Power Blind (34 page)
Authors: Steven Gore
C
asey slid along the right wall until he got close enough to see whether Boots was still alive, then reached down and took the gun from the dead man's hand.
Gage didn't give Anston a second look. He'd seen where the slug struck his forehead. He ran to where Viz lay shielding Socorro. Blood soaked through the upper right back of his shirt.
Viz rolled over and stared up at Gage. “Is she okay?”
Gage dropped to his knees between them. Socorro was lying on her right side, still bound to the chair, her face bruised and bloody. She nodded.
“She'll be okay. Hang in there.”
Gage saw blood pooling by Viz's shoulder. He ripped open Viz's shirt, then reached around and pressed his palm against the open wound.
“Man, I never thought I'd die like this,” Viz said, looking up at Gage. “It's too soon . . . I've got . . . I've got things . . .”
Gage locked his eyes on Viz's.
“You're gonna make it. You need to trust me. If you weren't, I'd say so. I wouldn't take that away from you.”
T
his is Graham.”
“Let me turn it down,” Spike Pacheco said.
Gage heard television voices fade in the background.
“I guess you just saw Landon on TV, too,” Spike said.
Gage's world mushroomed outward from the carnage lying before him.
“Graham,” Spike finally said, “you still there?”
“Yeah. I'm at Gilbert and Brannan. I just called 911 for an ambulance. You better get over here before your whole department shows up.”
S
pike shook his head as he surveyed the bodies of Anston and Boots. It wasn't the worst crime scene he'd been called to, but it was the only one that ever had a federal judge curled up in a corner, rocking back and forth like an infant.
“I'm not sure I can contain this,” Spike said. “The media listens to our 911 dispatcher.”
“Just try to keep things muffled,” Gage said, “at least until seven o'clock tomorrow morning.”
“Then what?”
“Speculate your ass off.”
“What about Viz and the bruises on Socorro? How are you going to explain all that at SF Medical?”
“Casey knows what he needs to do. He'll think of something by the time the ambulance gets them there.”
G
age turned on his cell phone and checked for messages as the United Airlines red-eye from San Francisco set down on the runway at Dulles International Airport at ten o'clock the next morning. He scrolled through the texts until he found one from Faith reassuring him that Viz and Socorro would be all right. He then activated the CNN Internet site. A reporter stood in front of the Gilbert Street warehouse, a microphone in his left hand and an open notebook in the other. The camera panned up toward the “For Sale” sign, then down again to the reporter.
“Details are scarce and the crime scene is still being sorted out, but the story we're getting is terrifying. Apparently, Judge Brandon Meyer, the brother of presidential hopeful Landon Meyer, went with an ex-law partner, Marc Anston, and another investor to scout a possible site for a live-work loft development. Judge Meyer was spotted by a disgraced and deranged ex-DEA agent named Boots Marnin who pursued them into the warehouse. By chance, FBI special agent Joe Casey was in the area on an assignment when he noticed Marnin following Judge Meyer. It's still unclear what happened inside, but the result was that Anston and Marnin now lie dead and Judge Meyer has been taken to SF Medical for what they're calling observation.”
“Does that mean medical observation?”
“They didn't say. But one source claims he had some sort of mental breakdown.”
“I understand Judge Meyer and Special Agent Casey had a recent conflict.”
“Yes, Bob. The irony is overwhelming. Just a few days ago, in open court, Judge Meyer all but accused Casey of perjury in the OptiCom trade secrets case.”
G
age climbed into the black Escalade to find Senator Landon Meyer sitting on the rear bench seat. The tinted windows shrouded the interior in near darkness. Gage sat down next to him.
As the SUV pulled away from the curb, Landon asked, “Were you there?”
Gage recounted the battle.
“And Brandon?”
“He'll recover, but he'll never walk out of federal prison.”
“That bad?”
“That bad.”
T
wo hours later, Gage removed Charlie Palmer's DVD from his laptop, closed the spreadsheets Alex Z had copied from Brandon's computer, and flipped down the screen. The click echoed in Meyer's Senate office.
