Jerry Mills stutter-stepped, and almost froze as he crossed the dining room of Il Rosa. It was bad enough that Phil Mahoney was in the same restaurant, but the guy was sitting with Reuben Hartman, the man he was meeting for lunch.
What the hell was this ass doing here?
He wanted to turn and leave, but he was too far into the room, and Hartman had spotted him and waved. Then Mahoney had turned around to see him.
Mahoney watched as Hartman took a drink of water, and began.
“I have an uncle, my father’s younger brother. He’s either eighty-seven or eighty-eight. Or he could be ninety-two. No one seems to know his real age for certain. He owns a bar on the corner of Fifty-fourth and Ninth. The Kildare Tavern,” Hartman said.
“Kildare?”
“It’s a county in Ireland.”
“No kidding. How the hell did one of the Hartmans come to own an Irish bar?”
Phil Mahoney didn’t like the feel of this. He had been a big time newspaper columnist, and he knew when someone was trying to set him up. The old guy sitting across the table was up to something.
“What’s going on here, Reuben?” he asked.
“This hearing of the Senate Committee on Hearings to Get to the Bottom of Things, will now begin. I’m Senator Jeffrey Boone. To my left is the committee’s co-chair, Senator Richard Doggle. Our first witness is Mr. Herbert B. Evasive. Mr. Evasive is the chief executive officer of URConnected. Mr. Evasive, before we get to questions from committee members, do you have an opening statement?”
Herb B. Evasive: “So…first, I want to thank Senators Boone and Doggle for inviting, summoning, and subpoenaing, me and my executive team to appear before the comimittee. We know privacy is of the utmost importance to the American people, and we are honored to have been forced, and shamed into appearing.”
As soon as MacKay heard the doorbell ring, he bolted up the stairs in a panic, stumbling toward the top and falling face-first onto the carpeted landing of the second floor hallway.
“Son of a bitch, McKay was heard to scream,” he yelled.
When last we left Jack McKay, the TV news anchor was struggling to understand why he could only speak as if reading a news story. McKay was on his way home, hoping his wife would have some answers.
McKay drove straight home, scrapping plans to stop at the cleaners and pick up his suits and shirts, for fear someone would say hello, or try to engage him in conversation. He tossed aside the idea of stopping to fill up the tank on the leased Mercedes for the same reason.