First Citizen

by Thomas T. Thomas

  “Good idea, sir.”

  Alcott and Birdsong ran the war in Yucatan—although we preferred to call it a pacification— for two years more. They fought pitched battles at Tikax and Ticul. They helped another G.V. unit repel a Russian-funded armada that sailed up the Caribbean side of the Peninsula from Livingston in Guatemala, heading for Puerto Juarez in Quintana Roo. The rebels were fools to hug the coastline. Our people sank the lead vessels in the strait between Belize City and Turneffe Island with rockets, then picked off the stragglers with coordinated air and water attacks.

  The most powerful sign was the large numbers of Mexicans, of both European and Indian background, who joined that fight. They said they didn’t want to be ruled by the Guatemalans anymore—they said under their breath—than by the norteamericanos.

  At the end of those two years, our small corner of Mexico could feed itself. It was raising a crop of children who could read, write, and fight for themselves. And it was ready to hold civilian elections under a three-party system—the Democratos, Republicanos, and Independientes. By that time, the 64th Volunteers was half-Mexican and doing double duty as the guardia civil.

  So, eventually, we had won the war. But the Mexicans, as we were to find, would do more to change the United States of America than we could do to change Mexico.

  It’s a push-me-pull-you universe.

  Chapter 14

  Granville James Corbin: Deaf Smith District

  Carlotta Hurstford was not my ideal woman. However, after falling in love with the sweetly practical Anne and the practically insatiable Tracy—and divorcing them both—I was ready for a marriage on some other basis.

  Carlotta’s face and body were adequately attractive, I suppose. Today, I can hardly recall what she looked like. She had gray eyes, I think, and dark-brown hair in great falls with a streak of silver that she may have put in with chemicals. All irrelevant. It was her brain that interested me: She was wired like a computer.

  Name a district or a State, and Carlotta could break down the voting pattern for almost any candidate or issue. Show her a loaded banquet hall and she could count the contributions with a sweep of her eyes. Set her in the middle of scandal or crisis—with offers, deals, and dodges coming down on all sides—and she could thread a path of promises and quid-pros that would leave everyone owing us and us with no commitments to speak of. Outline a piece of legislation to her over daiquiris des modes, and between sips she could reel out fiscal impacts, likely amendments, the final vote on it, and the ultimate date of enactment plus or minus five working days. Then she would go on to predict Supreme Court challenges and their outcome.

  Carlotta cared very little about the issues. They were grist in her mill, not the mill itself. Like a good general, she viewed all personal or political stands purely on their tactical merits. She thought of them as stepping stones, stations from which she could advance or retreat. She was completely nonfanatical and almost nonpartisan.

  Carlotta cared almost nothing about money. Her brain converted it automatically into media coverage and, from that, into votes.

  And she cared absolutely nothing about security. It was static, boring, dead. Carlotta lived like Eliza, scrambling, tipping, sliding from ice floe to ice floe. But I never discovered whom she was running from—or where to.

  We first met when I returned to the States and settled briefly in Vegas. There is something about that shallow, dusty valley between the black mountains, possessing no green grove, river, or other natural feature to focus it, with a city laid out like a bedouin camp and lit by a million light bulbs. Vegas was a human dynamo, running on dreams. A rich scent hung in the air, like yeast or human sweat. I planned to live there a while, tend my S.W.E.E.P. brokerage, and possibly run for the Nevada State Senate.

  Why think about going into politics? I was forty-three years old and had tried everything else worth a man’s time: making love, making money, and making war. I had become reasonably skilled at each of them. And now the wielding of power, by making law, seemed to be the next step. Besides, the mind scars from that disastrous San Francisco municipal campaign had just about faded.

  “Get a campaign manager,” one of my business friends said. “Running for dog catcher, let alone senator, will run you ragged. You’ll spend so much time and energy projecting that boyish charm of yours and scoring points that you’ll have nothing left over for plotting strategy and wheeling deals. Let alone details like meeting times, contributions and campaign accounting, plane tickets, meals and rooms, et cetera.”

