“No problem.” He aimed a thumb over his shoulder at the hallway. “Nunzio and I had a good day pickin’ up receipts for Don Bruce. We was just gonna pay a visit to obtain comestibles from the Yellow Crescent Inn. We had intended to dine in, but it would be my extreme pleasure to increase the order and enjoy my repast here wit’ youse. I am sure my cousin here would concur dat your company would be better’n any hoi polloi, no offense to Gus and his clientele.”
“You bet,” Nunzio agreed.
“Thanks, Guido,” I said. “That would be great.”
I must have fallen asleep in my chair, because the next thing I remembered was the smell of hot food. A tray had been placed across my lap. Paper-wrapped sandwiches, cut-up fried vegetables, and a tall strawberry milk shake were arrayed on it. Everyone else was already eating. I reached for the cup and took a long swig through the straw.
“Aaah,” I said, sighing with satisfaction.
I could tell that I had also missed a lot of the conversation, but I guessed from the context that they had been discussing the events of the day.
“Do you need more personnel on the ground, boss?” Guido asked.
“No!” Bunny said. “We handled it.”
“We have to find out where the leak is coming from,” I said. “There’s collusion going on between the two parties. I told you all on the day of the conference that there was something going on. Someone broke my security spell from the inside.”
Bunny nodded. “And someone substituted false documents for ours before the signatures went on. Who could have done that?”
“Either the managers or the candidates,” Nunzio said. “Both of them had plenty of time while they were examining the contracts.”
Bunny frowned. She took off her shoes and rubbed the soles of her feet. “But they insist they are following the rules that we set out.”
“Who else could it have been?”
Guido pointed with half a sandwich. “The assistants. Dat means dere is a mole in each camp.”
“But who are they working for?”
“Who else?” Aahz asked, appearing in the doorway. He ambled over to my tray and helped himself to a handful of fried vegetable sticks. He chased it down with a generous swig from my milk shake. “Who benefits from making this election chaotic? Who could possibly want this to keep going on forever?”
“No one,” Bunny said. “The island’s a wreck. The people are sick to pieces of the whole election process.”
Aahz never asked rhetorical questions. There was an answer, and he wanted us to guess. I wasn’t in the mood.
“Who?” I asked.
Aahz grinned. “Ask yourself who is making money even though the island is running without a government? Maybe you’re too close to the situation to have perspective. Who can’t lose? Even you should have figured it out by now.”
“Who is it?” I asked, peeved. Aahz always thought that I couldn’t put two and two together without help. In this case, he might have been right. “Just tell us.”
“I shouldn’t have to. If it were any more obvious, you’d have bite marks on your behind! Is this job getting to be too much for you? You can always back out.”
“No!” Bunny said. “Is this a sneaky way to get the company to reopen the question of who’s the head of M.Y.T.H., Inc.?”
“I’m shocked,” Aahz said, putting on an innocent expression. “Shocked that you would even think I would use a lever like this on you.”
“Aahz,” I said warningly.
Aahz dropped the joking and became serious. “No. This is not a referendum on your leadership, which has been excellent. Anyone can make a good decision that turns out to be the wrong one when the rest of the facts come out. We’ve gotten stiffed before. There’s always something that they don’t tell you. It’s lucky this time that it probably won’t be fatal.”
“Excepting for the minute point that we’ll hafta return the deposit we collected in advance,” Guido added.
“No problem,” I said. “We have been keeping a full list of expenses.”
“No! We started the job,” Aahz said, with a jab at his own palm. “We’re going to keep it.”
“We can’t,” I said. “It wouldn’t be fair.”
“This whole situation is a waste of our time and talent!”
“You were the one who insisted we take it in the beginning,” I pointed out.
Aahz had to drag the admission out from behind his teeth. “I was wrong! Tell them to draw straws. Short straw takes the governorship. We should have done that from the beginning. They should have gotten it over with a long time ago. It’s not worthy of M.Y.T.H., Inc.”
“No!” I said. “It’s not up to us to tell them how they want their election to progress. We said we’d help. We have a reputation to protect. We’re going to see this through according to their laws and customs.”
“Uh-huh. Either of them showing a lead in the polls?”
“No,” I said thoughtfully. I took a bite of my sandwich. “They are running almost exactly equal. And neither one will give the other an inch. And they keep coming up with new events to add to the roster. Each of them thinks he’s going to be showcased, but it always comes out a tie. There’s really no difference between them. No wonder it’s gone on so long. If you took away Wilmer’s wig and Emo’s eyelashes, they might be twins.”
Aahz raised an eyebrow. “So there’s no lesser of two Weavils.” He laughed heartily at his own joke. I didn’t get it.
“Not really, I guess.”
“You can admit it if this is all getting to be too much for you,” Aahz said. “Politics really isn’t a game for amateurs, even talented ones.”
“No!” I said. “We can handle it.”
“We’re doing all right,” Bunny said, with determination.
“Okay,” Aahz said. “I will be happy to come back in if you need me.”
