The Day of the Donald

by Andrew Shaffer

  “What the hell did you get us into?” she whispered, thankfully ignoring his wet pants. “You said this had to do with Lester, and then I’m kidnapped by a bunch of activists wearing Cubs hats, and they’re telling me you have some tapes . . . ?”

  His eyes darted from rooftop to rooftop. He knew that he was on thin ice—that this thing wasn’t over. While the president pretended that Jimmie had “led them” to Emma and the SJWs, they both knew that was a lie. If he said the wrong thing, was the Killing Everybody hero standing by to take him out?

  “I don’t have the tapes,” he told Cat.

  “What?” she said.

  “They were destroyed in the shootout.”

  “You made copies, though.”

  He shook his head.

  Her eyes widened. “So this was all for nothing—is that what you’re saying?”

  “It’s not for nothing. I saved you.”

  “The SEALs saved me.”

  He said, “Well, I was just about to save you, when SEAL Team Sixty-Nine kicked in the door and started blowing holes in everything. I wish I’d had the tapes still, but your life is what’s important.”

  “Why did you get me involved in this?”

  “I thought you’d want to know what happened to Lester. I thought you’d want some closure,” he said.

  “Bullshit. There was something in it for you. Let me guess: You needed somewhere to publish whatever was on that recorder’s hard drive, right? And now it’s gone forever because you were too stupid to make a copy.”

  “You’re calling me stupid? You—”

  He paused. He’d never mentioned the recorder to her. The SJWs hadn’t known it was a recorder either—everyone thought the interviews were recorded on cassette tapes. The only ones who knew about the recorder other than Jimmie and the Trumps were Lester and Emma . . . and Lester and Emma were both dead. Had the president enlisted Cat to suss out leaks too? Was he just playing them against each other?

  “You . . . you’re right,” Jimmie said. “I’m stupid. A big dummy.”

  Cat folded her arms. “You finally admit it. Now are you going to explain what’s going on? Give me a clue. You said this had to do with Lester . . .”

  He decided to gamble.

  “I know who killed him.”

  She was silent for a moment. Then she said, “He killed himself.”

  Jackpot. For somebody who hadn’t known her ex-boyfriend was even dead, she seemed to have a very specific idea of how he died. And a very suspicious specific idea, at that.

  Suddenly, Jimmie’s whole world seemed to be crashing down around him. Lewandowski wasn’t the last of the suspects in Lester’s murder—Cat had just added herself to Jimmie’s list. He couldn’t believe how blind he’d been. He’d been so focused on those who’d had rooftop access that he’d overlooked the obvious: The killer didn’t need a badge. Not if Lester had taken them up there. Was Cat the shadow he’d been searching for?

  “I’ll explain everything,” Jimmie said, loud and clear enough for snooping ears to pick up. “But not here. It’s not safe. Meet me tomorrow night at nine. The Lincoln Memorial.”

  “Right out in the open. How is that any safer than on a street corner? Maybe we should meet somewhere more out of the way. Like . . . your room at the Watergate?”

  She gazed up at him. Even after an eighteen-hour kidnapping ordeal, she could still mesmerize him with those big, bold eyes. This time, however, he wasn’t buying what she was selling.

  “It’s been compromised,” Jimmie said. “See you tomorrow. Oh, and another thing? Try to be a doll and not get kidnapped this time.”

  She swung a hand at him, but he grabbed her wrist before she could slap him across the face.

  “Still an asshole,” she muttered, struggling free.

  To the casual observer, Jimmie’s comment about getting kidnapped would have sounded like an impossibly cruel thing to say. But he’d said it to provoke a reaction out of her, and damned if she hadn’t responded as expected.

  Besides, Jimmie wasn’t expecting casual observers to overhear him. He was expecting trained ears to be listening in to their conversation. Not only was he expecting it, but he was counting on it. Sometimes, to catch a rat, you had to use a Cat as bait.

