Spinning Dixie (9 page)

Tommy Jacomo sat me at my favorite booth at the Palm on Nineteenth Street in Washington, D.C. I figured I'd get here first because the Panamanian worked, well, where he worked.

The Panamanian's real name was Marcus Dalendo. I called Marcus “the Panamanian” because he was born in Panama, and because I thought it sounded cool to call him “the Panamanian.” He was from South Jersey, too, and, by cosmic coincidence, also ended up working in Reagan's White House twenty years ago.

Marcus was…let's just say, a lawyer who did intelligence work. You may assume this means CIA. Woo, spooky. Whatever. The reality was that in the modern age of terror, the most lethal operatives were independent contractors unfettered by bureaucracy. Since I became press secretary, he occasionally used me to leak disinformation at my noon briefings, which I did because I thought it was cool. The Panamanian arranged for Claudine to be expressed a “black,” or untraceable, mobile phone with which we could talk until I could get to Rattle & Snap, which was about an hour south of Nashville.

Marcus did not go to work each day in a squat government building. This was critical to his ability to be effective in the war on terror. A man unfettered by a punch clock is a man who can get lots done. A man who does not exist cannot be guilty of anything; he cannot be quoted in newspaper articles; he cannot be fired; but he can solve problems.

Marcus was a spy in the original sense of the term—he eavesdropped on people to find out their most precious vulnerabilities in order to leverage this information against them.

We had met at a Xerox machine in the White House basement in 1984. He was a twenty-two-year-old punk working in the national security advisor's office. I was a twenty-two-year-old punk working for the president's main pollster. We studied each other for a moment, wondering which genius knew how to unclog a paper tray. I knew I had a friend when Marcus found a letter opener and began hacking away at the thing. “You know, Jonah, violence often
is
the answer,” he said.

“Totally agree,” I had said.

Ours was a visceral friendship perhaps because of our rogue streaks, which were stifled in a bureaucratic environment where there was no higher achievement than not visibly screwing up. My most recent favor for the Panamanian was stating at a news conference that the president was considering a visit to Milan, where we quietly suspected a terrorist cell was forming. The president had no such intention, but when the terrorists heard he might be visiting, they began scrambling to plan an attack. Their chatter allowed the Panamanian's assets on the ground to track the plotters down to an apartment above a Milanese café, which exploded, killing six terrorists, a few weeks later. “Another senseless tragedy caused by improperly leavened pita bread,” the Panamanian remarked at lunch the following week in the White House mess.

 

The Palm's daily march of the Self-Deluded had begun—lobbyists and operatives trickling in sufficiently after noon so that an audience had assembled to witness them sweep from Tommy's podium down the runway to that lofty altitude of the Ego. There appeared to be an awful lot of bowing for a twenty-first-century crowd. No one bowed to me, but a big-name lobbyist greeted me by my first name as I made my way down the aisle. President Truitt once referred to this as “cross validation”—the rewarding sensation that one gets when one is acknowledged by a person in one's own rarefied league. There was something about that naked desperation to be a player that filled me with a contempt that I could barely contain. Perhaps this was because I was eminently aware of my status: recently disgraced. In addition to their fries, this was the secondary sell of the Palm: the aftertaste of having
been there
when something—or someone—big was going down.

The faces of dead senators and nouveau riche real estate developers beamed down at me (
Mazel tov! You made the wall!
), while a kid in his twenties at the next table kept turning toward me and grinning. I could see his unripe mind working:
I'm sitting next to a guy who sat next to the president, thereby making me…what exactly?

I glanced at a newspaper article in
The Washington Post
that caught my eye. Scientists working to build a more effective roach trap had invented a synthetic chemical that mimicked the pheromone of the female German cockroach. This chemical caused the male of the species to become so obsessed that he would forgo food and oxygen for a frenzied chance to have sex with his lust-scented Object. Of course, once he chased the scent, he would become immobilized in a sweet-tasting substance inside the trap, which he would futilely try to flee, only to spend his remaining hours hyperventilating, severing his own legs from his thorax, and asking himself who was the cockroach who ended up with the elusive and achingly hot cockroachette? Good Lord, I thought, it was all chemicals.

