Taryn had everything she needed to buy a good, solid Senate seat, and start looking to move up. She’d pounded the field in the Democratic primary, taking fifty-one percent of the vote in a four-way race; the witch had finished third. She’d been a weekly visitor on both local and national talk shows, was good at it, and people started referring to her as a “rising star.”
She liked that. A lot. As anyone with narcissistic personality disorder would.
There was one large, juicy fly in the ointment. Three weeks before the election, she was losing. The thing about Smalls was, he was likable. Okay, he’d screw anything that moved, and in one case, allegedly, a woman who said she’d been too drunk to move. But then, what did that mean, anymore?
• • •
SO TARYN, WORKING ANONYMOUSLY through the shadow campaign, had hired Bob Tubbs to do his thing, to win the election for her. Tubbs didn’t know the man who passed him the 100K in twenties and fifties.
But Tubbs was a political, and had been around a long time, and knew how to follow a trail. It took a while, but he eventually followed it back to Dannon and thus to Taryn.
He showed up at her house at midnight.
He wanted more money.
Like this:
• • •
DOUG DANNON WAS A sandy-haired man of medium height with a trim, sandy mustache and a wedge-shaped body, marked with a few shrapnel scars from nearby explosions. On the particular night that Tubbs showed up at the door, he was sitting on a twenty-thousand-dollar German woven-leather couch that was soft as merino wool, his feet on a seventy-five-thousand-dollar Persian carpet as delicately brilliant as a French cathedral’s stained-glass window. He looked out through the faintly green, curved-glass porch windows at the billion-dollar woman, who looked like a million bucks.
She was topless, and the bottom of her bathing suit was not larger than a child’s hand. She’d just pulled herself out of the deep end of the heated pool, after forty laps, and stood shaking off the water. Tall and blond and tanned, she had muscular thighs and small breasts tipped with erect pinkish-brown nipples.
Hansel and Gretel sat on the pool’s flagstone deck, watching everything. The dogs made people a little nervous. Agitated, they could tear a rhinoceros apart, and they loved Taryn more than life itself.
Taryn knew Dannon was there behind the glass, watching, and that Ron Carver was someplace in the house, but paid no attention to that set of facts. Carver, who worked security with Dannon, was also part of the shadow campaign. Carver had suggested to Dannon that she could do this—swim topless, and occasionally nude, while they were in the house—because she was an exhibitionist.
Dannon thought that was probably true.
He was wrong.
She did it because, in the larger scheme of things, Dannon and Carver were irrelevant. The fact that they’d seen her nude meant nothing, because they meant nothing. They were tools; it was like being seen by a hammer and chisel.
• • •
TARYN HAD BEGUN TOWELING off when Carver came into the living room carrying a glass of bourbon; in fact, a glass of A.H. Hirsch Reserve, Dannon knew, which Carver had been regularly pouring from Taryn Grant’s liquor closet. Carver had a deal going with the housekeeper, who would order additional bottles as necessary. Taryn need not know.
Dannon disapproved: but Carver had told him that he needed a bit of booze on a daily basis to keep his head straight and the Reserve was what he’d chosen.
“If she smells that on your breath, when you’re working, she could fire you,” Dannon said.
“Ah, she’s so loaded she couldn’t tell that she wasn’t smelling her own breath,” Carver said. He was a large man, thick through the chest and hips. A small head, with closely cropped brown hair, made his shoulders look especially wide. He had a 9mm Glock tucked into a belt holster in the small of his back, and, because he was slightly psycho, a little .380 auto in an ankle holster.
Dannon was less psycho, and carried only a single gun, a .40-caliber Heckler & Koch, butt-backwards in a cross-draw holster on his left hip. Of course, he also carried a Bratton fighting knife with a seven-inch serrated blade guaranteed to cut through bone, tendon, and ligament, on the theory that you should never bring a fist to a knife fight.
“Look at the ass on that bitch,” Carver said, sipping at the Reserve.
“I don’t want to hear that,” Dannon said.
