by Steve Israel
Ralph pulled from his shirt pocket the tattered red three-by-five spiral memo pad he carried everywhere. The pad comprised page after page of people, places, and things Ralph considered threatening, sometimes written in a vengeful scrawl, sometimes in cool and precise block letters. Enemies of Ralph and Asabogue, enemies of the state, current enemies in Village Hall, and past enemies from high school. Even friends of friends were potential enemies, at least in Ralph’s book. He wrote: recycling.
He stuffed the notepad back in his pocket. “I have to go to Jack Steele’s,” he announced miserably.
“Bring back some of those mini egg rolls,” Louie said as Ralph climbed the basement stairs.
3
Sunny McCarthy sat in her robe on a balcony high above Washington, DC’s Penn Quarter, sipping her morning espresso. The robe fell open above her knees. It occurred to her that some voyeur might have been gazing at her from the multitude of windows nearby, but that morning she had bigger problems in the exposure department.
Her iPad had already tracked nearly three thousand media references to her employer, Cogsworth International, two dozen unfavorable references on morning news shows including Morning Joe, Today, Good Morning America (but not Fox & Friends; it wasn’t that bad yet), plus blogs and tweets that were trending about a zillion to one against Otis Cogsworth.
Sunny brushed a lock of blond hair away from her face and smiled at her tablet’s screen. Gonna be a bitch of a day, she thought happily.
Her cell phone rang, its screen flashing the name Bruce Cogs-worth Davies. Sunny rolled her eyes. Otherwise known throughout the ranks of Cogsworth International as “the idiot nephew,” Bruce was incapable of performing any job at Cogsworth International without shooting himself or others in the foot, so to speak. He bore the title Vice President for Public Affairs.
“Good morning, Sunshine!” Bruce chirped. His appropriation of her formal name rankled Sunny twice over, once because hardly anyone called her Sunshine and a second time because she’d asked Bruce repeatedly to call her Sunny. Still, he persisted in ignoring her request as part of what Sunny sensed was some misguided form of flirtation. “How are we doing this fine day?” he asked.
“Um, let’s see,” Sunny said matter-of-factly, “our company’s biggest seller was just involved in yet another massacre, the DOJ’s going to start serving us with subpoenas any minute, the latest polling says seventy percent of Americans want to ban our product, our stock will have sunk like a rock by the close of the markets, ‘Cogsworth’ is now in first place for most despised search word on the Internet, but other than that, oh, what a beautiful morning.” She let out a harsh laugh, a combination of contemptuous cackle and annoyed growl.
“Well,” Bruce said, unfazed, “that’s why we pay you the big bucks. Right?”
“I want a raise.”
“Hey,” Bruce said. “You already make more than me, and I’m a vice president.”
“But I’m worth so much more than you,” Sunny replied, and laughed her double-edged laugh again.
After a few seconds of uncomfortable silence Bruce got down to business. “Otis wants a conference call in one hour,” he told Sunny. “Can you do that? If you’ll be in the shower or something I can—”
“I’ll be on the call,” Sunny said abruptly, hoping she’d extinguished the visual that had clearly been forming in Bruce’s mind.
“Right. I’ll text the conference number and password. Bye, Sunshine.”
Sunny pressed END CALL.
She rose from her chair and walked through the sliding glass door into her apartment, a designer four-bedroom condo that glittered above downtown DC. It was a tasteful blend of granite, porcelain, and stainless steel. Floor-to-ceiling windows framed the Capitol dome in the distance. Spacious closets were crammed with clothing plucked from Georgetown’s top boutiques like fruit from the grocery store. The walls featured photos of Sunny with celebrities and senators and various presidential candidates. There was a framed cover of Washingtonian that read, “SUNNY & HOT: MEET DC’S SEXIEST LOBBYIST.” There were photos of the famous and the powerful. Formal and informal; candid and posed; grips and grins (she learned how to grin through some senators’ lecherous grips). There was not, however, a single family picture.
She gazed out a window toward the Capitol, already shimmering in Washington’s early-morning heat. There was a time she’d been inspired by the sight. Now she thought of it as merely a massive cash register sheathed in marble. She put money in; she took money out. Her national anthem began and ended with “cha-ching.”
