Big Guns

by Steve Israel

  Since the Leadership was comprised of fiscal hawks and balanced budgeteers, everything had to be paid for. So they took their carving knives to the usual tonnage of fatty flesh in the federal budget: waste, fraud, and abuse. In this case, it was the waste of college tuition assistance, the fraud of climate studies, and the abuse of environmental regulations.

  They feasted at the buffet table in the Speaker’s office that morning. The GGOOPs and ROBs and WACCs and TRACs. It was the perfect Washington compromise—a give-and-take where everyone took and no one gave, as long as they had a seat at the table. They fulfilled their constitutional duty to provide for the common defense and ensure domestic tranquility in a more perfect Union (preferably without unions).

  Roy sat silently as the deal was consummated under the portrait of young Congressman Lincoln, who now looked slightly queasy.

  The Speaker adjourned the meeting and disappeared. In a puff of smoke.

  *

  Sunny McCarthy was reclining in her chair, her bare feet on her desk when Roy called. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that four congressmen and two staffers had been sending her real-time text updates throughout the meeting. So she feigned awe at his triumph: how he set down his demands and refused to budge, how he slammed his fists and pulled concessions from the Leadership. He reported it in the hyperactive voice of the boy who hit a Little League home run and saved the game. Except, Sunny knew, he had never even got off the bench.

  “So, how’d I do?” Roy asked.

  “Am-aaaaa-zing, Roy.” She smiled.

  “We need a drink. To celebrate.”

  “Hold that thought. Until the bill actually passes. Anything can happen between now and—”

  “Meet me later at the Republican Club.”

  “Roy. You have no idea how this town works.”

  “This town doesn’t know how I work. Nine o’clock tonight.” Sunny sighed.

  21

  Speaker of the House Frank Piermont and Senate Majority Leader Horace Binslap cut their secret deals in plain sight: on an open balcony off the West Front of the Capitol with a sweeping view of Washington. That’s where they met this sultry July evening, jackets off, ties loosened, sleeves rolled up. They reclined on wrought-iron patio chairs covered with plush green-striped cushions. Piermont puffed on cigarettes and sipped a merlot procured from his private stock. Binslap savored a fat Cohiba obtained from the U.S. ambassador to Cuba. Binslap, of Miami, despised Cuba. He waged his own legislative Bay of Pigs against the Cuban government, hitting them with waves of amendments to defund diplomatic relations. Cuba was evil, totalitarian, rapacious, and godless. Cuba was, to borrow a phrase from Trotsky, consigned to the ash heap of history. Meanwhile, he’d just have to enjoy its ash.Tonight they discussed the fate of AFFFA.

  The entire city lay at their polished wing tips. Lights twinkled against a pink-blue sky. The illuminated Washington Monument rose majestically in the distance. About one mile behind it glowed the Lincoln Memorial, and just beyond were the lights of Rosslyn, Virginia. They could hear the soft rumble of planes at Reagan National Airport, just a few miles southwest. Far below, knots of curious tourists stared at them, pointing at these two lonely figures on the Capitol balcony, assuming they had to be important.

  Very important.

  They were the kings of this Hill. Mr. Speaker and Mr. Leader. (In this Congress, Jills didn’t make it up the Hill.) They met here weekly. Sympathizing, empathizing, commiserating about the ceaseless attacks from their own Members while pulling sharp objects out of each other’s backs, like primates. They planned the legislative calendar, a complex minute-by-minute schedule of looking busy while accomplishing nothing and preassigning blame. It was alternate side of the street blame. Some days the House blamed the Senate. Other days the Senate blamed the House. Every day both blamed the president who blamed both in return. The bald eagle was being replaced by a scapegoat. Of course, all that fingerpointing required the appearance of discord between Speaker Piermont and Leader Binslap. So they dramatically played the part of congressional combatants defending their respective chambers. But this was Washington. In the city of mirrors, objects were closer than they appeared.

  “Cheers,” Piermont said, holding up a glass of merlot, clasping a cigarette between two fingers.

  They clinked, then leaned back in their chairs, sighing contentedly.

  Piermont opened with: “My Leadership agreed to bring that ridiculous gun ownership bill to the floor after the August recess.”

  Binslap scowled. “A horrible law.”

  “It’s nuts.”

  Binslap expelled a heavy gust of former Cuban soil. He studied the smoke wafting lazily over Piermont.

  Piermont asked, “How about you? Senate gonna pass it?”

  Binslap shrugged. “Probably.”

  They fell silent.

  “Well, one of us should kill it,” Binslap said.

  Piermont sipped, then said, “Damn thing saved me from a coup. Truth is my crazies are all fired up over it. Looks like it’s up to the world’s greatest deliberative body to stop it.” He tipped his glass toward Binslap.

