Big Guns

by Steve Israel

  The only sounds were the beeps and hisses of Overbay’s life-support system.

  Sunny said, “Speaker Piermont and two hundred colleagues support it.”

  “Whoop-de-doo,” Buck responded. “They can go home to their districts and beat their chests and boast about being original cosponsors of your crazy bill. They can pad their NRA vote scores and look like heroes. But without Mr. Overbay’s support, this bill dies in committee. And he will never support it.”

  “You’re not worried about the pressure on your boss? As the one Republican in Congress who’s blocking passage?”

  “Five decades of NRA perfect scores. Remembered as the congressman who led the vote to overturn Bill Clinton’s assault weapons ban and defeated Obama’s background checks. No, we’re not worried. Does he look worried?”

  A thin stream of tobacco-laced drool ran down Overbay’s chin.

  Sunny shrugged for effect. “Well, I suppose you have to do what you have to do.” That was her way of threatening to do what she had to do.

  The chief of staff responded, “This bill passes over his dead body.”

  A machine beeped erratically.

  *

  Two days later, Buck Messina pulled his car into his prized spot in the underground garage of the Rayburn House Office Building. Even here, in the darkest bowels of Capitol Hill, dark and nauseating with fumes, seniority mattered. Buck Messina’s ten square feet of oil-stained paradise sat immediately next to wide gray doors that automatically swung open to a bank of elevators that whisked him up to his office.

  His tranquility was disrupted by the unnatural sound of shrill phones ringing like alarms as he approached the office.

  He pushed open the mahogany door to a besieged staff. They yammered into phones: “No, sir, Congressman Overbay is not taking your guns away”; “No, ma’am, I am not a socialist. I’m just an intern.”

  A press secretary emerged, frazzled. “You’d better see this.” His voice was heavy, as if breaking the news that someone had died. Overbay, perhaps.

  They went to a cubicle. It had a prized view of the Capitol dome across the street; but the view on the computer screen almost made Buck throw up:

  A man at his kitchen table, staring into the camera. Crew cut. Flannel shirt. Steam rising from a cup of coffee. Forlorn piano notes playing softly.

  “I’ve lived here all my life. Worked hard and played by the rules. But, not everybody plays by the rules. Criminals ... and terrorists. So when I learned that Congress is debating a bill to let Americans defend themselves, I just assumed my congressman supported it. Now I’ve learned he may not. To me, that just seems...”

  Dramatic pause.

  “... out of touch.”

  An indignant voice-over: “Call Wilbur Overbay. Tell him to support the Second Amendment.”

  Overbay’s phone number flashed on the screen. Below it: PAID FOR BY AMERICANS FOR AMERICA.

  The press secretary croaked, “They started running at seven this morning. In Traverse City and Marquette.”

  “How many calls so far?” Buck asked.

  “Hundreds.”

  Buck gulped for an air of self-confidence. “I bet the worst is over. They did their damage. Nicked us. Let’s not overreact.”

  “Who are they? Americans for America?”

  “One of those Super PACs.”

  “Where they getting their money?”

  “Donations are undisclosed. We don’t know.”

  He thought of Sunny. “But we can guess.”

  *

  Sunny sat on her balcony. She sipped her espresso and turned her head to the soft warmth of the morning sun. Then she gazed at the Capitol building and enjoyed the heat she knew she was generating inside, imagining steam coiling from the windows. She dialed Otis.

  “Hey, can you convene a family meeting?”

  Otis knew what that meant: raise more money.

  “How much?”

  “Another hundred thousand would do it. We want to cut one more spot.”

  “Where’s the money going?” Otis asked.

  “A group called American Crosshairs.”

  “Personal donations or corporate?”

  “Corporate donations are fine.”

  “Will it show up anywhere?”

  “Nope. American Crosshairs is a social welfare organization. They can accept corporate donations and not disclose the source. Thanks to the Supreme Court! Ain’t democracy great?”

  Otis said, “It’s greatly expensive.”

  *

  Days later, just when he thought it was safe to turn on the television, Buck Messina saw this:

  Warm, syrupy music. Father and son. Little League. Fishing. Hunting. Then, the piercing sound of police sirens. Grainy black-and-white crime scenes in Chicago. Terrorists waving Kalashnikovs in Pakistan.

