The Plan

Chapter 47.

THE ROOM WAS SMALL AND DARK, WITH NO WINDOWS, and the air was pungent with the smell of mildew and urine.

She was sitting with her hands tied behind her back. Her shoulders ached and she was thirsty. Something like a napkin or dish towel had been wedged into her mouth and her jaws were taped shut. At first she had cried, but her nose became filled with mucus, restricting her breathing, and she almost suffocated. Fortunately, she realized the danger before it was too late and had willed herself, as an act of survival, to stop crying. Relax, she had told herself. Breathe slowly. After a few agonizing moments, she cleared her air passage.

Anita Farrington Richards was terrified, but she had decided that her only chance to survive was to keep her wits, stay calm, and hope to find a way to communicate with her captors, men she had barely seen.

She had left the governor's mansion at eight-thirty, put her suitcase in the trunk of her car, and driven across Providence to River Street where she intended to meet a divorce attorney named Susan Salter. Anita had set up a nine A. M. appointment, without telling anyone. She had bee n o n her way to Susan's office when a brown Camaro rear-ended her at a stop sign. She pulled over to exchange licenses when a dark shape suddenly filled the window on the passenger side. Before she could even call out, the driver's door had been yanked open and, in an instant, two men were in the front seat with her. She had started to scream, but the man on the passenger side had pushed her down, and jammed a gag into her mouth. He leaned down and whispered into her ear.

"Shut up or you're dead."

And then, with her head held down against the driver's thigh, they pulled out. She could hear the traffic and, occasionally, the man on the passenger side gave instructions to the driver.

"Right up there… Halfway down the block… They'll open the gate."

She had tried once to straighten her legs.

"You move, you're gonna get conked," the man had said. Then the car came to a stop. She could smell something dense and rich, perhaps oil in an open tank. A hood of some kind was put over her head before she was allowed to sit up; then her hands were taped behind her and she was led across uneven pavement. She heard a metal door open; she was pulled up some stairs and, finally, put into this room. The hood had been snapped off her head and the door closed, leaving her in darkness.

Anita tried desperately to hold on, to maintain her reason. Icy fear consumed her, periodically pushing her to the edge of sanity. Each time she struggled back. Her mind wouldn't hold still; it pinwheeled across a landscape of thoughts, sticking on meaningless details of her life, then racing off in search of nothing.

Oh, God… oh, God… oh, God… she chanted in her mind. What will they do to me? How can this be happening?

A. J. had sent the plane back to Memphis to pick up the rest of the press and campaign staff. He left Haze at the governor's mansion and walked across the mall to his office. He sat down in his old leather chair and tried to recapture some of the excitement he had felt only a few hours ago when they'd swept Super Tuesday. It was useless. The excitement was replaced by a terrible listlessness.

The call from Henny Henderson came in at ten past twelve. He heard his secretary giving out the usual "Mr. Teagarden is not in right now." But he perked up when she said, "Would you say that number again, Mr. Henderson?"

"I'll take that, Jill," he called out.

"Oh, he just walked in. I can connect you now." And in a moment, Fudge Anderson's campaign chairman was on the phone.

"Well, I guess you're a happy guy this morning," the Republican wonk said cautiously.

"How you doin', Henny… You call to set up a handball game or did you just miss me?" A. J. said to the man whom he hadn't spoken to for ten years, since Henny had called him a loose cannon in the Democratic party.

"Haze really came out of nowhere. Guess it's us against you guys now," Henny said. "I'll bet you've got the DNC spitting tacks into your picture."

"Haze is an astounding candidate. He's got a great vision for America, Henny. He's tapping into a lot of discontent."

"That's not all he's been tapping into.''

"What does that mean?"

"Does Haze know a woman named Bonita Money?" Al's stomach flipped. "Is that `money' -like, 'We're in the money'?"

"Actually, now that you mention it, 'in' is the right word, 'cause she says Haze has been screwin' her. She runs a travel agency in Florida. Apparently, Haze set up some vacations down there where he did more than lie on the beach. Want the vitals?"

"Yeah, let's hear," A. J. said, his spirits plummeting. "She's five-five, thirty-six, with platinum-blond hair and abdominals you could scrub laundry on. She says they spent two consecutive weekends together last June… the seventh through the ninth and the thirteenth through the fifteenth."

"Jesus, Homy, calm down. You sound so happy." "Before we let go of this, I just thought I'd call and give Haze a chance to say it ain't so."

"That's pretty damn nice of you. Why didn't you just run right to the press with it?"

"I would have, but Fudge wouldn't let me. He said he wanted to give Haze a chance to deny it first. That's why I called. We could fit in some handball, too, if you want, but I think you're gonna be too busy trying to bury this turd before it stinks up your campaign. However, you should know, behind Ms. Money, we have a line of bimbos queueing up."

"You're a real prick!"

"I didn't fuck those girls, A. J. I'm just the poor messenger. If it wasn't for Fudge's sense of fair play, you would have been reading this blind in the papers tomorrow."

"I'll have to talk to Haze. I'm sure this is just a publicity seeker."

"Right. Well, we're gonna take it to the news guys at nine A. M. tomorrow, unless you can give us a reason not to. That's 'reason,' spelled A-L-I-B-I."

"Gimme a number."

They exchanged phone and beeper numbers, then hung up. A. J. leaned back and looked out across the mall at the governor's mansion.

"Shit," he finally said, then lunged out of his chair and headed over to find out what he already knew was true.

Haze didn't deny it. He sat in his office in the statehouse and looked glumly out the window.

"Were you there? those two weekends in June?" "yeah… Anita was having the hysterectomy in New York. I flew down to Florida."

"Great. Your wife is getting her uterus ripped out while you're playing tonsil hockey with this platinum-blond travel agent. Jesus!"

