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Tim Dorsey Collection #1

Page 130

by Dorsey, Tim


  “Are you guys finished fooling around? Can we get back to business?” said Escrow. He folded over a newspaper and showed Marlon an editorial entitled “Let ’em eat cake!” It endorsed Gomer Tatum’s proposal to execute prisoners on empty stomachs. There was a comparison chart of last meals and school lunch menus.

  “But I liked those pizza squares,” said Pimento.

  “This isn’t funny,” said Escrow. “The race is getting too close!”

  In truth, Escrow didn’t need to worry anymore about Marlon’s dedication to the campaign. He was starting to push himself plenty on his own. The more people he met, the guiltier he felt. It had begun as a lark, but now Marlon wanted to win more than anything. He soon passed The Point of No Return. He bought a Woody Guthrie tape.

  “…Well I rode that ribbon of highway…and saw above me that endless skyway…”

  Marlon had been putting in eighteen-hour days swimming against the conventional wisdom. He fought fatigue with the idealistic energy of a college student as he went home to home seeing how his fellow Floridians lived, listening to their dreams and fears. He began shunning the closed fund-raisers and political tribute visits and—most terrifying of all to Escrow—refused to select campaign stops based on how they would play to the cameras.

  Instead, he went to places that had never seen a candidate: inner cities, rural trailer parks, even a prison, where Escrow kept haranguing him about the political illogic of spending time with people who weren’t allowed to vote. He saw kids in hospitals and AIDS patients in hospices and the bedridden in nursing homes and the homeless at roadside.

  “Look at this clipboard! I don’t see any votes anywhere in today’s schedule!” said Escrow. “You’re spreading yourself too thin! Have you seen the bags under your eyes? Thank God we’re not doing any TV today.”

  Marlon just smiled.

  But even Elizabeth and Jenny were growing concerned. They found Marlon asleep in a running shower one night and again the next day, slumped over a slide-out desktop in the back of the Winnebago with his Guthrie tape still playing.

  “…This land was made for you and me….”

  THE cell phone rang and Escrow answered. He held the phone away from his ear, and everyone in the RV heard the shouting on the other end.

  It was Helmut von Zeppelin, calling from his estate, and he was demanding to know whether the rumor was true—that Marlon had canceled his thirty million dollars of corporate welfare to help him pay for a stadium someone else had already paid for.

  “How can you really answer a question like that?” said Escrow. “Words are such tricky things. You’ve got your synonyms, your homonyms, semantics and syntax. And don’t forget the onomatopoeia—”

  “Get your pecker outta my ear, boy!”

  Escrow held the phone away from his head again for another stream of invective.

  He handed the phone to Marlon. “It’s for you.”

  “Marlon Conrad here.”

  Von Zeppelin introduced himself with colorful language.

  “Helmut! Good to hear from you! How’s the team doing?”

  Escrow desperately shook his head no, running a finger across his throat in a slashing gesture. Football was a bad subject right now with Helmut.

  “Helmut, you’ll have to talk slower. I can’t understand all your threats.”

  “You come here right now!” yelled Helmut, pacing furiously in a neck brace from the blimp landing. “My house! On the double!”

  “I’m on the campaign trail,” explained Marlon. “Did I tell you I got a Winnebago?”

  “You listen to me, son! You turn that shitbox around right now and drive here as fast as you can and hope my mood improves!”

  “No can do.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll be glad to talk to you if you want to come to one of the debates,” said Marlon. “We usually have a question-and-answer period at the end that we open up to the public. Of course you’ll have to get in line—”

  Marlon heard a maniacal screaming, followed by a number of unidentified, inorganic sounds. Helmut strangled the phone receiver with both hands and then started banging it on his desk in the Charlemagne Room. He finally grabbed a medieval mace off the wall and smashed it to tiny phone pieces.

  Marlon heard the line go dead. He tossed the phone to Pimento.

  “You have no idea what you’ve just done,” said Escrow.

  “I’ve got the basic sketch in my head,” said Marlon. “There’s a chance I could lose the election.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” said Escrow. “You’ll be lucky if you only lose the election.”

