The Plan

Chapter 21.

"Shit." A. J. struggled to a sitting position. "How could I have been so dumb." He was still half asleep, in his single room at the Des Moines Holiday Inn. He tried to clear his head. Then he swung his feet off the bed and went to the phone. "Alo, Alo," he said out loud, looking for Mickey's private number. He found it on a card stuffed in his wallet.

"Hello?" a voice growled through the receiver. "Need to talk to Mickey Alo."

"He's sleeping."

"Tell him A. J. Teagarden is on the phone."

"Just a minute." And he was on hold.

He used the moments to collect his thoughts. He started tapping his foot, nervous energy burning like battery acid. He had been looking for a defining event, one that would score with the electorate at large. A defining event was any event that instantly told the public who the candidate was. Jesse Jackson bringing the Middle East hostages home or Clinton getting his hair cut on the L. A. runway. Both were defining events. People instantly got it. The debate had set Haze up. He would be in the national ey e i n the morning. While he had the nation's attention, A. J. needed something tangible to show that Haze's message was true. He'd come up with it while sound asleep. After a moment, Mickey came on the line, his voice choked with sleep.

,,yeah…"

"It's Teagarden." "yeah…"

"This Teamster problem, this strike, are you involved with that?" he asked, knowing that the Teamsters and the mob were generally in bed together.

"Not on the phone."

"I need to talk first thing in the morning. You won't regret it."

"Where you staying?"

"Des Moines Holiday Inn, room four seventy-six." And the line went dead. A. J. Teagarden lay back on his bed.

Shit, he thought, it was perfect., At seven A. M., New York Tony knocked on his door. A. J. got up and opened it, looking at the hatchet-faced bodyguard through the chain lock.

"Get dressed. Mickey is in a car downstairs," he ordered.

A. J. threw on his clothes, combed his hair with his fingers, and followed New York Tony down the hall and out into the cold Iowa morning.

New York Tony led A. J. around the side of the hotel and into an overflow parking lot where two large men in black overcoats were standing in front of a white windowless van. Their eyes metronomed the parking lot, like wary tank commanders in a fire zone. The bodyguard swung open the van door and A. J. was suddenly looking at Mickey Alo. Mickey had a box of Winchell's doughnuts on his knees and a cup of coffee in a paper cup.

"Seen this?" Mickey asked as he handed the Des Moines Register-Guard to A. J. The headline was in thirtysix-point sans serif boldface type and screamed: RHODE ISLAND GOVERNOR