The Inner Circle Read online

  Palmiotti glanced at his watch: 7:27. He looked over at the Oval. There were no suit-and-tie agents standing guard outside the door. The President still wasn’t in.

  No reason to panic just yet.

  From there, Palmiotti picked up the pace and made his way back outside, eyeing his own breath as he rushed down the West Colonnade and past the Rose Garden, whose snow had been melted away by the gardening staff. With a sharp left through the French doors, he stepped onto the long red-and-gold-trimmed carpet of the Ground Floor Corridor.

  “He’s still up there, huh?” he called out to Agent Mitchel, the uniformed Secret Service agent who was posted outside the private elevator on the left of the corridor.

  Mitchel nodded, but the mere fact that the agent was there told Palmiotti that the President was still upstairs in the Family Residence.

  “He’s gonna be in a mood, isn’t he?” Mitchel asked as Dr. Palmiotti headed to his own office, the White House Medical Unit, which sat directly across the hall from the elevator. Most staffers thought the Medical Unit was poor real estate, too far from the Oval. But as any doctor knew, the real action always happened at home.

  “Depends,” Palmiotti lied, well aware that from the phone call last night that something must’ve happened. “We know where he is?”

  For a moment, the agent stood there.

  “C’mon, I’m just trying to figure out what kind of day we’re gonna have,” Palmiotti added.

  He wasn’t stupid. After three years, he knew the Service protocol by now. To maintain some level of privacy, there were no agents or cameras allowed in the Residence. But to maintain some level of safety, the Service wired the floors of nearly every room up there. They did the same in the Oval: Weight-sensitive pressure pads under the carpets let them know exactly where President Wallace was at all times.

  “Workout Room,” Mitchel finally said, referring to the small room on the third floor installed by President Clinton.

  Palmiotti rolled his eyes. The only time Wallace worked out was when he had something that needed working out.

  “This from what happened last night?” the agent asked.

  “Sorry?”

  “I saw the call log. President called you at three in the morning?”

  “No, that was nothing,” Palmiotti said. “Same as always—just pulled his back again.”

  “Yeah, always his back,” the agent said. “Though if that’s the case, you really think he should be working out right now?”

  This time, Palmiotti was the one who stood there. The Secret Service wasn’t stupid either.

  “Oh, by the by—Minnie’s been looking for you,” the agent added, referring to the President’s sister.

  Nodding politely, Dr. Stewart Palmiotti glanced down at his watch: 7:36. A new Wallace record.

  “This something we should worry about, Doc?” the agent asked.

  “No,” Palmiotti replied, staring up at the red light above the elevator, waiting for it to light up… waiting for the President of the United States to come downstairs and tell him what the hell was going on. “I’m sure he’s just running late.”

  16

  Entick’s Dictionary?” Tot says, reading the embossed gold letters on the cover of the book as we weave through the morning traffic on Rockville Pike.

  “Ever hear of it?” I ask, lowering the radio, which is pumping with his usual playlist—old country music by Willie Nelson, Buck Owens, and at this particular moment, Kenny Rogers.

  “Don’t you touch The Gambler,” he threatens, slapping my hand away. He quickly turns back to the book. “Looks like it’s… or at least what’s left of it is…” He’s blind in his right eye, so he has to turn his head completely toward me to see the book’s torn-away spine and the missing interior pages. It’s the same when he drives (which, legally, he can)—always with his head turned a quarter-way toward the passenger seat so he can get a better view of the road.

  Most people think Tot looks like Merlin—complete with the scary white beard and the frizzy white hair that he brushes back—but he’s far more of a Colonel Sanders, especially with the gray checked jacket and the bolo tie that he wears every day. He thinks the bolo tie makes him look modern. It does. If you’re in Scottsdale, Arizona, and it’s 1992.

