Ironwood Ridge Page 3

  “So my place is messy because I’m waiting till the weekend to put them on the car?”

  “So messy. That’s why we can’t do it at your place. But observe my place.” She walked behind the couch patting the pillows neatly lined up, then turned and ran her finger along the mantle. “I keep everything so nice and neat!” She turned toward him, her dark eyes beckoning. “This could be an emergency. You want to come upstairs and fix it?”

  He walked toward her and wrapped her in his arms. She met his lips with the full softness of her own, clinging to him, her hands moving on his back. They kissed for a long time and then stood in front of the couch holding each other.

  “I’d love to fix it, Counselor.” He held her to him again, and then the phone rang.

  “You get it,” she said, “I’ll be upstairs.” She gave him a lingering look over her shoulder as she crossed the carpet. “And don’t forget the Irish Cream.”

  He picked up the phone after the third ring as he emptied his pocket and dropped a couple of pens on the desk. “Hello—” The line was silent. “Hello, hello. Who is this?” He listened, watching as one of the pens rolled off the desk. Holding the receiver to his ear, he stooped to pick it up.

  The room filled with deafening sound. Somewhere beyond the front window a weapon hammered away. The glass shattered behind the drapes. O’Neill heard the hiss of flying debris, the crash of splintering wood from the desk as he rolled onto the carpet. Sudden pain in his arm. The whole room seemed to come apart, torn and ripped by a barrage of flying steel. He heard Darcy scream.

  The noise died away, but the sound of gunfire continued down the street for several seconds. He heard a distant scream, and then several hysterical voices shouting somewhere at the end of the block.

  He lay still, feeling the pain in his arm.

  “Broc! Broc!” Darcy was crying. “Are you all right?”

  Slowly he moved his head, seeking her out. Darcy was gripping the banister halfway up the stairs at the far end of the room, her eyes wide with fear, flooded with tears. Slowly, cautiously, he got to his knees, dazed by the shattered glass and debris across the rug. Pain shot through his arm above the elbow; his hand came away with blood. He turned toward the window. The drapes were shredded, their tattered remnants drifting in the breeze blowing through the broken glass.

  “Broc!” She came down the stairs, eyes startled, paralyzed by terror. “Broc, you’re hurt!”

  He moved his arm. “There’s blood, but it moves. I think it’s just a flesh wound. Darcy, you better call the police.”

  Somewhere in the distance gunfire like fireworks sounded again, and then died away.

  Thirty minutes had passed. Beyond the shredded drapes the police cruiser’s red and blue lights flashed, painful to the eyes, nerve wracking, like a surreal dream from a bad TV program. O’Neill had taken off his shirt and was holding his arm, which Darcy had wrapped with three-inch gauze. Red was leaking through, but the bleeding was momentarily stilled.

  “A lot of gunfire,” the officer was saying into his radio. “One casualty, flesh wound. Front of the house shot up. A lot of property damage.”

  The officer listened for a few seconds, then signed off and turned to O’Neill. “There’s been a bunch of drive-by shootings the last half hour. Six blocks from here, over on Sumac Street, and Wayside. And three or four houses down the block. Nobody hurt, just a lot of broken picture windows. Looks like we’ve got a carload of drunks out on a joyride. But that’s the way it goes — nothing for weeks, then three or four in one night. They go crazy in spring.”

  “A drive-by with automatic guns?” Broc queried.

  “It’s happening more and more,” the officer explained. “They get their hands on an automatic, maybe one that dad smuggled out of training camp, and they have to try it out.”

  Darcy’s eyes were wild with fear. “My God, what’s the world coming to?”

  “You’re lucky to be alive, Mr. O’Neill. Your front wall is a mess, but those loaded file cabinets stopped a lot of steel. Hope you don’t need the files; they’ll have to dig out the bullets. Evidence, you know. There might be a couple of dozen rounds buried in all that paper. But Jesus” — the officer examined the wall across the room — “if you had been standing up, you’d have been mincemeat. Anyway, you’re safe now. Those guys are gone, so you might as well forget it till morning.”

