The Ex-President

by Jeff Soloway

  My mother modestly flicked at a crumb on the tablecloth.

  Chomp took a bite of salad and grimaced. “This dressing tastes like pancake mix. So this woman and also her son, that man right there, whom I have met and found both interesting and crafty, they are both grieving. Now, take a look at them both. Keep looking, go on, they’re both easy on the eyes, but then we’re all successful people here. See? You wouldn’t know they’re grieving, because people like them understand how to hide their pain, unlike all those weenies at college who protest for sushi in their dining halls and transsexuals in their bathrooms and forty-five bucks an hour plus masseuse services and early retirement for every single cleaning lady in their dorms, or should I say ‘cleaning human’? Okay. So the poor man was found deceased in his room, and by deceased I mean stabbed. Some flunkies who work for this ship tried to tell me he killed himself. Sorry, Charley. I know a felony when I see one.”

  The sympathetic murmurs fell away. A waiter deftly replaced Chomp’s salad with shrimp.

  “That’s why we’ve got our private security out tonight,” said Harvey. “To keep big-game players like yourselves safe. Plus,” he remembered to add, “everyone else.

  “Great time to start pat-downs, Harv.” Chomp nudged my mother with his elbow. “And this guy wanted to head up the FBI! But listen, if Angie Merkel and Rachel Maddow can’t scare me, there’s no way some loser murderer will who can’t even afford a firearm. I personally will conduct this investigation. I pledge to catch the culprit, just as I pledged to liberate Long Island from MS-13 and Afghanistan from the MSF. Which I did. Because when disaster strikes on the Chomp cruise, I feel the same awesome responsibility I felt when a U.S. drone took out some Afghani hospital, even though it’s not like I’m flying the damn things, and how many of those so-called innocent Muslim patients would have bombed us? As many as would have murdered this guy.”

  “What do you know about investigating a murder?” I asked.

  Chomp turned to me, with that squint that seemed to say, I see what the losers miss. And now again there were a few gasps around the table, mainly indicating disgust, not surprise. No one, not even Thule, interrupted Carlton Chomp.

  “Jacob, please let the president finish.” My mother bathed him with a look of exaggerated fascination, like a teacher encouraging a child to tell the class a story.

  The smile he gave back was about as tender as the shrimp. “No, I’m very happy to answer your son, because that is a terrific question. As head of the executive branch, I was the chief law enforcement officer of the United States, and therefore investigations political, criminal, and international were ultimately my personal responsibility, as more than one terrorist could tell you if he weren’t dead or in Gitmo. Believe me, I know forensics, and not just from watching TV. I’ve endured investigative briefings of absolutely tremendous length, detail, and tedium. Plus I saw this guy’s body. The dead guy’s. It was disgusting. Forget suicide. Punctures like that require a bad guy. Harv, paper.”

  Harvey, accustomed to lightning compliance, snatched the cloth napkin off his wife’s lap and chucked it to Chomp.

  “And pen, Harv, the two go together, maybe you heard.”

  My mother rolled her eyes at Harvey’s foolishness, but then nodded at Harvey, as if to acknowledge to him that they both understood the necessity of indulging this great and sensitive man.

  Harvey dug a Sharpie from his pocket and slid it across the table.

  “We are about to begin the process of solving a murder. What you are going to witness will demonstrate the majesty of the modern investigative method, at least as practiced by a guy who knows his stuff.” All of us, even Thule, listened closely, most of us with wide eyes and open mouths. By all accounts, Chomp’s usual dinner conversation consisted mainly of self-glorifying personal anecdotes. No one had expected this. Chomp grinned at our expressions. (He was, I realized, intelligent enough to know the difference between rapt and sycophantic.) He was performing now, as he had performed for so many years. The showman was his truest self, all others (president, businessman, entertainer, lover, billionaire renegade) merely roles he played. He had triumphed as a real-estate impresario, then a reality show star, then a candidate, and then a politician by being more absurd than anyone before, more true to himself as a performer and not to the part. Above all, he had kept himself entertained. But surely this current role had a purpose beyond entertainment. Surely he himself believed in his higher purpose. What was it?

