Big Guns

by Steve Israel

  Get ready, Lois thought.

  A handful of residents scraped metal folding chairs against the wood plank floors as they sat. It was the usual crowd: the curmudgeons and critics, the watchdogs and gadflies, united that stifling day by the powerful combination of free jelly donuts and nothing better to do with their time. Lois noticed that no one from Billionaires Bluff was present, probably due to the fact that there were no proposals to place stop signs near their gates or limit the height of their hedgerows.

  Usually, Sam Gergala mingled with residents, draping his long arms over their shoulders, laughing at their jokes, and scurrying back and forth to the dais to make sure Lois had everything she needed. Today, however, he sat sullenly in the front row, staring blankly ahead, avoiding eye contact with Lois.

  Next to him was Petey Scrafel. At age twenty-two, Petey was editor in chief, high school sports reporter, and director of advertising and circulation at the Asabogue Bugle. He also happened to be the publisher’s son. He was tall and gangly. The last vestiges of acne were slowly retreating from his forehead under tangled clumps of curly blond hair. Petey aspired to one day write for the New York Times. For now, it was “all the news that’s fit to print” in six pages once a week.

  They recited the Pledge of Allegiance—Councilman Kellogg’s voice boomed at “under God” as usual—and proceeded to the official agenda. They “wherefored,” “whereased,” and “resolved” their way through the meeting. By consistent votes of four to one, they authorized the mayor to procure road salt for the coming winter (“American salt or foreign salt?” Ralph Kellogg demanded to know); they approved a storage shed on the property of Al and Wendy Knickrehm; and they permitted limited outdoor seating at Joan’s Bakery (which explained the complimentary donuts that day, a possible act of bribery that Councilman Kellogg seemed to ignore, as evidenced by the powdered sugar clinging to his mustache).

  They reached the end of the agenda. Lois heard her colleagues push back their chairs.

  “Hold on,” she said. “I have one more matter.”

  She passed across the dais copies of a resolution she’d typed herself earlier: Village Board Resolution 52: Authorizing the Mayor to Execute an Agreement Re: Chicago Compact.

  “What is this?” Councilman Kellogg asked indignantly. Flakes of donut powder fell from his mustache like light snow.

  Lois answered, “It’s just an intermunicipal agreement to—”

  “To ban guns in Asabogue!” Kellogg said, his voice rising.

  “To ensure public safety,” Lois responded calmly.

  Ralph thumped his fists on the dais, jolting everyone in the room. His cheeks turned bright red. He stood slowly, the fists pumping, jowls quivering in rage.

  Sam Gergala also stood, ready to move protectively toward the mayor.

  “Wake up, people!” Councilman Kellogg boomed, his voice rattling the windowpanes. “Don’t you realize what she’s doing? It’s just like Ted Nugent said! Raping the Constitution! Urinating on the vision of our Founding Fathers!”

  The audience stirred uncomfortably. Outdoor dining and domestic road salt were one thing, but raping the Constitution and urinating on the Founders certainly seemed to exceed the jurisdiction of the Village Board.

  Lois stared forward, puckering slightly. She clenched her fingers around the gavel and said, “Thank you, Councilman Kellogg. Now, let’s vote. All in favor?”

  Lois was joined by three somnolent “ayes.”

  “Opposed?”

  “Noooooo!” Ralph thundered, alone.

  “The motion carries.”

  Lois clacked the gavel and pretended not to notice Ralph Kellogg’s tightening fists and crimson cheeks. His eyes narrowed menacingly, but he said nothing.

  *

  The next morning, Otis enjoyed breakfast in the solarium while watching CNBC, and thought, My troubles are over. There were no mentions of federal investigations into Cogsworth, the American Freedom from Fear Act had enjoyed favorable coverage, and the prospect of a new national law requiring Americans to buy guns was having a salutary effect on Cogsworth stocks. On the screen, some unknown Member of Congress was blathering about the trade deficit with China in the cavernous rotunda of a congressional office building. His words ricocheted off marble columns and echoed in his own ears, ensuring, Otis supposed, that he was making sense to at least himself. Otis’s bagel was perfectly toasted to a golden brown. The sun warmed the beach. CNBC warmed his heart. It was a good and peaceful morning.

