The First Lady Read online

  He stays quiet.

  “In the meantime, Scotty, you’re going to get what you want, to be in charge of the Presidential Protective Division.” I gently place Amelia’s sign into the top of the crowded box.

  I force myself to smile. “Enjoy it while you can.”

  CHAPTER 85

  A SONG IN one’s heart and a spring in one’s step, that’s how the saying goes, and Tammy Doyle is feeling it as she strides across the main office area—filled with rows of cubicles—now heading down a hallway and right up to the closed door of Amanda Price’s corner office, quickly passing by her two administrative assistants, grabbing the doorknob, and walking right in.

  A week ago she would have never considered doing something so rude and forward.

  But a week is a lifetime ago.

  Amanda Price, smoking a cigarette and on the phone with someone, looks up and says, “What the hell is going on, Tammy? Is the place on fire? Or has the President finally proposed marriage?”

  The corner office has a great view of K Street and the surrounding buildings, the best in the company. “I need to talk to you, Amanda.”

  Phone in hand, Amanda puts her cigarette down in the crowded ashtray. “I can see you in an hour.”

  “Now.”

  Amanda’s inked eyebrows lift up some. “Don’t push me, Tammy.”

  “If I don’t see you now,” Tammy says, “you’re going to be the one pushed. Out the front door.”

  Amanda speaks into the phone. “Jeb, sorry, something’s come up. I’ll call you back in sixty seconds. Promise.”

  Amanda slams the receiver down and starts in on Tammy, and Tammy yells back, “Enough! Amanda, I’ve been here some years and that’s the last time you’re ever going to raise your voice to me. Ever.”

  That gets her attention. She folds her hands before her, forming a slim and strong triangle. “I told Jeb I’d be calling him back in sixty seconds. You’ve got about thirty seconds left before I fire your ass and make that phone call.”

  Tammy says, “Lucian Crockett.”

  That puzzles her. “Go on.”

  “I just got off the phone with him. He’s ready to do business with the company … but only through me.”

  Amanda clenches her fingers together into a fist. “You shouldn’t have talked to him. When he called, you should have transferred the call to me. He and his company belong to me. I’ve been working to sign him up for months. Months!”

  Tammy says, “Not my choice. He wanted to talk to me, and he made it quite clear: he and his company will do business with Pearson, Pearson, and Price, but only with me. Not you.”

  She reaches for her phone. “Get the hell out of here. Now.”

  “If you’re thinking about calling Lucian, I wouldn’t do it, Amanda. He doesn’t like you. His wife and mother don’t like you. The only reason they’re coming here is because of me.” Tammy steps forward for emphasis. “If you go around me and try to mess this up, within the hour, the board of directors will hear from me on how you sabotaged a deal worth millions of dollars.”

  Amanda’s finely manicured hand is still on her phone. “Are you testing me?”

  “Not a test, Amanda. A statement of fact. Lucian Crockett is coming aboard, and I’m supplying the ticket.”

  She slowly draws her hand back. She looks at Tammy, looks out the window, then back at Tammy.

  Something resembling a smile creases her face. “Well … I suppose some arrangement can be made … for the good of the company.”

  “I agree, Amanda. For the good of the company. I’m glad you see it that way.”

  Silence, and Tammy decides to push it. “That’s very understanding of you, Amanda. And I need to understand something else. Back when you … broke into my condo, and after I told you I had been in a car accident, you said traffic can be awful on Interstate Sixty-six. How did you know I was on Sixty-six? I didn’t tell you. Did you arrange that accident?”

  She shakes her head. “No … Tammy, there are corners I will cut, lines I will cross, but not something like … that. No.”

  Amanda glances with longing at her slowly burning cigarette. “Information. That’s all. I always look to get information about our clients and our employees. Your name is on a list, that’s all. And I got a phone call from a source of mine at the Virginia State Police, telling me about your accident. That’s all.”

