Hope Rides Again

by Andrew Shaffer

  “The Cool President never gets angry. Ever. Getting mad isn’t cool. It’s the opposite—that’s why it’s called ‘losing your cool.’ Go ahead and interrupt my State of the Union. Call me names on Twitter. Call me a Kenyan. You can’t provoke me because Barack don’t crack.

  “There’s a fallacy in all of this, of course: politics isn’t cool. Running for office—even the highest office in the land—isn’t cool. The Cool President is as carefully calculated a creation as fast-food fries. If you ever wanted to see me lose my temper in the White House, all you would have had to do was attend one of our pick-up basketball games. I dropped the Cool President facade on the court. Elbow me in the face? Oh, it was on. Those were the moments I lived for.

  “I was a college professor before getting into politics. I wrote a book—that nobody bought. I was a nerd. The Cool President was just someone I was pretending to be. I thought that if I put the tan suit on, I could shed that image.”

  “And the green socks.”

  “What’s wrong with the green socks?”

  While I understood where he was coming from, being the Cool President had its advantages. If he had his BlackBerry, for instance, he could have reached out to Bradley Cooper for help. It was easy to imagine the A-list actor busting through the wall, guitar in hand, and setting us free, all without messing up a single perfect hair on his perfect head.

  “He didn’t change his number, did he?” I said.

  “Who didn’t change his number?”

  “You know who.”

  Barack let out a long sigh. “He changed his number, but…”

  “But you have his new number.”

  “I’m sorry, Joe. I don’t know what to say. The whole jealousy thing is getting old. This isn’t high school.”

  “You think I’m jealous of him? Mr. Hollywood? Puh-lease.”

  “I’m not the one who keeps bringing him up.”

  “I’m wondering why you would lie to me.”

  “Because I knew you were going to act like this, Joe. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

  There was a long pause. “This is what they’re hoping we do, isn’t it?” I said. “Turn against each other.”

  “I don’t know what they want.”

  “We’re in a big dill pickle. It’s not like we haven’t been here before, though. Not literally, of course.”

  “We’ve never been tied up. We’ve never been kidnapped.”

  “We’ve had some close calls, though,” I said. “Say, don’t you have some sort of presidential locator microchip implanted under your skin? I meant to ask you if they—”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “The technology’s kind of creepy, but it would be nice to have, wouldn’t it?”

  “I’ve never thought about it, honestly. We don’t need a locator chip, though: you have your cellphone on you. At some point, Steve will become curious. He can trace us using that.”

  “It’s a pay-as-you-go phone. I never registered it online.”

  “Joe?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If this is it—if this is the end…”

  “Don’t talk like that. Don’t you talk like that.”

  “I’m serious, Joe. If this is the end, I want you to know something. I swore I’d never say it, but…” He paused. He sounded choked up. “Joe, hear me out, OK? I want you to know…”

  “I’m listening. Whatever it is, you can tell me. We’re friends.”

  “A-hem.” It wasn’t Barack talking now. The spotlight was back on, this time trained on us. I couldn’t see if Gal was alone or if that creep was with her. She moved in the shadows on the other side of the light, slinking around like a cat on the prowl. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “You’re not going to get away with this,” I said. “Let us go right now, and maybe we’ll forget about the whole thing. It’s the only way you walk out of here.”

  “If I were you, I’d be more concerned about yourselves walking out of here.”

  “You know why we’re here,” Barack said.

  “Actually, I don’t,” Gal said.

  “Playing dumb?” I said. “Ha. I invented playing dumb. You can’t fool me.”

  “I’m not trying to fool you,” she said. “In fact, I didn’t even know who you were when you barged in here. Now that I do know who you are, I have a dilemma. If I let you go, my club will be raided and I’ll spend the night in jail.”

  “Just the night?” I asked.

  “I have good lawyers,” she said. “But I don’t know what else to do with you.”

  “You’re not going to silence us?”

