The motorcade took the last corner like a centipede, in segments, van after van, arriving at the top of the jog route only twenty minutes behind schedule. On Gretchen’s order, the rotary was sealed by flashing cruisers. Traffic started backing up in three directions. Some commuters, running late already, tried to go around, following the side streets, which were also blocked. The VP and his party stretched on the shoulder. Gretchen watched them stretch, cell phone in her hand. Through the trees she saw the river, a blue police boat midstream, frogmen jumping backwards off the deck.
Gretchen took a deep breath. She punched a number in L.A.
A woman’s voice: “’lo—?”
Soft as a kitten’s, Gretchen thought. She stiffened. “Is this Bambi?”
“This is Brandy. Who is this?”
“This is Lead Agent Williams of the U.S. Secret Service. Is Carlton there?”
“He’s sleeping.”
“Is he sleeping there?”
“Yes but—”
“Wake his slick ass up, girlfriend. Tell him Gretchen’s on the line.”
There was fumbling and whispering in California. Brandy’s voice said, “Carl, Carl, Carl—” Gretchen heard what sounded like a drinking glass knocked over and a mattress being bounced on.
“Gretchen,” Carlton Imbry said.
Same old midnight DJ voice. He said her name a certain way, made it musical, a breathy sort of Gre, you barely heard the tch. It was as if no time had passed. Ten years had passed.
“I’ve been meaning to call you, Gretchen—damn, wow, how you been? Kind of early to be calling the West Coast, but, hey, it’s really great to hear your voice. You been good? You sound good. Tevon—well, I’m sure you know that we’ve been talking. He’s a great kid, Gretchen. He knows all about my cases. I really get a kick out of talking to him. Of course, the phone bills are a little steep, but it’s worth it, and Tev says you have a real cheap calling plan, so it’s not a big deal. You know, I think it’s time for you and me to sit down together, discuss a couple things, don’t you? I’ll be out east in a few weeks. I’m retired now. Over Christmas. We had a nice affair at Spago’s, the mayor came and everything. I’ve got a couple jobs lined up, reality consulting, Law & Order, and this new show, Black Dragnet for BET, which is based on me, on some of my big cases over the years. Anyway, you don’t want to hear all this. I’ll be in New York, let’s see, the week of the twenty-third. I thought I might bop down to Washington on the twenty-fifth. No, wait—I’m looking at my book—I’ve got dinner that night. What about breakfast, the twenty-sixth? My treat, you pick the place. What’s the best and most expensive place for breakfast in D.C.?”
“You’re a failure,” Gretchen said.
Carlton Imbry sighed. “This is about Tevon. Let’s try and think about what’s best for Tevon. He wants to come out here in the summer, spend some time, and I’d like to get your input. I mean it’s fine with me, it’s great, depending on some shoots we’re looking at for Dragnet, July and maybe August. How’s breakfast on the twenty-sixth look for you?”
Gretchen said, “I don’t want to eat with you. I don’t want to be sitting in a restaurant and say ‘Pass the salt’ and have you pass the salt. I don’t want a normal minute in your presence. ’Cause I’m past that now. Tevon can go to California in the summer if he wants. But I’m warning you, Carlton: if you hurt or disappoint that boy in any way, if you are for one lousy second anything less than the hero he’s created for himself, I swear to God I’ll come out there and burn your house down.”
It felt good, pressing END.
They were ready to start jogging on the river road, waiting only for the second press bus, which had missed a turn. Gretchen sent a cruiser for the bus as the comm techs in van four went operational, activating jammers to disrupt nonauthorized signals, including point-to-point voice communication, radio-controlled bombs, radio-controlled toys, cell and cordless phones, broadcast television, TV clickers, and automatic garage doors for a radius of about two thousand yards. The press bus appeared without the cruiser. Reporters piled out, cursing at the driver, who cursed back at them.