“’Cause you’re totally pussy-whipped,” Carver said, watching the billion-dollar woman arching her back, thrusting her breasts toward them, as she pulled the blue-striped pool towel across her back. “Though it is a pretty sweet billet. Kinda boring, though. Other than the fact we get to watch her rubbing her tits.”
“Plenty of jobs outta Lagos,” Dannon said, watching Taryn through the glass.
“Fuck Lagos. The goddamn Africans got gun guys coming out of their ass. They don’t need me around.”
“I knew this guy from Angola, black as a lump of coal,” Dannon said. “Smart guy. Hired into the Bubble as a security guard. The first day he’s there, some asshole raghead points his taxi at the Haleb gate . . .”
More been-there-done-that Baghdad bullshit, but Carver listened closely, because he liked war stories. In this job, so far, there hadn’t been much to do but remember the Glory Days and collect the paycheck. Before he’d gotten kicked out of the army, he got to carry the SAW, the squad automatic weapon. It was twenty-two pounds of black death, loaded, and took a horse to carry. He was the horse, and happy about it.
• • •
OUT IN THE ENCLOSED pool, Taryn Grant finished drying herself and pulled on a robe. Carver was right: she was drunk, Dannon thought. She’d always taken a drink, and this night, at a campaign stop in a Minneapolis penthouse, she’d taken at least three, and maybe more, and two more back at the house, before she went for her swim; and she’d taken a drink with her, to the pool.
He’d talked to her about it, and she’d told him to shut up. She could handle it, she said. Maybe she could. In Dannon’s experience, alcoholism was the easiest of the addictions to control. Look at Carver, for example.
• • •
TARYN WAS PICKING UP a pack of magazines when the front gate dinged at them, then a quick, more urgent buzzzzz. Somebody had hopped the gate.
Dannon snapped at Carver, “Get the camera. I’m on the door.”
He started toward the front door, and as he went, pushed the walkie-talkie function on his phone. Taryn’s phone buzzed at her and didn’t stop, a deliberately annoying noise, impossible to ignore. She picked it up and asked, “What?”
“Somebody’s inside, on the lawn, hopped the gate,” Dannon said. He pulled his gun. “Get in here with the dogs and stay on the phone.”
“I’m coming,” she said. This is why she had security.
Carver was on the same walkie-talkie system, and said, looking at the video displays in the monitoring room, “Okay, one guy, big guy, coming up the walk. He’s not lost, he’s walking fast. Wearing a suit and tie. Hands are empty.”
“I’m inside, locking the doors,” Taryn said.
“Guy’s at the door,” Carver said. “I don’t know him.”
The doorbell rang and Dannon popped the door, gun in his hand; looked at the man’s face and said, “Ah, shit.”
“Hello, mystery man.”
• • •
TARYN HAD BEGUN DOING research for her Senate run two years earlier. She did the research herself—narcissistic personality disorder aside, she was a brilliant researcher, both by training and inclination. Much of the research involved selection of campaign staff, from campaign manager on down. She shared the research with Dannon, whose personal loyalty she trusted, because Dannon was in love with her.
Because of that loyalty, and because of his history as an intelligence officer, she’d had him set up the shadow campaign staff—spies—to keep an eye on her opponent, Smalls. He’d also identified other possible assets: among them, Bob Tubbs.
Tubbs was
a longtime Democratic political operative, and had been considered for a staff job with the regular campaign, to be eventually rejected. “He’s been involved in some unsavory election stuff, so I want to keep our distance,” Taryn told Dannon. “But also, it’s good to keep him on the outside, in case we need somebody on the outside . . . somebody who could handle something unsavory.”
The regular campaign staff, including the regular campaign manager, had no idea that the shadow staff existed.
When it had appeared that Taryn would lose despite a good, solid campaign, Dannon had met with Tubbs to discuss other possibilities. He hadn’t identified himself, except as “Mr. Smith . . . or Jones, take your pick.”
Tubbs probably wouldn’t have talked to him, if it hadn’t been for the 25K in the paper bag, and the promise of another twenty-five thousand dollars if Tubbs found a solution to the problem.