“Thanks, Aahz,” I said. “But we won’t.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“The medium is the message.”
—T. TURNER
I held the copy of the Morning Gossip in my hands and read the headline again.
Whose Island Is This Anyway? it read. The subhead went on to insinuate, Handing over the deed to Bokromi? In the center of the page, taking up three columns, was a picture of me offering Bunny the contract. The contract that had gotten burned up.
Ecstra had met us on a street corner a few blocks away from her office with her usual astonishing foreknowledge, and handed us the paper.
“I wanted you to see it before you talked to anyone else,” she said. “I didn’t write it; Tolomi did. He said he got an exclusive from both candidates. I’m sorry. It sounds bad.” She took her notebook out of her purse. “Would you two like to comment on it? For the record?”
“I want to read it first,” Bunny said, holding up her hand.
“So do I,” I added.
Ecstra had stood back to let us go over it.
The article was worse than the header. According to both camps, we had done our best to make the candidates appear unattractive during the portrait event of the day before. My hijinks, during which I had “severely injured” one or both of the campaign magicians, were nothing more than a screen to cover our perfidy and incompetence. We had forced the candidates to participate in a number of exploits that did nothing to display their intelligence and fitness for office. Instead, we had subjected them to a media circus that wasted both taxpayer money and hard-earned contributions from loving supporters of either Emo or Wilmer. Moreover, we had asked for, and received, bribes from each party so neither one would be left behind in the polls, which we were manipulating in a masterful fashion. Though the “interviews” ran in two columns, they were almost identical in content. The entire election was corrupt, the candidates insisted, and it was all down to M.Y.T.H., Inc. We had brought down evil on their fair island community, evil and fear and suffering.
“They don’t know what real evil is like,” I commented.
> The article concluded that if we were permitted to hold the election in two weeks’ time, the outcome would almost certainly be to the candidate who donated the most illicit money to the Klahds from Outside. The crooked candidate would win, and the honest one would be left out in the cold, along with the entire electorate. By the time I finished reading, I could hardly see the print for the rage I felt. Then I remembered we were not alone. I made myself calm down and handed the paper back to Ecstra.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“I don’t think this came from Emo or Wilmer. This doesn’t sound like their scriptwriters,” Bunny commented.
“No,” I mused. “It’s that flawless grammar again.”
Bunny knew what I was thinking. “We have to talk to Orlow and Carnelia.”
“Excuse us,” I said to Ecstra. I took Bunny’s arm and started to walk in the direction of Emo Weavil’s campaign headquarters.
“Wait,” she said, running after us. “What about my interview!”
“Not now,” Bunny said.
Ecstra doubled around in front of us.
“Is there some kind of conspiracy going on?” she asked, licking the point of her pencil.
“No comment,” I said.
“Who’s involved? You say you want to speak to the managers. Do you suspect them of talking to the press behind your back?”
“No comment,” I said.
“Do you know your shoe is untied?” she asked.
I stopped and looked down. She grabbed hold of my other arm and hung on. “I’m coming with you. There’s something going on, and the press has the right to know!”
I could have shaken her off, but I was in too much of a hurry. Summoning up magikal force, I pictured the ground passing by in a blur under my feet. Suddenly, we were running faster than I had ever moved before. I had to dodge wagons and trash carts, mothers with their babies, and messenger boys on two-wheeled conveyances who shot me looks of admiration as I wove in and out of the traffic.
Luckily, the streets weren’t that busy so early in the morning. I arrived at the door of the Weavil headquarters. Bunny’s cheeks were pink, but Ecstra was panting. She let go of me. I slipped past her, pulled Bunny inside, and locked the door behind me.
“No fair!” Ecstra shouted, pounding on the glass. “The press has a right to hear!”
Orlow looked up at us and glared. “So you’re helping the opposition! I should have known that Emo was too good and innocent to know what he was doing when he brought you in! This bodes poorly for a fair election! Bribes! I’m surprised at you! And not cutting us in!”
“We have not taken a single bribe,” I said.
“Multiple bribes, then!”
“Uh, no.”
Bunny took over. She pushed past me and confronted Orlow face to face. “I have it on good authority that this slander came from both these offices, so it’s time you did some talking.”
Orlow favored her with a stern expression. “What about, Miss Bunny? It seems that it doesn’t matter what I tell you, or do for you, you’re going to cut us down in the end.”
“That is, if you’re not the ‘unnamed source,’” Bunny said.
“Of course I’m not! None of us are!”
“I want to get to the bottom of this right now. We need to talk to both sides, immediately. I’m going to get Carnelia. You and Skeeve meet me at the hotel conference room in one hour. Be on time and alone. Got it?” She poked him in the chest with her forefinger. Orlow unconsciously rubbed the spot.
“Well, yes, ma’am.” He turned to me as Bunny stormed off. “She has a powerful way of expressing herself, doesn’t she?”
“Yes, she does,” I said. Ecstra followed Bunny away. I could hear her yapping out questions. I knew Bunny was too angry to answer.