  Tammy says, “Fair enough.” She turns and starts to the office door. “By the way, before you call Jeb back, make another call, will you? By the end of the week, I want a bigger office, with a better view.”

  The smile on that painted face disappears, but her voice is agreeable. “I don’t see why not.”

  She leaves Amanda, and just before she gets to her soon-to-be former office, her cell phone rings and she notices the familiar incoming number.

  Tammy feels it’ll be the last time a call from this number will ever be received on her phone.

  CHAPTER 86

  OUTSIDE OF THE Oval Office, it looks like it’s going to rain. The President of the United States slowly sits down, and when his chief of staff makes to do the same, Harrison Tucker holds up a hand.

  “You can keep standing,” he says, so very tired and worn. “You won’t be here long.”

  “Mr. President, I—”

  Tucker motions him to keep quiet. He says, “I blame myself, I guess, Parker. I got the first taste of power back in Ohio, loved it, and you just kept on feeding it and feeding it to me. Like an addict and his relationship with a pusher.”

  “Harry—”

  Tucker shakes his head. “It’s over. Get out and have your resignation on my desk within the hour. I’ll be polite, I’ll let you depart with my thanks and praise, but that’s it, Parker. You’re through.”

  His chief of staff walks around the front of his desk and leans over, both hands on the top of the Resolute desk. “You goddamn fool—put on your big-boy pants and listen to me. All right? Listen to me! That bitch Secret Service agent … she’s bluffing. She won’t go public. She won’t go to the press. We just need to get through the next three weeks and have you win the election. That’s all. Just win the damn election.”

  Tucker feels like all he has accomplished, all he has built, all he’s done since coming here to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is finished, done, spoiled because of this man standing in front of him.

  “You wanted my wife dead. Get out.”

  “I wanted you reelected. And if it meant losing that cold bitch—”

  Tucker abruptly stands up, so he’s practically nose-to-nose with his chief of staff. “All right, now you’re out of here—I want your resignation, and I’m going to keep my mouth shut and let you twist in the wind. Get out!”

  Hoyt says, “You’re only here because I put you here, and this is how you pay me back?”

  “You turn and start walking, or I’ll have the Secret Service come in and drag you away. You want that on the front page of tomorrow’s Washington Post?”

  Hoyt turns and walks across the carpet, out of the curved door, not shutting it behind him.

  Tucker slowly sits down.

  He feels so terribly alone, isolated, even in this people’s house with hundreds nearby.

  Only one thing he can do.

  He reaches for his phone.

  CHAPTER 87

  AND TAMMY DOYLE gets inside her office door as her phone rings one more time, and she answers, and a woman says, “Miss Doyle?”

  “Yes?”

  “The White House calling,” the woman says. “Please hold for the President.”

  For a long time that little greeting—“Please hold for the President”—had always thrilled her, making her feel oh so special and loved and cherished.

  Now?

  Tammy just feels dread.

  “Oh, thank you,” she says, and a quiet click, and that familiar voice comes on.

  “Tammy?”

  She walks to her small office window, thinking with anticipation of how much bette
r her view will be by this time next week.

  “Hello, Harry,” she says.

  She hears his sigh. “Damn … it’s good to hear your voice. It really is. And I need to talk to you.”

  “Harry, glad to hear that Grace has been found. I didn’t even know she was missing. Did you?”

  Her lover seems startled by the question. “Well, there were indications … here and there … but look, Tammy, I know the past few days have been rough. I haven’t been fair to you, or open. And I’m deeply sorry. In just a few weeks … the election will be over. And then we can start seeing each other again.”

  Tammy keeps on looking out at DC, such a faraway and fairy-tale place from the tenement building she had grown up in back in South Boston.

  A fairy-tale place, she thinks. With evil kings and queens, with plots and betrayals, and the constant struggle for power.

  “Tammy? I … love you, hon. I really do.”

  Those sweet words have now changed. They’re just … words.