She sipped her espresso. It had turned cold and bitter.
*
An hour later, showered and ready for the day’s fight, Sunny entered the bedroom that she’d converted into an office. A bank of television screens on one wall offered muted images from the major news networks. Three separate screens were tuned to various C-SPAN channels, because one wouldn’t want to miss a live oversight hearing of the House Subcommittee on Bee Pollination. Bookshelves were crammed with congressional almanacs, congressional directories, and congressional quarterlies. The largest piece of furniture was a beaten leather couch that Sunny had hauled to DC from her childhood home. It was really the only reminder she had of her roots, and now it served as a combination newspaper recycling bin, clothes hamper, and file cabinet.
The landline on her desk flashed to indicate three missed calls, all from that morning, all from the same person: her mother.
The number triggered a pang of guilt in Sunny’s stomach.
Call her back later, she thought at first. Get it over with now, she then argued. Ugh. She decided to wait until after the conference call with Cogsworth.
She punched a number on the phone, hit speaker, announced her password, and listened to the theme music from The Magnificent Seven. Bruce was surely on the line, too, but presumably he knew better than to try and flirt with Sunny when his uncle was about to get on the call. Soon an operator’s voice said, “Stand by for Mr. Otis Cogsworth. Go ahead, sir.”
Otis wasted no time. “We’re in a shitstorm,” he told them, and Sunny wondered whether he thought she didn’t know that. “How are we gettin’ out of it?”
This, she thought, is why he’ll never be appointed ambassador to any foreign country. The diplomacy genes are definitely missing.
Bruce began reading talking points prepared by some assistant idiot. “Condolences have been sent to the families in Chicago. We released a statement noting that Cogsworth International is voluntarily assisting state and federal authorities in various gun trafficking investigations and reiterating our significant financial support of school safety programs and mental health outreach—”
“Blah blah blah,” Otis said. Sunny imagined him kneading the temples of his balding scalp, wishing his nephew away. “What about the Feds? What’s our status, Sunny?”
She sat back. It was her favorite position: sitting back, arms folded, and taking charge. “So far about a hundred tweets blasting us from the usual Members of Congress. Four scheduled press conferences, to announce various bills to regulate us. And forty House Democrats are releasing a letter to the U.S. attorney general demanding an investigation of us, specifically why so many of our products are ending up . . . where they’re ending up.”
“Good Lord.”
“I’m not bothered by tweets no one reads and bills no one will pass,” Sunny said. “But that letter to the attorney general, that’s a problem.”
“Big problem,” Cogsworth said.
“Why?” asked Bruce.
Sunny rolled her eyes. “The attorney general is leaving the administration to return to California,” she explained patiently. “He’s going to run for governor. As a Republican. Which means he can only win statewide by persuading Democrats to vote for him. And the best way to prove to them he’s not just another Republican is to take on the gun industry. You’re about to be a poster boy, Otis.”
“Goddamnit!” Otis shouted. “I told the president, �
�Don’t appoint that guy!’ You know what he said? ‘Don’t worry, Otis. He may be from California, but he’s a Republican.’ To which I said, ‘Mr. President, he may be a Republican, but he’s from California.’ He should have listened to someone who knows what he’s doing.”
Sunny laughed. “Someone . . . like you.”
“Exactly.”
“The problem with President Piper is that he does listen . . . to the last pollster who whispers in his ear.”
Otis grunted his agreement, then said, “We cannot have the Justice Department pokin’ its nose into our business. This is still America!”
Bruce said, “I have an idea.”
Brace yourself, Sunny thought.
“Let’s fund a twenty-four-hour toll-free hotline to help—”
She couldn’t hold back another laugh, in part because Bruce’s idea was truly laughable and in part because she knew nothing shot down a ludicrous trial balloon faster than the machine-gun fire of her own withering cackle.
“Stop right there, Bruce,” Otis said. “Do you realize we’re staring down the triple barrels of a threat to our survival? We’ve got an attorney general who thinks he’s getting elected governor with our scalps, a mayor of Chicago who runs for president by kicking us in the balls, and the fake news outlets that boosts its ratings by shoving every gun crime up our ass.”
