Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

A Script for the President by William Bankier

© 1993 by William Bankier

This year the real president of the United States was honored by the Mystery Writers of America as its Reader of the Year. The revelation that Mr. Clinton loves a mystery must have brought him a lot of mail from aspiring writers. We hope none of them proves as persistent as the scriptwriter of Mr. Bankier’s story...

Royal Flagg woke up thinking he was back in Smokey Valley. He thought he heard somebody tuning his mother’s piano. Eyes closed, he waited to hear her voice calling from the foot of the stairs: “Roy? You’ll be late for school!”

The garbage truck in the laneway off Hollywood Boulevard stopped backing up so the repetitive note he had mistaken for a piano came to an end. Connie Seltzer rolled over beside him and made wet noises with her mouth. He was not going to miss school, he was going to be late for the early shift at the restaurant.

“I am your waiter, Royal,” he rumbled close to her ear, speaking through a filter of her ash-blond hair. “The special this morning is a nibble on the neck.”

Connie squeaked as she stretched and turned to intrude her tiny self into the cage of his lanky arms and legs. “I don’t believe you!” she murmured.

Nobody did. They all thought he was just another southern boy lost in L.A.; one more aspiring actor/writer waiting tables while dreaming of discovery, fame, and fortune. Few people realized that Royal Flagg had friends in high places. He was not a rose born to blush unseen. Soon, very soon, he was going to light up the sky.

“Don’t do it, Roy.” Connie was driving the car in dressing gown and bare feet. This habit was so Californian, Roy could only tolerate it by writing it into his script. The routine was for her to drop him at the restaurant on Melrose and head back to the apartment. There, she would take her time getting ready for her ten o’clock start at the radio station.

“Why not do it?” he said. “It’s a golden opportunity.”

“You’ll be setting your mother up for a big rejection.”

“I don’t think so.”

“You stopped sending her money. You don’t even answer her letters.”

“She’ll come if I ask her.”

Roy did not feel guilty about stopping the money. His mother was not the only one chasing him to pay. Anyway, all she did was use it for cat food and vet bills. It was crazy to have ten cats. Last time he flew to New Orleans and did the long drive in the rental car to Smokey Valley, the animals really spooked him. A few of them were normal. But others were ghost cats — old, sick strays that looked like cats made out of pipe cleaners. One orange character teetered on the lawn near the porch and stared at Roy as if he had materialized out of thin air.

Clara Hunter Flagg was a bleeding heart. Roy classified her this way even though he knew it was only a small part of the truth. He could not afford, not right now, to see her any other way. He needed all his concentration, and what little money he was earning, to push his career. His film script was ready. The fact that two agents had read An Air That Kills and declined to handle it meant nothing.

“Are you getting out of the car?” Connie said. “Or do you intend to sit here all morning?”

There was the restaurant door propped open. There was the ditzy sequined sign, Scrump. Behind the big window sat menacing silhouettes, customers who would want their toast taken back because it was not supposed to be buttered. And the ketchup bottle was empty. And always, always, more coffee. When he first arrived in L.A. and was a customer himself, Roy had enjoyed coming to Scrump. In those bragging, swaggering days, he met Connie Seltzer here. He got himself a fine place to live, rent-free.

“Will you talk to Chatterton?” Roy was balanced on the Melrose Avenue pavement now, high-top training shoes rocking just a trifle, bending his frame to show Connie his worried expression.

“Can’t you put your mother up in a Best Western?”

“She won’t come if it’s a hotel. We have no room. Hal has that giant condo.”

“All right, I’ll ask him.” Connie let the car creep forward. “But you know Hal Chatterton. Don’t be surprised if he says no.”

The headphones mashed Chatterton’s fuzzy brown hair on both sides. Connie had said once that he looked like a Brillo sandwich. L.A.’s popular talk-show host liked that one. He used it a few times on the air.

“In the next half-hour,” he said into the microphone, “we have Dirty Berty on the line from London to dish the dirt about the royals. And my aggressive co-host, Connie Seltzer, will review the movie Acid Heart. Did you actually see this one, Connie?”

“Start to finish. Paid my money and hung in to the end.”

“Not a rave, I take it?”

“Not unless you like women in cages.”

“Save it till after the break. This is Hal ‘Chatty’ Chatterton on 109, KLDD.”