  She knelt close to me and went to work on the knot. She was letting us go. I was flabbergasted, but not entirely surprised. She was a smart snickerdoodle cookie.

  “What do you want from us?” I said as she untied Barack. I shook myself free and stood, rubbing my wrists where the rope had dug into my skin. There were red marks on both my arms, which I hoped would fade. Jill was used to me bumping my head. Rope marks were going to be more difficult to explain away.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “What do—”

  “What do I want from you? In exchange for letting you go?”

  Barack got to his feet and let the rope fall to the floor. We exchanged suspicious looks. Was he thinking we should run? It was difficult to know what was going through his mind on a regular day. Today was no regular day. I watched him closely, waiting for him to signal our next move with his eyes.

  “I’m sorry that Victor didn’t recognize you,” Gal said, looping the rope like a lasso. “He’s not really into politics.”

  “He doesn’t vote?” Barack said.

  “He writes in Mickey Mouse. For every office.”

  “A straight Disney ticket,” I said.

  “Every vote counts,” Barack said. “When we don’t vote, or throw away our vote on Bob Dylan or Mickey Mouse, our democracy suffers. If you don’t think any of the candidates represent your values and your priorities, perhaps it’s because fewer than one in ten people vote in primary elections. Victor needs to engage in the electoral process sooner rather than later. It doesn’t take much time. Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes of his time. Is democracy worth that? When you vote, something powerful happens. Change happens. Don’t leave it up to others. Stop waiting for the perfect candidate. Get out there and get involved. Ordinary citizens like you and your friend from Hot Topic have the power to change things.”

  “You don’t have to convince me—I voted Obama/Biden in ’08 and ’12. I still sleep on my Obama pillow. And I named my twins after you. May I introduce you to Hope,” she said, cupping her right breast, “and Change.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I swear I saw Barack blush.

  “You might be able to help us,” he said, trying to recover his cool but failing miserably. “If you’re willing.”

  “Anything you want,” she said with a crooked smile. “And I do mean anything.”

  31

  It didn’t take Gal long to get us the information we were after. A few phone calls and she had the name of the street gang. I was expecting her to say “The Red Door.”

  The name she gave us was “The Crooks.”

  Barack didn’t notice my relief, as far as I could tell. My fears that the Red Door was somehow mixed up in all this business were fading by the minute. Shaun might not have been involved at all in the shipping container burglary. He had no affiliation with the Crooks, or any other gang, if Pastor Brown was to be believed.

  As we retraced our steps through the laundromat, I asked Barack if he’d known that his friend at the Record Store had sent us to a strip club.

  “It’s a burlesque club,” Barack said.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “She didn’t take off all her clothes, did she?”

  “Are you telling me strippers take off everything?”

  “Joe.”

  “It’s a serious question,” I said.

  “
Are you telling me there aren’t any strip clubs in Delaware?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve never seen one.”

  “Look harder,” he said.

  I said I would, but we both knew I was bluffing. The only woman I wanted to see take her clothes off was my wife. Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t think it was right to see a woman in her birthday suit except in a bedroom. Your own bedroom, with a ring on her finger.

  “I’m still confused about something,” I said. “How do strippers—I’m sorry, ‘burlesque’ dancers—know so much about what goes on down at the police station?”

  “Because Ms. Capone is also a madam. Her ‘girls’ are call girls. Sleep with enough cops, and you’ll hear some stuff.”

  “You’re saying cops talk in their sleep.”

  “That’s…yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

  An awkward silence followed.

  “It’s probably time to check in with Steve,” Barack said. “It takes more than a little hot air to keep that boy down.”

  “Or a bundle of sticks.”

  Barack looked at me quizzically.

  “So we touch base with Steve, then what?” I asked.

  “Then I’ve got to get ready for the VIP dinner. There will be hors d’oeuvres and desserts.