Two motorcycles led the way, crawling down the river road, followed by two cruisers, dome lights flashing. Van one, behind the cruisers, had the rugged look of a war wagon but inside the blacked-out windows it was empty except for a driver and a sideman looking out. Van two, next in line, held a driver, a sideman, backup troopers, and the SWATs. One SWAT was crouched low, pointing a .50-caliber machine gun out the side door at the woods. The other SWATs were kneeling on the last bench, pointing their machine guns out the back doors, keeping a visual on the bodies jogging in their exhaust. Herc and Bobbie were flanking the VP, who wheezed. Vi was at the VP’s heels, keeping to his awkward pace, not quite running, not quite walking, fending off photographers and cameramen who danced around the party, shouting “Over here!” and “Look this way!” and “Can I get a wave?” A few reporters followed too, shouting questions, holding their tape recorders in the air. Van three, behind the joggers, carried the extraction team for this event, Gretchen, O’Teen, and the troopers, Tashmo and Elias standing on the bumper, gripping the luggage rack. Behind the comm techs in van four was an ambulance followed by a cruiser and two motorcycles.
They came up on the first quarter mile. People watched from driveways, sidewalks, porches, lawns. They watched from upstairs windows, from carports and garages. They stood there holding mugs, folded newspapers, car keys, crullers, muffins, and the garbage. They stood alone, amazed, unsure of what to do. Some heard the muffled wud-wud-wud and looked for the gunship overhead. Others went in and got their families, spouses, kids, excited dogs, and the families stood together, watching. Motorcycle cops were parked along the road every hundred feet. They twisted in their saddles, watching too.
One curve fed into the next. Two paperboys on mountain bikes kept pace with the joggers, jumping curbs, tossing papers at the houses, yelling to each other, slaloming the street. Gretchen saw the paperboys and spoke into her fist. Tashmo and Elias, hanging from the van, touched their ears and stepped off to the street. They tried to shoo the paperboys. The boys evaded them with ease, laughing, pedaling ahead.
The leading cruiser had almost disappeared around the second bend when the press bus came around the first, and for a moment the whole slow strobing spectacle was visible, complete. Somewhere in the center was a jogging man, hips rolling, feet shuffling. He wore a ball cap from a local high school hockey team. He waved the cap at the families in their yards as the paperboys popped wheelies up the hill.
The rain predicted for that morning started falling, stray drops, then a downpour for an hour. The VP finished his jog just before the heavens opened. He motorcaded to West Portsmouth for a breakfast drop-in at McDonald’s.
Half the press corps covered breakfast. The rest, bored with photo ops and mindful of the rain, had stayed at the inn, calling sources from their rooms or mobbing the lobby coffee shop. The press hall, off the lobby, was a trading pit of tips and inside dope, journalists from twenty nations running, shouting, hunt-and-pecking at their laptops. Three assistant innkeepers were at the front desk in gold blazers. Six New Hampshire troopers were lounging among ferns. In the hotel’s business center, the VP’s volunteers were getting a pep talk from their leader, Tim the lawyer, field director for the region.
Tim was speaking to a circled group of fifty people, local and imported, one of whom was Peta Boyle. She was dressed for work (corporate pearls, Italian pumps, a houndstooth suit showing off her knees), and she had a business-woman’s day ahead of her. She had no time to volunteer, but she had made the time. She was here because her father, Philip Boyle, mortician of C.E., was a figure of some tonnage in the county party structure, and Peta had inherited his talent for the practical. It wasn’t lost on Peta that Moss Properties did a fair amount of business with the city—vacant lots auctioned off, little whispers about zoning—and it never hurt to hold a chit or two, or many chits, with the mayor’s office. When t
he county chair, a man named Thomas Monahan (criminal attorney and a family friend), asked Peta to work for the VP, she was glad to be a name he could circle on his list. She had a deep, near-glandular belief in the concept of a party as a tribe, of we pick a guy and back a guy and get him into power—otherwise, what are we doing, thumbs stuck up our asses, while rival tribes get power. The VP, as the choice of the machine, was entitled to support; it wasn’t complicated. Plus, she liked the guy. From what she saw on TV, there was nothing major to dislike.
