Brian Mcgrory - The Nominee

So I pulled off the road, right there on Highway 201 in Florida. I pulled off the road into the parking lot of one of those combination gas station and convenience marts, called, I think ConvenienceMart. Look, when you’re in the American energy business, with the laws of supply and demand generally on your side, creativity doesn’t have to be a strong suit. The white Cavalier pulled in as well and parked a few spaces away.

I sat in my car pretending to talk on my cellular phone. The other driver, in a baseball cap and a pair of clunky seventies-style sunglasses, got out of his car and walked up to a payphone. Sitting there, I had one overriding question: Who the hell uses a payphone anymore? Maybe I’d get the chance to ask him.

I started my ignition and he casually but quickly hung up the phone and walked back to his car. He was a lanky guy in an old tee shirt and jeans, youngish, with a hauntingly familiar look to him, but I couldn’t place it. So I got out of my car, walked up to his and rapped on his window. Because of the sunglasses, I couldn’t tell how surprised he was, or whether he was even surprised at all.

He rolled down his window and didn’t say anything. I mean, come on. You’d think he’d just say “Hello,” or “What can I do for you?”

So I asked, “You by any chance have change for a dollar for the phone?”

He replied, “Nope.”

The voice was familiar as well, a little bit gravelly with what seemed to be a thick Boston accent, and I don’t mean Brahmin. I said, “I can’t help but notice that you’ve been following me since we left the airport. I hope you don’t take offense if I ask you why?” I smiled at him for effect, though what effect I was going for, I’m not really sure.

“Fuck off.”

Certainly not that effect. I said, “Well, have a nice day.” And I walked off.

As I did, I heard his car door open behind me, and I turned and saw him striding in my direction at considerable speed. I probably should have broken for my car and tried to get away. Instead, I turned fully around and faced him.

“You want something?” I asked. I think I knew the answer already, but as my second grade teacher used to say, there’s no such thing as a stupid question, though this one may have been.

I might add here that the parking lot was otherwise empty but for the two of us, and though I’m sure there was someone working in the ConvenienceMart, I had yet to see any sign of them. That’s a longer than needed way of saying that out here in the Godforsaken parking lot of a seemingly barren gas station off a deserted stretch of Florida highway, I felt very much alone.

When he was within a couple of feet of me, he pulled a handgun out from behind his back and said, “Don’t try anything stupid. Turn around and walk to the side of the building.”

I did, or I started to anyway, but after I took about my third step, I faked right, like I was driving to the basket, and instead turned around in a swift, single motion to plow my fist into his nose. Mind you, they don’t teach you these moves at the Columbia Journalism School, but more than ever, I was starting to think they should.

When I turned, it was a blur of black and pink. I saw the gun, and somewhere beyond the gun, I saw a look of shock in his eyes, and I was so close to him I saw the pockmarks in his cheeks. Before I saw his nose, I felt it on the outer edge of my fist, a perfect shot, evidenced by the explosion of blood that spattered all over his face and my wrist.

“You fucking cocksucker.”

That’s him, not me. He was doubled over in agony, so I took the opportunity to kick him so hard in the face that I heard him wail as he fell backward. Yet somehow he still held onto the damned gun, and writhing in pain on the ground, I saw him take aim at me and prepare to pull the trigger.

So I bolted, not toward my car, because had I gone that way I would have been fully exposed for several long strides and given him a decent shot at me. Instead I raced two steps around the corner of the building, out of his line of fire, and galloped toward the back, where there happened to be nothing more than that previously referenced marsh.

I was about to become a victim of too much open space — thank you, Sierra Club. I hesitated, then decided I had no choice but to plunge into the swamp and take refuge behind some of the brush that stuck out of the water like strands of wispy hair on the head of a nearly bald man. So I did, I did. God only knows what lived under the surface. In fact, I think I did too — poisonous snakes that would snack on my legs, exotic eels that would slither into my pants and do unspeakable things to my favorite parts, slugs that would cover all my lower extremities.

As I waded deeper, heading toward a clump of green, I heard him stagger around the corner. He still had blood gushing from his nose, across his mouth and over his chin. He was a mess, but an armed mess. I saw him take aim again from the shore, so I dove under the cappuccino-colored water. When I came up, I saw him wading in after me.

He stopped and fired from about twenty feet away. I dove back under the water, popped up just long enough to grab another mouthful of air, and dove again. From beneath the surface, I could hear the pop of gunfire, but didn’t know how close it was.

I did know this: the shoulder-deep water was warm to the point of nearly being hot, rancid, filled with floating sticks and particles and leaves and other things I still don’t have the stomach to explain.

Then I had an idea. I surfaced, took measure of precisely where the gunman was, and dove back under. I did the chest stroke slowly in his direction, moving my arms firmly but gently so as not to cause any surface waves. I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me as I kept pushing myself onward.

Finally, as I felt the last of the fresh air leaving my lungs, I also felt my hand graze a solid object. It was either the gunman or a tree, but I had no choice but to come up. So I thrust myself above water, saw I was right beside the guy, and slammed my left fist fully into his surprised face. I watched the gun flip through the air and splash through the skin of the swamp as his legs crumbled and he went under the surface himself.

But give him credit for resilience. From the murky depths, he grabbed my ankle and brought me down, then held me there as I flailed with my arms and legs. I must have been making reasonable contact, because he eventually let me go, and when I pushed my way up, I saw him splash toward the shore, then amble back around the building. I gave a halfhearted chase, but by the time the parking lot came into view, he was pulling out onto the highway, gone.

I limped over to my car. My hair was dripping filthy water down onto my drenched clothes. I was covered in dirt and twigs and slime, and smelled like a Delhi sewer rat on the hottest day of an Indian summer. That’s when my cell phone rang. It had been sitting there on the passenger seat of my car, and it rang like there shouldn’t be a worry in my little world, like I should just be able to pick it up and say, “Yeah, yeah, this is Jack. Hey, good to hear from you, thanks an awful lot for calling.”

So I answered it and heard the sonorous voice of Robert Fitzgerald ofThe Boston Record, casually asking where I was and what I was doing.

When I tried to speak, to imbue him in some way with the life-and-death adventure I had just survived, my voice was surprisingly weak. So I said, “Hey, Robert, do you mind if I call you back in about ten minutes?”

“Of course not,” he said. “You sound strange. Everything all right?”

“Fine,” I said. “Right now, I’m just really swamped.”

IBEGAN THIS TRIPbelieving I was doing little more than a favor for Paul Ellis, conducting a process of elimination, the goal here being to eliminate his suspicion of foul play. Oh, it was a process of elimination all right, only someone was trying to eliminate me. I suddenly realized I was on a life-or-death mission in search of an unknown truth.