Born to Run

by John M. Green

  For the first time in its life, Broadway had become an understatement.

  “Terrorists could do this,” warned the on-screen caption.

  “If you don’t want that…,” it offered a menu of the subway design modifications Jax was convinced were essential.

  “This could happen almost anywhere: New York, Washington DC, London… any city with an interlinked subway.”

  “This is the key to turning the election around,” said Isis, cool as ice. “If we need to do that, if things pan out so it is necessary, this is how we’ll do it.”

  Even Diana swallowed.

  24

  ISABEL WOKE AT five, as usual, and leant over and picked up the photograph. “So I’m half-Chilean, half-Bolivian. Like an alpaca,” she smiled at her father’s picture, “though not so well-bred.”

  She swung out of bed, threw on a fluffy robe and opened the door into her hotel suite sitting room. A female Secret Service agent who’d flown in with her was on the lounge reading a book and jumped up to greet her, the paperback spilling to the floor. Isabel saw it had a pastel pink cover. The agent blushed and quickly pointed out the table laden with fresh coffee, bagels and a package of news wires and articles from the Sunday papers.

  Isabel poured them both a coffee and took the news pack back with her into the bedroom.

  Not surprisingly, almost all the newsclips were about Close-up. The free publicity they’d generated for tonight’s show would be worth an entire month’s campaign spending.

  The speculation was rampant but not one paper had anything firm or believable. One ridiculous story had Isabel in an intriguing sex romp with a black woman, but that was in a British tabloid. Among the pages she was flicking through was a faxed single sheet with “love Gregory” scrawled across the bottom. It was headed “Scoop”:

  Chilean to land-locked Bolivian: “Definition of absurd: a Bolivian navy.”

  Bolivian to Chilean: “Definition of absurd: Chilean Ministry of Justice.”

  Isabel’s spirits lifted. Gregory was her Mr Fixit, her cheerleader, her know-everything, do-everything. And yet, he could still take the time to lower the heat with a joke. After she’d worked her way through the pile, she switched on cable and flicked through the channels. The speculation about Close-up had hit rival networks like FOX, CNN, you name it. But there was no breaking news, not about her.

  Not even “sources close to” the program were giving anything away. It looked to Isabel like the network had managed a complete lockdown on the story.

  She switched on her cell phone for messages. Ed had sent her a text message at around 3 AM: “If UR reading this B4 I call U, go back 2 sleep. CU in Auto Alley.”

  She smiled and phoned him anyway.

  Ed had heard nothing but told her he’d cancelled his London trip—he was supposed to fly out that morning—and was coming to Detroit to be with her. “I won’t get there in time for Mass,” he joked.

  “Shame,” Isabel retorted, “You’re the one who really needs it.”

  “I’ll get there for the debate prep, okay?” Isabel breathed a little deeper knowing he’d be there to support her during the Close-up timeslot.

  AS Isabel went down in the elevator, she skimmed the background briefings on people she’d meet during the day. Her media arranger started giving her the rundown on what to expect with the press hounds waiting downstairs and on the radio program they were heading to: Bobby Foster’s new tax policy, her promise for improved health insurance portability…

  Isabel interrupted her: “There’s only one issue today… Close-up. And,” she said testily, “the only comment I’ve got to offer is ‘no comment’.”

  Even good-humoured Father Lizewski at St Hyacinth’s was stressed about the program. Leaning out from his pulpit, he blessed Isabel, joking in a preposterous mock-New-York-Jewish accent, “Like it couldn’t hurt she’s a Catholic?” When the chuckles settled, the priest looked out over the congregation and said solemnly, “What took God a lifetime of Isabel’s hard work won’t be undone in one 30-minute TV show.”

  Isabel was moved by the emotion that pulsed through the church. News broadcasts would replay the moment all day. When the service ended, swirls of well-meaning parishioners engulfed her.

  “I am Democrat,” said one woman who squeezed Isabel as if she were still wringing the washing water out of a bed sheet. “But November come and I vote for you. My whole family vote for you, good lady,” and she presented Isabel with a foot-long knobbly pink kolbasa sausage. “I make this special for you.”