  The officer passed a slip of paper to O’Neill. “This is the investigation number; your insurance agent will need it. In the meantime, you might as well get a good night’s sleep.”

  “If you think we’re staying here tonight,” Darcy blurted out, “you’re wrong!” Stunned by her outburst, O’Neill just looked at her.

  She glared from the officer to O’Neill, then at the torn curtains. She pulled out her cell phone. “I’m going to reserve us a room downtown.”

  Chapter Three

  Broc glanced in his rearview mirror, then at his watch, as he crossed Loop 465 driving east on Interstate 70, heading into Indianapolis. He had left Jefferson at 10:40 a.m. and driven at the speed limit all the way. His watch showed eleven fifty-four; his appointment was at twelve thirty. He watched the Indianapolis skyline in the distance as the highway ran northeast a few miles, then veered east. The day was heating up, a harbinger of long hot summer afternoons by the water on Choptank Bay.

  It had been a rough week. Neighbors up and down their street were outraged at damage to their homes; the papers were sensationalizing a “new crime wave” in the city. There were calls for a law enforcement crackdown.

  The police had come back the next day and spent most of the morning digging bullets out of walls and file cabinets. O’Neill had filled out forms and answered questions. The insurance adjuster arrived at the house as the police were pulling away. Everything had gone well: the plate glass windows had been replaced Friday afternoon, making the house at least secure. Similar repairs were going on all down the block. Monday morning the carpenters arrived. As O’Neill left this morning, two workmen were finishing the new siding across the front of the house while two more were replacing the knotty pine paneling across the back wall.

  O’Neill shifted in his seat and slowly pulled his shoulders up toward his ears. His left arm throbbed where the flesh had been sewn together five days ago. It would be uncomfortable, the doctor warned, for a couple of weeks.

  Darcy had not taken any of it well, but after an extended weekend at the best downtown hotel, she had reluctantly agreed to move back into their house Monday night. By Tuesday, she had more or less put things in focus and called Macy’s for custom drapes, which would be hung later in the week. That would give them four days in their newly restored quarters before leaving for Washington.

  O’Neill drove a few miles and then took the Downtown Destinations exit, following a route he knew well toward the research library at Purdue University. He glanced in his mirror for perhaps the hundredth time. The events of last Thursday night had set him on edge, like an aggravating noise that wouldn’t stop. The whole incident was just too close to fatal to forget easily. But Darcy needed to be calmed down, so O’Neill suppressed his own anxieties and attended to her needs. A phone call on Monday to the officer in charge of the investigation turned up nothing. O’Neill willed himself to put his life back in order.

  Once the chaos at home had been cleared away, O’Neill had turned his thoughts to the invitation and his appointment some thirty minutes hence. He had found basic information on Samuel Whiterock in The Almanac of American Politics. Before his election to the House in 1988, Whiterock had spent years hovering around the edge of the federal bureaucracy, though in what capacity was not entirely clear. The 1990 and 1992 editions of the Almanac revealed that he had done little more than warm a seat in the House of Representatives for six years before being swept out of office in the Republican landslide of 1994. O’Neill’s resources at home were inadequate for further research, and he could not get online; his computer had been disabled by the gunfire. Annoyed
at the loss of time and general chaos of the past six days, O’Neill swore under his breath.

  Several blocks before the Purdue University campus he turned off and slowed, watching street signs. A few minutes later he spotted the brick building, a branch annex of numerous federal buildings in the city. But the building was a landmark only. Eight blocks beyond, he found it — an older hotel, newly renovated.

  As O’Neill parked and got out of his car, he spotted a man on a third-floor balcony. He recognized Whiterock from magazine photos. His hair was graying; he appeared a little tired; but the forceful stature that had commanded the attention of the Virginia electorate was still evident.

  Whiterock beckoned him across the street. The hotel clerk motioned him toward the elevator as though he had had been expecting him for some time.

  Whiterock shook O’Neill’s hand and introduced himself, then led him toward the bar. Two men came out of a bedroom with drinks and sat down while Whiterock talked. “We’ll have sandwiches brought up in a while, Dr. O’Neill. In the meantime, would you care for something liquid?”

