We Are Holding the President Hostage Read online

  “And how many today, my Padre?” was his invariable query.

  Habit, Padre knew, was essential to firm rule. It encouraged the ritual of obedience. At that moment the Talker rose and moved into the room.

  “The Chinee,” he said.

  The Padre nodded. Actually the Chinee, as he was called, was Japanese. The Padre quickly remembered his last name. Mr. Akito. He addressed all representatives of groups outside the family by either their formal title or mister.

  A tiny, polite little man who served as the agent for their little dumping operation, the Chinee arranged with his co-horts in Japan to dump electronic equipment on American shores through the good offices of the Padre and his organization. The goods were actually shipped out of Japan for less than a quarter of their value, transshipped in mid-ocean, then moved through the organization onto the organization-controlled docks and into the so-called free market-place.

  It was enormously complex and profitable, the kind of business that the Padre favored. He enjoyed duping governments and their bureaucratic and corrupt minions. Also, he liked the Chinee, liked his solemn little rituals.

  “Ah, linguini with the white,” Luigi said as he rushed back to the kitchen. As the Padre’s caterer, Luigi’s role was never to forget a guest’s favorite dish or beverage.

  In the doorway stood the Chinee, bowing with exquisite grace and politeness. The Padre and the Pencil stood up, although neither returned the bow, nor was it expected. The Padre directed the Chinee to sit on a chair beside him.

  “With great respect, my friend,” the Chinee said, executing another smaller bow as he sat down. The Padre poured him a drink. He lifted his glass, lowered his eyes, and sipped. The Chinee’s precise textbook English amused the Padre and he felt himself obliged to emulate it.

  “To you as well, Mr. Akito.”

  “And your daughter and grandson. I wish them great bounty and good health.” The Chinee emptied his glass and the Padre refilled it.

  “And likewise to your wife and children.”

  The best wishes continued, covering their colleagues and finally themselves.

  Luigi brought their food. The Padre’s lunch rarely varied. Broiled fish and buttered pasta. For the Chinee, he served the linguini with white clam sauce.

  It amazed the Padre to see the anomaly of this Oriental eating pasta with such skill, never a strand unraveled. After a few mouthfuls, the Chinee put down his spoon and fork and delicately wiped his lips. The Padre, who had been eating sparingly more for form’s sake than from lack of appetite, soundlessly put down his knife and fork.

  “We have a troublesome problem, my friend,” the Chinee began. His smile never left his face.

  “Troublesome?”

  “Three hijackings last week,” the Chinee said, still smiling, his hands serenely clasped at the edge of the table. “They have knowledge beforehand of our movements.”

  “Someone on the inside?”

  The Chinee nodded but did not move his hands.

  “You think it is at our end?” the Padre asked. This was the first consideration. The crime of betrayal was one of the first magnitude.

  “I am afraid this is true.”

  The Padre felt his stomach congeal; the bit of fish that he had ingested seemed to expand into a hard ball. Betrayal, unfortunately, was endemic to organizations such as his. Try as he might, there was no stopping it beforehand. One could only gamble on a man’s character. Only in performance, the Padre knew, within parameters that required absolute obedience to the principle of loyalty, could a man be truly tested and judged.

  “Have you any ideas?” the Padre asked.

  “I do.”

  Both knew that the Chinee would not have come to the Padre if he did not have information on the culprits. Only the Padre was allowed to make decisions on enforcement. The Chinee drew a piece of paper from his pocket. On it was written the name of the perpetrator. The act of recording the name was not merely an allegation or even an indictment. It was a guilty verdict. He passed the paper to the Padre, who, in turn, passed it to the Pencil, who recorded it on another slip of paper. Then he burned the Chinee’s piece of paper in an ashtray.

  Dominic Tameleo was the name of the accused. The man’s dark face sprang into the Padre’s mind. A friend of Benjy. With great effort he forced his features to remain serene. Another second-generation member, he sighed, hoping it did not signify that the organization was at risk. It was one of his principal fears.

