Ray's head as the limousine inched its way through bumper-to-bumper traffic on its way to the hospital.
Jack thought about the secret ace. If the fragment of Sara's photocopy clue was anything to go by, the unknown ace had to be a veteran who had somehow got his blood test suppressed.
This left out Jesse Jackson, who, being a seminary student, had a draft deferment. The other candidates were all veterans, but the way Jack figured, the most likely suspect was Leo Barnett.
Barnett was a populist charismatic preacher who claimed to interpret the word of God, whose flock had mostly voted for Reagan in the last two elections, but who had followed him blindly into Democratic ranks. He preached against the wild card and wild card violence, but he didn't have the votes to take the nomination unless so much chaos broke out at the convention that a backlash gave him the nomination:
Maybe Barnett had been off in his tower praying for disasters to befall Gregg Hartmann. Maybe the angels had obliged him.
Or maybe it hadn't been the angels who had obliged. There was another possible clue in Sara's "secret ace" paper, the doodles that included a row of crosses. Maybe Sara made those crosses when thinking about the Reverend Leo Barnett.
Jack held off making a judgment until he saw the videotapes. Dukakis impressed him as hardworking, intelligent, and fairly dull. Hardly the sort to employ twisted aces to chop up his enemies. But Barnett was riveting.
In the videos, he prowled the stage like a wary panther, wiping away buckets of sweat with a succession of huge handkerchiefs, his voice ranging from a mild, just-folks West Virginia twang to a lacerating, scornful jeremiad shriek. And he was clearly no brainless ranting Holy Roller. His ice-blue eyes burned with fearsome intelligence. His messages were so well-constructed, so well-reasoned-at least within their apocalyptic framework-that his communications skills had to be the envy of any of the other candidates' speechwriters.
And Barnett was-Jack hated to admit this-sexy. He was still under forty, and his blond Redford good looks and dimpled chin obviously had his female audience in thrall.
There was one incredibly revealing scene, Barnett straddling a prostrate young semi-deb who had been possessed by the Spirit, Barnett shouting into his phallic microphone while the girl babbled in tongues, and writhed and grunted in what to Jack's jaded Hollywood mind seemed clearly to be a series of staggering sexual climaxes... . And Jack, looking into the preacher's intent face and ferocious predator eyes, knew that Barnett knew he was bringing the girl off just with the power of his presence and voice, and that Barnett rejoiced in the twisted sexual glory of it all... .
Jack remembered a night in 1948, sitting after a Broadway debut in a Sixth Avenue coffee shop with David Harstein, the member of the Four Aces whose pheromone power hadn't, at that point, been revealed to the public. Unknown to them, a meeting of the Communist Party USA was being held down the street. The meeting ended and several of the party members showed up in the coffee shop and recognized Jack and Harstein. What started out as autograph-seeking turned into a combative political debate, as the comrades, fired-up from their meeting, demanded ideological concurrence from the two celebrities. Hunting Nazis and overthrowing Juan Peron was all very well, but when were the Four Aces going to proclaim solidarity with the workers? What about assisting anti-Dutch forces in Java and Mao's army in China? Why hadn't the Aces fought alongside the ELAS in Greece? What about assisting the Russians in purging Eastern Europe of unsound elements?
All the downside of celebrity, in short.
Jack had been all for saying goodnight and moving on, but Harstein had a better idea. His pheromones had already flooded the small coffee shop, making everyone amenable to his suggestions. Shortly thereafter the comrades, including several hulking dock workers and a couple horn-rimmed intellectuals, were standing on the counter doing Andrews Sisters impersonations. The late-night crowd was entertained with "Rum and Coca-Cola,"
"Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy," and "Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree."
Jack thought about how easily Harstein had controlled the hostile crowd as he watched the last Barnett video, the one shot in Jokertown. Barnett moved amid the devastated landscape of a gang battle in New York, calling down the powers of heaven to heal Quasiman, who rose from the dead ... and seeing that, Jack knew in his bones the identity of the secret ace.
Barnett could make things happen. How the