Not that Barack and I had done too bad a job. We’d had a little help from the Secret Service—Steve might get a nod in the acknowledgments if this were a book—but we’d done a lot of the legwork ourselves. Tonight, I would sleep well knowing that I’d done some good. If it all left a bad taste in my mouth, it was because of my own actions. At least I could say that justice had been served. The shooter was on his way to the morgue, once they scraped what was left of him off the interstate. Frontier justice, of a grim variety.
We weren’t in the air yet. I decided to take a quick peek at Barack’s Instagram to see if he’d posted anything from the VIP event. Had Caruso shown up? Was Oprah there, schmoozing potential donors?
Nothing from tonight. The last post was of him, Pastor Brown, and Caruso. Taken this morning before the prayer breakfast. The three of them were laughing. About what, I wondered. About Amtrak Joe, the delusional old man who thought he had a chance at the presidency? He’d be forty thousand years old by the time of his inauguration!
The joke was on them. The first time I’d run for Senate, I hadn’t been old enough to take office until after the election. Everyone had laughed then, too. I’d proved them all wrong. I could do it again.
If I wanted to.
Something about Barack’s post was nagging me. I finally realized what it was: Caruso’s checkered suit jacket. Almost as ugly as Barack’s tan abomination. It had been hanging in the green room. The phone in Caruso’s jacket had buzzed while I was in the room with Barack this morning.
It’s not mine, Barack had told me. I already checked.
Maybe Barack’s BlackBerry wasn’t stolen.
Maybe another BlackBerry user had mistakenly picked up the wrong phone.
Maybe Caruso wasn’t as retired from the gang lifestyle as he boasted.
What sealed the deal for me were his knuckle tattoos, which I hadn’t seen clearly enough to read when I’d met him earlier. C-R-O-O-K-L-Y-F. Crook life. Barack had to have known that Caruso was a former Crook. Caruso was supposed to meet me at the forum, but had left around the time of the shooting. He was Shaun’s mentor, so he would have known where the kid worked and what his schedule was. I could see the rapper ducking through the rusted-out fencing at the freight yard and waiting for Shaun to show up. Maybe the Crook, Kendrick, pulled the trigger; maybe Caruso gave Kendrick the gun to dispose of afterward.
I phoned Steve. He answered with a grumble. “Shouldn’t you be on a plane right now?”
“Steve, I need your help.”
I was hunched over in my seat, trying to avoid the nasty looks the frosted-hair attendant was shooting my way. I know I’m not supposed to be on the phone, but chill out. We’re taxiing. We could be doing this for another hour.
“This will have to wait,” Steve said. “We’ve got a big event here, and there are a lot of moving pieces. I’ve got to go.”
“I have an idea. I need somebody to check it out. That’s all I’m asking. There was a jacket in the green room today. A checkered jacket—”
“They took the green room apart. It’s a conference room again. There’s nothing down there. No jackets, nothing.”
“Is he there?” I asked.
“Who, Barack?”
“Caruso.”
There was a heavy sigh on the other end. “He’s here, but—”
“It’s him! Don’t you see? It’s—”
“Goodbye, Joe.”
The line went dead. I called back and went straight to voicemail. His mailbox was full. Steve thought I was losing it. There was talk that, if I was elected president, I’d be the oldest president in history. Facts are facts, but mentally I was sharp as the reaper’s sickle. I was playing with a full deck, and screw anyone who thought otherwise.
“We need to turn this plane around,” I announced.
40
The first-class flight attendant was staring at me in shock. He was strapped into a seat outside the cockpit, belts crisscrossing his upper body so that he didn’t tumble down the aisle if the plane stopped abruptly.
“We need to turn around,” I said, louder this time. “Get ahold of the captain. If we don’t turn around, by God, somebody is going to die.”
The runway was going past us in a blur.
“That came out wrong,” I said, realizing my verbal gaffe. “I’m not a hijacker.”
