Thirteen Million Dollar Pop

questions, and for so ignominiously being stuck in an earlier time. But he went ahead just the same. “It’s just the timing of it-do you have political enemies already?”

Kolodnik laughed lightly, without mockery but with genuine amusement. “Those would be the fastest enemies a politician ever gained, wouldn’t they?”

“So no idea who could have done it?” Behr asked. When interviewing victims of anonymous violence, Behr didn’t ask “Who do you think did it?” That was a limiting question, one that forced the victim to confront his attacker directly in his mind. The “could’ve” made it almost a game. Behr liked to sit them down and make a list of could’ves and assign possible motives to each person on the list, as if it were a creative exercise, and eventually the actual “who” and “did it” would often end up staring him in the face. But that took time and cooperation, and it didn’t look like Behr was going to get much of either.

There had been an arrival in the offices while they talked. Three men and two women. There were roller briefcases, computers, and an audiovisual projector.

Behr felt his little window of opportunity closing.

“Disgruntled employees? Ex-employees?” Behr had the unfortunate sensation he was peppering the man. “Business? Personal? I wonder if it would be possible to interview your staff?” Behr was hoping for a developed source, some third party that a staffer might mention, whom he could question when he or she was unprepared, in the hopes of jarring loose some information.

“Old business saying goes, ‘It’s not a deal unless both parties are sore about it.’ I’ve always gone about it the exact opposite way. It’s stood me well,” Kolodnik said. “And I’ll tell you something else, and it’s how I’ve avoided all this recent unpleasantness in the economy. I never bought into the idea of overleveraging, and I’ve tried to avoid people who do. What I’m saying is: my business life is very … balanced.”

A secretary ushered the group toward Kolodnik’s office, then leaned over to Kolodnik and said, “The Trachtenberg group, sir.” Behr couldn’t tell if they were political lobbyists, real estate developers, or from a law firm.

“Be right in,” Kolodnik said, and then turned apologetically back to Behr.

“You said you had people on this. I wonder if I could confer with them?” Behr asked.

“I asked an old senator I count as a friend for some advice when the appointment came in. You know-how to manage the demands on my time, weigh the equities, all that. And you want to know what he told me?” Kolodnik paused for emphasis. “ ‘Learn to hold it, because you’re not going to have a chance to take a squirt for the next six years …’ Well, four in my case, but you get the idea.” Kolodnik was using his folksy gentleman’s idiom to give Behr a message: he was too busy to deal with the matter further.

Just then an exceptionally well-tanned man in his mid-forties with blond hair going to gray, and a suit jacket sporting shoulder pads that were a shade too big, strode up.

“You ready to get in there?” he asked Kolodnik with great familiarity in his tone.

“Yep, right in, Shugie,” Kolodnik answered, then made the introduction. “Frank, this is Shugie Saunders, my political consultant. Shugie, this is Frank Behr, the reason you still have a client.”

“No, no, no,” Shugie corrected with a porcelain-veneered smile that creased the suntan, “the reason I still have a friend.”

Saunders shot out a manicure-soft hand, which Behr shook, as Kolodnik wrapped things up.

“You should come by the house, Frank. Not now. I’m about ready to decamp to D.C.-”

“We’re going to get the seat. We’re going to be confirmed right away,” Saunders informed.

“But at the end of the summer, Labor Day, I’ll be back for a bit,” Kolodnik continued.

“So the attempt,” Behr tried a last time.

“That’s been downgraded as a priority at the moment,” Saunders said with finality. “We appreciate all your efforts.”

What could Behr say? Especially in the face of that powerful “we” that smacked of handlers and aides and institution, of government itself. Everyone he was dealing with was plural, from his client to his company and even Kolodnik. He thought about his own “we” for a moment. All it meant-all it would ever mean-was him, Susan, and his coming son.

“Like I said, Frank, bring the wife over to the house for some tennis when I’m back in town. Do you have a wife? Do you play tennis?” Kolodnik smiled.

“Not exactly,” Behr said, and after a cordial pat on the back, Kolodnik was on the move. Saunders gave a parting nod and followed his man through the double doors into the office. The doors closed behind them and Behr was left in the waiting area empty-handed and as inanimate as the Johnson statues lining the streets of the town.

17

The shite holes that accepted cash were the same the world over. It was a truth Waddy Dwyer had learned long ago, after the military when he was in intelligence, and then in his life as a private military contractor and all ’round useful bloke: they were thin, through and through. Thin sheets, thin blankets, thin pillows on the beds. Wafer-thin slivers of soap and paper-thin towels in the bathroom. Cracker-thin walls with worn-thin industrial carpet on the floor. The places often liked to include the word “quality” in their names, as did the one he was at currently, though there was rarely much of it in evidence. But after what seemed like a lifetime of shite, it didn’t bother Dwyer much. He’d always been stoic, ever since he was a rude boy on the streets, and the hardships he endured while plying his trade had made him a regular mean fucker. Though, it occurred to him, there were few things meaner than a pissed off Welshman in the first place.

He had left off his things-his labelless clothing and generic toiletries-at the Shite-Quality Inn, kept the hardware with him, and had driven north out of the city. He’d entered a different world, he realized, as he reached Kolodnik’s office. The city was glass and steel shooting up out of a plain, but everything was marble and money out in this bloody suburb.

Dwyer grimaced as he slowed at Kolodnik’s office building but did not stop the car. Anyone with a quarter of his field experience would’ve clocked the pair of yobs at the door for what they were: security for hire. He kept right on going, around the back, spotting two more, when another, a fifth man, big as a dray horse, came lumbering out the door. But this one didn’t stay with his fellows. Instead, he moved on toward his car.

“Bollocks,” Dwyer said, and tooled on out toward Kolodnik’s home address.

“Well, aren’t you the big-time Charlie Potato?” Waddy Dwyer said to himself as he crouched in the woods a good distance away from Kolodnik’s home. Hidden in a stand of old growth oak, he glassed the lavish dwelling with Swarovski 10?42 binoculars. The house was a heavy-beamed Tudor, with decorative leaded glass windows along the ground floor, a peaked slate roof, and landscaped grounds, including pool and tennis court, surrounded by a tall, wrought iron fence. The place was more English manor than regular house.

He had parked several streets away, and had gone through the woods for a good stretch to get a look. With the binoculars, along with having seen the security at the office, it was fairly easy for him to deduce that Kolodnik wasn’t at home. But the home security team certainly was. Another four men, at least, Dwyer determined, based on the two outside and the movement inside. He saw the telltale lumps under their jackets beneath the left shoulders. Probably Uzis or MP5s on slings, like the bleeding Secret Service carried.

He considered his options. A high-powered rifle from a quarter mile away while the man was at the kitchen sink. It was doable. He recalled a similar operation on a diplomat in South Africa more than a decade back. There were two on security there, who were put down after the shot, with the door kicked in and the target finished up close. But that was quasi-military, with plenty of support. There had been choppers for extraction. Here, a deer rifle with a telescopic sight was easily gettable, but night vision optics was not. It’d also be a cold bore shot, the barrel not warmed up. Then there was that leaded window glass to consider. It could cause a deflection, which might in turn cause a wound, not a kill-or, worse yet, a miss, with no chance of follow-up.

There was more poor news along with all this, Dwyer saw. Besides a pair of black Range Rovers outside in the driveway, and a Mercedes convertible in the open garage, there was a heavy-looking blacked-out Chevrolet