  “You worry too much,” said Marlon, turning inland. He drove west across Palm Beach County until he got to a migrant labor slum near Lake Okeechobee.

  Acting on an anonymous tip intended to embarrass Marlon, immigration officials followed him into the camp and began rounding up illegals. The crowd smelled a double cross and started jeering Marlon, who began shouting at the immigration people and ultimately tussled with two officers. He was arrested.

  They took him downtown in the same van as the aliens, right into a nest of TV cameras. He was quickly released when higher-ups in Immigration were squeezed by the GOP. Marlon was cheered outside the jail by human rights activists and plastered across the nightly news as a champion of the people.

  “Damn!” said Jackie Monroeville. “I never should have called in that tip.”

  The polls went schizo, and Mason & Dixon had their field people recheck the data. Bleeding-heart liberals were crossing over to Marlon. Self-righteous conservatives jumped to Tatum. The smart business money stayed put. After the dust cleared, Marlon netted a ten-point gain.

  The newspapers started picking up on it. There were long debates in the editorial offices. At first they couldn’t get past their skepticism that Marlon was some kind of political genius making cold calculations. No, said the reporters who were observing it on the ground. The guy’s for real. The editors dropped their cynicism. Marlon wasn’t a genius; he was a fool.

  They invited him to speak to their editorial boards.

  An editor in a bow tie shook Marlon’s hand and introduced the rest of the opinion-makers.

  “Why do you aspire to power?”

  “To share it with those who don’t have any.”

  “What do you want to change most about Tallahassee?”

  “The bullshit.”

  And on it went.

  Marlon’s reputation for goodwill and honesty began reaching such mythic proportions across Florida that it caused many to start remarking, “Someone ought to shoot that motherfucker!”

  29

  EIGHTY MILES AWAY, out in the Atlantic Ocean, the tiny island of North Bimini was dark and quiet. An ocean breeze blew through the coconut palms, and bright constellations filled the Bahamian sky.

  The main road on the island is called the King’s Highway, but it’s nothing majestic. Narrow and bumpy with mostly golf cart traffic. As it reached its south end in Alice Town, a raucous noise rose above the surf, and red light filtered through the trees.

  It was a modest old wooden bar built in the 1930s, the kind that would be called a roadhouse if it were on a mainland. The door was propped open. Faded photos, yellow newspaper clippings and stuffed fish covered the walls.

  There was a sign outside, THE COMPLEAT ANGLER, and it was one of the world’s finest dives. It was so secluded and expensive to get to that it had become the perfect hideaway for politicians. They had been making the quick yacht runs and seaplane hops from Florida for years, ever since Congressman Adam Clayton Powell began showing up and ordering his “usual,” scotch with milk chaser. On the wall was an old celebrity photo, Gary Hart on stage doing karaoke, shaking maracas with a nonwife companion. Then there was the literary world. Ubiquitous tropical barfly Ernest Hemingway arrived in 1934 with a Colt pistol and a severe thirst and, with impressive alacrity, somehow managed to shoot himself in both legs. He waited to heal and left without fanfa
re.

  On this calm October night in 2002, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was on the jukebox, and Dempsey Conrad and Periwinkle Belvedere were belly to the bar, heads bobbing to half mast from a full day of island drinking. The phones hadn’t stopped ringing back in Tallahassee. Major contributors, captains of industry and special interests wanting answers, demanding to know just what the hell Marlon was up to.

  “Relax. He’s a political genius. It’ll work out. You’ll see.”

  They weren’t buying. They wanted Marlon to back off his attacks on the “fat cats.”

  “But you are fat cats,” Dempsey joked.

  They weren’t in the mood.

  Conrad and Belvedere instructed their staffs to say they were out of town, but that only made things worse. You can ditch the press like that, but donors have ways of finding out where you really are, and they remind you the next time you ask for a check.

  It was getting too hot in the cockpit. Time to bail. Dempsey and Perry ordered up a Learjet. Give it a few days to fade away.

  They started taking liquid lunch at the End of the World Saloon, which had a sand floor and an elderly woman with tongs pulling conch fritters from an oil vat. They met a waitress who had served Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo.

