Failed State

by Christopher Brown

  “Just give me one more day,” said Donny. “Trust me.”

  “I did trust you, against my better judgment. I knew this was a stupid idea, to let you get in the middle of this. I am going to have to take care of this myself.”

  “Better you than Lecker. He has his own agenda.”

  “He just wants to make sure we can feed our people, Donny. Heather may be a little lost right now, but she’ll come around. I just need more time with her.”

  “Be careful, Lou. She and her friend are pretty wild. And I think they may be coming your way.”

  That caught him up short. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  “You would be surprised. Listen. I’m here. In Dallas. We need to meet in person. It will be safer. And maybe we can all sit down and work something out.”

  “I’ll talk to you later, Donny.”

  “Suit yourself,” said Donny. “But be careful. Don’t assume the guards protecting your gated compound there are actually doing their job. And if you change your mind, I’m going to meet with Lecker first thing tomorrow.”

  He wanted to ask Lou if he had ever played Wrath of Atlantis, but he knew he wasn’t the type.

  54

  From the airport, Donny went to visit his mom at her condo in downtown Dallas. It was Sunday night. Before politics pulled them apart, Sunday night was when they used to always try to talk or, if they were both in town, have dinner. And because it was the weekend, Mom’s boyfriend was there.

  “Hello, Judge,” said Donny, when he opened the door.

  “Hello, Donny,” said the father figure Donny least wanted to see.

  It was since the uprising that the Honorable Harold W. Broyles had been dating Donny’s mom, a turn of events that was more surprising to Donny at first than the uprising itself. And then Donny saw them together and realized it was actually a pretty good fit. Both lawyers, around the same age, with a similar social background—his mom, like Broyles, was blue-blood Houston. And with similar politics, though his mom was more loyal to the now-lost cause than Broyles was, the allegiance of a convert to the cause—where Broyles had just adapted his immutable values to the situation at hand.

  “Is she here?” said Donny.

  “No, Donny,” said Broyles. “Catherine is out. She went to a movie with Ellen.”

  Donny didn’t know who Ellen was.

  “Okay,” said Donny. “It was a stupid idea anyway.”

  “What was a stupid idea?”

  Broyles was an old man now, but a fit one, and while his face showed its age his eyes still had that same edge.

  “Coming here. I just thought—”

  He had thought maybe he could hit his rich mom up for the money he owed Thelen. It was an idea so obvious that he had considered it before he went to New Orleans, only to convince himself that his elaborate scheme would be easier than swallowing his pride and his political disagreement along with it. And now that his scheme had crashed and burned like some ill-designed early flying machine, and he looked for gold BMWs around every corner as he snuck back into Dallas, coming here also seemed like a good way to evade his creditors.

  “I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you,” said Broyles. “She should be back soon. Come on in. I was just reading.”

  Broyles, like Joyce, had a proclivity for Bach. But where she preferred guitar, Broyles liked the piano. You could hear the record playing from inside.

  “You sure it’s cool?” said Donny.

  “It’s cool,” said Broyles, making fun of the phrase at the same time as he meant it.

  The condo was nice, not big. It had a view to the west, high enough up that you could see the outline of downtown Fort Worth backlit by the little bit of light that was still in the western sky, and the green of the Tripto Labs farms fading to black. There was only one contrail arcing across the overburned sky, a late-breaking reminder of the things they had done to get them here, and the habits they had tried to break too late for it to do much good.

  “Can I get you a drink?” said Broyles.

  “Whatever you’re having,” said Donny.

  “I suppose you want ice?”

  “Only if it’s the cheap stuff. Not cored from the time of the Trojans.”

  Broyles laughed.

  “Sit down,” he said.

  The decor in his mom’s living room was modernist, which was paradoxical in a way since her ideas were not, at least to Donny’s sensibility, modern. Unless by modern you meant the thinking of the heart of the century before, that thought of itself as forward but was really just streamlining very old thinking.

  Maybe Donny’s newer ideas of what a better future could be like were no more than an updated version of the same thing. Whenever people set out to make things better by design, to improve on nature, they almost always made things worse. Joyce was right about that.

  “Here you go,” said Broyles, handing him a glass of scotch and sitting across from him.

  Donny recognized the record now. It was one of those performances by Raquel Wang, the Baltimore-born prodigy who had been such a big deal a few years earlier for her electric piano interpretations of Bach’s organ works. People said that you could hear the sound of the artist crying into her instrument if you listened closely, but Donny never listened closely. He was too distracted by her politics. By what they liked to call at the time “the sound of the coming age.” The coming age that was now long gone.

  “What are you reading?” said Donny.

  Broyles held up his book. Burr, by Edward Alvarez.

  “Heard of it?” he asked.

  Donny shook his head. “No, but leave it to you to read a book about a treason trial in your spare time.”

  “It’s not so much about the trial,” said Broyles. “It’s a new history of what led to the arrest and prosecution. But more than that. The writer has an agenda. Starts out making you think he’s a revolutionary, like your old clients, or a fellow traveler, like you.”

  The way Broyles said that now, it was more like talking about which football team you liked, even though they all carried the scars of what had gone down.