  Binslap waved his Cohiba at the Speaker. “Not me. I have four senators running for president. Each trying to run to the right of the others. They’re not going to allow a quiet Senate death for the bill. Ball’s in the People’s House.” He winked.

  Back and forth they went, in a polite parliamentary volley, until the sky turned purple then dark. The lights of the city glowed brighter and the tourists drifted away. Binslap’s cigar became a wet and gangly stub and Piermont’s bottle of merlot was drained to a thin red ring at the bottom.

  Piermont stood, stretched, and lit another cigarette. “Looks like we’re both boxed in. We could just pass it and send it over there.” He pointed in the direction of a long horizontal gray gash that cut right through the city. Pennsylvania Avenue. At the other end, less than two miles, was the White House. The imposing Treasury Building blocked what would have been a clear view between the White House and its noisy neighbors in Congress.

  Piermont continued: “The president will just have to veto AFFFA.”

  Binslap snickered. “When was the surgery?”

  “Huh?”

  “Vetoing AFFFA requires a spine. That is not part of this president’s anatomy. The man is a study in invertebrate biology.”

  Piermont grunted.

  “Besides,” Horace Binslap continued, “even if he vetoes AFFFA, it comes right back here. For an override vote. You and I will be whipping votes to override his veto while secretly securing votes to sustain his veto.”

  “What else is new?”

  Piermont walked to the edge of the balcony and leaned on the white granite balustrade. He took in the city. A helicopter glided on the horizon, its lights blinking persistently. “How is it that the two most powerful men in Congress can’t stop Congress from passing a law we’re both against?”

  Binslap smiled. “The most powerful man knows to get out of the way of a speeding train, Frank.”

  Piermont knew exactly what Binslap meant.

  The gun lobby.

  “Well, maybe I can slow the train,” Piermont mumbled. “I’m meeting with the president in a few days.” He took a final drag on his cigarette and watched the smoke vanish in the still night air. In the city of smoke and mirrors.

  22

  Across town, lobbyists played the Washington fundraising circuit like pinballs, ringing up points whenever they made contact with a Member of Congress. Since it was impolite to eat someone’s cocktails without bringing over a little something, they brought campaign donations of $1,000, $2,000, or $5,000, which is how Washington retained its world ranking in the category of “Most Expensive Mini Egg Rolls.”

  A black SUV dropped Sunny at the National Republican Club, a stately, white-brick expanse on Capitol Hill. This would be her final reception of the evening before meeting Roy for drinks. She strode under a long green awning, dressed in a blue skirt that clung
tightly at her hips and swished well above her knees. Inside the darkened lobby, she scowled at the portraits adorning the walls: Coolidge, Eisenhower, both Bushes, to name a few. It was like a fusty museum of political history, she thought, back when a tea party at the Republican Club involved convivial nibbling of hors d’oeuvres after a pleasant day of bipartisanship instead of frothing at the mouth; when Congress was, well, the country’s club.

  She wondered, What was so good about those good old days, anyway? Republicans won elections, then rushed to lose reelection. They compromised—a word that tasted stale and spoiled on her tongue, making her want to gag. No wonder those portraits were painted from the waist up. The subjects had no balls.

  For Sunny, politics was a blood sport where only one thing mattered: winning. The issues were irrelevant and the cause didn’t count. The so-called moral high ground was a graveyard where the naive and powerless were buried by a few good mercenaries.

  She turned her back on the paintings and found her way into a reception honoring Senator Peterson F. Tubbs, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Financial Institutions. Guests picked at crudités while gorging at the public trough. Hands were shaken, profits stirred. The room echoed with the familiar notes of the Washington Overture:

  “Nice to see you.”

  “Nice to see you too.”

  “And you.”

  In other words, who exactly are you?

  Chairman Tubbs stood on the far side of the room, lean, silver, and polished to senatorial resplendence. A long line of Wall Street lobbyists coiled toward him, as if he were an ATM, depositing PAC checks and withdrawing his good favor. He wrapped himself around his guests like a vine of ripened grapes, oozing sweetness. He recited industry acronyms—FHA, CFPB, FHLBB—like poetry, and turned small talk into exaggerated howls of laughter that seemed to rattle the wineglasses lined up on the bar. Sunny noticed that the lobbyist from the Association of Big Banks was there, plus the Association of Bigger Banks, and the Association of Banks Too Big to Fail. They all sought the senator’s relief from un-American regulations that stifled their ability to create thousands of new jobs planting FORECLOSED signs on America’s front yards.

  Sunny whisked past the line and approached the senator.