  “Okay, how do I find a manager? You volunteering?”

  He pulled his chin. “Somebody said Carlotta Hurstford is in town. Claim is, she’s never lost an election. But even you probably couldn’t afford her.”

  “Did this somebody say where she was staying?”

  “Try the Crown.”

  It helped to be discreet in Vegas. I had my personal assistant make polite inquiries. The Crown’s concierge agreed that a Miss Hurstford was in residence and had not discouraged the use of her name. We set up an appointment.

  “Granny Corbin?” she said with that cool, imperious voice when I was invited up to her suite. The accent was stage English with a slight nasal twang. Maybe something western Canadian? “Granny? How did you get a handle like that?”

  “It’s Granville, actually.”

  “Distinguished. But useless. Granny! Do you have any other names?”

  “James.”

  “James. James Corbin.” I could see her tongue rolling it around. “Not Jim? Westerners can live with a Jim.”

  “Jim if you want. And I was Jay as a kid.”

  “Jim Corbin. Jay Corbin … We can work on it.”

  “Excuse me, but what’s this—”

  “Politics, am I right? You come to Carlotta for politics. And I have to presume that a man with your money, your background, Mr. Corbin, has ambitions. Not for a friend but for himself. Am I right?”

  “You’re right,” I admitted.

  “Carlotta is the best political talent you’ll find in this country, sir,” she said with a toothy grin.

  “And I don’t work cheap.”

  “I’m sure we can negotiate—”

  “Oh, we will. But there’s just one non-negotiable condition.”

  “Which is?” I said drily.

  “I’ll stay with you as long as you win. You go rabbit on me or get a case of scruples, and I split. Deal?”

  “Whatever you said. Deal.”

  It turned out Carlotta was to stay with me a long time—as she counted time.

  “What are you running for?” She settled on the couch, arranged her full skirt, and patted the cushion beside her for me.

  “State Senate.”

  Carlotta made a face. “In this State?”

  “Something wrong with Nevada?”

  She looked around the room. I guessed she was spotting likely places to hide bugs—which was futile, unless her handbag carried a labful of electronics equipment. Later, when we really began working together, it did. She shrugged.

  “No, of course not. It’s beautifully managed. You talk to the Gaming Commission, put in your name and resume, and in about five years—if you measure up—you go on the ticket. You get to stay in office as long as you like, until you get tired of voting the line. … Simple and clean. Like everything here. Including the rattlesnakes.”

  “What do you recommend, instead?”

  “Go to Congress. It’s smaller scope than in the old days, when they were making gigabuck appropriations and setting social policy through taxes and entitlements. But the fun is faster now. And you’d still be writing the law of the land.”

  “Kind of a big first step, isn’t it?”

  “Well, you’ve already got something of a national reputation, after executing Congressman Pollock’s little brother.”

  “That was a mistake, I guess.”

  “Oh, no!” She jumped up and turned to face me. “Your man, Alcott, got it all on video—the
corpses, the shock on your troops’ faces, then Pollock the Younger’s rambling, psychotic monologue. It caused a flap in Baltimore that’s just now cooling down. Gordon Pollock had to say publicly that his brother had gone crazy and probably did deserve the death penalty. He just wishes you’d brought the boy back to this country for trial.”

  “It was a proper military tribunal,” I said stiffly. “And, according to law, it was carried out in the State of Yucatan.”

  “Of course, and it left no loose ends, no jury to muck up the law, no court of appeals, no clemency or paroles. It was a solution every American could feel in his guts. You’re the biggest thing since Wyatt Earp.”

  “So, I should run for Congress from Nevada?”

  “No. Only two House seats here and they’re both taken.”

  “Why not run for the Senate?”

  “It’s a backwater. Old men’s club. The action is in the House. Play it right and you might-could lunge for the big enchilada.”

  “Which is—?”

  “The Speaker’s gavel,” she tossed casually. “Where else are you known? What’s your power base?”