  “Nixon always had the same thing. Grilled ham and cheese, potato salad and a Beck’s. He was real nice. I had a picture taken of him hugging me, but the CIA grabbed the camera.”

  Dempsey and Perry discussed the options. Get drunk billfishing in the Gulf Stream or run the table. They decided on the latter, rented a golf cart and made it a mission to visit every bar on the island.

  They hit the Big Game Club and the Red Lion and Sandra’s before tipping the golf cart into Porgy Bay. They walked back to Alice Town in the dark, catching occasional whiffs of ganja from the breeze. There was a glow on the edge of the western sky, the lights of Miami Beach fifty miles away, over the horizon. The pair made it back to their rooms at the Blue Water Resort, changed into dry clothes and headed for the Angler.

  Dempsey stood at the bar downing a Kalik, and Perry—with considerable difficulty—had acquired a mint julep.

  “…Tin soldiers and Nixon’s coming…We’re finally on our own…This summer I hear the drumming…Four dead in O-hi-o…”

  Dempsey and Periwinkle heard someone calling their names over the music. Their Lear pilot had his hand over the phone. “You got a call!”

  “We’re not here!” said Dempsey.

  “You tell him.” The pilot held out the phone receiver.

  Dempsey heard the shouting before he got the phone to his ear. It was Helmut von Zeppelin.

  “What the hell’s going on? We had a deal!”

  “Calm down—”

  “Eat me! I’ve given your boy soft money, hard money, everything! Now he’s refusing to even see me!”

  “He’s got a plan. Trust us.”

  “I don’t trust my mother!” Helmut started strangling the phone and throwing it around the room again, and Dempsey waited patiently until Helmut’s voice came back on the line.

  Belvedere watched Dempsey’s face turn grim as he listened to what von Zeppelin said next. Dempsey hung up the phone and threw a pair of twenties on the bar.

  “We’ve got to get out of here!” he told Belvedere.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “We have to find Marlon.”

  MARLON’S Road Warrior act was still topping the newscasts, and the highlights replayed over and over.

  At a Federal-style mansion north of Tallahassee, in a pink upstairs bedroom filled with lace and puppets, Babs Belvedere sat on her bed untangling Punch’s and Judy’s strings. She watched Marlon on her bedroom TV. There was footage from Daytona and Vero. Babs zeroed in with missile-lock radar on Jenny climbing aboard the RV behind Marlon in both segments. The tears came in buckets. With wet eyes still on the TV, she picked up her princess phone and called her father, who wasn’t answering because he was in the Bahamas. She left a tearful message on his machine. Then she dialed a few more numbers, the last one for the airport.

  She packed a small overnight bag and went down to her father’s gun cabinet.

  30

  JOE BLOW WALKED out to his car with his morning cup of coffee.

  “Who do you like in the Senate race?”

  “How do you feel about the casino amendment?”

  “When was the last time you had your teeth cleaned?”

  He sped out of the driveway, sideswiping a Florida Cable News van.

  Joe Blow had finally had it. He decided things would be different from now on. The press corps didn’t know it yet, but they wouldn’t have Mr. Average to kick around anymore!

  The next day, Joe set about deliberately and radically changing his entire existence. He bought an electric car, paid off his credit cards, canceled his cell phone and stopped patronizing fast food. He went to a thrift store and bought a Beta-format VCR.

  The media tracked his every move. Soon, financial analysts began noticing new consumer trends and fundamental changes in lifestyle across the country. They mirrored Joe’s transformation.

  Joe was frustrated. He was frustrated he couldn’t escape the middle-of-the-road, and he was frustrated he couldn’t find any tapes for his new VCR. So he turned off the TV, began talking to his family, stopped drinking beer and went to bed early each night reading a book.

  The country followed.

  Whether power of media suggestion or paranormal phenomenon, every attempt Joe made to depart from the mainstream quickly became the norm. He was changing the way we lived. And, with the exception of the VCR, it was all for the better.

