Bloodland: A Novel (38 page)

He takes out his phone, but wishes he smoked, like his old man – standing there in the street, in a three-piece suit, busy with cigarettes and a lighter.

No questions asked.

*   *   *

Szymanski is tired. He feels like he was awake all night, but he must have slept periodically, five minutes here and there, enough to keep ticking over – micro doses, but never any of the deep stages, the REM, the restorative shit. That’s partly why he steered clear of the coke, which he’ll leave for housekeeping maybe. The weed he smoked some of, but most of it’s still in the bag.

He’ll leave that, too.

He checks out of the hotel at nine thirty.

He carries a canvas holdall with his stuff in it, but not a lot of time passes before he’s thinking about discarding it somewhere.

The day’s a little warm for the leather jacket he’s wearing, but the M9 fits perfectly in the lower inside pocket, so he needs it.

What has he got in the bag anyway? A couple of changes, toiletries, minor personal items. Nothing he couldn’t replace in a few minutes at a J. Crew and a Duane Reade. That was always the Gideon way, travel light, no excess baggage, leave it all behind you – including family, girlfriends, bosses, shitty jobs, whatever.

They didn’t have room, and weren’t interested.

Passing a construction site he tosses his bag into a dumpster.

There, gone, along with everything else.

But really this particular everything else –
his
everything else – he tossed a long time ago, when he signed up with Gideon in the first place.

Szymanski gets onto Fifth Avenue and starts walking north.

So that’s not what this is about, being unable, or unwilling, to go home to C-town – it’s about being unable to go back to work.

Unpaid leave.

Effective immediately.

That’s all he had left and now it’s been taken from him, and even if they’d acted differently, if they’d kept him on, it was all shot to shit anyway, as far as he was concerned, after what happened.

Ray Kroner.

Those people, the women and kids, the man at the wall.

What were their names? At least Ray had a name.
And
he got a body bag.

More than they got.

Szymanski turns right at Fifty-eighth Street. It’s a few blocks over.

He wonders about Ray’s family, out there in Phoenix, about what kind of an explanation they got, if any, and about the other families, the ones back in the DRC, in Buenke.

He knows
they
didn’t get any explanations.

They have to put up with Arnold Kimbela for Christ’s sake, day in, day out.

He slows down.

Man, some of the shit he saw over there, slave labour, systematic torture, systematic
rape
.

Explain
that
.

As he gets close to the hotel, Szymanski slows down even more, to a crawl. There’s security everywhere.

Naturally.

He’s assuming it’s all Gideon – their domestic division, the pussy squad, guys in suits, underarm holsters, earpieces. It’s unlikely that he’ll know any of them, or that they’ll know him. Unless Donald Ribcoff himself is around the place, which he probably will be. The CEO of Gideon is notoriously hands-on, especially when it comes to the high-profile jobs. He was in and out of Buenke all the time. But would he recognise Szymanski? Maybe, maybe not.

What does it fucking matter now, though, right?

Szymanski stands across the street from the hotel.

So this is it? He presses a hand against the gun in his jacket pocket. This is what it all comes down to in the end, the life of a spineless, deceitful bastard with a propensity to showboat on TV, who if he hadn’t been there that day, and hadn’t lied about it afterwards …

Szymanski finds the air around where he’s standing suddenly heavy with some local cooking smell. He realises his timing may not be the best, but he can imagine lying down now, there on the sidewalk, drifting off to sleep, falling into a pit of dreams.

He looks around.

People everywhere.

Just what exactly does he think he’s doing?

*   *   *

When Rundle arrives into J.J.’s Manhattan office on Third Avenue he’s surprised to see that Jimmy Vaughan is there, sitting on a couch in the corner shooting the breeze with some of the younger staff members. The idea was that Rundle and J.J. would head over to the Blackwood together, from here, wives in tow. Vaughan would show up whenever he chose – but over
there
, at the Blackwood.

Not here.

Rundle didn’t expect this.

‘Clark,’ J.J. calls from across the room. ‘Where’s Eve?’

Rundle walks towards him. ‘She’s down in the car, waiting.’ He looks at his watch, to reinforce the point. ‘Sally?’

‘She’s over there.’ He indicates another office behind him, door closed. ‘Some issue with her hair.’