  “I meant, then what regarding this tip about the Crooks? We can’t just drive around until we see somebody wearing their colors—”

  “Silver and black.”

  “—on a street corner and say, ‘Take me to your leader.’”

  “While I would like to see you try that, Joe, I’ve got another idea.”

  “Caruso,” I said.

  “He’ll be at the dinner. He might be able to help us put together some of the pieces. Even though he’s Shaun’s mentor, I’m not sure how much help he’ll be. He doesn’t live in Englewood anymore. I was actually thinking of somebody else.”

  “Pastor Brown.”

  Barack met my eyes. “I know you don’t trust him, Joe. I know you’re skeptical that he could turn his life around, that anyone who does the kind of good he does could come from a background like his.”

  “You think he’ll help us, that’s all that matters.”

  “I’ll get ahold of him tomorrow, feel him out.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “I’ll see this thing through—not just for you, but for Shaun.”

  I thought it over. If Pastor Brown could do the heavy lifting and talk to the gang leaders, he might even come out of this my new hero. But if he couldn’t, what then? I’d told Shaun I’d go around the world for him. There was no way I was stepping foot on that plane tonight.

  I glanced at my watch. “If Steve picks us up within the next twenty minutes, we have just enough time to get down to the Red Door. Your VIP event doesn’t start until nine.”

  “We’ll be cutting things close.”

  “When have we ever not cut things close?”

  I called Steve, who didn’t seem at all curious where we’d run off to. I gave him the cross-streets. Fifteen minutes, he said. Then I found the number for the Red Door.

  “Before you make the call,” Barack said, “there’s something you need to know about him. I wasn’t being entirely straight with you about his past. I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

  “He robbed a liquor store,” I said. “Everybody deserves second chances.”

  Barack shook his head. “There’s more to the story. He killed the shopkeeper. Jenkins Brown was only fourteen at the time, but he was tried as an adult. He pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter—a plea deal for turning on his accomplices. They’re still in prison, but Jenkins is a free man.”

  My thumb hesitated on the CALL button. No wonder Shaun’s aunt was worried about her nephew getting too involved with the Red Door. I wouldn’t want my family getting in bed with murderers either, no matter how “reformed” they were.

  I also knew it wasn’t my place to judge.

  Jenkins Brown had done his time. He’d served his debt to society. What he did was, ultimately, between him and God. And if you wanted to catch a killer, sometimes you had to work with one.

  What really disturbed me was that I was already thinking of Shaun’s shooter as a killer, even though Shaun was, far as we knew, on the road to recovery. The more of the city I saw, the more I felt hope slipping away.

  32

  Steve picked us up. I got into the passenger seat. It appeared that he’d recovered miraculously. “You OK to be driving, Steve?” I asked. “You’re not gonna faint again?”

  “It was an act, Joe,” Barack said.

  “What?”

  “Steve ‘fainted’ to let me give him the slip,” Barack explained. “Not his fault if he faints. Can’t get in trouble with the boss for fainting.”

  “Ah, nice,” I said, then slapped Steve on the arm. “You’re not as much of a snowflake as I thought, kid. You enjoy the birch massage?”

  Steve gripped the steering wheel. “I’m not ready to talk about that yet.”

  We rode in silence on the southbound freeway. I wanted to turn the radio on—anything to drown out the silence—but I’d already laid down the law regarding music in a man’s automobile. If there’s one thing Joe Biden ain’t, it’s a hypocrite.

  I glanced at Barack in the backseat. He was getting in a little shuteye. I was too keyed up to fall asleep. I was running on adrenaline at this point. It reminded me of the all-nighters we used to pull in the Senate. All I had to do was keep it together for a few more hours. Once we talked to the pastor, I’d have a better idea how long I was going to need to stay in town. Jill would understand, once she heard the full story.

  Steve’s phone rang and he answered it on his Bluetooth.

