Shock Warning

CHAPTER FORTY

Jake Sinclair sat in his office near Times Square and admired Principessa Stanley. The woman was looking more attractive all the time, damn it. He loved the way she moved, the way she used her hands, her wide mouth, her amazing figure; except for her hair, which presumably was still growing back in, she was a work of art. Not that she would stay that way forever; no woman ever did. Women were like fruit or flowers. You had to know just when to pluck them.

That was about as original a thought as Jake Sinclair could muster at this moment as he watched the delicious Ms. Stanley deliver her report. Surreptitiously, he glanced at the clock. He was meeting Angela Hassett in her private suite at the Waldorf in less than half an hour, but it wouldn’t take him that long to get across town, and beside Principessa hadn’t yet—

Hold on. What had she said to him back in L.A., the first time they met? That if he ever kept her waiting again she’d kill him? And she probably would, too.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Stanley,” he said, rising. “But I have a most urgent appointment across town that I simply can’t be late for.”

She stopped in midsentence, switched gears. “I get it. Life or death, huh?”

She didn’t know the half of it. “I wonder if we might continue this conversation later today…” Might as well go for it. “Say, over dinner?”

She gave him a look. No, she gave him that look. Then she made him wait. The bitch…

“That would be… wonderful, Mr. Sinclair.”

“Jake. Shall we say seven-thirty at Los Pescadores?”

Her face fell as she consulted her smartphone. “I’m afraid I can’t do seven-thirty… Would eight-fifteen be okay? There’s a couple of things I have to move around.”

“Pick you up?”

“Meet you there.”

He got up and put on his jacket. “What were you saying about this mysterious Mr. Grant?” he inquired. He hadn’t really been listening at all. But she knew that.

“Tell you tonight,” she said.

Jake Sinclair was feeling pretty good about his chances when he got to the Waldorf. He was five minutes early, thank God.

He took the private elevator up to the tower where Lucky Luciano once had lived. Those were the days in old New York, he thought to himself, when real men walked the streets of Manhattan, a gun on one hip and a flask on the other. Today, the city felt like a Puritan concentration camp, with sin banished and only the wide-bodied tourists to tell you that this had once been a city of giants instead of financiers. The sooner he was back in L.A., the better.

Unless, of course, he got a better offer from Ms. Stanley. Then he was sure he could find a reason to spend more time in the city and leave Jenny II to the tender mercies of her tennis instructor and the pool boy. The only thing wrong with Ms. Stanley was that her first name wasn’t Jenny, but he figured that body was worth having to learn a new name. He was at the door of her suite — the suite of the next President of the United States. JFK would have been so proud.

Angela opened the door on the first ring. My, she did look rather good. “We have a problem,” she said.

He stepped inside. No kiss, no hug, nothing. Fine. His date with Ms. Stanley was starting to look even better. “What’s the beef?”

“Something’s up. I can’t tell you what it is because I don’t know and anyway that’s your job, finding out what’s up. That’s why you employ all those horrible reporters who are always bugging me about something or other when I’m just trying to get my message out. Why do you let them do that?”

“Angela, we have to pretend to play fair, at least in the news columns and on the news broadcasts. On the opinion shows and the op-ed pages, you know you have our fullest support and of course in the blogosphere there are no standards at all. In fact, we’ve been hammering that son of a bitch Tyler pretty relentlessly. Why, just the other day I wrote our lead editorial — you remember, the one that was headlined ‘Still More Mush from the Feckless Wimp.’ ”

That was a lie. Sinclair couldn’t write a shopping list if you spotted him the milk, butter, and eggs, but it was his idea, more or less.

“I don’t care. Anyway, something’s up. Tyler’s acting weird — that’s what my spies inside the White House are saying. He’s been having secret meetings. He even left the White House the other day and went somewhere in the suburbs — he covered his tracks pretty well, so nobody’s quite sure where he went.”

“Maybe to see a girlfriend?” suggested Sinclair.

“That eunuch? Don’t be silly. Anyway, I want you to get your best reporter on it right away. Whatever he’s up to, we need to know about it. We can’t let him pull one of those October Surprises. Why don’t you put that big girl of yours on it, you know, the toothy one with the boobs and the funny name?”

