A short line of taxis waited at the curb of the hotel. Dean got in the first one, and with the aid of the Art Room translator gave the driver an address a half block from the office building where Karr was. It was less than four miles away, and there was very little traffic on the streets at night, but Dean found himself bouncing his foot up and down on the floor in the backseat, anxious to get there.
“Wait for me here,” he told the driver when they were about a block from the destination. Dean threw a twenty-dollar American bill on the front seat and bolted from the cab.
“Tommy’s around the back of the building,” Rockman told him. “Thao Duong is still in his office. We want you to trail him if you can.”
“Tommy, can you hear me?”
“He’s on the window ledge,” said Rockman.
“Connect us.”
The op-to-op mode on the communications gear could be activated either by the operatives themselves or by the Art Room. Dean heard Karr’s heavy breathing and asked if he was OK.
“Uh, yeah,” grunted Karr. “Just busy.”
“I’ll be there in a second,” said Dean, starting to run.
if he was going to fall anyway, Karr decided it would be better existentially to fall while going up rather than down. He gritted his teeth and jerked his right leg upward, swinging it up and over the ledge above him — and into the window glass, which shattered above him. He pushed up with his hands, curled what he could of his foot inside the building, and then for a moment hung suspended in mid-air.
“Hang on!” yelled Dean in Karr’s ear.
“Oh yeah.”
Upside down, Karr struggled to get a grip on the side of the window. He was now draped halfway in and halfway out, part of him inside the room and the larger part out. Blood rushed to his head. His face swam in sweat.
Karr had just enough of his calf inside the window to leverage himself upward. The rest of the glass broke and fell into his lap as he pulled himself up. Hands bleeding, he managed to maneuver himself around into a seated position.
Shouldn’t have done that, he told himself. It was OK to be negative once he’d succeeded.
Something smacked the side of his face. He looked up but couldn’t figure out what it was. All he could see in his night glasses was a black blur.
“Grab the rope,” said Charlie Dean. “It’s by your head.”
“Where are you?”
“Grab the damn rope before you fall,” said Dean. “I’m on the roof. I don’t know if this rig is going to hold long enough to pull you up.”
“Nah, I’m OK,” said Karr. “Is there a door up there?”
“Yeah, but—”
“I’ll meet you on the sixth floor,” he said, slipping inside.
40
Since the assassination attempt, reporters always began interviews with Senator McSweeney by expressing concern for his continued well-being. Some were sincere, some sounded sincere; few were both. McSweeney played a private game with himself, trying to predict beforehand the sort of expression he would receive. In this case, the reporter had the bad taste to suggest that getting shot at had helped McSweeney tremendously in the polls.
“I wouldn’t recommend it,” said McSweeney tartly.
The reporter was correct; McSweeney had vaulted from also-ran to the odds-on favorite not only for Super Tuesday but also in the round of primaries the following Thursday and Tuesday. If the trend continued, he would wrap up the party nomination within a month.
The pollster worried that it was just a temporary bump.
Jimmy Fingers pointed out that as long as “temporary” got them through Tuesday, it might as well be permanent. Sympathy vote or not, McSweeney’s aide added, the effect had helped Reagan during his first term when Hinckley tried to kill him. “It gave him space for his first-term agenda. This time, it’s going to get you elected.” McSweeney preferred to think that people would vote for him based on his record. But if they pulled the lever because he had the good sense to duck when someone shot at him, so be it.
“Why do you want to be President?” asked the reporter from the
McSweeney rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger, an old trick to make it look as if he were giving the question serious thought. In fact, he had a ready answer, a stock rehash of sound bites he knew would play well no matter how the reporter sliced and diced them in his story.
“It’s time to tap the full potential of the people. The President is the only person — the only real national leader — who can do that effectively.”
McSweeney continued, citing John F. Kennedy, talking about the contributions and attitude of the World War II generation, and laying out a program that all but the most cynical hack would applaud.
“But why,
The question threw McSweeney. It wasn’t the words so much as the tone of familiarity. The reporter sounded like a friend who had detected a false note in a casual comment and wasn’t going to stand for bull.
Power, prestige. The ability to do what he wanted to do without being stopped.
The guarantee that he would be included in history books.
Who didn’t want to be President, damn it?
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean,” said McSweeney.
“Inside,” said the reporter. “Why do you want to be President?”
McSweeney began recycling his earlier answer. But he got only two sentences out of his mouth before the reporter said, “Ah, come on, Senator. Why do you really want to be in the White House? Ego? The babes?”
Someone other than McSweeney might have answered the reporter’s poor attempt at a joke with a humorous joke of his own, cementing a favorable relationship for the rest of the campaign. Most of the others would have said something ridiculously stupid
McSweeney found a third way — he simply didn’t answer.
“Wanting to make America a better place, help us live up to our potential, can seem corny,” he told the reporter. “But that’s what I’m about. And it’s funny, I’ve always been ab-surdly idealistic, even as a nine-year-old. My mom has an essay I wrote on how I wanted to be President and how I was going to help the environment and improve schools.”
“Really? You have it?”
“She has it. Call her. Between you and me, my spelling was probably atrocious. I still have trouble. Thank God for spell-check.”
41
“He’s coming out of the building,” said Rockman as Dean met Karr in the stairwell. “He’s turning right.”
“You really lost your calling, Rockman,” said Karr as they clambered down to the basement. “You’d be great doing play-by-play.”
“Very funny. He’s crossing the street. He doesn’t seem to have a car nearby,” added Rockman. “We’ll lose him in a minute.”
Propelled by the need to rescue Karr, Dean had had no trouble running up the stairs. Going down, though,
