“You’re both idiots for working with that guy. He’s a racist, a sexist—”
“That’s just a bunch of talk. He seems okay in person.”
Except for when he asked his Secret Service detail to shoot me, Jimmie thought. But he could see why Cat wouldn’t like him: Her father was Mexican (one of the good ones, but still). That, plus the fact that she was a woman, meant she wasn’t exactly Trump’s target market.
“Well, have fun while it lasts,” Cat said. “I hear Trump likes to fire people.”
“Lester wasn’t fired.”
“So he quit,” she said. “So what? We split up a while back. I don’t keep tabs on him.”
“You don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
Jimmie lowered his voice: “He’s dead.”
Cat stopped abruptly, and Jimmie slammed into her.
“I’m sorry to be the one to tell you,” he said.
Her bottom lip quivered. He shouldn’t have sprung this on her here. There was a time and a place to tell your ex-girlfriend that her dickhead boyfriend was dead, and this wasn’t it.
“I haven’t spoken to him in months,” Cat said. “June? Earlier, maybe. I don’t know. We didn’t see each other around the West Wing too often—Corey keeps the press corps on a pretty tight leash to prevent anyone from leaking real news to us. I just . . . I can’t believe it. I would have heard if something happened to him. Are you sure?”
Jimmie nodded.
“How did he die?” she asked.
He shook his head. “He last signed in to the White House on Independence Day. I have reason to believe that was also the day he died. I can’t say more now . . . but could you just meet me tonight? Or even after this event. Maybe we could grab a drink.”
She was quiet for a long time.
Finally, she said, “Did they give you his old office? He didn’t . . . leave anything behind, did he?”
“Like . . .”
“Like, duh, nudes,” she said.
“You let him take nude pictures of you?”
“We got one of those instant cameras and took some glamour shots in the vice president’s office. Biden left behind his beanbag chair, where we—” She paused. “You know what, let’s just meet Friday. I need a few days to process this. It’s just . . . I can’t believe it.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Oh, and another thing, before you even ask,” she said. “I’m not going to sleep with you.”
“That’s good, because I wasn’t going to ask,” he said.
Cat disappeared into a row toward the back, and Jimmie took a seat up front.
She suspected he wanted to sleep with her. Ha! Part of him did—that part—but he had another, more pressing motive, one that he would spring on her over dinner. He needed her help.
Jimmie had three solid suspects for Lester’s murder. If he could establish a prior relationship between Lester and one of them, he would save some time. That would help narrow his investigation—and possibly keep him alive, if he could sort out friends from foes inside La Casa Blanca.
Figuring out the whodunit was only step one. For step two, he needed a platform. With the FCC’s ruling on net neutrality limiting the reach of small blogs, he couldn’t just publish this story—no matter how big—by himself online and expect traction. The Cigar Aficionado editor had stopped returning his e-mails. With his name still blackballed across the industry, selling an exclusive to the Daily Blabber was his only hope. And this time, he wouldn’t get slapped with a lawsuit. He’d get slapped with a Pulitzer. Then, and only then, would he ask to sleep with her. If she said yes, he might actually do it, too.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Prince of Whales
“Pee-wee Paul Ryan says the lawmaking process in this country is broken, and for once I agree with him,” Trump said. “Maybe we should do things a little more like our good friend Russia. What is it you do over there, Vlad? You write it down and hand it to a bird, right?”
Putin, seated beside the president, nodded. “Is owl.”
“That’s right,” Trump continued. “You write the law down—say, no more abortions after the fourth trimester—hand it to the owl, and send the owl out into a snowstorm. If it stops snowing within twenty-four hours, the bill becomes law. If not, you just try again, I guess?”
“We have many owl,” Putin said with a tight-lipped smile.
The president was just over ten minutes into his remarks, but already Jimmie’s mind was wandering. He looked down at his open notebook. He hadn’t taken a single note so far during the event, unless you counted the sketch of the first family’s wiener dog. It had shown up, humped the leg of a Secret Service agent for three minutes, and then chased off after a squirrel into the Rose Garden. Opulence was probably humping the poor squirrel right now.
