“What?”
“You told me you killed a kid who stole your father’s wallet. You told me you did time at Skyline Hall in Sacramento.”
He nods now, resigned. “I did?”
“Yeah.”
“I was still pretty new at this then.”
“Yeah.”
“Look, I’m sorry I killed your man. I was just doing what you would have done.”
“Yeah.”
He tries to sit up straighter, but the pain from my bite makes him wince a bit. “Then I guess you gotta do what you gotta . . .”
I shoot Hap in the head at close range and his face disappears before he can finish the sentence.
Five minutes now. With a bloody arm, with a knife stuck in my shoulder, but with something else, too: resolve. I climb to my feet, open the kitchen door that leads directly to the backyard and I am moving through it, into the sunlight, blinking my eyes.
CHAPTER 16
I am the son.
The same side, the same shoulder, the same fucking arm. First a bullet, then a knife, and now my arm is virtually useless. It has turned an ugly shade of black—even against my skin it is prominent—and I’m not sure if it will ever function properly. I have it cleaned and bandaged and I hit myself with a cocktail of medications but I’m not a triage doctor and if I tried to seek professional help now I’d be out of the game.
There’s a dead man named Evan Feldman in his neighbor’s kitchen and there’s my blood splashed on that floor and they’ll be looking for a wounded man with blood type B positive trying to get stitched up at emergency rooms all over the city. I’m stuck with one worthless arm and the convention is now two days away and I have seventeen hours until Congressman Abe Mann will be alone on the twenty-second floor of the Standard Hotel in downtown Los Angeles.
I am the son.
Pooley is dead and the man who killed him is dead and Mr. Cox is dead and so many others are dead and Vespucci is alive and full of regrets. I am alive, but I’m not whole.
I have seventeen hours and I’ll be damned if I am defeated now. Not after all this, not after I let the past back in and it forced me to my knees and goddammit, GOD DAMN IT, I’m losing my grip on the slippery ball of sanity floating somewhere in my head. There’s a mirror in this cheap hotel room where the clerk didn’t even look up when he took my cash and handed me a key, and my face is gaunt and pained and stretched as tight as a guitar string. I look into my own eyes and I force them to stare back at me, force them to fill up with that same resolve I’ve always relied upon, that same resolve that improbably got me out of that bedroom in Italy, that same resolve that kicked Jake Owens in the stomach in her apartment in Boston. I am Columbus, a Silver Bear, and whoever hired three assassins to kill Abe Mann the week of his nomination will not be disappointed because I am the son.
So how to get close to a man who has more security surrounding him than almost any man on Earth? How to get close to him even though I’m out of time and wounded and I have no resources at my fingertips?
And then it comes to me. The only solution, the only way to finish this. It was in front of me the whole time; it was in Vespucci’s words and in my own mantra and it is as clear to me as the sky after a storm.
I fashion a sling out of a white T-shirt and shower and make myself as presentable as possible. In the dust- caked mirror, I shave my face and check my reflection and nod, pleased. I look plain and unassuming. The injury is unfortunate, a red flag, but nevertheless I no longer look like an escaped mental patient.
I drive from the decrepit hotel on the outskirts of East Los Angeles to Interstate 10 and then off a few side streets to Grant and the front of the Standard. The hotel is modern and angular and stark in that West Coast style that emphasizes design flair over comfort. A valet parker exchanges a ticket for my keys and I enter the white lobby and get my bearings.
It doesn’t take me long to find what I’m seeking. A coterie of secret service agents huddle near a bank of elevators, stern expressions on their faces, eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses. A blond female whom I recognize from standing on the sides of daises in Indianapolis and Seattle is dressed differently from the security officers but shares their grave expressions. She is holding a clipboard.
I approach her and feel every eye shift toward me, sizing up my arm in the makeshift sling.
“Excuse me.”
“Yes?” She studies me with a smile that looks as though it were forced on to her face under duress.
“How would I go about seeing Congressman Mann?”
She snorts and I see two of the Secret Service officers move their hands inside their jackets.
“I’m sorry. The congressman is unavailable at the moment.”
“He’ll see me.”
She looks at the agents and they nod as if to tell her they are ready for any move I might make.
“And you are?”
“I’m his son . . .” And immediately they have me under the arm and are leading me forcefully away.
“Tell him LaWanda Dickerson’s son! Tell him that!” She looks at me queerly as I am jerked into an empty conference room off the lobby. Ten secret service officers materialize like magic and follow me into the room.
The senior officer is a man of forty or so with a bald head and hard eyes. He speaks with a higher voice than I would have guessed, like air blowing through an organ pipe, but he also speaks calmly, soothingly.
“Okay, friend. Let’s start by seeing some identification. Can you hand me your wallet?”
I shake my head. “I don’t have one.”
“No identification?”
“No.”
“What’s your name?”
“John Smith.”
He smiles, showing me I’m not going to get under his skin. “Okay, John. I’m going to have the man behind you pat you down while I keep a gun pointed at your head. Is that okay?”
“Yes.”
This tells him two things. One, I’m not carrying a gun or a knife because he knows a man who is about to be patted down would gain nothing by lying about it. And two, I don’t fear having a gun on me, which means I’ve undoubtedly had experience with it before. I can see this work itself out in his mind, but he keeps his face even. He pulls out his pistol and does as he said he’d do, points it a mere foot from my forehead.
“Are you carrying a bomb?”
All the eyes in the room are riveted on me.
“No.”
“What’s wrong with your arm, John?”
“I was shot and then I was stabbed.”
“You sound like a busy man.”
“Yes.”
“Okay, John. Stand up and Larry will frisk you now.”
“Go easy on the arm.”
“Okay, John.”
I rise to my feet and the large man behind me pats me down as thoroughly as if he’s taking my measurements. I wince as he searches up my bandaged arm and under it, not going easy at all. I regret saying anything; naturally that’s where he’d search the hardest for anything untoward.
Larry nods at the senior officer and he lowers his gun. “Okay, John. You are unarmed. You may sit.”
“Thank you.”
“What is your business with Congressman Mann?”