  Chapter Sixty

  Lucifer in the Flesh

  “You really sure you want to do this?” Darrell Riley asked. The six-foot-six man with the Texas drawl was the warden at the Pit, a for-profit, maximum-security prison on a sprawling patch of land in Dulles County, Virginia.

  “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be,” Jimmie Bernwood said.

  “Shit, I wouldn’t be either,” Riley said, holding his palm up to a security sensor.

  A door straight out of Star Trek opened for them, and they entered the Pit’s solitary confinement wing.

  Jimmie’s visitor badge identified him as “Barry Oliver.” An FBI agent. He’d called in some old favors—the last favors he had in his debit account—and set up an appointment Sunday morning to see one of the prison’s highest-profile prisoners. Jimmie was already waist-deep in shit . . . why not dunk his head all the way under?

  “You really think this guy has any information on your killer?” Riley asked as they walked down a long, barren corridor.

  “Doubtful.”

  Riley screeched to a halt. “Then why are we down here on a Sunday morning? I could be at church right now.”

  “And I could be tailgating in the parking lot at the Washington Palefaces game,” Jimmie said. “It’s still the preseason, but at least the beer’s real even if the football ain’t. Unfortunately, another body turned up last night along the turnpike. Same markings as before. Second one this month.”

  “I haven’t heard about any of this on the news.”

  That’s because none of it is true, you nincompoop.

  “We’ve managed to keep it out of the news,” Jimmie said. “People would freak out if they knew somebody was out there re-creating the Zodiac killings right down to the last detail.”

  Two armed guards stood alert outside the cell door and backed away to give Riley room to use his palm to gain access. The security here was tighter than at the White House.

  Jimmie flipped absentmindedly through his file folder, which was stuffed with printouts of the original Zodiac killing victims.

  “He may not have information about this new killer, but we believe he’s the only one who can help us get in the mind of the killer,” Jimmie said.

  The door slid open. A long walkway led directly to a glass cage measuring twenty feet on all sides. The shirtless prisoner was facing away in the other direction, but Jimmie could see that his upper body was bursting with tattooed muscle. There was a mattress on the floor of the cage and a bedpan, but nothing else. It reminded Jimmie of the time he’d caught a praying mantis as a kid. He’d placed the insect inside an old fishbowl with a few blades of grass. It had died after three days.

  “There he is,” Riley said. “Rafael Edward Cruz. ‘Ted,’ to his friends—if you can find any.”

  Jimmie laughed, because he thought that was what the warden expected of him.

  “There’s nothing funny about a man who’s killed as many innocent people as Cruz has,” Riley snapped.

  “Sorry, you work with sick sons of bitches day in, day out, you tend to get a twisted sense of humor, you know what I mean?”

  Riley shook his head. “Just get on with it so we can both get home before the game starts.”

  Jimmie started toward the cage. The pathway wasn’t simply a pathway—it was a bridge. On either side, it dropped off into an infinite darkness. So this was why they called it the Pit. Somewhere in the building, he guessed there was also a pendulum. Edgar Allan Poe had once lived in Virginia, so it made sense. In an insane way.

  He stopped. Riley wasn’t following him. “You’re not coming?”

  “This is as close as I get to that monster,” the warden shouted from the doorway. “I’ll be right on the other s
ide of the door. If you need help . . . shout. Not that it will do you any good.”

  “He can’t get out, can he?”

  “Theoretically, no. But they also said he couldn’t be the Zodiac Killer because he was born two years after the killings began—and look how wrong they were.”

  Jimmie nodded. Before he reached the glass cage, he heard the door close behind him. He was all alone with the man authorities believed to be one of the most prolific and vicious serial killers in history. The man whose presidential aspirations Jimmie had personally destroyed with a two-hour-plus sex tape. The man who had every reason in the world to want revenge on him. Would several inches of industrial-strength glass be enough to hold Ted Cruz back?

  “Mr. Bernwood,” Cruz said without turning around. “What an unpleasant surprise.” And his thin, ghoulish giggling filled the room.