  Below her small office, a taxicab honks its horn.

  “Harry, I love you, too. But I’m going to miss you as well.”

  “Tammy … what are you saying?”

  She earlier thought this call would be hard, or depressing, or upsetting, but no, she’s finding it …

  Empowering.

  Liberating.

  She says, “Harry, we had a grand time, with special memories. And I promise I’ll never violate the confidence of what we shared. I’ll keep those secrets forever. But I can’t try to go back to what we had. It’s impossible. It’s time for both of us to move on.”

  “Tammy, please, give us a chance, give us some time.”

  She says, “No, Harry, I’m sorry. My life is going to be mine, and mine alone. I’m not going to be connected to you in the future. I won’t be a second First Lady, or the very first presidential girlfriend. I saw what happened to Grace. I’m not going to let it happen to me.”

  “Oh, Tammy …”

  And for the first time in months, she uses that old, formal phrase.

  “Good-bye, Mr. President.”

  CHAPTER 88

  THE PRESIDENT OF the United States sits alone in the Oval Office.

  The rain is coming down hard now, streaking and streaming down the French doors behind his desk and chair.

  So it’s over.

  All over.

  He broods, staring at his clean and empty desk, and at the photos of him and Grace that were there to fool visitors into thinking he had a wonderful and traditional marriage.

  Now what does he have?

  A sudden stab of fear, of acknowledgment.

  He has nothing now.

  Grace will never take him back.

  Parker is gone.

  And now Tammy wants nothing more from him.

  The overcast sky makes it seem darker and more confined in the Oval Office.

  The President of the United States stares at his phone.

  He can pick it up and talk to the vice president, currently on a campaign swing through Georgia and Florida.

  Or he could call his secretary, Mrs. Young, and have a wonderful gourmet meal delivered to him.

  Or he could contact the famed White House switchboard, and in a matter of minutes, he could be talking to the president of Poland, the head of Columbia Pictures, the latest and most famous rap star, or the most beautiful movie star in Hollywood.

  All that power, all that possibility, all within his reach.

  But for what purpose?

  Why?

  The President of the United States is alone in his Oval Office.

  He continues to stare at his silent phone.

  CHAPTER 89

  ON THE FOURTH floor of the Waterford County Hospital, Deputy Sheriff Roy Bogart checks in on his VIP patient from the open doorway. She’s rolled over in her bed, facing the wall, handcuffs still secured.

  Good.

  He steps out and walks to the nearby nurses’ station. An empty chair is next to the patient’s open door. Deputy Sheriff Nancy Cook is supposed to be working with him, but one of her kids is throwing up something awful, so she’s running late.

  No matter.

  When he first checked in on the patient an hour ago, she wasn’t moving or saying a thing, curled on her side, one wrist handcuffed to the Stryker bed. Roy is fine with that, having guarded lots of patients over the years. The ones that drove you nuts were the ones screaming about hospital brutality, about how they had to use a bedpan, or that they were about to hurl all over the floor.

  This one, though, is perfect. Short, dark-skinned, kinda rough-looking, but from what he heard at the nurses’ station, she was wearing a Kevlar vest when somebody shot her three times in the chest. Poor gal is all busted up, and the last time Roy tried to talk to her, she just looked away.

  Okay, then.

  At the nurses’ station, he catches the eye of Rhonda Buell, the floor supervisor, who’s a cute thing with a nice set of curves, and although he’s old enough to be her father, he loves chatting her up.

  She rolls over on her chair and says, “How are you doing, Roy?”

  “Fine, hon, how about you?”

  “Hanging in there,” she says, smiling, and Roy fantasizes for a moment that she’s one of those nurses that gets off on seeing a man in uniform. Maybe he could luck out when both their shifts end and set up a lunch date or something.

  Roy says, “I’m about to swing down to the cafeteria, grab some coffee. Can I grab you a cup?”

