The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

“You said you were going to the four-fifteen White House press conference,” Dillworth said. “Ask Porky. Don’t take no for an answer.”

John David “Jack” Parker, the White House spokesman, was sometimes unkindly referred to—the forty-two-year-old Vermont native was a little on the far side of pleasingly plump—as Porky Parker. And sometimes, when his responses to questions tested the limits of credulity, some members of the Fourth Estate had been known to make oink-oink sounds from the back of the White House press room.

“Okay, I’ll do it. How do I get in touch with you if I decide this goes any further?”

Eleanor Dillworth slid a small sheet of notebook paper across the table.

“If there’s no answer, say you’re Joe Smith and leave a number.”

[FOUR]

The Press Room

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C.

1715 2 February 2007

“Well, that’s it, fellows,” Jack Parker said. “We agreed that these would last one hour, and that’s what the clock says.”

Ignoring muted oink-oink sounds from the back of the room, he left the podium and headed for the door, where he was intercepted by Roscoe J. Danton of The Washington Times-Post.

“Aw, come on, Roscoe, this one-hour business was as much your idea as anybody else’s.”

“Well, screw you,” Danton said, loud enough for other members of the Fourth Estate also bent on intercepting Porky to hear, and at the same time asking with a pointed finger and a raised eyebrow if he could go to Parker’s office as soon as the area emptied.

Parker nodded, just barely perceptibly.

Danton went out onto the driveway and smoked a cigarette. Smoking was prohibited in the White House, the rule strictly enforced when anyone was watching. And then he went back into the White House.

“What do you need, Roscoe?” Parker asked.

“Tell me about the Office of Organizational Analysis and Colonel Carlos Costello. Castillo.”

Parker thought, shrugged, and said, “I draw a blank.”

“Can you check?”

“Sure. In connection with what?”

“I have some almost certainly unreliable information that he and the Office of Organizational Analysis were involved in almost starting World War Three.”

“One hears a lot of rumors like that about all kinds of people, doesn’t one?” Parker said mockingly. “There was one going around that the Lambda Legal Foundation were the ones behind it; somebody told them they stone gays in the Congo.”

“Shame on you!” Danton said. “Check it for me, will you?”

Parker nodded.

“Thanks.”

[FIVE]

The City Room

The Washington Times-Post