"Look, AJ., it happened. Okay?"

A. J. sat down and looked at Haze for a long moment. "I can't believe this. Yesterday, we were sweeping twenty states on our way to the White House, and today, my life is caving in on me."

"Your life?"

"Okay… your life is caving in on me."

"Look, I can't stop her from talking."

"Were there witnesses?" A. J. asked in desperation. "I'm not a complete fool."

They sat without speaking and listened to the grandfather clock measure time. Then A. J. pushed himself out of his chair and walked slowly across the room toward the door.

"Where are you going? Whatta you gonna do?"

A. J. looked at Haze, the beginning of a desperate plan forming in his mind. He'd gone this far, he reasoned, why not go all the way? "If we can't stop this girl, then we gotta get somebody else to stop her."

"Not Mickey. You can't have this guy kill half the people I know."

"No, not Mickey. We'll get Henny Henderson to stop her."

"Why would he stop her…? He found her."

"He'll stop her if it's in his best interest to stop her. We have to create a situation to convince him it is." A. J. walked out of the governor's office, leaving Haze confused.

Five hours later, they met at the same gas station parking lot. Mickey Alo was alone behind the wheel of the same motor home.

"This better be good," the mobster said.

"It is," A. J. answered as he climbed in beside Mickey and they headed up the highway.

They pulled off the road at a scenic outlook near the same raging river where they'd first met. Mickey set the brake, got out from behind the wheel, and moved to the back of the coach. A. J. made no effort to follow.

"This is your powwow. I drove all the way from Jersey, I hadda borrow this fucking parade float from Pelico. You wanna tell me what's so important we gotta go camping together?"

A. J. looked up from the tassels on his loafers and out the window.

"Okay," he started slowly, not looking at the mobster. "On the political front, we're doing great… but we got problems on the home front. Haze has… well, he's been indiscreet. He's had more than one liaison with several different parties. The assignations have been brief but carnal."

"Listen, stop looking out the window. Okay? I'm over here. Second, stop talking like Bill fucking Buckley. Say what you mean… Haze is out banging available pussy. Is that it?"

"Was. Haze was out banging available pussy. I told him after we met you, and decided to get in this thing, that he'd have to take the cure. And he has."

"Who knows about this?"

"Well, that's the problem. Pudge Anderson's campaign chairman, Henny Henderson, called and told me about some travel agent in Florida that they've got their hands on. He hinted there's more than one woman in the wings. I confronted Haze and he acknowledged it. They're gonna go to press with it in the morning."

Mickey got up and moved to the sofa, his mind playing the angles. "So, what happens?" he finally said.

"You saw what happened to Gary Hart with Donna Rice, and you saw Gennifer Flowers take a bite out of Clinton. This will be worse. The conservatives and the moral Right will crucify him. Unless.." He stopped and forced himself to swing his gaze back to Mickey.

"Unless what?"

"Unless we create a reason Henderson and Pudge can't use it."

"What kind of reason?"

"What were you planning to do with Anita?"

"Anita has decided to take a long trip. She's going to be leaving the country. She may come back after the nomination is secured; she may not. It's gonna be up to her. Right now, she's thinking about it."

"What if Anita meets with tragic circumstances?" A. J. blurted out.

"You been watching too much television."

"What if she was chartering a plane and flying to meet Haze in Ohio where we're doing a press conference tonight. The plane could have problems…" He stopped, unable to finish the thought because Mickey was smiling at him.

"Jesus, you're not who I thought you were at all."

A. J. looked away and tried to finish. "Haze will cry on national TV. We'll stretch it out… we'll make it play for a month, maybe longer. The funeral is the cover of Time magazine. Haze will do the eulogy. He'll talk about a thirty-year love affair. He'll make trips to her grave and the nation will mourn with him."

"How does that keep them from parading these whores?"

`They can't. Pudge will look like an asshole if he starts to attack a man who is grieving for his wife. I promise you. It'll hurt him worse than Haze."

They were quiet for a minute; then A. J. went on. "It cleans up two problems at the same time. Anita goes away and so does her divorce threat. Also, our internal poll shows the public finds Haze a little distant. This will create sympathy for him and warm up his image," A. J. said, using the logic Ryan had given him in the bar back in Iowa. "Pudge won't dare throw his bimbo grenades," A.]. concluded, suddenly feeling trapped in the motor home, wanting to escape the stuffy environment.

"Okay, rent a plane. We'll rig something that won't look like sabotage."

"What about the pilots?"

"Not even remotely important, Albert. People are meat machines. Sometime they have fiscal or emotional value. If they don't have either, they don't count." He pointed his finger at A. J. and pulled an imaginary trigger. "Bang," he said. "No venue, no value."

"Shit," A. J. said, softly.

Mickey dropped A. J. back at the gas station. The wonk stood next to his car as Mickey looked at him from the steps of the motor home. "Rent the plane with campaign funds. Have it standing by at the executive terminal at the Providence airfield at six-thirty tonight. I'll take care of everything else." Mickey smiled at him. 'This bothers you, doesn't it?"

A. J. pulled his coat around him and nodded.

"Lemme give you something to comfort you," Mickey continued. "Right this second, approximately five hundred people are stepping off the planet… Some of them are dying in car wrecks, some are having coronaries, some are committing suicide. Dipshit passengers on the train to glory. While they're leaving, the maternity bus is pulling up, letting off a thousand new idiots. They're screaming and sucking in their first breaths, shifting their first loads. Net gain: Five hundred people. Ninety percent of them will turn out to be worthless assholes. One less here or there won't make a bit of difference."

"You're a sociopath…"

"Welcome to the dark side of the planet, Albert." Mickey closed the door of the motor home and drove off.

A. J. stood in the gas station, feeling cold and alone.