He flopped down on the bed with the weight of a lead-filled corpse. It was like landing at the bottom of a rock quarry. The only thing harder than the criminals at the Royal Linoleum Hotel were the beds.
A deep moan issued forth from the other side of the wall.
He lifted his head. There was a low grunt, followed by another moan.
Yes. Yes. Harder.
There was a sharp knock on the wall between the rooms, and then another. Somebody was getting some use out of the beds, at least.
Jimmie grabbed a pillow and wrapped it around the back of his head, covering his ears. He needed to get to sleep soon. He had to be back at the White House in less than twelve hours, and if he didn’t get a solid ten hours of shut-eye, he was a cranky bastard. Maybe when they finally assigned him an office, he could just sleep under the desk.
You like that? Say my name . . . say my name.
Teddy Mac.
Jimmie lifted the pillow and sat up. Teddy Mac? It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. No way. He pressed an ear up to the wall, which appeared to be nothing more than wallpaper over plywood.
Who’s your daddy?
I don’t know . . . oooooh . . . I’ve never met him . . . ahhhhh . . .
Son of a bitch.
Although the headboard continued to hit the wall, Jimmie knew with 100 percent certainty that the voices weren’t coming from whoever was doing the bed-shaking. The voices were from the television, which was turned up to cover whatever action was really going on next door. Whoever was on the other side of the wall was watching the sex tape that had landed Jimmie Bernwood in hot water. Scalding-hot water. Boiling water that had ultimately cost him his job at the Daily Blabber.
They were watching the Ted Cruz sex tape.
Chapter Thirteen
Wallbanger
Jimmie phoned the front desk. The man with the Kardashian accent answered. It was the same man who’d given him the keys to the room. Actually, the only man who appeared to work at the Royal Linoleum Hotel besides the housekeepers. Jimmie explained that he wanted to file a noise complaint.
“I’m trying to get some sleep, and these guys—well, you can hear for yourself,” Jimmie said, holding the phone receiver up to the wall. The pounding continued. “You hear that?”
“I can hear it from here,” the man at the front desk said wearily.
“Well, aren’t you going to do something about it?”
“It should be over soon. In my experience, these things never last more than eight or nine minutes. Especially with how vigorous they are going at it. By the time I got up from my desk and walked over there—well, they’d be vaping on the balcony.”
Jimmie slammed the phone down. Eight or nine minutes? The sex tape went on for a full two and a half hours. It was as long and grueling as Batman v Superman. In fact, the tape was so grim and gritty at points that some believed it had also been directed by Zack Snyder.
It had been played so many times during the jury trial that it was burned into Jimmie’s mind. Sometimes at night, when he closed his eyes, the candidate’s smarmy visage slithered across his field of vision. In night-vision green, which impossibly made him look even creepier. To this day, Jimmie couldn’t hear Pitbull’s “Timber” without thinking of the rattling venetian blinds, Cruz’s saggy pecs, and the squeaking.
Dear God, the squeaking.
It wasn’t surprising somebody was watching it in the next room. The video had spread far and wide after he’d posted it in full on the Daily Blabber. Once a sex tape gets out, there’s no putting that genie back into the bottle of lube. Everyone and their mother had seen it; some people had probably watched it with their mothers. Jimmie wasn’t one to judge.
What bothered him, however, was that whoever was on the other side of the wall had started playing it just as he arrived home for the day. Was somebody taunting him?
There was something else nagging him, too. It took him a few more minutes to figure it out. When he did, it was as obvious as Jimmie’s day had been long: The knocking of the headboard against the wall didn’t have the regular ebb and flow of a couple making whoopee. It came and went in odd fits:
BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-BUMP.
BUMP-BUMP.
BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-BUMP.
It reminded him of the rhythmic code used by the human traffickers in California, the ones he’d been embedded with. They’d used it over the phone, though, and not through a wall. Was someone tapping out a message?
