Boomsday

by Christopher Buckley

  “I’m sorry, Massimo,” Gideon said, summoning from deep within the remnants of his dignity. “I was not myself.”

  The phone rang. Montefeltro picked it up without saying hello. He heard:

  “Is residence of Montefeltro?” said the familiar, horrid, foreign-accented voice. Montefeltro tried to formulate some response, but nothing came.

  The voice said, “This is escort service from last night. You owe nine hundred dollars. You want to give me credit card number, or am I sending Ivan and Vladimir?”

  Chapter 29

  Frank Cohane was at the helm of his twelve-meter yacht Expensive off Monterey Bay in a stiff breeze, running time trials in preparation for the America’s Cup, when his cell phone went off. Whenever Frank was on the boat, his cell phone was programmed to accept calls only from his secretary, who was instructed to call him only if it was a matter of apocalyptic urgency.

  “Yeah, Jean, what?” he barked. Expensive had just rounded the upwind mark. The crew was setting the spinnaker, a delicate procedure and one requiring total concentration from the helmsman.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, Mr. Cohane, but there’s a reporter from the Yale Daily News insisting that he speak with you.”

  “The Yale what? Who?”

  “He says he needs to talk to you about a story he’s writing saying—these were his words—that you, quote, bribed Yale to keep them from expelling Boyd. . ..?Mr. Cohane? . . .Sir?”

  “Fuck!” Frank Cohane threw the cell phone overboard.

  “Mr. Cohane—sir! She’s jibing! Jibe-ho!”

  There was a loud rip forward, the sound of $60,000 worth of Mylar turning itself from a huge mono-bosom into something resembling a shredded party favor.

  “Mr. Kane?” Jean said to the Yale Daily News reporter. “I’m sorry to keep you holding. Mr. Cohane and I were cut off. He’s at sea, on his yacht. Let me try to reach him. I’ll call you back.”

  Charlie Kane, Yale sophomore, staff writer for the “Oldest College Daily”—as the Yale Daily News proudly called itself—told Mr. Cohane’s pleasant secretary that his deadline was in three hours. He hung up and went back to writing his story.

  It had come to him, as many of the really good stories do, in a hand-me-down way. A girl in his philosophy class had a friend who had gone out with Boyd Baker. Boyd was one of the campus’s more conspicuous party animals. He’d managed to flunk all his courses and had been asked to leave and spend a year, as Yale put it, “reassessing your priorities.” And then nothing happened. He just stayed.

  One dawn, after a long night of snorting Ritalin and Ecstasy with his girlfriend, Boyd confided to her that his stepfather, some humongously rich California tech guy, had bribed Yale to the tune of $25 million to keep him on. What a great story! Charlie thought. The election for next year’s editorial board was coming up, and with a story like this under his belt, Charlie would have a good shot at editor in chief.

  While he waited for the phone to ring, Charlie typed: “Attempts to reach Frank Cohane on his sailboat were unavailing.” He looked at the sentence, deleted it. He Googled “Cohane” and “America’s Cup,” examined the matches, and typed: “Attempts to reach Frank Cohane aboard his ultra-high-tech, well-named yacht Expensive were unavailing.”

  He wondered if he ought to change “attempts” to the singular.

  “Who’s got a phone?” Frank Cohane snapped his fingers. “Who’s got a phone? Someone’s got to have a fucking phone!”

  The tactician rummaged in a carry case and handed him his.

  “Take the wheel,” Frank said. Expensive was back on an upwind tack now, having rounded another marker. Frank stormed forward, stepping on the hands of several crewmen who were leaning over the rails, hiking to windward to counterbalance the boat. They knew better than to say, “Ow!” much less, “Hey, watch where you’re going, asshole!”

  “Jean. It’s me. Patch me through to that Yale kid.”

  “Mr. Kane? I have Mr. Cohane on the line. Go ahead, sir.”

  “Mr. Cohane? Hello. My name is Charles—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Look, this is Frank Cohane. What the—”

  The portion of Frank Cohane’s brain that was not on fire with rage and fury tried to say, Easy does it, big shot. But when driven men board their own yachts and assume command, the inner Bligh is invariably released and does not easily relinquish the helm. Frank Cohane couldn’t help himself.

