Sweet Hush Read online

  He stood. He laid a hand on my hair, as if I were a kid. “I hope you sleep well. Edwina and Eddie and I love you, Nick.”

  After he left the room, I cried.

  BILL SNIDERMAN was thirty-eight and looked like a balding Bill Cosby, already showing more forehead than hair. He had the top-dog attitude of a successful man who collected enough money as a corporate attorney to afford politics as a hobby. He’d already made his name as a savvy advisor in statewide campaigns and civil rights debates. He and Al and Edwina had been friends since college. He’d tried to dissuade them from taking me in as a kid. He sat in a chair beside my hospital bed that morning, smoothing the perfect creases in the knees of his five-hundred-dollar suit.

  “What?” I said. “No candy? No flowers? No ‘Hope You Find Your Finger’ card?”

  He threw down a newspaper. “I always knew it was just a matter of time before your uncle’s enemies dragged you out from under your rock to hurt him.”

  The paper fell open to a column by Haywood Kenney. By then, fleshy little Kenney, the crime reporter, had become a fleshy, round-faced political columnist. His sprigs of wavy brown curls were already starting to recede, so his forehead showed between the individual wavy hairs. The meat packers called him Pube Head, but his readers loved him. He’d been fired from the Tribune for rigging a story to make it more dramatic, but now his freelance column was syndicated in newspapers all over the Midwest, and he hosted a popular talk-radio show about politics on a local AM station. He had never stopped dogging Al and Edwina, waiting for revenge. Now, he began to take it.

  Bleeding Heart Al And His Personal Assassin Escape Murder Charges, the headline over Kenney’s column read.

  “This is running in five major newspapers in Illinois today,” Bill Sniderman said. “Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter.”

  I stared at the paper grimly. “I know.”

  “I don’t like you, Nick. I never have. You’re bad luck for Al. Bad mojo. Bad karma. An albatross around the neck of his political future.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “He’s going to run for Congress in the next election. I’m going to manage his campaign. The publicity he and Edwina are getting right now makes this the perfect time for him to launch his political career. Edwina and I have mapped out a plan, and it will work. He’ll serve one term in Congress, then run for the U.S. Senate. He’ll serve two, maybe three terms in the Senate, and then run for President. And he’ll win.”

  “Sounds simple.”

  “It will be. He’s a good man, a man people naturally like and trust. He’s the best candidate I’ve ever seen in my life—squeaky-clean, wholesome background, loyal as a dog, a good husband, a good father, a great public servant. I’m not thrilled that his family’s Polish Catholic—too ethnic, you know, and that’s tricky—but I can work with it. Edwina’s pilgrim credentials and All-American blue blood make her the perfect partner for him. She can get things done, and she’s one-thousand-percent behind him. And of course, Eddie’s the cutest little promotional asset in the world.”

  “Don’t talk about Eddie that way.”

  The tone of my voice made Bill swallow hard. “Sorry. Of course not. Al and Edwina don’t look at her the same way I do. You should hear them talking this morning. They’re afraid to show her face in public, again. I’m worried that they’ll be over-protective of her.”

  “Maybe you can convince them to put her in a nice, safe cage and let voters pay a quarter to look at her.”

  Bill stared at me. “Let’s confine the topics to you. Okay? All I have to do is eliminate anything and anyone who screws with Al’s perfect image. You.”

  “Aw, Bill, you’re flattering me.”

  “Listen. You’d do anything for him and Edwina and Eddie. Don’t bullshit me, I know how you are. Like a wolf protecting its den. Good. Then protect them by going away. Stay out of their lives. Find yourself a nice, quiet hole to crawl into. In another part of the world.”

  “I’m betting Al doesn’t know you’re here.”

  He stood, looking nervous. “No.”

  “Good. No need to tell him.”

  Bill exhaled. “I’m glad you agree. He’d be mad as hell. He’s loyal to you. Sentimental. That’s what makes him so appealing, but it could also ruin him.”

  “I know.”

  “Then you’ll heed my advice?”

  I nodded. “I’m already working on it.”

