finality of a breech closing on a cartridge. Somebody took what she had to say seriously.

  The caller was Owen Rayford of the Post's New York bureau. Chrysalis was dead. Murdered. Ace powers were involved.

  Was it a puppet? She doubted that. Hartmann's strings quickly attenuated and broke with distance; she knew that from experience. There were bent aces-Bludgeon, Carnifex, maybe the Sleeper if he were far gone in amphetamine psychosis-who were capable of such a deed. That was an irony about Hartmann; in his position you hardly needed ace powers to get into serious evil doing. Money, power, and influence weren't exactly any weaker forces in human affairs than they'd been up until the fifteenth of September, 1946.

  The fear lived within her; it coiled like a serpent, burned like a star. It brought with it terrible knowledge: the only hope of safety lay in risking all.

  The manager and the waitress who'd rescued her stood by, watching with polite curiosity. She arranged her face in a smile and stood.

  "Is there a back way out of here?" she asked.

  6:00 P.M.

  She had to take a Valium before she could get the damned acoustic coupler to work right. Her laptop had an inboard modem, but hotels were leery of modular jacks, preferring to keep their phones tethered firmly to the wall by old-fashioned cords. So she had to fiddle with the antique external modem, which was unforgiving if you didn't get the phone's handset into its twin-cup cradle just so.

  Eventually she got it going. Then she sat in gloom, lit only by afternoon light straggling through the room's heavy curtains, smoking and squinting at the screen as the records transferred count spun on and her story spun down the wires that connected her NEC laptop to the Post's computers.

  It had all come out of her in one orgasmic gush: Andi's death, her suspicion, the sinister hidden presence in jokertown who had flashed tantalizing clues as to his existence-and identity-during the riots attending another Democratic convention twelve years ago; her own personal quest, leading to her entrapment in the very web she'd been struggling to delineate. And finally murder.

  There were two people, she'd written, who had their fingers on the Jokertown pulse. Actually there were three; Tachyon was the third, literally as well as figuratively. But he was blinded by personal regard for Hartmann, and the political plums the senator had thrown his way, the grants that kept him living in a style fit for a prince, which he was. Sara would not invoke his name.

  The others were herself and Chrysalis. The Crystal Palace had never been more than a front for Chrysalis's real avocation, which was brokering information on everything that went down in J-town. Close observers of the scene took it for granted that sooner or later she'd reel in a thread and find it had a cobra tied to it.

  The cobra was named Hartmann. And Chrysalis pulled his string just at the moment when he was swollen with venom and quickest to strike.

  Why didn't I confide in her? she asked herself as liquid crystal numbers flickered in the dim. There had been plenty of time, when they gained a guarded sort of friendship aboard the Stacked Deck, during the year that intervened. But Chrysalis had remained in some sense a rival. And Sara was not a woman who found sharing confidences an easy thing.

  UPLOAD COMPLETED, her screen said, with a beep for emphasis. She quickly broke the connection and began to disconnect the modem. Calm had come upon her, strange and a little frightening. The calm of an accident victim.

  I'm a target, she thought without emotion. If Chrysalis learned his seeret, he has to assume that I know. She regretted pushing so hard at Hartmann's staffers earlier in the day. He had to have heard about that, and the inference would be unavoidable.

  You're such an innocent, she chided herself. Naive, just as Ricky said you were.

  But she wasn't a total fool. She was wading in the shark tank now. She'd learned a lot of moves during a long and successful journalistic career. None of them would suffice to get her to dry land intact. That was maybe the most important thing she knew right now.

  She turned off the NEC's power and clicked its cover closed. She tucked the miniature computer into her shoulder bag. Stood.

  It has to be Tachyon, she knew. He had to have his suspicions about what had been happening in Jokertown over the years-about what had happened in Syria and Berlin. He could read her mind, if he doubted her words.

  Besides, he thinks I'm… attractive. Even if he refused to believe her, there was a way to attach herself to him. She had been prepared to offer herself to him before, when she was convinced the Doughboy case would lead to Hartmann. He had a certain magnetism. It might not even be so bad.

  Don't kid yourself. She had not been with a man sincesince the tour. She hadn't felt the lack. Even before the famous affair, sex hadn't been her biggest priority.

  But survival was. At least until Andrea was avenged.

  At least Tachyon seemed the type to take his pleasure in a hurry and be done with it-no protracted grunting and groaning and Was It Good for You Too? She stabbed her cigarette to death on the Hilton logo embossed in the plastic ashtray. Pausing to dab some perfume on the insides of her wrists, where blue veins met white skin, she walked out the door.

  7:00 P.M.

  The convention had broken up for dinner and would reconvene at nine. Jack shared the glass elevator with a man who carried a tall stack of Domino's pizzas, and stood with his face turned firmly to the door-he hated heights, a phobia that developed after Tachyon pointed out, forty years before, that a long fall was one of the few things that could kill him. The elevator doors opened, and Jack thankfully followed the pizzas down the hall to Hartmann's headquarters. Floating up from the atrium lobby were the chords of "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina." Bar pianists, he thought, seemed a bit overspecialized.

