Bloodland: A Novel

by Alan Glynn

  During the meal, J.J. takes call after call on his cell phone. His staff are setting things up at the Blackwood and J.J. likes to micro-manage. Herb Felder even drops by with the latest draft of his speech, which J.J. asks Rundle to throw his eye over. Sally and Eve tease them about this.

  The two brothers.

  Echoes.

  ‘Any chance you’ll make Clark attorney general?’

  The atmosphere at the table is light, even skittish, but everyone understands how this works. They have to be excited or it won’t play.

  It’s a confidence trick.

  Anything could happen between now and the nomination, let alone afterwards, so they might as well enjoy it while it lasts. At the same time, and up to a certain point, the confidence trick must also apply to themselves. Because if they don’t believe, and act as if, they have a reasonable stab at this, who else is going to?

  At the end of the meal, as they’re finishing their coffees, J.J.’s phone goes off again. Then Rundle’s does, too. As they both reach out to answer them, the wives roll their eyes.

  Rundle looks at the display and sees that it’s Don Ribcoff. ‘Don.’

  J.J.’s eyes widen and he mouths something at Rundle.

  ‘Clark, I have an update. I need to talk to you.’

  Rundle is confused. What? This across the table.

  J.J. mouths it again. Jimmy Vaughan. He points at his phone, then sticks his thumb up.

  Rundle’s heart skips a beat. Confirmation. This is fantastic. ‘Don, what is it, what do you need?’

  ‘Can we meet?’

  ‘No, Don, we can’t.’ Rundle rolls his eyes. ‘I’m having dinner. What is it? Tell me.’ He’s watching J.J. working Vaughan, the way he works a room, but over the phone. Confidence is such a weird thing, he thinks, self-perpetuating, self-regenerating, the more you have …

  ‘I don’t really –’

  ‘Jesus, Don, just tell me.’

  ‘OK. That thing we talked about the other day, the guy?’

  What thing? What guy? Rundle is caught now between his excitement and a sudden burst of extreme irritation. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Don?’ he whispers into the phone. ‘Spell it out, would you?’

  Ribcoff pauses, then sighs. ‘The guy? The journalist? Jimmy Gilroy? He’s becoming a problem.’ Rundle furrows his brow. ‘We took another look at him. He went to Italy last week. He spoke to Gianni Bonacci’s widow.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That was before he met with Dave Conway. And that’s not all.’ Ribcoff pauses again. Rundle waits, the room around him going slightly out of focus now. ‘He’s here. In New York.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He arrived yesterday –’

  ‘Jesus, Don.’

  ‘I swear to God, Clark, I’ve only just been given the report this minute.’ He sighs. ‘Look, there was a delay.’

  Rundle can’t believe this, any of it. ‘He’s here?’

  ‘Yeah, we tracked his movements online. He booked a room at a hotel in the West Village, five nights. Arrived into JFK yesterday afternoon.’

  Rundle gets up from the table, nodding, but not making direct eye contact with anyone. He moves away. ‘Are you on him? I mean, what’s he doing? Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah, we’re on him, but he doesn’t seem –’

  ‘Don, I don’t care how he seems.’ Rundle stops. He’s standing between two tables near the side of the room, facing the bar. Quaranta is generous when it comes to table spacing. Acoustics might be a different matter. ‘What can you do about him?’

  There is a pause here, during which Rundle takes a quick look on either side of him. Sitting at the table to his left is Ray Tyner, baby-faced teen star turned serious-contender leading man. At the table to his right, judging from the get-up, is a Roman Catholic bishop, or a cardinal maybe.

  ‘Options are limited,’ Ribcoff says, ‘because there’s something else.’

  ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’ The cardinal flinches. ‘What is it?’

  ‘He paid a visit this afternoon to Ellen Dorsey, she’s an investigative –’

  ‘I know who Ellen Dorsey is. Fuck.’

  ‘So, the point is, she gives him a little cover, some profile. Whatever about him, you don’t want her on your tail.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  Ribcoff hesitates, then whispers, as though he can see the cardinal too. ‘We can’t just take the motherfucker out. We’ve got to be careful.’

