Season of Fear

by Brain Freeman

  Lyle slipped an arm around Caprice’s elbow. Lyle Piper and Caprice Dean were a political power couple in Florida, but they were idealistic in a way that only young people could be. They still thought they could change the world. They thought a new, centrist political party would be different from the other two. They thought Birch Fairmont would be the face of something that could tear down the extremes on both sides.

  Tarla could have told them right then that they were naive.

  Caprice leaned down to Diane. If Lyle looked older than his years, she looked younger. She was pretty and full-figured, with long dark hair, fresh-scrubbed skin without a hint of a Florida tan, and bookish black glasses propped high on her rounded nose. She wore a burgundy waistcoat, black slacks, and high heels smudged with mud. Her voice cracked with excitement. ‘Isn’t this great?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Diane said, her own voice hollow.

  The two political aides sat next to Diane on the dais. Birch raised his arms to quiet the crowd, but they may as well have been celebrating the balloon drop at a convention. It was Labor Day, and they had all seen the polls. They smelled momentum, which was like adrenaline in the veins of political junkies. This was their man. Birch Fairmont, candidate for the United States Congress in the 12th District from the newly formed Common Way Party.

  Tarla kept an eye on Lyle Piper and was surprised by what she saw. The cameras had left him, and something black flitted across his face. He clasped his hands in his lap and stared at his leather shoes with a stony expression. Caprice grabbed his hand, and the mask of enthusiasm slipped momentarily from her face, too. Whatever they told the world, they both knew the truth about the candidate at the podium. They were dancing with a devil. That was politics.

  ‘My good friends,’ Birch said to a new round of cheers. The microphone broadcast his voice around the park. The tower shimmered a hundred yards away. The floodlights illuminated the stage, but the crowd was lost in shadows, and beyond them, on the fringe of the lawn, the world was black. The park disappeared into the surrounding jungle.

  Tarla eyed Diane, who had a peculiar expression on her face. Her friend watched Birch with pride, fear, and hatred.

  ‘My good friends,’ Birch repeated.

  More cheers.

  ‘In less than two months, we will show America that we can choose something other than divisive rhetoric and empty slogans,’ he continued, diving into his stump speech. ‘That we can find consensus among our differences. That we can rely on good sense, not nonsense. That there really is a common way for all of us.’

  Tarla saw Birch’s photo on signs thrust into the air and waved by volunteers. The caption above his face read: The Common Man. She shook her head at the hubris of it all. Birch was many things, but he was not common. He was a businessman worth a hundred million dollars. Definitely not common.

  ‘I need you with me!’ Birch shouted.

  He waited for an elevated energy in the voices of the crowd. That was how you built people into a frenzy of full-throated excitement, with each applause line louder than the one before. Instead, he got no reaction, except a low burst of uncomfortable clapping that died as quickly as it started.

  Unsettled, Birch tried again.

  ‘I need every one of you to be part of the common way!’

  Heads turned, but no one cheered. Low voices murmured in an uneasy ripple. Birch was visibly annoyed. He looked over his shoulder at Lyle and mouthed: What the hell?

  Like the rest of the crowd, Lyle’s attention was focused elsewhere. He and everyone else had become aware of a man on the corner of the dais. He’d come from nowhere out of the shroud of the night. He was dressed completely in black: black long-sleeved nylon shirt, black tight jeans, black gloves over his hands, and – like a Dickens ghost – a black hood over his head. His presence froze them all into motionless silence. Tarla sucked in her breath as she saw him. She knew. Everyone knew.

  Something bad was about to happen.

  One person took action. She recognized him; he was the director of one of the largest corporate citrus farms in the area. Married. Father of three. He was on the dais in the second row, and he stood up and pushed to the front and marched toward the man in black. He got within ten feet before the man reached behind his belt with a gloved hand, which re-emerged holding a semi-automatic pistol. He lifted his right hand and calmly fired one shot into the head of the citrus farmer, who crumpled and slipped off the dais to the thick lawn.

  The explosion, like unexpected thunder, woke up the crowd. Chaos descended. Screaming began; the audience turned en masse, like a wave, and stampeded toward the tower, where overgrown trails led out of the park.