“I’m issuing all these executive orders, but there’s no funding for any of them. They’d just sit there if I didn’t find creative ways to fund them. Whoever thought about opening a Chase business card for the United States before? I was the first to do it. We’re getting a very, very good rate, too. Plus Amazon rewards!
“Unfortunately,” Trump continued, “there’s this little document called the Constitution—”
A chorus of boos momentarily drowned Trump out.
“Settle down, settle down,” he said, raising his voice. “The Founding Fathers can’t hear you—they’re dead! What do they care if the entire legislative branch is a joke?
“The pressure’s on Congress now. I shouldn’t have to go begging to them every time I want a few billion bucks or want to declare war on a bunch of tea-drinking pansies. If they don’t give me the authority I want, maybe I’ll just give it to myself. What do you think?”
Cheers from the audience. Jimmie glanced around to see who among the press corps was cheering—turned out, nobody. It appeared Trump had filled in the empty seats with ringers outfitted in Trump gear. One woman three rows behind Jimmie was wearing a shirt with a cartoon drawing of Prince Charles and several rather robust women, with the caption “PRINCE OF WHALES.”
“The new process—and this could change—is that I’ll write the bills myself and sign them. Then I’ll hand them to my bald eagle courier, who will fly them to Massachusetts, where a Mayflower descendent will seal them into law by chiseling them into the Plymouth Rock. If that doesn’t work out for whatever reason, we can always—”
“BEAR!”
Jimmie craned his neck around to see who’d interrupted the president. People were standing, row by row, and exiting in a panic. They were being split down the middle, like a parting sea. All hell was breaking loose in slow motion.
“Bear?” Trump said. “No, we’re going to use an eagle—”
Jimmie heard the great beast before he saw it. The creature’s deep, bass growl rumbled across the green, like thunder across the Midwest plains of Jimmie’s youth. The hairs on the back of his neck stood at attention, even as he was frozen in place.
“What in the hell is going on out there? I’m not finished!” Trump yelled into the microphone. “I’m not finished!”
Trump’s demand fell on deaf ears. People were fleeing the seating gallery haphazardly, tipping their folding chairs over. Cat ran past Jimmie on her way back into the White House, where everyone seemed to be headed for cover.
That’s when Jimmie finally saw the animal cutting its way through the middle of the crowd.
It was no bear.
It was a giant panda.
Which was technically a bear, Jimmie supposed.
He also recognized this one: Mei Xiang, the adult female from the National Zoo. Not only had she survived Trump and Putin’s hunt, but she’d escaped! Maybe they’d released the animals from their cages and made the hunt a little more sporting than Jimmie had first thought.
The panda batted chairs to the left and to the right with its massive tree-trunk arms, roaring all the while. Its dark eyes blended into the black patches of fur that
encircled them, but Jimmie was sure he could see more than a flicker of rage in them. This creature was out for blood. This creature was out for revenge.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Mei Xiang’s Revenge
When the panda was fifteen yards away, Jimmie’s fight-or-flight instinct finally kicked in. He crouched low and dashed to the edge of the seated area just as a chair flew over his head. Thankfully for Jimmie, the panda was of a single mind. It may not have been moving fast, but there was a deliberateness to its path of destruction. The panda was headed straight for the president of the United States and his entourage.
Although Trump had finally given up on his speech, he refused to yield the podium. “I’m not letting some Chinese push me around!” he shouted.
A phalanx of Secret Service agents formed a semicircle around the president, weapons drawn. They were decked out in black suits that had to be hot as hell on a day like this under the sun. They were probably a bit tougher than Jimmie and not likely to complain like he would about such things. That was why they were guarding the president and Jimmie was watching helplessly from the literal sidelines.