As the commercial sequence began, Chatterton lowered the volume on the studio speaker. “Give it to me again,” he said to Connie. “His mother?”

“I met her once in New Orleans when Roy and I first started going together. He drove alone to Smokey Valley and got her and brought her to the hotel. He didn’t want me to see where he used to live.”

“Smokey Valley.” Chatterton shook his head slowly and half closed his eyes, as if he had just heard of the existence of a lost city.

“She’s a cheerful old biddy. Taught school all her life. The residents of the town worship her, they all sat in her class. Including you know who.”

“He really knows Mike Linford?”

“I don’t think they ever exchanged words. Linford is somewhat older. But Roy saw him around, he used to come to his house.” It was exciting, talking with such familiarity about the new president of the United States. “Mike Linford used to come over to the Flagg residence for piano lessons.”

“I have to admit it, I’m impressed. All this time I’ve considered your friend to be a Louisiana con artist. Sammy Glick with Spanish moss,” Chatterton said, referring to Schulberg’s famous antihero. “Now I have to concede he’s a con artist who knows the president.”

“Royal Flagg is just a name to Linford.” Connie hurried as the commercials rolled through. “But Clara Hunter Flagg would be an important person from the president’s past. We’ve all seen what an approachable character Linford is. If his old piano teacher were to show up, he’d see her.”

“And I’m to house the widow Flagg for how long? A weekend?” The producer in the control room had her finger raised, one eye on the clock. “What does she take on her bran flakes?” Chatterton said, preparing his mind for Dirty Berty from London.

Royal Flagg was hovering by the cashier’s end of the counter, doing what he liked best. He was counting his tips. He pressed a sheaf of ones on Frederico and waited for big bills in exchange. Frederico was from Guatemala. When Roy came aboard, Freddy was a busboy. Now he wore a burgundy cummerbund and a black moustache.

“You must be about ready to buy your house,” he said as he handed the waiter his money.

“Got to fly my mother in from New Orleans. She’s coming next weekend.”

“That’s nice.” Frederico’s mother would never come to L.A. She was in a common grave near their village along with a dozen other women and children.

Roy emptied his eyes and showed the cashier a limpid smile. For his own amusement, because he was certain Freddy had never seen the movie Psycho, he used a Norman Bates voice as he said, “A boy’s best friend is his mother.”

Frederico tapped the wall calendar. “Linford will be in town. Your mother can see the president.”

“I’m working on it,” Roy said. He stuffed his wallet down into a front pocket of his jeans and left the restaurant. Connie was waiting in the car three meters along the street. Roy fought off an urge to kick in one of the doors. She had finished the show and then had driven all the way from the studio on Cahuenga. She would chauffeur him to the apartment and then head back to the studio to prepare tomorrow’s program. Roy felt like a school kid. Once in a while she missed and he took a cab. And then only after a delicious wander, looking at people and at himself in windows.

She reached across the seat to open his door. “Okay shift?”

“So-so. Do a good show?”

“Like the curate’s egg,” she said. “Good in parts.”

Connie had lots of these literary-type things to say. Roy disliked them. “Talk to Chatterton?”

“Not yet.” She had predicted Hal would not agree to put up Roy’s mother. It bothered her to admit she had been wrong about that. “I’ll try this afternoon.”

They wheeled into traffic. One good thing about his prisoner-status in Connie’s car; she was a conscientious driver, she tended to shut up. This left Roy free to think about his script. Whenever he was feeling down, a few minutes dreaming about An Air That Kills would lift him into a state of euphoria.

The movie would open with footage shot from a helicopter. The camera is racing at low level across a wooded area, a blur of dark branches. Now we see open pasture with two horses galloping flat out. The horses are terrified, of course, because the chopper is making a ferocious noise. But the viewers don’t think of that. They’re just watching those elegant stallions running, shoulder to shoulder.

Then the camera lifts and we see the village, the house with the green roof. And we see the boy standing in the open gateway, not waving as a pickup truck raises dust on its way to the paved road.

“You’ll be all right now?” They were in front of the apartment building. She always asked him if he’d be all right.

“Soon as I get the booze and the marijuana. And telephone the gang to come on over.” She drove away, leaving him with a glimpse of her tolerant smile. Roy went inside. He was going to use the telephone, not for anything as sterile as partying. He was going to put a call through to Ellis and Fanny Temple. It was one thing to leave everything to his mother. But what if she could not get through to the president on the day? It would be prudent to prepare the ground.