Landon's face was gray. He gripped the arms of his chair to rise, then stopped as though afraid his legs would give out. He lowered his hands to his lap and exhaled.
“I know Palmer and Anston didn't talk about my first campaign on the video,” Landon finally said, “but you don't think Anston was behind the killing of those poor children in Compton?”
Gage shook his head. “He just paid off some community leaders to sound like they were reversing their stand on the death penalty. He used Pegasus to funnel the money, like with the fake jihadist contribution.”
Landon leaned forward in his chair, then hung his head.
“So every election was tainted . . . every single one.”
Gage didn't interrupt the silence that followed, and didn't have an answer to the question that would surely come next.
Landon looked up, his face nearly bloodless, his fists clenched, his whole body rigid.
“Tell me . . . please God tell me they didn't kill Ed Lightfoot.”
S
ince Watergate,” Landon told Gage, “everybody says follow the money and you'll find the source of the corruption. But it's not that simple.”
It was an hour before the press conference. Landon had met briefly with his staff and sent them away to make the arrangements.
“I remember when I was young and heard my father railing about the links among organized crime and the Teamsters and Longshoremen's unions and the Democrats and asked myself how politicians could've let that happen to themselves. What were they thinking? How could they have been so self-deceiving? Now I know.”
Landon opened his lower left desk drawer and withdrew a humidor of Cuban Cohiba cigars. He opened the box, selected one, and held it up.
“You know where I got these?”
Gage didn't answer.
“The vice president.” Landon paused, then added, “of the United States,” a reminder of the decades-old U.S. trade embargo.
Landon reached into the drawer again, withdrew a half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey, and set it next to the box.
“You know what's wrong with the phrase âfollow the money'?” Landon unwrapped the plastic cigar casing. “I'll tell you what's wrong. It's no secret where the money comes from. Everybody knows from where and what it does.” He looked over at Gage, and then said, “Remember years ago I wondered aloud why Americans had stopped reading James Fenimore Cooper?”
Gage nodded. It had been during a late night talk, up at his cabin. Landon pacing, struggling to understand the country and his place in it.
“It was because of a line of his that had stuck with me since college. He said it âwas the proper business of government to resist the corruptions of money, not to depend on them.' Now I know why we turned away from him. It was too much like looking into a mirror that revealed all our hypocrisies and self-deceptions.”
Landon slipped the end of the cigar into a miniature spring-loaded guillotine and snipped it off.
“Picture this. Early May, late evening, sitting on the porch of the vice president's mansion. Me, him, and the head of the energy lobby, drinking Scotch and sucking on Cohibas. Male bonding. That's what my wife calls it. But this wasn't playing football in the park or catching bass on Lake Okeechobee or guzzling beer over boiled crayfish.”
Landon paused, glanced around his office, and then asked himself aloud, “Where am I going with this?” He ran the cigar under his nose, drawing in the aroma. “Following the money.
“Three little criminals sucking on Cohibas. Federal criminals at that.” He pointed at Gage. “I know what you're wondering. You're an investigator. You're wondering where the vice president got the criminal cigars.” Landon smiled. “From the lobbyist, of course.” He gestured again, not pointing, simply punctuating. “And where did the lobbyist get them? From the president of Hudson Wire and Cable. And where did president of Hudson Wire and Cable get them? At a meeting in Barbados with the managing director of Hudson's Cayman Island subsidiary that installed the electrical infrastructure for thirty-four hotels that were built on Varadero Beach in Cuba. And where did the managing director get them? From Fidel Castro's brother's son's sister-in-law's cousin who supervises the entire construction project.
“So there we were sitting on the back porch . . .” Landon paused, then clucked. “In case you're wondering, the sister-in-law's father is the leader of the largest anti-Castro group in Florida.”
Landon rose, walked to the window, and gazed over Washington. “Given this introduction, you're no doubt imagining the lobbyist met with us to push for lifting the embargo. Not at all. And it's not because he supports it. It's simply irrelevant. Anti-Castro Cubans in the U.S. are no more than a bloc of votes to be delivered to politiciansâon both sides of the aisleâwho vote the right way on other matters.