Tubbs hadn’t even needed time to think about it. “Porter Smalls has a history of sexual entanglements,” he’d told Dannon at that first meeting. Then he’d told him how that might be exploited. And that he’d need a hundred thousand dollars to pull it off. “It’s dangerous. People have to be paid,” Tubbs had said.
They met twice more: Dannon had demanded details, and names. At the last meeting, he’d handed over the other seventy-five thousand.
“Time is getting short,” he’d told Tubbs. “By the way—we expect results. We are not people to be fucked with.”
“You’ll get them,” Tubbs had said. “We’re already rolling.”
• • •
TUBBS WAS A POLITICAL.
And this one time, a blackmailer.
As he walked toward Taryn Grant’s door, a rippling chill crawled up Tubbs’s back. He was about to commit a felony, blackmail, real blackmail, not for the first time in his life, but never before like this: the payout would be life-changing. A man had to take care of his own retirement funding, these days. Not that another felony would be a problem, if he got caught. He was already in it, up to his ears.
He reached out and rang Taryn Grant’s doorbell. He knew she was home, because he knew her schedule.
The door popped open, and,
Surprise!
“Ah, shit,” said the man inside.
“Hello, mystery man,” Tubbs said.
• • •
TARYN GRANT WAS THERE with her two security men, in a robe, her hair still damp from the swim.
Tubbs said, “Look, I’ll tell you right up front. You saw what happened this morning. And I realized, my political life could be over. They could figure this out. I’m willing to go down for it and to keep my mouth shut, but I need a little more cash. I need to fund my retirement.”
Taryn asked, through gritted teeth, “How much?”
“You’ve got more money than Jesus Christ,” Tubbs said. “I’d like . . . a million. That’s what I want. I swear to you, if there’s a fall coming, I’ll take it. And I’ll never come back for another nickel.”
“Fuck you,” Taryn said. The snap in her voice caught the attention of the dogs, whose ears came forward, their noses pointed at Tubbs.
“Miz Grant—” Tubbs began.
Dannon cut him off, and said to Taryn, “Let’s take this out to the pool.”
“What are we talking about here?” Tubbs asked, looking from one of them to the other.
“We’re talking cameras,” Dannon said to him. “There aren’t any cameras around the pool.”
Tubbs nodded, and they trooped through the house, into the pool enclosure, Hansel leading, Gretel following. The pool had a wide deck with grow lights around the edges, shining sixteen hours a day on orchids, bromeliads, and palms; a tropical jungle in Minnesota. Tubbs looked around and said, “Nice.”
Taryn didn’t want to hear nice. She said, “You motherfucker. You’ve been well paid.”
Tubbs said, “Not well paid for what’s happening. There’ll be cops all over the place. I’ve got another person I’ve got to pay off, and this is like . . . this is a political Armageddon.”
Taryn had left an unfinished drink next to the pool, a screwdriver, half vodka and half orange juice, and she picked it up and threw back the rest of it, then said, “You don’t know what you’re messing with. You don’t do this: you get bought and you stay bought.”
“I just put you in the U.S. Senate, and I know you’re already thinking about moving up from that, and I did it,” Tubbs said, his voice climbing into the alto range. “You’re losing. You’d be a loser if it weren’t for me. You’d just be—”
“Shut up,” Taryn shouted.
Dannon realized that she was drunker than he thought. He wrapped an arm around her and said, “Come talk to me for a minute.”
She didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay in Tubbs’s face. But Dannon pulled her along, and halfway down the pool said to her quietly, “If you give it to him, he’ll be back for more.”
“So . . . what?”
“So, slow him down,” Dannon said, leaning close to her, close enough to smell the chlorine. “Tell him you’ll work something out. We need to get him out of the house so we can talk, come up with an action plan.”
“He’s not going away, he’s never going away,” she said. “Goddamnit, how’d he track us down?”
“Well, there was really only one place that money could have come from, ultimately. Maybe he saw me in the background on one of the TV shots, or at a rally,” Dannon said, glancing back at Tubbs. “Doesn’t make any difference: he knows.”
“I’m going to tell him to fuck himself,” Taryn said.
Dannon hooked her arm as she started away. “Don’t do that. Just delay, buy some time. Buy some time . . .”