  An anxious voice-over: “Michigan families have always counted on Congressman Overbay to protect our way of life. Now, Washington liberals want him to stop a vote to protect the Second Amendment. Call Wilbur Overbay. Tell him: Protect Michigan values. Protect Michigan families.”

  Overbay’s phone number flashed on the screen. Below it: PAID FOR BY AMERICAN CROSSHAIRS.

  *

  Wilbur Overbay’s pollster had one religion: data. He worshiped at the crosstab. His idea of eternal sin was the margin of error. And on this morning, his faith was challenged.

  Overbay’s numbers were sinking like a boulder in Lake Michigan. Every indicator was down: job approval, personal favorability, reelect. His reputation was plunging to the murky and unchartered depths of a possible competitive election in Michigan’s first congressional district. For the first time in Wilbur Overbay’s career, it looked like his career might be over.

  An emergency conference call of the Overbay brain trust was organized. The pollster reported that in a head-to-head choice between Overbay and State Senator Sarah Plunkett, the congressman was down by three points. Even worse, in a head-to-head between Overbay and anyone but Overbay, “anyone but” was a shoe-in.

  “We can’t ignore these Super PAC hits,” the pollster warned.

  “What do you suggest?” asked Buck.

  “Send him to the district over the July Fourth recess. Mend some fences. We need to remind people that he’s the Wilbur they know and trust. Do a listening tour. Live and in person.”

  Buck wasn’t sure about the “live” part.

  “When was the last time he was in the district, anyway?” the pollster asked.

  “April, I think.”

  “Not as bad as I thought.”

  “April 2007.”

  “Time to go home,” said the pollster.

  Prepare the medevac, thought the chief of staff.

  16

  One week later, a plane banked over an endless expanse of evergreen trees and landed with a soft bounce at Overbay Regional Airport in the Upper Peninsula of northern Michigan, also known as “the UP.” Overbay Airport had two distinctions. It was the recipient of nearly forty million dollars in congressional appropriations from its namesake. And it offered the fewest routes of any airport to or from any other airport in America. The FAA might as well have paved its single runway with gold leaf.

  Congressman Wilbur Overbay was rolled in his wheelchair through a mostly empty terminal. A lonely gift shop featured two for the price of one T-shirts that read DO YOU YOOPER? and SAY YAH TO DA UP, EH! Two TSA guards—unsure why they had been assigned to this purgatory of an airport—read and reread the newspaper, waiting for the arrival of somebody to screen. Any live body would do.

  Overbay was carefully lifted into a black SUV that doubled as a mobile surgical suite. The vehicle proceeded north on the Wilbur Overbay Causeway, across the Overbay Bay Bridge, in sight of the Overbay Sewage Treatment Plant. It continued on a thin ribbon of asphalt, meandering between towering pine trees and flat farmland, until arriving, two hours later, at Lake Overbay City, which wasn’t much of a lake, or a city, but happened to be the hometown and political b
ase of its representative in Congress.

  The car pulled into the parking lot of the Overbay Senior Citizens Center, a little brick building with a cheerful red awning and plots of tulips and daisies meticulously nurtured by the senior center’s “Garden Committee.”

  There was also a greeting committee of sorts.

  Dozens of angry seniors waved handmade signs:

  “DUMP OVERBAY!”

  “GO HOME, LIBERAL WILL!”

  “RIGHT TO BARE ARMS!” (Spelling was not one of the continuing-ed courses at the senior center.)

  “Crap,” said the driver, a twenty-two-year-old community outreach worker in Overbay’s district office.

  They surrounded the SUV, red-hot and white-haired. They waved canes and rattled walkers. They were energized by supplies of fresh air pumped from their oxygen tanks. They shook liver-spotted fists and rapped gnarled knuckles on the car windows. They chanted—panted, actually—“Keep our guns, keep our guns, keep our guns!” Two men in caps reenacted the famous scene from Tiananmen Square by maneuvering their motorized scooters in front of the SUV, defying it to move. The authorities of Wapama-tum County didn’t expect a riot that day at the senior citizens center, a facility whose only violence up to that point was a two-year silent grudge over possible cheating at a Parcheesi tournament. The only law enforcement officer on duty was one overmatched part-time county security guard/senior center bus driver named Hap, who seemed hapless.

