The Pinebox Vendetta Read online

  After several moments, seeming to fear any more silence, he looked back to the SmartPodium.

  “Er—we Gallaghers rely on black votes,” he resumed hurriedly, as though hoping to talk over the bizarre mistake, “and we are 100 percent committed to perpetuating class division through affirmative action, welfare, portraying inner-city police as racist pi…”

  He trailed off mid-word.

  Owen’s face was a mishmash of pains. His eyes bulged at the podium screen. The corners of his mouth sagged like dripping mops.

  The audience was fevered. Gasps, groans, sharp intakes of breath—Sam felt the courtyard teetering, lifting off its cobblestones. She was in the middle of a funnel cloud.

  Cameras popped rapid-fire.

  The buzz settled to a thick, hard, sad silence.

  Part III

  Chapter 14

  The gaffe needed no accelerant. Rock confirmed with Yanni the footage had been captured (“Yes, exquisitely”) and was circulating online (“like wildfire through California forest”). They agreed to sprinkle a few social media flakes, making sure Owen’s governing of whiter-than-white New Hampshire made its way into the discourse, but by and large, this one drove itself.

  Rock celebrated at Mory’s, drinking cup upon cup upon cup with whoever showed up—Nicky Kirkpatrick, Eric and Yoran from Rugby, Bethany who’d never let him in her pants and didn’t now, but brought a friend who did.

  Rock gave it to the friend—Cora? Terri?—in the same staff bathroom he’d had the undergrad the first night of the reunion. He put every ounce of joy from his triumph into the effort, kissing the woman full on the lips—which he rarely did—and taking the whole affair slow, sweet, all ten fingers splayed.

  He was in orbit. Success coursed through his veins, sharpened his senses, burst from his orifices.

  He’d beheaded the reader. He’d vanquished Theresa Velasquez. He’d fitted the Gallagher’s preferred presidential nominee for a dunce cap.

  Is anything beyond me?

  Could I reverse time if I tried?

  Leaving, he tossed the staff bathroom key to Johnston.

  “Everything in order?” the ancient barkeep asked.

  Rock said, “If there were complaints, I didn’t hear.”

  He and his partner headed back up to the Captains’ Room. The windows here afforded a view of Sterling Library and the lush lawns of Cross Campus. He looked out over the pewter, rum-stinking lip of another cup, exultant.

  Suddenly he needed to be outside, to stretch his legs over these freshly conquered territories. He finished the cup and told Terri she belonged among the gods and ran by Johnston, out the door.

  He pranced through campus, free, jolly as a schoolgirl. He didn’t even suffer that lurking fear of apprehension—like he would sometimes after a mission for Marshall, looking over his shoulder for the FBI or Interpol.

  Because this hadn’t required fists or a picklock. He’d used nothing more than a computer. A puny black laptop, since incinerated.

  Not a shred of evidence remained.

  He looped between Morse and Stiles colleges. He lifted weights at Payne Whitney Gymnasium, adding fifteen pounds to his personal-best bench press.

  His wife called while he was eating a chicken.

  “What’s up?” he answered.

  “Rock Junior has an ear infection,” she said. “He has a 103.5 fever.”

  “Put him -n,” he said through a bite of drumstick. “L-t me talk to him.”

  Rock Junior came on. He said in a small vibrato, “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Hey, Bud! How you feeling?”

  “Not very good.”

  “Not very good?” Rock made a buzzer noise. “Wrong answer. Try again—how are you feeling?”

  “G—good,” Rock Jr. said.

  “There she is! You’re not gonna let an ear get you down. Right?”

  The line was silent.

  Rock said, “Right?”

  “Right, Daddy,” Rock Junior said.

  “Ears are made of cartilage, Bud. You could chew cartilage—you could cut it with a knife and fork and put ketchup on it.”

  Rock Junior didn’t respond.

  “I love you, Bud,” Rock said.

  “Love you, too, Daddy.”

  After dinner, he found Marshall at Skull and Bones. The tomb felt wetter than the other night, like a dank basement—the Bonesmen in their frames either sweating or pissing into the room.