A few feet away, in front of a desk, several of the senior staffers, Herb Felder included, appear to be tinkering –
still
tinkering – with J.J.’s speech.

‘We are all of us,’ one of them says, ‘we are each of us.
Fuck
. We are each of us. We are all of us.’

‘Try
we are each of us
,’ Herb Felder says.

‘OK, OK.’ Red pen on paper. ‘OK. Because we are each of us shareholders in this great democracy, we are each of us the bearers of a sacred trust –’

Rundle looks at J.J. ‘Everything under control?’

J.J. nods. ‘Yeah.’ He smiles, something he’s good at. ‘You know what? I think we can nail this thing.’

‘So do I.’ Rundle smiles as well. But his smile has an in-built smirk to it, always had. He glances over in Vaughan’s direction. ‘He thinks so too, apparently.’

J.J. widens his eyes in delight. ‘I
know
. Let’s go over and say hello.’

As they get to the corner, Vaughan looks up. ‘Here he is, the
man
.’

‘Mr Vaughan.’

This is for the benefit of the junior staffers. Clark and J.J. have known Jimmy Vaughan since they were kids. He’s like an uncle to them.

‘You ready for this, Senator?’

Vaughan is sitting at one end of the couch, legs crossed, looking small and slightly frail. But his flashing blue eyes mitigate this impression somewhat, and there’s no question at all about who’s in charge here.

‘Absolutely. Bring it on, that’s what I say.’ J.J. looks around, being inclusive, already working this, the first of the day’s, and the season’s, many rooms.

Sitting next to Vaughan on the couch is a pretty redhead and standing around in a semicircle are three nerdy-looking guys, all of them in their early twenties.

‘So tell me, Senator,’ Vaughan says. ‘I’m curious. Why are you running?’

J.J. laughs. ‘You want to know the truth?’

‘Good Lord, no.’

Everyone laughs.

‘OK then, because I want to make a difference, because I feel that –’

‘Fine, fine, give us the truth.’

More laughter.

‘OK, but you know what? It’s actually the same answer, maybe framed a little differently. Because the
truth
is, I’m tired of the senate. Doesn’t do it for me anymore. Being in the senate these days is all about gridlock and rules and obstructionist bullshit, it’s chasing the money and playing to the base, it’s exhausting commutes, it’s endless press and media and blogging and
tweeting
, Jesus, it’s –’

‘Whoa, take it easy there, bubba.’

‘No, the thing is, I want to be able to
do
stuff. What was it someone once said? It used to be that you spent two years as a senator, two years as a politician and two years as a demagogue. Now you spend the full six as a demagogue. It’s crazy.’

Vaughan nods. ‘Richard Russell.’

‘Right.’

There is a brief silence.

‘So, what are you telling me, that’s your stump speech? Maybe
I
should run.’

More laughter, but this time it’s a little tentative.

Rundle senses J.J. stiffen beside him.

After a moment one of the nerds steps in. ‘Can I ask you, Mr Vaughan, what is it that keeps you going? I read about your work rate somewhere recently, projects you’re still involved in, companies you’ve acquired, it’s awesome.’

‘Fear of death,’ Vaughan says immediately, and smiles. Then he points at the senator. ‘You think his stump speech sucks? Wait till you hear mine. It’s a real downer.’ He waves a hand in the air. ‘No, but seriously, son, seriously. When you get to my age you just want to grab on to the future, you know, you just want to hold it in your two hands and
look
at it. Now the thing is, most folks don’t get the chance to do that, but in my line of work, developing new companies, with new ideas, I sort of can.’

Rundle sneaks a glance at his watch.

‘Let me explain,’ Vaughan goes on – the nerds and the pretty redhead hanging on his every word now. ‘History, right? It’s there, undeniably, you can survey it, and mull over it, from the Pyramids to the Renaissance, from the Nazis to 9/11, it’s all laid out for us. But the future? You can only ever have access to the tiniest, slimmest portion of it. Beyond what’s left of your own life, of whatever few years you’ve got remaining, everything is a blank, right? It’s unreachable. It’s unknowable. And
yet
.’ He raises a finger in the air and wags it. ‘And
yet
. Today, more than at any other time in history, we can guess with some confidence what the future
might
be like. People always used to believe they lived in a time following a golden age, but now it’s the other way around. Now we always feel we live in a time just preceding one. You get me?’