  Billy Ray, chest puffed out as he stood guard in the hallway in his white Carnifex suit, passed the deliveryman, but with a martial artist's quickness, stepped in front of Jack as he tried to follow.

  "Did the senator send for you, Braun?"

  Jack looked at him. "Don't push. It's been a hard day." Ray's face, which had quite literally been rearranged in a fight, gave Jack a leer. "Your plight touches my heart. Let's see what's in the case."

  Jack bit back his annoyance and opened his briefcase, revealing the cellular phone and computer-operated dialing system that kept him in touch with his delegates and Hartmann HQ.

  "Let's see vour ID."

  Jack dug the laminated card out of his pocket. "You're really a prat, Ray."

  "Prat? What the fuck kinda word is
that?" Ray's twisted face leered at Jack's ID. "That's not the word the strongest ace in the world would use. That's the kinda word some insignificant shivering weenie might use." He licked his lips as if savoring the idea. "Golden Weenie. Yeah. That's you."

  Jack looked at Ray and folded his arms. Billy Ray had been riding him for over a year, ever since they'd met on the Stacked Deck. "Get out of my way, Billy."

  Ray stuck out his jaw. "What are you gonna do if I don't, weenie?" He smiled. "Give me your best shot. Just try it." Jack comforted himself for a moment with the mental picture of squashing Ray's head like a pumpkin. Ray's wild card gave him strength and speed, and his kung fu or whatever gave him skill, but Jack figured he could still demolish him with one punch. On second thought Jack decided it wasn't what he was here for.

  "Right now, my job's getting the senator elected, and fighting with his bodyguard isn't going to do that. But after Gregg's in the White House, I promise I'll kick a field goal with you, okay?"

  "I'm holding you to that, weenie."

  "Any time after November eighth."

  "See you at one minute after midnight on the ninth, weenie."

  Ray stepped aside and Jack entered the headquarters suite. Open pizza boxes were surrounded by gorging campaign workers. TV monitors babbled network analyses to media-deaf ears. Jack found out which room Danny Logan was using, took a pizza box, and set off.

  The campaign parliamentarian was a white-haired, paunchy former congressman from Queens who had lost his seat when his Irish constituency was replaced by Puerto Ricans. Now he advised Democratic candidates on how to collect Irish-American votes.

  Jack saw him spread-eagled alone on his bed, surrounded by empty bottles and crumpled yellow legal-sized sheets, covered with numbers. "Better eat something," Jack said, and dropped the pizza box onto Logan's wide stomach.

  "It's not going to make a bit of difference," Logan said. His voice was thick. "We don't have the numbers. We're going to lose 9(c}-the test case."

  Jack rubbed his eyes. "Refresh my memory."

  "9(c) is a formula for apportioning delegates formerly committed to candidates who have dropped out of the race. According to 9(c), the ex-candidates' delegates are divided among the remaining candidates in proportion to the number of votes the survivors won in those states. In other words, after Gephardt dropped out, his delegates from Illinois, say, were divided between Jackson, Dukakis, and us according to the percentage of the vote."

  "Right."

  "Barnett and a few of the party elders are challenging 9(c). They want to free the delegates to vote for whoever they want. Barnett figures he can pick up a few votes; the party elders want to start a movement for Cuomo or Bradley among the uncommitted." Logan ran a hand through his thinning white hair. "We announced our support for the rule thought we'd see who lined up for and against, to give us a hint how the California challenge will go."

  "And we're losing on 9(c)?" Jack reached for a bottle and drank from the neck.

  "Gregg's making some phone calls. But since Dukakis came out against 9(c), we're fighting a losing fight." He slammed his fist into the bed. "Everyone keeps asking about those stories about the senator and that reporter lady. That we're going to have another Hart fiasco. That's where the resistance lies. Everybody's smelling Gregg's blood."

  "What can you do?" Jack said.

  "Just try to delay." Logan belched massively. "Lots of ways to delay in this game."

  "And then?"

  "And then Gregg starts working on his concession speech."

  Anger crackled in Jack like a burst of lightning. He waved a big fist. "We won the big primaries! We've got more votes than anybody."

  "That's why we're a target. Aw, shit." Tears were rolling from the corners of Logan's eyes. He swiped at them with the back of one red paw. "Gregg stuck by me when I lost my seat. There isn't a more decent man alive. He deserves to be president." His face crumpled. "But we don't have the numbers!"

  Jack watched as Logan began to weep, the pizza box jogging up and down on his broad stomach. Jack left his drink on the bedside table and wandered out of the room. Hopelessness sang in him like a keening wind.

  All that work, he thought. All the renewed hope that had got him into public life again. All for nothing.

  In the main HQ, campaigners were still clustered around pizza boxes. Jack asked where Hartmann was and was told the senator was cloistered with deVaughn and Amy Sorenson, plotting strategy. Then they'd try a last-minute phone blitz to win over some of the uncommitted superdelegates. Without anything else to do, Jack took a piece of pizza and settled down in front of the television monitors.