Tim started the pep talk with a poll. “Who here has done GOTV before?”
Many hands went up. Among the volunteers, there were three hungry-looking women from Mothers for the Truth About Gun Violence, an Oregon school safety group, several tort reformers, two global-warming Deadheads, a smattering of action-seeking retirees up from Sarasota, ten boys from the UMaine football team (earning gut credits for a class on governmental processes offered only to prize athletes at that university), and a dozen bleary Texans from the teachers’ union. When Tim asked the question about GOTV, Peta raised her hand, as did the Deadheads and the tort reformers, and several of the caravanning retirees, and two of the ten football boys (who had somehow managed to flunk the gut class as freshmen the first time around and were taking it a second time in hopes of graduation). The others—the women from Mothers for the Truth and all of the Texans—didn’t raise their hands.
One old woman was a little hard of hearing. She cupped her hand to her ear and said, “What did he say?” This was Jackie Kotteakis, the retired prairie schoolmarm, the captain of the Texas volunteers.
“Who’s done GOTV,” Peta paraphrased for Jackie.
Tim was pacing like a general. “We could win or loose this thing by a thousand votes statewide. GOTV will be essential. Do you have a question, ma’am?”
“I’ve done GOTV,” said Jackie Kotteakis.
“You can put your hand down,” Peta whispered.
Tim continued pacing. “Our goal for today is one hundred percent turnout of our base. Now, how do we do that? Well, we have a plan.”
The plan, like Gaul, consisted of three parts or three subassignments. One group of volunteers would man the bank of phones along the wall, calling the base and generally urging it to vote. A second group would do visibility, pumping signs at intersections, Honk for the VP, Honk If You Love Reform, Honk If You Hate Dead Seas Due to Greenhouse Gases, the purpose being both to flash a last message to the eyeballs of the electorate and to deny prime intersections to the forces of the senator, who would also be asking motorists to honk. A third group would be assigned to GOTV.
“Now,” Tim said, “who here knows the meaning of GOTV?”
GOTV meant get-out-the-vote, the eternal ground game of elections. It meant sending vans of volunteers out into the countryside armed with lists of voters needing rides to the polls. Done properly, GOTV was a satisfying exercise, raw muscle, group effort, people pitching in. Peta knew the meaning of GOTV, but she didn’t raise her hand (Tim’s Q&A routine was getting on her nerves). To Peta, it was more than satisfying. It was the system vindicated, the world working as it was supposed to work.
A volunteer was handing out maps and voter lists, as Tim explained GOTV.
“G,” he said, “stands for Get. Who can guess what O stands for?”
Peta felt like raising her finger, but raised her hand instead.
They took the back roads out of Portsmouth, avoiding the slow death of 95, Peta and four volunteers riding in a placard-covered van. Jackie Kotteakis sat up front. The women from Mothers for the Truth sat in back. Peta, driving, finally felt a purpose, the gathering momentum of the day.
Jackie Kotteakis wore a button on her coat. Peta read the button: Kiss me—I’m a teacher. The button was designed to say a lot about the wearer, to convey a certain sassiness, irreverence, pride in one’s fill-in-the-blank profession or ethnicity (Peta had seen many variations, Kiss me—I’m Irish, Kiss me—I’m Slovakian, Kiss Me—I’m a roofer). On anyone, the button would have made a statement, but on Jackie the effect was particularly striking, Peta thought. Jackie’s skin was deeply wrinkled, lightly powdered. Her hair was silver, flapperishly bobbed. Her shoes were cushioned nylon, an orthopedic sneaker with aggressive arching. Jackie’s manner in the van suggested many things to Peta, the patience of great age, kindliness, good posture, but not sassiness or kissing.
“You from around here, honey?” Jackie asked.
“Yes,” said Peta. “C.E.—Center Effing. Born and raised.”
“I can tell by how you drive. You know your way around.”
“You’re from Texas? Your whole group?”
