The Pinebox Vendetta Read online

  The tough talk stirred Rock’s loins. “‘Share air.’ I like that, lady. I like where you’re taking us.”

  The three tried to relocate, moving away from the fruit table toward the shade of a towering maple tree.

  Rock followed, calling, “Jamie, let’s talk. We’re the same. You and me are two peas in a pod. Screw our families, right? Screw their agendas.”

  The chick tried pushing him ahead, but Jamie answered over her head, “I already told you, I’m out. You can get all ginned up yourself, but I won’t. I won’t waste any more years. I’m just going to live.”

  And stood there with chin raised, like some band was about to strike up “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”

  The man was, clearly, a moron. There was no such thing as “out” of the pinebox vendetta, short of winding up in a pinebox yourself. Even if you could disentangle yourself from the chits and alliances and outside expectation, you still had that inner need. That will to fight.

  You could study philosophy. You could walk the earth like Jamie Gallagher. You could boink everything in sight—Rock had tried—but nothing matched the raw rush of power. The feud put it in your bones.

  “Hey, I respect that.” Rock was using every ounce of restraint to not laugh in Jamie Gallagher’s face—the cocaine wasn’t making it easy. “Don’t think I haven’t paid a price, too.”

  Something flashed across Gallagher’s face that might’ve been the start, a faint precursor, of sympathy.

  Rock thought, I can use a moron.

  Marshall Pruitt didn’t hold his chopper for Rock, which was infuriating. Rock asked the helipad operator what time the old man had gone wheels up.

  “One minute after six,” said the ballcapped official.

  It was 6:13.

  Well, tits.

  Rock gripped the nape of his neck and looked around. The helipad was part of the Port of New Haven, which was lucky. From where he and the operator stood, he could see a number of yachts—sleek, white wedges bobbing softly in the ash-blue water.

  Most were covered or seemed empty, but aboard one, maybe a fifty-five-footer, a man in linens walked about loosing dock lines.

  “Yo there, guvnor!” Rock called, starting that way. “A moment of your time?”

  The man paused in a stoop. His hair was curly gray, his skin tanned to deep gold. A similar-aged woman carried two glasses of wine.

  “Out for a sunset cruise, aye? Atta way to keep the fires stoked.” Rock shook both their hands. “Rock Pruitt. Fine dinghy you got here.”

  The man accepted a glass from his wife, keeping his distance from Rock. “Are you—that is, can I help you find somebody?”

  “Nope,” Rock said. “But you can take me to Long Island and meet the former President of the United States.”

  Thirty minutes later, Rock and his new friends were putting into Amagansett, the yacht’s wine cellar two bottles lighter. George Nagourney tied up to one of three piers on the Pruitt shoreline.

  Though the family kept this Long Island retreat out of media reports—ties to the New York Metro area were a liability among its core constituencies—it was among their most impressive real estate holdings. The house was baronial, forty thousand sprawling square feet of brick and Italian stone. The grounds featured a perimeter of lush forest, ensuring privacy.

  Rock hopped out to an empty dock. “You’re kidding—nobody else boated here? This clan’s headed downhill fast.”

  George and Sandra picked their way over sand after him, under a purple-tinged twilight. They’d spent the ride refilling his glass, watching and listening to him like some exotic parrot who’d alighted on their boat.

  Rock led them to a side entrance, where two plainclothes guards recognized him immediately. Their faces emerged from shadows with broad grins.

  “Gentlemen!” Rock clutched each by the elbow, these men with whom he’d done a deed or two for Marshall.

  One unlocked a heavy door, permitting Rock and his new friends inside.

  The other said, “We’re rooting for you. Knock ’em dead.”

  Rock bumped fists. “I may have to.”

  He breezed through the mansion’s service wing, grabbing a handful of bacon-wrapped scallops en route, tossing a pair back to the Nagourneys, who scrambled to keep pace. Starting in the third kitchen, he heard the din from the Grand Hall, mingled voices and glass tinkles rising over strains of Beethoven.

  Everybody was here.

