“Pssst, Buddy Boy,” came Daryl’s whisper. “Wake up, man, Pete’s coming.”
Bud flew to the bars of his cell and wedged his face halfway through. Pete was only two cells away, and everything was peaceful. He gave Daryl a piercing look as he passed his cell. Then he squatted down in front of the bars of Bud’s cell and looked him straight in the eyes. “I want the money before you get the cell phone, understand?” he whispered. “I’m not here the next couple of days, so you get it ready in the meantime.”
Bud shook his head. “Jesus Christ,” he whispered. “How do you expect me to get the money without the phone? Dammit, Pete, don’t you see? I need that cell phone first.”
Pete was pale. Here he was in the killing zone, confused, with everything at stake. He was in a no-man’s-land between death and rebirth. He knew, right there, that he now had a chance to soar high above Waverly and the state prison and never look back. The choice wasn’t so difficult in itself, but the chance of getting caught was a big consideration.
Helping Bud Curtis wasn’t like helping just anyone, as Bud well knew. No one in the country wanted anyone dispatched to hell faster than him, not even the worst serial killer or child rapist. Whoever got caught trying to help him escape would be in deep shit, and there was a sewerful of possibilities of that happening.
“A million dollars in three days, on March twenty-sixth. Then you get the cell phone, but not before.”
“I’ll give you five million if I get the phone first, all right?”
Pete got up and left. Bud tried unsuccessfully to stick his head farther through the bars, his heart hammering, but Pete never looked back.
CHAPTER 15
Doggie heard they’d arrested Tom Jumper—the country’s most popular TV host—early on Tuesday afternoon.
The authorities would have preferred arresting him the previous Saturday evening in the middle of his prime-time show, just to prove to the nation they were serious about shutting down TV programs that exalted violence, but the man was wily and disappeared. Afterwards his personal assistant spent the next two days standing on a beer crate in Times Square, raging at the government over their trashing of the Bill of Rights in general and freedom of expression in particular, until the authorities picked him up, too. Too many people were agreeing with him.
On Monday, Jumper popped up on a pirate radio station that half of Harlem had been listening to since the shutting down of the legal stations. He encouraged people in the White House to remove the president by force, which turned the search for Jumper into the biggest dragnet anyone had ever seen. Even though Doggie was unable to see how it could be their role, two thousand soldiers and National Guard volunteers joined the local police and security forces in their hunt for the tiniest clue as to the TV host’s whereabouts. This resulted in several shoot-outs with a number of fatal casualties, as people with bad consciences abruptly began fleeing town. The police were prepared with roadblocks, creating endless lines of stopped traffic. Some of the “guilty” even abandoned their vehicles and tried to escape into nearby fields and neighborhoods, but few succeeded. Triborough and Queensboro Bridges and Macombs Dam to the east were closed permanently, and lookout posts on the rest of the bridges and tunnels coming out of Manhattan were heavily reinforced. Tom Jumper was the symbol of a time that no longer existed—a symbol that had to be removed.
An anonymous tip blew his cover, and he was arrested on Tuesday in Alphabet City on the corner of 4th Street and Avenue B, in a little café called Kate’s Joint. Jumper had resisted bravely, but he was seriously outmanned. The ensuing beating he suffered caused the regulars in the café to lose it, which in turn caused the nervous soldiers to begin shooting. A very short time later the whole city knew. More than ten people had been killed, and Jumper was said to have been badly wounded. What the public didn’t know was that he’d been brought to the Downtown Family Care Center, patched up within an hour, and then had managed to escape down Essex towards Seward Park, in the company of a nurse and an orderly.
Doggie heard about it in the lobby of the White House, the place where White House employees went to hear gossip and unofficial news stories. Some people were infuriated by Jumper’s cat-and-mouse act, but not everyone, as Doggie could clearly see behind their worried expressions and careful choice of words.
For the last couple of days, offices in the White House were manned by increasingly overburdened employees who answered calls, zombielike, from government officials who hadn’t a clue to what was happening and were seeking answers and solutions that didn’t exist. Given the present situation, customs officers wanted to know about the legality of the mushrooming export of weapons and ammunition over the border to Mexico, and dairy producers were wondering how the hell they were supposed to deliver milk while it was still fresh, with all the time-consuming roadblocks.
Everyone was suffering a collective meltdown caused by Jansen’s decrees and state of emergency. The penal system had problems finding qualified personnel to handle the massive job of emptying the prisons of inmates, which corresponded to the massive job the social services faced in assigning community duties to these same ex-cons. And new problems that had never been dealt with before kept arising every day. It was depressing and frustrating, having to turn away this deluge of questions, but what it came down to was that all those who were qualified to make decisions were constantly busy elsewhere. White House staff began hiding in conference rooms and dumping problems in one another’s laps. Doggie could hear them arguing through the walls, screaming at one another. The Situation Room was constantly booked by the National Security Council, and suddenly, there were more people in uniforms in the hallways than in civilian clothes.