“This is Royal Flagg speaking. I’d like to talk to Ellis Temple. It’s in connection with the president’s visit next weekend?” He had opened a new barrel of Southern Courtesy and was letting the sweet stuff flow. Asked to wait, he passed the time making faces at himself in the mirror beside Connie’s desk.

A mature female voice came on the line, courteous but brisk. This one could crown him king or send him away with a flea in his ear. “How may I help you?”

“By making available a few minutes of our president’s precious time. Let me explain. I am Royal Flagg. I am the son of Clara Hunter Flagg from Smokey Valley, Louisiana.”

“Keep talking, Mr. Flagg. You mesmerize.”

“When Mike Linford was a boy, he took piano lessons from my mother. Came over to the house every Thursday afternoon.”

“Stop right there, Royal Flagg. You don’t have to say any more. Where is your mother right now?”

“In Smokey Valley. But she has a ticket to fly.”

“Then fly your mother in, by all means. This sounds like a most serendipitous meeting. Make it the second day, the Sunday afternoon. We can fit Mrs. Flagg in for tea.”

Roy’s heart was racing. “And who am I talking to?”

“This is Fanny Temple speaking. I’ll be having you checked out, of course. If all is well, you won’t hear from me. Just come along on Sunday.” Her voice went up a notch. “Your mother won’t mind a few photographs, will she?”

After arrangements were made and he put the telephone down, Roy had to run from room to room, bouncing off furniture. He ended up in the kitchen, where he took a beer from the refrigerator, popped the lid, and sat at the table.

Here was something to tell his father. Ted Flagg had been so good, it was hard to think about him. But once in a while, Roy could stand to remember. He was ten years old and his mother brought him to New Orleans. On a warm afternoon, they stood in the open doorway of Crazy Annie’s on Bourbon Street, listening to the jazz. The music made little Roy feel like marching. His father looked fine back there on the low stage in his white jacket with the black shirt collar open. Then the leader spoke into a microphone. “Here’s something special from Ted Flagg.” Roy would never forget the cathedral hush as his father moved front and center and raised the glittering trombone. He played a lilting, weeping melody that Roy now knew was “September Song.”

When Ted Flagg joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra, it was big news in Smokey Valley. So was the bulletin a year later from Montreal where the band was on tour. The visiting jazzman had closed Champ’s Shoebar on Crescent Street after the band’s two shows that day at the Seville Theater. There was an argument over a woman. Ted Flagg ended up on the pavement, bleeding to death from a knife wound to the abdomen.

At the time, Roy was in Memphis with a rock band called Stella in honor of Stanley Kowalski’s poignant cry in Streetcar. After he read the telegram, Roy told his buddies he was not going on. And he never did again. There was a photograph in his wallet of four leather-clad high-school kids frowning at the camera from around a pool table... all that was left of the band.

Now, past failures and former hesitations were over and forgotten. The future shone clear. His mother would fly in, he would take her to the Temple estate near Santa Barbara. She would shake hands with Mike Linford, as would Royal Flagg himself, without a doubt. And there would be a moment, he would create the moment, when he would tell the president about his script.

Roy was asleep on the sofa when Connie let herself into the apartment. The place was dark. She switched on the overhead. “Shoes off,” was her greeting. Her mind was still boiling from what she had been told an hour ago. The old man bought her coffee in the diner across the street from the studio. She saw his credentials, she believed he was telling the truth.

Roy scuffed the bulky trainers off one at a time and let them hit the floor with an infuriating pause between drops. “Guess who I was just talking to.”

“Elvis? John Lennon?”

“Fanny Temple. She’s agreed to have my mother see Linford. On the Sunday. She loves the idea.”

Connie stared at Roy for a few moments. She played back his tone of voice. This was straight stuff. “Your mother will be thrilled.”

“Better yet. I’ll get to show him my script.”

“Big mistake.”

“What did you think this is about? I’m not going to all this trouble and expense just so Mike Linford and Clara Hunter Flagg can reminisce.”

“I don’t like it.”

“You don’t like anything I do.”

“You’re going to take it over. The Temples, your mother, the president — they’re all expecting to remember old times. And there you’ll be, promoting your stupid script. Nobody wants that.”