The Panamanian, Marcus Dalendo, looked over his shoulder and slid into the booth. He slid a manila envelope across the table, and studied the miniportrait on the wall beside him. “Who the hell was Roman Hruska?”

“Senator,” I replied. “From a million years ago.”

“Big nostrils, huh?”

“That's what he was known for. Very progressive on nasal issues.”

The Panamanian grabbed a knife and sliced a pickle. “A little green in honor of Passover?” he said, sliding the bowl toward me.

“No thanks, I'm saving myself for a heaping side of bitter herbs.”

I opened the envelope, which contained satellite photos of Rattle & Snap. “I forgot how close the airport was,” I said.

“Lots of fields, too,” Marcus said. “I threw in a shot of your farm in South Jersey just for fun.”

I placed aerial photos of the two properties side by side and exhaled slowly. “God, Marcus, it's a queer thing surveying what you love from outer space.”

“How are you holding up after the fall?” he asked after downing a pickle slice.

“Press secretary's a tough job. You use one wrong participle and can set off a war in the Balkans.”

“Bummer.”

The Panamanian adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses and ask me cryptically, “Did you talk to Scarlett?” Claudine.

I nodded. “I'm a little shaken up.”

“What about that ghost that visited you? You got an ID?”

“Not yet.”

“What's our mission?”

“She needs my help in a big way.”

“Thank you for the specificity. And she thinks you'll help her why exactly?”

“Because she knows me, Marcus.”

“She knows you believe in damsels in distress, knights in shining armor?”

“Yes. She knows I believe in those things…in some order.”

“What's in it for you?”

“My history, I suppose.”

“How can I help, Jonah?”

“Can you go down with me?”

“I've got vacation time.”

“I can't do this alone.”

“What about your former boss?”

“I'm going to see him after lunch.”

“Does he know how to return favors?”

“I think so.”

“Do you know what kind of help you need?”

“I have a few scenarios in my head. Now we have to make it happen on the street.”

“Tell me.”

I slid the satellite photos back into the envelope and let him in on an old secret.

 

Even when the Secret Service knows you, they have to check your driver's license once you leave the White House staff. It had only been two days since my farewell, but the rules are the rules. I was now the worst thing a former political
playa
could be in Washington: a citizen. When you set aside all of the common-man worship nonsense, the whole point of democracy was having the freedom to become better than everybody else.

Tigger greeted me with a big hug in the West Wing lobby.

“Can he see me, or is he in the Bubble?”

“He knows you're coming.”

Let me explain the Bubble and its paradox. We are all part of a food chain of desirability, of power. The president of the United States is at the top of that food chain: Everybody wants a piece of him.

Now, take somebody like me. When I was press secretary, I was very high on the food chain. One of Tigger's main functions was protecting me from grasping acquaintances who wanted to trade on their link to me. But to, say, the secretary of state, I was a functionary—someone to be treated civilly, but no one who needed to be reckoned with.

When you are the president, being in the Bubble is necessary. Lots of people walk away frustrated, “dissed,” to use the current jargon, when they aren't admitted. But it has to be this way because, without the Bubble, the president would be devoured.

There is a huge risk living in the Bubble, and herein lies the paradox. When you are isolated from life functions, your immune system grows precious. If and when a harsh truth, or another of life's rusty nails, penetrates the Bubble, your defenses have become flabby and you are not equipped to do combat.

President Truitt was sensitive to the existence of rusty nails, especially his endorsement by the New Jersey unions I had delivered a few years ago. I had predicted that there would have been greater scrutiny of that deal, especially since the president had since appointed several anti-RICO federal judges. The scrutiny never happened, which he viewed as a stay of execution. And it gave him incentive to keep a close eye on the guy who engineered the whole thing.