  “You’re his Achilles Heel. Get out of his spotlight. And stay out.” He studied my face and adjusted his silk tie with a nervous flick of one hand, as if thinking of broken necks.

  But I was only thinking of loneliness.

  A MUTUAL FRIEND at Fort Bragg made the contact for me, and they sent someone the next day. My life changed that quick, as if the right people and the right moment had been waiting for me out there in the shadows, until I admitted where I belonged. The visitor was only forty if that, square-jawed and lean, wearing a major’s uniform. He had eyes like something that hunts in the woods when the moon is out. Eyes like mine, in fact. He showed me a clean-cut army ID taken when he was a raw private during the early years of Vietnam. “Just want you to see that we all start out looking like Boy Scouts,” he said. “Back then I thought I could save the world just by keeping my underwear clean and waving the flag.”

  I said nothing for a few seconds, as I finished buttoning the shirt of my uniform, using only my good hand and never asking for help. In years to come, the memory of that pressed shirt—with its stiff cloth torturing the small cuts flying glass had made on my arms and the smell of new beginnings rising like an antiseptic from the material—would always make a hollow sensation in the pit of my stomach. “You’re in luck, sir. Nobody has to tell me that idealism alone won’t get the job done.”

  “Let me ask you something. When you snapped that man’s neck you knew exactly what you were put on this earth to do, didn’t you? You took care of God, country and family. All in one snap of a brutal motherfucker’s spine. Hmmm? God, country, and family.”

  “Not in that order.”

  “Whatever inspires you. Fine. We live in a brave new world, Mr. Jakobek. Global. Nuclear. The rules of combat are changing. The enemy isn’t marching across a battlefield. He’s squatting in a cave or an office somewhere with a satellite phone and a computer and access to weapons we don’t even want to think about. To Mom and Pop America, the technology-inspired world seems civilized and quiet. But all the murderous, crazy shit of mankind is still going on out there, and all the killing fields are still open for business—armed with global capabilities, now. Only people who understand that—and who are willing to crawl under the rocks and get dirty if they have to—will choose who owns the future. Us.” He paused. “Or Them.”

  “I accept your invitation to transfer to your group, sir.”

  “Good. We’ll take care of the details in terms of paperwork. Welcome to your new line of work, Captain Jakobek. Congratulations on your instant promotion. You’re now part of the behind-the-scenes war the army doesn’t admit openly and the American public doesn’t fund—knowingly—with their tax pennies.” He paused. “Any questions or second thoughts?”

  “No, sir. I know what I’m doing. I’m fully aware that your people operate below the radar. All I want is to do my job without being a burden to my family.”

  “Secrecy, Mr. Jakobek,” he paused to smile, “is our best weapon.”

  I couldn’t agree more. That afternoon I boarded a plane leaving Chicago, leaving the States, heading anywhere and everywhere else on the planet. When you look into the dark, what looks back at you? It might be the unhappiness of someone you love but can’t help, or it might be sickness of a stranger who wouldn’t mind killing that someone. Or both. You either hunch down and wait for the fight to come for you, or you step into the darkness with your fis
ts up. I’d decided to do whatever was necessary to guard the people I loved against the evil out there, beyond the light.

  The letter I left for Al and Edwina summed up my decision this simply: If you need me, I’ll always be out there. I’ll do anything for you and Eddie. Just call me. Al and Edwina wrote back. When these people are done with you, we won’t even recognize your good heart. Will you come if we need you? Of course. And we’ll always be here for you. All you have to do is come home. We’ll wait.

  So would I. More than twenty years.

  Chapter 8

  BARBARA WALTERS STILL hadn’t called, the Marines hadn’t stormed my front flower beds, and the killer relative of Eddie Jacobs—one Nicholas Jakobek—hadn’t even bothered to phone ahead. I liked to know when Presidential hit men expected to arrive on my doorstep. It was only polite.

  Oh, there were lots of other phone calls coming in—from the President’s aides in Washington, D.C., various Jacobs family members in Chicago, and a hoarde of the First Lady’s high-toned relatives in Maryland. All these people, asking to speak to Eddie, being upset when Davis refused to wake her up, and telling me I was responsible for her well-being.

