Election

by Brandt Legg

  “I assume you mean NorthBridge,” Rex answered. “Gutsy, bringing the battle to Wall Street.”

  “They’ve miscalculated.”

  “Depends on who they’re working for,” Rex replied with a barely audible laugh.

  “This isn’t funny.”

  “NorthBridge is courting the populists. Everyone on Main Street hates Wall Street. It was a safe bet. And they did it at sunrise, minimizing casualties. In fact, there’s already a statement on NorthBridge’s website from AKA Jefferson,” Rex said. “They issued a warning to NYPD, the fire department, and even hacked into Goldman’s internal security to force an evacuation of the building twenty-five minutes before detonation. See, they didn’t want casualties.”

  “How nice of them,” Vonner said sarcastically. “Can you reach AKA Paine?”

  “I can try.”

  “With all your magic, you still can’t get into the shadows of the world-wide web,” he said the words as if they were poison in his mouth, “and find out who and where these menaces are?”

  “Not yet.” Rex laughed.

  “Now what’s funny?”

  “Just how you can characterize a deadly terror organization that just blew up a building, has murdered a couple of presidential candidates, multiple Secret Service agents, attacked the Federal Reserve, and generally brought American intelligence and law enforcement agencies to their knees, simply as a bunch of ‘menaces’.”

  “These are dangerous times. People fear the wrong things. They always have. It isn’t the threat of World War III, or gangs rising in the street, or Islamic terrorists, it’s the people and institutions they revere, whom they should not trust . . . whom they’d be wise to fear.”

  Chapter Forty

  Rex was right. In the weeks that followed the Goldman Sachs attack, WebSkeer, a company that used algorithms to detect far more data than traditional polling could, showed support for NorthBridge had increased. WebSkeer also claimed to be able to predict, or even sway, future events by tracking keywords and other behavior across the internet. Rex, a fan of the company, had befriended one of the developers and paid him handsomely for a back door. That access allowed him to show Vonner that the billionaire was also right; the masses were indeed fearing the wrong thing.

  “Everything is mixed up,” Rex told his boss as the two sat sipping cocktails in the expansive Pacific Room back at Sun Wave, Vonner’s Carmel estate.

  “That’s how we like it,” Vonner replied, but Rex knew he was worried.

  Dangerous times, indeed, the fixer thought as he continued his efforts in tracking NorthBridge, a dozen projects meant to derail Bastendorff, and even more things aimed at pushing Hudson Pound closer to the presidency. Rex oversaw a team who made sure the media reported what Vonner wanted, and another that monitored every aspect and conversation Hudson had—at least the ones they could. Rex obsessively rolled translucent purple dice while listening to summaries. He didn’t have the time he needed to stay involved in everything, and bothered only with the bits flagged by the head of each department.

  Vonner had his own private intelligence agency—a cross between the NSA and CIA—and sixty-eight people were assigned to Hudson. They analyzed everything, looking through every thread of his life, so Vonner could be sure it all went according to plan. It frustrated Rex that he couldn’t know everything. It gave him headaches, but he continued to multi-task while multi-tasking and believed artificial intelligence would one day make it possible for him to fill every void in his knowledge. He worked for Vonner, not so much because he believed in what the billionaire was trying to do, but rather because by mixing his brain with Vonner’s incredible wealth, it was his best chance at obtaining what he craved most: unlimited knowledge.

  Hudson spent December exhaustively campaigning and preaching both the need for law and order, and the desire for change. Other candidates tried similar tactics as polling consistently showed the two biggest issues for voters were terrorism and corruption. Most people felt the politicians were merely giving lip service to those topics, while Hudson was viewed as believable. Voters thought the hardware store owner would deliver on his promises. Thus, his numbers continued to rise, along with the mudslinging from Thorne and the threats from NorthBridge.

  Vonner had pushed Hudson to spend Christmas in Florida, but the frontrunner needed a break and wanted to get back to Ohio. He’d hardly seen Melissa since Thanksgiving, and required a good dose of her grounding. Another reason called him back to the Buckeye State, and on Christmas Eve, he was finally able to tend to a pressing matter from his past.