Listen to yourself, Jimmie, he thought. Only in Washington for a week, and already you’re seeing conspiracies. Get your head checked, or get out of town.
That was one thought—that was what he wanted to think. But what he wanted to be true and what was true were probably two very different things. It wasn’t a conspiracy theory if it checked out; it was just a conspiracy.
BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-BUMP.
BUMP.
BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-BUMP-BUMP—
Jimmie searched for a pen and paper. Inside the bedside drawer, he found a Royal Linoleum Hotel ballpoint pen. No paper—the closest he could find was a Gideon Bible.
He opened it to the title page and began recording the knocking on the wall as hash marks.
After he’d filled two pages of the Bible, a pattern emerged. He’d recorded the same message twice now. Whoever was over there was going to keep banging it out (pun intended), but he had enough to go on now.
It was definitely the same code used by the smugglers: Morris code. It had been invented by some woman named Katie Morris, who felt that Morse code was too complicated. (Jimmie happened to agree with her.) The idea was simple: The number of taps between each pause corresponded to a letter of the alphabet. One tap for A, two for B, and so on. He translated the message as:
MEETMEINCLINTONPLAZAATMIDNIGHTTELLNOONELEAVEYOURPHONEBEHINDYOURLIFEISINDANGER
Which could be parsed as:
MEET ME IN CLINTON PLAZA AT MIDNIGHT. TELL NO ONE. LEAVE YOUR PHONE BEHIND. YOUR LIFE IS IN DANGER.
Jimmie had plenty of questions. Meet where in Clinton Plaza? How would he recognize who he was supposed to be meeting? Why not pick a meeting place without a Z in its name? (Those twenty-six taps had taken forever.) For that matter, why not cut a few words out of that message? It was quarter past ten already. Had this guy never sent a code before? And if Jimmie’s life were truly in danger, why not just tell him face-to-face right now? They were just some cheap wood and insulation apart. Why meet clandestinely in a park at the witching hour?
Jimmie rapped on the wall with knuckles to begin his own Morris code message. Before he got to his third rap, the television went silent. Jimmie heard the door open and close. There were footsteps on the stairs. His neighbor was on the run.
Jimmie rushed onto the outdoor balcony that connected the hotel rooms. He leaned over the second-floor railing. He couldn’t see anybody down in the parking lot. Whoever had been next door was gone. But he knew where the mysterious wallbanger would be in just a few short hours. The same place he would be: Clinton Plaza.
Chapter Fourteen
We Honor and Remember Their Sacrifice
Jimmie strolled through the park, kicking a hypodermic needle along the sidewalk like a can. Though the pathway was well lit, Clinton Plaza was still a war zone of drug users, transients, and anonymous-sex seekers. And it was all by design.
One of Trump’s earliest executive actions was to have the Federal Bureau of Land Management take over Logan Park. It had long been known as the most degenerate of public spaces in the city. Instead of cleaning it up, however, Trump simply renamed it after his Democratic rival. With the twelve-acre land under federal jurisdiction, local authorities stopped patrolling it at night. Trump conveniently didn’t approve funds to staff it with federal officers, and things went downhill even further. On a scale of one to ten for safety, Clinton Plaza scored just under a Trump rally.
Clinton Plaza was only a short walk from where Jimmie was staying. He arrived about fifteen minutes ahead
of time. At least, that was his estimate—he’d left his government-issued phone back at the hotel. Now that he was here, though, he kind of wished he had ignored the stranger’s request to leave his phone behind. What if it was all a ruse to get him away from his room so that somebody could ransack it?
The phone was useless without his thumbprint. But there was always a chance they could lift his prints from the bottle of coconut oil beside the bed and cast a replica of his thumb, and—
Okay, now you’re moving from “conspiracy theories” into “hospitalization” territory, he told himself. All that’s missing is for you to hear voices.