The roar of the engine was so loud that I worried my voice was drowned out. By the look on the flight attendant’s face, all he’d heard was “hijacker.”
It was a classic Biden-ism, but nobody was laughing.
The attendant picked up the phone to relay something to the cockpit. What in tarnation had I done? My heart was beating fast, like I had a racehorse in my chest ka-thumping down the final stretch of the Kentucky Derby, a pint-sized jockey on its back holding on for dear life. If we did turn around, I’d be handcuffed, dragged kicking and screaming to
Cook County Jail.
The cabin lights flickered. The engines seemed to cut out, too, as the brakes locked up. The flight attendant tipped forward, the phone tumbling from his hands. I gripped the armrests tight as the wheels screeched and we skidded toward the end of the runway. Beyond lay a fence, and then a cluster of trees, a little forest. On the other side of that, head- and tail-lights, a four-lane highway.
My status as the presumed frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination was about to go up in a ball of flames.
The plane’s nose tore through the security fence like it was made of gauze, sparks spraying as the twisted metal lodged underneath dragged along the concrete. Now it was time to pray. Which saint should I address my message to? St. Patrick’s Day was tomorrow, but he wasn’t a fellow I thought much about outside of his special day. He was the big one, the patron saint of Ireland. His inbox would be full. I liked to check in with the littler guys who maybe didn’t receive as many prayers. Maybe they weren’t as powerful in a spiritual sense, but at least you knew they would put their all into your request. There were a couple of patron saints of aviation, but they were fairly obscure to a layman like myself. I’d have to look them up on my phone, which was time I didn’t have.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God!” I yelled.
And, just like that, the plane skidded to a stop amidst the trees, yards from plowing onto the interstate. Ah, Mary. Worked every time.
Onboard, everything had gone quiet. The lights flickered off again, causing a collective gasp. This was followed by a collective exhale as the lights came back on. Backup power. The flight attendant, still strapped in, had a growing wet spot on the front of his navy pants. His hair seemed to be standing taller than before.
Through the rain-spattered windows, there were flashes of yellow and red. Emergency vehicles on the way.
A sharp THWACK at my window sent my heart a-fluttering. It wasn’t a leprechaun or gremlin—it was a tree branch that had snapped. The wind was dragging it back and forth across the window. I shuddered at the brush with mortality, at the absurdity of the whole damned situation. Then the shuddering turned into chuckling.
Good thing I was alone in first class.
By the time I’d regained my composure, the first responders were boarding. The poor flight attendant strapped in like a baby in his carrier still hadn’t moved. He was babbling to the medics about Joe Biden and the Virgin Mary. He was the only one wheeled off on a stretcher, far as I know.
While the firefighters were helping the rest of us deplane one by one, I learned that the pilot had attempted to stop while on the runway. She was under the mistaken impression there was some sort of medical emergency on board involving Joe Biden. (The attendant’s handset had cut in and out.) The brakes locked up due to the slick runway, and that’s when things had gone to H. E. double toothpicks in a handbasket.
Before I stepped off the plane, I shook the pilot’s hand. She had long blond hair and reminded me of Jill. “No medical emergency here,” I explained. “I may be seventy-six, but this baby’s still in mint condition.”
I caug
ht a ride back to the terminal in a covered golf cart.
I never did get that bag of peanuts.
41
I trudged through the puddles on the downtown sidewalks in my worn-down loafers. With every step, I could feel the wet muck squish between my toes. I didn’t want to think about what was in it. The rain was cleaning the pavement of the day’s festivities, washing the filth into the storm drains and, eventually, the Chicago River.
Across the street from the Tribune Tower, I stopped for the crosswalk.
There was no cross-traffic. I could have stepped into the street, but I was frozen in place, staring up at the imposing gothic building from beneath my umbrella. Barack was up there, on the twenty-fifth floor foyer. So, presumably, was a stone-cold criminal who’d suckered the president and everyone else in Barack’s orbit.