They didn’t fire at the panda. There were too many civilians behind the creature, standing around with their phones raised. Like Jimmie, they’d seen that the interloper wasn’t just randomly attacking people. It was heading straight for a single target. So out came their phones to Periscope and YouTube and SnatchCatch it to the world.
Vladimir Putin emerged from the shield of Secret Service agents with a shotgun. Where he’d picked up a shotgun was anyone’s guess, but he had one.
“Stand down, Americans,” Putin hissed. “This is between me and woman bear.”
Upon seeing Putin’s receding hairline, the giant panda charged forward at full speed. Jimmie had only seen pandas sitting around in zoos, napping and occasionally eating shoots and leaves. He’d never seen a panda drop to all fours and go from zero to sixty in two seconds.
Before Putin could raise the barrel of the shotgun, the panda hit him like a semi plowing into a Smart electric car.
The shotgun went flying as Putin was slammed into the ground. The giant panda rolled him over onto his stomach to assume a more dominant position. Then the beast pawed at his back, ripping Putin’s shirt clean off. The sow raked its massive claws across the Russian’s exposed flesh, drawing blood.
The Secret Service agents exchanged glances with each other, unsure whether to intervene.
Trump held up a hand, as if to say, Let the fight go on.
The panda put one paw on the back of Putin’s skull and pressed down with all its weight. A great cry of anguish issued forth from beneath the beast. Jimmie flinched. The Russian president was being crushed to death live on social media. This was certainly a first in the digital realm.
Putin struggled to get out from under the panda, but it was useless. The sow had to weigh at least two tons. That was a lot of shoots and leaves.
After another minute, Putin’s arms and legs stopped twitching.
The panda stood on its hind legs and roared in victory.
Jimmie saw that Putin still had some fight left in him, however. The Russian president inched his hand down the side of his leg, where he found a six-inch bowie knife hidden underneath his dress pants.
The panda didn’t look down until it was too late. Putin rolled over onto his back (or what was left of it) and hopped to a standing position. It was a feat of athletic prowess that Jimmie had only seen before on the WWE. The panda cocked its head in confusion at the shirtless, bloodied man attempting to stand toe-to-toe with it. Despite Putin’s impressive stature, the panda towered several feet over him.
Before the panda could react, the Russian president ran the knife up through the bear’s ribs and straight into its heart.
The panda staggered backward on its hind legs, with the handle of the knife sticking out of its chest. It flailed its arms about and howled in pain. It took a few more ragged breaths before stumbling forward, right on top of the man who had struck it down. Two tons of dead weight fell on Putin, crumpling him like he was an empty can of Trump Cola.
Excerpt From the Trump/Dorset Sessions
July 1, 2018, 7:49 AM
Dorset: The race for the White House was a wild one. On the Republican side, you battled it out with more than a dozen other serious contenders—
Trump: I would hardly call them “serious.” There was only ever one serious candidate for the Republican nomination. His name was Donald J. Trump.
Dorset: You certainly garnered the majority of votes. Still, Ted Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, gave you a run for your money late in the campaign.
Trump: Lying Ted Cruz? Don’t get me started on that guy. We all saw what happened to him in the end. Terribly sad. I knew he was a liar. I take no pleasure in being right about him, you know. I wish he’d been caught sooner, but he’s behind bars now.
Dorset: I’d like to ask you about that. After you were sworn in, one of your first actions was to have the FBI reopen the Zodiac Killer case. Within a matter of weeks, they had arrested a suspect in the series of grisly killings that took place in California during the late sixties and early seventies: Ted Cruz.
Trump: Brilliant work by the FBI.
Dorset: The Zodiac Killer’s first confirmed murder, a double homicide in Solano County, was in December of 1968. Ted Cruz was born in Calgary in December of 1970.
Trump: Being born in Canada doesn’t preclude someone from being a serial killer. It does preclude them from being president of the United States of America, but that’s another story entirely.
Dorset: I’m asking if it makes any sense that he’s the Zodiac Killer, given that all five of the murders law enforcement attributed to him occurred before he was even born.