  The Chinee resumed eating his pasta. The Padre continued to pick at his food. But his mind was already devising a plan. Enforcement did not always mean death. Indeed, elimination sometimes was less effective than a living example.

  After a long silence, the Chinee emptied his plate and cleared his palate with the Chianti. Once again the Padre filled their glasses and they toasted the health of their respective families. Nothing more needed to be said on the issue between them. Someone in the Padre’s organization had breached the code of honor, the contract. This must now be dealt with.

  The transaction between the Padre and the Chinee was now officially over. The moment appropriate to departure had come. They stood up. The Chinee bowed, took two steps backward, bowed again, and departed.

  When he was gone, the Talker appeared once again.

  “Benjy,” the Padre said. The Talker nodded, his eyes closing at the same time.

  The young man came in from the other room. He was handsome, slender, and wore an expensive pin-striped suit cut in an Ivy League style, a button-down white shirt with a yellow tie that picked up the flecks of yellow in his hazel eyes. He was, the Padre knew, a ladies’ man, a dangerous hobby in their line of work. Nevertheless, he had promised the boy’s father, and to date the boy was a “made” member. He had killed on demand with his own hands. Such an act assumed a solemn entitlement.

  “Tameleo,” the Padre whispered.

  “Him?” Benjy said, his lip curling, his Adam’s apple jumping in his throat. “No way.”

  “Mark him, Benjy,” the Padre said.

  “But I . . .” Benjy’s words suggested the kind of protest that had to be dealt with quickly.

  “Mark him,” the Padre whispered, narrowing his green eyes, focusing on the younger man. “I want everyone who sees his face to know.” Benjy flushed, accepting the assessment.

  “Hell, Tameleo should be wasted and dumped. The bastard.”

  It was Benjy who had sponsored him. The Padre studied him. Was his indignation genuine?

  “Then go down the chain and finish it,” the Padre said.

  This meant that everyone who touched the goods would be eliminated. Purely business, the Padre sighed. Tameleo’s facial scars would mark him forever. They would be deep and ugly, but they would send the message that would cause him to live in fear for the rest of his life. His legacy, to become a living example.

  Luigi came in and took away the Padre’s uneaten food. He also brought him another bottle of Chianti, a peeled peach in ice water, and a knife. It was approaching late afternoon. There were still many other people to see.

  As he sliced his peach, the Talker came in followed by a large rough-looking man. He was about forty, with old-fashioned stained jeans and an oil-specked khaki shirt, a size or two too small, which showed off both his enormous biceps and a hard, pooching beer gut.

  “Mozak,” the Talker said.

  The big man stood hovering over the table, looking down at the Padre, who searched him carefully for any signs of potential violence. The two men at the table behind them also tensed. The Padre saw Mozak take in the situation. He seemed to seethe with repressed anger.

  “I got no choice. That’s why I come here,” he said. He had one of those flat Slavic faces, with deep eyes set wide apart.

  “You must sit down, Mr. Mozak,” the Padre said expansively, waving toward a seat. “Have some wine.”

  “I stand,” the big man said. “One of your guinea boys come to my place and tell me I gotta shut down my trucks ’caus
e I got no permission to make my airport runs. I say shit to that. I work hard, buy five trucks, and I run where I want. There’s enough business at the airport for everybody.”

  “Come sit down,” the Padre said soothingly. “No problem that cannot be worked out.”

  The Padre’s conciliatory attitude must have taken him by surprise. He stepped forward, then stopped abruptly, as if his legs had to be suddenly commanded to cease all movement.

  “Look,” the Padre said. “We’re talking business. Like gentlemen.”

  The display of camaraderie seemed to placate the man for a moment. With caution, he moved to the table and sat. He looked at the Chianti bottle, which the Padre had just lifted, and sneered.

  “I don’t drink that piss,” he said.

  The Padre put the bottle down and called for Luigi. The man ordered double whiskeys.

  “Just ’cause I drink your fucking whiskey don’t mean I’m gonna take orders from anyone.”