  “… I’m guessing pre-nineteenth-century—let’s say about…” Tot rolls his tongue in his cheek, already loving the puzzle. Even his blind eye is twinkling. The only thing that gets him more excited is flirting with the sixty-year-old woman who runs the salad bar in the cafeteria. But at seventy-two years old, Aristotle “Tot” Westman could have worse weaknesses. “I’d say 1774.”

  “Close—1775,” I tell him. “You’re losing your touch.”

  “Sure I am. That means you guessed… what?… Civil War?”

  I sit there, silent.

  “Look at the threading,” he says, running his finger down the exposed spine and the mess of exposed thread. “By the nineteenth century, it was all case binding—all machine production—two boards and a spine, then glued to the pages. What you have here is… this is art. Hand-stitched. Or was hand-stitched before someone gutted it. Is it one of ours?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”

  “You haven’t looked it up? Seen if it’s in the system?”

  “I need to. I will. It’s just—Yesterday was—” I take a breath. “Yesterday sucked.”

  “Not just for you. You see the paper this morning?” he asks as he pulls a folded-up copy of the Washington Times from where it’s wedged next to his seat along with a copy of the Washington Post and the Baltimore Sun. “Apparently one of our guards had a seizure or something.”

  He tosses the paper in my lap. I quickly scan the story. It’s small. Buried on page two of the Metro section. Doesn’t mention me. Doesn’t mention foul play. Doesn’t even mention Orlando by name (“The victim’s name is being withheld until family can be notified”).

  “This wasn’t in the Post,” I say.

  “Of course it wasn’t in the Post. You read only one paper and you’re only getting half the actual news—whatever biased side you happen to subscribe to. Can you imagine, though?” Tot asks, his voice perfectly steady. “Guy drops dead right in our building—right as President Wallace is about to arrive—and right as you’re walking around the building with the daughter of Nico Hadrian, the very guy who tried to assassinate Wallace’s predecessor.”

  I sit up straight as the traffic slows and a swarm of red brake lights flash their ruby smile our way. The only person who knew about Nico was the woman I called in our St. Louis records center. Carrie—

  “Don’t even feign the faux-shock, Beecher. You really think Carrie could find enlistment records—from Nowhere, Wisconsin—from over twenty years ago without calling for help?”

  I shouldn’t be surprised. When John Kerry ran for President and they needed to prove that he earned those Purple Hearts, they came to Tot. It was the same when they were searching for George W. Bush’s National Guard records. And the same with John McCain’s military file. On my first day of work, a coworker asked Tot if he knew where to find the unit records for a particular company in the Spanish-American War. Tot gave them the record group, stack, row, compartment, and shelf number. From memory. On the anniversary of his fortieth year here, they asked him the secret of his longevity. He said, “When I first arrived, I started to open these boxes to see what’s inside. I’ve been fascinated ever since.”

  “Honestly, though, Beecher—why didn’t you just call me in the first place?” Tot asks. “If you need help…”

  “I need help, Tot,” I insist. “Major help. I need the kind of help that comes with a side order of help.”

  His face still cocked toward me, he holds the steering wheel of the old Mustang with two crooked fingers. The car was his dream car when he was young, his midlife crisis car when he turned fifty, and his supposed retirement present when he finally hit sixty-five. But it was always out of reach, always for another d
ay—until three years ago when his wife of fifty-one years died from a ruptured brain aneurism. It was the same week I started at the Archives. He had nothing back then. But he somehow found me—and I found… When I used to work at the bookshop, Mr. Farris told me we’re all raised by many fathers in our lives. Right now, I pray he’s right.

  “Tell me the story, Beecher. The real story.”

  It takes me the rest of the ride to do just that, and as we follow rush-hour traffic to his usual shortcut through Rock Creek Park, I give him everything from showing Clementine around the building, to Orlando offering to let us in the SCIF, to spilling the coffee and finding the book hidden below the chair.