Taryn pulled free, strode back down the pool, reaching for control.
As she came up, Tubbs said, “Don’t try to screw me over. Don’t try. Just give me the money, and it’s done with. Don’t drag your feet. You guys scare me a little, so I’m going to hide out somewhere, until the election’s over. My offer here has a time limit: I want a million in a week, or I’m going to have to make an offer to the Smalls campaign.”
“I need more than a week, it takes a while to round up that much cash,” Taryn said, and despised herself for the begging tone in her voice.
“But that’s what you’ve got,” Tubbs said. “A week. I don’t care how you get it. I’m sure you could fix something up in Vegas, through one of the casinos. Just get the fuckin’ money, girlie, and get it to me.”
It was the girlie that did it.
She turned to Dannon, now with an icy grip on herself, and said, “We’ll get the money somehow. Get him out of here.”
• • •
THEY GOT HIM OUT of there, with the promise of the money inside a week. When he was gone, Taryn had turned to the two security men and said, “This won’t work.”
Carver drawled, “No shit, Ms. Grant. He’ll be back in your face like a rat. Even if you lose, he’ll be back. If you win, it’ll be five million, ten million, he’ll be coming back forever. There’s not enough money to fill that black hole.”
Dannon said, “But if he talks . . . if he tries to turn us in, he’ll implicate himself. He’ll be right there in prison with us.”
Taryn shook her head. “No. I’ll tell you how this would go down. We refuse to pay, he goes to Smalls and says, ‘I can get you your Senate seat back. I want a million dollars and immunity, or I never say a thing.’ So Smalls takes it: he’s got the cash, he could fix things with the prosecutors. Tubbs gets the money up front, then he confesses, points the finger, cries for the TV cameras. He does the right thing, says his conscience couldn’t handle it. And we’re done. The prosecutors won’t care about Tubbs—he’s small change. We’re the ones they’d come for.”
They all chewed on that for a while, then Dannon looked at Carver and said, “What do you think?”
Carver said, “You know what I think, Doug. He isn’t going away, so I think we make him go away. If we’re careful, we can pull it off??
?but I’d like a little appreciation for doing it.”
Taryn looked at him: “How much appreciation?”
Carver shrugged and said, “Whatever you think.”
She touched her lip, half turned away, considering: even rich people hate to give away money. Then she turned back and said, “A hundred thousand each. All cash. As soon as it’s done.”
Carver said, “Hooah!”
Dannon was less enthusiastic: “We’ll need to do some recon. We’ll need to fix it so that we’ve got alibis.”
“You know about those things,” Taryn said. “I’m out of it. If you get caught, I’ll say I had no idea.”
The two men nodded. Dannon said, “If we get caught, there’s no reason to drag you into it. You could help us more from the outside, than if you were inside with us.”
“I hope that’s clear,” she said, looking at Carver.
He said, “Clear.”
“Then kill him,” she said.
• • •
DANNON AND CARVER HAD buried Tubbs north of the Cities, in a marsh along the Mississippi. Taryn had helped: they’d put Tubbs’s body in the back of Carver’s SUV, and drove to the town house complex where both men were living. They parked in back, and Carver called Dannon, and then Dannon called Taryn, and a few minutes later, Taryn called Dannon back. They then went on to bury the body, while Taryn drove to their apartments and sent e-mails to herself and to a friend of Carver’s, from their laptops in their respective apartments. All of that could be time-checked, if it ever came to that.
Then . . . nothing much had happened until the St. Paul papers reported that the police were looking for Tubbs, and feared foul play. And now the report that a new investigator was on the job.
When Dannon broke that news—that the new guy, Davenport, was a killer—she said, “Ah, God,” and “Let’s talk later. I need to go for a swim, and Alice’ll be here in a minute. Let’s talk tonight.”
“I’m not sure we should talk later,” Dannon said. “I think we ought to stop talking about it and focus on our ignorance. We don’t know what happened with the porn, we don’t know what happened with Tubbs, we don’t know anything. If you can convince yourself of that, that you don’t know anything . . . it’ll be much easier to sell it to the cops.”