Now it felt just plain creepy on these streets that I had walked hundreds of times at every conceivable hour. Most houses seemed to be darkened for the night, the windows shut tight against the chill of autumn, their owners sound asleep. I watched shadows flicker on the ground, looked warily at movement in shrubbery, and scanned both sides of the street for any other people in parked cars. Nothing. As I neared my doorstep, the street seemed so dark, so empty, and so quiet that it was like a Hollywood stage set, void of actors and light crews.
I pulled my keys out of my pocket, and a car rounded the corner, slowly. It was a man, alone, in a Ford Taurus or another car like it.
He was looking in my direction as I was looking at him, and his car was barely moving at all. I fidgeted with the key in the lock and urgently pushed open the door. As I stepped inside, unnerved, I saw the car speed up and drive away. I shut the door fast, turning a deadbolt I don't think I had ever used before.
I quickly picked up the telephone and dialed Kristen's number. Baker stood by my side, looking around anxiously and up at me.
On the phone, one ring, then two, then three. Come on, Kristen. Be there.
'Hello,' she said.
'Hey, it's Jack. I just wanted to make sure you got back in all right.
It seemed kind of quiet out there.'
She gave a short laugh that seemed a mix of curiosity and gratitude.
'Jack,' she said, pausing. 'I'm fine.' She laughed again. 'You worry too much.'
'Maybe I do.' I said goodbye and hung up.
I pulled my sand wedge out of my golf bag on the way upstairs, then laid it down beside my bed, the closest thing I had to a weapon. I wondered what the NRA and PGA might think about this. Then I drifted off to sleep, and not very quickly.
eleven
Wednesday, November 1
Wednesday morning brought a fresh batch of polls to an election that was just six days away-polls that showed Hutchins holding on to a three-point lead over his Democratic rival, Senator Stanny Nichols. To be sure, this was not Lincoln versus Douglas or Truman versus Dewey.
Hell, it wasn't even Ford versus Carter. A week and a half before, when I packed my clubs into my car and drove out to Congressional Country Club, the presidential race was a statistical dead heat, pardon the pun. But the president had received a critical shot in the arm from that, well, shot in the arm. His approval ratings had risen nearly ten points, into the mid-60-percent range. Hutchins had suffered only a flesh wound in that blaze of gunfire; but Stanny Nichols saw his political career seriously injured.
Still, three points remained within that so-called margin of error that the boys over at Gallup always make sure we are well aware of. Despite Hutchins's good fortune, there was a sense of unease with him in the country, a lack of familiarity-and voters like to feel as if they know their president. Much of politics is about simple images, and some of that unease was erased out at Congressional Country Club when that nice paramedic was kind enough to poke Hutchins's words around and make him seem a nonchalant, combat-tested hero, cut right out of the American flag. Enough, anyway, to give him this three-point polling lead.
Truth is, the closest Hutchins ever got to military action was probably playing with his GI Joe as a young boy and watching McHale's Navy and F
Troop on TV. And the further truth is, voters were still nagged by a sense that they didn't really know the man.
The anxiety was evident throughout the White House. Lincoln Powers's mood was getting worse, not better. The president's campaign days were getting increasingly longer and more urgent. Aides seemed grim-faced, even in television interviews, as if the totality of events that was supposed to happen after that shooting didn't.
Give Nichols credit for hanging tough. He had been plagued by allegations of corruption-specifically, using his standing as a United States senator to receive a highly favorable purchase price on a Breckenridge chalet from the owner of a major ski resort, one of his top contributors, and then failing to pay the appropriate tax on it.
Add to that his lack of national experience. When all of the major Democrats took a pass on the race because they assumed they'd be running against Hutchins's popular predecessor, Wordsworth Cole, Nichols was the only one who stepped in to fill the void. In another time, in another place, he would have been known as the sacrificial lamb. Here, he was the Democratic nominee.
After Cole died, Nichols had suddenly become a contender, legal problems and all. Smartly, he made the press a major issue in his campaign, saying it was time that the news media stopped hindering the rich dialogue of a great nation with two-bit tattletale stories about old and misreported events. It was a message that seemed to resonate with the voting public.
Meanwhile, Hutchins did his very best at playing the delicate role of national consoler, and his very best was pretty good. He had performed flawlessly in his brief tenure as president. He paid public respect to Cole almost every day, every chance he got. At the same time, in policy decisions, he made clear what he would always call his
'respectful' differences. One of them was in the area of day care.
Hutchins quickly signaled to Democratic senators that he would sign legislation restoring federal subsidies for child care, a decision, analysts later said, that would allow welfare mothers to return to work in greater numbers. Even the most conservative of commentators agreed with him that to create a foundation for a society without welfare, the government had to help poor people get out of the house.
Next, in an impromptu press conference in the press cabin of Air Force One, a correspondent from the Associated Press asked Hutchins about his opinion on abortion. It was the first time he had been asked about the issue as president. Until then, he never had the inclination or the reason to let his feelings be known.
'What the hell business is it of mine what a pregnant woman does to herself?' Hutchins growled at the reporter, in a voice that harked back to Lyndon Johnson. 'Do I want her to have an abortion? God, no.
That's not good for anyone-not her, not the fetus, probably not even for society. Am I willing to tell her you can't do this or that with your own body? No again. That's just not what I'm in public life to do.'
His answer sent shock waves across the country. The prolife groups, who had always assumed that since Hutchins was a Republican vice president, he was on their side, went ballistic. They arrived in Washington en masse for an enormous protest on the Ellipse, carrying buckets of what they said were dead fetuses that they flung over the iron fence of the White House onto the South Lawn. The mainstream Republican Party was uneasy about his stand but quickly realized there was nothing anyone could do about it, and Ted Rockingham, ever soothing, worked his myriad personal friendships to help calm so many nerves. The nominating convention was already over. Hutchins was president, and like it or not, he was their candidate in the November election. And now he was three points ahead.
My desk telephone jarred me back to reality. It was early yet to be at work, evidenced by the fact that, at 8:30 A.m.' I was alone in the bureau. As I reached for the phone, I prayed that this would finally be my conversation with the anonymous source.
'A little less than a week out from Election Day victory, and there you are on the sidelines, and we're giving you the chance to come on over here and get in the game.' It was the voice of Lincoln Powers, sounding a little less southern and lilting than it usually did.
'You know what it's like to drive through the White House gates to work every morning?' he asked. 'You know what it's like to be quoted in all the major newspapers every day, as someone who matters? You know what it's like to have a whole staff of assistants to help you out, worshipful little things who'll do whatever it takes to make you happy?'
'Anything, huh?' I said, playing along, being a guy. I added, 'Look, Mr. Powers-'
'Please,' he interrupted urgently, 'you call me Link.'
'Lincoln,' I said, 'the president asked me to carefully consider my decision, so I am doing just that.'