  “Impressive,” Marshall said, wheeling forward to clutch Rock’s wrist. “Perfectly tailored to the man. Hard to say whether it’s a fatal blow, but this will stay with him for the duration of his career.”

  Rock sat open-thighed, basking in the praise. “Can you believe he made it all the way to ‘racist pigs?’”

  Marshall chuckled mutely. “Remarkable.”

  “All I wanted was the brown cheerleader bit—that’s why I stuck it in first.”

  “Shrewd.”

  “How close do you figure he came to saying that line about eugenics, calling for more funding?”

  Marshall did not engage the question. “We have an active file on SmartPodium.” He regarded Rock through slit eyes. “The boys bought one. Expensive. We kicked the tires on hacking in but never could.”

  Rock rubbed his knuckles boastfully on his chest. The old man was asking him to show his magician’s trick. Rock might’ve played coy in other circumstances, but he was riding too high now for modesty.

  “Jamie Gallagher,” he said. “That NetHuman thing—Foxy Charlotte must’ve granted him full access to all their campaign documents.”

  “You stole his credentials?”

  Rock nodded. “Recovered them from that filthy rucksack of his.”

  “When.”

  “Today. I waited for the last second to change the text of the speech. Figured Owen’s babysitters would be rehearsing with him right up until he went live.”

  Marshall folded his hands, the fingers joining in a shriveled nest.

  “This is how we beat the Gallaghers. With creativity. With details. The finances favor them now. But the details”—his cheeks hollowed with vigor—“favor us.”

  Rock said, “Cheers to that.”

  “There is opportunity here. For years, I’ve pushed for heavier investment in spycraft—the dirty, exotic sort.” His eyes gleamed in their sockets. “I believe the efforts deserve formal designation, to be an entity under the Pruitt umbrella.”

  “Don’t you already have a budget?”

  Marshall scoffed. “Dimes that fall through the cracks. I want resources commensurate with the grandest goals, with changing the course of human history.”

  Rock felt some giddy-up in his gut at the language, but no burning interest in the topic.

  He hadn’t come to gripe about clan priorities.

  “Makes damn good sense. Anybody asks my opinion, you got my vote.”

  A complicated look passed Marshall’s face. “I thought I might have a bit more than your vote.”

  This put Rock on guard. The cadaver in front of him had gotten what he’d wanted from the worst strongmen in South America and the best diplomats of Europe.

  What does he want from me?

  Was he calling in his pound of flesh for bailing Rock out of the Sterling Library mess? Already? Did he want Rock to press Jonathan Pruitt on this matter of black-ops funding? Why? Jonathan cared nothing about Rock’s opinion—a fact Marshall knew full well.

  Rock didn’t want head games. You played head games with Marshall Pruitt, you ended up in a rubber room.

  “I’ll do what I can,” he said. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

  Marshall said, “I need a leader.”

  Rock didn’t understand. “Leader of what?”

  “Of this new entity. I need a man to launch it, to define its mission and culture. Somebody with the requisite force of will.”

  “That’s…flattering. But I don’t see it fitting into my career right now.”

  “We can adjust the ti
tle,” Marshall said. “CEO. President of the Board—we can incorporate, structure the thing to your liking.”

  Rock felt a thrum beginning in his brain stem, some disorienting mistake at the core of this discussion.

  “Again, I’m much obliged, Marshall,” he said, “but I’m gonna be busy as a cross-eyed boy at a circus. I’ll be out campaigning soon.”

  As he looked into the older man’s face, Rock’s thrum became a violent shaking. Marshall’s expression—soft, the corners of his mouth drawn back—contained a sentiment that always made Rock’s blood boil.

  Pity.

  Rock asked, “What did Jonathan say? You talked to him, right?”

  Marshall nodded.

  “Before or after Owen Gallagher?” Rock was talking very fast. “Did he see what I did to Owen Gallagher? I did that. Nobody else—me. I did that.”

  “Yes. He knows.”

  “He doesn’t care? And he doesn’t care Theresa Velasquez has a husband running around on her with strange chicks on beaches? None of that matters?”