  Rundle swallows. He walks towards the bar and sits on a stool, but turns outward, facing the room. After a while he says, ‘You know what, Don? He doesn’t know anything. He can’t. Maybe he’s been told some stuff, but that’s as far as it goes. Has to be. It was three years ago. We’re covered. There’s no proof of anything. He makes a move, says a word, and we’ll get legal to shit all over him.’

  ‘OK.’

  He catches J.J.’s eye from across the room and nods.

  ‘But don’t let him out of your sight, you hear me?’

  12

  JIMMY GETS UP EARLY and goes out in search of coffee. It’s another really nice day and he just about manages to dress appropriately. He walks along tree-lined, sun-dappled West Fourth Street and tries to imagine living in one of these brownstones. They’re gorgeous, but he could never afford the rents around here.

  Besides, he’d miss the sea from his window.

  He finds a coffee shop out on Sixth.

  Convinced now that he is being followed, he can’t help feeling self-conscious, as though every move he makes, every gesture, is being watched and graded. A corollary of this, of course, is that his life might be in danger.

  He stays in the coffee shop for an hour, until just after nine, sipping coffee and watching people as they come and go.

  When he is out on the street again, he flags down a cab. He does this on impulse. He tells the driver East Fifty-eighth Street and they quickly join the flow of traffic heading uptown.

  Jimmy half turns and looks through the rear window.

  If he has a tail, could he lose it this easily?

  Seems possible.

  He turns around again, and looks ahead.

  But it isn’t as if they’d have much trouble trying to work out where he’s going.

  They.

  Jimmy feels a surge of frustration here. Over three years ago six people died in a helicopter crash. They were murdered. He knows who was responsible, and why. He was told, and he believes it.

  But that incident, and what led up to it, is locked away now, in a glass case, perceived by the public at large, and by the authorities, as a tragic accident.

  So what does he think, he can come along and change that? He can smash the glass and replace what’s behind it?

  With what?

  The cab turns east at Fifty-seventh Street.

  This event at the Blackwood Hotel is supposed to start at ten o’clock. He’ll arrive half an hour early and hang around. See what he can see. Without a press pass, he won’t get inside the door of the hotel, that’s for sure, won’t get near it, but he might catch a glimpse of Clark Rundle on his way in.

  He gets the driver to pull over between Madison and Park. He pays and gets out. He’ll walk the rest of the way, one block north and two over.

  From about half a block away he identifies the hotel, sees the marquee, and a small gathering of what look like photographers.

  And security.

  It’s a busy street, lots of midtown bustle, so no need to be overly self-conscious. He comes to One Beacon Court, and peers in at the glimmering, elliptical courtyard as he passes.

  A few moments later, two or three buildings before the Blackwood, he stops and leans against some railings. He looks around, up the street, towards the hotel. There are more arrivals, technicians, a camera crew.

  People standing around, random individuals like himself, free country.

  He takes out his phone, but wishes he smoked, like his old man – standing there in the street, in a three-piece suit
, busy with cigarettes and a lighter.

  No questions asked.

  * * *

  Szymanski is tired. He feels like he was awake all night, but he must have slept periodically, five minutes here and there, enough to keep ticking over – micro doses, but never any of the deep stages, the REM, the restorative shit. That’s partly why he steered clear of the coke, which he’ll leave for housekeeping maybe. The weed he smoked some of, but most of it’s still in the bag.

  He’ll leave that, too.

  He checks out of the hotel at nine thirty.

  He carries a canvas holdall with his stuff in it, but not a lot of time passes before he’s thinking about discarding it somewhere.

  The day’s a little warm for the leather jacket he’s wearing, but the M9 fits perfectly in the lower inside pocket, so he needs it.

  What has he got in the bag anyway? A couple of changes, toiletries, minor personal items. Nothing he couldn’t replace in a few minutes at a J. Crew and a Duane Reade. That was always the Gideon way, travel light, no excess baggage, leave it all behind you – including family, girlfriends, bosses, shitty jobs, whatever.

