The Plan Page 4

"I already tried, but these things have a life of their own, Ryan."

  Thirty minutes later, Elizabeth pulled the Ghia up in front of his condo north of Malibu. It was a Spanish complex with arched doors and red-tiled walks. He got out, and she started to back out of the drive, in a hurry to get home.

  Ryan's condo was on Broad Beach, amid heavy sand dunes. Inside, the apartment was more to Linda's taste than his-lots of French floral prints on overstuffed chairs. Linda had taken the big house in Bel Air and he was out here. He preferred the beach. He couldn't bear the upstairs hall of the Bel Air house, with all those pictures of the three of them before Matt drowned. The faces stared at him from behind antique lacquer frames. What had they been thinking. . smiling at the base of a ski lift. . or on the back of the Linda, his fifty-foot sailboat named after his ex-wife? The pictures seemed to be of three strangers. So he'd left the house with its framed reminders and moved to the beach.

  He saw his message light was on. He hit the playback.

  His own voice, tired and lifeless: "Hi, this is Ryan. After the tone, leave your message."

  Beep.

  "Ryan, this is Jerry. What the fuck went wrong at NBC? I got six calls already. Call me. I can't deal with this shit."

  His agent. Great! There were no other messages. It was as if he'd already been thrown off the Hollywood bus.

  Why was this happening? Ryan looked out at the ocean. . at the white foam, skipping playfully ahead of the green water. Then he picked up the channel changer and absently turned the TV on.

  ". . not a matter of employment or even deficit reductions," the man on television was saying. 'This is hardheaded economics. . not the pabulum President Cotton tried to make us swallow." Cotton, plagued by ill health, had decided not to seek a second term.

  It was Senator Paul Arquette on a taped weekly news show. The United States senator from Nevada had been getting more airtime lately than any other presidential hopeful. He had not announced yet, but he was obviously about to. Ryan remembered him from twenty years before, when Ryan had been just fifteen and had visited Mickey Alo at Thanksgiving. He hadn't been in touch with Mickey since Matt died. Then he remembered Mickey's dog Rex, running ahead of them, snapping at the air. And he remembered Rex lying on the grass. Headless. Dead. *

  Ryan turned off the set and went out on the porch to watch the sun go down, painting the Pacific with greens and reds. And then, for a brief moment in his mind's eye, he saw a seven-year-old redheaded boy. He was on a swing, pumping his legs to make it go higher. He didn't remember ever seeing him before, but somehow the memory of the boy was familiar. Then, almost before he could focus on him, the image was gone, leaving him with a feeling of dread he couldn't comprehend. Ryan had no idea who the boy was. He sat in the reclining chair and put his head back.

  He fell asleep, and again his dreams were dark and deadly. He was swimming with Matt. There was a black shadow in the water next to him, and as always, it terrified him. It was after Matt, but Matt was laughing. As the shadow beast swam past, Matt climbed on, riding its back. And then the giant blackness swerved and came at Ryan. . A beast he couldn't make out or identify but which seemed to contain all the evil in his imagination. His dead son was laughing. "Here we come, Daddy." For a second he glimpsed the huge monster's eye, rich with red and green markings-a paisley eye-then the shadow was ripping into him, eating his flesh. Matt was still laughing. "Does it hurt, Daddy?" And Ryan woke up. For almost a minute he didn't know where he was, then realized he was on his deck.

  Shaking, he went into the house and lay down on his sofa.

  Ryan was bone-tired but too afraid to close his eyes.

  Chapter 5

  CANDIDATE

  Mickey and his father were in Joseph's room watching a news report about the return of Paul's mutilated body to McCarran Field in Las Vegas. The UBC anchor, Brenton Spencer, told America that Bahamian police surmised that the senator and his media consultant Warren Sacks had gone swimming late at night and been savagely attacked by sharks.

  Paul's wife, Avon, met the plane, dressed in a dark suit. She was crying as Paul's casket was unloaded from a military cargo plane, and Brenton Spencer droned on about the late senator's political accomplishments.

