"What is it, Jane?" a man's irritated voice asked tersely.
"Sir, I'm very sorry to disturb you," the woman said quickly, looking at me with both annoyance and nervousness. "There's a gentleman by the name of Thomas Dickens out here, and he insists you'll want to speak with him. Should I call security?"
"Who?"
She repeated the name very slowly. "Thom-as Dick-ens."
There was a considerable pause, and then a strained, "Give me five minutes, then send him in."
I stood at the desk, alternately smiling at the woman and glancing toward a gray-suited, stern-faced man wearing dark glasses whom I assumed was a Secret Service agent assigned to Kranes because of the congressman's newfound place in the line of succession to the presidency. He had appeared out of nowhere, and was standing a few feet away off to my left. Two minutes later a heavy, carved oak door to my right opened and a tall man carrying a briefcase and wearing a Stetson and cowboy boots with his black, pin-striped suit came stalking out, obviously in a huff because his audience with the king of the Hill had been abbreviated. I gave Kranes three more minutes to compose himself, then walked unbidden through the door and into a large, plushly furnished office decorated with expensive, mounted shotguns and photographs of Kranes with enough politicians, sports and movie stars, and world leaders to populate a small town.
Kranes was sitting hunched over his desk and trying to look busy as he scribbled furiously on a yellow legal pad. His bushy brown hair was unkempt, as if he had recently been nervously running a hand through it, and the little I could see of his forehead and face was flushed. Unlike most people, Kranes looked even fatter in person than on television, and I wondered if he ever now regretted the venomous comments he used to make about his opponents' less attractive physical characteristics when he had been a younger, less powerful, and much thinner man. I somehow doubted it.
Kranes, whose heart I assumed was racing along at a pretty good clip at the moment, was a man who had proudly declared that he was going to take the country back to the 1950s, when "things were the way they're supposed to be." A lot of people, including myself, believed that the time he had in mind for the country was a few centuries further back than that. In one of his many unguarded moments, during one of his many histrionic rambles on C-SPAN before his party had ascended to power, he had described slavery as "not all bad, an economic system dictated by market forces, and a kind of health-care and welfare system for the underprivileged." He was a piece of work. It was because of Kranes that a lot of people, including not a few conservatives, prayed every day for the health of the president and vice president, as liberal as they were. Kranes was occasionally touted as a presidential candidate himself, but I doubted that was a serious possibility. His party was most pleased to have installed him as Speaker of the House of Representatives, but the only popular elections he had ever won had been to his seat in Congress representing this district in Alabama; with his spacey views and his willingness to express them, I considered it highly unlikely he could ever win even a statewide, much less national, election, even considering the sour mood the country was in. Garth would laugh and call me a naive fool, arguing that William P. Kranes was as all-American as apple pie.
Finally, having apparently decided upon some kind of strategy for dealing with the man whose poetry he had been plagiarizing, Kranes looked up. I was spared the boyish, toothy grin he liked to flash at the unwary; his eyes went wide, his mouth dropped open, and he snapped back in his chair as if he had been goosed with a cattle prod. His face, which had been red before, now went white. His features rapidly morphed into a variety of expressions, ending with one that looked curiously like relief.
"Your name isn't Dickens!" he triumphantly announced, rising from his chair and pointing a trembling, accusatory index finger in my direction, reminding me of nothing so much as an overweight edition of the other Dickens' Christmas Past. "You're that Frederickson dwarf! I'm on the Intelligence Committee, and I know all about what you and that ultra-liberal president and all your hippie friends are up to! If you think you're going to interview me as part of your effort to gut the CIA, you've got another think coming! Hell will freeze over first! I want you the hell out of my office!"
"Mr. Speaker," I said, smiling sweetly. "The Frederickson dwarf is not here to interview you about the CIA. You wouldn't tell me anything I want to know, even if you knew anything I want to know, which you probably don't, since you and the other members of the intelligence committees in both the House and Senate are usually the last to know about anything really important going on in the intelligence community. What you people hear is all honey and bullshit."