Tigger and I cut through the Roosevelt Room and made the diagonal to the corridor outside the Oval Office. The president's personal assistant was on the telephone, but mouthed “Go on in.”

Roscoe opened the Oval Office door, and we glanced around the room. No Big Guy.

“He was with Mr. Cane in there a minute ago,” Roscoe said.

Dexter Cane was the national security advisor, and had been the president's closest friend since they served together in Vietnam. Cane was also cheating on his helmet-headed horse-country wife. With Tigger. Tigger told me everything. I had vowed to keep her secret, but I suspect Cane knew that I knew. Eastman: 1, Cane: 0.

“He must be in the study,” Roscoe said.

Indeed, we found President Truitt in the small study that adjoined the Oval Office. Dexter Cane wasn't here. Different presidents used this room for different purposes. Reagan used to have lunch in here (there's an adjacent kitchen). Lyndon Johnson used to sit in the bathroom and void his bowels while getting briefed by his staff. Because he could. President Truitt used this room to rest his lanky frame on the sofa with his feet up and go through his papers.

The president got right to the point: “I don't mean to be callous, son, but why would you go out of your way for this Polk woman at this stage in your life? You still bewitched?”

“No, I don't think so. We're middle-aged now.”

“Doesn't mean a thing. People try to bring back old memories on a desperate basis inside that funhouse we call middle age—all those misshapen goblins flashing up at us, with nowhere to run. Those things seldom work out. Besides, so much of that intensity is anchored in the moment.”

“I agree.”

“So, if there's no rekindling, what's the motive? Old times' sake?”

“Sure, sentiment.”

The president narrowed his eyes and sighed. “The Secret Service tells me you met a real looker out by the northwest gate a few days ago.”

“That's true. Right before I came in to say good-bye to you.”

“And you didn't introduce us. I'm hurt, son.”

“I invited her in. I told her we had cable.”

“Heh-heh. Y'know, I don't get good reception up in the residence,” the president said, scrunching his nose. “You'd think I would.”

“This is God's way of keeping you in touch with the people.”

“Well, I'll thank the Lord for yet another blessing when I hit my knees tonight. Now, son, there's some things I don't need to know, but it always concerns me when a man behaves out of character. A man, a-course, can always trick you, but you never struck me as one to keep a twinkie.”

“The girl out at the gate? No, sir. I had never met her before. She brought me a message.”

“From Tennessee? That old plantation?” The president scratched his ear with the tip of his glasses.

“Yes, sir.”

“When was it you hid out there?”

“Nineteen eighty.”

“Any chance you may have left Princess Buttercup with a little knish?”

I laughed despite the subject's gravity. Something about the Southern leader of the Free World saying “knish.”

I squirmed in my seat. “She would have told me, wouldn't she?”

I did not want to hear his answer. I welcomed a lie. I thought,
You're the president, lay one on me.
The rasp of the alley cat Clinton tickled my throat:
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

The president leaned forward and stretched his neck. I heard a small pop. He sighed. “Let's think about this for a minute now, shall we? A Jewish boy, raised by a grandfather who ran an illegitimate gambling enterprise and Lord knows what else, falls in love with Confederate royalty, a family that helped create the America we all know. That family, I bet, wasn't too sweet on you. That millionaire's boy you came up against sure as hell didn't want you as his date for cotillion.”

“I don't remember telling you all that, sir.”

“Then you don't remember that I have an FBI for supplementary purposes. My point is, if the Confederacy had a cannonball for every reason the Polk family would want to keep a half-Dixie, half-Israelite baby quiet, the capital of the United States would be Richmond right now. You folla?”

“I do.”

“Did you notice any resemblance?”

“My daughter, Lily, has auburn hair. My grandmother was a redhead. This messenger girl had auburn hair. Green eyes. A dimple.”