  They didn’t have room, and weren’t interested.

  Passing a construction site he tosses his bag into a dumpster.

  There, gone, along with everything else.

  But really this particular everything else – his everything else – he tossed a long time ago, when he signed up with Gideon in the first place.

  Szymanski gets onto Fifth Avenue and starts walking north.

  So that’s not what this is about, being unable, or unwilling, to go home to C-town – it’s about being unable to go back to work.

  Unpaid leave.

  Effective immediately.

  That’s all he had left and now it’s been taken from him, and even if they’d acted differently, if they’d kept him on, it was all shot to shit anyway, as far as he was concerned, after what happened.

  Ray Kroner.

  Those people, the women and kids, the man at the wall.

  What were their names? At least Ray had a name. And he got a body bag.

  More than they got.

  Szymanski turns right at Fifty-eighth Street. It’s a few blocks over.

  He wonders about Ray’s family, out there in Phoenix, about what kind of an explanation they got, if any, and about the other families, the ones back in the DRC, in Buenke.

  He knows they didn’t get any explanations.

  They have to put up with Arnold Kimbela for Christ’s sake, day in, day out.

  He slows down.

  Man, some of the shit he saw over there, slave labour, systematic torture, systematic rape.

  Explain that.

  As he gets close to the hotel, Szymanski slows down even more, to a crawl. There’s security everywhere.

  Naturally.

  He’s assuming it’s all Gideon – their domestic division, the pussy squad, guys in suits, underarm holsters, earpieces. It’s unlikely that he’ll know any of them, or that they’ll know him. Unless Donald Ribcoff himself is around the place, which he probably will be. The CEO of Gideon is notoriously hands-on, especially when it comes to the high-profile jobs. He was in and out of Buenke all the time. But would he recognise Szymanski? Maybe, maybe not.

  What does it fucking matter now, though, right?

  Szymanski stands across the street from the hotel.

  So this is it? He presses a hand against the gun in his jacket pocket. This is what it all comes down to in the end, the life of a spineless, deceitful bastard with a propensity to showboat on TV, who if he hadn’t been there that day, and hadn’t lied about it afterwards …

  Szymanski finds the air around where he’s standing suddenly heavy with some local cooking smell. He realises his timing may not be the best, but he can imagine lying down now, there on the sidewalk, drifting off to sleep, falling into a pit of dreams.

  He looks around.

  People everywhere.

  Just what exactly does he think he’s doing?

  * * *

  When Rundle arrives into J.J.’s Manhattan office on Third Avenue he’s surprised to see that Jimmy Vaughan is there, sitting on a couch in the corner shooting the breeze with some of the younger staff members. The idea was that Rundle and J.J. would head over to the Blackwood together, from here, wives in tow. Vaughan would show up whenever he chose – but over there, at the Blackwood.

  Not here.

  Rundle didn’t expect this.

  ‘Clark,’ J.J. calls from across the room. ‘Where’s Eve?’

  Rundle walks towards him. ‘She’s down in the car, waiting.’ He looks at his watch, to reinforce the point. ‘Sally?’

  ‘She’s over there.’ He indicates another office behind him, door closed. ‘Some issue with her hair.’

  A few feet away, in front of a desk, several of the senior staffers, Herb Felder included, appear to be tinkering – still tinkering – with J.J.’s speech.

  ‘We are all of us,’ one of them says, ‘we are each of us. Fuck. We are each of us. We are all of us.’

  ‘Try we are each of us,’ Herb Felder says.

  ‘OK, OK.’ Red pen on paper. ‘OK. Because we are each of us shareholders in this great democracy, we are each of us the bearers of a sacred trust –’

  Rundle looks at J.J. ‘Everything under control?’

  J.J. nods. ‘Yeah.’ He smiles, something he’s good at. ‘You know what? I think we can nail this thing.’

  ‘So do I.’ Rundle smiles as well. But his smile has an in-built smirk to it, always had. He glances over in Vaughan’s direction. ‘He thinks so too, apparently.’

  J.J. widens his eyes in delight. ‘I know. Let’s go over and say hello.’