The relief, if it had been that, I had glimpsed on his face and in his brown eyes suddenly vanished, and now Speaker of the House of Representatives William P. Kranes looked more than a bit haunted. "What do you want, then?" he asked tightly.
"Thomas Dickens. You think I pulled that name out of a hat? It's the reason you agreed to squeeze me into your frantic schedule."
Kranes slowly sank back down into his chair, looked away toward a shotgun mounted in a glass case. "The name does sound vaguely familiar," he said quietly, "but I can't place it."
"No? Let's see if I can't jog your memory." I reached into my briefcase, removed a sheaf of Moby Dickens' poems, and tossed them on the other man's desk, right under his nose. "Why don't you read over these poems by Mr. Dickens and then see if you can't remember where you first saw the name? If that doesn't help, I have some other poems in here with your name on them that might help."
There was a long pause, and then I saw his gaze flick away from the shotgun down to the papers scattered over his desk. He swallowed hard, then said softly, "This is, uh, very. ."
"I think 'embarrassing' is the word you're searching for. Your career as a poet is toast, Mr. Speaker. Now, do you want to discuss this in a reasonable manner, or do you want to keep on embarrassing yourself?"
"Sit down, Frederickson," he said in the same quiet, slightly choked tone.
I sat, moving the chair back a couple of feet so that I had a clear view of his face over the top of the desk. "Have you plagiarized anyone else's poems?"
He slowly shook his head.
"So you're selective, and you've got taste. But why'd you do it? If you've got the heart to appreciate Dickens' poetry, why not write your own:
He breathed deeply, slowly shook his head again. His lips were compressed tightly, and there were spots of color high on his chubby cheeks, but he now held his head erect and looked me squarely in the eye. "I, uh. . I don't even think I was aware I was doing it, if you want the truth. I used to be an English professor, you know. I taught poetry, and I still read an enormous amount of it in my limited spare time."
"Obviously. It seems what you don't do is write any of your own. You steal somebody else's."
The color in his cheeks spread across his face and up onto his forehead, but he kept his composure, and his voice remained steady as he continued to meet my gaze. "I've admired Mr. Dickens' poetry from the time it first started appearing in various journals. I think what must have happened is that I read so much of it, so often, that I just started to think of them as poems I'd written. Can you understand that?"
"What a load of horseshit."
"People don't usually talk to me like that, Frederickson!"
"Horseshit, horseshit, double horseshit. Other people don't know about this little character flaw of yours. You used another man's work to impress your family, friends, and local constituents. You used Thomas Dickens' poems to present yourself as something you're not, an artist. This business has jogged my memory, and I now recall a television interview a few years back that one of your campaign workers gave to CNN in which she waxed eloquent about how she wished other people could only know about this artistic dimension of yours, how you were an accomplished poet who was too modest to write under your own name. At that time, I dismissed it as horseshit. It's still horseshit, but it comes from a different horse alt
ogether."
"I meant no harm!"
"You harmed Thomas Dickens."
"How? There's no money in writing poetry. And I always submitted my.. interpretations … to magazines that had considerably less prestige and circulation than the journals in which they'd originally appeared. Do you know how few people read those magazines? A handful. These are literary journals, for Christ's sake! They're read mostly by college professors and students, a few poetry buffs, and a few hundred poet wannabes-like me, yes! But I never made a penny! Most of the magazines I submitted to are cranked out in somebody's basement and distributed to a couple of hundred people at most. So where's the harm?"
"My brother handles metaphysics."
"What? What the hell are you talking about?"
Kranes wasn't getting it-as I hadn't gotten it at first. I thought about the problem, reluctantly made a decision. I was decidedly uncomfortable with what I was about to do, but thought it might be necessary to impress upon the man behind the desk the seriousness of the situation-what was at stake for Moby Dickens, and for him. I asked, "You know anything about Dickens?"