  It only brought more media attention. The hounding was relentless, the glare too intense. Joe came home from work, and the street was filled with the reporters’ new electric cars. The Tampa Tribune began running a standing box on the bottom of the front page every day, chronicling Joe’s daily activities. It was called “Blow by Blow.”

  ANOTHER long day. It was after midnight. Escrow had just taken everyone’s orders for sodas and was now rooting around the cooler in the dark. Pimento had locked himself in the tiny lavatory again, staring at his reflection in the mirror: “Who are you?”

  Marlon saw something ahead in the road and leaned over the steering wheel. “What the heck is this?”

  “What’s what?” asked Elizabeth, looking out the windshield.

  Up ahead on a dark, open stretch of US 1, a pair of sheriff’s cruisers sat in parking lots on opposite sides of the road. They faced the highway with their high beams on.

  Bright light filled the RV as it drove through the crossfire of headlights. Marlon pulled the Winnebago over in front of a closed drugstore. “Escrow! Get the sheriff on the phone!”

  “It’s after two in the morning.”

  “Goddammit, Escrow!”

  Escrow grabbed his cell phone and dialed. He got information, which patched him through to dispatch, which told him there was no way in hell they would call the sheriff at home at this hour.

  Escrow covered the receiver with his hand and relayed the message.

  “Get the shift commander!”

  Escrow got the shift commander, who told Escrow the same thing.

  “He says the same thing.”

  “Escrow! You tell him that if the governor isn’t talking with the sheriff in two minutes, I’m gonna fuck him for ten generations!”

  Escrow uncovered the receiver. “This request comes directly from the governor, who would personally appreciate your help in this matter of utmost political urgency…”

  Sinclair was startled. Marlon was half crazy, veins popping and heart pounding.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Marlon pointed at the Atlantic Country sheriff’s cars in the driver’s-side mirror. “They’re looking for motorists DWB.”

  “DWB?”

  “Driving While Black. That’s how they park when they’re race-profiling. Shine headlights in cars to see what color they are.”

&
nbsp; The sheriff came on the line. Escrow handed Marlon the phone.

  “Sheriff Corrigador here. How can I help you, Governor?”

  “Call off your boys! They’re shining their lights across the road!”

  “I don’t follow…”

  “Don’t play the country hick! They’re profiling!”

  “Now, Governor, there’s no such thing down here.” He said it with a lazy patronizing drawl.

  Marlon caught himself and took a full breath and matched the sheriff’s poise. “Of course there isn’t such a thing. But for some crazy reason your campaign manager told me last year that you do it all the time. He even made a joke that there was no way to prove it in court, and he laughed. And you know what? I laughed, too.”

  “Then where’s our problem, Governor?”

  “Pull ’em off, Sheriff.”

  “Now you listen here. We’re polite enough in this country, but you’re quite a ways from home. You can come down and visit and we’ll be sweet as pie, but we don’t take to it when you start actin’ like you know what’s better for us than we do.”

  “Pull ’em off or this is your last term.”

  The sheriff broke into a big laugh. “Oh, how precious. You’re still just a boy. This here’s an elected post, and we have a nice, well-oiled machine in place that takes care of things like that, so don’t you go worrying your little head about it.” He laughed again. “Son, you just don’t seem to understand how things work.”

  “I’m not your son, and I’ll explain exactly how things work,” Marlon said evenly. “There are four veteran circuit judges in your county who are going to retire in the next three years. Instead of serving their full terms, and risk the party losing the seats in open elections, they’re going to resign three to twelve months ahead of time. That way I can appoint their successors from our party, who will be virtually unbeatable running as incumbents. How am I understanding things so far?”

  The sheriff didn’t answer.

  “Now, I have a list of four very powerful party members in your county—possibly even members of your oily machine—who are just dying for those juicy judgeships. In fact, Governor Birch even privately promised them the seats last year. But I’m gonna have to call ’em and say, ‘Fellas, there’s an unfortunate situation in the sheriff’s office that threatens to embarrass the state party as a whole, and I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to get around to those appointments for a while because I’m too busy trying to fix that problem—unless of course there’s something the local party can do to expedite the process.’…So you tell me, Sheriff. Does this boy seem to understand how things work?”

 

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