George Pelecanos - DC Noir

Port had known Mendes for decades; he interned under her at the Des Moines Register , and she edited his first book, Restoring the Soul of America , a surprising bestseller that had made him all the more useful in the eyes of his handlers. Though the two had lunch together earlier in the week, he accepted her email invitation to the Bombay Club because he needed her. Taking a circuitous route that revealed his desperation, he arrived at the restaurant two blocks from the White House grounds well aware she was likely his last friend.

Sweating under his violet shirt and black cashmere blazer, Port anxiously surveyed the room through the veined mirror behind the bar. He saw a half dozen people with whom he’d had dinner at their homes, and there were at least that many with whom he had shared a dais at a conference or a podium at a rally.

They are shunning me, he thought. Every one of them.

And all he had done was write a new book, one that could be summarized by what Ronald Reagan said some thirty years ago

“When we begin thinking of government as instead of they , we’ve been here too long.”

“Mr. Port?”

He turned to find a young Indian man, a rail-thin bus-boy.

“Mr. Port,” he said compliantly, “a message, please, from Ms. Mendes. She prefers for you to wait outside.”

Port looked into the man’s dark eyes for a sign of sincerity. He wondered if the restaurant’s manager had been asked to send him elsewhere.

“Please, sir,” said the Indian man with a sweep of his arm. “The lady is waiting.”

Port nodded, left the bar stool, and headed out onto Connecticut Avenue.

He was greeted there by pale sunlight and a sinewy black man who crossed the avenue to approach him. The black man wore a vest with the yellow logo of a company that owned a chain of parking garages. The winter wind rippled the sleeves of his white shirt.

He towered over Port, who was as lithe and delicate as a young teen.

“She’s in Room 523 at the St. Regis,” he said, repeating the room number.

Port shivered and dropped his hands into his coat pockets. “I don’t understand. The St. Regis—”

“Ana Mendes,” he said directly. “You’d better go now.”

Port nodded and began to walk briskly toward I Street.

When Port turned the corner, the valet dashed back across Connecticut Avenue to the garage where the Indian busboy was behind the wheel of a black Cadillac Escalade. The valet removed the uniform top he’d been given and tossed it behind the front seat.

The busboy drove quickly toward I Street, but not so fast as to overtake Port.

The St. Regis was one block away.

Five days earlier, Port was summoned to Off the Record, a clubby bar in the basement of the Hay Adams Hotel. Douglas Weil Jr. was waiting, and with a wave he called him to a cherrywood table set deep in a dark corner. Framed political cartoons and caricatures rested on the wall above Weil’s neat salt-and-pepper hair.

Weil had ordered a 2001 Viognier from a Virginia winery, and he poured Port a glass as his guest crossed the crowded room and eased into the banquette.

“Thank you for coming on such short notice, Jordie,” he said.

“Always a pleasure, Doug,” he replied cheerfully, concealing his nervousness.

They were both in their mid-forties, but Port’s famed boyishness and Weil’s grinding sense of purpose made them seem years apart.

Before Port could reply, Weil said, “My father is disappointed, Jordie.”

Port waited for Weil to fill his glass before he offered a silent toast.

Weil returned the gesture, though his eyes were slits. “I read the manuscript,” he said, as the glasses met. “You are way, way out of line.”

“What did your father say?” He sipped the delightful wine, a favorite for its taste rich in peaches and apricots, and heady floral bouquet. “He knows we have to take back—”

The thickset Weil leaned toward his guest. “Don’t, Jordie,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I read it. I don’t want to have to hear it.”

Port had known a warning was coming, and he surmised it might be Weil who delivered it. Off the Record, a favorite of the city’s political insiders, was a suitable venue: All of Washington would know he’d been chastised, and thus responsibility for his actions couldn’t be attributed to the American Center for Culture in Communications, of which Doug was president and his father founder and chairman emeritus.

But Port believed Weil could be swayed. “The principles your father shared with President Reagan mean nothing to these people, Doug. You know this.”

Jutted chin hovering above the table candle, Weil said, “Don’t be a simpleton, Jordie. We have what we’ve worked toward for more than thirty years. No one is walking away from it because of you.”

“When Ronald Reagan said a balanced budget was essential to restoring America, Doug, the deficit was $66 billion,” Port continued. “Today, it’s more than ten times that — after Clinton brought it to zero.”

“Jordie…”

The K Street lobbyists and White House staffers who peered with curiosity at the two men couldn’t tell from appearances what they were saying. They saw the twinkle in Port’s pale-blue eyes and his dimpled smile, an expression familiar to millions of Americans from talk shows, book jackets, magazines, and newspapers. All seemed well.

“Middle America is being compelled to act against its own interests,” Port said, as he returned the chilled glass to the table. “They need tax relief, affordable health insurance, a promise fulfilled on Social Security… Doug, the ACCC can help them. We can help—”

“Oh Lord.” Weil sat back, resting his folded hands against his vest.

“We’ve moved light years from what Ronald Reagan believed, and what I believe.”

“Are you kidding?” Weil sat upright and plopped his hands on the table. “Jordie, do you think we give a good god-damn what you believe?”

Port started to reply, but stopped when Weil lifted the bottle to refill his guest’s glass.

“Listen, we plucked you out of the cornfield because we knew you would do what you were told,” Weil said, as the golden wine flowed. “You’ve still got that farm-fed puppy look, but by now, people have been trained to know what’s coming out of your mouth before you open it. Hell, you go off message and they’ll shut you down.”

For effect, Weil laughed, reached across the table, and punched Port on the shoulder with the side of his fist. Not for a moment would he let Port know he was concerned. The manuscript Port had written used Reagan’s words and ideals to challenge the direction the Right had taken since the opportunity of 9/11. Once Mendes massaged the prose and smoothed out his newfound fanaticism, the book would be another Jordan Port bestseller. That could be deadly dangerous, a blueprint for a moderate coalition.

“So here’s how it works, Jordie. We’re going to issue a press release telling people you’re on sabbatical. You’re going up to the cabin our money bought you in the Casper Mountains to write another book. You won’t answer the phone and there’ll be no email. You’ll return when we tell you and we’ll give you your next manuscript.”

“Wait a minute, Doug, I—”

Anticipating the protest, Weil held up his hand. “Don’t worry. Mendes will be involved. She’ll make it sound enough like you.”

“I wrote those books, Doug. You can’t—”

“The words are yours, sure; yours and Mendes’s. But not the ideas.”

Weil took a short sip of the wine he considered pretentious and feminine, holding the glass by its stem.

“If it was up to me, we’d be done with you,” he said, as Port looked on in silence. “But my father likes you. You helped us get Hollywood on board and you helped us turn around the FCC. But the end is in sight if you don’t wise up.”