“Now, I am not a flake, let me say that. Let me make that one thing clear. I’m not!
“Just because I—find it hard doesn’t mean—It’s normal! We all—
“Sometimes I pray. I do, I—I get on the gold phone and—
“Heh heh.
“Of course you never know. It’s a flashlight in the dark, prayer, you—You never know what it’s going to turn up—
“I guess my—I mean if I have a fault, I—Of course I have faults, I’m not saying—But if I—
“It’s that I, I don’t love people enough.
“Heh. You think that’s just—but I—I can’t explain it to you, I—
“Heh.
“Well, so what. Big deal.”
He gazed off to one side, a tremor playing at his eye.
“I didn’t want to do it anyway.”
• • •
We pulled up near the corner of Pennsylvania, across the street from a security door to the Old Executive Office Building. Charlie was at the wheel.
The guards, the fence, the sidewalk to the door. We were in technician drag—gray pants, brown shoes and, clipped to our breast pockets, red plastic cards with VENDOR spelt out in white letters.
Norman had got us these at least, and he’d drawn me a map of the Vice President’s office and the surrounding area. He had an office in the White House as well but it was more or less for show and Norman had agreed to look it over. No particular threat involved there. This was where the work went on, and where the locks were.
We were to proceed to the mantrap door and enter one at a time, me and Shoop. Insert the VENDOR card to open the door, enter, and when it closed behind you the guard inside looked you over and buzzed open the door in front of you.
At the desk the guards would write our names, the numbers on our cards, the time and what we were doing there in the Big Book. Servicing the new computer in the Vice President’s office, we would say. We had the tools, the whole bit.
“If we’re computers we need a scope,” Shoop had said, and he came up with this Techtronic oscilloscope, big mother chip tester the size of a gym bag with a dial like a speedometer.
It was after five and we’d be pretty much on our own. Some stay-late would come down to take us up to the office but we could play with the scope and tinker around with the tool kit long enough to bore him into reading a magazine or going out for coffee. Take the terminal apart, I don’t know.
Shoop guaranteed he could be into any locked drawer they could throw at him in seconds, he had the tools right there. Had this thing, you hang it on a safe and it tells you the combination. Had this other thing that would ground out an alarm system. Of course they would turn off the alarm system then they brought us in but you never knew. And if there was an alarm that activated when we grounded out the alarm system, he had a thing that would disarm that.
Software, baby. State-of-the-art stuff. I guess he stole it or something.
And if the page wasn’t in there we had access to the offices of the key staff people. They were arranged along one side of a hall with anonymous doors on the outside, but inside a suite of adjoining units led up to the Executive Secretary’s office and through to the throne room.
Not that we could wander back and forth at will but the OEOB was one of those old buildings with ledges and gargoyles and windows that went up. We had the alarm-detectors, the glasscutters, the rope—I mean we weren’t taking any chances. Pierlawn rope with the thirty-per-cent stretch in case you fall, don’t want to cut yourself in half. He’d taken me to a climbing store in Georgetown with an artificial cliff on one wall, showed me the knot where you just jerk the line and it undoes. Guy was a pro.
I mean were we set?
But we needed someone to stay in the van. The guard would never let us leave it at the curb empty and there had to be someone to talk back to him. There was a parking lot but it was blocks away and when we came out of there we wanted to go.
Charlie. That’s why he was sent to us.
We told him what to say in case anyone came. Made him memorize it and say it back.
“My horoscope says something bad’s going to happen!”
“Why don’t you just shut the fuck up and listen,” Shoop said.
“Okay.”
“Charlie, darling, please try to pay attention.”
“Okay.”
“Charlie,” I said, “you will have my otherwise unconditional friendship if you do this right.”
“Okay.”
It took a lot of parenting but he had the routine down and he knew how to drive.
What could go wrong?
He put it in park and Shoop and I got out and opened the door on the side, got our stuff together. We took that breath you’re entitled to before you step into the arena and when we looked up Charlie’s door was open and he was gone.
We raised our heads and watched him through the window.
He went along the sidewalk up to the glass door, put his card in the lock and pushed it open.
“What the fuck’s he doin’?”
I couldn’t see what was happening at the security desk but the inner door didn’t open and Charlie took out some heavy-duty kind of pistol and fired it in several directions, I guess he panicked in there or something, eventually concentrating on the outer door and percussing it into an unyielding web of fragments. He threw himself at it until it tore gradually like plasticine.
We watched, open-mouthed.
Realizing his error he turned and shot the shape out of the inner door, kicked a rent in it and blammed at the desk. “You bum-fuckers!” he expleted.
The guard lifted out a rifle as fat as a flare gun that went foomf, foomf, foomf and made the pieces clatter around and Charlie held his arms straight up and screamed like a chimpanzee.
By now we were wedged in a traffic jam. Police, people trying to see what was going on. Someone was waving us through.
They must have taken him away and locked him in a room or something. I don’t know where he got the gun, he was evil.
“So that’s no good,” I said.
