Стюарт Вудс - Wild Card

“Exactly. You’ve already nearly burned down their building — or rather, some unknown person did. They’re going to be ready. Wait until they’re not.”

Bob nodded but said nothing.

Rance Damien attended dinner with the two Thomases.

“I watched a few minutes of a Joe Box speech,” Henry said. “He wasn’t awful. I didn’t cringe once.”

“He is improving rapidly,” Rance replied, “under the tutelage of Ari. It turns out that he has a remarkable memory, so the teleprompter instructor has been returned to the wild.”

Henry laughed at that, something he didn’t do often, unless there was a woman involved. “He even looks better,” he said.

“That’s because Ari instructed him to have his clothes pressed daily.”

“Tell us about this Ari,” Hank said. “Is he personable?”

“Not in the least,” Rance replied. “He’s blunt to the point of rudeness, and beyond. He has the uncomfortable faculty of always saying what he’s thinking — unadorned.”

“Is he trainable?”

“Not in that regard, I think, but he can learn anything. Mostly, he already has. He would be erudite, if he had any charm.”

“I didn’t know charm was a factor in erudition,” Hank said.

“It is, if you want people to continue to listen to you. A recitation of facts gets pretty cold without charm.”

Ari Kramer and Annie Lee stood offstage in a school auditorium and listened to Senator Joseph Box orate, except it was more like a chat among friends. Box at times gripped the podium with both hands; at others, he leaned on it with an elbow and emphasized with intensity in his voice but not volume.

“He’s word perfect,” Annie said.

“He certainly is. I don’t think I could have recited my own speech as perfectly. The man should have been on the stage.”

“He is on the stage,” Annie said, “and will be until at least November.”

“I was nervous about this being televised,” Ari said, “but now I’m glad it is. Let’s go and watch the rest on TV. I want to hear what the pundits have to say afterward.”

They arrived in their hotel suite, sat on the edge of the bed, and switched on the TV in time to watch a standing ovation. The local anchorman came on and introduced a panel of New Hampshire newspaper editors.

“They loved him,” Annie said. “Can I scratch your back?”

“It doesn’t itch,” Ari said.

“You shouldn’t take everything I say literally.”

“You mean, scratching my back is a euphemism?”

“As in, ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’”

“Does your back itch?”

“It’s a different kind of itch,” she said. “Why don’t we start with rubbing your neck? You’ve grown to like that.”

“Yes, please, do that.”

She had just begun when Ari’s computer rang and the person they knew as William Smith appeared on the screen. Ari sat down before the machine. “Did you watch?”

“I did, and frankly, I was amazed. So were my colleagues.”

“He truly doesn’t need the teleprompter. He has a prodigious memory.”

“Who knew?”

“It isn’t necessarily a sign of intellect, or even intelligence,” Ari said. “It’s more of a savant thing, like some mentally challenged people being able to do complicated math in their heads.”

“We couldn’t ask for more,” Damien said. “In fact, we don’t want more. You just keep him stocked with speeches and position papers.”

“I will do that,” Ari said.

“I got your new address. Are you settled in?”

“We are.”

“I notice you’re dressing better, too.”

“Yes, I am. We both are.”

“I’ll say good night, then.” Damien switched off.

Annie spoke up. “It sounds like they want more of a puppet than a candidate,” she said.

“I think that’s an accurate assessment,” Ari replied. “Does that trouble you?”

“Not particularly, not at sixty dollars an hour, anyway. How long are we going to follow him around?”

“I think we’ll watch him on TV after this. I don’t want to stand around a lot of school halls, waiting for him to make a mistake.”

“Good idea,” she said.

“Weren’t you rubbing my neck?”

An SUV pulled up to a Barnes & Noble in Buckhead, in north Atlanta, and Ida opened the door for Jamie.

“Aren’t you going to check inside first?” Jamie asked.

“Already done by our local people. They’ve given us the go-ahead.” She held up her cell phone. “These work.”

Jamie got out of the vehicle and, braced by Ida and Lane, was marched into the bookstore.

An announcement came over a loudspeaker system. “Good evening, book lovers,” a woman’s voice said. “ New York Times Pulitzer Prize — winning reporter Jamie Cox is about to speak about her new book, Scandalous , in our audience area. Please feel free to join us there now.”

Jamie saw a few people emerge from the stacks and wander over to where she was being directed. They were getting subtle, but close inspection by the local security people. While she was being miked by her publicist, the bookstore manager gave a short introduction, then remarked that questions would be taken at the end of the talk. She turned the podium over to Jamie.

“Good evening,” Jamie said to the crowd. “I thought you’d like to know that, earlier today, at LaGuardia Airport, two men entered the ladies’ room I was using, pulled guns, and were disarmed by my security guards. They fled on foot and have not yet been found. I do hope that none of you are armed, but if you are, you should know that women with guns are watching you.”

This got a laugh from the audience and seemed to relax them.

Jamie spoke for fifteen minutes about her book and the events recounted in it, then took questions for another fifteen minutes. She then sat at a table while the audience lined up to have their books signed.

Later, she asked the bookstore manager how they had done.

“Very well,” the woman replied, “a hundred and twenty-two sales, much better than average.”

Shortly afterward, she was hustled into the SUV and driven back to the St. Regis, where she had dinner in her suite with her publicist and a publisher’s representative.

“Tomorrow night,” Jamie said to Lane later, “do you think I could have dinner in the hotel restaurant? I’d feel less like a caged animal.”

“Tomorrow night we’re in Palm Beach, where you’re speaking to an arts society, and you’re staying at the Brazilian Court. If everything is quiet, you can dine in the restaurant, which is very good.”

“Oh, thank you,” Jamie replied, then got ready for bed.

Stone, Dino, and Viv had dinner at Patroon.

“What do you have on the two guys at LaGuardia?” Stone asked Dino.

“They had an escape route planned, so we didn’t get them. We got their weapons, though, from the trash receptacle in the ladies’ room.”

“Any prints?”

“Nothing. They had apparently handled the weapons only when wearing latex gloves. We found some talc residue that’s used to make the gloves easier to pull on.”

“Were they Italian?”

“Why do you ask?” Dino said.

“Because the Thomases are really the Tommassinis.”

“The descriptions from witnesses were generic — nothing about ethnic appearance. One of the witnesses thought one of the shooters was a woman.”

“So much for eyewitnesses,” Stone said. “Anything unusual about the weapons?”

“Both were Glocks with homemade silencers, apparently never fired. They were originally sold at a gun shop in Virginia last year.”

“How about the hit on Sherry?”

“We found a single shell casing behind the parapet on a house across the street. A.22 long rifle, chosen for a head shot.”