Mean Woman Blues

happen to someone who’s too poor to get out of the hole these so-called guardians of your money can put you in.”
    They loved that one too. But Mr. Right wasn’t one not to have the last word. He signed off with a final rabble-rousing speech: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are
not
going to let some corporate leviathan get away with this! With outlandish and outrageous fees! With backing a young woman— a poor student, a struggling artist— into a corner like a dog! With never even giving her a chance to make it right! But we will make it right! The day when a solid citizen, a young woman who has done nothing wrong except to fall into the jaws of a greedy monster, can be wrongfully imprisoned and harassed is a black day indeed for America! But a new and brighter one dawns for Terri Whittaker tomorrow.”
    Again, the audience stood and cheered. Some threw coins at the set; others threw hats into the air. Still others fisted their hands and chanted: “Terri! Terri!”
    Terri left the studio feeling dazed and strangely upbeat.
I should be
, she thought.
I’ve got a suitcase full of money.
    She’d barely gotten back to the hotel when Jessie called from the lobby. “Get your Louisiana butt down here.”
    That made her laugh. She nearly ran from the dismal little room, riding an adrenaline high.
    * * *
    Isaac tried calling Terri before she went on the air, just to say, “break a leg,” but he wasn’t all that surprised when she didn’t answer; she was forever letting the battery run down. But he really wished he knew where she was staying; he wanted to make sure he had a message waiting for her when she got back from the studio. Well, no problem, he called the station and talked to the producer, who said Terri was at that moment being interviewed by the host but she was staying at the Bluebonnet Motor Lodge.
    He made himself a big bowl of popcorn, got himself an unaccustomed beer, and sat down to watch his girlfriend wow ’em. At first he had eyes only for her. To him, she was beautiful, even with the brown hair. At first he’d disapproved of her wearing the gold cross, thinking it too calculated, but it sure looked good glinting in the lights.
    The host gave him the creeps from the get-go. Everything about him looked and sounded phony, from his carefully styled hair to his weirdly familiar voice, with the ersatz English accent. The way he moved gave Isaac the creeps.
    When Terri started to talk, the camera came to rest on Mr. Right, showing the compassion in his face. Isaac had a weird, creepy sense of déjà vu. Something wasn’t right with this guy, and he’d seen it before.
    But where?
    He lost all interest in the content of the show. He put his entire focus on observing Mr. Right, listening to him, watching his eyes.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    Mr. Right’s first thought was that everything was fine, it was just a coincidence.
No one
, absolutely no one could penetrate his disguise. He was going all the way, and he’d thought of everything. He was Mr. Right; he was no longer Errol Jacomine. Even his own son wouldn’t know him.
    His second thought was that it was a setup. He felt sweat popping out under his fine mane of white hair. It had happened before. Even at his finest moments in his other lives, he had felt the clammy grip of fear, had felt himself zigzagging wildly between his trademark sublime confidence and a crazy, paralyzing tenor. This was just one of the zigzags, the first of many he’d suffer before he achieved his final goal. It was nothing, just one of those moments of panic the great have to live with, the kind of thing a president must feel before pushing the button.
    He tried to calm himself, to let in the suggestion that he’d been wrong about this, that somehow he’d overlooked something. This was his own son’s girlfriend, or somebody who claimed to be, and she was about to be on his show.
    Oh, hell, no!
No, it wasn’t that. The truth hit him like an anvil. This was someone sent by the Devil-Spawn to make him blow his own cover.
    Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He could see it. Nobody knew who he was, except Rosemarie, and she had everything to gain by keeping him where he was. But somebody who knew him might have seen the show, picked up some little thing— hell, maybe the way he moved or something— and dropped a dime to Devil-Cop. His confidence came back for a moment: Was that conceivable?
    He had to be calm here. After all, he had a contingency plan; he never did anything without a