Boomsday

by Christopher Taylor Buckley

  Massimo seriously considered faking a heart attack. Certainly his high blood pressure didn’t need faking.

  That fool Geedeon. It was all his fault. And now he was running for president. What a country, America. A lunatic asylum, without enough attendants or tranquilizers.

  What to do? He looked up at the statue of Our Lady of Prompt Succor. She smiled back at him, as if to say, Massimo, Massimo, Massimo, be reasonable-not even I can get you out of this.

  The phone rang. His blood pressure spiked. He had developed a morbid fear of telephones, something of a disability for the Vatican’s number two man in Washington, soon to be number one. Assuming he lived.

  “Monsignor, it’s someone named Ivan calling. He won’t give a last name. He says he knows you. Do you want to speak to him?”

  Monsignor Montefeltro suppressed a groan.

  “Yes, yes.” He picked up. “What do you want? I gave you the money.”

  “Am calling on behalf of charity organization.”

  “What?”

  “For orphans of war in Chechnya. Do you wish to make donation?”

  “No,” said Monsignor Montefeltro. “I do not wish. I wish you to go to Chechnya.”

  Silence. “Pity. It’s good cause. And Catholic Church is so rich. You have big office on Massachusetts Avenue.”

  “How did you find me here?”

  “I follow you to work!” Ivan the Terrible sounded pleased with himself.

  “All right, all right. I will make a donation to this charity.”

  “How much you give?”

  “Ten dollars.”

  Ivan made a noise not indicative of being impressed. “Ten thousand dollars, better.”

  “I don’t have ten thousand dollars.”

  “Catholic Church not have ten thousand dollars?” Ivan said. “Pah. You can sell gold Madonna or candlesticks. You pay gold before. Gold watch of your friend Gidyon Pine. Is same person as man on television who want to be president?”

  Montefeltro no longer much cared about protecting Geedeon, since this calamity had been entirely of his making. So they’d made the connection at last. Montefeltro thought, Perhaps Our Lady of Prompt Succor did hear my prayer.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s the same. So why don’t you call him and ask for donation. Perhaps he will buy back the watch.”

  “It’s good idea. You are clever priest.”

  Free at last…

  “But you should also be making donation. Poor orphans. They are so hungry.”

  Frank Cohane had wanted an office in the West Wing. Bucky Trumble explained that not even he could arrange that. Under the law, campaign operatives could not occupy government buildings. “Under the law” was not a concept that particularly interested Frank Cohane, but Bucky mollified him with a White House pass so he could have the illusion of working in the White House. He also made sure that Frank got lots of “face time” with the president in the Oval. That would keep the bastard happy. That and an orgiastic night with Lisa in the Lincoln Bedroom. It was all they cared about, the big donors. They wanted to go back to their friends and say, “I screwed my brains out in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

  In keeping with the deal that he had worked out with Frank, once Bucky had got him the finance chairman job, Frank handed over the tape of Bucky asking him to plant incriminating e-mails on Cass’s computer.

  “How do I know this isn’t a copy?” Bucky said.

  “You don’t.” Frank grinned.

  There was media interest in Frank Cohane, in particular about him and his estranged daughter, who was working for another presidential candidate. Washington loves such polarities.

  “Do you still regard her as morally repellent?” asked a reporter for the Post.

  “I didn’t come to Washington to comment on my daughter,” Frank said. He now had his own team of media advisers. “I came to reelect President Peacham.”

  “To help reelect President Peacham,” his media handler gently suggested to him after the interview.

  “Right,” Frank said.

  Frank had, amazingly, agreed to Lisa’s suggestion that he hire a personal anger management consultant. Frank was a smart man, smart enough to know that he could no longer indulge his temper. It’s one thing to be a billionaire and call reporters “cocksuckers,” another if you are the finance chairman for the reelection campaign of the president of the United States, with aspirations to become secretary of the Treasury. The triggering event was when one of the crew members on Expensive told a reporter how Frank stepped on someone’s hand while screaming obscenities at someone else on a cell phone.