Jackie nodded. “Longmont, north of Denton. You know Texas at all?”
“Not really,” Peta said. “I went to Houston once. I had to take this two-day ethics seminar for my realtor’s license. They give it all around the country, but Houston was the place that fit into my schedule.”
“You like it?”
“Houston? It seemed like a weird place to learn ethics. It was really humid.”
“Oh, Houston’s super-humid,” Jackie said. “It gets humid up by us, but not that Houston kind of humid.”
They ran out of things to say about Houston and the conversation flagged. Peta glanced in the rearview at the women from The Truth. She was trying to decide whether to ask them about their group, its positions and beliefs, the problem of gun violence and school shootings generally (the scariest thing going, Peta thought—the phrase itself, school shooting, made her kind of sick). There had been a rash of shootings that year and the year before, one in Oregon, one or maybe more in Southern California. Peta saw the stories in the paper, on TV, children shooting children after study hall, parents asking why. There was always at least one hero story in the mix, the brave teacher who disarmed the kid or led the other kids to safety through a locker room.
Peta wanted to ask the women from The Truth why children shot children, why there was, or seemed to be, a trend, and what could be done to stop them in the future, all the talk-show questions one might ask. But the women from The Truth were kind of spooky, Peta thought, the way they scrunched together on one bench, even though there were three benches in the van. One of them was named Hilly, or it sounded like Hilly when she said her name. The second was named Shannon (Peta heard it clearly) and the third one didn’t say her name, or did, but mumbled it, or mumbled something. The women from The Truth came from Oregon, different parts of Oregon. They had driven east together in a battered little camper to save money. They parked the camper at the inn, slept in back, and didn’t go out for pizza with the other volunteers, eating nothing or buffets. Peta had seen them that morning before Tim’s pep talk, feasting on the wreckage of the continental breakfast in the pressroom, obviously starving from the night before. They had a wounded, disemboweled look, and a Moonie farawayness in the eyes. Peta saw many people like these women in grassroots politics, victims-rights types, AIDS activists, ghost-souls brought together by some awful loss or tragedy. Peta guessed or suspected that what bound the women to The Truth, and to each other, was that they had all lost children in school shootings. It fit together suddenly, the gypsy life, the camper, the cultic closeness, the harrowed gaze. For a moment Peta felt for them. It’s Kai ten years from now who dies in the hallway with the others. It was fully real to her for as long as she could stand it, a moment and no more. Peta wanted to learn about gun violence, how to stop it, a truth, The Truth, anything at all, but she was afraid that if she asked the women about their group’s proposals, they would come out with something crackpot, angry and extreme, and Peta, feeling for them in one part of her brain, would be disagreeing with them in another part, and thinking they were crazy too.
The rain was thinning to a drizzle as they came into C.E. Hilly and Shannon got out at the Gateway-to-the-Wetlands Nature Center, the polling station for the area. Hilly took some signs, Shannon took a box of leaflets. Tim had assigned them to visibility. They would wave the signs and dis
tribute literature, staying at least a hundred feet from the doors, as required by state law.
Peta took Route 32 to Belvedere Estates, a low-end subdivision in the hills above C.E., new houses by the hundreds, saplings wrapped in burlap, gutters without curbs. Peta, Jackie, and the quiet woman from The Truth tried to find the first address in their action packet, but the unit number was evidently wrong. Two voters weren’t at home—Jackie rang their doorbells, waiting on the stoops, drizzle running down the bricks. They moved on to voter number four, a man named Leonard Nichols, a fat mechanic with a bushy Fu Manchu.
“I appreciate the ride,” he said as Peta pulled away.
“That’s no problem,” Jackie said.
Leonard Nichols wore a too-small leather jacket and a concert t-shirt for a heavy metal band, WORLD TOUR ’98, with the names of forty cities listed in small type, none of which were outside of the United States.
He said, “Is there any way you could run me up to Willingboro when I finish voting? I’ve got a job interview up there and my Buick’s fucking totaled in the shop.”
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