Mark Costello - Big If

Herc said, “Did this bar have a different theme before?”

“No,” said Kelli, “we’ve had this theme all night.”

“How about October?”

Kelli said, “I’m new.”

“Well,” said Herc, “how would you describe this theme?”

Kelli looked around. “Oh, I don’t know — Roaring Nineties?”

Elias said, “Is history required at your college, Kel?”

O’Teen said, “Ignore them, Kelli. I’ll have another.”

Kelli said, “Another what?”

Everyone had beer except for Elias, who had another Schweppes, and Bobbie, who had a Shot Heard ’Round the World. The agents pondered dinner, reviewing the menu.

Kelli said, “We also have our specials for tonight: old New England baked spaghetti in a spaghetti sauce; the hearty Yankee pot roast with creamed spinach, buttered bread or a popover; our signature baked ham with your choice of the house salad, a popover, the steamed green beans with slivered almonds; the cod, which you can have baked, grilled, poached, or deep-fried in a popover; roast turkey with the cream-a-corn, or your choice of two, creamed spinach, maple carrots, Uncle Jesse touched me, or a steamy crock of our famous onion soup.”

“Cheeseburger,” said Herc.

“Ditto,” said Elias.

Tashmo said, “Uncle Jesse what?”

Kelli blushed. “I usually get away with that — no one ever listens to the specials.”

O’Teen said, “Do you have baked spaghetti?”

“Yes sir, it’s a special.”

O’Teen got spaghetti, Bobbie got the cod. Kelli took the orders to the kitchen. O’Teen left to see if Herc’s number was still in the men’s room and ran into Gretchen Williams. Tashmo watched her cross the room, pushing O’Teen along.

Gretchen stood over the agents at the table. No one said hello to her.

Gretchen said, “Where’s Vi?”

Bobbie said, “She’s sleeping.”

“She was yawning,” said O’Teen.

“I’ve never seen someone so tired,” Herc observed.

They were obviously lying. Tashmo knew that Vi had left the hotel without orders. The VP’s team wasn’t a close group, like the glorious old Reagan team, but at least these half-assed kids had the decency to lie and cover up for a fellow agent, even if they did it badly. Tashmo was proud of them, a little.

Gretchen said, “It’s curfew time, you’re finished here. We’ve got an early prebrief in the morning. Everyone to bed.”

“But we just ordered dinner,” Bobbie said.

Gretchen said, “Bobbie, shut your trap. Herc, locate the waitress, cancel that last order. Elias, don’t pay with plastic, makes us look like fucking flight attendants — Jesus, Eli, have some pride. The rest of you to bed except for Tashmo. Tashmo, follow me.”

Every night on the road,Gretchen’s last official act before she went to bed was a tour of the hotel from the lobby to the roof. She took this tour alone most nights, double-checking normal, making sure that nothing was undone or overlooked. She crossed the lobby of the inn that evening, Tashmo at her elbow.

She said, “Where were you when you were called for this deployment, Tashmo? I was at the batting cage with my son, seems like a million years ago. Then I get beeped by Debbie Escobedo-Waas. She says the Director needs to see me. Fine — Vi comes by and we go up to Beltsville. When we get there, the Director takes me for a big walk on the quad. ‘Gretch,’ he says, ‘everything pertaining to the life and works of Lloyd L. Felker is secret now, and triple need-to-know, and you don’t need to know so I shouldn’t tell you, but I will. Because I know it bothers you, what happened in the flood. Felker was your people, Gretch, and you left him on the ground. You left the Asplund girl too, but we were able to recover her substantially intact, so it’s no big whoops. But Felker — that was a big whoops. Not your fault, of course. You lost a man, Gretch. Cost of doing business. And in the end, it’s not your fault that the man you lost happened to possess, in his legendary memory, all-clearance knowledge of every plan and tactic in the cupboard, every plug in every hole, every hole in every plug, every Certainty and Sensitive. I’m not here to dwell on your fuckup in the flood, because I admire you. You keep them dawgies moving, Gretch, and I see you as directress of this Service in a few years. I’ll be out to pasture then, an eager, hungry, slightly desperate, business-lunching corporate security consultant, probably working for that goddamn Loudon Rhodes, assuming he’s not in prison for shooting Hinckley, ironically enough, not that I object to shooting Hinckley, sauce for the gander in my humble book, but I don’t condone hiring ex-Mossaders to plan such a hit, and I have in my office, Gretch, at this very moment firm evidence of contractual discussions between Loudon Rhodes in Hollywood and a shadowy global headhunter with offices in Crete and Lake Success, New York— firm evidence, I tell you: wiretaps, wiretaps —well, not wiretaps because everything in Hollywood is cell phones nowadays, so these are mostly wireless taps, but shockingly explicit nonetheless, and when the time is right, evil Loudon Rhodes will be facing a grand jury if he doesn’t give me a really good job when I retire. You don’t need to know what I’m about to tell you, Gretch, and I shouldn’t fill you in, but I will. Because when I’m retired to the cold, unfeeling private sector, and you sit in my twirly chair of power, and are in a position to give out certain lucrative consultancies, I want you to remember me as one who knew you felt responsible for Hinman and had the decency to fill you in.’”

Tashmo said, “Did he ever actually get around to filling you in?”

“They found Felker,” Gretchen said.

There were troopers on the couches by the lobby doors. They got up as Gretchen approached and sat down again as Gretchen went away.

“After Felker disappeared in Hinman,” Gretchen said, “Boone Saxon’s guys put a watch on his Diners Club card. Two days after Hinman, the card came alive in a burst of charges, St. Louis, K.C., Denver, and Las Vegas. The rate and spacing of the charges indicated a man driving west, steady progress, but not headlong flight. Most of the charges were for gas, barbecue, or Asian-only escort services, and the tips, I’m told, were staggering. Boone traced the card to a casino-motel-massage complex in Laughlin, Nevada, a southward jog from Vegas, which made the Director think of Mexico, of Felker running for the border, not quite the Director’s worst nightmare, but up there anyway. Because what if Lloyd went into Mexico and sold his knowledge of our weakness to the drug cartels, to Castro at his embassy, to the Shining Path? What if he made the jump from Mexico to the Middle East and sold his mind to the Iraqis? We’d have presidents in bunkers for the next twenty years. It was therefore deemed imperative to catch Felker before he made the border. The Director sent a troop of SWATs to Laughlin. They covered the casino and found the Diners Club card in the hands of a car thief from Chicago. We’ll call this person Earl.”

There were two banquet halls off the lobby at the inn. The first, the West Wind Room, had been rented to the campaign and transformed into a cavernous press center. Gretchen walked between the rows of folding tables, watching people type at laptops, talk on cell phones, type and talk and chew their pencils, looking at the ceiling.

“Before the flood, this person we call Earl was a guest of the State of Illinois, doing the back nine of a seven-to-fourteen, working in the barber shop, studying for his GE Ph.D. in boxing history, hoarding marijuana, snitching on his friends, abusing his free access to the law library, pestering the overburdened courts with nuisance suits complaining of various ills, slights, and due process violations — in other words, living the life of your typical mellow prison inmate.