  Mickey watched, without feeling. He had not told his father about the inflammatory Polaroid pictures he'd found in the Flamingo Suite because it served no purpose now. The pictures showed Paul and Warren and a pretty sixteenyear-old Bahamian girl, locked in a bisexual daisy chain of anal bliss. Mickey had cut them up and flushed them down the toilet. They were of no use to him now and only defined the depth of his father's mistake in judgment about Paul. As the funeral procession left the airfield, Mickey switched off the TV and moved back to his father.

  "I think you're right," Joseph wheezed. "This Rhode Island governor Haze Richards looks good, but this whole thing happens now or not at all. We got no time."

  "Okay, but it's not like with Paul," Mickey said. "We knew Paul since he was governor. Haze Richards is a stranger. We need somebody who's got the candidate's ear and can control him. Somebody who can godfather this whole thing. I've been checking it out, and I found a guy who could help. He's real tight with Governor Richards-all the way back to grade school-helped him win the Rhode Island Governor's mansion. If we pick Haze Richards to be our candidate, this guy could rope him for us."

  "What's his name?"

  "Albert James Teagarden," Mickey said. "They call him A. J."

  "What kinda leverage you got on Teagarden?" Joseph asked, then exploded into a coughing spasm, cursing as he barked out stale air and phlegm, spitting it into a wastebasket. Mickey turned on the oxygen tank, but Joseph waved it away, his eyes hard and yellow as dry corn.

  "I talked to our people in Rhode Island. They wanted to get a handle on Haze Richards before he was elected governor 'cause of all our racetrack action up there. Tea-garden was running the governor's campaign. Our people threw a party in a hotel mom in Providence. There was pussy and booze, and then in comes some guy with this suitcase and he turns it upside down and spills out two hundred and fifty large all over the bed. It still had racetrack wrapping bands on it. They told Teagarden it was to buy campaign TV ads and to take what he needs. This fuck, A. J., is stuffing his pockets like some kid at a Halloween party. They also got a video of him with one of the girls. We got the prick by the balls."

  Haze Richards had made his way to the top of their short list. Paul's old campaign manager, Malcolm Rasher, had found him. Ken Venable and Guy Vandergot, the two pollsters they had hired for Paul, had confirmed the choice at a meeting they had with Mickey the day Paul's body was found.

  They'd been in the back booth of one of his father's Mr. A's steak houses in Atlantic City. The dinner crowd was just streaming in from Resorts International next door. They were wedged into a booth in the back, hidden by a partition from most of the crowd. The din was growing as the tables filled. Ken Venable was dissecting the Democratic field along with a turf 'n' surf special, gesturing with a serrated knife blade, pointing the tip at Mickey. Guy Vandergot, fat and slothlike, was eating with his head down, grunting in agreement as Ken rambled on.

  `Thing you gotta understand here, Mickey, is the Democrats are factionalized, always have been. They can't agree on shit. You got liberals in the North and conservatives in the South. You got New Age intellectuals in the West, labor guys in the Midwest, along with farmers and subsidy protectionists. It's a patchwork of ideologies, and Malcolm thinks this gives us a chance. . and I agree with him."

  "How so?" Mickey said.

  " 'Cause in a four-or five-horse race where nobody is winning, there's a chance with financing to jump in and grab the thing early. . While the rest of these guys are fighting over little pieces of the pie, we sweep in and grab the whole deal."

  Ken looked over at Guy Vandergot before continuing.

  "Okay, here's the Democratic field now that Paul's gone. All these guys have announced, and in a week or so, all of 'em are gonna be in Iowa co
rnfields, sitting on Jap tractors, talking about farm subsidies like they actually give a shit. . So we gotta get in this now if we're gonna," Ken said, still pointing with his knife. "Your front-runner is gonna be Leo Skatina, the second-term U. S. senator from New York. He's got name identification, good local organizations, and the media likes him. He's the early poll leader. He's been real vocal about women's issues. I think the Democratic National Committee is getting set to endorse him. The DNC probably thinks he has the strength to win against Vice President Pudge Anderson, who we all know is gonna be the Republican candidate. Then you got the Democratic senator from Florida, Peter Dehaviland. Environmentalist, that's his beachhead issue-offshore drilling, air pollution, nuclear waste. He also has a strong stand against unrestricted immigration. . He's gonna fade unless he gets really lucky in Iowa and New Hampshire. Malcom agrees."

  "Go on." Mickey took out a notepad and began making notes.