  He never interrupts. Forever an archivist, he knows the value of collecting information first. By the time we turn onto Constitution Avenue, I hit the big finale with the parts about Orlando’s death, the suddenly missing videotape, and every other detail I can think of, from Dallas’s lurking, to Khazei’s passive-aggressive threat to make me look like the murderer. But as the powder blue Mustang growls and claws through D.C.’s slushy streets, Tot’s only reaction is:

  “You shouldn’t’ve told me any of this.”

  “What?”

  “You need to be smart, Beecher. And you’re not being smart.”

  “What’re you talking about? I am being smart. I’m getting help.”

  “That’s fine. But look at the full picture you’re now in the middle of: Of everything that’s happened, there’s only one detail—just one—that can’t be argued with.”

  “Besides that I’m screwed?”

  “The book, Beecher. Where’d you find that book?” he asks, pointing to the dictionary.

  “In the chair.”

  “Yes! It was hidden in the chair. Y’understand what I’m saying? You may not know if it was hidden by the President, or for the President, or by or for his Secret Service agents or some other party we don’t even know of—but the act of hiding and finding something, that’s a two-party agreement. One hider and one finder. So to hide the book in that SCIF… to even get in that room…”

  “You think it’s someone from our staff,” I say.

  “Maybe from our staff… maybe from Security… but it’s gotta be someone in our building,” Tot says as we stop at a red light. “I mean, if you’re hiding something, would you ever pick a room unless you had the key?”

  Up ahead, the Washington Monument is on my right. But I’m far more focused on my left, at the wide green lawn that leads back, back, back to the beautiful mansion with the wide, curved balcony. The White House. From here, it looks miniature, but you can already see the specks of tourists lingering and snapping photos at the black metal gates.

  “Beecher, don’t think what you’re thinking.”

  I stay silent, eyes still on the home of Orson Wallace.

  “That’s not who you’re fighting, Beecher. This isn’t you against the President of the United States.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Sure I do. If it were, the paramedics would be carrying you under the sheet by now.”

  I shake my head. “That’s only because they don’t know I have their book.”

  For the first time, Tot’s silent.

  As we turn onto Pennsylvania Avenue, as he pulls past our building—a huge neoclassical granite archives that fills over two city blocks on our right—I ignore the fifty-foot-high columns and instead stare at the two smaller limestone statues that flank the front doors. There are four statues in total, representing the Future, the Past, Heritage, and Guardianship. Tot knows better than I do which is which, but there’s no mistaking the carved old man holding a scroll and a closed book on the right. Engraved at the base it says, “Study the Past.”

  I open the Washington dictionary and again read the words. Exitus acta probat.

  “Think about it, Tot, of all the people in the building yesterday, I can account for everyone being where they were—Orlando… Dallas… Rina… even Khazei—everyone except for President Wallace, who just happened to pick the exact day, at the exact time of death, to stop by for his visit.”

  “Actually, he’s not the only one.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  He looks my way, turning far enough that I can see his good eye. “Tell me about the girl.”

  “Who?”

  “The girl. The high school crush you’re all gushy about.”

  “Clemmi?”

  “Clemmi? No, no, no, don’t do pet names. You barely know this girl two days.”

  “I’ve known her since seventh grade,” I say as I reach to change the radio station.

  “What’re you doing?” Tot challenges.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t change my station. What’d I tell you about messing with The Gambler?”

  “I know, and you know I love The Gambler, but—Can’t we just…?” I twist the dial, searching for music. “I just want to hear something new—like maybe—do you know which stations play rap or even… Joan Jett?”

  He pumps the brakes, nearly putting me through the windshield. “Beecher, don’t you dare hit menopause in my car.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  He raises his voice, trying to sound like me. “I need something new. Where do they keep the rap music?” Returning to normal, he adds, “This girl’s been back in your life barely forty-eight hours, and what—suddenly you don’t want to eat your raisin bran, or listen to the same boring old music anymore? Don’t be such a cliché, Beecher. You have a good life. You moved past Iris… you were in a real groove.”