  “I haven’t misplaced even one Presidential daughter during apple season yet,” I said, and put Smooch in charge of taking messages, after that.

  U.S. Secret Service Agent Lucille—now fully, in Southern tradition, identified as Lucille Olson, one of two Olson daughters from a farm family in Minneapolis, Minnesota—guarded my front door. Guarded it. Eddie Jacobs needed protection from terrorists, stalkers, kidnappers, and god-alone-knew what other threats a Presidential daughter fell heir to, including, apparently, a runaway romance with a fellow Harvard student. I looked around my home with a sinking sense of security, as if the scum of the earth might rise out of my flower beds and rush the antique front door with its brass apple knocker.

  Up at the gate, Lucille’s fellow Secret Service agents loitered unhappily beside their hulking SUVs. Logan, big and beefy and gently immovable, stood guard before our locked entrance with his tan Stetson on the roof of his patrol car and a fried apple pie in one hand. We had the same reddish-brown hair and green eyes. He was a little baby faced, but strong of character and deep of spirit. A tall, good-looking McGillen, like me.

  “Pies, boys?” he called slyly, to the agents. They didn’t take the bait.

  No need to worry that Logan would crack under the pressure, though I was a little worried about his vulnerability where Lucille was concerned. Logan and Lucille had circled each other like antsy housecats when he stopped by the house to introduce himself. He asked her the caliber of her handgun and offered her a fried pie. She shook her head but eyed him with an arched blonde brow. He eyed her likewise. He had no idea how to flirt with an armed woman, but it was clear he might try. My brother, a lonely and gallant homebody, had lost a beloved young wife to cancer after only two years of marriage. They’d met while he was overseas in the army. He doted on their five-year-old daughter. We all did.

  She was the sixth Hush McGillen. We called her Hush Puppy.

  Puppy sat in the patrol car at the gate, pretending to color a coloring book but darting looks at the agents across the road. “Morning, Puppy,” I cooed, leaning into the open window and smoothing her dark hair. She smiled, turned her face up, and let me kiss her on the forehead. “Morning, Aunt Hush.”

  “I’m going to take you to my house and feed you some of the apple-cinnamon buns Cousin Laurie’s testing for the catalog. Then we’ll put Harry Potter on the VCR. Or you can read through your books. You know, I’m ordering you the whole Detective Girls series next week.” Hush Puppy had a pink, girly bedroom at my house. I’d decorated it for her especially. She stayed with me whenever Logan was out of town on county business. “And I’ll set up the Go Girls game on your computer, if you want to play it,” I coaxed.

  But none of those enticements worked. Her face went somber. “Aunt Hush, I’m too old to treat like a baby. I need to stay up here and watch what’s going on.”

  “Oh? Why?”

  “Lucille looks like a lady wrestler, and I think she’s gonna throw Daddy for a loop.”

  “Honey, I expect Lucille could wrestle a full-grown gorilla, if she had to.”

  “She could sure wrestle Daddy. He just stared at her with his mouth open when they met. I think he’d let her win.” Hush Puppy looked wistful. “Do you think she has any little girls I could play with?” Puppy was lonely for playmates and sisters.

  “I don’t get the feeling she’s married or has any children, honey. But she’s sure tough enough to be a mother.”

  “Ahem,” Logan said.

  I moved away from Puppy’s earshot. “How’s it going?”

  “You’re about to have thirty employees lined up outside this gate. What do you want me to do, Sis?”

  I handed him a box full of fried apple pies. “Feed them. Let them in. Tell them to meet me at the main barn and I’ll tell them . . . something. Not the truth. Not today. We’re opening this farm today just as if nothing’s happened.”

  “There’s a problem.” He jerked his head toward the stoic group of agents watching us from across the road. “These boys tell me we can’t open the gate. They won’t stand by and let it happen.”

  My blood went cold. “You’re kidding.”

  “Orders of Lucille.”

