Cut and Thrust

30

Late in the day, Billy Burnett was returning from the set to the offices in his golf cart when he passed a construction site for a new sound stage. The construction crew worked from seven A.M. to three P.M., so the site was deserted. Except it wasn’t.

Billy stopped his cart and watched as a familiar figure strode across the site. The young man stopped, looked around, and didn’t see Billy. It was Harry Gregg, the gunsmith at the Centurion armory whom Billy had hired and trained the year before, and there was something furtive about his actions.

Sure that he was alone, Harry began doing something to the door lock on the construction shed in which hand tools and explosives were stored. Billy glanced at his watch, then waited patiently until Harry emerged from the shed. He had been there for a little less than two minutes and he was carrying something in a brown paper bag. He watched as Harry got into a golf cart and drove back to the armory.

Billy drove back to his office, lost in thought. He’d have a word with Harry tomorrow. The young man always came in early to get a head start on his work.

Harry took his paper bag into the now-deserted armory and went to his workroom. He weighed the bag: six and a half ounces. Plenty. He molded the malleable plastic explosive into the desired shape, then unwrapped a throwaway cell phone he had bought at his neighborhood supermarket and plugged it in for charging. The battery was already eighty percent charged, so he didn’t have to wait long. He cut a piece of wire, stripped the ends of their insulation, secured one end to a detonator he had taken from the construction shack, and pressed the detonator into the soft explosive, then he used duct tape to fix the cell phone to the explosive, satisfied that it had a sufficient charge. He did not fix the detonator wire to the phone — not yet. Safety first, he told himself.

Harry put the completed bomb and some tools and duct tape into his tin lunchbox, then went home. As he walked into his apartment, his phone was ringing and he picked it up.

“This is your client,” a woman’s voice said. “The gentleman you seek will depart at nine A.M. the day after tomorrow, not tomorrow. All other arrangements are the same. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” he said, and she hung up.

Stone and Ann arrived at the Staples Center with the Bacchettis in an Arrington SUV and, after the usual security procedures, took the elevator up to Stone’s skybox.

The bartender brought them drinks, and Stone picked up a pair of binoculars and stood at the big window, panning around the convention floor. He found the New Mexico delegation — only five delegates, but with various spouses and hangers-on seated with them they came to fifteen or twenty, including Ed Eagle, who stood head and shoulders above the rest. Pete Otero was not in sight.

Stone kept panning until he found the Virginia delegation — bigger than that of New Mexico, with thirteen delegates. Senator Mark Willingham was not among them.

He did the same for the huge California delegation. With its fifty-five delegates and their hangers-on it came to more than a hundred people. Governor Dick Collins stood in the midst of them, shaking hands and buttonholing delegates, whispering intently into an ear here and there.

Stone called Ed Eagle, who answered immediately. “Hi there, I’ve got binoculars on you.”

Ed turned and looked up at the skybox and waved.

“Where’s your governor?”

“I don’t know — not here, though.”

“Funny, Willingham isn’t with his delegation, either.”

“Train your binoculars to the right, under the first balcony. There’s a bar.”

Stone panned right. “Got it.” Ah, there were the missing pols, in earnest conversation. “Otero has Willingham by a lapel. I’ll bet he doesn’t like that, but he’s nodding, so they must be in agreement. Powwow is breaking up now. Your governor will be with you in a moment.”

“I’d better go,” Eagle said and hung up.

Stone watched Otero work his way across the floor, shaking hands, smiling, slapping a back here and there, pecking women on the cheek. Then he found Willingham, rigid in his pin-striped suit, greeting men — only men. He apparently didn’t have much use for women, and it didn’t take him long to rejoin his delegation.

“Well,” Stone said to Dino, who stood beside him, “all the players are where they’re supposed to be.”

The convention was being hammered to order by the chairman, who was shouting at the delegates to take their seats.

Stone took a seat next to Ann, found a remote control, and turned on the TV sets to get the play-by-play.

Back in the library of The Arrington’s presidential cottage, Will and Kate Lee sat, having dinner off trays. Kate put her fork down. “I don’t think I can eat.”

“Funny, I’m starved,” Will said, shoving a slab of steak into his mouth and sipping from a glass of Cabernet.

“Well,” Kate said, “that’s the difference between an office seeker and an officeholder — and a lame duck at that.”

Chris Matthews was holding forth on the balloting. “Kate Lee has taken an early lead,” he said. “Arizona, whose delegates Martin Stanton won in the primary, went solidly for her, but Alabama and Alaska went for Willingham. California has put the first lady ahead — she got forty-two of her fifty-five delegates. And Otero got the rest.”

Stone sat up. “Thirteen went to Otero? Dick wasn’t able to swing them all.”

“That could hurt us later in the balloting,” Ann said, chewing her lip and taking a swig of her martini. “God, I hate this part.”