• • •
She hung up and walked into the bedroom.
I followed her. “What happened?”
“I’m meeting him for dinner.” She flipped through her wardrobe.
“Tonight? Just like that?”
“He wants to see me. I don’t know what to wear.”
“Something easy to take off.”
“Darling, defuse yourself. We’re only going to dinner.”
“So you won’t submit to his embraces, then.”
“Really, Wordy, do hush. What about this?” She held it to herself .
“It makes your arms look fat.”
She flung it to the floor. “You’re getting all hyper.”
“I’m not happy about this.”
“Make yourself as happy as you can, darling. There’s nothing else we can do. What about this?” She pressed it to her thighs and twisted for profile.
“It looks, how shall I say, HTC.”
“Well you don’t seem to be getting anywhere!” She walked the dress over to the bed and shrugged her robe off.
I went with her. Clearly she wasn’t interested in making me feel any better. Sometimes you just have to go with it.
“Ouch,” I said.
“Is there anything else we can do?”
“Anything! Nothing! I don’t want you to—”
“What?”
I chewed my lip.
“Aw, Wordy.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “I won’t let him.”
“I see. The Secretary of State drops everything. What for? What are you going to tell him, you’re not on the pill?”
“Darling!”
“I don’t care about the world, Alberta!”
“What about the President?”
“Hell with him.”
She fingered the back of my collar. “Look, if you don’t want me to go I won’t go.”
“I don’t wan
t you to go.”
“All right.”
I stood there and felt stupid.
“Just watch out for him,” I said. “He sleeps with everybody, you don’t know what he’s got.”
“I think I can manage him.”
“Keeps his etchings on the ceiling.”
She straightened my shirt.
So then I just had to stand around with my hands in my pockets while she got into her night-bird mode for homo erectus. Didn’t know whether to read or what.
When she was ready she had become a creature of a different order. Barely touching the floor.
Rumpled, disconsolate, I leaned in the doorway. “Che bella,” I said.
She grinned guiltily. “I don’t know why you should be worried. I’m the one who has to keep him amused.”
She kissed at me and went out to the elevator.
I had to admire the elegant way she juggled me. She knew exactly how much energy it took to overcome me.
When the elevator door closed I went out to the balcony and got Shoop on the phone. “She’s coming down.”
After a minute he said, “Okay, she’s in a cab. We’re heading up Virginia.”
“I’ll be there.”
I went downstairs and took a taxi up Virginia holding my phone out the window.
She was in Rocco Terrone’s on upper Connecticut. There was no parking around and Shoop was tucked in at the corner. I paid the taxi and got in the van.
“He’s already here,” said Shoop. He nodded at a black Chrysler double-parked in front of the restaurant. A Secret Serviceman leaned on the driver’s door.
We waited three hours. I’d forgotten the hamburgers and we got hungry but we sat there. Couldn’t leave now, they could come out any time.
Shoop was patient. The Charlie fiasco had let him down, he had his own c.v. to consider. He sat with his feet on the dashboard working his cheeks to the radio, waiting to involve himself in history.
“Shootin’ Down to Shebooby by the RK’s right there movin’ us up to Newswatch, brought to you this hour by—”
“Shut that shit off,” I snapped, but of course with perfect tact.
When they came out W.T. was laughing and sort of mock-running, jogging merrily behind her. No pressure on anything. Oiled.
“Oh, I’m chilly!” she said.
“Here, put this on.” His arm went around her and he pinched her shoulder.
“Ouch!”
“Would you let me hurt you if I promise not to get carried away? Hyuh hyuh.”
“Apparently one has to be abused by you either verbally or physically.”
He winked at the driver as she got in. Scorin’ a little clit. He belched at length, gave it verve and contour, and got in the car.
“Oh, shit!” he shouted, getting out again. He had upset the drink in his pocket and now removed the empty glass, plucking his clothes away from him. “Like to put out mah fah!” He handed the glass to the other agent. “Don’t like that ay-tall. Hyuh hyuh.” He dove back inside.
We followed them along Connecticut. Traffic was light that late, a few sirens, always the sirens. We hung back as best we could and sped up when they turned. If we got out on the Beltway it wouldn’t be that easy to hide but they just drifted along Rock Creek Parkway.
And it was hard enough. There was no traffic until we got to the Lincoln Memorial Bridge and crossed into Virginia. We were headed out towards the bedroom towns. Falls Church or someplace.
Bedroom.
But after a few minutes we turned off. You get these high-rises in the Arlington Hills with a view of the city and presently we paused in front of one and turned off the lights. It was set back from the street and we were looking at it across an unkempt acre or so of terrain. Its own road ran past the main door where the Chrysler had stopped.
One agent stayed in the car and the other held the door open and followed Alberta and W.T. inside. The guard in the lobby got up and came around the desk.
“Get out here,” said Shoop. “Watch where the light goes on. I’ll check the back.”
He left me standing on the shoulder and zipped off down the side road past the building.