  At the threshold, Rock pulled a fingernail across his top gums—what genius put poppy seeds on the beef tongue sliders?—and surveyed the scene. Here was Coach Pruitt up from Mississippi in his sweater vest. Karl Peoples representing the Michigan wing. Neither had an obvious connection to the Virginia seat.

  Were they just sightseeing? Positioning themselves for the presidential cycle after next?

  The Choosing seemed to be either between sessions or in a glad-handing period, where the contenders were supposed to circulate and demonstrate their skill pressing the flesh. In an adjoining dining room, folding chairs and a half-dozen lecterns were being arranged.

  Yes. He hadn’t missed the debate.

  Rock found Jonathan Pruitt on the far side of the Grand Hall, before a towering wall of windows overlooking the sea. His suit was charcoal. The blue of fresh-shorn sideburns could be seen twenty yards away.

  Glued to his side was Theresa Velasquez.

  “Hey, ho!” Rock butted his way through the crowd, bumping ambassadors and junior House members. “You two must be discussing how to win over those Reagan Democrats in Norfolk, right?”

  Theresa looked at Rock like he was mold on her smear of Brie.

  But Rock didn’t care about that.

  He cared about Jonathan Pruitt—and there was a crinkle in the former president’s face, the merest hint of amusement.

  You gotta start someplace.

  Jonathan looked past him to George Nagourney. “Did you bring your own pollster?”

  Rock pulled the man forward by his lapel. “A supporter of yours, gave you a couple votes!” The two men shook. “George gave me a berth over from New Haven.”

  Jonathan hadn’t the foggiest what that meant—Rock could tell from his mouth angle—but asked cordially, “And how is my alma mater?”

  “Myopic beyond belief,” Rock said.

  Jonathan smiled perfunctorily and pivoted to Theresa, no doubt eager to resume their euphoric discussion of Northern Virginia’s changing demographics and her unique ability to capitalize, when an opportunity occurred to Rock.

  “They’re christening Gallagher College tomorrow, you know,” he said. “I have an operation underway…I think we can land a stiff body blow on Owen Gallagher.”

  Jonathan’s stance stayed toward Theresa, but interest flickered in his face. “We’ve not had much luck getting to that one.”

  “Right, because you’ve had the B team on the field.” Rock opened his palm to Theresa. “No offense, but affirmative action weakens the Pruitts. Like it weakens the country.”

  Theresa scoffed. The flag pin on her breast glinted in a chandelier’s light. “I’m not running against Owen Gallagher. I’ve been out on my campaign bus listening to the people of Virginia.”

  “Yeah? What do they say, that they’re itching for a bland waffler who advocates cop killing and is soft on immigration?”

  Theresa glanced to Jonathan to see whether the former president would intervene. He didn’t, only clasped his hands at his waist and watched. This was part of the Choosing—sparring, responding when you got scratched.

  “I’ve been on the front lines in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Theresa said, her voice steely and sure. “When you’ve faced IEDs and shoulder-fired rockets, when you’ve been up against real grenades, Rock? You don’t get rattled by the conversational kind.”

  She finished with a sip of what looked like water. Jonathan smiled his approval—and, it seemed to Rock, his relief.

  Jonathan Pruitt was a man who hated risk, an odd trait for one who’d as
cended to such heights. In Rock’s opinion, it had been his downfall as president. The Gallaghers had effectively ousted him with their investigation of a pay-to-play pardon, which everyone in the town’s political class knew to be nonsense.

  Jonathan had pardoned a man serving forty years in jail for insider trading. The guy, Ian Poeskey, had gotten railroaded—weak testimony from bitter underlings, the prosecutor dropping his Polish-Russian ties like blood in the jury pool. Poeskey’s wife petitioned Jonathan directly, bringing their three daughters into the Roosevelt Room.

  Her husband was innocent. They were nearly destitute. Would he help?

  Jonathan believed her, his conviction buoyed by disturbing journalism about the trial and Poeskey’s apparent guilelessness at disclosing his full fortune to the court.