  “—fuck is this you’re telling my secretary? Did you use the word bribe? Did you actually say bribe?”

  Charlie Kane, all of age twenty-one, had not yet in his brief career as a reporter been bitch-slapped by a California billionaire. He had only one thought in his mind: editor in chief.

  “Ah, well, sir, it does appear that you visited the president’s office on the twenty-fourth of last month. According to the president’s appointments calendar. And the development office records do show a donation made later that same day from the Cohane Charitable Trust in the amount of fifteen million”—Charlie’s source had inflated the amount of the bribe, but he’d caught the error—“and your stepson, Boyd Baker, had, previous to that, been informed that he was on academic suspension. He confirmed that detail himself.”

  Frank winced. Boyd! Imbecile!

  Charlie Kane continued, “And the fact is that he is still enrolled at Yale. So in connecting the dots, I—”

  “Connecting the dots? Connecting the dots? Do you think this is some kind of game? Let me ask you something, Mr. Kane,” Frank said. “Do you know how many lawyers I have, just on staff?”

  “I wouldn’t have that information, but from the way you’re asking, I’d guess, quite a few, sir?”

  “Twenty-five. Twenty-five lawyers. Full-time. Sharks, all of them. Great whites. They never sleep. They just keep moving forward, suing everything in their path. . ..”

  “That does seem like a lot of lawyers, I agree, sir.”

  “You’re fucking damn right it’s a lot! And if they’re not enough, I can afford to hire every other lawyer in the country. And I will, if you print a false and malicious story—false, malicious, libelous, and defamatory. I’m formally putting you on notice here that—Jesus Christ, I . . .I can’t even believe I’m having to tell you this. Is there a crime in giving money to your college? Don’t you think I care about Yale? Do you think I give this kind of money to, to—Harvard?”

  “I don’t think that’s really the point here, sir.”

  “Mr. Kane,” Frank said, trying a calmer, cooler—indeed, icier—tone of voice, “understand something. For your own well-being. Understand that I will sue you—you personally, not the Yale Daily News—if you print a story saying that I quote-unquote bribed Yale. I give you full warning. I will take the food from your table, from your parents’ table, and from your grandparents’ table. Am I making myself clear?”

  “Actually, sir, my grandparents are deceased.”

  “Don’t fuck around with me, you little zit! Look me up in Forbes magazine. I have resources you can’t even imagine. I will grind your bones to dust and use them for fertilizer. Do you hear me? . . .Kane?”

  Charlie Kane could hardly believe his luck. Dude was postal! His fingers flew over the keyboard. “Um-hum.”

  “What you do mean, ‘Um-hum’?”

  “So that is your comment? That you’re going to impoverish my family and turn me into fertilizer?”

  “My comment? My comment, Mr. Kane, is that you’re a dead man. Let me spell it for you, so you get at least that much right: d-e-a-d. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir. D-e-a-d. Thank you. Good luck with the race.”

  And with that, Frank Cohane hurled another innocent cell phone into the vast deep of the Pacific Ocean. He stormed aft to the wheel. As he did, the crew leaning over the rail withdrew their hands, one by one.

  A winch grinder murmured to the man next to him, “Skipper’s in a good mood today.”

  All Bucky Trumble got to tell the president these days was bad news, and as the axiom has
it, in the long run this does the bearer no good. The high-and-mighty much prefer to hear, “Sir, your approval ratings are through the roof!” or, “Sire, the enemy has capitulated!” than the endless servings of distress and gloom that seemed to constitute Bucky’s daily political briefings. Today was no exception.

  “What?” the president grunted without looking up. “What?”

  In the old days, he would have said, “Well, if it isn’t the Buckmeister! Sit down, you sad-ass cocksucker, pour yourself a drink, and gimme all the dirt.” Now all Bucky got was, “What?” short for, “What now?”

  “I have the FBI report on Cassandra Devine’s computer, sir.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “They didn’t find anything on it that would link her directly to Arthur Clumm, the male nurse.”

  The president looked up at Bucky sourly. “I was under the impression that you were working on that.”