  “I think you misunderstood our people,” the Padre said, after Luigi had swiftly brought the man his drinks. “And maybe they were a little too, you know, pushy. They meant to say they wanted to buy out your business at a handsome profit.”

  “Why should I sell to you? I don’t need no shit from bosses,” the man grunted.

  The Padre, from behind his tranquil smile, assessed the man. An immigrant. Ignorant. A hard case. But even the most brutish man was entitled to his say.

  “The offer wasn’t good enough?” the Padre asked politely.

  “I don’t remember no numbers,” the man muttered.

  The Padre looked toward the Pencil.

  “More than he would make in five years,” the Pencil said.

  “That’s a wonderful offer,” the Padre said. “You want to work your ass off? You could start something elsewhere and still have some bread in your pocket.”

  “Shit,” Mozak sneered. He slammed the shot glass on the table as if to emphasize his defiance.

  The effort to ingratiate abruptly terminated. Why were people so opposed to reality, the Padre wondered. Airport cargo was the organization’s franchise at Kennedy and La Guardia. Everybody knew that.

  “You got a family?” the Padre asked. The change of tone confused Mozak.

  “Yeah, I gotta family.”

  “You’re not doing right by them.”

  The man stood up, his heavy bovine face flushed, his hands balled into fists. Behind the Padre the two men stood up, opening their jackets, displaying their Magnums.

  “I ain’t afraid,” Mozak said, but his courage had waned.

  At that moment the pay phone rang. It was such an uncommon happening that the Padre turned to it as if it were something human that had just made an insulting remark. But the ring was persistent. The men in the room froze, waiting for the Padre to react. He looked at the Pencil and signaled with his eyes. The Pencil rose and walked to the phone, lifting the receiver.

  “Yeah,” the Pencil said.

  The Padre watched him.

  “Who?”

  “What about me?” Mozak snapped.

  “I can’t hear you too good,” the Pencil shouted.

  “I ain’t afraid of you guys,” Mozak said with bravado, trying to stare down the two men who had stood up. The Padre ignored him, watching the Pencil at the pay phone.

  “Robert . . .” The Pencil was confused. He scratched his head. Then it dawned on him. “Robert!” He looked toward the Padre, whose heartbeat had already accelerated. The Padre stood up abruptly, rattling the table. Drops of Chianti fell on the white tablecloth.

  “So what about me?” Mozak shouted.

  “You?” the Padre said, shaking his head as he moved toward the outstretched receiver. “We’ll fix it tomorrow,” he said. “You go home.”

  You’re finished, he thought. By tomorrow he would have no trucks left. He looked at the two men standing by the table. Without a movement of his features, the message passed between him and them. Mozak’s eyes searched the faces of the men in the room, then he shrugged and stormed out, muttering under his breath.

  With trepidation, the Padre took the earpiece from the Pencil. Sweat had already broken out on his back.

  “Robert? This is your father-in-law,” the Padre said, hearing the familiar whoosh of international long-distance.

  “I didn’t want you to hear it first from anyone but me,” Robert began.

  4

  BIRDS. FROM WHERE SHE LAY, one leg strung out along Paul’s bare thigh, the other at an angle that dangled one foot over the edge of the king-sized bed, Amy Bernard saw birds. Most of them flew, glided, or dove helter-skelter over the white hand-painted Chinese wallpaper that her predecessor had installed in the bedroom. Some merely primped and exhibited themselves. One that looked suspiciously like a lowly barnyard rooster pecked at the ground near the hand-carved marble mantel. There were sound effects, too, birdsongs from the live chorus of winged creatures that occupied the magnolia that Andrew Jackson himself had planted just outside their windows.

  After more than three years of sleeping in this place, the painted birds and the background songs had become reassuring, validating as she awoke each morning, that she had, indeed, spent yet another night under the roof of the most powerful house in the land. She raised her head and squinted at the ornate gold clock on the mantel, more out of habit than purpose. She never could see the numbers clearly. But the clock looked so good on the mantel. Must be six or thereabouts, she thought. They rarely slept past six-thirty.