  Within days of the pardon, Gallagher-led Democrats were pushing media accounts of Poeskey associates making large contributions to the Pruitts’ political PAC. There was rumored to be some shady fixer living in a Capitol Hill basement apartment who had documents proving a coordinated effort to curry Jonathan’s favor. They even smeared the wife and daughters, suggesting they’d offered unsavory favors.

  Rock remembered the girls’ headshots—absolutely smoking, blond, the stuff of oligarchs’ arm candy. For the Gallaghers, it must’ve looked like fish in a barrel.

  Marshall went to his younger brother in the scandal’s early days and suggested a counter-move. His men had a bead on the fixer. The sleaze was lawyering up, angling for maximum payout for his “incriminating” documents.

  We can extract them. The documents can disappear with zero footprint from my people.

  Jonathan Pruitt refused. He’d done nothing wrong. He had listened to an honest woman, reviewed all facts, and exercised the powers of his office for good.

  He realized the Gallaghers had no interest in truth and would keep attacking, but he believed his innocence would win out. He refused to risk a cover-up, to instigate actual crimes in order to insulate himself against non-crimes.

  The Democrats grandstanded their way through hearings, Joan Gallagher thundering away about “the staggering perpetuation of privilege,” and nominated an anti-Wall Street candidate to oppose his reelection. Jonathan maintained his innocence. The economy was booming. He’d steered the country out of two wars and around a third.

  No way could he lose.

  He was innocent.

  “The American people know better.”

  He said this at debates; he said it in the maelstrom after the October-surprise reveal of the fixer’s documents, as his lead was disappearing; and he said it to aides on election night, as the cable networks were calling Ohio—and with it, the election—for the challenger.

  Now Rock feigned looking behind Theresa. “Where are you hiding your husband? He’s the reason you’re on this gravy train, after all. You didn’t leave him back in Hicksville, did you?”

  Theresa glanced down, a reflex that told Rock he’d found softness. “He was in the smoking lounge. Perhaps you’ll want to catch up. I understand you two used to scrum together in the summers?”

  “Against, usually. I knocked out three of his teeth in ninety-four.”

  Rock had another hour until the debate started. He used the time to tick off to-dos. He reconnected with his supervisor at Pruitt Capital, Kim Stricker, a potential source of campaign funds. He made two phone calls: to his wife, confirming her availability for photo ops next week, and to a certain service provider in Manhattan who assured him she could get the requested resources to the Amagansett address by ten.

  Rock won the debate, easy. This was a given. Beyond the high school trophies, he had routinely obliterated opponents in previous races—his last primary foe famously bowed out of the race after Rock wielded his logic scalpel on the man’s farm subsidy position. (Non-position, more accurately.)

  Tonight, he wittily batted off character digs. He veered from party orthodox—“Confederate monuments, why? Gimme a hardhat and bulldozer”—and when challenged, dodged aside and scored points on rebuttal. The drugs in his system were at just the proper ebb.

  The rapt crowd fueled him, reminding him why he wanted the Virginia seat at all, rather than raking in seven figures with Pruitt Capital or another of the clan’s lucrative private arms.

  Power.

  Adulation.

  He stood tall, spoke evenly, and dominated.

  As with all debates, though, this one was judged against expectations—and by that standard, Theresa Velasquez fared well. She varied her delivery of talking points and worked in anecdotes from her upbringing in a Charleston foster home. (Rock resisted the urge to start humming violin chords.) Her answers on social issues were clunky, but she gripped her lectern with two hands and emoted.

  She concluded, “I pledge to fight for what I believe is right, and to fight for the families of Virginia.”

  Puke.

  As great as his performance had been, Rock received conspicuously few congratulations. A few passing smiles and one hearty pounding between the shoulder blades from William Pruitt the Third—Billy, who owed his gerrymandered House seat to Rock’s nifty subterfuge.

  Then nada.

  Rock was standing in the Grand Hall, chest full in the face of the collective cricket chirps, when Marshall Pruitt wheeled up with two drinks in his lap.

  He handed Rock one. “I took the liberty. Gin and tonic.”

  “Much obliged,” Rock said. “How’d it play with Jonathan?”

  The spymaster inhaled through tight teeth. Rock was reminded of that Van Gogh of the skull with a cigarette. “He understands what you bring to the table.”