  “I thought I had worked on it. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m certainly going to call Frank Co—”

  “Don’t.” The president held up a hand. “Don’t tell me anything I don’t need to hear. Tell me something I want to hear. Even if you have to make it up out of whole cloth.”

  “As a matter of fact, there is something. Seems Devine and her PR boss, Tucker, may be involved in illegal business dealing with North Korea.”

  “North Korea?” the president said, brightening. “Well, goddamnit. Why didn’t you tell me that first? That’s good work, Buck. Fine work. Ho, ho. Oh, you’re a clever cocksucker, Bucky boy.” The president chortled.

  Bucky thought, He thinks I planted it.

  “Sir, I’d love to take credit for it, but, uh, this fact is in fact a fact. That is, it’s real. They found it on the computers.”

  The president looked taken aback. “Oh. Well, fine. Okay. Even better. So can the FBI throw her ass in jail?”

  “Well, sir, it’s not like they were selling F-16s or missiles to North Korea or anything like that.”

  The president frowned. “What were they selling ’em?”

  Bucky tried to make it sound as traitorous as he could. “Sir, these two jokers were conspiring with the government of North Korea, a government declaredly hostile to the United States, to”—he cleared his throat—“to put on a golf tournament.”

  “Golf? Did you say golf tournament?”

  “Yes, sir. A corruption of one of the most democratic pastimes in the civilized world. A totalitarian golf tournament. In Pyongyang. Behind enemy lines. Ostensibly to promote—I’m quoting directly—peace and understanding. In actuality to provide cover, to paste a big smiley face on a ruthless regime. And God only knows what else they might be up to. It’s big, sir. Big.”

  The president stared. “Who in hell gives a rat’s ass about a golf tournament? Goddamnit, Buck, you had me thinking they were giving ’em enriched plutonium or anthrax or—”

  “The FBI seems to think it’s serious enough. Want the headline? JEPPERSON’S ADVISERS ON NORTH KOREAN PAYROLL.”

  The president considered. “Well, I do like that headline.”

  “Thought you might.” Whew.

  The president’s leather chair squeaked. “Now, a headline like that, you don’t want to spend it right away. You want to hold on to it for a while. Save it for just the right occasion. Like . . .”

  “Before the New Hampshire primary?”

  “Or even after. You’ll convey this to our good friends at the Bureau?”

  “I’m shakin’ it, boss!” Bucky said brightly. “I’m shakin’ it!”

  It was a line from the movie Cool Hand Luke. Bucky used it in the old days, when just he and Governor Peacham were flying around in a single-engine Cessna hitting a dozen campaign stops in a day. Back then, Peacham would laugh and laugh at the line, which conveyed just the right amount of irony and servility. Now all he said to his faithful retainer was, “Okay, then,” and went back to his paperwork, an impassioned personal plea to the head of the Federal Reserve not to raise the prime rate to 20 percent.

  Bucky returned to his office, feeling thoroughly exhausted and a bit ungratefully used. He loosened his tie and checked his e-mail. He had three hundred, including one from his assistant slugged “Urgent—Read ASAP.”

  He opened the e-mail. It contained a link to a story in the online Yale Daily News. What on earth kind of urgency could there possibly be in a story in a college newspaper? He clicked on the link and read.

  “Oh,” he said to no one in particular, “shit.”

  Frank Cohane’s secretary, Jean, reached him as he was driving home from the yacht basin. (He kept a spare cell phone in the glove compartment of his Ferrari Enzo.)

  She read him the story in the online Yale Daily News. When she got to the paragraph where the hapless Boyd admitted, on record, that “yeah, I guess my stepdad sort of dealt with the situation, threw some bucks at them, whatever, made them an offer they couldn’t refuse. He’s pretty cool that way,” Frank’s fury reached such intensity that for his own safety he had to pull the Enzo over to the dirt shoulder and hyperventilate.

  According to Kane’s story, “Yale has no official comment, but a spokesperson in the development office notes that ‘Mr. Cohane has been, and continues to be, a wonderfully generous supporter of Yale.’ Dean of Undergraduates John Wilkinson did not return repeated calls asking for clarification as to Baker’s academic status.”

  “Is that it?” Frank moaned.

