MaxAllan Collins - Quarry's vote

He pointed across the lobby to some stairs going down. “The Bix Beiderbecke Room,” he said. “At nine o’clock Tuesday morning.”

“Thanks. By the way, my status with the Freed campaign is known only by the top-level people. So don’t go throwing my name around.”

“Uh, what is your name, sir?”

“Ryan. Jack.”

“Of course,” he said, smiling, as if the name had just momentarily slipped his mind.

I gave him a smile and a little forefinger salute and left him and the money behind.

The Blackhawk was an older, recently refurbished hotel; the lobby’s black and white marble floor gave it an art deco feel, though the extensive mahogany woodwork and whorehouse-red-trimmed-gold ceiling harked back to frontier days. The lobby wasn’t small, but a low ceiling and comfortable furnishings made it seem intimate, as did the way the thick pillars separated it off into areas. A row of shops and offices-one of them the rear end of the Freed campaign headquarters-was just around the corner from the check-in desk.

I went down marble stairs, following a sign that said ARCADE, and found an arcade in the earlier, pre-Pac Man sense: a row of shops and businesses, about a half a block long, beneath the hotel lobby. The walls were light plaster and decorated with amateurish murals depicting New Orleans street scenes, in honor of Davenport’s legendary Dixieland jazzman, Bix Beiderbecke, who died young. Frightened by the mural, possibly, with its grotesque Mardi Gras figures and frozen Basin Street musicians.

The shops were closed today, although from the looks of things, several stalls were shuttered no matter what day it was. Among those currently in business were a barber shop, a beauty shop, a shoeshine stand and an architect’s office. A ghost town on Sunday; I was alone down here, despite the crowd brunching it upstairs at the hotel’s Sundance Restaurant.

The arcade walkway was really just a hall-perhaps eight feet wide-with a fairly low ceiling made lower by chandelier-style light fixtures. At the end of the hallway were carpeted steps moving up into a newer, beige-brick section of the hotel.

But just prior to that was the entry to the Bix Beiderbecke Room, a short hallway with a short flight of steps that led down to an open area outside the room itself: a medium-size meeting hall with a door at right and another down at its other end, at left. I peeked in the door at right.

A podium was set up facing a room full of chairs, arranged in rows with a central aisle. Seating for probably a hundred or so. Standing in that doorway, I was within twenty feet of the podium.

I looked at my watch, waited for the second hand to point straight up. Then quickly ran from the doorway, down the short hall out to the arcade and up the carpeted steps. Checked the second hand.

Ten seconds.

I looked up from my watch and saw that I was indeed in the new part of the hotel, a high-ceilinged add-on that connected the Blackhawk with its parking. I was a few steps away from a door to the street, where there was plenty of parking at the curb on both sides of the wide one-way; and a few steps away from the parking garage itself, where if I had a car parked on the bottom floor nearby I was within seconds of wheeling out of here. A few more steps to my right, down a gentle Oriental-carpeted ramp-like walkway, were hotel elevators.

Back up the ramp, still in the beige-brick modern addendum, which was overseen by a huge, old-fashioned wall clock, I was facing the glass wall of the indoor swimming pool/sauna area. A few families were in there splashing around. I’d have a swim later. The door was kept locked, but your room key would open it.

The upper lobby’s arcade connected nearby, and I wandered back in, thinking over what I’d seen. A row of telephone booths, set in the mahogany walls, was on my right. I used one of the phones to call the number Freed had given me.

After several rings, Freed himself answered.

“Yes?” he said, thickly, obviously awakened by the call.

“This is Quarry.”

“Quarry!”

“That’s Jack Ryan to you.”

“Yes, certainly-what is it?”

“I’ve had a look around here at the Blackhawk Hotel. We better have that security briefing we talked about. Gather the key people who are going to be covering your butt at the press conference. I need to talk to them.”

“I can do that. When?”

“Is this afternoon too soon?”

“One o’clock?”

So I went in the front way this time, a hunting-jacketed sentry in the brown Ford climbing out to open the unpainted metal gate, and I drove down the paved drive, forest on either side of me, until I was driving along the edge of the quarry drop-off, the lake below shimmering with what little sunlight was filtering through today’s overcast.

I parked in back and was met by an armed guard in a brown leather bomber jacket and tan slacks; he had that same deputy sheriff look as some of those I’d stun-gunned last night, but I didn’t recognize this one, a round-faced man with rosy cheeks and thinning hair.

Me, I wasn’t in ninja black today, but spiffed up in a suit and tie and brown leather overcoat.

Freed came down the wooden stairway in back, off the kitchen, its railing freshly repaired, and greeted me with a smile and an extended hand. I shook it, smiled back. He was wearing a blue suede jacket and a light blue shirt with a string tie; his mane of white hair brushed neatly back, and the light blue eyes in the tanned face, made him seem almost otherworldly.

“Jack,” he said, “it’s good to see you again.” And he slipped his arm around my shoulder.

“Been a long time,” I said.

Soon we were in the open-beamed conference room, where the oil portrait of Freed as a riverboat captain held sway; at a large table sat four men, two of whom I recognized. All four stood as Freed introduced me, and one by one shook hands with me.

One of them was campaign manager Frank Neely, he of the steel-gray gaze and fleshy, intelligent face. He was wearing a sweatshirt that said WHY NOT A REAL PRESIDENT? VOTE FREED, with the last word given extra prominence by a somewhat protruding belly.

“Mr. Ryan,” he said, smiling warily, “please excuse my informality-this was a last-minute meeting…”

The other one that I recognized was a thirtyish, somewhat heavy-set, balding blond guy, who I’d met in this very room last night, introducing myself by way of a brass Presidential seal in the belly. He was dressed much the same as the night before: blue workshirt and jeans. When we shook hands he kept his grip insolently limp, dark eyes drilling into me, his smile a scowl. His name, Freed said, was Larry.

“You can stuff the apology,” Larry said, sneering.

“What apology?” I said.

“Larry,” Freed said. “Just sit down.”

Larry sat down and did a slow burn. Nobody’s favorite stooge.

The other two men were named Blake and Simmons; one had brown hair and the other blond, but they were pretty much interchangeable, a pair of oversize WASP ex-cops who had probably been football players in college or anyway high school. Linebackers, I’d say. They were, Freed had informed me last night, his security chiefs on the primary swing.

Both had firm grips; both smiled without revealing any warmth-or teeth, for that matter.

We all sat, except Freed, who stood at the head of the table, his back to the fireplace, which was going, his own portrait looking over his shoulder.

“Jack Ryan is an old friend of mine,” Freed said, beaming at me, so convincing a liar I almost had memories of our friendship, “who also happens to be one of the best security men around. Yesterday he handed Frank here a line, and Frank was ready to set up a meeting between Jack and myself, without running any kind of security check first. I think we’ve learned something, haven’t we, Frank?”