  There were, however, about two dozen television crews, tipped off to the untriumphant return of Wilbur Overbay by Sunny McCarthy. They recorded the brave veterans who stormed Normandy in defense of freedom, now storming Wilbur Overbay’s car.

  Inside, a rather startled Overbay, accustomed to being whisked into a VIP parking area at the White House for occasional meetings with the president, commanded his driver to “get the hell out of here!” Specifically he suggested that they “run the bastards down.” The driver summoned his recent political training and properly assessed that vehicular homicide against the elderly might come up in a future candidates debate. So he began gently shifting gears, rolling the car backward and forward, inches at a time, until he could maneuver out of the crowd, and beyond the top speed of the motorized scooters.

  The cameras captured the moment when Overbay’s car lurched away, leaving behind shaking fists and mouths frothing with saliva and denture cream.

  *

  Congress returned to Washington the following week. In the ornate chamber of the House Judiciary Committee, Chairman Overbay wheezed into a microphone and feebly tapped his gavel. He read the Opening Statement of the Chair, as prepared by his staff: “Today the Judiciary Committee will consider the Overbay-Dirkey American Freedom from Fear Act, a historic step in ensuring the personal safety and freedom of all Americans.”

  The bill passed in committee. By a vote of twenty-six to eighteen. It was headed to the floor of the House.

  17

  On Billionaires Bluff, Jack Steele had asked Otis Cogs-worth if he could borrow a few things. As a good neighbor, Otis was happy to comply. He sent over some pollsters, media consultants, campaign strategists, opposition researchers, and fund-raisers.

  He didn’t include Sunny McCarthy, although he had briefly considered it. He figured that a strategy session to plan her mother’s destruction might be, well, awkward for Sunny. The man had a heart. Actually, Otis had come to an agreement with Sunny: she’d focus on passage of AFFFA in Washington and he’d help defeat her mother in Asabogue. It would be a firearms firewall.

  Now Otis sat at a long glass table on the terrace at Villa di Ac-ciaio. The early-morning shadows of turrets spread against marble tile. A soft ocean breeze rippled cotton shirts, gingham slacks, and blue table linens. Servers had put out crystal pitchers of Bloody Marys, mimosas, and silver chalices of coffee. At each plate was a menu of breakfast selections prepared by Jack’s personal chef. Jack’s favorite was Freedom Toast (he despised the French). Otis chose the Jack Steele Sausage Links and a side of pastry puffs.

  Jack tapped a silver spoon—not the one from his mouth at birth—against a champagne glass and raised it.

  “To the demise of Lois Liebowitz. May she be gone . . . and forgotten.”

  His guests snickered, then slurped. Otis thought the toast might have been hard for Sunny to swallow.

  Jack continued: “We’re here to discuss how to defeat that woman in the recall election. We need a strategy. A budget. And someone to run against her.”

  Otis’s assumption was that Councilman Ralph Kellogg would run. He found it strange that Kellogg wasn’t present that morning.

  “I’ve taken the liberty of assembling dossiers on prospective candidates.”

  An assistant scurried to the table. Otis assumed she was recruited from the Southampton Beach Club, Blond & Tanned Lifeguards Union, Local 200, AFL-CIO. She embraced a stack of color-coded folders against ample breasts then plunked them— the folders, that is—in front of Jack.

  Jack waved the first file. “Councilman Ralph Kellogg.”

  There was satisfied agreement around the table.

  Jack said, “Pros: he’s my guy. He’ll do what I tell him. I love him like a brother.”

  I second the nomination, thought Otis.

  “Cons: I love him like a brother who’s a juvenile delinquent. Christ, the man’s borderline psychotic. Plus, we need him to stay where he is. The trusted ally of the man who will be mayor.”

  Jack always liked surprise endings, thought Otis. And this certainly was a surprise! Ralph Kellogg, disposed of efficiently, like some minor character in Jack’s films. As Jack said in his toast: gone and forgotten. Without even a credit at the end.