  O’Neill sensed an inside-the-beltway protocol unfolding, the first step being adequate lubrication. He motioned at the Cutty Sark. “About half and half.” As Whiterock chipped ice into the glass, O’Neill glanced at the others. One watched the weather on the TV, which was muted; the other was smoking and gazing through the open curtains toward the balcony. Both were dressed in standard department-store suits. Government people, he thought. Compared with the well-suited Samuel Whiterock, they were underlings.

  Whiterock handed him the Scotch-and-water and led him toward the chairs. The others sat across the large coffee table. “I’d like you to meet two of my colleagues, Wayne Boatwright and Jim Sawyer.” Both men held his eyes as they leaned forward and shook hands across the table.

  “I’ll get right to the point, Dr. O’Neill. I run a small institution — probably one you’ve never heard of — The Whiterock Foundation on Foreign Policy. Nonprofit. Wayne is my vice-president, Jim is secretary. I’d describe us as a think tank.”

  “Foreign policy?” O’Neill queried. “What’s your connection to The Council on Foreign Relations?”

  Whiterock gazed at O’Neill; his heavy brows shadowed his deep-set eyes. “The Council on Foreign Relations has never been more than a government retirees’ club. Most of them are frustrated intellectuals who don’t understand politics and play it badly when they try.”

  O’Neill said nothing, hiding his disagreement.

  “For instance, when they advised President Carter to admit the Shah of Iran to the U.S. for medical treatment. That’s a good place to begin. The taking of American hostages at Tehran was the result. Over a hundred Americans were held for over four hundred days.”

  O’Neill nodded agreement, though he preferred to consider the causes of the 1979 crisis as slightly more complex. “What’s the mission of your foundation?”

  “We are beginning a complicated investigation — a secret investigation, if you will, Dr. O’Neill — into the wrongdoings of the Republican Party since the sixties.”

  “That would take us back to the Nixon administration.”

  Whiterock held O’Neill’s eyes as he nodded. “A little earlier, actually. But we’ll make a full disclosure of the rigged election of 1980 our first item of business.”

  O’Neill looked at him noncommittally. The suspicion that Ronald Reagan’s people had somehow manipulated his election to the presidency had simmered for years.

  “There have been rumors for years, but nothing conclusive,” Whiterock hinted. “It’s been alleged that the Reagan National Committee negotiated with Tehran through the summer and fall of 1980. The American hostages were sweltering under Muslim captivity and tropical heat for over a year. President Carter worked desperately to free them by October — to get himself re-elected in November. Remember that abortive rescue attempt?”

  O’Neill nodded, recalling the shock of colliding American aircraft crashing somewhere in the Iranian desert in the spring of 1980. Then, as the election neared, everyone had wondered whether Jimmy Carter would be able to pull off a last-ditch ‘October Surprise,’ get the hostages home, and guarantee his reelection. But it had never happened.

  “We’re close now, we’re close to a detailed picture of what happened. The evidence suggests that the release of the hostages was delayed — deliberately delayed — until Ronald Reagan was safely elected.”

  “There were a couple of books on it as I recall,” O’Neill volunteered. “A Reagan intern wrote one — October Surprise, I think it was called.” Whiterock nodded. “And then a Senate investigation dismissed the whole thing—”

  “That book made a start, but it missed crucial pieces of evidence. And so, yes, the smoking gun eluded the investigators and Reagan got away with it!”

  O’Neill listened, remembering the startling cut-and-paste on American television on Reagan’s inauguration day in 1981. As the ceremony went forward in Washington, the news anchors kept cutting to the Middle East where the hostages were being released and flown out to Greece, then to Germany. The effect had been surreal. And every thoughtful observer wondered whether it was all coincidence. But a congressional investigation years later turned up nothing. O’Neill wasn’t convinced there was any ‘smoking gun’.

  “The full evidence will show, Dr. O’Neill, that the Republican election committee cut a deal with the terrorists in Iran, arranging for a delay in the release of the hostages until after the election. Isn’t it highly suspicious that they were released on Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day? What a coincidence! Great theater. We believe it was orchestrated to the hour.”

  “For what purpose?”