  As they get to the corner, Vaughan looks up. ‘Here he is, the man.’

  ‘Mr Vaughan.’

  This is for the benefit of the junior staffers. Clark and J.J. have known Jimmy Vaughan since they were kids. He’s like an uncle to them.

  ‘You ready for this, Senator?’

  Vaughan is sitting at one end of the couch, legs crossed, looking small and slightly frail. But his flashing blue eyes mitigate this impression somewhat, and there’s no question at all about who’s in charge here.

  ‘Absolutely. Bring it on, that’s what I say.’ J.J. looks around, being inclusive, already working this, the first of the day’s, and the season’s, many rooms.

  Sitting next to Vaughan on the couch is a pretty redhead and standing around in a semicircle are three nerdy-looking guys, all of them in their early twenties.

  ‘So tell me, Senator,’ Vaughan says. ‘I’m curious. Why are you running?’

  J.J. laughs. ‘You want to know the truth?’

  ‘Good Lord, no.’

  Everyone laughs.

  ‘OK then, because I want to make a difference, because I feel that –’

  ‘Fine, fine, give us the truth.’

  More laughter.

  ‘OK, but you know what? It’s actually the same answer, maybe framed a little differently. Because the truth is, I’m tired of the senate. Doesn’t do it for me anymore. Being in the senate these days is all about gridlock and rules and obstructionist bullshit, it’s chasing the money and playing to the base, it’s exhausting commutes, it’s endless press and media and blogging and tweeting, Jesus, it’s –’

  ‘Whoa, take it easy there, bubba.’

  ‘No, the thing is, I want to be able to do stuff. What was it someone once said? It used to be that you spent two years as a senator, two years as a politician and two years as a demagogue. Now you spend the full six as a demagogue. It’s crazy.’

  Vaughan nods. ‘Richard Russell.’

  ‘Right.’

  There is a brief silence.

  ‘So, what are you telling me, that’s your stump speech? Maybe I should run.’

  More laughter, but this time it’s a little tentative.

  Rundle senses J.J. stiffen beside him.

  After a moment one of the n
erds steps in. ‘Can I ask you, Mr Vaughan, what is it that keeps you going? I read about your work rate somewhere recently, projects you’re still involved in, companies you’ve acquired, it’s awesome.’

  ‘Fear of death,’ Vaughan says immediately, and smiles. Then he points at the senator. ‘You think his stump speech sucks? Wait till you hear mine. It’s a real downer.’ He waves a hand in the air. ‘No, but seriously, son, seriously. When you get to my age you just want to grab on to the future, you know, you just want to hold it in your two hands and look at it. Now the thing is, most folks don’t get the chance to do that, but in my line of work, developing new companies, with new ideas, I sort of can.’

  Rundle sneaks a glance at his watch.

  ‘Let me explain,’ Vaughan goes on – the nerds and the pretty redhead hanging on his every word now. ‘History, right? It’s there, undeniably, you can survey it, and mull over it, from the Pyramids to the Renaissance, from the Nazis to 9/11, it’s all laid out for us. But the future? You can only ever have access to the tiniest, slimmest portion of it. Beyond what’s left of your own life, of whatever few years you’ve got remaining, everything is a blank, right? It’s unreachable. It’s unknowable. And yet.’ He raises a finger in the air and wags it. ‘And yet. Today, more than at any other time in history, we can guess with some confidence what the future might be like. People always used to believe they lived in a time following a golden age, but now it’s the other way around. Now we always feel we live in a time just preceding one. You get me?’

  Heads nod vigorously.

  Some of J.J.’s other staffers, the senior ones, wander over to listen.

  ‘Right, now we’re in the infancy stages of various branches of scientific development – biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, that sort of thing – and since the rate of change in the next hundred years is probably going to equal or even exceed the rate of change in the last hundred, we can be fairly certain that no matter when we die it will be at a time when great advances are just about to take place. Which we won’t be around for. Which we’ll miss.’ He pauses. ‘Right? That’s the downer part.’

  A ripple of nervous laughter.