Wellhead looked at him blankly for a moment, and then panned the audience with his million dollar smile again as they laughed and clapped.
“Let’s move on to another candidate. Mr. Davenport, when did you quit considering a Democrat as a running mate?”
Davenport scowled, and then forced a smile. “Ah, good one again, Russ. You almost caught me there.”
“I’m not joking, Hollis. When did you?”
“I’ve never considered a Democrat as a running mate, Russ, and you know it.”
Blovia gave a knowing smile and a big Vaudeville wink to the audience. “Of course not, of course not! Now Mr. Overby, a question for you.” Overby smiled and blinked rapidly, his suit coat hunched up on his thin shoulders.
“What do you think of Democrat plans to tax the top 1% of Americans to bring down the deficit?”
“Oh my goodness, Russ, what a terrible idea! We should repeal all taxes! Why, if we just let businesses run things, everything would be fine! Just fine! The best way to let a free market economy be successful is just to leave it alone!”
Blovia nodded. “How about you, Governor Johnson? What do you say?”
“Well, I absolutely agree that the last thing we should do is tax the rich. Why, they’re the engines of our economy! If we were to raise taxes, they might just decide to move out of this country entirely. Then what would we do? Who would buy the luxury cars Detroit doesn’t make any more? And what about all those McMansions? If all those estates got dumped on the market at the same time, why, we’d have another real estate crash! No, I think the only smart thing to do is to cut taxes for the rich. Let’s have a flat tax for everybody. It’s incredible the Democrats can’t see that.”
“Does anyone disagree?” Blovia asked the candidates at large.
Most nodded “no;” only Cabot shook his head in the affirmative.
“Well, it’s unanimous, then. We’ll return to other policies the Democrats have all wrong after this commercial break.” The screen flashed over to an ad for Bentley Motor Cars.
Frank shook his head in disbelief and got up to grab a beer and his laptop. How could it be that so many conservative candidates would think the best way to get elected was to defend the wealthiest 1% of the nation when unemployment and underemployment were over 15%, and the nation was running a half-trillion dollar annual deficit? And weren’t Republican voters able to do elementary math problems? A flat tax would drop taxes for the rich while raising them for everybody else. It defied all logic.
He scanned his email, and perked up. He had just gotten his first email from Josette! He opened it.
>Hi Frank! All is well here. Do you watch the debate?
Not exactly what he had hoped for.
Yes, but I’m wondering why – they’re all crazy.
She replied immediately.
>I think so, too. But surely all the voters are not crazy?
You have to wonder, given the polls.
> I do wonder. The only two candidates that make sense are Davenport and Cabot. But no one pays attention to Cabot. And it seems that anyone new is always right away more popular than Davenport.
Frank looked at his laptop. He wasn’t sure where to go with this conversation, knowing what he did. Time to change the subject.
How was the Festival?
>It was so wonderful! You would have loved it. I have taken many pictures. Perhaps I can show them to you some time?
I’d like that. Where will you go now?
>I will ride back east with my friends. When they return to France, I will stay here to study.
As usual, she had taken him by surprise; he didn’t recall her ever suggesting before that she might stay in the U.S. over the winter.
To study?
>Yes. Last spring I applied for a fellowship at the Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, and they have told me that I am accepted! For the fall and spring, I will be studying your election and what happens afterwards. I must find somewhere to live now in Washington.
He leaned back and stared at his laptop. Had he ever felt anything other than off-balance when conversing with Josette? Then he had another thought and phrased his next question carefully.
Just you? All of your friends will be returning to France?
>Yes, just me. Oh – the debate is beginning again. Au revoir!
He closed his laptop slowly and turned back to the TV screen. But he found it hard to concentrate.
* * *
9
Come into My Parlor, Please Do
Len Butcher was sweating heavily. The cards had been with him at the blackjack table for most of the evening, but then his luck ran out. Across the table, a wiry rancher with thinning hair and weathered skin was making no effort to conceal his satisfaction that their roles were now reversed. Behind them, the cigarette smoke of elderly patrons rose from the maze of slot machines that provided the main attraction of the small casino.
Butcher never gambled in big cities anymore. But what the hell; every gambling floor was the same, and the stakes were lower here. He couldn’t get hurt as badly when the cards ran against him, which seemed to be most of the time these days. Most importantly, nobody would recognize him in an out of the way, jerkwater casino like this, miles from anywhere anyone he knew would ever want to visit. If anyone back in Washington found out he was a hard-core gambler, he’d be out of a job.
He knew he’d been lucky to get his security clearance to begin with. But background checks had been perfunctory when his agency, and scores more like it, were created during the blowback from 9/11. After all, terrorists could be anywhere, so there was no time to lose; recruiters were scrambling for people with data mining and computer forensic skills, and there weren’t a lot of people with that kind of training back then. And anyway, the people they were hiring wouldn’t be doing field work; they’d be invisible, sitting behind computers in offices that didn’t exist. There shouldn’t be many opportunities for them to be turned or compromised.