  So Frank was determined to be pleasant. Each morning, his first appointment was with the anger consultant, a small intense woman named Harriet. He would tell Harriet how he anticipated the world would disappoint him that day. She would listen, reaffirm his superiority over the rest of humanity, and then encourage him to have a good loud scream, cuss a blue streak-really dirty words-then finish off with some yoga and breathing exercises. Finally, she would give him his mantra for the day, a variation on “Don’t waste your energy getting mad. You’re better than the rest of them put together.” It worked, more or less. Frank hadn’t called anyone an “incompetent cocksucker” in over a week. He was still allowed to vent on staff.

  He installed Lisa in a large redbrick Georgetown mansion that had belonged to someone who had become famous largely by initiating one of America’s more catastrophic wars. Since he had agreed to anger therapy, Lisa agreed to etiquette lessons. He hired a former head of State Department protocol to-so were his instructions-“sand off the rough edges and get her set up as a Washington hostess.” Lisa’s rйsumй was buffed up. “Tennis pro” became “tennis enthusiast.” She was “an avid art collector” and “active in philanthropy.” She was given her own charitable foundation-always a reliable social lubricant-which Frank funded with $30 million. Boyd, now a Yale (moolah, moolah) sophomore, was kept out of sight. Frank told him he would buy him a Maserati if he actually managed to graduate. Frank’s PR people had even managed to spin the Yale bribe story to his advantage. They funneled a fat cash donation to a foundation that gave out fatherhood initiative awards. The organization was more than happy to create a special “Stepfather of the Year” award for Frank, in recognition of his “devoted involvement in the life of his stepson.”

  With the personal details all taken care of, Frank plunged into work. Within weeks, he had raised the eye-popping sum of $40 million for the Committee to Reelect President Peacham. He was not shy about suggesting to the big corporate contributors that he would be Treasury secretary in the next term but stopped short of saying outright, “I’m sure you want to stay in business over the next five years.”

  Terry busied himself with coming up with “Boomsday”-themed podcasts and flash and pop-up Internet ads designed to put the fear of God into the under-thirties. Cass blogged away on CASSANDRA to rally the troops. She was finding this harder than she’d thought it would be. It was easier getting them to assault gated retirement communities and golf courses. Getting them excited about the political process…bo-ring.

  She did online focus groups. She told them, “Okay, some of it may be boring and hard work, but if you want to get it done, you have to get involved.”

  “Why can’t we just, you know, vote?”

  A generation that had grown up with the Internet and text messaging was not inclined to go around banging on doors and handing out pamphlets and doing voter registration drives. They were, however, willing to blog.

  And you could, Cass found, get their attention.

  “What would you say if I told you that one-third to one-half of everything you earn over your lifetime will go to paying off debt incurred before you were born?”

  “That totally sucks.”

  She thought, Maybe we should change Randy’s slogan to “Jepperson-He Won’t Suck.”

  One problem they did not have was fund-raising. Randy was happy to be the first president in U.S. h
istory to pay for his own campaign out of his own pocket. This didn’t sit well with Cass.

  “I think we at least ought to try to raise some money,” she said. “It’ll look better.”

  “Au contraire,” Randy said. “Lots of my colleagues in the Senate bought their seats. I think it sends a good message: He can’t be bought. He already has all the money he needs.”

  Cass had noticed that Randy had started referring to himself in the third person. One night, during a rare dinner alone at the Georgetown house, he began speaking as if he were being interviewed.

  “Do you want more chicken, honey?” she said.

  “The chicken was delicious. The peas were delicious. Everything was scrumptious, in fact. I remember as a child, we’d have peas with every meal. Proper nutrition was a factor. Balanced meals were a factor-”

  “Randy?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Who are you talking to?”

  “You, dear. Why?”

  “I got the impression that we were doing a live network feed.”

  Randy looked around. “No, I don’t think so.”

