The third cameraman, also suffering from video tunnel vision, planted one foot in the small of the first cameraman’s back. That leg buckled. He caught his full weight on the other leg, hopped on it three times like a wide receiver trying not to go out of bounds, planted that foot on some ice, and skidded on one rigid leg for a distance of several feet, now looking perfectly like a figure skater. He finally got the other foot down on the edge of a serving platter, catapulting a dozen freshly grilled burgers into the chest of a prominent comedian-turned-real-estate magnate.
At which point he realized, finally, that he was about to run over Karl Fort’s body. He planted both feet and once again created an accordion effect on a tablecloth. This carried him forward until he reached the edge of Fort’s table, where his rubber-soled boots contacted solid, clean, dry Formica, and stopped dead. This slammed him forward onto his knees, which was perfect: he stopped in a kneeling position with the lens of his camera about four feet away from Karl Fort, looking straight down on his body.
Unfortunately, from a strictly media-conscious point of view, Fort’s face wasn’t visible; the view was blocked by the beefy arms of a young man, possibly a security person, who had the heels of both hands in the middle of Fort’s naked breastbone and was rhythmically shoving on it, compressing his entire ribcage, making his bony thorax bulge outward around the sides like a stepped-on balloon. Even if this man had not been there, Fort’s face still would have been obscured by another man who was gripping Fort’s chin in one hand and his temples in the other, holding his mouth open in a yawn, bending forward to fasten his mouth over Fort’s.
The Reverend had just arrived by Fort’s side; despite all of the above-mentioned hindrances, most of the journalistic corps had actually beaten Sweigel to the scene of the action.
“Please step aside, please make way,” Sweigel was saying, in the rising, chantlike intonation of a preacher quoting Scripture. Since most of the people in his way were journalists who had come specifically to see what Sweigel was going to do, they made way willingly.
Sweigel stood belly-up to the table, only inches away from Fort, and clasped his hands together for a moment, praying with his eyes tightly clenched shut. Then he held out both hands, palms downward, and laid them gently on Fort’s bare skin: one on the shoulder, one down on the belly, where they didn’t interfere with the CPR. Billy Joe Sweigel knew how to hedge his bets.
Twenty feet away, Tip McLane stood numb with horror.
He had been fighting the primary campaign for almost a year. It had been very much like an Okie bar fight: desperate men wielding brass knuckles, ice picks, and broken bottles in a dark back lot. In Iowa, New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, New York, he had taken on all comers. He had not made many friends, but, with Drasher providing the strategy and Zorn providing the media kidney punches, he had thrashed all of his adversaries into bloody, inert sides of meat. Norman Fowler had hung on all the way to California and then taken his own political life. He had come here, to safe, comfortable ground, to celebrate victory.
And now he was being dry-gulched. Sweigel was going to nail him right between the eyes.
If the CPR worked, if the ambulances got here in time, if the doctors arrived to deliver their miraculous clot-dissolving miracle drugs, then Sweigel would be two for two on national TV: first Cozzano, and now Karl Fort.
Between his memories of Fort in the old days, and the prospect that the old son of a bitch might, by surviving, now torpedo his political career, Tip McLane had never wanted anyone to die quite so badly.
“It’s fake,” Zorn said, standing very close to him and muttering into his ear. “Fort’s not really having a heart attack. Cy Ogle set this whole thing up.”
“You’re a lunatic,” McLane said. But Zorn’s words had made him nervous anyway.
“Lord, hear our prayer,” Sweigel said. “This man has been stricken. We pray that, in the name of JEEE-zuss, he may be healed, and walk among us once again.”
Then he prayed silently, while the two men continued with CPR and mouth-to-mouth, until the ambulance showed up and the EMTs took over the job.
McLane was a little surprised. He had expected that the EMTs would bundle Fort up and whisk him straight back to the ambulance as fast as possible. But instead they set up some equipment and worked on him for a few minutes, right there on the table, doing CPR with a sort of large plungerlike object and squeezing air into his lungs with a resuscitator.