“Nobody!” Roy’s bellow shook the windows. Connie shrank back as he rose from the couch. “Nobody has ever cared a damn about my screenplay. I’m the only one. Maybe they’ll laugh me off the estate. Maybe they’ll have me arrested.” The face he hung close to hers was a caricature of Royal Flagg. She was reminded of a cat’s face when you take it by the scruff and draw back the skin. His eyes were slits, the nose flattened. “But this is my chance and I’m not letting it go by.”

The apartment was like a library for the next three hours. Connie made herself a sandwich and ate in the kitchen, turning the pages of a magazine. The old man’s disclosure about Roy meant things were going to change. He would probably take off. There were times when she despised men.

Roy sat inside the headphones staring at a basketball game on television. The game ended and he switched off. After ten minutes watching the blank screen, he heaved himself up and went looking for Connie. She was in bed now, face to the wall.

“I’ll need the car on Sunday. To take Mother to Santa Barbara.”

“I can’t let you have it.”

“This is important.”

“Rent one.”

“I haven’t the money to rent a car. You know that.”

“Then get a better job.”

He stood for a full minute, watching her, while the light through the window changed. “You want me to vanish?”

“What else is new?”

He was not always sure what she was talking about. “I’ll think about it.”

This was no time to pack and leave. But if the Sunday encounter worked out, then everything would change. Roy went to Connie’s desk, opened a lower drawer, and took out his script. He switched on the angle-poise lamp and sat down inside its glow. Then, slowly, he read An Air That Kills from start to finish, turning each page the way the minister used to do with the giant Bible on the lectern back when Roy was a choirboy. Two services every Sunday.

Clara Hunter Flagg came through the arrival gate with a young man carrying her hand luggage. He was some sort of business executive, the jacket of his expensive suit draped over his arm. Roy watched from the crowd gathered to meet the flight, saw the way his mother was charming this man, and felt one down. The guy was not doing a good deed for an old lady. He was enjoying her company.

Roy came forward and there were first-name introductions and one of those salesman handshakes. He was glad when the guy peeled off to join his wife. She was a neat little creature who liked to sit with her legs crossed. Roy had been inspecting her for the past half-hour.

“This way, Mother. Your luggage is through here. Then we go and board the shuttle.”

“Where is the car, Royal?” She looked smart in her pale blue suit. Her hair was very short and brushed forward, a stylish silver crown.

“It’s in the garage for a new transmission.” He was not about to admit that Connie had cut him off. Or even that he went about in somebody else’s car.

“But how will we get to Santa Barbara tomorrow? How will I keep my date with the president?”

He acknowledged her whimsy by putting an arm around her shoulder and dragging her against him so they walked off balance for a couple of steps. “You’ll be staying at Hal Chatterton’s place. Hal’s going to lend me his car.”

An hour later, they were at Chatterton’s building. Roy had visualized the famous radio personality watching for their arrival, coming outside to lay on the greeting. But it was nothing like that. As Roy bullied the matching suitcases through the lobby door, a guard behind a desk studied him intently.

On the fifth floor, Chatterton made jocular noises letting them in. But it was hollow. He was doing a number. He seemed to think he would get dirty if he stood too close to Roy Flagg. Perhaps he had been listening to Connie’s negative perceptions. He led them to the guest room, but within minutes he excused himself and left the apartment, having given Clara a key to the front door.

“Your friend is a strange man,” she said. “All that hair.”

“I hardly ever see him. He’s Connie’s friend.”

It was much better with Connie. She got on with Clara Hunter Flagg from the first moment. The ladies sat together in the backseat, with Roy given permission to drive the car. He took them on a tour of Beverly Hills, then swept around to the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard so that Clara could fit her tiny shoes into the concrete footprints of the stars.

Finally, they got onto Sunset Boulevard and drove west as far as they could go, racing at last down the winding hillside road to the ocean. Here, they dined at a beachfront restaurant with gulls hovering outside their window.

Connie took the wheel on the return journey. Roy ran his mother inside when they got to Chatterton’s building. Hal was home but unapproachable, the back of his head showing over the top of a tall swivel chair. He was facing a blue screen, rattling the keys on his computer.

“It’s all right,” Clara whispered in the hallway. “I’m tired, I’d like to rest. Thank you for a lovely day and an excellent dinner.”

He kissed his mother good night, crept out of the apartment, and hurried back to Connie. She said, as soon as the car was rolling, “Will you be abandoning me, too, once you strike it rich?”