As if on cue, he started hearing voices. Whispers from an element-battered tent; a hushed argument taking place somewhere deep in the woods. Closer to him, the chirping of a house finch. The same type of bird that had landed on Bernie’s podium at a Portland rally. The poor bird had become an unofficial symbol of the last of the protestors in America.
Jimmie kicked the needle into the grass and picked up his pace. He was headed nowhere in particular, but he was in a hurry to get there. Whoever wanted to meet him would find him.
He stopped at the polished granite wall in the center of the park. The structure stood ten feet tall and stretched at least fifty feet along the pathway. There were hundreds of names engraved on it. The plaque bearing the wall’s name and dedication was covered in moss. One word was visible: BENGHAZI.
So this was the Benghazi Memorial. Jimmie remembered the press conference where Trump had announced it. Speaking alongside his then wife Megyn Kelly, Trump had said, “Let us remember the sacrifices made in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s terrible, embarrassing foreign policy disasters when she was the worst secretary of state in history.”
“What a joke,” a voice said from behind Jimmie.
Jimmie glanced over his shoulder. A solidly built man clad in a gray hoodie and jeans had crept up behind him. He didn’t know if this was some random weirdo or the person who’d tapped out the code. Either way, Jimmie had to assume he was dangerous.
“A joke?” Jimmie said. “People died over there.”
“Read the plaque.”
“It’s covered in moss.”
“Then wipe it off,” the man said with growing irritation.
“I’ve never liked moss,” Jimmie said. “It feels weird. It’s furry.”
“Cats are furry, and people pet them all the time.”
“They’re not green. Most of them, at least.”
The man crossed in front of Jimmie and, with his hand wrapped in his jacket, wiped the plaque off. He stepped back and let Jimmie read the bronze tablet bolted into the stone:
IN MEMORY OF THE MEN AND WOMEN
WHO SERVED ON THE HOUSE SELECT COMMITTEE ON BENGHAZI
AND SO VALIANTLY GAVE OF THEIR TIME
WE HONOR AND REMEMBER THEIR SACRIFICE
Jimmie took a closer look at the engravings that spanned the length of the wall. “Trey Gowdy, SC-04,” he read aloud. “Susan Brooks, IN-05. Jim Jordan, OH-04. Mike Pompeo . . . KS-04.” There were eight more names in the sequence before they repeated—a total of twelve names.
“This isn’t the Benghazi Memorial,” the stranger said. “It’s the Benghazi Hearings Memorial. It’s a memorial for the politicians who wasted their time interrogating Hillary Clinton about the Benghazi attacks. I’m no fan of hers, but the Right continues to treat her like she’s some kind of war criminal. The man who built this could care less that four Americans died that night in Libya.”
“And the man who built this wall . . .”
“Is your new boss,” the stranger said. “Welcome to Washington, Mr. Bernwood.”
Chapter Fifteen
Hope Is a Four-Letter Word
“I hope you didn’t invite me here to debate politics,” Jimmie said, keeping a few paces between him and his new best friend. “Because I ain’t that guy.”
The man removed his hood. He wasn’t a man so much as a boy—a baby-faced boy, at that. He had short, cropped blond hair, mostly hidden by a backward blue baseball cap. He was half a foot taller than Jimmie and at least ten years younger. It would have surprised Jimmie if the kid was old enough to buy a drink.
“No phone?” the kid said.
Jimmie shook his head.
“Good. Be careful with that thing—they’re tracing your every step. Recording every conversation within range when it’s powered on.”
That didn’t seem possible to Jimmie, but he kept that to himself. What did this kid know? Well, probably more about technology than he did, but still. Jimmie Bernwood had been around the block a few times, especially when it came to hidden recordings.
“Connor Brent,” the kid said without offering a hand.
“And you know who I am, apparently,” Jimmie said.
“You’re the new ghostwriter.”
He’d signed an NDA. Nobody was supposed to know about his involvement with the project outside of the White House. Not even the publisher, Crooked Lane.
