The Postmortal (21 page)

Randall Baines is still ranked number one on the FBI’s list of most-wanted fugitives. He’s been implicated in the July 3 bombings, so I know all about him. I see his face and I find myself again chased out of that hallway by the FDNY, forced to sit in a cold, gray stairwell while my best friend burns alive.

An anonymous journo who uses the pseudonym Flywheel was able to score an iFace interview with the guy. Everything about the video appears to be real. Here’s a section of the transcript :

Matt called me into the back room. I passed the giant orange boat and sunk down into the pit of couch cushions. I noticed a giant stuffed rooster in the middle of the coffee table. This was a decidedly new feature. The pictures on the wall had also been rearranged. Ernie says Matt does this at least six times a month.

I pointed to the rooster. “What is this?”

“It’s a rooster. I found it in a dumpster. The little auction house down the street was gonna toss it. You believe that?”

“Yes. I do.”

“Listen, we’re going full-time freelance with you.”

“Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?”

“Look, do you want the job or not? You’ve done just fine with the alkies and the old cripples. Time to take you off the bunny slopes.”

“Are you sending me to a compound?”

His eyes sparked. “Yes. I am. Prepare yourself for the very mysterious, extremely dangerous slum known as Potomac, Maryland! You may never get out
alive
.”

Ernie and I got into the plug-in, sat on the Beltway for ninety minutes, crossed over the American Legion Bridge, and soon found ourselves in Potomac, a slice of lily-whiteness that remains unaffected by the general lunacy of the rest of the DC area. It doesn’t matter what happens in the future—wars, epidemics, whatever. I’m all but certain there will still remain these little bucolic footholds dotted across the land. Flawlessly landscaped country roads featuring one oversized house after another, all occupied by people who possess inexplicable amounts of free capital to spend as they please. Protected by walls and by the inherent charm of their existence.

I stared at the houses and compounds and considered an alternate version of my past that would have brought me to a place like this. A life where I had never stopped being a lawyer, where I married the mother of my child and settled down in a pristine burg, sealed cozily in a life of mild content. Each house we passed felt like a reflection of the finality of my own choices. I will never live in a place like this, and I have no clue if that’s a tragedy or not.

We cruised along one of the back roads at a crawl and came upon a white gravel driveway leading into a flat, wide crest of land that overlooked the far-stretching county below. The entrance to the compound was blocked by an enormous gate supported by a giant, whitewashed brick arch. At the top of the arch was a coat of arms featuring Mercury’s winged shoes. The gate itself was a set of huge cast-iron doors. No bars. Impenetrable as the darkness in a windowless room. We pulled onto the lip of the driveway.

Ernie stared at the crest. “I’ve seen this gate before. Like on TV. That coat of arms.”

“It’s the RideSwift logo,” I said.

“RideSwift?”

“Yup.”

RideSwift. The record label. The clothing label. The boutique mescal label. I once bought RideSwift sheets at Daffy’s. It was not a wise purchase.

I looked at our case file on the WEPS. The name was Edgar DuChamp. I hadn’t even bothered to glance at our client’s name before we left. But there it was: Edgar DuChamp, the Swift. Ordering himself a deathgram.

We pushed the button on the intercom in the archway. A stern voice immediately asked us what we were doing in the driveway. We told the voice who we were and where we were from. The voice angrily dismissed us and told us to leave. But just as it was finishing berating us, another voice in the background started yelling at the first voice. “Charles!
Charles!
Those are the guys! Those are the guys he asked for!”

The intercom went dead and the gate opened. Two very large men were standing behind it. Both had guns. They approached our plug-in, dressed in black suits with orange bow ties. Official uniform of the black collectivist movement. I know very little about the Church of the Black Man, only that I have never been invited to any of its functions. The two men flanked the car and knocked on our windows. Ernie rolled his down. One of them leaned into the plug-in and pointed ahead. “Drive to the end of the road,” he said. “There’s a parking circle in front of the house. Park at exactly nine o’clock on the circle—that’s nine o’clock if the front door is at twelve. Do
not
park right in front of the door. It messes with the aesthetic. And leave your keys with Terry, at the door, in case he needs to move your car or go out for snacks.”

We did as instructed and got out of the plug-in. The wall of the compound ran along the driveway and down the hill like a giant white zipper. Another man in a COBM uniform walked our way and immediately escorted us through the huge wooden portico and into the house. I expected to be blinded with opulence upon entering the Swift’s home: framed movie posters, gold banisters, stripper poles in the kitchen—every cliché fast money can purchase. It was nothing like that. Instead we entered a deluxe log cabin. Stacks of notched tamarack trunks lined the walls and met in cog joints at every corner. Thick log rafters strutted end-to-end across the tops of the stacks. Fleecy blankets were draped over every handrail and easy chair. Big, soft, smushy sectionals dominated the vast main space that lay below the foyer. A butcherblock island the size of Manhattan was all that separated the open kitchen from the main room. Hanging overhead was a chandelier made entirely of reindeer antlers. It was the kind of house the Texan’s gun felt at home in.