Nor were these new agencies supervised in the traditional way. The hierarchy of their internal divisions had been established using a “cabinet” metaphor. Each department was analogous to a locked drawer, and no communication was allowed between any of those drawers. Each agency in turn was like a drawer in yet another, larger cabinet, and so on up to the top, each unit sealed off from the others.
It was all rather comical, really. First the administration created the Department of Homeland Security to unify the already vast and chaotic security apparatus that had evolved over the decades. That was supposed to prevent the data sharing failures that had made 9/11 possible from happening again. But that explanation was just for public consumption. Behind the scenes, the compartmentalization process was fractally repeating itself, guaranteeing that any progress made through common access to data would be cancelled out by ensuring that sharing analysis of the same data would be impossible.
To be sure, an enemy agent could never succeed in penetrating very far into this system through traditional means. But neither could any Cabinet officer, General or Admiral that was nominally in charge of any cabinet, let alone the whole, shadowy system.
All of which meant that no one was doing a very good job of keeping an eye on someone like Len Butcher, which suited him just fine.
The dealer was sweeping the last of his chips away as the rancher rubbed it in. “What’s the problem, cowboy? Somebody rustle your herd?”
The other gamblers, all friends, laughed and waited to see how the tenderfoot would react. Butcher was about to say something he probably would have regretted, when someone appeared at his side.
It was a good-looking Native American in his mid-thirties, wearing jeans, hand-tooled boots, and a dark shirt with mother of pearl snaps. The laughter stopped immediately.
“I’ll spot him $500
,” he said to the dealer. “That is, if you wish to play again, my friend.”
Butcher paused. This wasn’t how he wanted to get back on his feet, but he couldn’t afford to let so much money go.
“Sure,” he said, “I could play a few more hands.”
The young man turned to the rancher. “How about you Bart − you in?”
“Yeah, Ohanzee, I’m in,” he said, his expression turning sour. He glanced down at the large pile of chips in front of him with regret.
“Very good. Just the two of you then.” He gave the dealer a look and a nod, and the dealer dropped a fresh deck of cards in the shoe before dealing the first hand. Butcher tilted up the edge of his face down card: an ace! And he had a ten showing.
“I’ll stand.”
Within a few minutes, the rancher’s pile of chips was greatly reduced. He knew what was going on, but he was trapped, because the others at the table knew, too, and were enjoying the show. He’d never live it down if he turned tail now.
Butcher would have loved to wipe the rancher out, but when their piles of chips were about even, the young man put a hand on his shoulder.
“It looks like your luck has returned, my friend. Come to my office for a drink, and you can tell me your secret.” He reached forward and slid a dozen of Butcher’s chips over to the dealer.
Butcher followed him though the forest of slot machines, ignoring the retirees fixated on the spinning wheels that were gradually emptying their cups of tokens. At the other side of the floor, they passed through an inconspicuous door next to the bar, up a few stairs, and into a dimly lit room, empty except for an uncluttered desk, a leather couch, and a small but amply stocked wet bar in the corner. An expanse of tinted glass filled most of the wall they had entered through, providing a panoramic view of the casino floor. Viewed from the other side, it was the mirror above the bar.
“So, my friend. It is good to see you. How long has it been? Three weeks? Four?”
Butcher expected that Ohanzee White Crow, the manager of the Casino, knew exactly how long it had been. There wasn’t much that escaped his attention. In any event, he hadn’t played the tables anywhere but here since he’d begun making bi-weekly visits to his agency’s new satellite office in San Francisco.
“Too long, Ohanzee. And too bad our election game is all over. Somebody at another agency, maybe the FBI, must have figured out what was going on. But hey, what a ride while it lasted, right? You must’ve made a bundle betting on the polls by now! Must be one of the best hustles you’ve ever pulled off, I’ll bet.”
White Crow wasn’t about to share that information. As it happened, his guest had a drinking problem as well as gambling issues, not to mention a tendency to become arrogant and talkative when he was on a bender. It had been easy for the casino manager to learn more about him than Butcher should ever have shared.
“Your usual, my friend?”
“Ah, sure. Why not.”
Butcher was watching him carefully for any hint of what his host might have in mind with his invitation. He’d been a fool not to be more careful in the past, worrying only about who might recognize him when he was gambling. The problem he hadn’t considered was that he stood out like a snowman in a cactus patch when he showed up alone at the remote tribal casino at a time of year when tourists shouldn’t be around. White Crow could smell a mark while he was still in the parking lot. It hadn’t taken many drinks before Butcher let it be known that he was some kind of big shot back in Washington. And it hadn’t taken many more before he was deeper in the hole at the tables than he could afford to be.
Too late, Butcher realized that White Crow had played him perfectly, extending him credit and making him feel like the kind of high-roller a casino treats like royalty, all the while discretely extracting more details on who he worked for and what he did. White Crow even presented him with a Sioux name – Teetonkah. But he didn’t tell Butcher it meant “talks too much.”
Butcher stared at White Crow’s back as he poured his drink. He should never have taken White Crow’s offer to let him run up his account, damn it. It always seemed that his evenings started well, but ended terribly. White Crow was always there to raise his credit a bit more, and what harm could a little more do?