  Marshall gripped the handles of his wheelchair as though preparing to push out of it and console Rock, then remembering his legs.

  “Jonathan was never going to put you on the ballot.” His tone was somber. “Not in Virginia. Not anywhere.”

  Rock swore profusely. He stalked to a wall and put his fist through the Bonesmen of 1926.

  “I have pictures!” Rock said. “We have pictures! Bryce on his back, Bryce on his knees, Bryce brushing sand off his—”

  “This is a blessing in disguise,” Marshall put in. “Senators don’t matter. Governors don’t matter, even presidents. Politics is in a new phase, Rock. Today, you can make the facts. That’s where the power is.”

  “Yeah? Does Yanni Jovanovic get a lot of ass, you think?”

  Marshall pushed forward to Rock’s hip, wheels crunching over the broken 1926 glass. “This is the superior play.”

  “It’s a slap in the face,” Rock said. “You’re positive his mind is made up? There’s nothing to be done to budge him off Velasquez?”

  Marshal confirmed there was not. Jonathan Pruitt had been troubled by Bryce’s actions. He appreciated Rock’s energy—at the Choosing, and in exposing Owen Gallagher for the pretender he was—but there was simply no chance.

  Not while Derek Dickerson still hung from his neck.

  Rock left the tomb with acid in his heart. He’d done superhuman things this weekend, and the clan was essentially yawning.

  It had been like this Rock’s entire life. As a child, excellence was expected. His father’s pet saying had been, “Is that all you got?” His mother’s had been, “We’re different, honey. You might as well prepare.” Rock had devoured awards, owned every honor worth owning. The rare times he’d failed—or succeeded less than completely—he had been mocked.

  Rock’s father, holding a state runner-up trigonometry trophy with two fingers like trash: “Couldn’t beat the Indian boy, aye? He’s never had steak in his life, you know. Cows are sacred there. We fed you ribeye last night.”

  Campus taunted Rock now. The spires of Branford and Old Campus laughed, their skinny stone shoulders twitching in the night. Stained-glass windows made cruel mirrors, showing Rock just what he was: a mid-forties nothing with receding hair. An indifferent father and husband who possessed no great or marvelous position that justified indifference.

  The acid worked down Rock’s chest, eating channels between ribs and forging chutes into his lungs. When he moved, it moved, sloshing, fouling fresh tissue.

  The only thing for it was alcohol and narcotics.

  Chapter 15

  In the courtyard of Gallagher College, a kind of surreality took hold after Owen’s speech. He had finished out reading a paper copy—rushed to him by a heady staffer—amid graveyard silence. He delivered his parting promise to “keep fighting for progress, for people, and for you,” and then brushed sandy hair off his temple.

  It bounced back in his eyes.

  Joan Gallagher rushed on stage to examine the SmartPodium, squinting, drilling her fingernail into the screen.

  Charlotte stayed sitting beside Jamie. She’d already run through the gamut of reactions: shock, denial, rage, and now resignation.

  “That’ll be all she wrote for SmartPodium,” she said. “Mother will be glad.”

  Jamie barely registered the gallows humor. His gears didn’t turn as quickly as his sister’s. Perhaps he just wasn’t as accustomed to the speed and scope of their fight.

  He’d been confused at first, angry at the grotesque sentiments, wondering how or why somebody allowed Owen to write his own speech…but once he realized the words hadn’t been Owen’s, Jamie had needed only a few moments to figure out who’d engineered the sabotage.

  The Pruitts.

  It could only be the Pruitts.

  And he, Jamie Gallagher, had been sitting across a table from one of them not five hours earlier.

  Now, weakness exploding down his arm, he reached under his chair to the rucksack and checked the front pockets.

  Empty, every last one.

  The NetHuman credentials Charlotte had given him—given him with the expectation he would use them to do good—were gone.

  Blood rushed to Jamie’s face. He thought for several minutes how to undo the damage. Jump in front of the cameras outside—the cable news outlets were breathlessly reporting Owen’s nightmare—and tell the truth? Claim full responsibility? Explain how he’d been duped?

  Hunt down Rock Pruitt? Confront him, accuse him? Jamie had a strong instinct to do just that, to pin him against some wall by the lapels and wring a confession out of him.