  A chopper with armed agents patrolled the sky over Lake Hope State Park. The 120-acre body of water had three vessels patrolling, and there were six two-member units of Vonner’s special security in the woods. All of that, plus a three-person Secret Service detail for each of them. Hudson and Melissa strolled along the shore until they saw a man walking up ahead.

  “Is that him?” Melissa asked.

  Hudson stared hard at his past. “Yeah.” He then called one of the Secret Service agents over. “Listen, I just spotted an old friend of mine. I’m going to talk to him, but I don’t want to scare him.”

  “Sir, we really need to screen him.”

  “No. That’s not necessary.”

  “Sir, with all due respect, that is not your call.”

  “Actually, it is,” Hudson said. “You can follow us, but do not bother us.”

  The agent looked at Melissa, as if she might join his protest, but she did not. Instead, she nodded, signaling her approval.

  “Okay.” He went back to the other agents. They all looked over at Hudson. The senior one spoke into his wrist.

  Hudson turned to Melissa. “Thanks for helping with this.”

  She smiled.

  “So you’ll be good here?”

  “Sure. I’ll just be skipping rocks. But remember, you agreed. Don’t go too far.”

  Hudson nodded and gave her a quick kiss. He’d told her as much as he could without telling her everything. Still, it felt like he was lying to her, probably because he mostly was. The story he’d told her was that Tommy Gouge, a childhood friend who’d been down on his luck and in and out of jail for most of the past few decades, had asked Hudson for help.

  “Obviously, it’s better if I’m not seen with him, but I have to speak with him,” he’d said. Melissa had tried to talk him out of it, even offering to send someone with an envelope of cash if that’s what Hudson wanted to do, but he’d insisted. “I don’t want to insult him. He’s a good man. We grew up tough and poor. If I hadn’t joined the Army, I could have wound up just like him.” Melissa argued that point, but knew Hudson would never turn his back on a friend, and finally agreed to help facilitate the meeting.

  Hudson had cleared the encounter with one very reluctant Secret Service agent on the detail who would reassure the others. As previously planned, Gouge and Hudson crossed paths just before the trail wound into the trees. Melissa stayed back so that only three agents would follow him, but she felt safe knowing Vonner’s people in the woods would also pick them up.

  “There’s the only politician who’s survived a tangle with NorthBridge,” Gouge said, opening his arms. “You look good, Dawg.”

  “Sorry, Gouge,” Hudson said. “No contact. The Secret Service crew is already nervous they didn’t get a chance to—”

  “To shake me down?” Gouge looked back at them. “Hell, I ain’t afraid of any spooks. I knew this guy on the inside, came out of CIA special division, he told—”

  “We don’t have much time.” Hudson started walking.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gouge said, moving next to him, matching his stride. “Okay, so thanks for coming. I know you don’t want to be here, that it wasn’t easy.”

  “I’m glad to see you again.” Hudson remembered the “TRUTH” tattoo across Gouge’s fingers and thought of the lie he was telling Melissa by not telling her. Damn the past that chokes the present and terrifies our future.

 
; “Last time we talked you looked scared. Said you thought I was threatening you.” Gouge coughed. “Freaked out that I might tell and take all this away from you?”

  “The Wizard tells me you’re still my friend.” Hudson stopped walking and looked Gouge in the eye. “Are you?”

  “I don’t understand you, Dawg. How do you think we could be anything else? It’s you that should be answering that . . . Are you still my friend?”

  Hudson nodded and started walking again. Thirty paces behind them, the Secret Service detail shadowed him.

  “Anyway, a lot more than just friendship binds us together,” Gouge said, lighting a Marlboro. “But we finally have a chance to fix what happened that night.”

  “That night can’t be fixed any more than the nightmare that happened five years after it.”