  “But?”

  “You walked in ten runs down.”

  Rock growled, a rising primal noise starting from his heart.

  For the millionth time, he cursed the Derek Dickerson thing. Over the years, his reputation had suffered plenty of self-inflicted damage, fine, but it was that original stain he kept bumping up against. Jonathan refused to see past it.

  What could Rock do?

  Bump harder.

  Now he and Marshall worked the room, greeting donors and media influencers against the vast, restless backdrop of Long Island Sound. Though Marshall was respected and facile with civilians, Rock still felt strange standing off his left wheel, like the pet human of some lethal reptile. He supposed he couldn’t complain. Marshall was the only high-placed member of the clan willing to be seen with him.

  They had some fun. Karl Peoples, the former governor of Michigan who’d made his fortune in carnivals, was absolutely on fire talking about the legalization of marijuana.

  “We oughta get behind it, federal, nationwide!” said the man, who stood a good six-six and talked so loudly, every flounder in the Sound must’ve heard. “It’s the right thing to do. Everyone knows it’s coming anyhow. Why not take the votes?”

  “That’s all true.” Rock didn’t believe this, but he liked Karl. “But have you met Jonathan Pruitt? Used to be president? How’s he going to feel when The New Yorker runs a cartoon of him in a ponytail, holding a bong and empty bag of Doritos?”

  Karl boomed out a laugh. The Michigan Pruitts had always chafed at Jonathan’s orthodoxy. Karl—the son of Rock’s great uncle, who’d moved them to the Midwest on becoming CEO of General Motors—campaigned in open-collared shirts at the county fairs his carnival traveled to, downplaying the clan’s social positions whenever possible.

  Occasionally the rift flared and there would be talk of dissolving the Pruitt caucus, but cooler heads always prevailed. Apart, the two factions’ power would be diffused, lost in the mix of nationalists and budget hawks, evangelicals and Tea Party holdouts. Together, they had the muscle—and votes—to seize the horns of the Republican bull and steer.

  “Fair enough,” Karl said, “but it’s a lost opportunity. Owen Gallagher won’t take a position. He’s being cautious, see. Thinks he’s the frontrunner. If we go first, we look like the future.”

  Rock eyed the man suspici
ously. “What’re you here for?”

  Karl Peoples made a defensive sound like an oink.

  Rock said, “You want to run, don’t you? For president?”

  Karl said no, no, he was only—

  “You do,” Rock cut in. “Holy hell. Jonathan’s not going to run anybody against the dick. We’re sitting this one out, didn’t you get the memo?”

  Karl spluttered about circumstances being fluid, never could tell, could ya? and various other evasions that all added up to oh, yes.

  He wanted to seize the Republican nomination from a sitting president.

  “Karl, you’ve got ideas, I grant you that,” Rock said to the taller man. “But I think you’ve ridden that tilt-a-whirl of yours one too many times.”

  Jonathan Pruitt addressed the room at nine o’clock. He mounted one of two arcing stairwells to a demi-balcony, resting his hands on a parapet of obsidian oakwood—straight out of Titanic.

  “Please accept our most cordial thanks,” he began. “Virginia is a crucial seat, and all your efforts tonight help ensure we put forth the very best candidate. At this point, formal events are over. I’ll open up the hall to glad-handing now. Myself and the senior leadership will be out on the floor, in the mix.

  “Please treat this as an opportunity. We’re looking for women and men of action. If we’ve learned anything in the last few races, it’s that we are no longer in a world where candidates are anointed—where discussions in shady backrooms land you in power. We need candidates who ignite passion, who’re capable of shaping events around them.”

  Listening, Rock felt his insides rev. He bounced between the balls of his feet like an MMA fighter during intros.

  He’s cracking the door. He’s signaling to the others I’m back in the conversation.

  Rock eyed Theresa across the room. She was already busy working the crowd, flashing her pensive smile in a circle with media firebrand Zoe Pruitt. Hovering nearby were the oil-magnate Gibsons, the husband-wife pair who’d endorsed the dick in the last presidential primary, and some Heritage Foundation folks.