  “The first move,” Chomp said, “is to establish time of death. Isn’t that right, Harv?”

  “It certainly sounds right,” said my mother.

  Harvey shrugged. “How would I know? I wasn’t good enough to run the FBI, remember?”

  “I remember again every time you open your month. Trust me on this one. Did they tell us when exactly this guy got perforated?”

  Harvey frowned knowledgeably. “During the evacuation drill. They think.”

  “Time of death—check! Mystery solved, let’s head straight to dessert.”

  Around the table, mouths closed and foreheads crinkled in confusion.

  “Ha! That is what we POTUSes, or POTUSi, to use the Greek, call messing with the electorate. Next step is to compile a list of suspects. I could do that myself but what do I know about solving a murder? Let us turn to Young Mr. Genius.” He popped off the pen cap and pointed the Sharpie tip at me. “Start.”

  “Start what?” I asked.

  “Start listing suspects! You’re a smart guy, right? Well informed. Sneaky. I bet you picked up some clues.”

  He smirked, letting our tablemates know he was mocking me. Chachkey and the NFL owners looked at me with new respect. Most people Chomp preferred to boss around, ignore, or insult directly.

  “Plus,” Chomp continued, “I happen to know how you were brought up with intelligence and good sense and a winning attitude and most of all good genes. This is a woman”—he flopped the index fingers of both hands, like windshield wipers, toward my mother—“who, after a divorce that left her alone and broke, started at the bottom of the corporate ladder and hauled herself up to an executive position, hand by hand, in high heels. Brains are in your blood. Blood is in your blood. I like that.”

  My mother smiled gratefully at him. I’d never been more impressed. Somehow, in the few moments they’d spent together before dinner, she had shut him up long enough to tell him her life story. Or a version of it.

  “So. Any ideas for suspects?”

  “No,” I said.

  He nodded with some satisfaction. “Anyone else? Who wants to show off zee little grey cells? Remember that guy? And they say I’ve never read a book! Harvey, what’s the last book I read?”

  “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

  “Tremendous book, you should all read it. Okay. What’s the next step in the investigation?”

  Chachkey lifted his hand.

  “Oh. Okay, what’ve you got?”

  A lesser toady would have been daunted, but Chachkey had done cameos in criminal television. “A murderer needs a motivation.”

  His wife’s sigh was designed to be audible only to me.

  “Motive,” said Harvey.

  “Shut up, Harv,” said Chomp. “Master Thespian is correct. One motive is money, but, though the deceased was reasonably loaded, nothing was missing from his room. Cash, cards, wallet, cellphone. Rule out money. Another motive is hate. So let us ask ourselves, who hated him?”

  “I did.” My mother’s tone was unnaturally steady. “He cheated on me, and I hated him for it. But I’m not a killer.” At the moment, it wasn’t so hard to imagine her as one.

  “Whoa. Let me explain.” Explaining was clearly one of Chomp’s favorite things. “This deceased, he was a jackass, so this woman dumped him. Still, she retains some, I do not say affection, but nostalgic goodwill toward the jackass, as I do fo
r several of my ex-wives and ex-girlfriends, no matter how unladylike they treated me—I don’t mean the alimony, which I can afford no problem, but all those lies to the Daily Snooze, I mean News—despite all that, I retain my affection for them, and do you know why?” He took my mother’s hand. “Do you know why? Because I am full of love. As all of you are too.” He passed his gaze around the table like the bread basket, inviting us to feast on his praise. “Even Harvey. The guy who murdered this poor jackass, however, was not full of love. No. The murderer was full of…”

  “Hate?” offered Mrs. Chachkey.

  “Bingo.” Chomp nodded mistakenly at her husband.

  He again surveyed the table, not to wait for an answer but to appreciate the silence that only he among us could command.

  “I hated him too,” I said. “But my mother and I were both at the evacuation drill. There were witnesses. If that was the time of death, we’re in the clear.”

