DADDY, WHAT’S SEVEN-CYCLE sound?” Kerry asked at the dinner table.

     The president nearly choked on his clam chowder. Some of it shot out of his nose, spraying all over the table cloth.

     “Where’d you hear about seven-cycle sound?” he asked, wiping chowder off his mouth and chin with his presidential napkin.

     “At school today,” she answered.

     “What, like in science class?” he asked.

     The president’s wife stopped eating and was looking at her husband with concern.

     "In last period. We were just messing around, waiting for the bell to ring, when the PA came on and some man said, ‘Kerry, ask your dad about seven-cycle sound,’” she said. “So what is it?”

     “Never you mind,” the president said, as he leaned over toward his wife and said in a diminutive voice, “I think we’re gonna have to have a little chat with the provost.”

     The president signaled his Secret Service escort, standing just outside the door to the family quarters, and asked him to get Tidwell -- ASAP.

     Tidwell appeared moments later. When asked by the president why he hadn’t heard about this before, Tidwell said he didn’t want to bother him until he knew for sure what really happened. He said, “They found an iPhone and a small amplifier inside the speaker cabinet in Kelly’s last-period classroom, hooked into the speaker.”

     “So someone had to know that Kelly went to that school,” the president said, “what classes she took, and in what order, and had to have physical access. Are there surveillance cameras that track movement in and out of the classrooms?”

     “As you’ll recall, I recommended that, but there was so much flak from some of the senators and congressmen who have kids there over the issue of privacy,” Tidwell explained.

     “Flak or not, overtly or covertly, I want cameras -- with permanent storage -- in place before the first bell tomorrow morning.”

     "Got it. Changing subjects,” Tidwell said, “I left a report on your desk concerning the vice president’s Redskins’ adventure.”

     “Yeah, someone told me you guys locked the place down.”

     “It looks like your pen pal had a private one-on-one with McClure right after halftime.”

     “What do you mean ‘one-on-one?’”

     “He hot-wired the chair McClure was sitting in with a Bluetooth earpiece,” Tidwell said.

     “What was the essence?” the president asked.

     “He told McClure about the proposed pardon--”

     “Shit!” the president cut him off. “That’s all we need. And now every congressman and senator will be looking into seven-cycle sound before the day’s out, thanks to that announcement at Kelly’s school.”

     “It gets better.” Tidwell took back the conversation. “He told McClure that you were stalling for six months and asked him, if he were president, would he let political expedience delay a pardon?”

     “What’d he say to that?”

     “He said he told him he wouldn’t wait,” Tidwell said.

     “The bastard!” the president exclaimed.

     “He told our guys he would actually do what you did, but thought it best to placate the guy,” Tidwell explained.

     “He’s just covering his ass,” the president said. “I assume you locked down the place and found nothing.”

     “I wouldn’t say nothing. The Bluetooth was connected by radio with--”

     “What do you bet -- another fucking iPhone," the president interrupted. “This is getting out of control. I’m gonna have to pardon him now -- publicly -- but we can’t let anyone know he’s behind the armored car heists.”

     “You can do a private pardon for his associates. He should be OK with that,” Tidwell suggested. “Then we can take the whole lot of them off the face of the earth.”

     “My thoughts exactly,” echoed the president. “‘But it has to look like an accident.”

     “Or,” Tidwell said, “natural causes.”