The Patriots' Club

62

“J. J… a word?”

“Yes, what is it?” replied Jacklin. “Has the President arrived?”

“Not yet,” replied Guilfoyle, crouching at his side. “He’s due in eight minutes. His motorcade just crossed Key Bridge.”

Jacklin smiled obligingly at his guests. Dinner had been served. The dance floor was packed to bursting. The plates had been cleared; a digestif offered. He raised the snifter of Armagnac to his mouth and took a sip. “What is it, then?”

“Bolden’s woman is in D.C.”

“I thought she was laid up in the hospital.”

“Hoover just contacted me from the operations center. Cerberus spat out some credit-card activity indicating she purchased a ticket on the US Airways shuttle and rented a car at Reagan National Airport.”

“Why are you telling me this now? Cerberus is a real-time program. It should have given us the information hours ago.”

“The boys in the op center thought she was in the hospital, too. No one inputted her vitals until a couple of hours ago.”

Jacklin checked his temper. He had half a mind to cuff this unfeeling robot right then and there. “And you think she’s headed here?”

“She also purchased evening wear from a boutique on Madison Avenue.”

Jacklin excused himself from the table and led Guilfoyle outside. A freshening breeze snapped at their cheeks. “Look at that,” he said, scanning the leaden sky. “We’re going to have one hell of an inauguration.”

Guilfoyle looked up at the sky, but said nothing.

“And the cop?” Jacklin asked. “You getting what you need?”

“In time.”

Jacklin turned suddenly and grabbed Guilfoyle by the lapels. “We don’t have time. Can’t you get that through your head? I ask for results and you bring me more problems. For all your supposed intuition, you’ve shown all the foresight of a chimpanzee. First you screw up with Bolden, then you can’t make this cop give us what we need. Now you’re telling me that Bolden’s girlfriend might be trying to mess things up. Thank God, it’s just a woman.” He released the lapels, breathing through his teeth. “What does she look like, anyway?”

“No picture, yet. She’s thirty, tall and blond with wavy hair down to her shoulders. Reasonably attractive.”

“What’s her name?”

“Dance. Jennifer Dance.”

Jacklin leaned closer. “Jennifer?”

This was the rough stuff. The stuff that happened when you got too close to the cartels, or hounded the Mob a little too much. This was the stuff you read about and shook your head, and when you went to sleep that night, you prayed it would never happen to you. When they beat you up before they start asking questions, when they hit you so hard that suddenly you can’t remember the last five minutes, or where you are even, you know it’s the rough stuff. And you know how it’s going to end.

“I’m a cop,” Franciscus said through his broken teeth, though it sounded like “Thime a thop.” “I don’t take evidence with me.”

“Did you leave it in New York?”

Franciscus tried to lift his head, but his neck seemed locked in a downward position. They had taken their time beating him. They’d started on his face, then worked down to his gut, going methodically step by step, like the local train stopping at every station. He was fairly certain that his cheekbone was fractured. He could still feel the punch that had done that. Contractors, he had told Bolden. The best his government could train.

Someone hit him again in the face, directly on the busted cheek. He heard the impact from afar, the bone shattering like a china plate. His eyes remained open, but he saw nothing, just sparks from a flare exploding in the center of his brain. He passed out for a minute or two. He had no idea how long, really, except that the same goons were still there when he came to. Both had removed their jackets. Their shoulder holsters cradled 9 millimeter pistols.

Lying on the concrete floor, he saw his thumb a few inches away. He willed it to budge, and a second later, it did, jittering as if juiced with a thousand volts. The sound of his breathing filled his ear. It was a thin, wheezing rasp, and he thought, Christ, whoever sounds like that is gonna check out pronto.

It was then that he decided, no. He wasn’t done yet. He wasn’t going to allow these two gorillas to finish him off. He would not let them kill him here and now. Not without a fight. The drums of his rebellion pounded faintly, but unmistakably. War drums.

A few hundred yards down the path, a hundred men and women were drinking and dancing the night away. Reach them and he was safe. He would flash his badge. He would give his name. He’d get the collar, one way or the other. Jacklin would be his.

