The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [30]
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