  “He seems to be building a kind of interesting thesis. About national rebirth. About the idea that the nation can be many nations. Or no nations at all. Just communities, but all connected.”

  “You’re a little late to the party, Judge.”

  “I didn’t say I buy it.”

  “Neither do I. But you have to admit it has a certain appeal.”

  “I suppose. But the problem is when you leave everything fragmented like that, people end up fighting. You need unification to maintain order. And that has to come from above.”

  You could hear the order in the music.

  Looking across the coffee table at this old man in his wool cardigan and wide-wale corduroys peering at him over the rim of his glasses with those incisive eyes, Donny had a flashback to when he would peer down at him from the bench. Those same eyes were scarier when they were wrapped in black robes and backed by the penal power of the state.

  “How long have you had those glasses, anyway?” asked Donny.

  Broyles took the silver wire-frames from his face, and held them up to look at.

  “Lord,” he said, as if he had never even considered that. “Since my last year in law school. I came home for Christmas break, went hunting with my dad, and realized when I went to aim that the vision had degenerated in my right eye. Doctor said the eye was essentially permanently focused at the distance of a book. Which I thought was rather annoying, until Christmas dinner when my uncle the investment banker said don’t you know the rule, Harry? Never trust a lawyer who doesn’t wear glasses.”

  “I don’t wear glasses,” said Donny.

  “Exactly,” said Broyles, smiling.

  Donny was going to make the argument that sunglasses should count, at least for certain types of lawyers, but the door opened.

  “Look what the cat drug in, Catherine,” said Broyles.

  “Oh,” said Donny’s mo
m.

  Donny was ready for her to turn red and point her finger at the door. And it looked like the thought crossed her mind. But then she smiled, a more adult variation of the “I should ground you for a year, but I’m glad you’re home” smile.

  “Come here,” she said.

  As Donny got up to hug her, he noticed the frames on the wall behind her in the hall. A picture of Donny, at his law school graduation. And next to that, an official portrait of the President.

  It didn’t stop him from asking her for help, and a place to crash.

  55

  Lecker sent a limousine to pick up Donny early the next morning. When they set out, instead of heading toward Highland Park, the limo drove west through Dealey Plaza, crossed the Trinity, and got on the freeway headed in the direction of Fort Worth.

  “Why aren’t you taking me to Dr. Lecker’s office?” said Donny, looking out the window at the shanties along the river.

  “I am taking you to Dr. Lecker’s office,” said the limo.

  “Dr. Lecker’s office is in another direction. Uptown, off Turtle Creek.”

  “I am taking you to Dr. Lecker’s other office,” said the limo.

  “And where is that?” said Donny.

  “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that.”

  “Well, I’m going to see it right through the window, and on your screen there.”

  “I’m sorry, you can’t do that,” said the limo.

  The screen display went dark. And then the windows dissolved to black. Even the windshield. Donny had never known that was a possibility, but it immediately made sense.

  Another screen dropped from the headliner, and an ad came on for commemorative plates featuring vignettes of country life before the droughts.

  “Turn that off please,” said Donny.

  It did.

  Around thirty minutes later, the limo let Donny out with a click and a hiss, the door sounding almost like an airlock as it opened. The sun was bright. Fortunately, Donny had thought to bring his sunglasses.

  He was in the middle of some kind of airport, out on the tarmac. But there were no airliners. At least, not with the logos on them. And no terminal—just hangars and blocky old one- and two-story buildings. You could hear the whine of the jets, the clanking of metal on metal, and the sound of men yelling.

  “Mr. Kimoe!” yelled one voice. Donny looked. It was Lecker’s secretary. He had gone from business casual to combat casual—a flight suit, a sidearm, and a black ball cap with the company logo. He looked fitter than he had before, like an aging wrestler who could still take you down if you pissed him off. He was waving at Donny from across the tarmac, walking in the direction of an executive jet. “Over here!”

  Donny headed that way. It was hot out there. As he walked Donny looked around. He saw helicopters being fitted with what looked like the ziplock bags of the gods, secured with frames and filled with some kind of fluid the color of cheap whisky. There was a prop plane, maybe a crop duster, getting some tubular variation of the same thing. There was a big jetliner painted matte black with no identifying insignia other than the call sign on the tail. A fuel truck was there under the wing, while other linemen loaded the luggage compartment with what looked like big metal foot lockers rolling up a mobile conveyor belt. It took two guys to load each locker onto the belt, and even then it looked heavy. Farther back was a big cargo plane, ass end open to make a ramp, up which the crew were driving a bunch of off-road-ready pickups.

  “What the hell is this place?” yelled Donny over the engine noise as he met Lecker’s secretary at the bottom of the collapsible stairs that led up into the Dornier-G.

  “Carswell Field,” the secretary yelled back. “After you.” He gestured up the ramp to the open door.

  Donny took another look around before stepping up. He’d heard of it—Carswell Field was an old air force base that had been one of many sold off to military merchant companies during the Mack administration. It was supposed to be primarily a logistics hub, but you always heard rumors about other stuff.

  Inside, the plane looked like a cramped living room, with leather armchairs for seats. Lecker was there on the phone. He signaled Donny to sit down.