  Isabel smiled and took it, handing it to one of her minders. She had tried the fatty sausage once, as often as anyone would if they didn’t have to.

  The priest pressed a set of rosaries into her hand. “You might want these tonight,” he said and softly kissed her cheek. Isabel wasn’t much of a Catholic after she left the trailer park, but she thanked him graciously and slipped the beads into her jacket pocket. As the car shot off to the picnic, she pulled them out and held one of the rosary beads tight, recalling from when she was young the Glorious Mysteries, the first of which was the Resurrection. Well, here was hoping. And praying.

  The high-security, deep blue Chrysler SUV that had been organised for the day was brightened up with magnetic stick-ons of her emblematic red roses, one on each door, standard fit-out for a campaign vehicle.

  Her phone rang.

  “I’m on my way to Detroit,” Gregory said. “We’ve got nothing. No one’s talking… no backgrounders… no off-the-records. No ‘sounds like.’ No ‘hypothetically speaking.’ No ‘what ifs.’ We’ve asked everyone, tried to pull in favours, pressed, cajoled, whatever. Nothing. These people don’t seem to care that they’re playing with the most important election in the world.”

  “Don’t we just watch tonight, knit our eyebrows and say, hmm, that’s interesting, we’ll get back to you?”

  “Not if they whack the ball right out of the field, we can’t.”

  “Have you called Orrin Hatch’s people?”

  Gregory’s silence told her she’d insulted him by even asking.

  “What did they say?”

  They hadn’t been able to think of anything. “Here’s the thing,” said Gregory. “Scenario one is that this is all opportunist media hype and we’ve got nothing to worry about—about as unlikely as al-Qaeda cutting off their own heads—in which case we just go ahead with the debate prep; or… scenario two, whatever they’ve got is huge and we are… you know…”

  “Fucked?”

  Gregory had never heard Isabel use the f-word and after several empty seconds, he coughed. “Ah… yes, that. In which case, you and I and the team should ditch the debate and go out and get, well, ah, you know, pickled.”

  “I’m not a ‘get pickled’ sort of gal.”

  He didn’t think she was a “fucked” sort of gal either, at least not until a moment ago, but there was a lot of pressure on her right now. “Yeah, getting drunk isn’t classy.” He thought of The Book. “If it’s going to be the end, not that I’m resigned to that possibility, we will stand tall and with grace. Who knows, maybe there’ll be a next time. Or maybe not. Whatever. So, if it does all turn to, er, shit, then we call in the media, including Close-up, of course…”

  “To the church fellowship hall?”

  “Exactly… out there in shabby real-town. We say, you know, no hard feelings… they were doing their jobs… we had no idea…”

  “But we need one, dammit.”

  Isabel saw her team was fighting the last war, not this one. They’d discussed the need to create other options often enough but if a different approach was needed, it looked like Isabel would have to find it herself.

  25

  ISABEL’S VAN PULLED up for her debate prep a little late. “I had some last minute things at the hotel,” she said as she walked into the secret location and joined her entourage around the large flat screen TV that Gregory had arranged to be set up. They were holed up in a vintage Detroit fellowship hall,
last painted at least twenty years earlier, with quaint white gables and greyed, peeling clapboard walls. Any heritage value the building once had was lost on those present. They were here to practise the debate, but first they’d watch Close-up.

  For the first ten minutes of the program, Gregory’s theory proved correct: soppy human-interest stuff, but critically no surprises. No news, just background.

  Ed had flown over as promised and a speakerphone line was open with Hank Clemens and Bill Edwards, as well as a few Republican officials in case they needed to coordinate reactions. The Party stayed rock solid. Not one representative with any clout agreed to appear on the program, a point Mike Mandrake tried shoving up them at the start of the show when he interviewed former Republican National Committee chairman, Michael Steele, who had nothing of value to say, much like when he was still in office.