  They reviewed each folder. Civic leaders, town fathers and mothers, bankers, doctors, merchants. Jack vetoed each one. Too independent, too needy. Too loud. Too meek. Closet gay, closet liberal, closet filled with skeletons, real and imagined. When the last folder was put aside, Jack announced, “That leaves one candidate.” They looked around the table.

  Jack stood, gazed at the ocean, then proclaimed, “It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.”

  Shakespeare, Otis knew. He translated for the group, blurting: “Jack’s runnin’ for mayor!”

  Even some seagulls seemed to squawk their delight.

  Jack’s nomination secured, the candidate got right to business. “Let’s talk money. What’s it gonna take?”

  The media consultant, still dressed in fashionable funeral black, jumped in. “New York broadcast media is the most expensive in the country. So we’ll have to advertise on cheap cable television.”

  “I despise cable!” Jack snapped, perhaps because his movies were recently buried in the graveyard between RetroFlix and Has-BeenTV. “Buy network! No one makes a four-star picture on a one-star budget.”

  The pollster said, “We need a benchmark poll. Then two, maybe three tracking polls. Some focus groups would be good. Probably about a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “Spend it!”

  The mail consultant reached for the golden ring. “We’re looking at about twenty mailings to likely voters. Hit pieces on Liebowitz. Positives on you. Total budget, including location shoots, creative, production, and postage . . . roughly three hundred thousand.”

  “Done!”

  A third consultant pitched forward. “Field program won’t be cheap. This isn’t exactly a presidential election. We can expect massive voter drop-off. Half your supporters live in Palm Springs or Beverly Hills. We’ll have to register voters here, persuade unde-cideds, turn out our base—”

  “How much?” Jack asked impatiently.

  “Two hundred thou—”

  “Worth it! Leave no voter behind.”

  “Thirty thousand for an opposition research book on Liebowitz,” said the opposition researcher.

  “I’d pay anything for that!”

  “Could be another ten thousand.”

  “Don’t get greedy.”

  “Ten gra
nd a month for a campaign manager,” someone bid.

  “Get the best in the biz. Get me the Spielberg of political campaigns. Just not Spielberg.”

  Heads bobbed happily around the table. Waves splashed on the beach. The horizon was bright. In Asabogue’s history, no mayoral campaign had ever exceeded thirty thousand dollars. That morning, the nascent campaign of Jack Steele projected a total budget of three million. An average investment of just under six hundred dollars per eligible voter.

  “A small price to pay for the defense of liberty,” Jack beamed before consuming another mimosa. “And besides, money will not be a problem. I have friends.”

  Otis reached for his checkbook, delighted that he’d found an Asabogue charity worthy of his support.

  *

  That night, Mayor Liebowitz convened her kitchen cabinet—in her kitchen. They sat at her wobbly table, under a dim light fixture, accompanied by the labored hum of the old refrigerator. Sam Gergala wore a steep frown. Neighbors Patsy Hardameyer and Vera Butane sullenly moved pieces of Vera’s homemade blueberry cobbler across their plates. Vera was the Asabogue Blueberry Cobbler Queen from 1959 through 1974, when the contest was discontinued. Technically, she still reigned. Coach McHenry, potbellied and still perspiring after high school summer football practice, nervously twisted his whistle lanyard around two puffy fingers.

  They were in quiet mourning, surrounding the mayor as if she were a terminally ill patient drawing her last breaths.

  “We’ll win,” Lois insisted.

  Her neighbors exchanged glances, which Lois silently interpreted as Poor Lois. Poor naive, unelectable Lois.

  Sam exhaled, “Jaaaack Steeeele,” triggering the clucking of tongues and resigned shaking of heads.

  Lois said, “All we need is a plan.” She tapped a pen against a yellow pad. It was blank. She caught Sam narrowing his eyes at no one in particular.

  “Maybe,” he offered, “you should rescind that Chicago Compact. Then Steele will withdraw. You can put out a statement that it . . . deserves further study. Like they do in Washington.”

  Lois crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. “Sam, you know I won’t do that.”