The race was over, barring an unforeseen catastrophe.
BUSTER’S FIRST JOB at Trumble was running a Weed Eater, for which he earned a starting wage of twenty cents an hour. It was either that or mopping floors in the cafeteria. He chose the weed eating because he liked the sun and vowed that his skin would not turn as pale as some of the bleached-out inmates he’d seen. Nor would he get fat like some of them. This is prison, he kept telling himself, how can they be so fat?
He worked hard in the bright sun, kept his tan, vowed to keep his flat stomach, and tried gamely to go through the motions. But after ten days Buster knew he would not last for forty-eight years.
Forty-eight years! He couldn’t begin to comprehend such time. Who could?
He’d cried for the first forty-eight hours.
Thirteen months earlier he and his father were running their dock, working on boats, fishing twice a week in the Gulf.
He worked slowly around the concrete edge of the basketball court where a rowdy game was in progress. Then to the big sandbox where they sometimes played volleyball. In the distance, a solitary figure was walking around the track, an old-looking man with his long gray hair in a ponytail and with no shirt. He looked vaguely familiar. Buster worked both edges of a sidewalk, making his way to the track.
The lone walker was Finn Yarber, one of the judges who was trying to help him. He moved around the oval at a steady pace, head level, back and shoulders stiff and erect, not a picture of athleticism but not bad for a sixty-year-old man. He was barefoot and barebacked, sweat rolling off his leathery skin.
Buster turned off the Weed Eater and placed it on the ground. When Yarber drew near, he saw the kid and said, “Hello, Buster. How’s it goin?”
“I’m still here,” the kid said. “Mind if I walk with you?”
“Not at all,” Finn said without breaking stride.
They did an eighth of a mile before Buster could find the courage to say, “So how about my appeals?”
“Judge Beech is lookin at it. The sentencing appears to be in order, which is not good news. A lot of guys get here with flaws in their sentencing, and we can usually file a couple of motions and knock off a few years. Not so with you. I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. What’s a few when you have forty-eight? Twenty-eight, thirty-eight, forty-eight, what does it matter?”
“You still have your appeals. There’s a chance the decision can be overturned.”
“A slim chance.”
“You can’t give up hope, Buster,” Yarber said, without the slightest trace of conviction. Keeping some measure of hope meant keeping some faith in the system. Yarber certainly had none. He’d been framed and railroaded by the same law he’d once defended.
But at least Yarber had enemies, and he could almost understand why they came after him.
This poor boy had done nothing wrong. Yarber had read enough of his file to believe Buster was completely innocent, another victim of an overzealous prosecutor.
It appeared, at least from the record, that the kid’s father may have been hiding some cash, but nothing serious. Nothing to warrant a 160-page conspiracy indictment.
Hope. He felt like a hypocrite for even thinking the word. The appeals courts were now packed with rightwing law and order types, and it was a rare drug case that got reversed. They’d slam-dunk the kid’s appeal with a rubber stamp, and tell themselves they were making the streets safer.
The biggest coward had been the trial judge. Prosecutors are expected to indict the world, but the judges are supposed to weed out the fringe defendants. Buster and his father should’ve been separated from the Colombians and their cohorts, and sent home before the trial began.
Now one was dead. The other was ruined. And nobody in the federal criminal system gave a damn. It was just another drug conspiracy.
At the first curve of the oval, Yarber slowed, then stopped. He looked off in the distance, beyond a grassy field to the edge of a treeline. Buster looked too. For ten days he’d been looking at the perimeter of Trumble, and seeing what wasn’t there—fences, razor wire, guard towers.
“Last guy who left here,” Yarber said, gazing at nothing, “left through those trees. They’re thick for a few miles, then you come to a country road.”
“Who was he?”
“A guy named Tommy Adkins. He was a banker in North Carolina, got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”
“What happened to him?”
“He went crazy and walked away one day. He was gone six hours before anybody knew it. A month later they found him in a motel room in Cocoa Beach, not the cops but the maids. He was curled in the fetal position on the floor, naked, suckin his thumb, his mind completely gone. They put him in some mental joint.”
“Six hours, huh?”
“Yeah, it happens about once a year. Somebody just walks away. They notify the cops in your hometown, put your name in the national computers, the usual drill.”
“How many get caught?”
“Almost all.”
“Almost.”
“Yeah, but they get caught because they do dumb things. Get drunk in bars. Drive cars with no taillights. Go see their girlfriends.”
“So if you had a brain you could pull it off?”
“Sure. Careful planning, a little cash, it would be easy.”
They began walking again, a bit slower. “Tell me something, Mr. Yarber,” Buster said. “If you were facing forty-eight years, would you take a walk?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t have a dime.”
“I do.”
“Then you’ll help me.”
“We’ll see. Give it some time. Settle in here. They’re watchin you a bit closer because you’re new, but with time they’ll forget about you.”
Buster actually smiled. His sentence had just been reduced dramatically.
“You know what happens if you get caught?” Yarber said.
“Yeah, they add some more years. Big deal. Maybe I’ll get fifty-eight. No sir, if I get caught, I blow my brains out.”
