The Nix

by Nathan Hill

  4

  SIMON ROGERS PACED through Faye’s wrecked apartment, stepping carefully to avoid debris on the floor and explaining that there were certain laws that allowed all this (when he said “all this,” he said it with a sweep of his arms, meaning the apartment’s general desecration and ruin), certain statutes passed after 9/11 governing the searches of terrorist suspects, the allowable use of military force.

  “Basically,” he said, “the police can send a SWAT team whenever they want, and we have no way to stop it, prevent it, countermand it, or redress it.”

  Faye was in the kitchen, silent, stirring tea in her one unbroken mug.

  “What were they looking for?” Samuel asked. He kicked at the remains of the television, which had been fractured by some kind of blunt force, its electronic guts scattered over the floor.

  Simon shrugged. “It’s procedure, sir. Since your mother is being charged with domestic terrorism, they’re allowed to do this. So they did it.”

  “She’s not a terrorist.”

  “Yes, but since she’s being charged under a statute designed for sleeper-cell al-Qaeda agents, they have to treat her as if she might actually be one.”

  “This is so fucked up.”

  “The law was written at a time when folks were not that interested in the Fourth Amendment. Or the Fifth Amendment, for that matter. Or, actually, the Sixth.” He chortled lightly to himself. “Or the Eighth.”

  “Don’t they need some kind of specific reason to search the house?” Samuel said.

  “They do, sir, but they keep it a secret.”

  “Don’t they need a warrant?”

  “Yes, but it’s sealed.”

  “Who gives them permission?”

  “Confidential, sir.”

  “And is there anyone watching over all of this? Anyone we can appeal to?”

  “There is a sort of habeas process, but it’s classified. National security reasons. Mostly, sir, we’re meant to trust that the government has our best interests in mind. I should note that this kind of search isn’t actually mandatory. It’s at the court’s discretion. They didn’t have to do this. And I know for a fact the prosecutor didn’t ask for it.”

  “So it was the judge.”

  “Technically, that is information withheld from the public. But yes. Judge Brown. We can infer that he ordered it himself.”

  Samuel looked at his mother, who was staring down into her tea. It did not appear that she was drinking the tea so much as intensely stirring it. The wooden spoon she used clunked softly against the sides of the mug.

  “So what are we going to do?” Samuel said.

  “I am prepared to mount a vigorous defense, sir, against these new charges. I believe I can persuade a jury that your mother is not a terrorist.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Primarily, that the recipient of the terrorist threat, Governor Packer, did not actually feel terror.”

  “You’re going to summon Governor Packer.”

  “Yes. I’m betting he won’t want to admit in pubic that he was terrified. Of your mom. Not during a presidential campaign.”

  “That’s it? That’s your defense?”

  “I will also argue that your mother merely made a threatening gesture and did not convey her terroristic threat verbally, electronically, on television, or in writing, which for certain convoluted reasons is a mitigating factor. I’m hoping this will reduce her sentence from life to merely ten years, maximum security.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a win to me.”

  “I have to admit that I’m more comfortable in free-speech law. Defenses against terrorism are not my, shall we say, cup of tea? Haha.”

  They looked at Faye, who continued to stare into her mug and had no reaction at all.

  “Excuse me,” said the lawyer, and he walked between mounds of ripped-open pillows and couch cushions and clothes still attached to their hangers, into the bathroom.

  Samuel made his way to the kitchen, each footstep provoking a shriek of broken glass. Food was strewn over the countertops where police had upended the pantry—coffee grounds and cereals and oat bran and rice. The refrigerator was pulled from its place and unplugged, water now dribbling out of it and puddling on the floor. Faye held her mug, which appeared to be handmade from clay, to her chest.

  “Mom?” Samuel said. He wondered what she was feeling right now, given the high-end anxiety meds she’d taken earlier that day. “Hello?” he said.

  At the moment, she seemed numb to everything, oblivious. Even the way she stirred her tea was automatic and mechanical. He wondered if the shock of the police raid had put her in some kind of fugue.

  “Mom, are you all right? Can you, like, hear me?”

  “This wasn’t supposed to happen,” she said finally. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”

  “Tell me you’re okay.”

  She stirred her tea and stared into the mug. “I’ve been so stupid.”

  “You’ve been stupid? This is my fault,” Samuel said. “I went to see the judge and I made everything worse. I’m really sorry.”

  “I’ve made such stupid decisions,” Faye said, shaking her head, “one after the other.”

  “Listen. We should figure out a plan. Alice said we needed to get out of town. Maybe even out of the country.”

  “Yeah. I’m beginning to believe her.”

  “Just for a little while. If Brown is retiring soon, why not wait him out? Make sure he knows it will be years before a trial happens. Get rid of him, get another judge.”

  “Where would we go?” Faye said.

  “I don’t know. Canada. Europe. Jakarta.”

  “Actually, no,” she said, and she put the mug on the counter. “We can’t leave the country. I’ve been charged with terrorism. There’s no way they’ll let me on an airplane.”

  “Yes. Right.”

  “We’ll have to trust Simon, I guess.”

  “Trust Simon. I really hope that’s not our best option.”

  “What else can we do?”

  “Alice said the judge will never back down. He really seriously wants to put you away forever. This is not a joke.”

  “It doesn’t feel like a joke.”

  “He said he’s in a wheelchair because of you. What did you do to him?”

  “Nothing. I have no idea what he’s talking about. Honest.”

  A rush of plumbing came from the bathroom then, and Simon emerged, little water specks dotting the arms of his sport coat.

  “Professor Anderson, sir, I’m actually glad you’re here. I’ve been meaning to talk to you. About your letter? The letter to the judge that you’ve been working on tirelessly, I assume?”