  “Alibis are bullshit.” Chomp shook his head, disturbing not one strand of his hair. Even his toupee had no doubts. “That’s okay. The entire premise is wrong.”

  He stuffed one of the little pink question marks in his mouth, tail and all. We waited for him to swallow.

  “The answer to the conundrum”—the word rolled slowly over his tongue—“is obvious. The murderer was full of hate, but not for the jackass. He meant to kill someone else.”

  His eyes circled the diners.

  “He meant to kill me. My room was just round the corner. There’s no sign directing murderers to the right place. The guy got confused. And now the question is pretty fucking obvious.”

  “The question is why!” cried Chachkey.

  “Huh? No. The question is who. The question is always who. Why is just an on-ramp. But let’s start with it. Why kill me? Remember, most murderers are just like us, only they lack our self-restraint. Yes”—he leaned back and looked out over his adoring masses, many of them now hard at work on their second dessert—“that is exactly what they lack. So the question becomes, who hates me? Look down. Those people are smiling so hard they can hardly eat their sundaes. Watch me wave at one of them, that kid that’s dressed like me, navy suit, tremendous suit. Here we go. See that? Now I do it again. There. I just made the whole table go bananas. I could do the same a hundred times to a hundred different tables. Eleanor here tells me that the dead guy loved me just that much. I might at first prefer not to believe it, because he was such a loser, yet I do believe it, because my appeal is so incredibly wide. So the answer is nobody hates me. No passenger on this ship anyway.”

  “What about the help?” said one of the NFL owners. “Lot of Muslims. Lot of Latins.” He glared as Pedro snatched away his empty plate. Pedro was too busy to notice.

  “Or a conspiracy.” This was Thule. “One of those passengers might be an undercover agent who defeated the security check.”

  “Defeated Harvey’s security check? Only some Tom Cruise superspy could manage that, right, Harv? As usual, the billionaire has a point. Most murderers are ruled by ordinary human motives like sexual jealousy, and not your super-complicated James Bond geopolitical motives, like some rogue Canadian paid them ten million dollars to destabilize the pharmaceutical patent system. Believe me, it’s not all maple syrup and moose safaris up there. But this, remember, is no ordinary murder. This is an attempted assassination. And consider the timing. Whoever committed this murder, staff member or secret agent, they knew what we were up to. And we know who was behind them. My enemies. Who are everywhere. Which means I could die at any time.”

  He let the silence gather respectfully around him. We listened for a moment to the sounds from below, the clanking of plates, pushing of chairs, and whining of children. The Serb brought Chomp’s entrée. He stared into it.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” he said to the steak. “I’m taking a risk just by eating in public. A risk to my person and to our mission.”

  My mother stroked his forearm. Harvey shrugged and nodded. The rest hummed sympathetically.

  Chomp lifted his head to us, a lion finished with his kill. “But I am not afraid.”

  My mother blinked but refused to let me catch her eye. Any other man—like me—she would have burned alive with mockery.

  “You should be.” It was Mrs. Chachkey. Her face remained calm under gray skies, while her husband’s blazed with anxiety at her contribution.

  This time Chomp noticed her. “Yeah, I constantly ponder my own death. Harvey makes me. It’s my duty. I have become, as they say, somewhat more than myself, and let’s face it, I was already huge. When President Lincoln died—great man, absolutely demolished slavery—they loaded his body on a train and drove it across the country. Every person in every dinky town in America came to tip their hats as it passed. They all had hats then. With me, they’d have to put my coffin in some huge stadium, or maybe a park, a giant one, like Central. Or Yellowstone National. People would want to be with each other. If they couldn’t get tickets, they’d invite their friends and have a party to watch the funeral on TV. It would be the Super Bowl of tragedies. Wouldn’t it, Harv?”

  “No doubt.”

  “And two weeks after my death—it would all be over. The park raked up for trash, the beer bottles returned for nickels, the new president free to screw everything up. Because he’d know for sure I’d never run against him now. And there’d be nothing I could do. A dead guy is the ultimate loser. So you know what? I’d better stick around.”