“What are you talking about?”

“The way you make use of people. As if they were rungs on a ladder.”

He waited one full traffic light, red to green. As they moved off, he spoke the words he had decided might cool her out. It was worth a try. “You want to get married?”

“Don’t make me laugh.”

“Isn’t that what this is about?”

“Your wife and daughter would hate it if you married me.”

Speeding cars are great places for domestic fights. Nobody can leave the room and slam the door. “I never told you about them because it would serve no purpose.”

“Perfect,” she said to herself.

“When did you find out?”

“This afternoon. A nice old man came to the station. I thought private detectives look like Humphrey Bogart. Your wife is trying to find you. And now she has. He said you can run but you can’t hide. He thinks you should straighten up and fly right.”

“I’m too old to change.”

“She needs money, Roy. To feed and clothe and educate your daughter.”

“I don’t have any money,” he whined. “I can’t even buy a new pair of shoes.”

“Because you’re drifting and dreaming, pretending you’re going to sprout wings and turn into Tennessee Williams.” Connie’s anger was diminishing, she was gliding into persuasion. “You should get yourself into a job with a future. You’re a bright guy, you could earn money. This script thing is never going to happen.”

She could not hurt him now by putting down his script. He was too close. This time tomorrow, he would have had his conference with Mike Linford. “I’m curious. What did the detective tell you about Sharon?”

“That she hired him to trace you. That he’s sure we’re both nice people. And now that I’m informed, I’ll persuade you to do the right thing.”

“No problem. Linford will listen to me tomorrow. He’ll talk to Ellis Temple. Temple will option An Air That Kills. It’s not impossible, they pick up hundreds of scripts every year. I’ll get money up front and everybody will get paid.”

Connie adopted a studious tone of voice. “There’s a wife and child back in Louisiana. What other secrets am I unaware of?”

“Cut it out.”

“Sharon is a nice name. Mrs. Sharon Flagg. What’s your daughter’s name?”

Roy drew a blank. He had to reach around in the dark at the back of his mind. Finally he was able to say, “Jennifer.”

On Sunday, Roy was too proud to ask Connie if she would change her mind about the car. He showered and shaved and put some mousse on his hair. He dragged out his three-piece dark blue suit from the end of the closet and drew off the plastic garbage bag that served as a dust cover. He was stunned to discover a moth hole on one side of the vest, near a button. He thought about leaving the vest off, but he had always believed he looked substantial with it on. If he got close to anybody, he could button the jacket and the hole would be concealed.

A coat of polish had brought his old leather shoes back to life. Roy did some mirror time; his grin and the white shirt were dynamite together.

Connie always slept interminably on a Sunday. The taxi pulled up outside, he found his wallet, and pocketed some change. As he opened the front door, he heard her voice from the bedroom. “Roy?” But he closed the door and kept on going without a word.

At Chatterton’s place, his mother let him in. She was dressed in a white linen suit and a pink pillbox hat. She looked crisp and ready for anything. Roy drew confidence from her. The Flagg family was about to whip the world. “All set to take on that Linford kid?” he asked.

“Can’t wait.”

He went looking for mein host. Hal Chatterton was in the kitchen, talking on a cellular telephone while coffee seeped through a filter. He said something and put down the phone.

“How’s Connie?” Roy took a chance on saying. “She was asleep when I left.”

“She’s asked me to do the impossible. Turn back time so that when you show up in her life, she can walk the other way.”

“I don’t have any quarrel with you, Hal.” He wanted to borrow the man’s car.

“How does it happen? Connie Seltzer shows me more stuff in a day than you could in a year. But she’s working for wages on a radio show, while you’re off to see the wizard.”

“Don’t put down the program, Hal. You’re the best on the coast.”

“Need some money? Is that what this is?”

“No, thanks. But I need your car. Just for the afternoon.”

“Can’t do it.”

“I’ll get it washed afterwards. Fill the tank.”

“I have to be in Laguna this afternoon. I need my car.”

Roy began to heat up. The unaccustomed shirt collar squeezed his neck. “Think about it, Hal. This is once in a lifetime.”

“Your lifetime, not mine.”

There was a long knife on the butcher-block table. Roy got himself out of that room. But he came back from the dark hallway and thrust his face into the light to say, “It’s my mother’s lifetime, too. And one other thing. You ask why I’m succeeding more than Connie? You’re such a homogenized bastard, you wouldn’t remember. The cream, Mr. Chatterton, always rises to the top.”

