Acts of Mercy by Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Malzberg Page B

accomplished without incident had failed to ease his mind. But now that he was in California again, approaching the Presidential Special and soon to be at The Hollows, a sense of optimism had begun to return to him. He always seemed to feel more sanguine about things when he was away from the Washington milieu, the austere atmosphere of the White House. Truman had been right: no man in his right mind would ever enjoy living in that place. And that, of course, was why all the presidents in the past several decades had taken every opportunity to go elsewhere—Roosevelt to Warm Springs, Truman himself to Independence, Eisenhower to Camp David, Kennedy to the family home in Hyannisport, Johnson to his Texas ranch, Nixon to Key Biscayne and San Clemente and Camp David, Carter to his Georgia farm. Despite all the negativism in the press about his own California trips, Augustine thought, the simple truth was that a “Washington Presidency” was a figment of the Constitution. The country could be run just as effectively outside the Capital.
    He smiled at Claire as they neared U.S. Car Number One, to let her know he felt cheered, but her answering smile was preoccupied and mechanical. Her mood had matched his in the past eighteen hours: withdrawn, silent, morose. Which was not like her at all, though understandable in the circumstances. Neither of them had mentioned Briggs since he had conveyed Justice’s report to her; and neither of them had slept much last night, nor on the flight from Washington this morning.
    When they reached the portable metal steps Augustine turned briefly to wave at the gaggle of photographers and reporters that had followed onto the station platform. Flash. bulbs popped; television cameras whirred. From out at the front of the station he could hear the voices of the wellwishers who had gathered to greet him when his limousine arrived from the airport—a much smaller crowd than even on his last visit ten days ago. But that would change once he got his campaign into full swing. They would come in droves then, as they had four years ago; all over the country they would come out in droves when the Presidential Special came whistling in.
    He noticed Justice standing a few feet away, looking as unobtrusive as always but with dark smudges under his eyes that said his night had also been mostly sleepless. They had exchanged but a few words this morning and none at all since leaving Washington; everything that needed to be said about Briggs had been spoken last night, and any further dialogue at this time would have been painful for both of them.
    Augustine stood a moment longer, smiling impersonally for the cameras, sniffing the good oily machine odor of railroad stations everywhere. Then he turned and helped Claire up the steps, boarded after her and followed her into the corridor of U.S. Car Number One. At the door of her compartment she stopped and turned to him, putting her hand gently on his arm.
    “I think I’ll lie down for a while, Nicholas,” she said.
    “Don’t you feel well?”
    “I’m just tired. You ought to rest too, dear.”
    “I will, a little later.”
    She nodded, turned as Elizabeth Miller came up and asked her something about a secretarial matter. Augustine left her with Elizabeth and went up the empty corridor to his office at the far end. Just as he reached it, someone—Maxwell Harper—called his name. He sighed softly, glanced back and waited for Harper to approach him.
    Maxwell had tried to get him alone at Dulles and again on Air Force One—plainly, he had something on his mindbut Augustine had been in no mood to listen to one of Harper’s lectures. Nor was he now, for that matter. A brilliant man, Maxwell, but you could not interact with him on an emotional level; he thought only in terms of facts and figures, causes and effects, and dry intellectual syllogisms. It was exactly for that reason that Augustine could never tell him about the Briggs decision. Harper would be