  Chapter Sixty-One

  As Big as It Gets

  “You must have me confused with somebody else,” Jimmie said, standing close to the glass. The smell of sulfur drifted through the tiny holes drilled at intervals along the glass wall. “I’m Larry Oliver, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation—”

  “Your badge says Barry Oliver,” Cruz said, still facing away from him.

  “‘Larry’ is short for ‘Barry,’” Jimmie said.

  “Drop the act. You may have fooled the warden, but you haven’t fooled everybody at this facility. You wouldn’t have made it this far unless I let you. I’ve had the cameras turned off for the occasion. Nobody’s watching . . .”

  Which meant that nobody could save Jimmie should Cruz attack him. He took a step back from the glass.

  “I never got a chance to thank you, Mr. Bernwood.”

  “Thank me?”

  “Oh, did I say thank you? I meant kill you. I never got a chance to kill you.”

  “I’m not here to dredge up old grudges,” Jimmie said.

  Cruz spun around and with lightning quickness was at the glass. “I get to say when the hatchet is buried,” he hissed. “Not you.”

  Up close, Cruz was less Grandpa Munster and more Grandpa Monster. Prison had hardened him almost beyond recognition. The prison tattoos covering his body told a tale—the tale of a man who’d gone off the deep end. LUCIFER was writ large in gangsta lettering across his chiseled abs; SAM I AM wrapped around his neck. Perhaps more worrying, however, was how prison had reshaped his face. The lines around his eyes were deep and pronounced. He looked like he hadn’t slept since they’d thrown him in this cage—either because they never turned the overhead lights off or because he was just that stone-cold of a badass now.

  “I need your help,” Jimmie said.

  “There is no copycat killer, is there?” Cruz said. “What’s the real reason you’re here?”

  “It has to do with Trump.”

  The color drained from Cruz’s face.

  “That’s right,” Jimmie said. “The man who put you in this hellhole. You remember Trump?”

  Cruz clawed at his ears. “Stop saying that name! Stop saying that name!”

  “It was Trump who did this to you, not me. Trump.”

  Cruz banged a fist on the glass.

  Jimmie stood his ground.

  “You might have been able to get back in the race if not for the sex-tape scandal,” Jimmie said. “People expected you to stick around until the bitter end. They liked you because you were spiteful and delusional. Who knows? If that tape hadn’t come out, you might even have beaten him on the second or third ballot at the convention. Not necessarily—anything can happen in American politics, or so I’ve been told—but you had a chance. Instead, someone in his camp leaked it, and . . . you know the rest.”

  Cruz crumpled to the ground. He curled into a ball, shaking and making a sound like a whoopee cushion with asthma.

  Jimmie pushed on. “I’m sorry about the role I played in it, but now I need your help. The country needs your help.”

  “They framed me,” Cruz said between sobs.

  “I know. There’s no way you could have committed the Zodiac killings.”

  “Trump framed me.”

  “That’s right,” Jimmie said. “President Trump framed you.”

  Ted Cruz got to his feet. He wiped the tears from his cheeks. “What do you need from me? An interview for a story?”

  Jimmie shook his head. “This is bigger than just a story,” he said, opening the file and removing the paper clip from the printouts. “This is as big as it gets.”

  As Jimmie explained to Cruz what he would need him to do, the convicted murderer’s eyes grew wider, and giggles escaped his throat at odd intervals. The man was clearly delirious. At various points, Jimmie could almost see Ted Cruz as a serial-killing lunatic.

  Good. For what Jimmie needed him for, he’d have to play the part. For what Jimmie needed him for, Ted Cruz was going to have to be the killer the world thought that he was.

  Excerpt From the Trump/Dorset Sessions

  July 2, 2018, 3:36 PM

  Dorset: You’re a big proponent of the Second Amendment and the rights of gun owners in general. Are you carrying a firearm right now?

  Trump: I have a concealed-carry permit, but if I were to answer your question in the negative, it might embolden my enemies. If I answer in the affirmative, it would probably piss off the Secret Service. It’s a no-win. I’d rather keep everyone guessing. Let’s just say I’m not happy to see you.