Roy plunged on down the hall. The situation was desperate. They could not make it to the Temple estate by bus or train, even if there had been time. And there was no time. They needed wheels. Roy passed an open doorway, saw bedclothes tossed back, a dresser with a lamp casting light over a litter of objects. He saw a wallet, some loose change, a handkerchief, a roll of mints. None of it mattered, but the ring of keys did.

There was nothing to think about, no time to think. He strode to the dresser, picked up the keys. A red tag had the letters BMW in gold. These were the keys to Hal Chatterton’s shiny black car.

Roy pocketed the keys and hurried to where his mother was waiting. She was seated on the lip of a chair with her knees together and her hands folded over a beaded purse. God grant me, Roy said to himself, some of the courage that sees this lady through hard times.

“Let’s hit the road,” he said cheerfully, picking up his script in its crisp new covers. “Hal is lending us his car.”

They went past Ventura, getting close to Santa Barbara, when Roy spotted the highway patrol cruiser in his rearview mirror. It tailed him for a mile or so while his stomach turned over. Hal could very well have reported the car as stolen. The cops would be verifying the license number on their computer.

“Why are we speeding up, Roy?”

“There’s a police car following me.”

“Shouldn’t you be slowing down?”

If they stopped him, it was all over. His intention had been to borrow the car and return it safely. But if Chatterton said stolen, that’s what it was. And the man had clout; half of Los Angeles listened to his dorky program. No cops would buy his story that he had to see the president. Why? To show him a movie script? He could picture some raw-boned officer with a gun strapped to his leg taking the script from him and reading the title. “An Air That Kills? Going to see the president with this, sir? Any weapons in the car? Get out slowly with your hands in sight. Lie face down on the pavement.”

The lights on the cruiser roof came on and the siren went Woop! as the police drew closer. Roy put his foot to the floor. The expensive car accelerated through the sixties, seventies, eighties. Chatterton’s vehicle handled as smoothly at ninety-five as it did at forty miles slower. They began overtaking and passing cars. His mother stared at him. “Are you in some kind of trouble, Roy Flagg? What have you done?”

“Open the glove compartment, Mother. Do it.” She pressed the chrome button and the door dropped down. “Take out that folded sheet of paper. Read me what it says. I wrote down the directions how to get to the estate.”

She read in a schoolteacher voice. “Two miles past The Grey Walrus beach bar. Turn right at big yellow house. Halfway up hill, guarded gate between eucalyptus trees.”

“And there it is,” Roy said. “The Grey Walrus.” There were three California highway-patrol cars behind him now. Watching for his next landmark, he had to reduce speed. The dark-lensed, implacable faces staring through the windshield of the car behind drew closer, filling Roy with dread. A battered pickup loaded with mattresses was in the lane ahead of him. He cut hard right and raced past, narrowly missing a rattling, weaving big-rig in the other lane. Looking back, he saw a police car absorb a sideswipe from the big-rig.

The cops began spinning, clipping the pickup and sending it across the median into the path of southbound traffic. Roy heard smashes, saw cars rear-ending over there. But the worst thing was the CHP cruiser. It was rolling now, glass spraying, a wheel off and bouncing along the highway. The other police cars were doing things to avoid running into the debris. For the moment, the pursuit was over.

That was when Roy noticed the police helicopter overhead. At the same moment, he saw the big yellow house. It was a restaurant; that was its color and its name. He pulled into the parking lot behind the frame building. There was no time for anything. “Mother, I have to go!” He snatched up his script.

“Royal, what’s going on?”

He saw her face, cold and hard with a threat of punishment in eyes made of glass. He could not stand looking at this face. “There’s no time. Stay here, you’ll be all right.”

“The president is waiting to talk to me.”

“I’ll explain there was an accident. He’ll understand.”

Roy slammed the car door and darted into a stand of trees on the hillside. The chopper was holding position high above the parking lot. Cops would soon arrive in numbers. What would Clara Hunter Flagg tell them? Everything she knew. But people in authority always have to check things out. If he hurried, there would still be time.

Roy was panting when he reached the iron gates. He could see a white porch and a red tile roof through dark foliage down a gravel lane. Two uniformed guards came forward to meet him. Three men in suits lingered by the gate, jackets unbuttoned.