  "Okay. . Eric Gulliford, nickname Gilligan 'cause he kinda looks like Bob Denver. He's an old-time Democrat. Hubert Humphrey in a fishing hat. U. S. congressman from Ohio. He's for all the traditional Democratic Party stuff: labor, welfare, jobs for everyone, government spending. Tax the shit out of everybody. He's strong with the old party hacks. Could only be trouble if, for some reason, the party shifts off Skatina. And then the last announced candidate is Benjamin Savage. He's a New Age liberal from California, a three-term U. S. senator and he's got all the hot-button Melrose Avenue issues western liberals love-recast the workplace to fit society, tough sex harassment laws, animal rights, gay rights, women's rights, health care for everyone, legalized drugs. ."

  Mickey winced slightly, but they didn't see it.

  Ken set down his knife pointer and leaned back. 'That's the field," he concluded. "These guys couldn't agree on due north if they were each holding a compass. Malcolm thinks we should try and lump them all as insiders and run against the whole lot like they were one candidate. Tar them with the same brush. That means we should try and find a candidate that has never held a national office, somebody who's never bounced a check on the congressional bank or cast a midnight vote for a pay raise. Rhode Island governor Haze Richards is our choice. He has no legislative record to attack that would mean anything to anybody. He's photogenic. Show him the picture."

  Van opened his briefcase and slid out a glossy print. Mickey was looking at a very handsome man in his mid-fifties who could have been in a Ralph Lauren ad-closecropped gray hair, square jaw, blue eyes.

  "He's a second-term governor, and all we need is to find a guy who can steer him for us so he does what we say: The choice of that person, Mickey knew, was critical. It was a problem that had led to the meeting in Joseph's bedroom two days later, and now it seemed to be a man named A. J. Teagarden.

  Mickey looked at his father, who was losing energy.. His eyes were still fierce and bright, but his head was sagging on his weak neck and his cough was appalling.

  "Mickey, you go up there tomorrow, let's see if we can get to this governor you found."

  Chapter 6

  SOLOMON KAZOROWSKI

  The club was one step below a Vegas carpet joint.

  The slots were ringing and croupiers were keeping up a steady drone, making the place seem more interesting than it was.

  Toozday Rohmer had started as a tall, seventeen-year-old blond dancer at the Stardust, but she'd had a fling with a pit boss who'd gotten her initiated into drugs and then into the sisterhood of the towel. It was just a short cab ride from high-roller hooking to fifty-dollar grudge fucks in seedy hotel rooms. While Solomon Kazorowski was still running the Organized Crime Bureau Strike Force in Vegas, he had trained her as an informant inside the hotel. She'd never been able to give Kaz the big bust he'd wanted but they'd become friends over the years. At Christmas he always gave her a magnum of Dom Perignon. "Real class," she'd tell him.

  There was something tragic about the Tooz, and Kaz couldn't bring himself to lean on her hard.

  She had been born poor in one of those farm states that begin with a vowel. She soon became a victim of her own great legs, jutting breasts, and lack of curiosity. At age forty, she was still flatbacking and watching cartoons on days off.

  She and Kaz had gotten drunk together one night, ten years ago. In what seemed like an obligatory salute to their sexuality, they had made listless love on the sofa in Kaz's apartment while his marmalade cat, J. Edgar, looked on.

  It had been a mistake, so they'd never done it again and had agreed to be just friends. . and they still were, even though Kaz had been dumped out of the FBI nine years ago for too actively pursuing Alo family ties to Governor Arquette and the casinos.

  The way it had happened was almost impossible for him to believe. He had taken his mother to the flamingo Hotel for dinner and the head waiter sent over a bottle of complimentary champagne and some caviar to commemorate the occasion. Kaz, who had never accepted a dime from organized crime, somehow had a lapse of reason and accepted the bottle and the tin of caviar. Maybe because it made him look good to his mother and he was showing off, letting her see what an important guy he was. Whatever caused the lapse, the underworld had hung the fivehundred-dollar tab around his neck like a dead fish. The Las Vegas press danced on his forehead. They ran a six-part story and sank his career in that magnum of champagne. All his life, Kaz had wanted to be a fed-to stand tall in a company of men fighting for justice. He knew it was corny but he believed in the mission. The Alo family had orchestrated the end of his career, had convinced Governor Paul Arquette to put the heat on with his superiors. He'd been forced to go "stress-related" and put his papers in early to save half his pension. His life had been stripped from him. After all these years, Kaz still harbored a seething resentment. Even though he was benched by the "Eye," his heart still pumped Bureau-blue. He was still looking for an opening, and was still dangerous.