  “I’m a native of California. …”

  “So is half of the West. The field’s a little crowded.”

  “Then—”

  “There is a back door. Known in the business, but not much outside. However, I’m not sure—” Carlotta narrowed her eyes at me, clearly making a decision. “What the hell,” she said, “if you’re not the one, you probably can’t use it anyway.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The districts in West Texas and the Panhandle have seen their populations decline steadily for almost twenty years—since the cotton crop died for lack of water and the rumors said it was atomic dusting. Now they’re almost deserted, but they have never been reapportioned. In some circles, they’re called the Armadillo vote. You can buy in fairly cheaply and no one is looking over your shoulder.”

  “How do I—um—apply?”

  “In Austin, with the electoral commission. Let’s see, ’13 is an off year, so you could try to run for a vacancy, if any. But it’ll be November before you get squared away—a little late for anything to turn up this year. Or you could position yourself to run next year. The campaign season is abnormally short in Armadillo Land, so you’d have plenty of time to make your other contacts.”

  “Which are those?”

  “Get you tied into the Baltimore circuit. Scout the committees you’ll want to serve on. Get your hand into the lobbyists’ pockets. That sort of thing.”

  “Then you’ll manage me?” I finally asked.

  “Are you kidding? I’ve been billing you for the last half hour. You’re a natural, sweetheart.”

  So I went to Austin, got on the ticket—Democratic, for old times’ and Uncle Aaron’s sake—and thirteen months later took my seat in the House of Representatives. It wasn’t too different from booking an airline seat, with Carlotta as my travel agent.

  By that time, it was clear to her that she could go farther as Mrs. The Honorable James Corbin than as a behind-the-scenes field marshal in what was becoming, in a small way, the Corbin political machine. We were married in a simple ceremony at Annapolis. The honeymoon was a working session, I’m afraid, a fast tour of Yucatan to see how Alcott, Birdsong, and my Homeless Bastards were faring. Carlotta found Chichen-Itza by moonlight a place of sovereign romance. The north coast and Progreso she compared favorably to Cozumel. She was really trying hard.

  While we were gone that summer of 2014, the first riffles of hot wind were blowing through the Old U.S. In Miami, a six-day running riot broke out. The videocasters dismissed it as another effect of the now-institutionalized drug trade: a spasm of indigestion when the local economy tried to swallow the gross domestic product of a small country. Yes, the Colombians and the Cuban exiles were involved. But no, trade rights weren’t the issue.

  The next cork to pop was Taos, New Mexico. Wealthy, artistic, settled Taos. It started with a car bombing—which was read as a terror technique instead of any attempt at assassination. Somebody was sending a hate message to Taos and the city responded with vigilantes and guns. The countering move was with pipe bombs, grenades, and molotovs. And the party was on.

  That same week, Pasadena erupted. Not Watts or Venice, but Pasadena? Then Marina Del Mar.

  Reading the papers—actual newsprint, in Spanish, with stories off the wire service in Merida—I kept looking for a linking cause, but nothing suggested itself. Carlotta, whose Spanish hadn’t developed yet, got a trailing synopsis from me at breakfast. Her brow furrowed.

  “Who are the leaders? Who’s claiming responsibility for these disturbances? What are they demanding?”

  “Nothing yet.”

  “That’s really weird. You don’t hold a riot until you know what you want.”

  “Maybe it’s a natural phenomenon. The heat. The burden of poverty. Or the collective sense of injust—”

  She was shaking her head at me. “Hot, tired, poor people don’t shoot up their own homes unless somebody is offering them something better. There has to be a payoff. Video coverage is the lever.”

  “Then it will all come clear in a couple of days, huh?”

  “Ought to,” Carlotta said. We went back to our rolls and chocolate.

  On our return to the Old States, it seemed as if we had brought half of Mexico with us. When we flew up to Baltimore that January, the town was overrun with Spanish-speaking brown people. Most were newly elected congressmen from Mexican States that, for the duration of the war, they dared not return to. And they had come north with their staffs, families, lobbyists, political backers, bankrollers, chauffeurs, sideboys, and bodyguards.

