Stephen Cannell - The Plan

"Sympathy. Could win him the election."

"Come on, he was winning."

"Make him win bigger. . Or to stop the bimbo grenades that I'm sure Pudge was set to throw. What else is troubling you?"

"How do we knock the Haze Richards campaign off the track? Seems to me the only thing we have a chance of proving is that the mob financed C. Wallace Litman and that his network is steering on the election. That may not even be a crime, and just because Litman worked on Teddy Lansky's tax returns in the seventies doesn't mean he was bankrolled by the mob. Where's the evidence? We've got no smoking gun."

"Not yet, but if we can prove that UBC is a mob-controlled company, and if we can prove that Mickey Alo wants to put Haze in the White House, then I think we can knock him off. The American people hate to get duped. If we can prove the mob and UBC picked Haze and were trying to manipulate the election, the backlash will end it."

Cole paid for the drinks and they moved to a table for dinner. "Ever since the Lansky trial in Israel I've always wondered what was in that suitcase. It had to be powerful. It kept him out of Israel," Cole said as they were seated.

"My bet is illegal wiretaps of Lansky's private conversations with criminals. Probably stuff Justice couldn't use in the U. S. courts 'cause it was obtained illegally, but it would be perfectly all right to let the Israelis borrow it. If we get lucky, maybe those tapes still exist. They won't b e l isted in the records 'cause there was no paper behind the bugs. David Robb would have had to approve the deal. That means he has them or knows where they are. If we find him, maybe we get half the equation. . Maybe we get old recordings of Lansky talking to Joseph Alo."

"Or maybe he's talking to Wallace Litman."

"I wish I was still boozing so I could drink to it," Kaz said.

The waiter brought menus, but when they saw the prices, they got up and left.

Kaz and Cole had dinner at a crowded McDonald's next to a pinball arcade. As kids screamed and threw ice cubes, they divided up the tedious task of locating David Robb.

Lucinda steered a course for Cabo San Lucas, and the fifty-foot ketch headed downwind in a following sea.

The course corrections were frequent as she rode the mounds of fast-moving water that were overtaking them from the stern. The sky was filled with high, scuddin g c louds that turned the day silver in the afternoon light.

Ryan had stayed on deck, hopping awkwardly to port and starboard, reeling in the jib lines with the chrome coffee grinders.

The incident with Jerry Paradise had crystalized the danger for both of them. For Lucinda, it was the final chord in a dark fugue that started playing the day they buried Rex an orchestrated deception that included the beating in the park. . the cold, empty warning in the den and the threat in the kitchen where he'd pushed her down and accused her of spying on him. All of these things paled next to Jerry Paradise and the attempt to kill them.

"We should call Kaz and tell him what happened," Lucinda finally said.

Ryan listened to the wind whistling through the rigging. He knew she was right. The cell phone was in the center drawer below. It was dead but Ryan told her there was a charger down below.

Lucinda got the cell phone, turned on the tiny generator that fed power to the cabin, plugged in the charger, and set the unit up on the chart table. She turned to go back up on deck, but hesitated when she saw Ryan sitting at the wheel, looking off toward the horizon, his chin high, his right hand on the helm. Her heart caught as she looked at him. There seemed to be something more substantial about him now-something that was missing before, a strength of purpose, a determination. He looked down and caught her staring at him. She smiled to cover her embarrassment and clambered up the stairs to join him.

"What were you just thinking?" she asked.

"I was wondering what force in the cosmic plan decided to hand us this gigantic problem. How are we qualified to keep the underworld from stealing the presidency?"

She had no answer. The thought overwhelmed her.

A gust of wind caught the mainsail and they both felt the boat lean over as it rushed down the hill of rolling water.

Ryan looked out at a low-flying gull that had its wings spread and was cruising, effortlessly, along behind the Linda, never changing its position, riding the same wind so that it appeared to be hovering, while in fact it was moving fast, maintaining the position with only slight adjustments of wing and tail. Ryan thought it would be nice if he'd been able to control the currents of his life with such ease.

In forty minutes, the cell phone was charged and Lucinda went down and got it. She dialed her mother's number. It rang three times, then she heard Kaz's voice on the other end. "Yep," he said, noncommittally.

"Kaz?"

"Who's this?"

"Lucinda. I'm with Ryan. He wants to talk to you." She handed the phone to Ryan, who put it to his ear.

Kaz was still in Washington, parked in front of the Human Resources Office. He was about to go in and find somebody who would buy a line of bullshit he'd dummied up about an overpayment on David Robb's social security. "How y' doin', Kaz?" Ryan said.

"How you feeling is a better question."

"Coming along. But I have a problem that needs solving."

"Do my best.. "

"Nobody should have known where Lucinda and I were. We had been there for three days and some guy who called himself Jerry Paradise, or maybe his name's Harry Meeks, showed up and tried to kill us. He was from Atlantic City, so I'm pretty sure Mickey sent him, but the only thing I can't figure out is how Mickey could know where we were."

"You call him?"

"I called him once, but it was from a pay phone and it was the same day we got attacked, so that couldn't be it." He looked at Lucinda. "Just a minute. ." He turned to her. "Did you call your brother?"

"No." Then she remembered the call she had made to Penny. "But I called my mother at the Jersey house two days ago when I went into Avalon for food."

"Lucinda called Penny at the house in Jersey two days ago."

"He must have a Pin Tel."

"A what?"

"A gadget the phone company developed to catch people who are making threatening phone calls. If he's got one, he'd get a printout of the number she was calling from. It's not much of a trick to get the address." Then Kaz added, "I guess I don't have to tell you not to call him again unless you wanna decorate the inside of a pine box."

"Listen, Kaz, I want to be part of this."

Kaz said nothing, so Ryan forged ahead.

"Mickey's already tried to kill me three times. As long as I'm a target, I might as well go ahead and get a uniform."

Kaz really didn't want to work with amateurs, but he couldn't say that to Ryan. "Cole and I are working on something. Get some place where you won't draw a crow d a nd lay low. Is that a cell?" "yeah."

"Okay, gimme the number and stay out of sight. If I need any help, I'll call."

Ryan gave him the cell-phone number and they ended the conversation.

After he hung up, Ryan and Lucinda held hands in the cockpit of the ketch as the day turned slowly to dusk. The sun sat on the horizon like an orange cue ball on frothy green felt. It slowly sank from view and then they were in a strange murky twilight, the boat shooting down the sides of the following sea. For almost a minute, the color of the ocean and the sky were an identical shade of dusky gray. Where sky and water met, there was no horizon. It created a strange vertigo, as if the small sailboat were in a colorless vortex, a small shifting platform in a world of invisible, coursing currents.

Then night fell and the moon lit the ocean as they, once again, slipped silently away, heading toward Mexico.