  She felt a sudden clawing on her shoulder.

  She was spun abruptly.

  Looming over her was the corpulent lobbyist for GUN (Guns Uniting the Nation). Everything about him was grotesque. He wore an expensive suit accented with his favorite red-and-black bull’s-eye patterned suspenders and matching tie. His black hair was liberally slicked with gel. He had a wide, foamy smile that spread from ear to ear, revealing a row of sharp-edged teeth that seemed too small for his cavernous mouth. He also had a well-known reputation for “pressing the flesh”—as long as the flesh was fresh and fair skinned. He slid his plump hand down Sunny’s shoulder, tightened it around her elbow, and tried pulling her into a hug. Sunny angled sideways to protect her breasts from squeezing against his chest, so that all he got was the defensive brush of hip against his groin, which he didn’t seem to mind given the satisfied widening of his eyes.

  “Sunny, we gotta talk. Quiet place.” His drawl was deep and syrupy.

  He steered Sunny into a corner, under an oil painting of President Hoover, which was appropriate because that’s where Hoover had said prosperity was—just around the corner.

  He whispered, “Sunny, I have some information that may be useful. It’s about your momma.”

  Sunny had many choice names for Lois, and momma wasn’t one of them.

  “It’s about to hit Politico. Sunny McCarthy . . . queen of the gun lobby . . . has a momma who wants to ban guns!”

  Sunny glared at his fingers around her elbow, which quickly unclasped. “Gee, wonder who leaked that?”

  “Wasn’t me, Sunny. Swear. But you got bigger problems. Something else is coming.”

  Sunny folded her arms.

  He lowered his head, exposing Sunny to an asphyxiating dose of whatever cologne he’d pumped through a fire hose that morning. “I was on a conference call today about your momma’s election in Asatuck—”

  “Asabogue,” she sighed annoyedly.

  “It’s World War Three for the industry, Sunny. We can’t let every piss-ass mayor of every piss-ass town start banning our products. Gotta stop her. We’re organizing, Sunny. Raising money, sending in campaign operatives, making an example of her!”

  Sunny mustered a dismissive shrug.

  “The NRA just pledged over a million dollars to beat her. They got opposition researchers crawling all over.”

  “That’s her business.”

  “Yeaaah. But seems her business might be your business.” “Meaning?”

  “Did you know about your momma’s little . . . tax problem?” There were certain word combinations in Washington that got the old adrenaline racing, for example, “tax problem.”

  “Unpaid taxes. On the house where you grew up. Judgments, warrants, liens up the wahzoo. It’s all gonna be public. You didn’t know?”

  Sunny McCarthy, whose favorite dress was hubris, felt it all suddenly yanked away, leaving her exposed and vulnerable, right there in the Republican Club, bested by an insufferable rival wearing gun suspenders and a gun tie and probably even “gunderwear.” No, she hadn’t known. How exactly would that have come up? “Sunshine, I have a meeting tonight so I left you a frozen dinner and I never paid my property taxes on our house?”

  “I just wanna help, Sunny. Keep you in the loop.”

  He looped his fingers around her elbow and squeezed lightly. “You wanna get a drink, Sunny? Talk more about what I know about your momma?”

  “I have plans,” she muttered.

  “Well, you just lemme know how I can help in the future. Professional courtesy.”

  Sunny nodded, but she knew that in Washington when a rival offered help, it was with that final yank of a noose around one’s neck.

  *

  Lois Liebowitz had planned to spend the next day handling routine matters in Village Hall. There was the unrepaired streetlight on Asabogue Bluff Lane; the rumbling intrusion of a new helicopter service that ferried $800-an-hour Manhattan hairstylists to the doorsteps of uncoiffed Hamptons clients after strenuous mornings of tennis; and a petition by the twelve-member Asabogue Village Merchants Association demanding the paving of a pothole on Main Street. Lois awoke punctually at seven. She dressed in a light blue running outfit, sipped coffee while skimming the newspaper, then pushed through the rickety screen door. Strong, hot gusts of wind blew in from the ocean. Lois wedged her bicycle helmet on her head, smoothed her ACLU tote bag against her hip, and pedaled slowly down the dirt driveway into the breeze. She opened her mouth to taste the warm salt air, knowing that both fall and a bitter election were just around the corner.

  Just around the corner, Lois spotted a large sign tacked to a telephone pole. It featured a grainy, unflattering photograph of her, like a mug shot. Below her face, in big block letters, was the declaration:

  TAX-LIEN LOIS

  DUMP LOIS LIENOWITZ!

  Then she saw identical signs nailed to every pole on both sides of the street, fluttering like pennants in the stiff ocean breeze.