  Rhonda says, “Sure … but you sure you want to leave your patient alone?”

  “Cripes,” he says, “you said her chest is all messed up, she’s handcuffed—I don’t think she’ll be breaking out anytime soon.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” she says. “I hear word that there’s a bunch of Feds, state cops, and local cops in a conference room on the first floor, fighting over who gets her.”

  Roy says, “I still don’t know what she did, do you?”

  Rhonda shakes her pretty little blond head just as the nearby elevator opens up, and a sweaty, red-faced Deputy Sheriff Nancy Cook comes out, a large woman in the sheriff’s brown uniform, carrying a small cooler.

  “Man—Roy—s-so sorry I’m late—” she stammers out. “You know how it is.”

  “Sure do,” he says, and he thinks, Perfect, she can sit and guard the prisoner, and I can make the cafeteria run. “Let me get you set up.”

  He points to the patient’s room and Nancy joins him, and they walk in and Roy calls out, “Hey, miss, this is the other deputy sheriff who’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

  No reply, which isn’t a surprise.

  But a second later, there’s a big surprise indeed.

  There’s no patient.

  Just bunched-up pillows underneath the blankets, a dangling handcuff, and thick tufts of hair spread across the pillow that made it look like someone was sleeping. Sweet Mary, Roy thinks, she either tugged the hair out by herself or sliced it off.

  Nancy is standing next to him, breathing hard.

  “Christ, sorry to say this, Roy,” she says, “but I sure am glad I’m late.”

  CHAPTER 90

  FOR PROBABLY THE last time in my life, I’m able to use my Secret Service identification to go past a police and agency cordon, and after some minutes of delay, I’m able to get to a special room in Blair House, which—irony of ironies—is within easy walking distance of the White House and is also the President’s official guesthouse.

  The door is opened up by one of the First Lady’s “children” from the East Wing, and I’m ushered into a sitting room, where a refreshed-looking Grace Fuller Tucker is sitting at a round dining room table. There’s a coffee setup spread before her, and she says, “Can I offer you a late-afternoon refreshment, Agent Grissom?”

  Any other time, I would say no, but like I’ve thought many times over the past few days, this certainly isn’t any other time.

  “Sure,” I say, “but I’ll pour m
yself.”

  She nods, and I sit down across from her, get myself a cup of steaming hot coffee from a silver set, and add a few lumps of sugar. The First Lady has had her hair done, she’s wearing black slacks and a plain white turtleneck, and the bandage on her left hand is fresh.

  “How’s your hand doing?” I ask.

  She holds it up and gives it a glance, like it’s some foreign object that’s been attached to her. “Doing much better,” she says. “The ER doctors over at George Washington cleaned it up and restitched it, and I’ve got some very fine painkillers to take the edge off. They wanted me to spend the night, but you see how far that went.”

  The First Lady smiles, and it’s nice to be the focus of her warmth and attention, despite what I’m going to say next.

  “Was it hard,” I ask, “having your father slice off that finger joint?”

  Her smile never wavers. “He’s spent many years at Cleveland Clinic, observing and evaluating. He did a perfectly fine job.”

  I take a sip of the coffee. “This had been in the works for a very long time.”

  “Not that long,” she says. “Only when my suspicions about Harrison were confirmed.”

  “I did some additional checking in on Mr. Fuller,” I say. “It seems he’s also on the board of the corporation that owns the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I can see if a reporter or an editor learned about your husband’s affair, how that news might have gotten to him first.”

  Mrs. Tucker doesn’t say anything, but there’s the slightest of nods. I say, “With that information … he doesn’t confront the President. You don’t confront the President. Instead, he sets up that ambush in Atlanta. I was always puzzled by that. It’s typical for a breaking news story for one outlet—television station or newspaper—to take the lead in getting the story. Very unusual to have an ambush consisting of a couple of network television crews and reporters from competing newspapers at the same place and the same time. Like they were all tipped off simultaneously.”