  Gouge took a long drag, then slowly exhaled the smoke, watching as the bluish haze dissipated into the organic air of the woods. “You’re right, Dawg. We can’t fix it all, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to fix what we can.”

  “Have you ever thought . . . I mean, what happened that night . . . it was beyond horrible, but Rochelle didn’t have to do what she did. There were consequences and victims of her act that went beyond what—”

  Gouge glared at him. “I swear if the Secret Service wouldn’t shoot me dead, I’d knock you to the ground right now and beat the hell out of you.”

  “I can get them to stand down,” Hudson said, tensing. “I don’t need them to protect me from you.”

  “You did when we were kids.”

  “As you’re so fond of pointing out, we ain’t kids no more.”

  Gouge held a mean stare. “Rochelle was entitled to do whatever she needed. They made her into what she became.”

  “No,” Hudson said, looking off into the trees, catching a glimpse of one of Vonner’s people watching them. “She made it worse.”

  Gouge scowled. “So you aren’t going to help her?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  Gouge looked at him with a crooked smile, then nodded.

  “But first I have to win.”

  “Looks to me like no one can stop you.”

  “Really? How about NorthBridge, a handful of governors, Fonda Raton, the voters, a skeleton from a dark closet . . . ”

  Gouge shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

  “Fine, assuming I win, then . . . I’ll only have one option.”

  “A presidential pardon?”

  “Yeah, but that’s political suicide, at least until the end of my second term.”

  “Second term?” Gouge raised an eyebrow. “Look at you, Dawg. Saying you might not win, but already figurin’ on the RE-election.” Then he turned serious. “She can’t wait that long.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “No, but I’ve spent eight years in prison,” Gouge said, taking another long drag. “And she’s already done two dimes.”

  “Twenty years?” Hudson said.

  “And then some.”

  “She killed a man.”

  “She never admitted to it.”

  “We both know she did it.”

  “I don’t know nothing ‘cept if Rochelle did it, she had a right to do it.”

  “So you want my first act as President of the United States to be to pardon a murderer?”

  “It’s the right thing to do.”

  “How am I ever going to explain it?” Hudson looked back at the Secret Service agents and lowered his voice to a whisper. “What will I say when they ask me why I pardoned the woman who assassinated the governor of Ohio?”

  Chapter Forty-One

  The day after Christmas, Hudson spent a few hours in one of his hardware stores. Melissa thought it was a bad idea, but he told her it would help to clear his mind before they hit the campaign trail again the next morning. Schueller and Florence were back catching up on their lives, with full Secret Service protection. Fitz and Hudson had agreed the “kids” could sit out December and rejoin the campaign in January.

  The Secret Service and Vonner’s people had doubled protection around the store, and yet somehow, they didn’t bother the customers too much. Most of the locals were respectful of Hudson’s privacy, although quite a few of them couldn’t resist wishing him well when they found him on the retail floor.

  “Can you tell me where to find a plunger?” a woman asked him from behind. “There’s a big clog of . . . stuff that I’m trying to clear up.”

  The familiar voice filled him with dread and despair. Hudson turned slowly. “I have nothing to say to you, Ms. Raton.”

  She smiled big and pulled her head back as if surprised. “Oh, come on, Hudson. After all we’ve been through and you’re still not calling me Fonda.”

  “I could call you all kinds of things, but ‘Fonda’ isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.”

  She laughed. “I’ll bet.”

  “I’m serious,” he said, moving past her. “I have nothing to say to you.”

  “Oh, I think you do.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  “Really? You don’t want to talk about Rochelle Rogers?”

  Hudson froze.

  She walked around to face him. “See, I thought you’d—” His expression, much more panicked than she’d expected, surprised her. It looked like genuine fear, but then she decided it was more like terror. Fonda moved in for the kill. “What about Thomas Gouge? Or Cabot Schifflet? Wade Allen, Mooney Moore, Louis Rich, Michael Plummer, Richard Hirsh—”

  “Wait.”