The attention of the guests, of the media, and especially of Billy Joe Sweigel could hardly have been more focused on Karl Fort. Standing at the periphery of the crowd, Tip McLane realized that, for once, absolutely no one was paying attention to him.
From a media standpoint he was just like Gyges, ancestor of Croesus, who was able to become invisible. This was a story mentioned in Plato’s Republic. Gyges, being invisible, could get away with anything. If he used his power to do evil, but no one saw him, and he was thought to be a just man, then did he ever suffer for his crimes? Tip McLane decided to ponder this issue as he went for a bit of a stroll around the Markham estate.
They were in the backyard, hemmed in between a sheer cliff wall on one side and the almost equally massive Markham mansion on the other. Perfectly manicured gardens wrapped around the mansion on both sides—neat paths winding between trellises of roses. Mrs. Markham adored her roses. Tip McLane walked into the fragrant and colorful jungle, quietly at first, then with longer strides as he became confident that his departure had gone unnoticed.
Within a few seconds he had worked his way around the side of the house to the front. He stood for a moment, framed in an arched trellis groaning with peach-colored roses, and took in a broad view of the horseshoe drive, which was paved with little interlocking geometric tiles.
A few minutes ago this drive had been clogged with limousines and media vans. When the ambulance had been called, all of the drivers had pulled out of the horseshoe, down the long driveway, through the twelve-foot-high gate, and parked on the road. Now the whole front of the house was empty except for the ambulance, square in the middle of the horseshoe, doors open, engine running.
Representative Nimrod T. (“Tip”) McLane sauntered out of the rose garden and into the horseshoe, trying to look like a man who was just out for a stroll, trying to clear his head and get away from the chaos out back. He looked carefully in all directions: into the garden, into the windows of the mansion, into the front seat of the ambulance itself. He saw no one. Everyone was out back.
He had one or two irreducible habits that he had picked up when he was just a boy, working in the broccoli fields, and that had remained unbroken through years of parochial education, Ph.D. study, conservative theorizing at various think tanks, White House dinners, and service in the House of Representatives. One habit was that he always carried a pocketknife. It was amazing how often a pocketknife came in handy.
He squatted down against the left front tire of the ambulance, unfolded the small blade of his pocketknife, which he always kept sharp as a scalpel, and paused for a moment to ponder his next move.
As Socrates had pointed out, the highest reach of injustice was, like Gyges, to be deemed just when you were not. Karl Fort was Gyges. He went to White House dinners, gave money to charities, spent half his life at various testimonial dinners where the most important people in the country stood in line to gush about what a wonderful man he was. No one ever said a word about the ax handles.
But did that justify slashing the tires of his ambulance? McLane continued to thumb his way mentally through Plato’s Republic, looking for guidance.
Plato advocated dividing the republic into three categories: rulers, warriors, and tradesmen. Tradesmen were allowed to become rich. Rulers and warriors were to live simply and to receive the best possible education, in the hopes of producing philosopher kings.
Tip McLane was a philosopher king. Karl Fort was a tradesman. And according to Plato, the worst form of injustice occurred when people tried to force their way in
to a class where they did not belong—e.g., when warriors tried to seize political power (the Soviet coup), or politicians meddled in military campaigns (Vietnam War), or in the affairs of private enterprise (burdensome government regulation).
Or when tradesmen tried to use their wealth to gain political power, which could lead to the degenerate form of government known as oligarchy.
Representative Nimrod T. (“Tip”) McLane inserted the blade of his pocketknife deep into one of the treads. The rubber was tough, but so was Tip McLane, and eventually it gave way and he felt the blade penetrate into the tire. Then all he had to do was twist, and air began to hiss out, feeling cold and wet as it flowed over his hand.
The ambulance settled, almost as if it were going to roll over on top of him. He was startled by a popping noise that came from the flaccid tire as its bead popped loose from the rim. That was extra good; it would make the tire much more difficult to reinflate.