  “Why did you quit in the first place?” I asked.

  Harvey stared at me. Everyone else was afraid even to glance my way, except my mother. She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply, an old gesture of exasperation and warning.

  “I never quit,” Chomp said. “I lost my personal space. I lost my respect for Congress and the bureaucrat pack. I lost my lunch sometimes, because of all the lies the media told. But I never quit. I was elected leader of the people of this country, the best people, and I still am. POTUS changed, but Chomp’s still here. Leaders protect their people. This deceased, he was a jackass, but he was my jackass. And when you threaten my people, you get hurt. I don’t care who you are or what nation or NGO funded you.” His voice rose higher, and he rose with it, standing before the table and the entire room. “I swear that justice will be done!”

  Scattered cries came from below. I turned to see the masses’ reaction to Chomp’s magniloquence, but hardly anyone was looking at him. A man in a scarlet shirt had leaped up on one of the dining tables. He lifted to his mouth what looked like a bullhorn made of cruise activities bulletins and shouted:

  “Time for a toast to the man of the millennium! Carlton Chomp, king of the redcaps, the president who booted four million hardworking people from his country!”

  It was Carlos.

  Uncertain laughter crackled below. The passengers, especially those accustomed to cruises, had been expecting goofy entertainment—a waiter chorus line, a rapper in a chef’s hat, a hairy back parade. Chomp, still standing, his body still exposed, turned and squinted out over the crowd. The bodyguards around our table, hitherto occupied mostly in glaring at the waitstaff, started to hustle to his side. Chomp waved them back.

  “Sit down,” I told Chomp.

  He only cupped his hands around his mouth and leaned out over the railing. “Correction! It was five million!”

  His meat bullhorn was louder than Carlos’s paper one. The crowd cheered. Down below, security zigzagged through the maze of tables to Carlos’s. A diner tried to grab his ankle.

  “Let him continue!” Chomp ordered.

  Harvey reached for Chomp’s sleeve and tried to tug him back down.

  “Ease up, Harv,” murmured Chomp, without his usual mean-spiritedness.

  Carlos kicked his foot free from the diner. “The man who ripped the hearts out of four million families!”

  “Five million!�
� several shouted back. Many more, misunderstanding Carlos’s meaning, cheered.

  Carlos, with the help of adrenaline and his makeshift bullhorn, shouted over them: “The man who every day tweets insults at schoolteachers, feminists, volunteers, diplomats, the disabled, refugees, Muslims, Latinos, and journalists!”

  He went on, but by now the cheering was deafening. Chomp blasted his grin to all quarters of the hall. My mother started to reach for his arm, then stopped. Security above and below looked around uncertainly. Was this guy a radical, a cheerleader, or a joke?

  Carlos set his legs, took a deep breath, lifted the bullhorn, and cried out with all his breath on behalf of twenty million frightened demi-Americans: “This unimaginably rich TV jerk who shows no compassion for the poor, no empathy for people of color, no respect for other languages and cultures, no kindness, no hunger for anything but money!”

  At this the crowd went nuts. Everyone at our table was standing, along with the rest of the hall. Even Thule was applauding. The waitstaff, half their job being to nurture enthusiasm wherever it sprouted, clapped too.

  Carlos spun around the table, looking over the crowd in horror. He gathered the last of his strength and shouted: “This man tears immigrant mothers from their children!”

  The roof almost blew off. It was like the last out of the World Series.

  Chomp’s voice boomed just loud enough for those nearest to hear: “Get him, Harvey! There’s your killer.”

  Harvey stood and signaled. Down below, security advanced. Carlos whirled helplessly on the table. This was the time to ignite the bomb if he had one. But he only leaped from the table and fell to his knees in surrender. He was instantly swamped by security men and helpful civilians.

  Chomp turned around. Still standing, he picked up his napkin and dropped it over his plate—he was done. My mother, looking up, was pouring all of herself into Chomp’s face. It brightened even further Chomp’s self-satisfied glow. I stood up.