  Then the phone rang.

  Otis heard Andre’s muffled voice, then rapid footsteps against ceramic tile.

  “It’s Mr. Steele, sir,” said Andre anxiously. “He says it’s urgent.”

  Good Lord, thought Otis. He picked up the phone. “Hullo, Jack.”

  “Have you read this morning’s Bugle?” asked Steele in his signature rasp.

  Of course. I begin every day with the Asabogue Bugle. Then, if there’s time, I turn to the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. “No,” said Otis.

  “Christ, man! Don’t you know what’s happening in your own backyard?”

  Otis scanned his own backyard. The ocean horizon was shrouded in a serene morning haze. “Tell me,” he said resignedly.

  “That woman! She just dropped a bomb right down our stovepipe!”

  Otis blinked.

  “The village is signing that Chicago Compact! Banning your guns! Going after your stocks. Right in your hometown!”

  Jack Steele rattled on about Lois Liebowitz’s threat to civilization, but Otis tuned him out and slumped in his chair. Otis didn’t really care about civilization. Otis’s concerns were of a more personal nature. He imagined the conversation at the National Association of Firearms Manufacturers annual golf outing. That’s right, I’m from Asabogue, he heard himself saying. The little town that banned my product and tanked my stock. But the beach is nice and property values have held steady. May I play through? He groaned into the phone. “I’d better have my people look into this.”

  “Look into it? Sure, Otis, that’s what I always did. When the terrorists had me hanging out of an airplane at thirty thousand feet, I looked into things.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “The Jack Steele way, my friend. None of this eye for an eye bullshit. You take out my eye, I chop off your head. With my good eye.”

  Otis wondered from which Jack Steele film that line came. Or was it Shakespeare?

  “Otis, I’m getting rid of Liebowitz.”

  “Jack—” Otis hoped Steele wasn’t talking about what he thought he was talking about, and yet he wouldn’t put it past Steele.

  “I’m taking her out!” he said with a snarl.

  “Good Lord, Jack! You can’t!”

  “Christ, Otis, calm down! I’m not gonna kill her. I mean, physically. It’s gonna be legal. By the books. My lawyers found the solution right there in the Village Code.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “A recall election. All you need is five hundred signatures on a petition to recall the mayor, and an election is mandatory.” He pronounced mandatory with relish, drawing out each syllable and clicking on each consonant. “We get her out of Village Hall and put in one of our own.”

  Otis assumed that “one of our own” would be Jack’s protégé, Ralph Kellogg. He winced, then asked, “How long do we have?” “Couple of weeks. If we get those signatures, the recall election is in November. We’ll bring in the top political operatives. Spend whatever it takes. I need your best people. You in?”

  Otis briefly considered the potential indelicacy of asking Sunny McCarthy, his best operative, to help “remove” her mother. Then he mumbled, “Yeah, I’m in.”

  “Carpe diem!” Jack barked.

  Fade to black, Otis thought.

  11

  In the Capitol dining room reserved for Members of Congress and guests, Roy Dirkey bowed his head, clasped his hands, and said grace. Sitting across from him, Sunny ungracefully peeked at her e-mails.
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br />   Sunny regarded the Members’ Dining Room as one-star dining for five-star egos. It was regally adorned in gold and blue and brightened by a crystal chandelier that sparkled from a high ceiling. It was crowded with Members of Congress chewing the fat, literally, at white-linen tables. Nearby, the lobbyist for the American Council of Big Oil and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee devoured slathered heaps of pork sausages, with a generous helping of tax subsidies on the side.

  Famous on the menu was the navy bean soup. According to congressional lore, in the early 1900s, Speaker of the House Joe Cannon requested the soup for lunch. When told it wasn’t available that day, the tyrannical Speaker ordered that navy bean soup appear on the menu every day until the end of days. Suffrage and civil rights would wait. But the right of the people to slurp overly salted brown glop would not be denied or delayed.

  After a quick “Amen,” Roy started on his bacon and eggs. Sunny noticed his eyes narrowing on every forkful and the forceful bobbing of his jaw, as if he was rushing through a meal ready-to-eat before battle.