  Chapter 34

  It had been a long time since he’d been back to Frenchman’s Bluff, overlooking the Coosoomahatchie River. Gideon Payne was attended by several campaign aides and the crew of 60 Minutes. The producers had even found a 1955 Cadillac Eldorado convertible with red leather upholstery.

  “Will you be sending the car off the cliff?” Gideon inquired. The answer, thankfully, was no.

  “It is a bit eerie,” Gideon told the reporter who was doing the segment. “Most eerie.”

  “You’re a sport to do this,” the reporter said.

  “My pleasure.” Gideon smiled faintly. “Well, perhaps that’s not quite the right word.”

  “Okay,” said a cameraman, “we’re rolling.”

  “Mother was sitting right where you are now, in the passenger seat. We often came to this place on our Sunday drives. We’d stop right where we are now. On that day, I put it in park, just like…so. Set the parking brake, so. I left the motor running. We never stayed very long. Got out of the car…” Gideon opened the door and got out, reporter, cameraman, and sound technician following. “And walked over to this spot here. There used to be a bush. So you see, I had privacy. I was standing here, facing away from the car, taking care of what had to be taken care of, and that’s when I heard this dreadful sound.”

  “What kind of a sound?”

  “A sort of grinding, mechanical sound. Then I heard Mother shrieking and expostulating. I zipped myself up and turned and saw that the car was rolling down toward the edge of the cliff. And I ran.”

  “Can you show us?”

  “I was more, shall we say, fit in those days. I ran toward the car. Mother was continuing her shrieking, and I think trying to turn the car, also doing something with the transmission. She went over before I could reach her. It was dreadful. I still remember the sound of the car.…?It’s a moment that has stayed with me all my life. As you can imagine.”

  “But if the transmission somehow slipped out of park, wouldn’t it have gone into reverse?”

  “One would think,” Gideon said. “Yes.”

  “And yet the sheriff’s report states that the transmission was in drive when the car landed.”

  “Yes,” Gideon said, patting his vest pocket for his watch, “I can only surmise that Mother, in her panic, managed to shift into drive. She was not very adept at driving to begin with.”

  “The sheriff’s report also indicated that the parking brake was off.”

  “Yes,” Gideon said, “I believe that was accounted for by the impact of the landing. It’s nearly four hundred feet down. Don’t stand too close.”

  “Did you kill your mother?”

  “No, ma’am,” Gideon said. “But I do appreciate your candor, and I appreciate your having come all this way to put this matter to rest.”

  “Is it at rest? Some people around here we’ve talked to still seem to have doubts.”

  “Well…” Gideon smiled. “I would say to you, let them come forward and present their evidence. I don’t think they will, for evil shunneth the light and hideth its face at noon. No, I did not kill her. In fact, this is part of the reason I find myself a candidate for the presidency. There are those who are advocating that we drive our dear old mothers and fathers off cliffs. Surely there must be some better way of resolving our Social Security and Medicare problems, critical as they may be.”

  Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…

  Gideon watched the broadcast with his campaign staff at headquarters. When it ended, the place erupted in whoops and hollers. (Most of the staff was from the South.) His press secretary, Teeley, gave a thumbs-up, despite the bit with the aging coroner, who told the 60 Minutes correspondent, “I don’t think we’re evah really going to get to the bottom of what happened that day at Frenchman’s Bluff.” Gideon was accepting congratulations and pats on the back when his aide thrust forward and said that there was a call from a Ms. Tolstoy.

  “Who?” Gideon said.

  “Something about a gold watch.…?Reverend? Are you all right? Should I fetch some bicarbonate?”

  Cass had watched 60 Minutes with Terry and Randy. Randy said, “He came off rather well, I thought. I still think he did the old girl in.”

  “No,” Cass said. “He didn’t. But there’s something missing to it. Whatever. He came off well. He defused it.”

  Randy said, “I’ll bet my guy Speck could find out if he sent her off that cliff.”

  Cass said, “Now, now-we’re not going negative, remember?”

  “Not yet, anyway,” Terry muttered.