  Dorset: Has the Secret Service told you not to carry a gun?

  Trump: There’s nothing in the Constitution forbidding the president from carrying a gun. I could carry a bazooka if I wanted to. But you know how people get—they think you’re stepping on their toes. It’s their job to protect the president. If I can defend myself, there goes their livelihood. They’d be more comfortable with a wimp like Obama.

  Dorset: Can we talk about President Obama for a couple of minutes?

  Trump: Two minutes. I’m not wasting more time than I have to on that clown.

  Dorset: In 2011, you became the public face of the so-called birther movement. You questioned whether the president was actually born in the United States and thus eligible to be commander in chief. President Obama eventually released the long-form version of his Hawaiian birth certificate to quell the flames. In the days and months that followed, did you ever regret raising the issue?

  Trump: First off, I reject the term “birther.” It’s derogatory. It just sounds icky, like childbirth. And secondly, I’m still very proud of what I was able to accomplish. As a private citizen of the United States, I successfully petitioned the president. I did what no one else could do. The White House produced his birth certificate, which looked very realistic, I’ll give them that. The media bought it, at least.

  Dorset: You never did—one of your first acts as president was to revoke his US citizenship. You deported him and his family to Hawaii.

  Trump: That’s correct.

  Dorset: You do know that Hawaii is within the United States, right?

  Trump: Your hundred and twenty seconds are up.

  Sunday, September 2, 2018

  Chapter Sixty-Two

  The Series Finale

  Jimmie had never seen the Lincoln Memorial at night before. The famous statue of Lincoln seated like Captain Picard in his captain’s chair was brilliantly lit from all sides. The stone columns supporting the ceiling cast majestic shadows across the wide cement staircase where Jimmie stood. He’d chosen to meet Cat here because it was the one place in the city Trump hadn’t fingered with his Midas touch. Lincoln was the lone president that Trump was on record as admiring—because, as Trump once said, “He’s the greatest vampire hunter our country has ever seen.”

  But Jimmie wasn’t here to admire the unmolested monument. If everything went according to plan, there’d be time for admiration later.

  “Where is everybody?” Cat asked, approaching from the south. She was walking with purpose. She wanted to get this over with as fast as possible.

&nbs
p; That made two of them.

  Jimmie rose to greet her. “It’s nine o’clock on the Sunday night before Labor Day,” he said. “They’re all at home watching the Game of Thrones series finale. Even G. R. R. Martin is watching to see how it ends.”

  “I never understood that fantasy shit,” Cat said, keeping a few feet between them. That was fine by Jimmie—he had no interest in being smacked again or thrown to the ground.

  “I don’t watch it either. I’m still on season two of The Wire,” he said. “I’m, like, five premium cable series behind.”

  His choice of date and time had been deliberate. Once night had fallen, the Memorial and the adjoining National Mall had cleared out. An eerie calm had come over DC . . . an eerie calm that would soon be shattered.

  “You said you know who killed Lester,” Cat said. “But that’s impossible. He committed suicide. He jumped off the roof of the White House. His body was found in the Rose Garden.”

  “You said before that his death was news to you,” Jimmie said.

  “I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

  “So why didn’t you write about his death, then?” Jimmie said.

  “You know as well as I do that this is a click-driven business.”

  “So you didn’t even investigate it? He was your boyfriend.”

  “Was my boyfriend. Remember that I’m a member of the White House press corps. I’m not paid to investigate,” Cat said. “Besides, ‘Old-School News Reporter Kills Self at White House’ isn’t exactly going to garner many views.”

  “Let the people make that decision,” Jimmie said.

  She shook her head. “The people did decide—years and years ago. Before the advent of blogging, before the advent of the Internet. There’s maybe some political intrigue there. Maybe. But it’s miniscule. Bottom line is reporters aren’t celebrities. Nobody cares when they drop dead.” Cat pulled a snub-nosed revolver from her handbag. “That’s why nobody’s going to care when you’re found facedown in the Reflecting Pool, drowned.”