"Not personally, no."
"Neither does anyone else, and that's the way he wants to keep it; that's why he hired me to come and have this little talk with you. But I'm going to tell you a few things about him anyway. Thomas Dickens isn't exactly poor, because he has a steady union job working for the New York Sanitation Department, but he comes from a background of poverty."
Kranes's brown eyes widened slightly, and he slowly blinked. "He's a garbageman?"
"Uh-huh. And it gets better. He's a black ex-convict who served a lengthy prison term for an act of self-defense that was called murder. The reason I'm telling you this is because you can't exactly be described as a friend of the poor, black, or convicts-ex or otherwise. If you had your way, people like Thomas Dickens would be summarily executed the week after they were convicted. He's a member of three different minority groups of people you've stereotyped and demonized as undeserving, stupid, lazy folks who bloat the prisons and the welfare rolls. Putting these people down is how you keep getting reelected down here in your district, and it's the underlying message that won your party the last national election. Now it turns out that you've been bloating your own ego and reputation by stealing the intellectual goods of a black ex-convict who comes from a poor southern background. You have some wealth, family, reputation, fame, and great power. Mr. Dickens has none of these things; all he has are his words, and you've been stealing them from him. You've harmed Mr. Dickens because you've appropriated everything that means anything to him."
The color drained from Kranes's face, and his eyes in his pudgy face suddenly glinted with anger. "You've come here to try to blackmail me!"
"I've come here to ask you to stop plagiarizing Mr. Dickens' work-or anyone else's, for that matter. If you want to be thought of as a poet, write your own poems."
"What does Dickens want?"
I shook my head. "I could have sworn I just told you. He wants you to stop copying his fucking poems. Get it?"
Kranes sucked in a deep breath, slowly let it out. "That's all? He's not going to attempt to … embarrass me?"
"How you could possibly be embarrassed more by this than by all the crap that comes out of your mouth every day is totally beyond me, but I'm not one of your fans. Dickens doesn't even know who you are, and if he did know he wouldn't care. The man's a poet, and all he cares about are his words. He doesn't want money from you. I, on the other hand, think it would be appropriate for you to pay Mr. Dickens an honorarium of, say, five hundred dollars. We'll call it a fee for your past leasing of his work. Those poems you claimed as your own may even have gotten you some swing votes among the not-so-conservatives around here who took them to mean that you're really a sensitive guy at heart who doesn't mean all those nasty things he says. Hey, maybe it's true. Don't think that I'm unimpressed by the fact that you picked Thomas Dickens' work to copy. It spoke to and touched you, which may very well mean that you routinely put your brain in park and let your mouth do all the work, pandering to people's ignorance, gullibility, and prejudices simply in order to stay in power. Maybe the politician in you killed off the rest of the man."
"That's enough, Frederickson. For five hundred dollars, I shouldn't have to sit here and listen to your liberal bullshit. The country doesn't agree with you. Your time is past."
"Make the check out to Thomas Dickens. I'll take it with me, along with your written statement acknowledging your plagiarism and pledging to cease and desist. That goes no further than my confidential files. You'll also pay my fee and expenses. I'll send you an itemized bill after I figure out how much time my staff and I have spent on this matter."
"No check for Dickens. I'll give you cash."
"Whatever you like. I'll give you a receipt."
"I don't want a receipt. I'll pay your fee and expenses, but make sure that the bill you send me makes no mention of Thomas Dickens or any plagiarized poetry. Just bill me for general expenses. And no letter. I've told you I meant no harm, and I'm telling you I won't do it again."
I studied him for a few moments, then nodded my head. "All right, Mr. Speaker. I'll take your word for it."
He pushed his chair back, took a key from his vest pocket, leaned over, and opened a locked drawer in his desk. When he straightened up he was holding a fistful of cash. He counted out five hundred dollars and put the bills in a plain envelope that he tossed across the desk to me. "And I have your word that this is the end of it?" he asked in an even tone.