It was like this all over the country, she was told. Uniforms everywhere, from the forests of the Northwest to the beaches of Florida. She’d seen it herself when she went to see her father. Normally the trip from Washington down to the prison in Waverly took two hours, but yesterday it had taken five. There were roadblocks all over, lines of cars stretching for miles with horns honking, poncho-clad National Guardsmen and civilians losing their tempers, screaming at one another. Suspicion, car searches, and hard looks were the order of the day.
Doggie had recently heard about two farmers who had flipped out in Madison County. An argument in a cafeteria had developed into a shooting episode, after which the two men had taken off with twenty sticks of dynamite in their trunk. A half hour later they blew up the city hall in Charlottesville. At least four hundred lawmen were quickly reassigned to give chase, and the two farmers eventually met their bloody demise on the road to Barboursville. Local folks had no idea what had happened, but dramas like this were unfolding all the time, all over the country.
A few streets away from her apartment, a minor fire on L Street grew into a conflagration because all available police had been ordered to control a half million angry demonstrators in front of the Capitol building and therefore couldn’t be on hand to prevent the curious spectators in their cars from driving so close to the fire that the fire hoses were squeezed shut by their tires.
There were scenes of chaos almost everywhere one looked, and out of the general hysteria and anarchy a selfish, defensive attitude was emerging among the populace. Because, even though people were united in their horror at what was taking place in their beloved country, things were moving so fast that notions of solidarity quickly yielded to the primal instinct of self-preservation. Who knew what tomorrow might bring? Would there be any food to buy, any electricity, any water in the faucets? Spontaneous hoarding spread like wildfire, even though Executive Order 10998 specifically forbade it, and suddenly scenes of housewives staggering home with a year’s supply of potatoes and rice were commonplace everywhere, from the biggest cities to the smallest rural towns.
Analysts were predicting that rationing would soon have to be implemented, as people kept stockpiling goods whether they needed them or not. In the unusual ev
ent that a business was hiring, people trampled one another underfoot to get to the head of the line, no matter what job it was or what it paid. At least this way, one avoided Executive Order 11000, and thus wasn’t impressed into community work alongside released convicts, washing down streets and hauling away the mountains of garbage that had been growing in the alleys and along the train tracks. And all of those whose lifestyle revolved around never planning anything suddenly had to get their shit together to avoid getting in trouble, not only with the authorities, but with their neighbors as well. Street justice was spreading, growing in swiftness and impunity, because if one individual committed a crime, the entire neighborhood could suffer the consequences. The police were unusually short-tempered, and whereas they used to threaten to take people into custody who were suspected of withholding information, they now simply instructed the authorities to hold back welfare payments until the crime was solved. In this way, people were brought to heel and began informing on one another. The FBI’s website—where Americans could send tips or report suspicious people—was swamped with mail.
Each day brought a chain reaction of new situations. Doggie was having a hard time discerning between good and bad—just like everybody else, as far as she could tell. Kids who used to cut school now trudged obediently to class each day because there was nothing else to do. There were fewer and fewer TV channels to watch, and hanging out on the street was no fun anymore. There were ex-cons everywhere in their shrieking-green overalls, admonishing and lecturing the neighborhood youth about all kinds of potential dangers. Throwing a chewing gum wrapper on the sidewalk could result in a slap upside the head. Unruly behavior unleashed corporal reprisals of a magnitude that discouraged any repetition in the near future. Suddenly, rough justice was being meted out left and right, and those youths who usually preferred the pleasant anarchy of the street were beginning to feel uncomfortable and homeless in the asphalt jungle. They, too, had to get used to a situation where not much could be taken for granted, and learn to deal with a new kind of constant dread.
* * *
—
Doggie’s workday at the White House was changing character more and more, too. Where she used to spend her time making in-depth studies and analyses and projections into the future, she now merely dispatched tasks methodically for all the secretariats, doing so with such superficiality that her desktop was clean at the end of the day, regardless of the works’ importance or complexity. The tasks she didn’t get around to—well, that was just too bad. People were going to have to realize that the White House couldn’t assist them much with their problems. Maybe this would help reduce her workload to fit the sixteen-hour day she spent slaving away in her little office. One could always hope.
Everyone who worked in the White House was more or less in the same boat as Doggie, but not all of them could handle the pressure. Yesterday one of Communications Chief Donald Beglaubter’s older secretaries had said she wasn’t feeling well after the morning meeting and sat slumped over her desk for most of the day until someone discovered she was dead. The shock her colleagues felt was intense but brief, and today everyone was back in high gear. Otherwise, there were many who broke down in tears from fatigue and confusion by noontime. The cafeteria stood empty most of the day; getting the workload cleared off one’s desk by evening took precedence over eating.
Wesley had looked in on her a couple of times the previous week. He, too, was showing the effects of the overwhelming state of affairs. His eyes wandered, and his trademark smile had withered. He looked ready to give up, like he’d lost interest in everything and everyone. Well, maybe everything except her.