  IN the few hours’ build up to Close-up’s timeslot, Isis wasn’t the only one making moves. Despite Bill Edwards’ advanced years, he moved fast too, shifting the entire inner core of the Republican Party organisation into crisis gear. What with the calls from CBS, the program teasers, and the intensifying media speculation, it was too much to leave solely in the hands of the candidate and her campaign team. What if this really was big?

  Bill had personally called to put each member of the Executive of the Republican National Committee on red alert and, by the time Close-up was on air, Bill wasn’t sitting on just any open line, contrary to what Isabel and the others in Detroit believed; he and the entire Executive Committee, or ExCom, were bunched around the massive oak table in his dining room. All their church-going and family Sundays had been cancelled and they’d jetted in from around the country to assemble at Bill’s home. Fortunately, the secret gathering hadn’t leaked to anyone, not even to the campaign. A news story like “GOP in panic” was the last thing Bill wanted, even if it were true. Actually, it was the second last thing he’d want.

  Unhappily, he’d be getting both.

  Bill had also dragged in Myron Kowalski, a wily old-faithful constitutional lawyer who, even more than that turncoat Robert Dupont, had provided the backbone of the party’s legal advice for over thirty years, even if his own was clearly suffering acute curvature these days.

  ISABEL was tetchy; who wouldn’t be, waiting to hear about a past you didn’t know you had until yesterday and having it broadcast live to millions of viewers?

  But when the program ran an old scratchy newsreel, it gave her such a jolt that Ed put his hand on her shoulder to steady her.

  The dateline on the screen was 1968. US President Lyndon B. Johnson was welcoming a line of Latin-looking officials to the White House, taking each of them one-by-one for individual photo-ops. As the fourth man, small, rotund, almost bald, was walking up to shake LBJ’s hand, the voiceover announcer intoned, “This man is Dr Hernandez Diaz, the father that, until now, Isabel Diaz didn’t know she had.”

  “That’s not him,” she said to no one in particular. “They’ve got the wrong…” She removed Ed’s hand from her shoulder. “This whole thing is cra… rubbish.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” said Gregory, hoping she was not.

  She held up her hand, and asked for someone to go out to the van for her satchel.

  Bill Edwards spoke up on the open line, “Bel, what’s that you say?”

  “Bill,” she said, “that man with LBJ might well have been a Chilean diplomat called Hernandez Diaz, but he was not my father.”

  “How do you know?” Bill asked.

  At that moment, one of the Secret Service detail returned from outside with her bag. Isabel pulled the old photo-frame out of its zipper pocket at the side and held it up for all in the church hall to see. “Because this man was my father… Bill, I’ve got a photo of him here,” she said in explanation. “It was my mother’s.”

  A weird thing to carry around, thought Gregory—and most of the others—but even so, it was a lucky break. He dictated a silent “note to self”: next campaign, check for rot in candidate’s family tree, and always get mug shots.

  The heavy mood in the church hall vaulted instantly to jokey bemusement about Mike Mandrake’s very public, humiliating error, with enough bluster they could have been in a gym locker-room.

  Isabel passed the photo-frame to Ed for safekeeping, and headed for the bar that had been set up in the corner for a spicy tomato juice. She needed a big hit of Tabasco.

  The bravado and the barbs about Mandrake were getting somewhat offensive. Isabel hadn’t minded the initial comments about his “radio head” and “newspaper voice” but the steam-letting was getting a little too warm.

  “That jerk is so done with TV now.”

  “TV? After this effort, those whiskers won’t even be welcome on a broom at any newspaper I know.”

  Ed stepped back to the buffet table and lifted a knife. Unnoticed by the others who were still enjoying their moment, he slunk to the darkened rear of the room.

  “They’re going to look like… like idiots when we get this out… So, Isabel? What do you say? Shall we call them right now?” Gregory suggested with just a touch too much glee.

  She wiped her mouth and put down her glass. “Maybe we shouldn’t. After all, what’s it really matter, right?” she shrugged.

  But it did matter.

  MYRON Kowalski’s legal research assistant phoned him on one of Bill Edwards’ other lines to confirm he’d emailed through to Bill’s house what the crotchety lawyer had hassled him for: a copy of a certain 1898 Supreme Court decision, as well as extracts from the seminal constitutional law texts, one of which the old codger had written himself.