“I had a flat tire at the bottom of the hill.” The self-deprecating grin was always there when he needed it. “I have an appointment. Royal Flagg.”

The guard turned a page on his clipboard. “Supposed to be a lady as well. Clara Flagg?”

“My mother. She’s not well, she couldn’t come. I’ll have to make her apologies.”

They patted him down, then let him go on up to the house. Another man in a suit headed him off on the porch and patted him down again. A maid led him through to a spacious room with logs burning in a fireplace. An elderly man with a bald head was tucked into a chair near the fire. A tall, slender woman in shiny red lounging pajamas rose from a chair on the other side of the fire. Roy looked past her, because Mike Linford was stretched out on a sofa with his shoes off and two pillows propping up the big pink face with its cap of salt-and-pepper hair. All three had drinks; the president was holding his glass on his belt buckle.

“You must be Roy Flagg. I’m Fanny Temple. That’s my husband, Ellis, over there.” She peered over Roy’s shoulder into the doorway. “Where’s your mother?”

“She was taken ill at the last minute. I’m sorry. I should have telephoned.”

“Taken ill.”

“I came ahead because I was afraid you’d tell me not to come. And I did so want to see the president.”

“Is that a Louisiana accent I’m listening to?” Linford said. This was all the permission Roy needed. He was in.

“Better than that, sir. Smokey Valley.”

The president got to his feet. It surprised Roy how big he was. Even in his socks, he towered over everybody else. They shook hands. “Royal Flagg, your mother is one fine piano teacher. Why, she almost taught me to play ‘Beautiful Ohio.’ ”

Everybody laughed and Roy relaxed even more. But when Fanny Temple offered him a drink, he refused. It seemed good tactics. He was not a member of this party. He would make his pitch, and he would leave his script in the president’s hands, and he would go.

The others resumed their seats. Roy remained standing. “I don’t want to intrude on your quiet time, Mr. President, in such peaceful surroundings with these good people.”

“Don’t you just love it?” the president said.

“So I’ll say my piece and take my leave. I’ve written a screenplay. I took the liberty of bringing it with me.”

“Listen to this, Ellis. Wake up, he’s making a pitch. Give the man a Kewpie doll.”

“I want your permission to hand it to you, Mr. President. Because it’s all about the town we both grew up in and the people who live there. And it comes from the heart.”

Linford was sitting now, big woolly feet angled on the carpet. He took the script from Roy, balanced it on a knee, and opened the cover.

“All I ask is for you to read it. Then pass it on to whoever you think ought to see it.” Roy glanced at Fanny Temple. She granted him a solemn wink.

There was a movement outside the room, voices rumbling in the vestibule. One of the suited men walked in, glancing at Roy as he said, “Mr. President?”

“What is it, Mel?”

“There’s been some trouble on the freeway south of here. A unit belonging to the highway patrol went over. There’s an officer killed.”

Fanny said, “God help us.”

Mel went on, “The unit that crashed, and others, were in pursuit of a vehicle driven by this man here. The car was reported stolen.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“We spoke to his mother, sir. She’s waiting down the hill in the car. She told us they were coming here.”

After a silence, Linford said, “This is very serious, Roy.”

“I know it is, sir.”

“You’re going to have to go with Mel and answer for whatever you’ve done.”

“I’m ready to do that,” Royal Flagg said. “But can I ask you to read my script all the same?”

The president riffled the pages, ending back at page one. “I have a problem with the title. An Air That Kills. That’s Housman, isn’t it? ‘A Shropshire Lad’?” Linford tipped his head as he began to recite:

“You know that poem, sir!”

“The line you chose for your title has a negative connotation. Could be talking about pollution, hydrocarbons. You’d be better off calling your play Blue Remembered Hills.” He handed back the script.

“That’s a good idea. I’ll change the title.”

“And maybe you can work on the rest of it while you’re at it. One more draft can’t hurt.”

Mel was staring at Roy. His eyes were hard, his face a mask. “Let’s go,” he said.

Leaving the room with Mel behind him, shoving him, Roy managed to turn and say, “Thank you, sir. You only glanced at my script and you’ve improved it a lot.”

“That’s why they elected me president,” Linford said as agents in the vestibule seized Roy and roughly cuffed his hands behind his back, making his wrists bleed while they hurried him out of the house.