  Everywhere about town, you could see signs of a language warp. Notices in Spanish pasted up alongside the English on billboards, city directories, storefronts, and buses. Inked translations on menus. Posted exchange rates for pesos. (Although the peso was now legal tender in the Old U.S. and accepted in most places, the rate fluctuated somewhere around 279,000 to the dollar. My wrist calc ran out of decimal places when I tried to convert the price of lunch.)

  But physically, it was still the old Baltimore: Fort McHenry on the Patapsco River; the National Aquarium and the frigate USS Constellation in the Inner Harbor; the music, shows, and games of the Power Plant; the broad streets around Federal Hill with their narrow brick townhouses—and their white marble steps, of course; the Florentine clock tower with “Bromo Seltzer” inscribed around its face; the restaurants of Little Italy and the sailors’ bars of Fells Point; the mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe’s house and the humorist H. L. Mencken’s; the McCormick Tea House, with its spice scents still lingering.

  You might think the Spanish-speaking newcomers would have the courtesy to be amazed and abashed by all this history and heritage, or at least act like it. No, they and their ladies ran around the city speaking English or Spanish, whatever came to their tongues, sometimes a mixture of both. They paid the tab and made change in mixed dollars and pesos, which really confused the issue. If the locals didn’t like it—and most didn’t—then the Mexicans took their business elsewhere. Baltimore was being Miamized. There would be some scarring.

  My first night in town, the Speaker’s office sent a courtesy bouquet and orientation data pack up to my suite at The New Omni. It must have been confusion about my name and my district, which was so close to the border: The text of the greeting and the pack were in Spanish. I gave a laugh and read them anyway.

  The laughing stopped when I realized what was going on. For any freshman congressman who had just arrived from what was essentially a foreign country, this message from the Speaker of the House would be the gospel on democratic institutions in America. After all, McCanlis was the Old Man of the U.S. Congress, father of the New Republicans, and de facto chief executive of the richest nation of the West.

  His orientation pack, at least the Spanish version, read like something out of Banana Land. It was the monotheistic v
ision, with McCanlis as chief deity, pope, and political oracle. Separation of powers and the U.S. Constitution were lost in the murk of words. What came through very clearly was the NR—or Nuevos Republicanos—party line: support the Speaker in this time of crisis, protect the Federal cash flow, preserve peace and order. For statesmen who went to school under the Partido Revolucionario Institutional, the message would be both powerful and reassuring. It told them this foreign place was a lot like Old Mexico. I grated my teeth, but what could I do? With his own brand of audacity, McCanlis had once more outflanked everyone.

  The first session of the 114th Congress in January 2015 was the now-traditional joint session with the Senate. Which meant the New House chamber was crowded asses to elbows, waiting for McCanlis to arrive. And with the heavy infusion of congressmen from Old Mexico, it had the flavor of a border-town rodeo.

  The mixture of gringo and Spanish was jarring. Among the sober sharkskin and occasional polysatin suits of the congressmen and -women from the East and the Midwest, the older Mexican politicians stood out in their immaculate white linen or their too-conservative charcoals, like pieces of sea shell and chunks of burned wood in the sand. They had the obdurate manners of Old Empire, smoking thin black cigarillos and, among the low murmur of voices, carrying on distracted monologues in Spanish with whomever was in earshot. It was the younger members, however, with a reputation for guerrilla politics to preserve, who added the real noise. They wore green fatigues, pistol belts (with the weapons removed at the door by the sergeant-at-arms), and boots that they hiked up on the desk, railing, chair back, or whatever was in front of them. If they disagreed with what they heard, they drowned it out by clapping their hands on their knees—in less decorous circumstances they probably rapped the table with a pistol butt—until the House chamber echoed like a football stadium. It was a circus.

  And then there were the Mexican politicians who dressed like norteamericanos, spoke like norteamericanos, and thought like norteamericanos. They were the smooth ones, the ones we would have to watch out for.