I felt naked out there in the dark. I hoped I would see if a light went on. I counted ten balconies up and eight across.
And then what? There was an agent at the front door, a security guard watching a video panel and the other agent would be in the hall outside the apartment!
A light went on. Seventh floor, three in from the left. They were up there! Where was Shoop?
He didn’t come back for fifteen minutes by actual second-by-second count! I jumped into the van with considerable eagerness. “Where were you?”
“I didn’t see nothin’.”
“Seven up, three across.” I pointed it out.
“All right, take it easy.”
“Yeah. Yeah. What are we going to do?”
“We’ll go in and take a look.”
He pulled away easy and whipped us back around back. Parking lot across the street. He got out and opened the side door, strapped on a utility belt, put on a knapsack and picked up a ladder. I stood there.
There were floodlights on the building but we strolled right across the lawn, me looking around nervously.
“Relax,” he said.
He pulled a cord that extended the ladder, leaned it on the end of a balcony and shook it down firm.
“Up you go.”
I climbed up to the railing. The ladder got thin up there, I don’t like heights. Have these nightmares about heights.
I pulled myself over and waited for him. The apartment was dark. A doberman came and put his paws up on the glass and made a steady noise in his throat.
Shoop swung his legs over with easy style and slid the ladder back together as he pulled it up. He laid it on the balcony, knelt at the door and took a tool off his belt. With it he bent the strip of aluminum along the bottom away from the door.
“All right,” he whispered, “we lift it an inch and it’ll slide away from the lock. Don’t let it open too far.” He nodded at the dog.
I went to the end that would open and braced my hand against the frame. He went to the other end and joggled it, lifted it just a little bit and it started moving. I held it hard.
The doberman stuck his bare teeth through the crack. He was getting real real serious. Real tense. So was I.
“Burglar’s dream, a sliding glass door,” said Shoop. He consulted his utility belt and pulled off a baggy full of chicken livers, rapped the dog on the snout with the tool and when it withdrew poked the slop through the crack.
The doberman wasn’t happy about that at all. He climbed the glass and made the most penetrating threats and we had to stand there and keep him from pushing the door over. Eventually he resumed all fours and sniffed at the meat.
Three minutes later, by actual second-by-second count, he was chasing rabbits and jerking his paws and we were stepping over him and stealing on through. When we got to the front door Shoop took its temperature with some electric thing. An alarm was unlikely with a guard in the lobby but he checked. We unlocked it and tiptoed into the hall, closed it softly and hopped it for the fire door. Again the preliminary check. Negative.
“All right,” he whispered, “here’s the risky part. Cameras out there, every floor, but they feed one screen in the lobby so they’re on a pulse system, dig? One floor at a time. Blind spot’s under the camera and we goin’ out and stand there a minute.”
He opened a crack. “One-way locks.” I glanced up and down the hall while he slipped his hand out around the latch and taped it so we could come back.
Ready? his look said, and we shot out into the stairwell and stood flat to the wall under the camera. The door took its time closing and jammed on the tape. He kicked it and reached up and clipped something on the cable to the camera and took out some Texas Instruments timing device.
We waited. I was going nuts. The cable thing buzzed softly and I almost ran away.
After ten more seconds we ran up to the next floor and stood under that camera. He clipped on a buzzer. We waited.
Buzz, it went. Then the one below us.
“Shit. Come on.”
We climbed briskly.
“It starts at the top and comes down at us. Say fifty seconds to get to the ninth floor and next time we make the roof.”
“The roof?”
“The roof.”
“The roof?”
We took the stairs steadily, sweating a little. So far so great, I was glad we didn’t have to deal with the guy on the door, but the roof?
We stopped at nine and breathed while he counted off seconds and then pushed on until we came to the high steel door. He investigated the alarm possibilities, checked the timer, drew new weapons and we were through and out on the roof.
Gravel underfoot, warm night, stars, the city.
“What are we doing here?” I whispered.
We tiptoed to the edge and looked carefully over. The drop was so long it was almost abstract. A sickening sway to the perspective.
He walked the edge to the third balcony in and dropped the knapsack, got out some rope and leather straps.
I tried to close my mouth.
He ran the rope through his fist by the arm length and tied the end through a seat harness.
“No,” I said. A flat statement of fact.
“Come on, I’l1 tie you in.”
“You’re taking this too seriously,” I told him.
He went back and found something to tie the rope to. I didn’t want to know what it was. Ludicrous.
He approached me, testing it. “All right, I’m gonna be lettin’ it out—”
“No,” I insisted. “This is absolutely out of the question.”
“You don’t think a black man can do this job?”
“Don’t give me that shit!” I said. “It’s ten floors down there!” I gestured violently.
He sank in his stance and gave me a we-never-seem-to-get-anything-done look. “All right,” he sighed. “No use standing around here.” He knelt to pack.
I peeked over the edge. Four floors down, light on the balcony. Alberta. They’d been in there half an hour. They were still in there.
The President's Palm Reader: A Washington Comedy Page 23