The First Lady - James Patterson Page 0,86
a travel mug of coffee. She waves at us both, and we wave back, and she drives on, ignorant of whom she’s just passed.
I say, “Earlier you said you had an idea of a safe place where we might go.”
“I did,” CANARY replies.
I slide my hand into my coat, to the lumpy envelope that my sister has just given me.
“Now’s a good time to let me know,” I say.
CHAPTER 81
TAMMY DOYLE IS in her office at Pearson, Pearson, and Price, pleased that she was brave enough to pass through the front doors of her firm this morning. With the news about the missing First Lady, the stakeout has thinned, with most reporters and TV crews heading out to the newer and juicier story in Virginia.
She knows the equations of news very well.
What gets more attention?
A live mistress or a dead First Lady?
A slight knock on the door and Ralph Moren, the group’s admin aide, comes in, bearing a cup of coffee, and he says, “You’re looking pretty fine this morning.”
“Thanks, Ralph.”
He passes the cup of coffee to her, and before she can take a sip, he says confidentially, “There’s a phone call for you.”
“Who is it?”
“You won’t believe it,” he says, smiling.
“Try me.”
“Lucian Crockett.”
Tammy is stunned, remembering the last time she heard that name, back at her condo. “There’s a mistake. Amanda’s been trying for months to reel him in as a client.”
The aide smiles and shakes his head. “No mistake. He asked for you directly and specifically.” Ralph gestures to her phone. “Line three, Tammy. Don’t keep him waiting.”
Ralph leaves, but Tammy does keep Lucian waiting because she’s trying to process what’s going on. Lucian Crockett is the CEO of the nation’s largest fracking and gas recovery corporation in the American Southwest, and the lobbying firm of Pearson, Pearson, and Price—and especially Amanda—have been trying to get him and his billions of dollars of assets under the firm’s lobbying umbrella.
Tammy stops hesitating. She picks up the receiver, punches in the switch for line three, and says, “Tammy Doyle here.”
“Miss Doyle?” comes a gravelly and self-assured voice. “Lucian Crockett here. Thanks for taking my call.”
“My pleasure, Mr. Crockett. Thanks for calling. What can I do for you?”
He laughs. “I always love doing things informally. Drives my accountants crazy. May I call you Tammy, Miss Doyle?”
“Certainly.”
There are voices raised out in the common office area, but Tammy ignores the commotion. “Then you can call me Lucian,” he replies. “Look, I know you’re a busy woman, and you’ve been in the news lately, so I’ll make this quick and to the point. I want your company to represent me and my folks, the sooner the better. We need to get a jump on a lot of permitting and zoning issues, and your company has just the kind of folks we need to push things along.”
Tammy says, “Well, that’s wonderful news indeed, Mr., er, Lucian. But I know you’ve been in discussions with my boss, Amanda Price, and—”
His cheerful voice quickly turns to ice. “Amanda? Well … ’tween you and me, Tammy, that bitch has been playin’ with me for months, like a cheerleader dating a star football player, taggin’ and taggin’ him along, and I’m tired of it.”
“Well—”
“My wife and my mother, bless ’em both, well, they’ve seen you on the TV. They like how you hold your head high. They don’t like the way Tucker has treated you. And I told ’em that you worked for Pearson, Pearson, and Price … well, they advised me …”—and he chuckles, like he and Tammy both know what the word advised means—“that I should go with your company, but deal only with you. And not Amanda Price.”
Tammy’s heart is thumping with joy, thinking of the millions of dollars that will be coming into the firm, and all thanks to her. “Well, Lucian, that’s highly irregular, and—”
“Here’s the deal,” Lucian says. “Yes or no, don’t have time to keep on dickin’ around … last time Amanda and I chatted, she said her last offer was the best she could do, take it or leave it. Seems she felt like she had to charge me more in case she loses some of her nature-loving clients ’cause of what we do. Bitch. Okay, I’m gonna take the offer, but it’s gonna be with you and only you. Make myself clear?”
Tammy’s thoughts are racing. Amanda will say this is impossible, that she won’t allow it to happen, but the other partners in the firm … they’ll smile and