  “Right. Yes. What about it?”

  “Well, I wanted to personally thank you, sir, for all your efforts and all the time you’ve no doubt put into this already. But you should know that we will no longer be needing your services.”

  “My services. Sounds like you’re firing me.”

  “Yes. The letter you’re writing? That will no longer be necessary.”

  “But my mom is in pretty big trouble.”

  “Oh, yes, she most certainly is, sir.”

  “She needs my help.”

  “She definitely does need help from somebody, sir. But probably not from you. Not anymore.”

  “Why not?”

  “How do I say this delicately? It’s just that I’ve become convinced, sir, that you are not in a position to help her. Probably you’d make things worse. I’m referring of course to the scandal.”

  “What scandal?”

  “At the university, sir. Dreadful.”

  “Simon, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “Oh, you haven’t seen yet? Oh, my. I’m so sorry, sir. Seems like I’m always the one to bring you bad news, eh? Haha. Perhaps if you checked your e-mail more often, or watched the local news?”

  “Simon.”

  “Of course, sir. Well, it looks like there’s a
brand-new student organization that’s gaining some serious attention at your school. This organization’s purpose, its singular raison d’être, if you will, seems to be getting you fired.”

  “Seriously?”

  “They have their own website, which has been gleefully shared and circulated by your students, both current and former. You are now pretty much the textbook definition of what PR people call toxic. Hence our no longer needing you to vouch for your mother.”

  “Why do my students want me fired?”

  “Perhaps it would be best to look at it yourself?”

  Simon removed a laptop from his briefcase and called up the website: a new student organization called S.A.F.E.—or Students Against Faculty Extravagance—arguing that university professors were wasting taxpayer money. Their evidence? One Samuel Anderson, a professor of English, who, according to the website, abused his office computer privileges:

  During routine maintenance, the Computer Support Center found logs showing Professor Anderson uses his computer to play “World of Elfscape” for a frankly shocking number of hours each week. This is a completely unacceptable use of university resources.

  There was also an associated letter-writing campaign that had gotten the attention of the dean, the press, and the governor’s office. Now the whole matter was being sent to the university disciplinary committee for a full hearing.

  “Oh, shit,” Samuel said at the thought of explaining Elfscape to a committee of humorless gray-haired professors of philosophy and rhetoric and theology. It made him break out in an immediate sweat, justifying to his colleagues why he had a robust second life as an elven thief. Oh god.

  The president of S.A.F.E. was quoted on the website as saying that students needed to be vigorous watchdogs of faculty who wasted their tuition dollars. The student’s name was, of course, Laura Pottsdam.

  “Fuck this,” Samuel said, closing the laptop. He walked over to the expanse of windows on the apartment’s north wall and looked out at the jagged city.

  He remembered Periwinkle’s ridiculous advice: that he should declare bankruptcy and move to Jakarta. That was actually sounding pretty good right about now. “I think it’s time to leave,” he said.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “It’s time to get on a plane and leave,” Samuel said. “Leave my job, and my life, and the whole country. Start fresh, somewhere else.”

  “You are, of course, free to do that, sir. But your mother needs to stay here and fight this within the strict confines of the law.”

  “I know.”

  “My various oaths bar me from telling anyone accused of a crime that they should flee the jurisdiction.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Samuel said. “She can’t leave anyway. She’d be on the no-fly list.”

  “Oh, no, sir. She wouldn’t be on the list yet.”

  Samuel turned around. The lawyer was carefully tucking his laptop back into its special briefcase sleeve.

  “Simon, what do you mean?”

  “Well, the no-fly list is administered by the Terrorist Screening Center, or TSC, which, interestingly, is actually a part of the National Security Branch of the FBI, under the auspices of the Department of Defense. The no-fly list is not, as many people believe, controlled by the Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security. They are completely different departments!”

  “Okay. So?”

  “So to get onto the no-fly list, one’s name has to be nominated by an approved government official from the Department of Justice, or Homeland Security, or Defense, or State, or the Postal Service, or certain private contractors, and since each of these agencies has different criteria and guidelines and rules and processes, not to mention different documents and forms that sometimes are incompatible with another administrative agency’s equivalent documents and forms, the TSC has to filter through everything and evaluate it and standardize it. This is made infinitely more complicated by the fact that every agency and department uses its own special computer software, like, for example, the Circuit Court of Cook County uses a Windows operating system that’s at least three iterations out of date, whereas the FBI and CIA are more Linux-based, I believe. And getting those two systems speaking to each other? Hoo-boy.”

  “Simon, get back to your point.”

  “Of course, sir. What I’m saying is that the information on your mother’s status as a terrorist must be processed by the Circuit Court of Cook County’s First Municipal District, then passed along to the regional FBI office, then to the TSC, where it’s evaluated and approved by the TSC’s multiagency Operations Branch and Tactical Analysis Group, then that information needs to percolate over to the Department of Homeland Security, which then sends it along to the TSA in some manner that probably involves a fax machine, all this before the no-fly information is available to individual airport and security personnel.”

  “So my mom is not, in fact, on the no-fly list.”

  “She’s not on the no-fly list yet. This whole process usually takes around forty-eight hours, start to finish. More if it’s a Friday.”

  “So, hypothetically, if we wanted to leave the country, we could do so, as long as we did it today.”

  “That’s right, sir. You have to remember we’re dealing with huge bureaucracies staffed by people who are, for the most part, criminally underpaid.”

  Samuel glanced over at his mother, who looked back at him and, after a moment where she seemed to consider this, the gravity of this, gave him a little nod.