  Whiterock leaned forward, his eyes intense. “It was a powerful piece of symbolism. It suggested that foreign terrorists who had the audacity to toy with a Democratic president, especially a peace-at-all-costs peanut farmer like Jimmy Carter, should never dare play the same game with the new Republican President, Ronald Reagan. Their release at the very hour when he was sworn in symbolized what every Republican wanted Reagan to stand for: the Great Warrior Hero standing victorious over the barbaric heathens of the Middle East.”

  “So you think it was planned down to the hour?”

  “We are sure it was.” Whiterock searched for O’Neill’s response.

  O’Neill suppressed his urge to challenge Whiterock. Two books had detailed Jimmy Carter’s inability to mount an ‘October Surprise’. Both had alleged that Reagan’s closest allies had made such an October Surprise impossible, thus guaranteeing Carter’s loss. But neither had uncovered decisive evidence. The possibility, however, could not be ignored, but a congressional investigation failed to prove wrongdoing, and so the issue was dismissed.

  “The whole ‘October Surprise’ investigation was a whitewash!” Whiterock’s anger was growing. “And I wonder why! George Bush was vice president under Reagan; he would have known about any negotiations of Reagan’s henchmen with Tehran. But Bush had become president when it was investigated. If it really happened, it was kicked under the carpet; there’s no way Congress would have indicted a sitting president! But it needs to be scrutinized again.”

  “It happened sixteen years ago.”

  “It was only the beginning. Reagan was the president who played fast and loose in foreign policy. Or his lackeys played fast and loose for him — his campaign manager William Casey, and Admiral Poindexter, and Oliver North.” Whiterock tilted back his glass of Scotch; it was half empty when he set it down. “Believe me, Dr. O’Neill, the rigging of the 1980 election and Irangate are only the tip of the iceberg. We’ve got evidence of all kinds of travesties in foreign policy, including evidence that casts a shadow over most of George Bush’s alleged accomplishments in Desert Storm.”

  “It’s history.” O’Neill wondered what the evidence could be.

  “It’s reality, Dr. O’Neill. And it’s one of the keys to our own times. The Iranians played along with Reagan’s e
lection committee but realized later how Reagan had manipulated history with their unwitting assistance. You’ll notice that no one in the Middle East is willing to negotiate with us on anything any more. Now they strap on bombs and blow things up. A lot of it is revenge for all the times they were gulled in the past.”

  O’Neill was silent for a minute, mulling over a spin on past events that varied a good deal from what he had concluded. “Maybe, but it seems unnecessary to debunk the Republicans all these years later. After George Bush showed himself incompetent on domestic policy, we got Bill Clinton, who looks okay. Democrats are a minority Congress now, but we’ll probably see the pendulum swing toward the Democrats again soon.”

  Whiterock leaned forward, his eyes blazing, angry. “You’re right, and I’ll be happy — no matter which Democrats pick up seats, because presidents mean nothing. It’s Congress that makes or breaks this great nation. We elected a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress in ‘92. That was promising. It shut out a party that is still on a right-wing, ignore-the-poor, creation-science runaway train, and nothing is changing. Then everything went down the tubes in ‘94. The voters gave away both House and Senate to the Republicans, whose last term controlling both houses was during the Eisenhower administration! Think of it! For forty years Democrats occupied both houses! That’s the secret of American prosperity today — solid Democratic control, election after election, most with huge Democratic majorities. But now, see what’s happened since ‘94. Hillary Clinton’s health care initiative, a program fully in keeping with Democratic ideals, was voted down, killed within the first year of the new Republican Congress. Their ideology is hostile to the people and their needs. It’s a good index of what is to follow.”

  “And the Whiterock Foundation aims at… aims at what?”

  “We are conducting an intensive investigation. First of all, think of all the ridiculous governmental scandals during Republican administrations. Senator McCarthy’s witch hunts in the fifties… a Republican move to discredit young Democrats who were thinking about how to prevent more wars, thoughtful about capitalism, attempting to work out other plans for a just government. Or Watergate. A crooked Republican president trying to guarantee a second term in office. Or the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages exchange… another Republican plan to undercut the less dramatic but ultimately more ethical Democratic policies.