He withdrew the knife, folded it back into his pocket, and then strolled back through the roses to the backyard.
The EMTs transferred Karl Fort onto a gurney and wheeled him across the yard, through the Markhams’ house, and out to the ambulance, chased the whole way by journalists who left a trail of baked-bean footprints across the polished-granite floors and the oriental rugs. The ambulance traveled about ten feet down the drive, veering uncontrollably to the left, and then stopped.
Someone ran inside and called another ambulance. Two of the EMTs jumped out and began to change the tire. Shooting through the rear windows of the van, the media were able to get beautiful shots of another EMT, on his knees next to Fort, holding up the electric paddles, preparing to administer the sacrament of defibrillation.
Karl Fort lingered in the hospital for five days. According to tracking polls commissioned by the McLane campaign, the Rev. Sweigel’s support climbed all the way up to the 20 percent mark when Fort’s condition was upgraded from critical to serious. But when Fort’s kidneys went, on the Saturday before the big vote, the voters began to show disillusionment, and when he finally died on Sunday evening, just in time for the eleven P.M. news, the Reverend’s standing collapsed like a popped balloon.
Tip McLane and his crew had already gotten the news, through private channels. He and Zorn and Drasher went down to their hotel bar for a drink and watched the coverage of Fort’s death, and then of the day’s campaign events. They were joined by a couple of writers for major East Coast newspapers, men who had been assigned to the McLane campaign for the last few months and whom they had gotten to know well. They bought each other drinks and talked off the record late into the night. Though no one came out and said it, they all knew that the primary campaign was over.
thirty-four
ELEANOR RICHMOND rented a town house in the Rosemont neighborhood of Alexandria. It had actually been part of D.C. at one point and had been ceded back to the state of Virginia in 1846, so she could weakly maintain that she was back living in her hometown once more.
This historical argument was completely lost on all of her relatives in the District, who had been delighted when she announced she was coming home, and then hurt and angry when she chose to live in Virginia. But Eleanor had already seen her son get shot in the back, and as far as she was concerned, D.C. didn’t have anything to offer her kids except for a few museums and a whole lot of ways to get shot.
She was in a nice, mixed-race neighborhood near Alexandria’s eighteenth-century waterfront. If she went uphill she got into an aristocratic neighborhood of big houses, bordering on mansions. If she went downhill, toward the Potomac, she got to the proverbial other side of the tracks in just a few minutes. Straddling the boundary, on the tracks themselves, was the Braddock Metro station, from which she could ride into D.C. in about ten minutes. Braddock’s modest parking lot was ringed by nice new yuppie condos, shops, and office buildings. Beyond that was a floodplain between the tracks and the river, filled with dingy town houses and projects, bounded by the outskirts of National Airport on the north and the swank cobblestones of Old Town on the south. Compared to the bad parts of D.C., it didn’t deserve the description of ghetto; it was just a lower-middle-class neighborhood. It was something that Eleanor could point to when her relatives in D.C. made catty remarks to the effect that she had sold out and fled to white suburbia.
She still hadn’t gotten used to being respectable again. When she looked at real estate, she kept expecting people to glare at her suspiciously and say, “Have you ever been a bag lady?” But all she had to do was say that she was senate staff and all the doors were open to her: nice new apartments, charge accounts at Pentagon Plaza, auto loans. It astounded her when she was able to go into a Toyota dealership and drive out an hour later with a brand-new Camry.
Harmon, Jr., and Clarice stayed behind in Denver long enough to finish out the school year and then followed her out to Alexandria. In the fall they would go to T. C. Williams High School, just a mile or two up the street. In the meantime, over the summer, there was a lot for them to do. The nearby Metro station meant that they could get around town easily (which they liked) and safely (which Eleanor liked). And, after a bit of looking around, Eleanor found a nice extended-care facility (what used to be called a nursing home) where she could put Mother.