  "Fucking stage manager is always trying to cop a feel and this guy looks like he was bred in a mayonnaise jar," Tooz was saying. "I swear this place is a dump, the costumes don't fit. My G is climbing up my ass and I gott a w ear Clorinda's extra shoes. She's two sizes smaller." Tooz was looking at Kaz, filling time with her bitching, thinking he looked old. He still wore the horrible Hawaiian shirts, but he'd gained weight and looked ten years older than his fifty-four years. Liver spots dotted his beefy hands. Getting busted out of the Frisbees had really taken a toll.

  "Well, Tooz, whatta you gonna do?"

  "Yeah," she nodded sourly. "You doing okay? I heard the Licensing Board turned you down again."

  Kaz had been trying to get a private detective's license so he could get some of the growing divorce work that was hitting the town. Plus there were half a dozen runaways a month that had good repos on them. Most of them were teenage strawberries on the strip: Because of the enemies he'd made while he was busting mobsters in the casino counting moms, they blocked him four times.

  "Gonna have to get a job selling used cars pretty soon," he said.

  "Listen, reason I called is I got something sorta strange the other day."

  "What's that?"

  "Well, there's a girl I dance with, Cindy Medina. Her sister works in the Coroner's Office and there's a rumor down there that when they did the autopsy blood screen on Senator Arquette, it showed he was HIV positive."

  Kaz looked at her, his mind going back ten years. He always suspected Arquette was a shill for the Alos. He had gone in and swept the governor's suite in the Sands after he'd checked out, hoping to find something. He hadn't gotten anything to confirm his suspicions, but he had found a man's bikini wadded up and stuffed in the Jacuzzi drain. It had a hotel gift shop label. He'd gone down there and found out it had been put on Paul Arquette's bill by somebody he didn't know named Warren Sacks. Warren turned out to be Paul's media consultant. Warren and Paul had died together last week in the Bahamas. Kaz had his suspicion that something was going on between Warren and Paul, but nobody had anything to prove Paul was bisexual so they'd let it drop. Maybe, just f
or the hell of it, he ought to see what he could find out. God knows, he had plenty of time and he still had one or two friends in the Coroner's Office.

  "Thanks, Tooz. You're a doll and you're prettier every day." He thought she looked tired and whorey.

  "And you're aging like vintage Dom Perignon," she lied, wishing he would lose weight and get a haircut.

  They leaned over and kissed. They could smell the sweat and Scotch on each other. When he left, they both felt sadder than when he had arrived.

  It had taken Kaz four calls from the pay phone in the lobby to finally track down the medical examiner, Chuck Amato. Chuck was on the golf course and he finally answered his cell phone.

  "It's Kaz."

  "Jeez, Kaz, I'm playing golf. I'll call ya back." "Question. You handled 'the cut' on Senator Arquette when they sent the body home two days ago. . Right?" "I ain't got time, Kazy. I'm hanging up a foursom e b ehind us."

  "Was Paul Arquette HIV positive?" He dropped it without preamble, listening for a gasp of confirmation. What he got was silence.

  "Where'd you get that?"

  "It's on the street."

  "Look, he was our ex-governor and our senior senator. Let him R. I. P."

  "R. I. P.? What's that stand for, rot in purgatory? The guy was shacked up with hoods all his life."

  "I gotta go."

  "I've gotta take this evasive answer to mean yes." "Don't do this to me, Kaz. Besides, what difference does it make? He's dead."

  "I have a piece nobody else has. Believe me, it makes a difference."

  "Go fuck yourself. I'm gonna get beaned with a golf ball I don't get outta here." And he was gone.

  Kaz knew he'd hit pay dirt. Ten years ago, he'd hung an illegal wire on Paul's house. Kaz was the only one who knew that. Back then, Paul Arquette had occasionally been sleeping with Penny Alo. He'd been saving that info to use at just the right moment on Joseph. But before he could use it, he'd been canned.