“Oh, come on,” Connor said. “Don’t act dumb. The White House visitor logs are public. Everyone who walks through that front door—tourist or staff member, doesn’t matter—is tracked online at WhiteHouse.gov. You signed in to see the apprentice. Reporters don’t get that kind of access, especially not a blogger.”
Blogger? Oh, hell no.
That prep-school accent made Jimmie eager to slap him across the face. The only reason he didn’t do it was because he was afraid of cutting his palm on those sharp cheekbones.
Those sharp, perfect cheekbones.
“I’m a journalist,” Jimmie said. “Use the B-word again, and I walk.”
“Calm your tits, bro,” Connor said. “I’m not here to start some fight over the state of modern journalism. In fact, we have mad respect for what you did to Cruz.”
That whole fiasco had been a mistake. Good to know he had a few fanboys out there. However, politics had never been all that sexy to Jimmie. Ever since his mother lined his crib with the National Enquirer, he’d been fascinated with the world of celebrity. Politics, even when there was scandal involved, just didn’t do it for him. This kid had him confused with somebody who gave two shits.
“You said my life was in danger,” Jimmie said.
Connor’s eyes danced furtively around the park. “The Donald’s last ghostwriter ended up in the Rose Garden with a broken neck. Somebody threw him off the roof.”
“That would have been all over the news.”
“A tourist accidentally caught it on camera. They turned it into a GIF, and it went around the dark web. Not a single ‘real’ news site picked it up. Granted, the video was dark and blurry . . . but this was no Loch Ness Monster.”
“Say what you’re saying is true. What’s that have to do with me?”
“The last guy in your position reached out to us. Apparently, he’d recorded some interviews with the president, and they yielded some game-changing information. His words, not ours. Unfortunately, he was dead before he could get the tapes out of the White House. Needless to say, whatever was on those tapes was big enough to kill somebody over.”
“You have no idea what this information was?”
Connor shook his head.
“You keep saying ‘we.’ I assume you’re, what, Democrats?”
“I’m a former Bernie bro.”
“Former?” Jimmie said.
“No one’s seen him since the Democratic National Convention,” Connor said. “But we’re carrying on his work. We don’t believe in the two-party system. While most of us are former Bernie bros, anyone is welcome to join the Socialist Justice Warriors. Anyone who believes America should live up to the inscription at our door: ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.’ Trump doesn’t even care that the masses are huddling.
“Help us,” Connor continued. “Help us make America great again—again.”
Make America great again . . . again?
“Sorry,” Jimmie said, �
�I don’t have any interest in joining your little after-school club. But your secret is safe with me—I don’t have any interest in exposing it, either.”
“That’s good.”
“Why? Because otherwise you’d have to kill me?”
Connor shook his head. “It’s not us you have to worry about. And I think you already know that.”
“I said it once, I’ll say it again: You’ve got the wrong guy.”
“Really?” Connor said. “You’re a smart guy. Just look around you: The United States isn’t a democracy anymore—it’s a monarchy. We’re walling ourselves off from the world, and the world can feel that. Support for the presidency may be at an all-time high within our country, but resentment of our country internationally is higher than it’s been in decades. The resentment surpassed the W era a week into Trump’s presidency. A week. He called Angela Merkel a ‘dried-up six’ in his inaugural address. The Donald is a dangerous man. He has dangerous friends. He’s got his finger on the nuclear button, and he’s involved in some sort of Twitter war with Prince Charles. What if the Twitter beef spills over into the real world?”
“So you think I can feed you some inside dirt, is that it? Something that will finally erode Trump’s support at home and force him out of office. And then what?”
Connor said nothing.
“We’re not going to war with the UK,” Jimmie said. “But if we did, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve fought them. As Trump has said on Twitter, ‘We’ve kicked their ass before; we could do it again.’ I hope it won’t come to that, but you know how Trump is. He’s mostly full of hot air.”
The Day of the Donald Page 5