Trump: Ask the jury. I wasn’t in the courtroom. I didn’t see the evidence.
Dorset: You really believe a jury could legitimately convict somebody for murders that couldn’t be committed without a time machine?
Trump: I have faith in our justice system. Answer me this: Since Lying Ted Cruz has been locked up, has there been another Zodiac Killer murder? No, there hasn’t. I rest my case.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Chapter Thirty-Five
Thursday, Don’t Even Start
Thursday was declared a day of national mourning for President Putin. Trump excused all White House employees for the day so everyone could honor the late Russian president’s memory in their own way.
As Putin’s body was flown home to Russia, Jimmie hit up the Leonardo DiCaprio triple feature at the nearby megaplex. Putin had once described the actor as a muzhik. A “real man.” It was only fitting that both Putin and DiCaprio had gone out fighting bears—Putin at the White House and DiCaprio while filming The Revenant 2’s impressive live-grizzly attack scene (shot in one take, for which DiCaprio picked up a much-deserved posthumous Oscar).
It was while watching DiCaprio get torn apart by the pack of thirty-two hungry grizzlies that Jimmie finally concluded there was no way Putin could have had anything to do with Lester Dorset’s death. The Russian president had gone down fighting a two-ton panda. Putin was a real man. It was utterly inconceivable that he would murder a reporter by pushing him from a roof in the middle of the night. That wasn’t the way of the muzhik. Lester Dorset’s killer was still out there. One suspect down . . . two to go.
Excerpt From the Trump/Dorset Sessions
June 25, 2018, 8:16 AM
Dorset: You had some strong words for Jeb! Bush during the primaries.
Trump: He’s a wimp. He has weak, limp wrists. A tiny voice. Low energy. He might be suffering from a medical condition. Have you heard of this? “Low T”?
Dorset: Low testosterone levels. Some doctors say “low T” is exaggerated as a medical condition—that it’s natural for men’s testosterone levels to drop as we age.
Trump: You know who doesn’t suffer from low testosterone levels? Me, that’s who. My doctor said my leve
ls were off the charts. Literally so high they would need to recalibrate the testing equipment.
Dorset: That sounds potentially dangerous.
Trump: I should find a way to take my excess and bottle it. I could charge a fortune for it. You’d buy it.
Dorset: Uh . . . I don’t know that—
Trump: You’d buy it. Come on. Besides, who would you rather have in the White House? Somebody with too much testosterone or a wimp like Jeb! with too little?
Dorset: I’m not sure if testosterone levels equate to sound governance. We’d have to check to see if any studies have been done.
Trump: You don’t need a study to tell you that it takes “high T” to do what I do. It takes a pair of big balls to be commander in chief. When Jeb!’s finally drop, he’s welcome to come out of whatever Florida swamp hole he’s been hiding in and come at me like a man. I will fight him any day of the week. Except on Sunday. Sundays are reserved for golf and Game of Thrones.
Dorset: You’ve been almost as critical of Jeb!’s brother, George W. Bush, as you were of Obama.
Trump: The Iraq War was a disaster. How many trillions of dollars did we sink into that waste of time? If we’d gotten some oil out of it, it might have been worth it. How hard is that? Throw some empty jugs in the Humvee. He made the same mistake his father made with Kuwait. To quote The Art of War, “Never get into a land war in Asia.”
Dorset: You’ve been very vocal about the need to “bomb the shit out of ISIS.” The United States’ use of unmanned drones in the Middle East has increased dramatically under your leadership.
Trump: We’re bombing the shit out of them—their training camps, their weapons stockpiles, and so forth. All from the air with our little toy planes. Since I took office, not one American life has been lost overseas.
Dorset: While that’s made you wildly popular with the American people, it’s brought condemnation from some quarters. Drone warfare is still warfare. The Guardian’s George Monbiot has said the US is “fighting a coward’s war.”
The Day of the Donald Page 10