Sinclair couldn’t believe his luck. “Principessa Stanley,” he said, trying to control his voice.

“That’s the one.” Finally, she softened a little. She was wearing a bathrobe, and now let it fall open a little to keep his eye on the ball. “You know, Jake, that really was a stroke of genius on your part, bumping her all the way up to the national broadcast after that creep scalped her in Central Park. I mean, who wouldn’t want to tune in and see the chick that some pervert practically buried alive, and now here she is, shorn but sassy. Real triumph-of-the-human-spirit stuff. Your shitty movie studios ought to be turning out more pictures like that instead of those fucking cartoons and that anti-war crap. America hates a loser, Jake. Remember that.”

“You know,” said Sinclair, seeing an opening, “she was still in the office when I left. Why don’t I go back there right now and brief her? We’ve got — what is it? — a few weeks before the election. Plenty of time.”

Angela saw her opening as well. This idiot was beginning to bore her with his mindless, solipsistic prattle. “That’s a great idea. I’m kind of tired anyway, and you know I have that big speech tomorrow in Madison Square Garden: ‘A New Vision for America.’ The crowd loves that shit, but I need to be sharp.”

She moved forward and let her robe fall all the way open. She brought his mouth to hers and kissed him almost as if she meant it. That would keep him in line, and coming back for more.

Jake Sinclair left a happy man. He had two angles to play and time to kill. Instead of going back to the office, he thought he’d take in a movie, just like a civilian. One of the cartoons would do just fine. With what he was sure was in store for him tonight, cartoons were just about all he could handle.

Three hours later he was at his customary table at Los Pescadores. He liked being recognized — not by the public, because that was always a pain in the ass, but by waiters and, more important, the maitre d’s. And then there she was, sweeping in, and he forgot all about being recognized.

For Principessa Stanley was instantly recognized. He’d had no idea what a celebrity she was now in New York — everybody in the place knew her, wanted to shake her hand, get a pat on the head, maybe get a picture with her. He hadn’t thought of that. If he was going to make a play for Principessa Stanley tonight, suggest they get to know each other a bit better back at his place, he was going to have to play it plenty cool. No footsie, no hand holding. From the outside, it had to look like all business — kind of like a secret code between them. Too bad he didn’t know a damn thing about codes.

Dinner was miserable. He couldn’t taste his food. He kept looking at her like a love-struck calf. Other big shots could get away with it, cheating on their wives very publicly, being seen with beautiful women in strange cities, and no one thought the less of them for it. A little whiff of the lothario, in fact, was a positive benefit for certain politicians — conquests rumored or imagined just burnished their luster as lovable rogues.

So he was the most surprised guy in the joint when, after they got the check — the prices here really were outrageous, but luckily the company was paying for it — she leaned over, very casual-like, and suggested that they go back to her place for a nightcap — in separate cars, of course.

Good. At least one of them knew code.

He got there about twenty minutes after she did, as she had requested. She wanted to get out of her work clothes, change into something more comfortable, get the champagne out of the fridge. All good signs. This was going to be his lucky night.

He had the driver let him off half a block away and around the corner. Nobody needed to know where he was. He didn’t need any whispers about power imbalances or workplace violation — hell, he owned the damn workplace. This was a simple consenting-adult transaction. He would help his lover win the presidency, Principessa would get the story of a lifetime, everybody would get laid — no harm, no foul.

It was one of those private elevators that opened right into the flat. The apartment was spectacular — not as spectacular as his, of course, because he always prided himself on the best of everything. But it was pretty darn good just the same, two thousand square feet of living space overlooking the East River near Gracie Mansion, with a windswept terrace that made you forget the automobile noise from the FDR far below. He must be paying her too much.

She was wearing… well, not much. Everything he had imagined about that bod… well, as they said in the movie business, it was all right up there on the screen.

He took in his arms and kissed her, ran his hands over her. She responded in kind; good Lord, she was powerful. They knocked each other around the terrace, then toppled back into the living room. He had just gotten his pants down around his ankles when the flash of a cell-phone camera caught his bare ass high, wide, and handsome, and he knew he was fucked. And not in a good way.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” said Principessa, pulling herself together, “but you ought to know better than to try and screw the help.”