  Lois brought her bike to a rattling stop against a curb, dismounted, and squinted at the sign. She unfastened it from the pole and folded it neatly into her ACLU bag, briefly considering that she might be violating someone’s free speech but refusing to litter. She returned to her bike and began pedaling urgently toward Village Hall. The posters rippled at her sides as she passed, like a frothing gray wake. She panted against the wind, her heart pounding. There weren’t many skeletons in Lois’s closet. This one hung from every telephone pole in town, haunting her as she rode. She thought, Sam will know what to do.

  She arrived at Village Hall, jammed her bike into the metal rack, and rushed inside.

  Sam sat at the conference table, fingers pressed against his forehead. When he removed them, Lois saw that they�
�d left tiny pale circles against the dark crevices in his skin.

  He looked gloomily at Lois and sighed, “Well, that’s that. We just lost the election.” He dropped his palms to the table with a thud.

  Lois plunked herself on a chair across from him, trying to catch her breath, chest heaving in irritating pangs. “It’s dirty politics, Sam!”

  “Is it true?”

  Lois felt her lips moving, but the words seemed caught in the back of her throat.

  “You did pay your taxes, didn’t you?”

  Lois sighed. “It’s a long story.”

  “Not according to what I’ve read on almost every telephone pole in town.”

  “I paid back every penny. Plus penalties and interest—”

  “Penalties? Interest?”

  “Paid it all back. We just have to tell people. I’m not a tax cheat.”

  Sam nodded annoyedly. “Awww geez, Lois. That’ll make a nice campaign slogan. I’ll ask Patsy Hardameyer to redo the lawn signs. ‘Reelect Liebowitz. Not a Tax Cheat.’ Maybe even make up some bumper stickers. What with the six hundred dollars we have in our treasury.”

  “I had no choice—”

  “Funny thing about people, Mayor, they expect government officials who tax them to pay their own taxes.”

  Lois felt her lips pucker. The salt air she’d inhaled during her ride now tasted bitter. The only sound was the low drone of the television. She glanced at the screen and saw an interview with that congressman from Arkansas who’d lately been dominating the news. Trying to pass a law requiring gun ownership was madness, she thought. But she knew she had bigger problems. Closer to home problems. She blew a long breath, slumped her shoulders, and began her story.

  Only a few months after Larry Liebowitz fell for the actress on the Bluff, he disappeared. Larry should have known that an A-list actress would quickly tire of a local real estate lawyer towing two children to her home on weekends. But men suffering midlife crises aren’t in positions to grasp reality when their genitals are being grasped, particularly by a well-endowed starlet who was the masturbatory fantasy of countless Larry Leibowitzes around the world. Soon, Larry found himself pushed to the outside of the incrowd that caroused at the actress’s home. His feelings were particularly hurt at one such soiree when he discovered Caitlin in the affectionate embrace of not one but three men in the pool house. Upon finding this moaning, writhing, sweaty tangle of well-toned musculature and almost uncountable limbs, Larry decided to join the fun. His clumsy effort to angle his naked body between what appeared to be Caitlin Turner’s thigh and the elbow of the actor Mark Van Pann was met by the sudden thrust of said elbow into Larry’s groin, followed by the actress’s suggestion that he “get lost,” followed by an orgasmic moan that Larry had not heretofore heard in his own encounters with her. He staggered dejectedly from the pool house, a towel wrapped hastily around his waist. On the beach he spotted a group of bikini-clad women crouched around a small table spread with copious amounts of cocaine. Unlike his last interaction, Larry was heartily invited to participate by, he would alwaysremember fondly, Stormy, Rainy, and Skye. Until that moment, his only infraction of controlled substance laws was smoking the occasional joint with Lois. He sampled, sampled some more, and that began a daily addiction to cocaine, which Caitlin kept in a kitchen cabinet next to the Keurig coffee pods. Turner, who’d built an immunity to the stuff, was less than impressed by a live-in boyfriend who, when high, howled at the moon and took to rolling his naked body back and forth across the beach. One morning, Larry was abruptly awakened in a sand dune by a gentleman named Vinny. Vinny, Larry recalled in his delirium, was the director of security at the Turner estate. He was best known for having discouraged a group of paparazzi from photographing Caitlin by barreling his armored Hummer at them in an uncompetitive game of chicken. Vinny “escorted”—dragged, more like it—Larry to his waiting luggage in the courtyard. Larry was taken to his law office in the village, where the driver, also named Vinny, told him that if he ever returned to Asabogue, he would lose his license to practice law as well as the ability to urinate, what with his “dick stuffed down his throat.” Not surprisingly, Larry had not been seen since. Nor were his alimony and child support payments.