Well, that broke a record for anatomical references, Sunny thought. Bruce, wisely, didn’t respond.
“And your strategy is a toll-free helpline?”
“Hotline,” said Bruce.
“We gotta stop this investigation,” Otis said. “We’re in a goddamn war! I need strategies, not helplines.”
“Yes, s—”
“I need this stopped dead in its tracks. I’m paying you people a fortune. I gotta get ready for some charity function at Jack Steele’s house, but when I come back, I want a plan to fight back and fight back hard. You got it?”
Sunny said, “We’ll have something for you.”
All she heard was a dial tone.
4
Otis and Lucille Cogsworth climbed into their Range Rover and glided down their long stone driveway. They turned right on Asabogue Bluff Lane, drove slowly west for approximately ten seconds, then turned right again and passed through the massive wrought-iron gates of their next-door neighbor, Jack Steele.
“What’s the charity du jour?” Otis grumbled as he waved off a parking attendant and began the winding ascent up a gravel driveway.
“The East End Animal Welfare Alliance,” she said. “And please be nice.”
But nice wasn’t a tool in Otis’s toolbox, especially the one he brought along to Asabogue charity functions. He detested these events. Never in history had so many eyes made so little contact. Whomever he finally, begrudgingly entered into conversation with, they were constantly peering over Otis’s shoulder to see if there was anyone better to corner. Their eyes scanned and darted in search of more fame and bigger fortunes. A clash of raw egos in refined dress, circling as gracefully as sharks.
Particularly annoying was that today’s soiree was a Jack Steele production, which meant Otis would at some point be held captive to the aging film star’s right-wing ramblings. Steele had become the iconic celebrity spokesman for a number of high-profile conservative crusades: taxes and spending, abortion and regulation, drilling here and bombing there. His proudest title was National Chairman of the American Gun Owners Defense, or AGOD, the chief spokesman for the God-given right to bear arms without pesky background checks. Otis agreed wholeheartedly with Jack’s politics. He just thought there were better, more productive ways to express these opinions than sounding like the keynote speaker at the reunion breakfast of the John Birch Society.
Otis maneuvered the car up the narrow driveway, tires rumbling loudly on the loose gravel. Dense woods crowded the path, and heavy tree branches arched low overhead, casting a foreboding shade. Signs were posted prominently, warning NO TRESPASSING and PRIVATE PROPERTY. One read, IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU’RE IN RANGE. Finally, Villa di Acciaio rose in front of the Cogsworths. This man’s home literally is his castle, Otis thought. There were dark gray stone and medieval turrets and even a gurgling moat. It seemed built to defend against an invasion of tourists, jihad-ists, and most registered Democrats. They parked in a courtyard. Lucille balanced a blueberry pie from the beloved local farmstand, Marion’s, in one hand, and Otis cradled a gift-wrapped Cogsworth Crusader 9-millimeter in the crook of his right arm. Because how do you go to your neighbors’ without bringing a little something?
They entered the main hall, where Jack Steele movie posters were mounted on high granite walls: Jack Steele in Hard Steel, Jack Steele in Sharp Steel, Jack Steele in Steel Medal. Guests circulated, clinking champagne glasses, blowing air kisses, and coming close enough to hug without actually touching. Everyone was awaiting the grand entrance of the star of this show.
The first person Otis recognized was Councilman Kellogg, who was towering over the crowd. Crazy Ralph, Otis thought, shaking his head and avoiding eye contact. Lucille drifted into the fray, cooing over her pie with a few of the other Bluff wives.
Suddenly a voice ricocheted off the stone walls from the top of the grand stairway. “Carpe diem!” it announced sternly. The guests clapped and oohed and ahhhed because this was the catchphrase that signaled the end of every Jack Steele film, usually accompanied by a sneer and the deliverance by Steele of some final blow to the film’s villain: a cold-blooded push out of an airplane door or a heartless hurling over a canyon’s edge. The voice was now raspy after all these years, but it was unmistakably Jack Steele’s.