Not much, it had seemed, until White Crow announced it was time for Butcher to pay up. By then, he was in the hole for more than $200,000, and with the housing crash, he owed more on his mortgage than his house was worth. With two kids getting close to college age, what the hell was he going to do?
White Crow was all too ready with the answer. Months before, Butcher had bragged that he could predict what the next presidential polls would show. When White Crow seemed indifferent, Butcher was annoyed, and bet him $100 he could prove it. The casino manager was happy to take the bet, and paid it gracefully when Butcher’s prediction came true. By the end of a long night of drinks on the house, Butcher had once again told his host more than he should have.
The choice White Crow gave Butcher was simple: pay up, or feed secret data to him about the polling investigation. Given Butcher’s financial situation, it wasn’t really a choice at all.
For a while, he tried not to be too concerned. Surely the pollster hack would be discovered quickly, and he could report to White Crow that the game was over. But instead, he found himself sweating his way through the pre-primary season, supporting White Crow’s bets with an ongoing flow of predictions based on the patterns Butchers’ staff detected as one candidate after another entered the race and the polls continued to swing wildly. Butcher had no idea how heavily or openly White Crow might be betting. What if those who were looking for the hacker noticed, and busted him as well? He had no doubt that White Crow would turn him over in a heartbeat to protect himself.
By the time fall arrived, Butcher was desperate. That’s when he thought to enlist Frank to figure out the hack. And now, thank God, the nightmare was about to end.
“Your drink, my friend.”
Butcher accepted the glass with a confident smile. “I must have quite a credit with you by now. But, you know, I’ve decided to take a vacation from gambling for a while – quit while I’m ahead for once. Spend more time with the wife and kids – gambling kind of sits on your conscience after a while, you know? Anyway, I was pretty deep in the hole at one point and you let me run, so why don’t we just call it even? Clear out my account and we’ll just shake hands and call it quits.”
White Crow gave a pleasant smile. “You have indeed done very well, my friend, and yes, it has been a good run.”
Butcher raised his glass. “Great! Well, here’s to the next president of the United States then!” He laughed, a wave of relief washing over him. “Say, don’t you want to join me in a drink?”
“No my friend, you know I do not drink.”
But Butcher was feeling a bit giddy. He walked over to the wet bar and spoke over one shoulder.
“Ah, c’mon. Make an exception just this once. Here − let me pour you a stiff one – it’ll help you loosen up for a change.”
When he turned around with the new drink, White Crow was no longer smiling. Butcher shrugged.
“Suit yourself,” he said, and poured the rejected drink into his own glass.
“‘Let me pour you a stiff one,’” White Crow repeated. “Where have I heard that before? It sounds so familiar. Tell me, Mr. Butcher, in all these times that you have gambled at Native American casinos, have you ever taken the time to drive around one?”
Butcher swirled the ice around in his drink. “Drive around one? Well, I don’t know.” He took an appreciative sip from the glass. “I mean, there’s not usually a whole lot to see, is there? All of the little houses tend to look the same – I guess the government gives these pre-fab houses to you, right?”
“Is that all you’ve seen?”
“Oh, I dunno.
I guess a school – store – couple gas stations. I mean, that’s pretty much it, isn’t it? It’s mostly wide open country with some cows on it, right?”
“Actually, they’re referred to as ‘cattle.’ You’re correct, though, in observing that there isn’t much to see on a reservation. No water, for example. And certainly no natural resources – your people kept all the land with value, didn’t they? No jobs, for sure. Or hospitals. You didn’t see a movie theatre, did you? Or a factory? Why do you suppose that is?”
Butcher had never thought about it, and didn’t like the way the conversation had turned. “I guess maybe there just aren’t a lot of people living on reservations, and they’re all kind of spread out. Just like the old days, I guess.”
“Ah, but you’re wrong about that, Mr. Butcher. In the old days, we had much more land – much better land – land that gave us everything we needed. Before the white man came, we were self-sufficient. Healthy, too, and strong. Now we are weak, and we are sick. Today the average Indian only lives to his mid-40s. Did you know that, Mr. Butcher?”
Butcher began to tense up. “Gee, I’m sorry, I didn’t know that. I know your people got a really raw deal a long time ago – everybody knows that. But it’s better now, right? I mean, Washington gives you money, and you’ve got your own local government and, I guess, police and everything? I learned that, for sure, first time I came out here! Don’t speed through the ‘ole Rez in a car with out of state plates!” Butcher forced a laugh and raised his glass in a mock toast.
“As a matter of fact, no, it’s not better now. In fact, it may be worse. Our unemployment is over 40%. The cattle are mostly owned by Anglo ranchers. The alfalfa you see is grown by them, too, on land they rent from us for a pittance, because what else can we do with it? The banks won’t lend us money to buy equipment to farm it ourselves, or to buy cattle. Very many of our people have diabetes. More abuse alcohol. Do you recall where the alcohol originally came from, Mr. Butcher?
The Lafayette Campaign: a Tale of Deception and Elections (Frank Adversego Thrillers Book 2) Page 6