  “Yes, Mr. Cohane. In the meantime, you’ve had quite a few calls. Mr. Trumble from the White House: ‘Urgent, please call right away.’ Also President Reigeluth of Yale: ‘Urgent, please call as soon as possible.’”

  Frank hung up and deliberated which call to return first: the chief political adviser to the president of the United States or the president of Yale. Eenie-meenie . . .

  “Buck. Frank.”

  “Frank. Jesus.”

  “What can I tell you? Fucking kid reporters.”

  Frank was about to unleash a stream of expletives on the topic of his moron son-in-law when, ex nihilo, an inspiration occurred, and with not a second to spare.

  “What can I tell you,” Frank said. “I love that boy. He’s like my own son.”

  Silence. Frank waited to see if this inspired bit of spontaneous mendacity had hit its mark.

  “That’s very, uh, decent of you, Frank.”

  “Ah, well,” Frank said, “the old Washington solution, right? Hurl money at the problem and see if it’ll go away. They can’t prove a thing. So I’m generous. Last I checked, it’s not a crime.”

  “Frank,” Bucky said, “I was actually going to call you about another matter.”

  Frank had forgotten to activate the recording device on his car phone. He did now. “Yeah? Shoot.”

  “That, uh, matter we discussed? About the FBI and those com-puters?”

  “What computers?”

  Bucky sounded uncomfortable. He could hear cars going by on the other end and assumed Frank was on his cell phone. He didn’t like to speak too candidly on those. “At the Wok’n Roll? Remember?”

  “Oh. Yeah. That. What about it?”

  “Well, I had been kind of left with the impression that you were going to follow through on that thing we discussed.”

  “Follow through? How do you mean?”

  Bucky’s discomfort became suddenly acute. “Frank?”

  “Yes, Bucky?”

  “Are you . . .recording this phone call?”

  “I record all my phone calls. In fact, I record all my conversations. Even the ones in crummy Chinese restaurants in Arlington.”

  “Frank—what are you saying?”

  “Nothing. For the time being. I’ll be in touch. Tell the president I’m looking forward to this campaign. In fact, I want to be closely involved. Closely.”

  Bucky’s breath came in gasps. Frank hung up.

  Frank’s next call was to the head of his Internet division. He instructed him to pour a major amount of Spider RepellentTM all over
the online Yale Daily News so anyone Googling “Cohane” and “bribe” and “Yale” would come up with zero matches.

  Having blackmailed the president’s top adviser and taken care of his own little scandal—not bad for ten minutes on the shoulder—Frank Cohane put the Enzo in gear, roared back onto the eucalyptus-scented Pacific Coast Highway, and gunned the engine toward home. He was actually looking forward to torturing Lisa with the latest evidence of her son’s nincompoopery. Under the circumstances, he felt entitled to squeeze every drop of satisfaction from it, while at the same time congratulating himself on having outfoxed a very big bad wolf. Bucky Trumble’s balls now belonged to him. As Frank reflected on it, with instincts like his, he should be quite an asset to the Peacham campaign. Yes indeed, quite an asset.

  He whistled as he drove.

  Chapter 30

  Gideon Payne was in pain, and not just physical.

  Try as he might to remember having willingly handed over to the two odious Russian prostitutes his precious watch and fob—handed down all the way from his sharpshooter ancestor—he couldn’t. He had no memory of it. None. (“An alcoholic blackout, perhaps,” Monsignor Montefeltro suggested.) And now those two—shudder—Muscovite jezebels not only knew what Gideon looked like, but were in possession of a watch engraved with his name. The thought of it gave him chest constrictions.

  He did, vaguely, dimly, unfortunately, remember using the monsignor’s phone on that dreadful night of nights . . .and asking the directory operator for the number of an escort service. “Any—hic—escort service.” Oh, the wages of sin.

  Now, every time a phone rang—any phone—Gideon trembled and broke out in cold sweat. Was it—them?

  He heard a chastising voice inside him, mocking: My, my, my, how the wicked do lie . . .in wait upon the Judgment Day.

  He kept a low profile. He must show up at the last meeting of the Transitioning commission. He had to. But what if the Russian jeze-bels watched C-SPAN? Oh, Lord. . . .

  Monsignor Montefeltro, meanwhile, now found himself in a deepening hole of his own digging.