  Bill’s live-in assistant had printed the email attachments and brought them in to Kowalski. The old lawyer skimmed them for a few minutes, nodding and smiling to himself, finally tossing his eyebrows over to Bill Edwards with such a theatrical gasp it was as if he’d just read that his revered baseball hero Sandy Koufax was back on the mound and had pitched yet another no-hitter season.

  Bill was familiar with Kowalski’s tricks and punched the open line onto mute. What Kowalski had to say was not going to be shared with the campaign team. Not yet.

  “Bill,” Kowalski smiled, “our former ally Dupont is going to throw a fastball to our left over this ‘father’ issue. And were it not that this was a simple case of mistaken identity,” he paused for effect, “it would be my sad duty to inform you that our star-hitter, Isabel Diaz, had suffered a hit to the temple, that she was down, and out, that the vice would have to go up to captain, we’d be bringing on a reserve and, after a decent moment for prayer, play would continue but we’d probably lose the game, and the season.” The shameless egotist even quoted himself: “It says here in ‘Kowalski on the Constitution’…” and he read from a review of a dusty old court decision that he was certain Professor Dupont would shortly be quoting back at them on TV.

  Bill Edwards and Myron Kowalski went way back and to Bill, despite the annoying and often fumbled ballpark analogies the old lawyer inserted into almost every conversation, he deserved his own entry into the Hall of Fame. He’d saved Bill’s skin, and even his marriage. Several of them.

  With the assurance of Isabel’s identification and Kowalski’s opinion, Bill relaxed a little and called for whiskey and cigars all round, even for the women.

  ISABEL quietly squirmed during the segment when Willy Nesbit, the sleazy trailer park manager, spewed to the world that not only had her mother been a drunk, which was not news, but that she’d also been a cheap whore, which was. They even put him to air leering about her expedient lack of teeth.

  “Gappy Hooker? How can they run that on a Sunday night at prime time?” Bill Edwards boomed over the open line before slapping the phone back on mute.

  Isabel knew she’d made the right decision to stay off the show. She peeked around the room; most of the smirks were hidden by nervous hands, but she could still see it in their eyes.

  “What a dirtbag!” cried one.

  “And
that tattoo! Tell me it’s not really rats doing… you know… to each other,” another shuddered as the TV camera panned over Willy’s neck. “A-a-w... Gross!”

  “…the kid ran away from Cactus Flower after’n she got outta [bleep] hospital. Little [bleep] never even brought her sorry ass back home to kiss her lovin’ ma g’bye. Damn broke her ma’s [bleep] heart.”

  When Mandrake revealed to Willy on screen that the girl was the same Isabel Diaz who was running for president, Willy splurted out, “You shittin’ me, right?” but the network didn’t bleep that.

  For the mass of viewers it was top-rating entertainment and gave far more colour to what they knew about their next president than anyone else had ever attempted but, even so, they were still expecting more: the punch-line, the Kodak moment that the teaser ads had promised.

  Now that Gregory was sure that whatever Mandrake was saving for last about Isabel’s father would be a damp squib, he was finding it compelling viewing and the new insights into Isabel’s past were fascinating. Frankly, they’d do no harm to the campaign, he decided; so what, her mother was a whore—it proved Isabel had politics running in her veins.

  Gregory checked his Patek Philippe chronograph; to lesser people it was a watch. Mandrake dropped his long-awaited bombshell at 6:40 PM. Or 6:40:20 PM, to be precise for The Book. When the man draped with a red, white and blue striped tie, blue shirt and Harris tweed jacket appeared on-screen, no one present missed Isabel’s chief counsel Oliver Pryor’s stomach-churning groan.

  WHEN Professor Robert Dupont’s face appeared on TV in Bill Edwards’ dining room, a wheeze of smoky air was inhaled as Kowalski twisted the knife, “Advising them in private, in confidence… that’s one thing. But for Dupont to appear… to step onto the plate… and for the other team… What is the old fool thinking?”