  All around, Gallaghers were in damage-control mode. They’d been hacked—no question the podium had been hacked. Could they float the likelihood of Russian involvement? Chinese? Frame it as a malicious attack on democracy, foreign governments emboldened by lax Republican oversight?

  But how to handle the main problem? The podium had been hacked—fine, that could be sold to the public—but how did you explain why Owen had said those things? Why there hadn’t been some filter between the teleprompter and his mouth?

  Hands groped in pockets.

  A Portland cousin had commandeered a Beefeater bottle from the caterers and was passing it.

  Owen waved him off. The presumptive nominee stood apart from the frantic deliberations looking dazed, his rugged face a sheet of clean typing paper as friends and family strategized how to deal with his complete and unquestioned stupidity.

  Jamie was angry, and a piece of him—a growing piece—yearned to jump into the fray. To avenge Rock’s stunt and his own negligence, to go find that wall and those lapels…but he resisted.

  He thought of ten years in Juba. He thought of Sam, of his reasons for coming back.

  And he decided not to jump in front of cameras, nor to hunt down Rock and fight.

  Laboriously, he pushed up off his knees and stood. He dreaded calling attention to himself, stepping into the spotlight, but he knew what had to be done.

  “Owen,” he said, stepping around Charlotte and others formulating counter-moves. “This is my fault. They used my credentials to change the speech.”

  He explained lunch at Commons, how he’d been joined by Rock Pruitt. How he’d left his rucksack unattended—probably the NetHuman card had been visible without undoing a single snap.

  How Rock had looked into Jamie’s eyes in parting and thanked him.

  “I respect your moral compass,” Rock had said. “You’re living life on your terms, brother. That’s priceless.”

  Rock had beaten him. Outsmarted him, exploited him—pick your pejorative.

  Owen heard Jamie out, then draped an arm over his wiry shoulders. “This isn’t on you. At all.”

  “The credentials were mine. I should’ve never—”

  “Nah, I appreciate you telling us,” Owen said, “I own this. The buck stops here, with me.”

  Chest full, he clapped Jamie on the back
and told the courtyard at large they’d be fine.

  “We will get past this,” he insisted. “Don’t lose heart.”

  Listening, Jamie felt he’d misjudged Owen—or at least judged him unkindly. Owen wasn’t some privileged brute who felt entitled to lead the free world because of this last name. He was a decent, mostly competent man thrust into circumstances beyond him.

  He was the boy who faints at the sight of blood but can’t escape joining his parents’ veterinary practice.

  Owen finished by telling the crowd today was not about him, but about Gallagher College: their family’s legacy of progressive achievement. This speech hiccup? It was a blip.

  Charlotte didn’t look like she thought it was a blip.

  “Rock Pruitt is an absolute—” She strung together four or five curses, a sequence that suggested extreme bodily contortion. “The first thing we do, the first damn thing, is cram his—”

  She painted another profane image. The Portland cousin’s face curdled.

  Jamie’s mother said, “Where are they running this cycle? Besides Pennsylvania-sixteen, I know Penn-sixteen. Where else?”

  “Florida-twelve and California-seven,” Charlotte answered from memory, whipping out her phone. “Virginia Senate of course. And I hear that twerp T. Jonas wants to be attorney general of New York.”

  “Okay. Okay.” Joan Gallagher paced between the stage and first row of seats. “Double the oppo research on all Pruitt candidates. Triple it—if there’s even a whiff of dirt.”

  Charlotte was already swiping out texts. “Absolutely. What else? Let’s make some trouble in Georgia, shall we?” Warren Pruitt was governor there. “I feel a labor issue coming on. What’s their minimum wage? Pretty sure it’s five-fifteen. Five”—she swore—“dollars, can you imagine? How’re there not protesters on the governor’s lawn every single day?”

  Next there was a call for scandals-in-waiting. Someone thought Pruitt Capital had a diversity problem in the executive ranks. Someone else said there was gold in Jonathan Pruitt’s presidential library donor list, if anybody would just take a few weeks to mine it.