Heads nod vigorously.

Some of J.J.’s other staffers, the senior ones, wander over to listen.

‘Right, now we’re in the infancy stages of various branches of scientific development – biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics, that sort of thing – and since the rate of change in the next hundred years is probably going to equal or even exceed the rate of change in the last hundred, we can be fairly certain that no matter when we die it will be at a time when great advances are
just
about to take place. Which we won’t be around for. Which we’ll miss.’ He pauses. ‘Right? That’s the downer part.’

A ripple of nervous laughter.

Vaughan shifts his weight on the couch, shunts forward a bit. ‘But what
I
think, and what I try to do with some of these companies – and to answer your question – what
I
think is that if we work harder and faster, and redouble our efforts, and push, I mean
what
ever it takes, if we do that, we can get the jump on next season, next year, the next decade.’ He clenches his fist and raises it slightly. ‘If we imagine our way into the future with enough vigour and determination, we can somehow actually arrive there. It’s a bit like that old slogan from the World’s Fair, I remember it as a kid.’ He pauses. ‘
Tomorrow, Now!
’

‘Oh my god,’ the pretty redhead beside him says, hand on chest, clearly unable to help herself, ‘that’s
so
inspiring.’

‘Thank you, my dear.’ Vaughan turns toward her and nods in acknowledgement. ‘Clark there knows what I’m talking about. Right, Clark?’

Rundle is taken by surprise. ‘Sure, Mr Vaughan, yeah. Absolutely.’

At that point, Herb Felder intervenes, tapping his watch.

Minutes later, they’re all downstairs and piling into various cars.

Rundle sees Don Ribcoff on the sidewalk, but there’s no time to talk.

As planned, he and J.J. ride together.

When the car pulls out and joins the flow of traffic, J.J. exhales loudly and says, ‘What the fuck was
that
?’

Rundle turns to him, ‘Look, he’s always been like that. Despite what he says, the old man thinks he’s going to live forever.’ He turns the other way and looks out the window, Third Avenue flitting past, the corner of Fifty-eighth just up ahead. ‘But we know different, right?’

*   *   *

Jimmy glances up and sees what looks like a flotilla of black limousines and SUVs turning onto to Fifty-eighth Street from Third Avenue. He leans back against the railings, almost as though he’s standing to attention, and watches.

Around the entrance to the hotel there is a flurry of activity – positions are taken, equipment is prepped. On either side of the marquee burly guys in suits line up, enough of them to create an effective blockade, with photographers moving around and behind them, dancing like boxers, already pointing, clicking, whirring.

The flotilla moves along the street at a stately pace. It then pulls in and stops, one of the limousines flush with the hotel entrance.

Along the line of vehicles – an SUV, three limos and another SUV, Jimmy can see them clearly now – multiple doors open at once and more burly guys in suits appear, some on the sidewalk, others on the street.

Jimmy steps away from the railings and moves a few paces along to try and see better. But he doesn’t get too close. He’s assuming he’s still under surveillance and doesn’t want to draw attention to himself.

Undue attention.

He doesn’t want to alarm anyone. Not that there aren’t plenty of other people around the place now for them to be worried about.

Passersby, civilians, gawkers.

As the back doors of all three limos are being opened, Jimmy senses a collective, almost gravitational pull, a jolt, like an implosion,
towards
them. This is accompanied by a noticeable increase in the level of clicking and whirring.

From the first car, two ladies appear, in their forties, svelte and elegant. These, Jimmy takes it, are the Rundle wives. From the second car – slightly harder to see now, with the scramble intensifying – the Rundle brothers themselves appear, the senator with the wire brace on his hand and wrist, Clark instantly recognisable from photos in that
Vanity Fair
spread.

They all move from the kerb onto a carpet under the marquee. The pace is leisurely, and Jimmy has the impression that someone from inside the hotel has emerged to greet them. This causes a delay, as there seems to be some handshaking and small talk going on. It’s possible they’re doing this for the benefit of the photographers and camera crews, but Jimmy doesn’t mind, because standing in his direct line of vision at the moment – through an accidental configuration of the crowd, and it surely won’t last – is the only person here this morning he’s interested in seeing, Clark Rundle.