There he was in living color: tanning-parlor bronze. For today’s gathering Steele wore his trademark cowboy hat with a purple checkered shirt, black jeans, and monogrammed snakeskin boots. His face was taut, his parchment skin stretched surgically over hollow cheeks, but his eyes glowed icy blue and his perfectly aligned teeth sparkled through those famously thin lips, like the glinting edge of a razor-sharp knife. As Otis took Steele in, he contemplated the fact that he always thought of Steele as mildly stooped with age, but in fact the man stood ramrod straight and, at six foot six, was easily the tallest person in the room, with a spine seemingly made of, well, steel.
Steele’s wife, Amber, stood beside him, her head turned anxiously up toward his. Her blond hair was tied back in a sleek ponytail, and she wore a short white summer dress that clung to her petite frame. “She wore that two weeks ago.” Otis heard one of the wives hiss at another. Twenty years earlier, Jack had plucked Amber, then Amber Jankowsky, from anonymity as an extra in Forged Steel. She was forty years Steele’s junior, and remained perky and blond. As far as Otis could tell, she spent the majority of her time acting as lead cheerleader and caregiver for her husband.
She quickly whispered something into Steele’s ear, and he narrowed his eyes at a small card cupped in his hands. “Welcome to Villa di Acciaio. We are here today to raise money for . . .”
Amber whispered.
“. . . the East End Animal Welfare Alliance, a cause I relate to because I made some real dogs in my career.”
Obligatory laughter rippled through the main hall.
Jack then spoke of his love of animals, which, he recounted, had been kindled with his horse, Swifty, on the set of Gunslingers of Tombstone. He segued into his usual monologue about how “they don’t make action movies like they used to” and how “Sly Stallone could kill a bunch of gooks on set but the man would weep at the sight of a puppy” and “that time Sly stuck a whoopee cushion under this blond actress with big tits. Can’t remember her name but, God, do I remember the tits,” all to the accelerated kneading of Amber’s fingers and the nervous shifting of feet of the East End Animal Welfare Alliance staff. Amber placed a slender hand on Steele’s forearm and, as if a director had yelled “Cut!,” Steele’s eyes snapped back into focus.
“So let’s dig deep into our pockets and support our animals and—”
Steele st
opped, and for a moment Otis assumed he’d lost his train of thought again, but then the old actor’s blue eyes locked onto someone in the crowd and narrowed menacingly. Slowly and en masse, his guests turned toward the object of Steele’s scorn.
Otis saw her immediately, right there in plain sight, a villain who’d somehow infiltrated Steele’s home: Mayor Lois Liebowitz, sporting her droopy straw hat and ACLU tote and sipping a mimosa.
Otis turned back to Steele, who took a quick, audible breath, smiled icily, and said, “Carpe diem, Madam Mayor.”
Villa di Acciaio grew cold.
*
Later, Otis found himself engaged in small talk with the owner of a mineral and gas mining company whose inherited position didn’t disqualify him from lamenting the leeches who sucked the system dry by collecting unemployment insurance because they didn’t understand the value of hard work. Otis was nodding numbly when he felt a tight squeeze around his forearm.
“Follow me,” Jack Steele ordered.
They cut through the crowd and strode out onto a glittering marble terrace that extended toward the beach. They passed a massive swimming pool whose floor featured various scenes from Jack’s films in mosaic tiles. On the far side of a perfectly manicured rolling lawn was a large red-roofed guest cottage, nestled amid trees that blocked Jack’s view of the billionaire next door, or, for that matter, anyone else on earth. Otis always wondered how Jack managed to build so close to the property line, but the answer seemed clear: Jack Steele didn’t bother with such nuisances as permits, variances, and approvals.
They arrived at a weathered wood railing that overlooked rolling sand dunes, dotted with beach grass that rippled in the soft breeze.
Steele squinted toward the blue horizon, slowly turning his head as if scanning for an incoming threat. Then he closed his eyes and sucked the ocean air through his lips. Otis watched Steele’s rigid chest expand and contract as he exhaled a long, raspy breath. His eyes fluttered open and he said, “Only in America do you get a view like this.”