  “Oh, I’ve got more,” she said. “Seems Vonner and Booker Lipton aren’t the only criminals you associate with. In fact, you have twenty-one people with criminal records working for your hardware stores—ex-cons, felons, all kinds of baaad people. Even two of your army buddies went on to serve time. And this Gouge character, he’s got an ugly record. It’s three pages long. I have it right here. Do you want to take a look?”

  Hudson shook his head.

  “Apparently, you two were good friends back in the day. Were you also friends with Rochelle Rogers? Did you know she killed the governor of Ohio?” She smiled as if she’d just given him a cupcake. “Yes, of course you knew.”

  Hudson noticed several customers listening. “Gouge and Rochelle went to the same school as I did. She was a few grades back.” His mouth was clumsy and dry. The words stuck in the back of his throat, seemingly trying to push through dust and cobwebs, as if he were forcing them through time. “The others are good people. I’ve always believed in giving folks a second chance. We have a program to help them get back on their feet.” Hudson stared off to a display of hinges and locksets, suddenly feeling dizzy. “Can we go back to my office?”

  “Oh . . . ” Fonda smiled and mock fanned herself. “My, my, now I’m invited back to the king’s chambers?”

  He looked from her to the customers.

  Fonda winked at a chubby man holding a gallon of paint and a couple of brushes. “He wants to have a chat . . . in private,” she whispered loudly to the customer. “What do you think? Should I risk it?”

  The man looked at her, confused.

  “Could be an escaped convict back there,” Fonda added, laughing. “If I’m not back in an hour, send help.”

  “Fonda, please,” Hudson implored, seeing the man with the paint was also uncomfortable, and others were gathering. A Secret Service agent moved closer.

  “Oh, it’s ‘Fonda’ now?” She smiled coyly. “Why yes, Hudson, I’d be delighted.” She bent her arm in his direction, waiting to be escorted.

  “It’s okay, Sammy,” Hudson said to the man with the paint. “She’s a reporter trying to get a story.”

  Sammy nodded, as if that answered everything.

  “Remember, Sammy,” Fonda yelled as she followed Hudson to the back. “If you don’t hear from me, call the law.”

  The man, as if trying to distance himself from the reporter, backed into a cardboard bin of paint roller covers and nearly k
nocked it over. Fonda could hardly suppress a smile as she and Hudson vanished behind the swinging doors.

  Once in his office, Fonda lounged back in a chair across from his desk as if she were a frequent visitor. “Nice touch,” she noted, pointing to a large POUND FOR PRESIDENT poster hanging on one of the walls. “That wasn’t here last time.”

  “Fonda, please, you can’t post this story.”

  “What story?” She studied him closely during a long pause. “Oh, you mean the one about your crime syndicate?”

  “Crime syndicate!?”

  “What would you call it when a man has close ties to more than two dozen criminals, embezzlers, thieves, and murderers?”

  “Rochelle is the only murderer on that list.”

  “Not true.”

  Hudson looked surprised.

  “Cabot Schifflet.”

  “Oh, come on, that was involuntary manslaughter. It was an accident.”

  “Have fun explaining that to the voters.” She smiled. “And then there’s Vonner and Booker.”

  “Really? Who did they murder?”

  “Do you want a list? It’s a long one.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “They haven’t been convicted because they also kill the witnesses.”

  “Do you have any proof?”

  “If I had enough, don’t you think I would have already posted a story?”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “I’ve got enough proof about your gang of criminals. Care to comment?”

  “Don’t run it.”

  “Why not?”

  “You just can’t.”

  Fonda laughed easily. “Do you know who I am? We’re not really old friends. Maybe if I’d robbed a liquor store, we’d be friends, but I didn’t, and we’re not, so you don’t get to ask me to trust you. I’m not interested in doing you a favor.”

  “Just what do you have against me?”

  “Vonner.”

  “You don’t like Vonner, so you’re going to ruin me?”

  “Ruin you? Is this story going to ruin you?” Fonda cocked her head for a moment and then squinted her eyes. “Talk to me, Hudson. I may not be able to trust you, but you can trust me.”