“That’s what I’d do. You have to be prepared to leave the country.”
“And go where?”
“Go someplace where you look like the locals, and where they don’t extradite to the U.S.”
“Anyplace in particular?”
“Argentina or Chile. You speak any Spanish?”
“No.”
“Start learnin. We have Spanish lessons here, you know. Some of the Miami boys teach them.”
They walked a lap in silence as Buster reconsidered his future. His feet were lighter, his shoulders straighter, and he couldn’t keep a grin off his face.
“Why are you helping me?” he asked.
“Because you’re twenty-three years old. Too young and too innocent. You’ve been screwed by the system, Buster. You have the right to fight back any way you can. Do you have a girlfriend?”
“Sort of.”
“Forget about her. She’ll only get you in trouble. Besides, you think she’ll wait forty-eight years?”
“She said she would.”
“She’s lyin. She’s already playin the field. Forget about her, unless you want to get caught.”
Yeah, he’s probably right, thought Buster. He’d yet to get a letter from her, and though she lived only four hours away she hadn’t made it to Trumble. They’d talked twice on the phone, and all she seemed to care about was whether he’d been attacked.
“Any kids?” asked Yarber.
“No. Not that I know of.”
“What about your mother?”
“She died when I was very young. My dad raised me. It was just the two of us.”
“Then you’re the perfect guy to walk away.”
“I’d like to leave now.”
“Be patient. Let’s plan it carefully.”
Another lap, and Buster wanted to sprint. He couldn’t think of a damned thing he’d miss in Pensacola. He’d made A’s and B’s in Spanish in high school,
and while he couldn’t remember any of it, he hadn’t struggled with the material. He’d pick it up fast. He’d take the courses and hang out with the Latins.
The more he walked the more he wanted his conviction to be affirmed. And the quicker the better. If it got reversed, he’d be forced to have another trial, and he had no confidence in the next jury.
Buster wanted to run, starting over there in the grassy field, to the treeline, through the woods to the country road where he wasn’t sure what to do next. But if an insane banker could walk away and make it to Cocoa Beach, so could he.
“Why haven’t you walked away?” he asked Yarber.
“I’ve thought about it. But in five years they’ll let me go. I can last that long. I’ll be sixty-five, in good health, with a life expectancy of sixteen years. That’s what I’m livin for, Buster, the last sixteen years. I don’t wanna be lookin over my shoulder.”
“Where will you go?”
“Don’t know yet. Maybe a little village in the Italian countryside. Maybe the mountains of Peru. I’ve got the whole world to choose from, and I spend hours every day just dreamin about it.”
“So you have plenty of money?”
“No, but I’m gettin there.”
That raised a number of questions, but Buster let them pass. He was learning that in prison you kept most of your questions to yourself.
When Buster was tired of walking, he stopped near his Weed Eater. “Thanks, Mr. Yarber,” he said.
“No problem. Just keep it between the two of us.”
“Sure. I’m ready whenever you are.”
Finn was off, pacing another lap, his shorts now soaked with sweat, his gray ponytail dripping with moisture. Buster watched him go, then for a second looked across the grassy field, into the trees.
At that moment, he could see all the way to South America.
TWENTY-FOUR
FOR TWO LONG, HARD months Aaron Lake and Governor Tarry had gone head to head, toe to toe, coast to coast, in twenty-six states with almost 25 million votes cast. They’d pushed themselves with eighteen-hour days, brutal schedules, relentless travel, the typical madness of a presidential race.
Yet they’d worked just as hard to avoid a face-to-face debate. Tarry didn’t want one in the early primaries because he was the front-runner. He had the organization, the cash, the favorable polls. Why legitimize the opposition? Lake didn’t want one because he was a newcomer to the national scene, a novice at high-stakes campaigning, and besides it was much easier to hide behind a script and a friendly camera and make ads whenever needed. The risks of a live debate were simply too high.
Teddy didn’t like the thought of one either.
But campaigns change. Front-runners fade, small issues become big ones, the press can create a crisis simply out of boredom.
Tarry decided he needed a debate because he was broke, and losing one primary after another. “Aaron Lake is trying to buy this election,” he said over and over. “And I want to confront him, man to man.” It sounded good, and the press had beaten it to death.
“He’s running from a debate,” Tarry declared, and the pack liked that too.
“The governor’s been dodging a debate since Michigan” was Lake’s standard response.
And so for three weeks they played the he’s-running-from-me game until their people quietly worked out the details.
Lake was reluctant, but he also needed a forum. Though he was winning week after week, he was rolling over an opponent who’d been fading for a long time. His polls and D-PAC’s polls showed a great deal of voter interest in him, but mainly because he was new and handsome and seemingly electable.
Unknown to outsiders, the polls also showed some very soft areas. The first was on the question of Lake’s single-issue campaign. Defense spending can excite the voters for only so long, and there was great concern, in the polls, about where Lake stood on other issues.
Second, Lake was still five points behind the Vice President in their hypothetical November matchup. The voters were tired of the Vice President, but at least they knew who he was. Lake remained a mystery to many. Also, the two would debate several times prior to November. Lake, who had the nomination in hand, needed the experience.