  She raised herself on one elbow and looked at her husband. She watched his face in repose, the features relaxed, the skin taut against his skull.

  More than three decades slipped away. He looked that much younger when he slept, a reminder of the eager young student she had first met at the University of Minnesota, the gangling, blond, blue-eyed, intensely motivated competitor who she had seen for the first time when he beat the bejesus out of all comers on the debating team from the University of Iowa. Of all memories, this first-time image persisted.

  His eyes fluttered. He was dreaming. She frequently wondered what his dreams were like. When she asked, he could not remember. With her finger barely touching, she traced his lips, pursed slightly, as if he were smiling at his good fortune.

  Often he told her, “I am the luckiest bastard in the world.”

  Her response was to tap her forehead. “Brains, too.”

  Also those, she told herself, drawing an imaginary line down to his crotch, which set off erotic signals. Her arm crept around his bare middle, fingers fluttering, brushing delicately like birds’ wings along the thatch of hair that surrounded the presidential phallus. Just thinking that way made her giggle. Considering their life in the goldfish bowl, it was delicious to be wickedly uninhibited in private.

  Paul stirred, grunted, his conscious mind still tucked away in some mysterious fog. But other parts were reacting. Certain of her own as well. The giggle flattened inside of her. It was this morning moment she cherished the most, as it always came before the giant tide of “responsibility” that would carry them off to the fantasy world of the presidential stage.

  What good was power as an aphrodisiac if you never had time to harvest its rewards? she thought, sensing the feathery tickle of sensuality. This moment was the only special private unscheduled frame of time in the waking day. Or was it scheduled? Had some aide penciled in “Six to six forty-five. The President and the First Lady engage in recreational copulation.” Perhaps there was a code name for it. Like Jellyroll.

  Her nightgown was rolled to her waist and she slowly undulated against him, her hand growing bolder, her upper leg cradling his thigh.

  “Stop faking,” she whispered. “You’re up.”

  She caressed him with growing eagerness, her sensual motions accelerating. He turned toward her and in the half-light she could see his smile and the moist glistening of the white space in his opened eyes. He snuggled against her, his hands busy, his head moving to her bosom. Her arms embra
ced his head, held it to her breasts as his tongue rolled over a nipple, sending thrills of expectation through her body.

  So precious, she thought. There was no other way to describe this stolen moment. They rolled slightly in the big bed as she positioned herself under him in the missionary way. Middle-of-the-road in every way, she happily thought as she concentrated on the serious business of giving and taking pleasure.

  “Fuck me, Mr. President,” she whispered, biting his earlobe, lightly, playfully.

  With her hands she directed the course of his movements, each obeying private signals that three decades of marriage had taught. Like most marriages, there wasn’t a jackpot in it every time, but the act itself and its frequency gave the lie to those who said that political marriages were rocky in the sack.

  Not mine. Not now. She felt it begin, somewhere deep, as if a centipede were crawling over exposed nerves. Her mind stopped looking for its source as she lifted her legs and raised her hips to meet his, concentrating on the foamy curl of the breaking wave. Then it began. For him, too.

  But somewhere in the tangle of impressions a faraway sound intruded, rhythmical, urgent, the nightmare tapping of the inevitable spoiler. She removed her hands from his buttocks and put them against the sides of his head, pinning his ears, hiding the sound. Not yet, she cried, bringing his lips down to hers, waiting for the waves of primary pleasure to subside. A victory of sorts, she decided, recognizing the persistent knuckling on the bedroom door. She had beat the bastards to the punch.

  “They really flew this time,” she said in his ear, eyes opening to the flocks on the wallpaper.

  “I heard the flapping,” he said, lifting his head to focus on her face. “But you had the better view.”

  “Just an old-fashioned couple.”

  The knocking continued.

  “Mr. President,” a voice said.

  “Go away,” she whispered in his ear. “You’re robbing me of afterplay.”

  “Meet you same time, same place tomorrow.”