Sinclair couldn’t see the man sitting in the darkness, but he could hear him chuckle. It was a low, sinister exhalation and it frightened him. This was no ordinary wronged lover or professional gumshoe, sent by Jenny II to see where he was parking his dick when he was out of town. This guy was scary.

“Whatever she’s paying you, I’ll double it,” he whined. “Triple it. Name your price.”

“She’s not paying me anything,” said the man. Sinclair could tell he had risen from the sofa on which he’d been sitting and was walking toward him. He wasn’t at all sure that he wanted to see his face. He looked around for Principessa, but she was nowhere to be seen.

“Who are you working for? What’s he paying you?”

“More like a ‘they,’ ” said the man, still approaching. “But don’t worry, even you can’t afford my fee.”

He had his pants back on now, and was feeling a little braver. “That’s bullshit. Do you know who I am?” He realized what a stupid question that was the instant it came out of his mouth.

“Your fly is still open, so zip yourself. There’s a lady present, or have you forgotten?”

“You’re fired, Ms. Stanley,” he said.

“Oh, I doubt that very much, Mr. Sinclair,” the man said. “In fact, I would say that you’re working for us now. You see, I have a job that I very much want to keep, and I need your cooperation and assistance to help me to keep it. It’s worth a lot to me, so I and Principessa and several other very important people would really fucking appreciate it if you would become part of the team.”

“What if I don’t?”

The man held up the cell camera and illuminated the screen. Yup, that was his bare behind all right, about to slip the sausage to a woman whose face couldn’t be seen. There was no way out but to play along.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Very simple. Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing, as in neutral. You stop pounding on Tyler. You tell your papers and your crappy cable channels and your shit-assed websites that, as we enter the final phase of the campaign, you have decided, as president and CEO of Sinclair Holdings and Sinclair Worldwide Media, that henceforth true patriotism demands that the media act fairly. No more taking sides. No more rooting for one team or the other. No more fabricating documents, reporting innuendo, and imagining total crap and then rushing it onto the TV or into print. Your days as a kingmaker are over. Capisce?”

God, he hated that expression. New Yorkers said it all the time, like they were all goombah-wannabes, auditioning for crime dramas. “Yes, I understand.”

The man was standing over him now, very close, but he still couldn’t see his face. “Now, you’re probably thinking, ‘Fuck this guy. The minute I get out of here, I’m going to unleash my whole fucking empire on this cocksucker, and make him rue the day he was born. I am going to unleash hell, sic the dogs on him, finish him in this world and in all universes, known and unknown.’ That about right?”

“Maybe. Can I stand up now?”

“Sure. Let me give you a hand.” A powerful arm reached out and hauled him to his feet.

“I’m sorry, Jake,” said Principessa, returning dressed and decent. “Looks like they got us both by the nuts.”

“That’s right,” said the man, stepping out of the shadows and into the dim light. “You’re both working for me now — for me and the President of the United States. Do we have a deal?”

Sinclair recognized him right away. It was Thomas Byrne, deputy director of the FBI, and very much a man you didn’t want to fuck with. Byrne had put in the ground more opponents, whether criminal or political, than Crazy Horse at the Little Bighorn. A major bad-ass.

“We have a deal,” said Sinclair.

Principessa walked over to Tom. For a second, Sinclair wasn’t sure what she was going to do. She looked like she might slap him.

Then she threw her arms around his neck and picked up with him right where she had left off with Jake. Only this time, she meant it.

“Why don’t you let yourself out, pal?” said Byrne. “Ms. Stanley and I are going to be busy for a while.”

Byrne must have already summoned the elevator because it was right there, waiting for him.

“I’ll be in touch,” shouted Byrne from the bedroom. “Remember, Jake — you can run but you can’t hide. I know where Laughlin Park is, and you can bet that if I do, other folks do too. So keep your nose clean and your head down and wait until your country needs you before you say another damn thing.”

Jake Sinclair could hear them going at it as he sheepishly tiptoed into the elevator. He’d be on his way back to L.A. tomorrow morning. There would be no dossier released in dribs and drabs, no October Surprise from the Sinclair media empire. Angela Hassett was on her own.

Jenny II was starting to look pretty good after all.