  Between gulps, he shared the parts of his bio that didn’t make the Congressional Directory.

  His father had owned Dirkey Chevrolet, known throughout North Little Rock for its interminable, grating commercials: Roy Sr. dressed as Dirkey the Duck, quacking into the camera about Dirkey Deal Days as the feathers of his low-budget costume flittered in the air. Roy wanted to join the military to serve his country and, he admitted, avoid taking over a business that required him to quack on TV. He secured a congressional nomination to West Point, graduated, then deployed to Afghanistan. Within a year he returned to a hero’s welcome in Bentonville, where running for the House fulfilled his lifelong dream of not running Dirkey Chevrolet. “I guess I found the one job less popular than a used car salesman,” he said, “I’m a Member of Congress.”

  Sunny was sure he’d used that line before.

  Roy seemed momentarily lost in a life-size oil painting that dominated a far wall. It was Constantino Brumidi’s depiction of the British surrender to George Washington. Sunny thought that the Brits looked positively happy to be leaving America. Washington, on the other hand, wore the severe grimace of someone who knew what a shitstorm awaited. Or, maybe he knew about the navy bean soup.

  Roy said, “I keep pinching myself that I’m here. I mean, if someone had told me that I’d be in Congress, I never would have believed it. I guess this is exactly the democracy our Founders had in mind.”

  Sunny shrugged. “That’s one theory. I have another.”

  He cocked his head.

  She sipped some coffee, which had grown stale and cold. “The guys in that painting basically didn’t like paying high taxes to the king. But, they had a problem. They couldn’t recruit an army willing to fight the most powerful military on earth on a ‘tax and spend’ message. So they sprinkled in some ‘inalienable rights,’ a dash of ‘all men are created equal,’ and a pinch of ‘we the people.’ Of Thomas Jefferson’s many inventions, political spin was his greatest.”

  Roy looked hurt. “That’s pretty cynical, isn’t it?”

  She thought, You’re in the U.S. Capitol. They sell cynicism snow globes in the gift shop.

  Roy pushed his now-empty plate forward. “So, I told you the story of my life. When do I hear yours?”

  Sunny drained the last of her rancid coffee and said, “I could use a refill.”

  “C’mon now,” he coaxed.

  She sighed. She needed to prepare Dirkey to unveil AFFFA to the entire Republican Caucus the next morning. At the moment, however, he clearly had other interests. Let’s get this over with, she thought. She whisked back her hair and lowered her eyes to the empty coffee cup.

  “I was married, but we didn’t make it to our second anniversary. Name was Brad. I lived on the poor side of the tracks, his family had their own helicopter pad. Brad’s father was managing partner at a white-shoe law firm. Daddy-in-law, by the way, did not do commercials dressed as any sort of waterfowl.”

  Dirkey laughed. Sunny traced the lip of her coffee cup with her index finger.

  “Anyway, we moved to Manhattan. Brad went to work for his father, who pulled some strings and got me a job at a PR firm that handled crisis management for his . . . special clients. Special, as in under investigation by the U.S. Attorney, the SEC, the IRS, you name it. You think Afghanistan was tough, Congressman? Try image rehab for a hedge fund billionaire with a twenty-one-count indictment for tax fraud.”

  “Bet you nailed it,” Roy cooed.

  “That particular client eventually had to deny rumors of pending sainthood.”

  She waved at a waitress, who waved back cheerfully, not quite grasping the international signal for “more coffee.”

  “So what happened? With Brad?”

  “We had our differences. So dear old daddy-in-law flew us to the Dominican Republic for an all-inclusive weekend, including a quickie divorce. I got a decent payout and some very lucrative client referrals, including Cogsworth International Arms.”

  “That was generous.”

  “Noooo. Those were my demands. I learned that Brad the fairhaired son was screwing Stephanie the big-boobed summer associate. So I turned what could have been a very ugly trial into a beautiful settlement. As they say, the rest is”—she pointed at the painting—“history!”

  Dirkey nodded his head sadly. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not. It’s worked out nicely.”