Mother had no idea, really, that she was back home, but as she looked out the windows of the car on her way in from the airport and smelled the air of the late Virginia spring, Eleanor imagined that, at some level, she knew where she was, and that she was glad to be back where she belonged, not out in the middle of Colorado sharing a room with some rancher’s widow. Whether or not Mother knew what was going on, bringing her back here was good for Eleanor’s heart, and made her feel that she was doing right by her mom.
When Eleanor showed up for her first day of work, a week before Memorial Day, she had no idea what she was doing; Senator Marshall still had not defined her responsibilities or even provided her with a job title. She was both excited and intensely curious. She walked to the Braddock Metro station at seven. Her neighborhood’s sidewalks were filled with commuters headed for the Metro station. As Eleanor entered this stream of suit-and-tie-wearing, newspaper-reading professionals, carrying her very proper attaché case, wearing her Reeboks, and holding on to her Washington Post she felt like a spy testing out a new undercover identity.
From the raised platform of the Metro station she looked across the public housing toward National Airport, the 727s plunging in at forty-second intervals, and across the Potomac to D.C. The pleasant, scented spring air was still cool, and as she looked through the haze, she could see the monumental structures that were now part of her world. The Metro glided into the station, eerily clean and high-tech compared to The Ride. She boarded, found a place to stand where she could look out the window, and watched the progression through Crystal City, Pentagon City, Pentagon, and then out into daylight across the Potomac. She saw the National Cathedral drawing the light of the sun, peeked in at Thomas Jefferson, and got to L’Enfant Plaza, where she transferred to the Orange Line for two stops over to the Capitol. Since she was a few minutes early, she chose to be a tourist, and strolled through the Capitol on her way over to the Russell Senate Office Building.
She was greeted at the gate of the Russell Building by a handsome, very young-looking black man from Senate Security. “If you’ll follow me, Mrs. Richmond, we’ll get your credentials in order.”
Eleanor was still new enough at this that she was surprised when people recognized her. “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t expect someone to meet me at the door. I thought I’d be standing in lines all day.”
“When Senator Marshall speaks, we move,” the man said. “We’re taught that all senators are equal, but we love Senator Marshall. He’s not one of your blow-dry wonders, if you get my drift.”
They took an elevator down two levels and entered an office where Eleanor was photographed, finger-printed, asked to sign her official signature, and then take the oath as an employ
ee of the United States. A petite, perhaps sixty-year-old woman read the oath.
She proceeded into the next office and was given her holographic badge, complete with innumerable codes implanted in the strips on the back of the badge. She wondered what she was going to do with a Top-Secret Alpha clearance.
“That’s it,” her guide said. “Now you have one very cranky senator waiting to put you to work.”
The Russell was the oldest and most prestigious of the three senate office buildings. It had the aura of fine old wood, penetrated by decades of good tobacco smoke. It was the building of choice and Marshall had the office of choice, with a commanding view of the Capitol out one window and down the Mall and Constitution Avenue down the other. Entering the office, Eleanor was struck by the profusion of Native American art, mission decor, and numerous watercolors painted by Marshall before his arthritis had made it impossible for him to hold a brush. His secretary of thirty years, Patty McCormick, turned and said, “Hello darlin’, welcome to the last frontier.”
From around the corner, the familiar husky voice shouted, “Goddamn it Patty, don’t scare her away. Come on in, Eleanor.”
Eleanor edged into the Senator’s office and found him working his way through a breakfast sent up from the cafeteria. “Have a seat,” he said, waving at one of the heavy leather chairs.
“Good morning, Senator, how are you feeling?”
“Shitty, as usual, but that’s nothing new. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll take pain medication. I haven’t got an awful lot of brain cells left and I want them to work.”
They made a little small talk about her move to Alexandria. Caleb seemed surprisingly unhurried, for a senator. Eleanor kept wondering when he was going to tell her why she’d been hired. Finally she came out and asked.
“Should we talk about what you want me to do?”
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