T. Bunn - Drummer in the Dark

“You’re rigging the election?”

“That shows how much you know about politics in the modern age. Nothing’s rigged about this deal. Just highly lubricated, is all. This election will pass without more than a couple of headlines in the local rag. You’ll make the rounds, shake the hands, eat a few rubber chicken dinners, smile for the cameras on polling day, and be off to the big city.”

Wynn sat buffeted by his sister’s wiles. “I don’t have any choice.”

“Not if you’re a man of your word like I’ve always thought.” Grant waved at someone Wynn could not see. “Two quick points before we do the press come-on. First, I’m making a run for the Senate in the next election. I want you to back me.”

Wynn’s ears were filled with the noise of crashing waves, as though the ocean had moved seventy miles inland. He watched the lovely aide pass out printed sheets to the gathered press, helpless to halt the tide.

“Second, and I hope you’re listening because this is critical, Hutch has been backing a piece of legislation that’s raised hackles all over the state. Called the Jubilee Amendment. We want you to be our man on the spot and kill this thing stone dead.”

“I can’t do that.” Wynn took small satisfaction in having something to refuse. “A point up front. I’m not your man. I go up, I look everything over for myself, and make up my own mind.”

Grant forced his game-face back into place. “I like you. Always have. You’re too good-looking for a hard-scrabbling boy, but you’ve done well by what you had. So I didn’t have any mind to tell you this, sport. Rumors have started floating around town about some tricky financial dealings. Insider trading, confidential information about the sale of your company, Bermuda banks, the works.”

“Remarkable timing.”

“That’s how things are. It ain’t just rain, it’s a hurricane.” Grant tapped Wynn’s knee. “Here’s how it’s going to play. You’re heading up for eighteen months of the Washington high life. When I launch my Senate run, you’re going to come out for me whole hog. Then you can retire down here to your fancy-pants waterside villa and have folks call you congressman for the rest of your days.” Another tap on his leg. “And in the meantime you’re going to make sure that the Jubilee Amendment is choked to death.”

Wynn had nothing to say, which satisfied Grant immensely. He rose and lifted Wynn with him, motioned to his aide, and smiled as the press surged forward. Wynn flinched but held his ground. He said nothing, just stood and let his brother-in-law proclaim how stunned and honored Wynn was by the nomination. To the accusation of rampant cronyism, Grant countered with Wynn’s success as a businessman and his staunch backing of the party. The questions and the cameras’ square black eyes and the lights all struck at Wynn for maybe ten minutes, maybe five hours. Then he was shaking Grant’s hand and staring the man in the eyes, knowing he was beaten, trapped, and more scared than he had been in years.

Grant clapped him on the shoulder, hugged him close for the cameras, and said, “You start tomorrow.”

Monday

Jackie Havilland slipped off the headphones, swiped her hair back into place, and rose in stages. Nine hours in the stenographer’s chair had left her kinked as a puppet with its joints glued together. She was one of nine women working at the long table, split into cramped myths of privacy by waist-high partitions. The woman to her right looked up and said, “Got us a bridal shower today. Can’t get better than the fables of fresh starts, if you’re looking for an excuse to party.”

“Can’t.” Jackie’s brain felt mushed by another day of listening to court-sanctioned surveillance tapes. “Busy.”

“Yeah, right.” Neva had a way of huffing a laugh with every part of her body except her face. “I’ll give you busy. Give you so much busy you won’t know which way is up. Not for days.”

Jackie recognized the tone from Neva’s phone-scolding of her children. There were three under the age of ten. No daddy. The man had been a Triple-A mechanic until the year before last, when he had walked around a broken-down car on I-95 and a rain-blinded trucker had carried him a hundred and twenty feet. One moment a family, the next just another blues riff. Jackie slung her bag and started down the aisle separating their table from the next. “See you tomorrow.”

“Take it from me, girl. You got yourself a bad case of the lonelies. Ain’t but one cure for that, and you won’t find it sitting in front of your TV.” Neva leaned a heavy arm on the partition and pointed at Jackie’s desk. “Look there. Got just the one picture, and the boy’s been gone over a year now.”

“I’m fine.”

Jackie took the stairs to the ground floor, chased by their chatter and all the dirty little secrets she had overheard and transcribed. The agency put on a good front downstairs. The name was etched into a crystal tower splashed by an encircling fountain. Big lobby, lovely receptionist, guards, rotating cameras, oil paintings, and recessed lighting in the chambers used for meeting clients. The company specialized in high-tech surveillance, industrial espionage, deep background checks. There was a world of difference between the downstairs chambers and Jackie’s arena. Even the music was different-classical below, lite rock where fifty hourly workers sat crammed into a windowless cubicle ninety feet to a side. Jackie had taken the job when her brother became ill the last time. Its only asset was flexible hours-so long as she clocked a fifty-hour week, nobody cared when she came or went. Preston had died fourteen months ago this weekend, another victim of living with his afterburners constantly lit. Since then, Jackie had basically been marking time. Holding on to the here and now meant at least pretending to some final tie with the only man she had ever really loved.

The company’s parking lot baked and blistered beneath an April sun. The Orlando afternoon stank of diesel and asphalt and the sullen summer ahead. There was nothing on the horizon that hinted of wind and an excuse to chase the storms Jackie lusted after. She walked to her gas-guzzling Z-28 with its sailboard roof racks and the license plate that read WND-DANCR. A gift from her brother, a relic of the days when money had seemed endless. Back when paying for her graduate school had been a source of pride and joy to them both. Back before Preston had lost it all-job, future, money, health, life.

The car’s interior was an oven set on high roast. Jackie cranked the motor, hit the AC, turned up the radio to blot out the voices in her head. Everyone who worked in the agency’s boiler room listened to Orlando’s time warp to the seventies. Not that looking backward was any brighter than the way ahead. It just held fewer surprises.

An arm in a pinstriped shirt and gold Rolex reached down and tapped on her passenger window. Jackie assumed it was a boss and began forming a generic excuse for whatever she’d done wrong, the man leaned over and showed her shades and a nervous smile. When she opened his door, Jeff slid inside and asked, “Hot enough for you?”

“What are you doing here?”

“More like early August than the week before Easter. Hear it’s hitting a hundred tomorrow.” Jeff wore the narrow, insect-eye shades popular with the high-income tribes. “How’ve you been, Jackie?”

“Okay.” Jeff was an associate with Orlando’s biggest law firm, a dedicated work-hard, play-loose survivor. They had dated occasionally, back in easier times. Before she had hooked up with her ex-fiancé and had her desire for male companionship surgically removed. Jeff’s firm was a big user of her company’s services, and she still saw him now and then, slipping in and out of the downstairs chambers. Reminding her with his little smiles and quick patter of just how far she had fallen. “Do you have a client out here?”