  The secretary, it turned out, was also the copilot. The pilot, who glanced back as they entered, was a short and stocky blond woman who looked like she was made for kicking ass in low gravity.

  Donny took the seat Lecker had pointed at, which faced Lecker on the opposite side of a small table that folded out from the fuselage. On the table were a tablet computer, a tumbler fizzing with club soda and lime, and an aviation map of the Mississippi River delta, with New Orleans there in the upper-right-hand quadrant. The map had been annotated by hand, in a way that reminded Donny of the diagrams the coaches used to draw on the whiteboard after football practice. Diagrams Donny was so bad at understanding that they kicked him off the team before the first game sophomore year, which was not really a bad thing because Donny seriously sucked at the game, but in those days was still trying to do things that would please his dad instead of actively seeking the things that would piss him off.

  Donny looked at his onetime dentist, and onetime friend of his dad’s, sitting there planning some kind of corporate invasion of the neighboring state, and wondered which strategy he would take with this representative of the collection of fucked-up patriarchs Donny had collected in his life. A type, as he and Joyce had once joked, that America was very good at producing, Donny had a knack for getting tangled up with, and Joyce had a desire to exterminate. Of course, back then, she wanted to exterminate them with ideas.

  Through the window, Donny saw the soldiers unloading from the bus that had brought them out from one of the buildings, and then boarding the big passenger jet. They weren’t dressed like soldiers. More like the world’s biggest rich-guy hunting party, in their high-end technical gear and field wear, but each carrying an Armalite rifle along with whatever gear of their own they had brought.

  “Thank you, Governor,” said Lecker. “I will send you an update as soon as I can.”

  Then he hung up. And looked at Donny with the same kind of disappointed face as when Donny had allowed the perfectly fine tooth God had given him to get knocked loose by someone he had given lip to.

  “So you have come back empty-handed,” said Lecker.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” said Donny.

  “You are alone. Our stolen seeds are still shipping. Heather is still in their custody. You have nothing for me.”

  “Heather is free. I told Lou.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t exactly know. She took off with her boyfriend.”

  “Oh.”

  “Who is my client. The lead plaintiff in my lawsuit against a company in which I just learned you are the controlling shareholder.”

  “In which Heather’s trust is the controlling shareholder,” he corrected.

  “She told me the real deal.”

  “Did she? And what makes you think she even knows what the real deal is? She’s a lost child. A runaway. She’s lucky those treasonous terrorists haven’t killed her.”

  “I don’t know. It had the ring of truth to me. All I know is she’s free, I helped make that happen, and I want my fee.”

  “That’s not our deal at all,” said Lecker. “Lawyers are so good at changing the deal as soon as you have them write it down.”

  “Come on, Doc. You owe me and you know it. But I guess I shouldn’t expect you to honor a deal.” He gestured out the window, at the corporate army mobilizing to steal its own sovereignty. “By what right do you think you can do this, in bald violation of the Compact?”

  “The right of he whom no one will dare to stop,” said Lecker. “We have an invitation from the governor, who has deputized us members of his state guard. The state is not party to your revolutionary compact, and the territory we are repossessing belongs to the state.”

  “I have everything I need to stop you.”

  “You c
an tell me on the way there, then,” said Lecker.

  “Never mind,” said Donny. “I have a better idea.”

  He stood to leave. And it was only then that he realized the plane was in motion.

  He grabbed the seatback and turned toward the forward part of the cabin. The door was closed. And between Donny and the door stood the beefy secretary, with a metal club in his hand.

  Donny looked back at Lecker.

  “I know about your ratline, Doc.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Bruce here probably was one of the camp guards I’ve been looking for,” said Donny, nodding at the secretary. “That freaky TV pitchman grill of his should have given it away.”

  “You really do talk too much,” said Lecker.

  “That may be, but you are not going to shut me up about this one. Because I have the documentation to prove it.”

  Lecker laughed. “That’s impossible.”

  “Is it? I wasn’t surprised to learn a guy like you keeps such fastidious records, however much you try to code them. That’s probably the real reason you’re headed to New Orleans with your napalm posse. Not because they walked their debts, or because you want the real estate. You know they got their hands on enough of your files to put it together. Well, you’re too late, because they did. And they gave me a copy. And I made more copies. I brought one just for you.”

  Donny opened his briefcase and handed the document to Lecker.

  “The part about pulling their teeth and giving them new implants was a beautiful touch,” said Donny. “Too bad it achieved the opposite effect of what you intended. That was the initial key that unlocked the whole program. Now we know where every one of these bastards is.”

  Lecker was flipping the pages as Donny spoke, taking in the information.

  “What do you plan to do with this?” he asked.

  “I thought maybe we could revisit our deal.”

  56

  Donny had seen Lecker’s vision of the future. There was a whole TV show about it, back when Tripto Labs launched its first commercial plantings on land that had been reclaimed by the feds. Lecker wasn’t on it—he knew extreme wealth went best with maximum anonymity. But Helen was, because she really believed in the project—a way to do something with her money that helped people, while generating profits far beyond what the businesses she had inherited were capable of.