  Logan set the plate of pies on a gate post. Across the road, the agents craned their heads and sniffed the fried-apple-scented air, but didn’t budge. “Tough people,” my brother said dryly. “Sis, they’re just playing nice for now. We’re gonna be in over our heads, soon.” He hesitated. We both glanced at the patrol car to make certain Hush Puppy had her head down over her coloring book. Logan looked at me somberly. “Not much makes me worry,” he said. “But I don’t like the idea of outsiders getting too curious about us.”

  My heart in my throat, I nodded. “Things will be okay by tomorrow. I promise you.”

  “If we don’t get this gate open, the whole county’s going to know something funny’s going on. Today. There’ll be a lot of talk. A lot of questions.”

  That was it. Done. “I’ll be back in ten minutes,” I said. “With Lucille.”

  “OPEN THIS GATE,” I ordered.

  “No, Mrs. Thackery. I can’t.” Lucille stepped between us and the gate, and refused to move. Logan held up the key to the padlock. “Comeon, now, Lucy,” he crooned in a drawl that could congeal mustard. The morning sun glinted off his patrol car. Hush Puppy gaped at the three of us from an open window. Lucille’s fellow agents inched toward us across the road. Logan and I gave them a hard look, and they stopped. Then Logan he turned a softer gaze on Lucille. “Agent Lucy, you make a mighty appealing barricade, but step aside.”

  Lucille ignored him and looked at me. “It’s a very bad idea to allow huge crowds of strangers near a member of the President’s family. Crowds are unpredictable and impossible to fully control. I can’t allow this gate to be opened until I speak to my superiors—and to Eddie’s parents. I’ve alerted everyone to the situation. We need to wait for them to contact us.”

  “Eddie is sound asleep and will stay inside my house, safe as can be. Nobody knows she’s there except us. Nobody is going to know.”

  “This will be resolved, soon. Postpone your opening day until this afternoon, at least.”

  “Not going to happen.”

  “Then I’m not moving.” She planted herself at the juncture of the gates, and rested her hands on the padlocked chain.

  Logan sighed. “I’m not sure I have the authority to arrest you, Agent Olson, but I hope you won’t hold any grudge if I tackle you.”

  “If you do, you’ll be wearing your badge someplace it doesn’t fit well, Sheriff.”

  Logan looked impressed. The cell phone on my belt began to chime. I clamped the phone to my ear. “Sw
eet Hush Farm.”

  “This is the White House calling,” a woman said. “The First Lady’s on the line. Please hold.”

  I cupped a hand over the phone. I didn’t have time to think about who or what or why. No nerves. The tornado had landed. “You got your wish, Lucille. It’s Edwina.”

  Lucille stiffened. “Please, don’t call her that, Mrs. Thackery. A word of advice. Always refer to her as ‘Mrs. Jacobs,’ or ‘Ma’am.’”

  I didn’t have time to say that the honor would have to be reciprocated. Logan and I traded a wide-eyed look. Be nice, he mouthed. A crisp, female, uppity East Coast voice poured into my ear. “To whom am I speaking?” it demanded.

  “This is Hush McGillen Thackery.”

  “Shush, this is Edwina Habersham Jacobs. I’m calling from England, so bear with me. I have five minutes before I speak to Parliament.”

  “Well, you better talk fast, then.”

  Silence. I had stubbed my toe on her good will, already. “All right, Shush.”

  “Hush.”

  “Shush?”

  “Hush.”

  “Shush.”

  To hell with it. “Your daughter’s just fine. I give you my word.”

  “She better be. The Secret Service assures me she’s safe, no thanks to your son.”

  “Now hold on—”

  “I understand you’re being less than cooperative.”

  “Under the circumstances, I think I’ve been a model of good citizenship.”

  I heard her rustling papers. “You operate some kind of small family farming business, I gather.”

  My world stopped. “You . . . have notes on me?” I said slowly.

  She ignored me. “I want you to listen to me. I know what’s happened is very strange and exciting to you and your relatives on the farm, and I will be the first to admit my daughter owes you an apology for involving your son, Euell—”

  “Davis.” I felt numb.

  “Your son, Ulysses—”