  The man in black was unaffected by the tumult. He was on a mission, marching along the front of the platform toward Birch Fairmont. The VIPs in the rows of chairs sat paralyzed, watching the violence unfold. A woman in the back row stood up to escape, but the man in black fired, hitting her in the shoulder, her torso blooming with red as she wailed and sunk to the wooden floor. No one moved again.

  Smoke burned in Tarla’s nose from the smell of the bullets. She found herself dizzy, seeing the man come closer. Birch had the look of a man on a falling plane, a man staring at his mortality seconds away. This instant, you are alive; the next instant, you will be dead. He faced the gunman with his fists clenched; he didn’t run, because there was nowhere to go. His face went dark with frustration.

  ‘You son of a—’

  Birch didn’t finish his curse. The man in black fired four times, one two three four, boom boom boom boom, each bullet streaking into Birch’s chest, carving out ribs, organs, and blood. Birch staggered but didn’t fall, and the man fired again, another round flush in the heart, and Birch’s knees sagged. He grabbed for the podium, missed it like a blind man, and fell sideways, gasping out cherry-colored blood. His white shirt was crimson. His tanned face was ashen.

  ‘Birch!’ Diane screamed.

  The man in black swung around and thrust the gun in Diane’s face, but Tarla stood up and put herself between them. She had only one thought in her head, to protect her best friend. The barrel, inches away, fed smoke into her nose and mouth and made her choke. The metal almost touched her forehead. She couldn’t see his eyes behind the black mesh, but she was close enough that she could smell his sweat and see the tiniest tremble in his hand. In her heels, she was taller than him. It was strange, what you noticed at a moment like that. He was a killer, but he was just a man.

  She thought of her son, because she wanted him to be her last thought on this earth. Cab, six-foot-six, blond, funny, cynical, wicked smart, gorgeous. Cab, the one thing she had ever created in her life that gave her nothing but pure pride.

  Then the gun was gone from her head. Gone, leaving her alive. Tarla could barely stand with nausea and relief. Birch’s blood pooled around her feet. It’s over, she thought, but she was wrong. The man in black pointed his gun at Lyle Piper. Lyle had a look of dazed confusion on his face, as if he had stumbled into a bad dream. Next to Lyle, Caprice’s young voice warbled like a soprano, screaming out words that climbed into disbelief, almost unrecognizable.

  ‘What are you doing what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing?’

  Tarla watched in mute horror as the man fired again, one kill shot, no mercy. Just like that, Lyle keeled backward, and Caprice was spray-painted with blood and brain. He was dead, and she was alone.

  One word, one scream, long and endless and riven with loss, wailed from the dais. ‘No no no no no no no!’

  Vertigo descended on Tarla, overwhelming her senses. The world made circles, breaking up the way a kaleidoscope whirls and spins. She blinked once, and the gunman was gone, and she heard sirens and saw the multicolored flash of lights. She blinked again, and she was in a hospital bed miles away.

  PART ONE

  THE EXTREMES

  1

  ‘Chayla,’ the union official said, stabbing the elevator button in the lobby of the Tampa Hyatt Regency. ‘Wh
at the hell kind of name is that for a storm?’

  His younger companion chuckled as he sipped a Starbuck’s cappuccino, which left foam on his upper lip. ‘Hey, it’s better than Debby. Chayla sounds like some kind of evil witch, you know? Like she could seduce you and wipe out your home and you’d thank her for it. Debby, that’s like being mugged by a Girl Scout.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I don’t care what name they give the things. This baby hits, we’re talking hundreds of millions in damage. You guys are watching the weather maps?’

  ‘Sure we are. Some models have landfall on the Gulf Coast by Wednesday of next week, but it could still turn north to New Orleans, and all we’ll get is rain.’

  The union official, whose name was Walter Fleming, poked a half-eaten chocolate donut at his well-dressed companion. As a rule, Walter didn’t like hotshot political aides. They were too smart for their own good. Nobody could be as dumb as really smart people, particularly when they worked for the government. ‘Just don’t blow this, okay? Nothing loses votes faster than a messed-up disaster. Especially if it hits next Wednesday, huh? The Fourth of July?’