  “I thought the plan,” Randy said, “was to scare the shit out of the U30s?” U30s was their shorthand for the under-thirty voters they were after. It sounded like a German submarine.

  “It’s not the same thing,” Terry said.

  “We’re going negative against Boomers, not individual candidates,” Cass said. “We need a symbol. I’m tired of doing photo ops in front of the Social Security building.”

  “We could trash a few more golf courses,” Terry said.

  “Been there, burned that.”

  Cass’s cell phone rang. She took the call.

  “I guess the Today show watches Sixty Minutes. They’d like the senator”-she sighed-“to return to Bosnia.”

  Terry said, “Must be Presidential Candidates Acting Badly in Vehicles Week. Didn’t Peacham run over a deer one weekend at Camp David while he was giving the president of Latvia a tour?”

  “Racoon.”

  Randy said, “So. Are we going back to Bosnia? You did say the U30s rather liked the idea that we were ‘doing the deed.’”

  “Why not,” Terry said. “Cass could give you a hand job while you drive into a minefield. Very presidential.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Cass.

  “Too bad,” Terry said. “Could have been our PT-109 moment.”

  “And in Washington tonight, a stunning announcement from the Vatican. We go now to our correspondent, Wendy Wong.”

  “Brian, a senior Vatican official at the Holy See’s embassy in Washington today issued a stern warning to Americans not to vote for any candidate who supports legalizing suicide-or, as it has come to be called, Voluntary Transitioning.

  “The warning came from Monsignor Massimo Montefeltro, Rome’s second-highest-ranking official in the United States, a man said by observers to be close to Pope Jean-Claude the First.

  “Montefeltro today threatened the most severe sanction that the church can issue, a so-called bull of excommunication, which effectively bars a Catholic from the sacraments. He issued the warning at a press conference:

  “‘Legal suicide, or Transitioning, as its proponents call it, is absolutely contrary to all Catholic moral teaching. The holy father has been watching the political developments in America. Therefore he is, regretfully, compelled to issue a bull of excommunication. This would take effect agains
t any American Catholic who votes for, or who supports, any candidate advocating legal suicide’…

  “Strong words.…?Brian?”

  “Wendy, why is it called a ‘bull’?”

  “The name derives from bullae, the wax or lead seals that popes used in the old days to seal proclamations. In any language, Brian, it spells ‘tough medicine.’”

  “Thank you, Wendy. In the Middle East today, a spontaneous display of affection between Israelies and Palestinians.…”

  Monsignor Montefeltro’s discomfort at the press conference was much commented upon. Some Vaticanisti suggested that it hinted at a theological divide between him and Rome.

  Cass and Terry were at campaign headquarters going over campaign Boomer attack ads when Randy called. He sounded frantic. He was in Minnesota on his way to a fund-raiser. Cass had insisted he hold at least a few, for appearance’ sake.

  “What the hell’s going on?” he demanded.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just got a call from some Reuters reporter. She said the pope had just attacked me?”

  “What?” Cass said. “Don’t talk to anyone until I call you back.”

  Terry was already online. “Holy shit.”

  Cass read over his shoulder. “You got ‘holy’ right. Where did this come from?”

  “Sort that out later. Now what?” Terry said. “Do we denounce the pope?”

  Cass thought. “At least he’s French. I better stuff a sock in Randy’s mouth. He’s got that old-WASP thing about Catholics. Calls them ‘papists.’”

  “I’ve had four more calls,” Randy said. “I’m not going to take this from some old Frog in a miter-”

  “Just stonewall, Randy.”

  “I am. But they’re going to pounce on me at the fund-raiser. What do I tell them? What I’d like to tell them is the pope can go jump into the Tiber. What business is it of his-”

  “You have the greatest respect for the pope-”

  “I do not. I’m Episcopalian. Not very practicing, but-”

  “Randy. Shut up. You’re looking forward to a vigorous debate…you-”

  “I’m not here to debate the pope, for God’s sake.”