Franciscus summoned his resolve. He needed to act quickly, while he had enough strength to make it to the main house. He lay as still as a rock, holding his breath. One of his interrogators knew right away something was wrong. You were supposed to jerk when you got hit, not just lie there. He came closer, looking at Franciscus as if he were a landed croc that might have some bite left in him.

“I think our man’s checked out. He’s blue.”

The other man laughed skeptically. “Has he stopped sweating? That’s when you’ll know if he’s dead.”

“I think it’s his heart.”

“Let me have a look.” The man dropped to a knee and bent over Franciscus. First he put a hand on his wrist. Then he looked at his associate, and the look was enough to get the man down on the floor of the tack room, too. “I can’t find a pulse. See if you can feel anything.”

“He’s cold. Fuckin’ Guilfoyle. I told him it was stupid to beat up on a senior. My dad’s a cop, too. I don’t want this on my conscience.”

“Shh. I’m still listening.”

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“Go get him. The guy’s turning bluer than a fish.”

Jennifer Dance was reading the minutes of the Patriots Club.

December 6, 1854

Present: Franklin Pierce. Henry Ward Beecher. Frederick Douglass. Horace Greeley. Thomas Hart Benton.

“… the Committee votes in favor of a grant of $25,000 to assist Mr. Beecher in the purchase of Sharps rifles for overland shipment to Kansas in support of the abolitionist/antislavery movement.”

The guns were later named Beecher’s Bibles by the Northern press, and they turned the state of Kansas into a battleground that was nicknamed Bloody Kansas.

Sept. 8, 1859

Present: James Buchanan. William Seward. Horace Greeley. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry Ward Beecher.

“… all ammunition to be provided to Mr. John Brown and sons in support of his proposed raiding of the arsenal at Harpers Ferry…”

John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry failed, but his subsequent conviction for treason against the commonwealth of Virginia and his execution by hanging hastened the advent of the Civil War.

April 1, 1864

Present: Abraham Lincoln. William Seward. U. S. Grant. Salmon P. Chase. Horace Greeley. Cornelius Vanderbilt.

“… the Committee votes against General Lee’s petition asking for a truce between the Union and the Confederacy, the Confederacy accepting the Emancipation Proclamation with all territorial issues reverting to status quo ante bellum.”

A truce? Jenny had never heard of a failed truce between the states. Abraham Lincoln had pressed the war until the South had surrendered, exhausted, depleted, and without any chance of further victory on the battlefield.

Jenny opened the second ledger, dated 1878-1904. She thumbed the pages until she came to the date of January 31, 1898.

Present: William McKinley. Alfred Thayer Mahan. Elihu Root. J. P. Morgan. John Rockefeller. J. J. Astor. Thomas B. Reed. Frederick Jackson Turner.

“We can no longer overlook the pressing requirement for our nation to acquire global colonies. At the least, a string of coaling stations across the Pacific necessary for the expanding fleet… it is imperative that we check the British colossus as a world power.”

Her eyes skipped down the page.

“… an incident required to galvanize the American people in support of war… suitable targets: Cuba, Haiti, the Philippines… all lands where a democratic presence would be viewed as a liberator and widely welcomed by local populace… Mr. Root proposed scuttling of U.S.S. Maine, second-class battleship cruising in Cuban waters.”

Voices carried into the room from the corridor. Jenny flipped the pages forward faster, and faster yet. She was searching for one more name, a last indication that, against whatever argument she might muster, it was all true.

March 13, 1915. Present: Woodrow Wilson, Colonel A. E. House, General J. J. Pershing, Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, Vincent Astor.

“… a means to enter European conflict is now of primary importance… unrestricted submarine warfare an assault on civility of conflict… the Cunard liner Lusitania will depart New York on May 1. The War Department is shipping two thousand tons of ammunition for the Allied war effort. Items are not on manifest… an irresistible target for German navy…”

She flipped forward to the most recent meeting. It was dated the night before. She read a paragraph, then two.

The door burst open.

Jacklin stood framed by the light. Two of his bodyguards waited behind him. She recognized them from the night before. Wolf and Irish. Jacklin walked slowly across the room and plucked the journal from her hands.

“Miss Dance… is it?”