  The political aide smirked behind his coffee cup. ‘Relax, Walter. We’re on it. Besides, if it comes our way, it’s more work for your boys, right?’

  Walter scratched his wiry gray crew-cut, which hadn’t changed since his Marine days. ‘It’s not about that, and don’t let anyone hear you talking that way.’

  The two men wore lanyards and badges from the industrial union meeting at the Convention Center. Walter had been the number two man in the union’s leadership hierarchy for more than fifteen years. He had no interest in the top job. The union leader had to wear expensive suits and put up with reporters and send out Twitter updates, whereas Walter could wear jeans and do the real political work behind the scenes. If anyone in Tallahassee wanted something important done without publicity, they knew who to call. Not the top dog. They called Walter.

  The political aide – Brent Reed, thirty years old, curly black hair, goatee – had made the call to Walter when their poll numbers started going south. Reed was just the messenger boy. The call went much higher up the campaign food chain, but nobody at the top wanted to get their hands dirty. That was Walter’s job. After fifty years in Democratic politics, ever since he was an eighteen-year-old kid, Walter knew everybody who mattered in Florida, and he knew how to get things done.

  ‘Jeez, these elevators are slow,’ Walter complained as they waited in the lobby.

  ‘Yeah, there’s never an electrical worker around when you need one,’ Reed joked.

  ‘Funny. That’s real funny.’

  Brent slid an iPhone out of his pocket and scrolled up the screen with his thumb. Walter figured he was probably checking his Facebook page, ‘liking’ some post about a Vegas vacation or a cat in a sweater. Dumb kids.

  ‘Anyway, you can say you told me so,’ Brent went on, fixated on his smartphone screen as he sipped his coffee. ‘Looks like Diane Fairmont’s numbers are for real. She’s up three over Ramona Cortes in a three-way race. Eight over you-know-who.’

  ‘I told you so. People haven’t forgotten what happened to her husband ten years ago. Her favorability is, what, 65 percent? That’s a lot better than our boy. He’s down around 37 right now.’

  ‘Maybe we should shoot his wife,’ Reed joked again. ‘He can compete with Diane for the sympathy vote.’

  Walter eyed the hotel lobby, then bunched the silk lapel of Reed’s suit coat in his beefy fist and hissed at the tall, slim aide. ‘You want to read a remark like that in the papers? Keep your goddamn voice down.’

  ‘Chill, Walter. There’s no press around.’

  ‘You better learn, there are spies everywhere. You have to talk like everything coming out of your mouth is going into an open mike. Haven’t you figured out that this is a war? The Republicans cottoned on to that a long time ago, and the Common Way folks have done a hell of a good job of catching up.’

  Brent shrugged. ‘That’s why we called you, isn’t it?’

  ‘It took you long enough.’

  ‘Maybe so, but my people are getting nervous. They want to see some progress. What should I tell them?’

  Walter shook his head. If he’d learned one thing in fifty years, it was that each new generation had to learn the old mistakes all over again. Give a kid a master’s degree in public policy from FSU, and he was still a moron. Walter, who was six inches shorter than Brent Reed and a hundred pounds heavier, exhaled a cigar-tinged breath. ‘We’ll talk about this in my room. Not here.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  The elevator doors finally opened. A handful of hotel guests exited into the lobby. Most were delegates from the convention who greeted Walter like a celebrity. He pumped their arms and chatted them up, paying no attention to the impatient political aide with him. Brent held the doors open until the elevator’s alarm buzzed, and then Walter shouldered inside and hit the button for the Hyatt’s sixth floor with his fat thumb.

  Just as the doors began to close, a bare arm slid between the narrowing gap, as if waving a magic wand. The doors reversed course, and a girl joined the two of them in the elevator compartment. Walter stuck out a sleeve of his tweed sport coat to keep the doors open until she was safely inside. She was young. Everybody looked young to Walter, but he figured she couldn’t be more than twenty years old. She wasn’t short, but she was anorexic-skinny: all bones, no curves, flat breasts. Her jaw worked; she was chewing gum. The girl wore a pink tank top that didn’t even reach to her belly button, and her cut-off corduroy shorts were cut off so high that Walter could see the slope of both butt cheeks when she turned and faced the door. She pushed the button for the tenth floor.