Neither Steve nor Michelle had answered my calls, which meant I’d be walking into the situation blind. I had no plan other than to make a scene. I’d already made a horse’s ass of myself in front of Barack once today. What did I have to lose?
Lightning flashed and a thunderclap shattered the calm. The streets and sidewalks were all but deserted. Everyone who would normally have been hitting the bars on a Saturday night was at home, hungover from the parade. The rain was a cold one. Every drop that hit my cheeks stung like a slap in the face. The cheap umbrella I’d picked up from the Jewel-Osco down the street wasn’t holding up in the wind, so I stuffed it in the trash. The good news was that the rain might have put a damper on the crime wave predicted for the weekend. That, and I’d grabbed some honey-roasted nuts at the drugstore.
A figure in a khaki trench coat stopped next to me. The DON‘T WALK signal was still lit, but I held my ground. No sense jumping the gun. Almost time to storm the castle. Any moment now and I’d step into the crosswalk, and the countdown would be on. It was game time—go big or go home. Barack had taught me that. When he’d failed to win a state senate seat, he hadn’t headed home from Springfield with his tail between his legs. He’d set his sights on the U.S. Senate instead. Go big or go home.
I planned to go big and go home. I’d already texted Jill to let her know that my plane had run into mechanical trouble, and that I was trying to reschedule for another flight. It was mostly true.
The crosswalk sign changed. I held back a moment to let the other pedestrian go ahead of me. When they didn’t move, I took a longer look. The wide body, the André the Giant hands, the rain pitter-pattering off his shaved scalp. Benny “Bento Box” Polaski. Rahm’s right-hand man didn’t have an umbrella. He’d probably never used an umbrella in his life, the deviant.
I had to remain calm. I couldn’t show weakness. If only I hadn’t been munching those peanuts. My mouth was dry, and I desperately needed a glass of water. As it was, I couldn’t do much beyond swallow as hard as I could to try to work up some saliva so I could say something, anything.
“Hello, Joe,” Bento Box said, a hard candy clacking against his teeth. There was another flash of lightning, followed not by thunder but by the fixer’s low, rumbling laughter.
42
I tensed up, preparing to shield myself in case Bento Box came at me with a right or left hook. Protect my face, protect my chest. Try not to pass out from the pain. And then fight back. Fight back until I couldn’t swing my arms no more. Dinner is for winners, Joey. Dinner is for winners.
“Heard your plane ran into some trouble,” he said.
“Nobody was hurt.”
“That’s very fortunate. You’re a lucky man.”
Luck had nothing to do with it. The pilots knew their stuff and were the ones who should have been praised for avoiding certain disaster.
The crosswalk signal was flashing now. A police car passed us in the other direction without slowing.
“You need to ask yourself,” I told Bento Box, “whether this is worth it.”
He cocked his head, examining me curiously.
“Ask yourself if he’s worth it,” I said.
“The president?”
“Your boss,” I said. “Do what you want to me, but ask yourself if he’s worth it. Is this really what you want to be doing? Trying to beat up a septuagenarian?”
“You think I’m going to beat you up?”
“You’re going to try. I didn’t say you were going to be successful.”
The signal stopped flashing.
A pair of headlights was headed toward the intersection. It wasn’t time to walk; it was time to run. I dashed into the street, right in the path of the oncoming vehicle, confident that the fixer wouldn’t follow.
“Wait! Joe!” Bento Box shouted.
The headlights blinded me. It didn’t look like the driver was slowing down. I pushed myself into second gear and reached the opposite curb as the car’s brakes squealed.
There was a THUMP behind me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Bento Box lying on his back on the hood of the stopped sedan. The front of the car was crumpled, as if it’d hit a concrete pole. A four-foot-wide concrete pole.
The car backed up quickly, and Bento Box rolled off onto the pavement. Then it spun around the fixer’s body and ran through the light as it turned red. By the time the shock wore off, the car was already several blocks away. I hadn’t thought to write down the plate.
The rain was letting up. After looking both ways, I ran to the lump in the street.
