Steve Martini - Double Tap

“The best,” he says. “I found the print in an old album. I had a negative made. I thought you’d want it.”

“It’s beautiful,” I tell him. “And to think you came all the way down here to deliver it personally.” We let go of each other. I’m wiping my eyes.

“I’d like to say that was it, but the fact is, I was tying up loose ends on committee business out at Isotenics.” He can tell by my look that I perk up with the mention of the company name. “Do you have time for lunch? For old times’ sake,” he says.

I look at my watch: eleven-twenty. “It’s a little early, but what the hell.” I hand the framed photo to Janice for safekeeping. “Would you tell Harry we’ll pick it up again this afternoon? I should be back by one.”

We slip out of the courtyard through a service entrance in Miguel’s Cantina, skirting the handful of reporters out on Orange Grove in front of the office. Nathan and I dodge a few cars and hoof it across the street to the Del Coronado. Within minutes we are cloistered in one of the corner booths in the restaurant on the hotel’s main floor, out of sight, nursing drinks.

“You never told me what brings you down here.”

“Oh, that,” he says. “That’s nothing. Senate Committee on, Redistricting.” He touches the side of his nose with his finger. “A lotta BS. I’ll be glad to be rid of it. Pain in the butt, all the members constantly crying on my shoulder about their districts and where they want the lines drawn for the next election so they can do in all the competition.” Nathan talks as if he’s never done this himself.

Politics is its own form of insanity. In California, beds in this asylum are assigned in the state legislature and Congress every ten years, with district boundary lines redrawn based on the last federal census. Ever since term limits were imposed on the legislature by voters, political panic on the order of a hotel fire has raged through the state capitol, with members of both parties eating their own in an effort to survive. The hallowed ground is Congress, where term limits don’t apply.

“You remember. I used to tell you about the games played. Somebody running their district boundaries thirty miles along a railroad track so they could circle a university or capture some ethnic ghetto while they registered all the hobos along the way.”

“You must have done that one and forgot to tell me about it.”

“Well, those were the good old days. Back when Machiavelli was writing the legislative ethics rules. When every vote cast in an election had an actual voter behind it.”

To listen to Nathan, the state legislature is now the third ring of hell. He can’t wait to get out.

“But that’s not the reason I wanted to talk to you. I’ve been following the trial in the papers,” he says. “Your Ruiz case. I don’t know the details, but I heard something you should know. I was out at Isotenics. They crunch numbers for us, do the district maps. And I heard some comments about this IFS thing. It came up in connection with the trial. IFS has been in the papers.” Nathan tells me this as if I’m from Mars. “I know some members,” he says, “people in Congress who are very upset about it. As they should be. I don’t know how you feel about personal privacy. You know that I’ve always felt very strongly about it. Computers. High tech. It’s eroding any sense of civil liberties. Pretty soon corporations and the government are going to know more about us than we know about ourselves.”

Nathan is now cutting to the chase. I can smell him trying to get a jump start to some committee in the House of Representatives. He is probably telling them that he has an inside track with the lawyer trying the case and that if they can pump enough heat and fire up my skirt, they can use the illumination to expose the White House. It’s what you love about Nathan: he never quits.

“Check out the nurse over there. I think I need more medicine,” he says. Nathan’s talking about the cocktail waitress.

“When did this meeting occur?”

“Hmm?”

“Out at Isotenics?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Couple of days ago. We were meeting with these two execs out there. One of them was midlevel type. I’ve been dealing with this guy for a couple of years. You know the kind: makes the company go. Jack lives in the corporate synapse, between executive decisions and action, if you know what I mean. Kinda fella who puts the spark in the gap that usually makes things happen.” He pauses. “Good idea man, and he usually knows what’s going on. The other guy I didn’t know. Never met him before. Jack’s boss.”

I nod knowingly as I listen. Nathan has a way of making a short story long.

“Anyway, there were several of us at the meeting: two members of the assembly, myself, and some congressional staff sent out to cover their interests. The two executives knew I’d just been elected to the House. They were overflowing with congratulations. Isotenics can use all the friends they can get in Washington right now, as I’m sure you’re aware. If there was a fire hose long enough, they’d be pumping water from the Pacific to try and reduce the heat on themselves.”

I nod again and take a sip from my glass.

“I suppose they were trying to impress me, so you can probably take it with a grain of salt, for what it’s worth,” he says. “But one of them, the boss, gets a phone call during the meeting. We were in a rush to finish up since the assemblymen had to catch a plane.

“So this guy decides to take the call on the extension in the conference room where we’re gathered. All I can hear is half the conversation, but he’s talking about the case. Ruiz’s name comes up, so of course I’m all ears. Something about when the case is over they can ramp up again, but not until, he says. He’s talking under his breath and I guess whoever’s on the other end can’t hear him, because this guy keeps saying he can’t talk any louder, he’s in a meeting. Fortunately I had my back to him, sitting right in front of the side table where he was talking. If I’d leaned back any further I’d have been on the phone with him,” says Nathan.

“Then he says-the guy on our end-he says something. . ” Nathan’s reaching with the fingers of one hand as if he’s trying to pluck the precise words from the air over our table. “He says something: they’re understaffed, that DOD is all pissed off, something to that effect. That if she had left it alone, everything would have been fine. But now that she’s dead somebody’s going to have to go pick up the pieces because she wouldn’t leave it alone.” He looks at me to see if this is producing any revelations. “I don’t know if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, but if you are, I’m thinking the dead person they’re talking about has to be Madelyn Chapman, and the project DOD is involved in has to be IFS. Does it make any sense to you?” he asks.

“I don’t know. It’s possible.”

“It sounded to me like maybe they are caught in a whirlpool of shit at the moment and they can’t get out of it until your case is over. That when that happens they’re back in business. Doing something. God knows what,” he says. “I may stick around and watch the trial. I have nothing going on up in Capital City. And it sounds like all the fireworks may be happening down here.”

“Do you have names? The two executives at your meeting?”

“Yeah. Jack Hansen is the guy I’ve been meeting with for years. The other guy, the guy on the phone, I’d never met him before. His name was Harold Klepp. Head of research and development.”

This morning when I arrive, the hallway outside the courtroom is jammed, standing room only. I’m pushing my way through when I run face-to-face into Nathan.