  ‘Wow,’ Brent said.

  Walter’s idea of ‘wow’ was Kim Novak, but the girl in the elevator was cute, the way his youngest daughter was cute. She had pink-painted toenails poking out of flip-flops. Her hair was long, lush, and black; her face was pale and freckled, with a tiny oval mouth. A silver cross dangled from her right earlobe. He couldn’t see her eyes, which were hidden behind sunglasses with leopard frames. She tugged on the strap of an oversized satchel purse, which was slung over one arm. She wore earbuds, and the music from the iPod squeezed into her skin-tight back pocket thumped so loudly that Walter could hear the screaming lyrics of the song. The girl hummed, and her hips swung rhythmically, and her head bobbed.

  ‘What the hell is that noise?’ Walter asked Brent. ‘Is that supposed to be music?’

  ‘Sounds like Rihanna. “Roc Me Out.” Rihanna, that’s a good name for a storm.’

  ‘This girl is going to be deaf by the time she’s thirty,’ Walter said.

  Brent’s eyes were locked on the sway of the girl’s shapely backside. ‘What?’

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Anyway, I need to take something back to my people,’ Brent went on. ‘Do we have any dirt on Common Way yet?’

  ‘Upstairs,’ Walter repeated through gritted teeth.

  ‘Oh, hell, you think this girl can hear a thing we say?’ Brent raised his voice and called to her. ‘Hey, sweetheart, rock me on the floor, okay? Man, that ass of yours could stop traffic.’

  ‘Jesus, Brent!’

  ‘Forget her, she’s in her own world,’ Brent told him, and he was right. The girl couldn’t hear anything except Rihanna. She danced as the elevator ground upward. ‘So?’

  ‘Fine, we got nothing so far,’ Walter said. ‘I told you this was going to take time. We’ll turn up something we can use, but we need to keep a low profile. If Common Way catches us spying, it’s game over.’

  ‘Were you able to get someone inside the campaign?’

  ‘That’s my business, not yours. And it’s better for you if we keep it that way.’ He added after a pause: ‘Remember, Ogden Bush works for them now, not us. You don’t want him connecting the dots. He knows me.’

  ‘Bush. Fucking turncoat.’

  ‘It’s politics. We screwed him, he screws us. Sooner or later,
we’ll want him back on our side. In the meantime, sit tight, and let me do my job.’

  ‘When do you plan to deliver? After the election? That won’t do us much good.’

  ‘We can’t make shit up out of thin air. It’s got to be legit.’

  ‘Well, we’re paying a lot of money, and we expect results. Something needs to happen soon.’

  ‘What’s the rush?’ Walter asked.

  ‘Our boy is watching the needle sink. He’s not happy. He’s about to make some decisions that none of us want.’

  Walter took a moment to grasp Brent’s meaning. ‘Are you saying he’s thinking of dropping out of the race?’

  ‘Better to bow out than to get beaten. Live to fight another day, you know? He’d rather see Diane win than Ramona Cortes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Depends on Chayla. He doesn’t want to announce until we see what happens to the storm. Plus, we’ve been thinking that you’d be able to dig up something that would be worth sticking around for. That’s why we called you, Walter. So what do you want me to tell him?’

  Walter rubbed his grizzled beard. ‘Tell him to hang tight. Don’t do anything stupid.’

  ‘What if there’s nothing to find?’ Brent asked.

  ‘There’s dirt,’ Walter insisted. ‘These guys made a mistake somewhere, and we’re going to throw it in their faces. But it won’t make any difference if he’s already out of the game.’

  The elevator doors opened on the sixth floor. Walter stamped outside. He had Stoli in his room, and he needed a drink. He was angry with Brent; he was angry with the idiots in Tallahassee. Politics. The years passed, and nothing changed. Every election was a race to the bottom.

  Brent tapped the young girl on the shoulder and held the elevator open with one hand. She didn’t take off her sunglasses, but she popped an earphone out of her ear. ‘Huh?’