Bento Box was on his back. There was a dark pool growing under his head. The Werther’s he’d been sucking was all the way in the other lane.
I tried to get him to his feet, but he was down and out. I called 911 to report the accident and then, using my lower back muscles, dragged him unceremoniously to the curb, where I sat him against a sign like a sack of trash. The front of my shirt was stained with his blood. The cut on his scalp was wide, but not deep. It continued to gush. I wrapped my jacket around my forearm and applied pressure to the wound.
Without warning, the fixer’s eyes popped open. He reached out for me with one giant mitt. I thought he was about to strangle me, but he latched onto my shirt collar instead of my throat. He pulled me close. “Listen, I came to tell you…it’s Caruso…”
“The rapper.”
“He’s pulling all the strings…the Crooks…the police…everyone. This whole town is corrupt. I took his money. We all did.”
His voice was weak and raspy. Compensating for crushed ribs. Bento Box had a lot of padding. It was the only reason he was still breathing.
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
He grinned. His teeth were stained red. “If I’m going to die, I can’t die…a bad guy.”
“You’re not going to die,” I said, holding his hand as sirens wailed in the distance. I looked away, unable to meet his eyes for fear that he’d know I was lying.
43
There was no visible security on display outside the Tribune Tower. Van Heusen and the horse-mounted cops must have been sent home for the day after the protesters and parade-goers had cleared out. I’d still need to get past building security at the front desk, and possibly one or two Secret Service agents. Barack’s detail would recognize me. It was far from a given they would let me upstairs. Had Steve ordered them to hold me, to keep me from causing a scene?
I had to find another way to the Crown foyer.
Since hang-gliding onto the roof from a neighboring building was out of the question—Barack was the hang-glider, not me—I decided to go underground. Specifically, through the parking garage below the building. I hustled past the unmanned card-reading tollbooth at the street-level exit, keeping my head down. Benny “Bento Box” Polaski was onbeing tended to by medics, but I didn’t have time to concern myself with him. What I was looking for was a tenant’s-only entrance to the tower. The Tribune employees didn’t use the revolving doors out front. Whatever doors I found down here would require a badge, but if I could time it right—
There. A glass door with a magnetized card reader. A man in an overcoat stepping out. I hust
led through the parked cars, past the man. He wasn’t paying me any attention. He was going through his pockets, probably looking for his keys. I stuck a hand inside the door, inches from closing. It was heavy, and it bit down on my fingers. I stifled a yelp.
“Hey,” the guy said.
I took a deep breath and turned. My heart was pounding.
“You got a light?” he asked, holding up a cigarette between two fingers.
I pretended to pat down my pockets. Wouldn’t you know, it wasn’t just for show—I still had the lighter I’d snatched from the record store fella. Mr. Ponytail.
“Keep it,” I said, tossing it to the smoker.
“You’re a lifesaver.”
Time would tell. Time would tell…
There wasn’t any security at the elevator bank inside the tenant’s-only entrance. There was, unfortunately, a magnetic keycard pad on every one of the five elevators. The only way up would be to hitch a ride with somebody. That wasn’t happening. My dress shirt was stained as red as the stripes on the flag. It was only through the grace of God that the man looking for a light hadn’t seen me from the front as I’d run past.
I poked my head into the emergency stairwell, since it didn’t require a magnetic card for access. The stairs went round and round and would take me all the way to the twenty-fifth floor. I pulled off my shoes, emptied the water that had soaked through, and fit them back on.
I’d been training in cities around the country for this very moment. I was the Stair Master.
44
Three flights up, and I was huffing and puffing like the Big Bad Wolf up against the pig in the brick house. You would have thought it was my first day on a treadmill in a quarter century. I’d been hitting the gym plenty, sometimes twice a day. Unfortunately, real stairs were a lot more difficult than a StairMaster. For one thing, I couldn’t control the resistance. For another, I couldn’t take a ten-minute break to wipe my brow, refill my water bottle, and check Politico.
Hope Rides Again Page 15