He came into her office the day after she’d been with her father. Doggie barely managed to turn her back, moisten her lips, and pinch a bit of color into her cheeks. She didn’t want him seeing how she was feeling, or discuss it with him, either. Because what could he do, anyway? How could the president’s press secretary help her save a man convicted of killing the president’s wife? He couldn’t, so what was the point of talking about it? He sat down heavily on the chair upon which Doggie had laid the day’s mail, compressing a considerable pile of desperate inquiries and complaints as he stared listlessly into space. Then his expression changed suddenly, became personal rather than collegial. “Hey, Doggie, let’s get far, far away from here and have us a couple of chubby little babies and bathe all day in the Bungo Canal—whaddaya say?” He smiled, but a moment later he shook his head and withdrew into himself once more. This sad, neon-lit excuse for an office was so obviously his personal refuge that she didn’t take his touching outburst for more than it was. She didn’t answer, even though there was nothing she’d rather see than the two of them make their exit to never-never land together. It was too late. She was branded, the mark of Cain on her forehead. The moment for Wesley to initiate a serious relationship with her had definitely passed. Even if he couldn’t get such foolish thoughts out of his head, there was no way he could just leave, anyway, not with his ever-present bodyguards. And nor could Doggie, for that matter. Not that the opportunity wasn’t there; they’d surely heave a sigh of relief if she disappeared, and as heir to Bud Curtis’s bulging bank accounts and enormous hotel empire, she could easily go live wherever she wanted. But she had to stay at the White House—this was essential. President Jansen could fire her, but in the meantime she had a mission: to vindicate herself, no matter how long it took. Then she could get out.
Wesley sat a moment longer, apparently lost in thought, then got up suddenly and removed both his and her identification badge-chips. Then he placed them, along with her telephone receiver, on top of a couple of circulars Doggie had been reading, carefully wrapped all three among the pages, laid them in her desk drawer, and closed it. Next he took his chair over to the door, tipped it back beneath the door handle, and squatted down before her. “Give me your hand, Doggie, would you, please?”
She looked at him doubtfully. “What are you doing, Wesley?” She made a sad attempt at a laugh. “Why’d you put this stuff in my drawer?”
He took her hand. “I don’t want anybody but you to hear what I have to say,” he said very quietly. She frowned. Had she and her office been bugged? Was there a microphone in her ID badge? Had it really come to this? Were they figuring her father would call her and confess everything? That she’d take over where Toby O’Neill left off and finish the hired assassin’s job?
“Yeah, they’re spying on all of us.”
She felt her jaw drop. Did he say “all of us”?
He squeezed her hand. “If this situation ever gets better, Doggie, then remember what I’m going to tell you now. You’re the only one here who I can trust.” She nodded.
“There’s going to be a showdown one day when all this is over with, I’m sure of it. There’ll be hearings and trials, and those implicated will be punished, believe me. That’s why it’s important for me that there’s someone left who can tell the world I didn’t go along with this voluntarily, okay?”
“But no one believes you did, Wesley!”
“I’m the one who passes information on to the public and the whole world; I’m the one who writes all that shit. Do you think anyone’s going to consider me innocent?”
“So get out.”
“How?”
“Sneak out and disappear.”
“The chip, sweetheart, the chip. None of the staff can leave this place without it. Alarm bells would be ringing all over. Don’t you think I’ve thought about just dumping the thing into a glass of water and short-circuiting it?”
She knew he was right.
He loosened the grip on her hand. “Just remember, when the time comes, that I wanted to quit this job, but I couldn’t.”
They heard a muffled sound on the other side of the door, and Wesley shot to his feet. The legs of the chair wedged against the door teetered for a moment as he grabbed Doggie and held her close. The next bang from outside succe
eded in toppling the chair, but by then he was hugging her tighter and giving her a passionate kiss. She glanced at the door before closing her eyes to accept the embrace.
Then his lips left hers, and he looked deep into her eyes. For a split second this brief intimacy seemed to have taken them both unawares. He held his breath, sighed deeply, then turned to stand face-to-face with their acting chief of staff, Lance Burton.
“Jesus, Wesley,” said Burton, looking at him with disapproval, “I can’t let you out of my sight for a minute, can I?” The staff chief shook his head, and Doggie was pretty sure she knew what he was thinking. Burton thought it was okay for Wesley to have sex with whomever he liked. Just not her.
He let go of her slowly. She followed Wesley’s eyes down to the telephone and telephone cord that disappeared into her desk drawer. She moved a bit to the side to hide the sight.
His shallow breathing and the pulse pounding in his neck told her he was afraid, but his even, professional voice was calm as ever.
“Two seconds and I’ll be with you, Lance,” he improvised. “We have to discuss the Internet, right?”
Burton gave him a sharp look and a brief nod. “Okay. Two minutes. In my office.” At no point did he look at Doggie. He closed the door after him.
“The Internet?” she whispered, while he took his chip out of the drawer and closed his hand around it. “What can you do about that?”
“We can shut it down in twenty-four hours. We’re virus experts, didn’t you know? We can crash the large servers and the satellite connections, too. The question is: When? Maybe in a couple of weeks, maybe not at all. It depends on how things develop and if they can find an alternative way to keep the defense and surveillance systems working without certain satellites. If you need to use the Internet, you better do it now.” He stroked a few strands of hair out of her face and looked at her very gravely. Then he sighed again and left.
The Washington Decree_A Novel Page 17