The Inner Circle - Brad Meltzer [96]
With a cock of his head, the President flashed the aide a final look—the kind of angry, split-second daggers-in-the-eye that spouses share when they’re entering a party but still want to say that this won’t be forgotten later.
But as Wallace approached the crowd and waved the first guest into position, he couldn’t help but notice how quickly Minnie stepped aside, leaving him alone in the spotlight. He’d seen it before—Minnie never liked cameras. All her life, she’d been self-conscious about her masculine looks that she got from the Turner syndrome. He knew that’s why she didn’t like the campaign trail, and why she never took a yearbook photo. But right now, as her colleagues gathered around her, there was a brand-new half-smile on her face. A real smile.
“Minnie, thank you so much for doing this,” one of them said.
“—no idea what this means,” another gushed.
A flashbulb popped in front of Wallace, but as the next person headed his way, he couldn’t take his eyes off the… it was pride… real pride on his sister’s face. And not just pride from being related to a President—or even from being an instant bigshot. This was pride in her work—for what she had done for this organization that had helped her so much all these years.
“Sir, you remember Ross Levin,” the President’s aide said as he introduced a bookish but handsome man with rectangular glasses.
“Of course, Ross,” Wallace said, taking the cue and offering the full two-fisted handshake. “Can you give me one second, though, Ross? I want to get the real hero for these pictures. Hey, Minnie!” the President of the United States called out. “I’m feeling a little stage fright here without my sis near me.”
There was a collective awww from Minnie’s colleagues. But none of it meant as much as the bent half-smile that swelled across Minnie’s face as her brother wrapped an arm around her shoulder and tugged her into the rest of the photos.
“On three, everyone say Minnie!” the President announced, hugging her even closer as the flashbulbs continued to explode.
Sure, Wallace knew he needed to get out of here. He knew he needed to deal with Beecher—just like they’d dealt with Eightball all those years ago. But after everything his sister had been through—from the teasing when she was younger, to the days right after the stroke, to the public hammering by Perez Hilton—would an extra ten minutes really matter?
No, they wouldn’t.
Last night was a mess. But today… Beecher wasn’t going anywhere.
60
Y’hear what I said?” Tot asks, his cloudy eye seeming to watch me in the passenger seat as he waves the photocopied sheet between us. “February 16th. Don’t you wanna know?”
I nod, trying hard to stay focused on the traffic in front of us.
“Beecher, I’m talking to you.”
“And I hear you. Yes. I’d love to know.”
He turns his head even more. So he sees me with his good eye. I don’t know why I bother. He’s too good at this.
“You already know, don’t you?” Tot asks. “You know what happened on February 16th.”
I don’t answer him.
“Good for you, Beecher. What’d you do—look it up when you got home?”
“How could I not?” I spend every day doing other people’s historical research. All it took was a little extra footwork to do my own. “Khazei wants to pin the murder on me. This is my life on the line, Tot.”
“So you saw the story? About Eightball?”
I nod. Even without his training, it wasn’t hard to find. When it comes to figuring out what happened twenty-six years ago on February 16th, all you really need is a newspaper from the following day: February 17th.
Twenty-six years ago, President Orson Wallace was in his final year of college at the University of Michigan.
“You did the math, didn’t you?” Tot asks.
“That what? That February 16th was a Saturday?”
This is when I’d usually see Tot’s smile creeping through his beard. Right now, though, it’s not there—even though I know Saturday was the breakthrough for him too. At this point, nearly every American has heard the story of how Wallace used to come home every weekend to check on his mom and his sick sister, who