Free Access to Power by Robert Ellis

them without breaking the law.
    “It’s running on two stations,” Frank said, handing the tape to Tracy like it might be soiled.
    “Who are they?” Linda asked.
    Tracy checked her notepad and shrugged. “The Committee for the Restoration of American Values and Ethics.”
    “Another special interest group,” Frank said. “You ever hear of them?”
    Linda shook her head. “What’s their special interest?”
    “Same as ours,” Frank said, thinking it over. “Only they don’t know what they’re doing.”
    The phone rang and Tracy picked it up, rolling her eyes. Reporters were beginning to check in, asking questions about Woody’s murder. They wanted an interview with Frank.
    Frank refused the call and told Tracy to put the service on for the rest of the day. Then he chased her and the interns off to a restaurant with the company credit card. When they left, he checked in on Linda. She was sitting before her computer struggling to write a spot she would have blown through in ten minutes if this had been any other day. Her glow had faded, she looked exhausted, and it didn’t take much to convince her to go home early as well.
    After he heard the door close, Frank switched off the overhead lights and poured a cup of coffee. He cupped the mug, letting it warm his hands as he moved to the window. He could see Linda getting into her black Explorer and watched as she drove off, probably to be with Jason Hardly. It would be a night of holding each other, comforting each other, then who knows what , followed by deep sleep.
    Frank stepped into his office, trying not to think about it as he sat down at his desk and took in the silence. He noticed a copy of the latest Merdock poll and pushed it aside. Tracy must have left it for him. Frank didn’t need to read it because he already knew the results. Lou Kay was winning. His spots were made by Stewart Brown. They weren’t laughable. And they weren’t a distraction. Brown’s ads for Lou Kay were slick and tough, the message so concise, no one could possibly miss it.
    “Three more weeks,” he said aloud.
    Somehow he had to get through the next three weeks before he could let go.
    He took a sip of coffee and leaned over in the chair. The blood stain remained on the carpet just beside his feet and he studied it. The maintenance people had worked all morning and gotten nowhere. Frank guessed that the stain would be there as a reminder of his friend until the day he replaced the carpet.
    And so would that nagging feeling that something was wrong.
    He cracked the window open and looked outside at the Capitol dome looming in the afternoon sky. He couldn’t place the feeling, couldn’t ground it in thought. But it was there, without shape or body, just below the surface.
    Something was wrong.

 
     
     
     
    Chapter 21
     
     
    By seven-thirty he was in his car, making the short drive over to the Lincoln Memorial. It was a warm night for mid-October, the air very still. A perfect evening for tourists. Frank had always enjoyed trying to pick out the tourists, which was difficult here because the sight of Lincoln keeping watch over the city and nation seemed to have an impact on everyone, even him, no matter how many times he looked at it.
    He found Mario waiting for him on a bench by the Reflecting Pool. Frank sat down, his eyes on the people taking pictures of themselves before the memorial.
    “I need something on Lou Kay,” he said. “They’re killing us.”
    “I thought Merdock’s money had the thing locked.”
    “Stewart Brown’s killing us. I need something on Lou Kay and I need it now. And while you’re at it, I want background on the Committee for the Restoration of American Values and Ethics. They’re on our side, but their spots eat shit like they’re from Mars.”
    Mario smiled as Frank settled. He was a small, thin man in his early forties and wore a blue-gray herringbone sport jacket along with his mustache and glasses. He had been doing Frank’s