  "It'll be a close vote." Ted Koppel's voice rang in Jack's ear, speaking from the nearly empty floor of the convention to a cynical-looking David Brinkley in the sky booth. "The Hartmann forces are counting on this test to show their strength prior to the showdown over the California challenge."

  "Isn't. That. A risky. Strategy?" Brinkley's curt manner seemed to inflate each word into its own sentence. "Hartmann's strategy has always been risky, David. His articulation of liberal political principal in a race dominated by glib media personalities has always been thought risky by his own strategists. Even if he loses California tonight, Hartmann's campaign manager told me that he'll still stand by the jokers' Rights plank in the platform fight tomorrow." Brinkley affected curmudgeonly surprise. "Are you telling me, Ted. That in this day and age. A man can get. To be front-runner. By a consistent public articulation. Of principle?"

  Koppel grinned. "Did I say that, David? I didn't mean to suggest that Hartmann's campaign wasn't media-wise-just that it's been consistent in the image it's presented to the voter, just as the campaigns of Leo Barnett and Jesse Jackson, the other two candidates nearest the prize, have been equally consistent. But, like I said, any strategy has its risks. The campaign of Walter Mondale in '84 stands as an example to any politician who dares to be too consistent and articulate."

  "But let us suppose. That Hartmann loses the fight. How can he possibly. Regain momentum?"

  "He may not, David." Koppel was obviously excited. "If Gregg Hartmann can't win by at least a small margin in the fight over Rule 9(c), he may lose everything. The big challenge over California may just prove an anticlimax-he could lose the whole shooting match right here in the fight over 9(c)." Drama, Jack thought. Everything had to be dramatized. Each vote had to be the vote, the significant vote, the critical vote, or else the voracious media gods were unhappy and had nothing to fill the air with but their own meanderings.

  Jack tossed his half-eaten pizza slice back into the box. He crossed the room and met Amy Sorenson coming out of her meeting. There was despair in her dark eyes. Hartmann was on the phone, she said, trying to round up last-minute votes. Hopeless, Jack thought. He picked up his briefcase, left HQ, and headed down the hall to Logan's room. The parliamentarian was passed out on the bed, clutching a whiskey bottle as if it were a woman.

  Alone in the corner, the television rattled on. Cronkite and Rather were analyzing Hartmann's strategy and concluding that he may have overreached this time. They reminded Jack of a pair of television movie critics chewing up a new film. What if there wasn't any drama? Jack thought. What if the vote came and nothing happened, it was just some little procedural thing? Wouldn't everyone be surprised if someone, came along and took the drama away? What if someone, some media god or something, went and canceled Leo Barnett's showdown?

  Jack realized he was staring at his briefcase.

  He opened the case, picked up the phone, told the little computer memory to get him Hiram Worchester. "Worchester?" he said. "This is Jack Braun. I'm speaking for Danny Logan."

  "Has Logan come up with any numbers yet? From what I can see, we're in real trouble."

  Jack reached to the bedside table and swallowed the remains of his drink. "I know," he said. "That's why, when the fight over 9(c) comes up, I want you to give half your votes to Barnett."

  "You better not be selling us out, Br
aun."

  "I'm not."

  "That would be your classic Judas ace style, wouldn't it? A quick stab in the back, then a new job in the media courtesy of Leo Barnett."

  Jack closed his fist. The glass in his hand exploded in a flash of gold light.

  "Are you going to do this or not?" Jack demanded. He watched as crushed glass drained like sand from his fist.

  "I want to discuss this with Gregg."

  "Call him if you like, but he's busy. Just get ready to cut your delegate count in half."

  "Would you mind explaining to me what's going on?"

  "We're canceling the showdown. If Barnett wins by too large a margin, it's not going to prove anything. All it'll mean is that we didn't fight. In the pictures, you can't have a gunfight with just one man in the street. The audience'll walk out." There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then: "Let me talk to Logan."

  "He's on another line."

  "Why do you expect me to trust you?" The fat man's furious anger beat at Jack's ear.

  "I don't have time to argue this. Do it or not, I don't care. Just be ready to answer for your decision later."

  "If you cost Gregg the election…"

  Jack gave a laugh. "Have you seen ABC? They've already got our man conceding."

  Jack cut the connection, then phoned his own assistant Emil Rodriguez. He told Rodriguez that he wouldn't be on the floor tonight, that the delegation was his to command; but cut his vote in half on 9(c), and then stand like a rock against the California challenge.

  He began to call every other delegation head, in order of number of votes. By the time he made his last call, to the man who controlled Hartmann's two votes from the Virgin Islands, the convention had reconvened.

  Danny Logan, unconscious on the bed, began to snore. Jack turned on the television and sat in the corner with Logan's whiskey bottle. The atmosphere on the convention floor was intense. Delegates were scurrying into place around their floor leaders. The orchestra was playing-good lord-"Don't Cry for Me, Argentina."