“Hudson Wire and Cable makes tens of millions a year in Cuba, embargo or not. And one of those millions found its way into a political action committee backing me, and part of it has been set aside to get out the anti-Castro Cuban vote in Florida.”
Landon spun toward Gage.
“You think Hudson Wire and Cable ever gave a damn about how many political opponents Castro imprisoned and executed over the years? Or how many innocent Chechens Putin murdered or Egyptian protesters Mubarak shot down in the street? Or Suharto's genocide in East Timor? Not a bit. As long as Hudson is free to pursue its interests in Cuba and Russia and Indonesia, it doesn't care. And people like me who took their money didn't choose to think about it.”
Landon picked at a fingernail.
“But let's face it. The deaths of innocents are like fertilizer. Take China. Our Internet hardware manufacturers overlook political repression in order to sell them routers. Routers open the Chinese to the Internet. The Internet opens their eyes to freedom of speech and democracy.”
Gage pointed at Landon. “You're starting to sound like Anston.”
“That's exactly the problem, except Anston didn't believe in democracy, only in fertilizer.”
Landon paused, then a half smile appeared on his face.
“There's a certain irony in all of this I didn't grasp until now. Brandon used to think of himself as my Machiavelli. What he didn't realize was that Machiavelli believed the first act of a newly formed republic was sacrificial. It must murder the princeâand I suspect it's something Anston never doubted.”
Landon's eyes focused on the bookshelf behind Gage. “You know what St. Augustine says about original sin?” He looked back at Gage, but didn't wait for an answer. “He calls it an inescapable blindness in human action. We never really know what we're doing. And by âwe' I mean all of us. It's not just Republicans or Democrats. We're all coconspirators in our own self-deceptions. We create the most powerful industrial nation on earth, but only by funding oil-producing governments that want to destroy us. And then once in a while we wake up, have a moment of terrifying clarity, then run from it or go back to sleep pretending it was just a nightmare.” He hung his head. “Worst of all, when we most think we're our own men, we're really just someone else's puppets.”
Landon inspected the cigar in his hand as if he'd never seen it before, then threw it into the wastebasket next to his credenza.
“In all these years since you gave me Augustine's
Confessions,
it never crossed my mind he was talking about me.”
Landon dropped back into his chair, his arms limp in his lap. His eyes went vacant and inward for a moment, then he squinted as though searching for something far in the past. He finally focused on Gage.
“You always knew how all this would end, didn't you?”
Gage shook his head, He hadn't known. He had no way of knowing. And he was certain that in his heart Landon didn't believe Gage knew. It was just that the floundering man still needed to believe that there was such a thing as perfect knowledgeâboth insight and foresightâwith which he could have armed himself against the tragedy that now enveloped him.
“Maybe not specifically,” Landon continued. ”Maybe you couldn't have foreseen where I am now, but from that first day on the river, you saw the hazards below the surface”âhe lowered his gazeâ“and all I really saw was my own reflection.”
S
enator Landon Meyer paused at the threshold of the Senate Radio-Television Gallery, just out of sight of the video cameras focused on the door. He looked over at Gage.
“You know where I am in the New Hampshire polls?” Landon asked.
“Does it make a difference?” Gage asked.
Landon shook his head. “Turns out it never did.”
He then stepped through the doorway into the floodlights. In three strong steps he stood behind the podium. He scanned the familiar faces before him, the sources of thousands of questions over nearly two decades. While they were always dis-satisfied with his politically polished answers, he was always forgiven because of his charming delivery.
He glanced toward his wife standing behind him, thinking that she would have made a wonderful first lady. But he knew the voters would never forgive him for Brandon, and for his own blindness. She smiled at him as though they were alone in the kitchen reading newspaper cartoons over coffee or at the dinner table after he said grace.
