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Deborah and Mason stared slack-jawed at the phone. “Hello,” Mason said dumbly, eliciting a curt glance from Deborah.
“This man can be trusted. He’s on”—and here the president’s voice sounded slightly strained—“the right side.”
Deborah said, “Why should we believe her? I’ve worked with plenty of voice impersonators.”
“Jesus Christ,” the commander in chief said. “I don’t have time for this shit. I’m having you transferred to Templeton.”
A click. A hum of the paused line. Then ringing. Naomi picked up on one ring.
“Excuse me,” Evan said, taking the phone off speaker and turning away for privacy. In a muted voice, he told Naomi what he needed.
Then he hung up and said, “Follow me, please.”
In a sort of stupor, Deborah and Mason followed him into the kitchen and stood before the TV. Evan pointed to the grandstand behind the dais, indicating the black-suited man nearest the podium.
“Secret Service will scratch his nose,” Evan said.
Twenty seconds passed. Perhaps thirty.
Then the agent touched his ear. Caught the eye of the camera. And scratched his nose pointedly.
Deborah said, “Holy hell.”
26
Dirtboxes
Derek Tenpenny and his sinful six had a cadre of low-level security schmuckatellis to cover the basics so they could concern themselves with higher-order strategy for Mr. Devine. They also had the run of Tartarus with all its hidden spaces and secret corridors. Lately they’d been commandeering the billiards room as their unofficial HQ. Its plush leather couches and the curved bar in the corner made it ideal for confabulations, and that’s where Tenpenny and the extant five met now.
Bram Folgore had been stabbed to death.
As always, word traveled rapidly to Mr. Devine, in this case from patrolman to detective to the commanding officer of the First Precinct to the police commissioner to the mayor of New York City, on whom Tenpenny himself had compiled a substantial file over the course of a lost weekend last autumn.
This glorious job that Mr. Devine had bestowed upon Tenpenny—part security tactician, part interceder, part espionage agent—seemed uniquely designed to fit his attributes and temperament. Tenpenny’s only weakness was women. He got after it every time he found a participant who was willing and properly shaped and, in a pinch, when she was neither. Being a media fixer had provided ample access and plenty of opportunities. After an incident involving cracked hotel drywall (DoubleTree, Times Square) and cheekbone (hooker, Thai), a judge had ordered him to attend Sex Addicts Anonymous, which had proved richer hunting grounds yet. During the six-week stint, he’d nearly worn out the sink basin in that church bathroom.
A Division II hoops player from way back when, Tenpenny was taller than any man had a right to be, his height a useful icebreaker when it came to the dark arts of lechery. He’d had the benefit of pouring the foundation of his career before the #MeToo nonsense had gotten up steam, so he’d had plenty of time to hone his skills at keeping one step ahead of the social-justice mob.
Working for Luke Devine felt like getting called up to the Show after laboring for years in the farm system. Per Mr. Devine’s wishes, Tenpenny had dirtboxes installed all over the property, cell-site simulators that threw out powerful pilot signals stronger than those from any cell towers in the area. They made all phones within range switch over to their network. Then—bam—you had IMSI numbers, ESNs, and you could snatch encryption-session keys in less than a second. That meant you were logged in. Emails, text histories, all that juicy stuff Mr. Devine used to exploit their owners and, in turn, the world.
Mr. Devine was, if anything, laissez-faire. Tenpenny had plenty of elbow room to work with on the side. He’d grab all the girls’ information when they entered Tartarus. If you got into a young woman’s phone, you got into her head. There was an art to it. Pulling photos and comments out of Instagram and Snapchat, compiling information on their best-loved attributes. Did they favor their asses? Their long, long legs? Did they post wistful pictures of their deceased daddies? Or were they frosty and immaculate, shelf ornaments like the cable-news ice queens he used to look after who always had to be the prettiest girl in the room? In fact that’s whathe lusted after most of all—the collection of insecurities those girls put right out there for the world to see, all the poker tells he could use when lubricating his angle of attack.
Tenpenny kept records for himself in a big old-fashioned leather-bound ledger like the ones they used at European bed-and-breakfasts. On the weighty pages, he noted flexibility, mouthfeel, degree of required persuasion, sexual positions. It gave him a kind of power, his big book of exploits. Write her name in the ledger and he owned a piece of her forever.
But now, now they had a problem. And he was at bottom a fixer. So he had to fix it.
The one holy rule of Luke Devine: No one was to see what went on behind the scarlet door.
Ever.
But someone had, and that had opened up the gates of hell, so now Tenpenny was here meeting with his marines.
Years ago they’d been flown into the city for a news segment on their alleged misdeeds in Kandahar, and Tenpenny had been tasked with looking after them. Right away he’d recognized that they were beautiful savages, the purest of what they were, and he’d made clear that he could provide bountiful opportunities to exploit their expertise. Through the course of doing business, he’d learned much about their temperaments.
Like that of Craig Gordon, currently embedded in the couch, thunder thighs parted to allow room for his belly to sag. A great big shiny pink man with a bald head and hot-dog bulges of fat at the base of his skull, Gordo had been an M240 Bravo Gunner with the Corps, lugging the Pig into more firefights than he could keep track of. The front of his shirt carried potato-chip shrapnel and various streaks of lunch condiments, as did his push-broom mustache. A spiral notebook rested, as always, on the slate of his knee, and he doodled now, the pen dwarfed in the catcher’s mitt of his hand. He seemed to keep the scribble pad with him as a security blanket; Tenpenny had never seen him take a single actual note.
At Gordo’s side Daniel Martinez stood with a ramrod posture that looked reinforced with rebar. On the gym-swollen ball of hisbiceps, Dapper Dan wore his marines tat with pride, the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor inked in vibrant blue to match his piercing eyes. Waxy black hair, not a strand out of place. Prominent eyebrows manscaped to perfection, waxed chest showing at the open collar of his Polo shirt, waft of Creed Viking cologne giving off smoke and a hint of spice.
Norris Norris, which was actually the dude’s fucking name, sat on the pool table with his stick legs dangling. Double N had done a stint as a nonappropriated fund-audit technician within the Force Support Squadron before changing his MOS so he could get his dick dirty out beyond the Green Zone. Lean and dark-skinned, he had a pronounced Adam’s apple and a pair of old-school thick-frame eyeglasses that popped his pupils. Of the men he was the easiest to predict and handle; he ran on nothing but money. It was almost shocking what he was willing to do if his price was met.