"As far as I'm concerned, yes. I can't speak for Mr. Dickens, and he's the injured party. I have an obligation to tell him who Jefferson Kelly is-but only if he asks, which I'm not even sure he'll do. I won't volunteer the information. I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. He's not interested in you. I'm not even certain he'll accept your money; if he doesn't, I'll send you a check along with my bill."
I put the cash in my briefcase, rose, and turned toward the door.
"Hey," Kranes said quietly.
I turned back. "Hey what?"
"What you're doing is wrong. It's just incredibly wrong-headed and short-sighted, even for an ultra-liberal like yourself."
"Trying to protect a man's intellectual property?"
"Working to destroy the CIA."
"Did you say 'destroy'? From your mouth to God's ears."
"The KGB hasn't been disbanded, you know. They've just been regrouped into an organization with a different name. They're just as powerful and evil as they ever were. Russia is bound to return to totalitarianism, and they will once again be the number-one threat to this nation and to world peace."
"Are you trying to appeal to my patriotism, Mr. Speaker?"
"And if I am?" he asked in the same quiet tone. "Is 'Patriotism' such a dirty word to you?"
"In some mouths, yes. It's a weapon-word, and too often it's used to try to shout down other people. It's a word that kills. Patriotism is just another form of religion, and like all religion it's bad for the individual and frequently deadly to the people around him. Incidentally, I've been hunted, shot at, and tortured by the KGB on a goodly number of occasions, so you can keep that bogeyman in your closet. I know the monster a hell of a lot better than you do."
"You're an atheist, aren't you?"
"My mother taught me never to discuss sex, religion, or politics in polite company. Let's just say that if I had my way, every single so-called 'house of worship' on the planet would be outfitted with a sign warning that 'the creationist and exclusionary fantasies for sale in this establishment are hazardous to your health and the health of others.'"
"So you don't love God. How can you live without God?"
"How can you live with God? I'll admit it can sometimes be a bitch taking responsibility for your own actions, and holding other people accountable for theirs, but I still don't understand how you can live with the chauvinistic, ill-tempered, stand-up comedian so many humans call God. It truly is a myste
ry to me. If I did believe in this deity, I'd be a guerrilla fighter looking for a suitable replacement. I mean, your guy is worse than useless; he's arbitrary."
"And you have no love for this country?"
"I don't believe countries should be loved or hated; they should constantly be improved by the people who live within their borders, and especially by their leaders. People like you. You asked me if I loved this geographical entity called the United States. I'll ask you if you really think you're improving it by all the divisive things you say and do. If I'm even half right, if much of what comes out of your mouth is posturing and tap dancing to stay in office collecting a government paycheck and accumulating ever greater power, is that patriotism?"
To my surprise, he did not reply. To my even greater surprise, I found myself giving him points for the honesty of his silence. To my utter astonishment, in that moment I felt a kind of bonding with the man, if not much affection.
"I believe the United States to be the most diverse and complex society on earth, Mr. Speaker," I continued quietly. "Anybody who tries to wrap his mind around the whole thing just gets brain sprain. Nobody should say they understand this country."
"I say I understand this country, Frederickson. And I do love this country with all my heart. There's something wrong with a man who doesn't love his country."
"Yeah, but people like you would feel exactly the same way about Russia if that's where you'd been born; that's religion, not rationality. I find the United States to be a relatively safe, comfortable, and pleasurable place in which to live and go about my business. This society allows me to create my own country, if you will, and I'm grateful for that. I want to keep it that way, for myself and for others. But sometimes you have to snip out a few tumors if you want to keep a body healthy."
"We need the CIA, Frederickson. Who's going to protect you- protect all of us-when the KGB is in ascendancy again?"
"Hopefully, a responsible and professional intelligence service that isn't run like an old boys' social club and that doesn't spend decades seriously exaggerating the strength of the enemy in order to feather their nest and fill their rice bowl. That's what the CIA has done."
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