  Sunny turned toward the nearby table. She watched the Ways and Means chairman shake hands with the oil company lobbyist and wondered just how much that little breakfast was costing the U.S. Treasury. She calculated about thirty dollars for the meal and ten billion for the deal.

  “So who’s the future First Lady of Arkansas?” she asked abruptly, sending the conversation back to Roy.

  He smiled, revealing that subtle space between his teeth. “For me, marriage is a sacred institution. I’m just waiting for the right one.”

  Sunny noticed his eyes lingering on her. It wasn’t the usual leer, but more of an evaluation. She wondered whether Dirkey might be imagining her in some kind of below-the-knees, pastel Sunday church getup, surrounded by five mini Dirkeys whom she would chauffeur to Bible class on her way to delivering homemade cupcakes to the United Daughters of the Confederacy bake sale.

  I’m not that kind of woman, buddy.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by the soft ping of her phone. She glanced at URGENT in the subject line and scanned the text.

  She blurted, “I’m going to kill her.”

  “Who?”

  “I have a situation. Back in two minutes.”

  Sunny rushed into a dimly lit corridor, its high vaulted ceiling muraled with American history scenes. She read the e-mail again, under an image of the British burning down the Capitol in 1814, which seemed appropriate given the fire in her chest.

  To: SBM@Cogsworth

  From: BIG-GUN@Cogsworth

  Sunny—see attached Bugle article about your mother. Good Lord!! This will get messy. I know you’re in a tough position. If continued work on AFFFA is a problem, I understand.

  She thought, “I understand”? That’s what they say when they don’t understand! A patronizing tap on the head. “I understand you won’t be able to work with us, little girl. Not to worry, we’ll find someone else with, shall we say, more suitable familial ties. Now, go away and let the big boys take it from here. Understand?”

  Each word from the Asabogue Bugle article churned in Sunny’s stomach. Her usual crisp and cold-blooded thinking was turning slow and molten. She folded her arms, leaned against a wall, and struggled to manage her anger. She watched an intern guide tourists up a wide marble stairway known as “the Bloody Steps,” pointing to faint splotches of blood dried into the marble. Sunny had heard all the legends, conspiracy theories, and ghost tales, but loved the real story of a nineteenth-century public relations crisis. In 1890, a newspaperman was reporting on the serial scandals of Kentuck
y congressman William Preston Taulbee. One day, Taul-bee decided to add his own spin, literally, by shoving the reporter in a corridor just outside the House chamber. The journalist scurried from the Capitol to the taunting of Taulbee and his colleagues. Hours later, he returned with his gun, and on those very steps, shot the gentleman from Kentucky in the eye.

  Sunny stared at the stains, imagined the scene: the blast echoing through the austere halls of the Capitol, the screams of the bystanders, the acrid odor of gunpowder. She visualized Taul-bee, staggering down the steps, clutching his face, blood pouring through his fingers and splattering on the marble, soaking in to become an indelible exhibit on guns in the People’s House. American history was displayed on the high painted ceilings above, and soaked into the marble steps underfoot.

  She remembered that Taulbee’s killer was acquitted on grounds of self-defense.

  Sunny took some deep breaths.

  You can manage this.

  Take control.

  She poked Otis’s number on her cell phone.

  “This is Ot—”

  “I’m resigning,” she snapped.

  “Whoa—”

  “No, Otis. If you don’t think I can do my job on AFFFA, fine! I’m done. I’m sure your barely competent nephew Bruce can take it from here!”

  “Sunny—”

  “It’s truly been a privilege, Otis. Now I think I’ll go to work defending child slavery. That’s a challenge I’m up to.”

  Sunny imagined the sweat trickling down Otis’s puffy red cheeks as he struggled to find the right words, pressing his fingers to his wide forehead. She began counting to herself, until Otis finally blurted, “Good Lord, I was just trying to . . . be sensitive.”

  Sunny burst into that prolonged spitfire laugh, which rattled through the corridor. “Otis, you’re good at some things. Being sensitive isn’t one of them. So let me be clear: I do not let my mother’s politics affect my business. And my business happens to be keeping you in business. Do you understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Good! Just one more thing.”