  “I was in a groove. But that’s the problem with a groove—if you don’t change it up, it quickly becomes a hole.”

  “Yeah, except for the fact you’re already in a hole—one that can swallow you. You gotta admit it’s odd, Beecher. The daughter of Lee Harvey Oswald walks back into your life—”

  “Her dad’s not Oswald.”

  “No, he’s Nico Hadrian, who tried to assassinate a U.S. President. And she walks back into your life on the same day that another President just happens to be visiting our offices? Girl’s got a pretty uncanny sense of timing, no?”

  “Tot, she didn’t even know who her dad was until we told her! How could she possibly be plotting against me?”

  With a sharp right onto 7th Street, Tot makes another quick right toward the underground side entrance of the building, which is blocked by a bright yellow metal antiram barrier that rises from the concrete. Tot rides the brakes, giving the barrier time to lower. When it doesn’t, the car bucks to a halt.

  On our left, I finally see why Tot’s so quiet. An armed security guard steps out of the nearby guardhouse, his puffed black winter coat hiding everything but his face and his unusually white front teeth. Ever since 9/11, when we became obsessed with terrorists stealing the Declaration of Independence, our building has limited the underground parking spots to a grand total of seven. Seven. Our boss—the Archivist of the United States—gets one. His deputy gets another. Two are for deliveries of new records. Two are for VIPs. And one is for Tot, a favor from a friend in Security who used to control such things during the Bush era.

  As the guard with the white teeth approaches, Tot nods hello, which is always enough to get us in. But instead of waving us through and lowering the barrier…

  The guard raises his hand, palm straight at us. We’re not going anywhere.

  17

  Morning, morning,” the duty nurse sang as Dr. Palmiotti stepped into the cramped reception area of the White House Medical Unit. As usual, her dyed black hair was pulled back in a tight military braid that was starting to fray from her bad night’s sleep. Behind her, in the area between the bathroom and treatment room, she’d already tucked away the fold-down bed. The White House doctor arrived first thing in the morning, but the duty nurse had been there all night.

  “Good night’s sleep?” Palmiotti asked, amused to notice how the morning small talk sounded like a one-night stand.

&n
bsp; “I tell my mom I sleep less than a hundred feet from the President. Vertically,” duty nurse Kayre Morrison replied, pointing up at the ceiling.

  Palmiotti didn’t even hear the joke. He was peeking over his shoulder, back into the hallway. The red light above the elevator was still off. Still no sign of President Wallace.

  “By the way, Minnie wants to see you,” the nurse said. “She’s waiting for you now. In your office.”

  “Are you—? Kayre, you’re killing me. I mean it. You’re striking me dead.”

  “She’s the President’s sister,” the nurse whisper-hissed. “I can’t kick her out.”

  Palmiotti shook his head as he trudged to his private office in the back of the suite. Typical duty nurse. And typical Minnie.

  “Heeey!” he called out, painting on a big smile as he threw the door open. “How’s my favorite girl?”

  Across from his desk, sitting on the tan leather sofa, was a stumpy forty-two-year-old woman with a thick block of a body. She was dressed in her usual unconstructed dress, this one navy blue, plus her mother’s long dangly silver earrings from the early eighties, which was about the time Palmiotti first got to know Jessamine “Minnie” Wallace.

  “Okay, Minnie, what’s it this time?”

  Minnie lifted her chin, revealing a stout, squatty neck and a grin that—ever since her stroke—rose on only one side.

  “Can’t I just be here to say hello?” she asked with the slight lisp (another lingering side effect from the stroke) that made the word just sound like juss.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be doing physical therapy right now?”

  “Already did it,” Minnie promised.

  Palmiotti stood there, studying her on the sofa as her thumb tapped against the bright pink cane that she still needed to walk. The handle of the cane was shaped and painted like the head of a flamingo. That was the problem with being the sister of the President—you wind up spending your life finding other ways to stand out. “You didn’t do your therapy again, did you?”