  Yeah…Uh-huh…OK…

  He finished and turned to me. “They traced the plates of the car that almost took you guys out in the parking garage,” he said. “A couple of agents went to talk to the owner. Said the car had been parked on the street all morning as far as he knew, so they’re treating it as a stolen vehicle. There’s an APB out for it. Sounds like somebody was driving it like a nut because it was hot.”

  Steve’s news didn’t make me feel any better or put an end to my creeping paranoia. Somebody didn’t want us looking into this shooting. I already knew one of those somebodies was Rahm, but he wouldn’t send someone to run us down. I didn’t even think Bento Box would go out of his way to do that. You’d have to be pretty stupid to target a former president and vice president. Stupid, or desperate. When it came to criminals, though, they were all either stupid, desperate, or some combination of both.

  Which category had Pastor Brown fallen into when he’d been sent to the big house as a teenager? I replayed everything he’d said to me in Shaun’s hospital room. He hadn’t exactly lied about what he’d done, but he hadn’t been forthcoming about it, either. Then again, I wouldn’t expect somebody who’d taken another person’s life to be forthcoming unless pressed, especially if they’d done their time and found salvation.

  Fourteen-year-old Jenkins Brown had been tried as an adult. That didn’t make him an adult when he pulled the trigger. Barack explained that the accomplices had been eighteen and nineteen, and although Brown was the one who pulled the trigger, they were the ones who bore the brunt of the punishment. Neither cut a plea deal. Brown testified at their separate trials. Threats had been made against him, and there were stories of hit jobs foiled in lockup. The two other men, now approaching fifty, wouldn’t be eligible for parole until they were older than I was now.

  Barack knew all of this.

  There was no single victim. There was the shopkeeper, who had lost his life. There were also his three children, who had been robbed of their father. But hadn’t Brown and his accomplices also been robbed of their innocence, years before they became criminals? Society had let them down. Whose fault was that? Who took the blame for a fourteen-year-old kid running the streets without supervision, sticking up liquor stores?

  There wer
e no easy answers. Even the questions were difficult.

  33

  We parked in front of the Red Door, near where Michelle had dropped me off. It reminded me that I hadn’t told Barack that his wife had given me a ride. He wouldn’t have minded, but I couldn’t very well bring it up now—A) it would seem suspicious that I hadn’t mentioned it earlier, and B) he would quickly suss out the real reason I hadn’t told him (i.e., that I’d suspected Pastor Brown and his flock had some involvement in the shooting at the freight yard). Learning about the Crooks had eliminated most of my suspicions, but I didn’t want Barack to think I was going around checking up on his friends.

  Steve went to plug the meter.

  “It’s not working,” I said.

  He turned back to me.

  “It looks like it’s out of order,” I said. “The little thing with the…never mind.”

  He slapped the meter a couple of times, trying to get it to work. Every one on the block—broken on purpose, I suspected. “Free” parking for the Red Door, courtesy of the City Streets Department. Steve eyed me with suspicion. The only way I could have known about the meter was if I’d been down here already. Thankfully, Barack was busy backing out of the car, unfolding himself onto the sidewalk with great care.

  “The meter’s broken,” Steve said to Barack. “Do you think they’ll tow my car?”

  “I wouldn’t worry…too much.”

  Steve looked like he was about to tear up. This had not been a great day for him—but, to be fair, we’d all had a pretty stressful day. We’d been bouncing around the city for what felt like a three-day weekend. It was hard to believe I’d landed just that morning.

  Barack went straight to the red door, which to my surprise was unlocked. Perhaps I should have expected it, seeing as how Pastor Brown had told us he’d meet us here. But still.

  “Everything OK, Joe?” Barack asked, holding it open for me.

  Inside, a young man greeted us and told us to wait in the lobby. I could hear sounds coming from the main chapel. One of the doors was open a smidge. I peeked in. An auditorium, with hundreds of empty seats. The lights were up and a gospel choir was practicing. I wondered how many of the young adults onstage had criminal records.