Orlow and I reached the meeting with plenty of time to spare. I surrounded the conference room with a triple layer of magikal silence. You’d have thought I had done the same thing inside, for all the communication going on between the others in there with me. The two campaign managers glared at us and one another.
Finally, Carnelia broke the silence.
“You have a fat lot of nerve, dragging us away from the legitimate pursuit of running for office,” she said. “We trusted you, and we spent a lot of time on you, and what do we get? Defeated before the first vote is cast!”
“Now, hold on, they’re cheating us, not you!” Orlow said. “Your candidate is paying bribes, not mine.”
Carnelia looked outraged. “We’re not responsible for this. You are. We’re going to call this all off, and it’s your fault!”
“Our reputation is at stake, and you’re to blame!”
The more the two of them argued, the more certain I was that they were telling the truth. I’d heard some good liars in my life, but Orlow and Carnelia didn’t even make the top hundred. But I could hear Aahz’s voice in the back of my mind, and I knew what he had been trying to get us to understand. It was as clear as crystal to me now.
I stopped the bickering with an upturned hand.
“Please, just listen for a moment.”
“Well?” Orlow demanded. “And what have you got to say, as if it matters now?”
“Do you know why you can’t ever get all the way to an election day?” I asked them.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too profitable to have both sides continue the endless campaign. It’s become a cottage industry here on Bokromi. You’re probably employing hundreds, if not thousands of people. You’re a percentage of the economy!”
“Well, that’s true,” Carnelia said, thoughtfully. “About two percent, maybe, over the last five years.”
“And do you know who profits the most? Who has an interest in prolonging this into infinity?”
“The suppliers, I suppose,” Orlow said. “They make a pretty decent buck out of us, what with the posters, balloons, hats, buttons, favors—and those rush orders! Whew!”
“You don’t have to tell me about rush orders,” Carnelia said, adjusting her stole. The rodents rearranged themselves fetchingly. “We had to send out for emergency donations to cover the last rally!” She frowned at me. “But how are they keeping us from holding the election?”
Bunny slapped herself in the forehead.
“We are so stupid,” she said. “The newspapers! We’ve been consorting with the enemy, telling them our every move!”
“The newspapers?” Orlow asked.
I nodded. “Every time it looks like the two sides agree and are going to go through with the vote, there’s an article, or an editorial, or an interview from ‘undisclosed sources’ revealing some secret information or a crooked trick. Just like trained pets, one or the other of you backs off and cancels the election.”
“But they have transcripts of interviews,” Carnelia said.
“Yes,” I said. “Who said these interviews took place?”
“Well, it’s in the papers!” Orlow replied.
Carnelia nodded, horrified. “And if you didn’t put it there, and we didn’t put it there . . .”
Orlow finished her sentence as enlightenment dawned on them both. “. . . They put it in.”
“He’s right, you know,” Carnelia said, shaking her head. “Every time. We figure we can’t trust you, and it all starts over again.”
“We should have known better,” Orlow said. “But how could we have known?”
“You couldn’t,” I said. “You didn’t believe anything the other side said, so the printed transcript was the only source.”
“Newspapers aren’t supposed to make the news by themselves!” Carnelia declared. Both managers were as outraged as I was.
“No, they’re not,” Bunny said. “And from now on, they will get what we want them to, and only in front of enough witnesses that we will have credibility.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“Press releases,” Bunny said. “From now on, they get printed press releases that will be dis
tributed in public, identical ones to every paper in town. No interviews, private or public. The only input they get from either side goes through us. You can’t have an interview if we’re not present. Is that clear?”
“Clear as crystal,” Orlow said.
“And by the way, both of you have leaks in your offices,” I put in. “Someone let eavesdroppers overhear that first conference. And I suspect all of our plans have been passed along to the newspapers.”
Orlow looked grim. “I’ve got a file folder with teeth. I should have been using it all along.”
“And from now on I will keep all sensitive information on my person,” Carnelia said. “No one can get past my stole. They bite anyone who gets too close.”
“Do you suppose anyone can bribe them?” I asked.
“Hah!” Carnelia snorted. She petted the little animals, but her expression was feral. “They know which side their kibble is buttered on.”
* * *
“Mr. Skeeve!” Ecstra called to me. She had been waiting in the corridor outside our room. She followed us out of the hotel and down the street. “What was the subject of this emergency conference with the rival campaign managers? The public has a right to know!”
“You’re absolutely right,” I said. I reached into my belt pouch and came up with a rolled-up scroll. The building manager had a copy-elf on duty, and I had hired his services. I had thirty identical papers beside the one I handed Ecstra. “Here’s your briefing.”
Ecstra scanned it. She read faster than anyone else I had ever seen. “All this says is that you’re issuing press releases from now until the election! Will you comment on that? For me?” She gave me a winning smile.
“No, I can’t,” I said firmly. “That’s all you will get.”
“Are you giving exclusives to another reporter?” she asked.
“No,” I said. “The candidates will now communicate with the press solely through press releases that we have gone over and verified. All of you will get the same information at the same time. We have to keep it fair.”
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