As Landon's eyes turned back to the crowd, he caught sight of an NBC producer, eyes pleading for action, as if to say the networks weren't giving up advertising revenue only so the public could watch a senator gaze at his wife.
Landon glanced back at her again, then faced the cameras and removed his notes from his suit breast pocket.
“I have served as a United States senator for the last fourteen years and have sought to represent the people and the interests of the State of California.”
He paused and scanned the standing-room-only crowd.
“What does that mean? To represent. To act for others.”
He paused again.
“Who are the people? And what is in their interest?
“Does representation mean casting my vote to reflect the polls? Or does it mean voting my conscience that tells me what's right, what's wrong, and what's in the true interest of the country, regardless of what the polls might say? It means all of this and, as it turns out, a great deal more.
“I say these things as a preface to a story I need to tell not only to the people of California, but to the people of the United States, for I serve in the United States Senate, not the California state legislature. This story recounts how I became elected to that body, how it happened that I continued to serve in that body, and finally became a candidate for president.”
Landon looked toward the rear of the packed room where producers and camera operators lined the wall.
“Cognizant as I am of deadlines, news cycles, and the short attention span of the press, I shall begin with a sound bite that can be quickly digested.”
Landon stared at the NBC camera.
“Unbeknownst to me, I have been the beneficiary of both corruption at an unimaginable level and disgraceful political maneuvering that destroyed not only lives, but the reputations and careers of each of my senatorial opponents in turn.”
The crowd condensed into a stunned mass. Not a gasp. Not a stir. Not a word.
“It began twenty years ago . . .”
F
ifteen minutes later, the press had answers to questions none of them would have ever thought to ask, but not the one Landon posed when he began.
Landon thought about the president watching in the White House, knowing Duncan was as shaken as he was.
“Now,” Landon said, “let's return to where we began. With the matter of how I'm to represent the people of the State of California, people who were deprived of the senators they would've chosen had the political process not been corrupted, but in whose interests I must act.
“I return, therefore, to one of my initial questions. What is that interest? Is it a matter of polls or conscience? Is it a particular interest relating to these nominees for the Supreme Court or a general one relating to how we are to be governed? It seems to me it is all of these.”
Landon gripped the podium, shoulders square.
“The bottom line is this. I believe these two nominees are highly qualified to serve as justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. I recognize they hold views considered by many to be extreme. The fact is that in good conscience I share many of those views, and do not at all think they are extreme.
“Given the tragic death of Senator Lightfoot, and given that ninety-eight other senators have already announced their intentions, it would appear the confirmation of these nominees rests in my hands.”
Landon paused, staring at his notes, then folded them and returned them to his pocket.
“But that's not true. In fact, these confirmations were never in my hands. They were in the hands of the people of California. Even before the nominations were made by the president, before the Senate Judiciary Committee held its hearings and sent them on to the full Senate. Indeed, even before the tragic events of last night. In truth, these nominations were in the hands of the people of California when they walked into their polling booths, when they marked their ballots or touched the computer screens.
“I firmly believe that had it not been for corruption and deceit, I wouldn't be in a position to decide whether these nominees become justices of the Supreme Court.”
Landon took in a long breath and exhaled. It was as if he was the only one in the room who breathed at all.
“An argument could be made, and I've made it to myself, that the appropriate course of action is to abstain from voting. The matter would then go forward as if I was not present, and the vice president would break the forty-nine to forty-nine tie.”
Landon imagined the president leaning forward in his chair, praying that Landon had devised a way to salvage the nominations.
“But that would leave the people of the State of California unrepresented, with no one to stand in their place and act for them, in the most important confirmations in our nation's history. It is for that reason I will vote against . . .”
P
resident Duncan pressed the mute button on the remote and stared at length at the screen, at the now-vacant podium in front of which a CNN reporter stood.
“Mr. President?” Stuart Sheridan asked.
“It's all down the tubes. Every bit of it.”
“But we can nominateâ”
Duncan shook his head. “Landon took us all down. The Democrats are going to own the nominating process.”
“But . . .”
“We did everything right. Everything. How the hell were we supposed to know?”