Tarry didn’t help matters with his constant query, “Who is Aaron Lake?” With some of his few remaining funds, he authorized the printing of bumper stickers with the now famous question—Who is Aaron Lake?
(It was a question Teddy asked himself almost every hour, but for a different reason.)
The setting of the debate was in Pennsylvania at a small Lutheran college with a cozy auditorium, good acoustics and light, a controllable crowd. Even the smallest of details were haggled over by the two camps, but because both sides now needed a debate agreements were eventually reached. The precise format had nearly caused fistfights, but once ironed out it gave everybody something. The media got three reporters on the stage to ask direct questions during one segment. The spectators got twenty minutes to ask about anything, with nothing screened. Tarry, a lawyer, wanted five minutes for opening remarks and a ten-minute closing statement. Lake wanted thirty minutes of one-on-one debate with Tarry, no holds barred, no one to referee, just the two of them slugging it out without rules. This had terrified the Tarry camp, and had almost broken the deal.
The moderator was a local public radio figure, and when he said, “Good evening, and welcome to the first and only debate between Governor Wendell Tarry and Congressman Aaron Lake,” an estimated 18 million people were watching.
Tarry wore a navy suit his wife had selected, with the standard blue shirt and the standard red and blue tie. Lake wore a dashing light brown suit, a white shirt with a spread collar, and a tie of red and maroon and a half-dozen other colors. The entire ensemble had been put together by a fashion consultant, and was designed to complement the colors of the set. Lake’s hair had received a tinting. His teeth had been bleached. He’d spent four hours in a tanning bed. He looked thin and fresh, and anxious to be onstage.
Governor Tarry was himself a handsome man. Though he was only four years older than Lake, the campaign was taking a heavy toll. His eyes were tired and red. He’d gained a few pounds, especially in his face. When he began his opening remarks, beads of sweat popped up along his forehead and glistened in the lights.
Conventional wisdom held that Tarry had more to lose because he’d already lost so much. Early in January, he’d been declared, by prophets as prescient as Time magazine, to have the nomination within his grasp. He’d been running for three years. His campaign was built on grassroots support and shoe leather. Every precinct captain and poll worker in Iowa and New Hampshire had drunk coffee with him. His organization was impeccable.
Then came Lake with his slick ads and single-issue magic.
Tarry badly needed either a stunning performance by himself, or a major gaffe by Lake.
He got neither. By a flip of the coin, he was chosen to go first. He stumbled badly in his opening remarks as he moved stiffly around the stage, trying desperately to look at ease but forgetting what his notes said. Sure he’d once been a lawyer, but his specialty had been securities. As he forgot one point after another, he returned to his common theme—Mr. Lake here is trying to buy this election because he has nothing to say. A nasty tone developed quickly. Lake smiled handsomely; water off a duck’s back.
Tarry’s weak beginning emboldened Lake, gave him a shot of confidence, and convinced him to stay behind the podium where it was safe and where his notes were. He began by saying that he wasn’t there to throw mud, that he had respect for Governor Tarry, but they had just listened to him speak for five minutes and eleven seconds and he’d said nothing positive.
He then ignored his opponent, and briefly covered three issues that needed to be discussed. Tax relief, welfare reform, and the trade deficit. Not a word about defense.
The first question from the panel of reporters was directed at Lake, and it dealt with the budget surplus. What should be done
with the money? It was a soft pitch, lobbed by a friendly reporter, and Lake was all over it. Save Social Security, he answered, then in an impressive display of financial straight talk he outlined precisely how the money should be used. He gave figures and percentages and projections, all from memory.
Governor Tarry’s response was simply to cut taxes. Give the money back to the people who’d earned it.
Few points were scored during the questioning. Both candidates were well prepared. The surprise was that Lake, the man who wanted to own the Pentagon, was so well versed in all other issues.
The debate settled into the usual give and take. The questions from the spectators were thoroughly predictable. The fireworks began when the candidates were allowed to quiz one another. Tarry went first, and, as expected, asked Lake if he was trying to buy the election.
“You weren’t concerned about money when you had more than everybody else,” Lake shot back, and the audience came to life.
“I didn’t have fifty million dollars,” Tarry said.
“Neither do I,” Lake said. “It’s more like sixty million, and it’s coming in faster than we can count it. It’s coming from working people and middle-income folks. Eighty-one percent of our contributors are people earning less than forty thousand dollars a year. Something wrong with those people, Governor Tarry?”
“There should be a limit on how much a candidate should spend.”
“I agree. And I’ve voted for limits eight different times in Congress. You, on the other hand, never mentioned limits until you ran out of money.”
Governor Tarry looked Quayle-like at the camera, the frozen stare of a deer in headlights. A few of Lake’s people in the audience laughed just loud enough to be heard.
The beads of sweat returned to the governor’s forehead as he shuffled his oversized notecards. He wasn’t actually a sitting governor, but he still preferred the title. In fact, it had been nine years since the voters of Indiana sent him packing, after only one term. Lake saved this ammo for a few minutes.
Tarry then asked why Lake had voted for fifty-four new taxes during his fourteen years in Congress.
John Grisham Page 20