David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

The run had gotten her mind ticking right. Leila sucked down the news. What Dear Diary said about the Committee’s reach was true.

“And it’s enough?” she asked Dylan. “It’s enough to make the prosecutor back down?”

“Well, so, by last night, our forensic guy had spoken with their forensic guy. And when we show up to the RITSerF, you could tell that the prosecutor was pretty shaken, actually. Kramer thinks that the man had no idea. They built that facility a year ago and it cost a billion dollars and it’s supposed to be the safest place in the world, and we’ve just given him proof that the evidence in a high-profile case is being written like a storybook by some black-helicopter-contractor outfit in Virginia with apparently free access to his shop. Dude went white.”

“And he said he’s going to drop the charges?”

Dylan made a little grimace. “All but one. He wants us to plead to one count possession of unauthorized material. It wouldn’t be a felony conviction. The sentence would be that Dad would have to sign a legal instrument saying he would never speak or write about the events.”

“Dad’s not going to do that. And if the prosecutor concedes that the evidence is fabricated, where’s the unauthorized material?”

“When the FBI interrogated him, Dad admitted to having installed on his personal laptop a copy of, I think it was, Adobe Creative Suite. That was software licensed for use by the school only.”

“You’re fucking joking with me, right? They can do that? They can ream a guy like they reamed Dad and then turn around and compel his silence?”

Dylan, who took care when speaking and who saw no reason to add to the scope of the trouble they were facing, said, “Let’s not worry about the them here, Leila. Or not at this moment, anyway. Let’s just worry about Dad, and what’s happening right now. Shouldn’t we take this offer? Plead to the bullshit count, and Dad walks away?”

A car went by. Jim Brenton and his severely autistic son from three houses down. Leila waved, and Jim gave her two honks, like you do when you’re supporting picketers. Dylan had told her that some neighbors were already keeping their distance and that an unknown man had yelled vile things at the house soon after the arrest. So the two honks made Leila want to weep with gratitude. Behind Jim Brenton’s car came one of those cute USPS mail jeeps with the right-hand drive. The mailman inside was better-looking than your average mailman. Leila waited until both vehicles were well past.

“You think he should take it, I know,” she said. “But, Dylan, he can’t walk back into that school without it being perfectly clear to everyone that he was completely exonerated, cleared of all charges. The gag-order part of this would kill him.”

“Maybe, Leila.” They were standing close to each other now, like conspirators, like siblings. “But the risk of the other course is we fight this and lose. Or it could be months or years, and then we have to take the same deal, or a worse one. So maybe Dad won’t be able to walk back into that school. I just want him walking.”

Leila began to object.

“I know. I know. I know. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham,” said Dylan. “But imagine. The case would be us saying, No, it’s not that a pedophile principal was making sicko collages out of the volleyball-trip pictures; it’s that a shadow-government frame shop is persecuting innocent Americans. It would be a tough sell, sis. The drive that Mystery Dude gave us is enough to beat this. I say let’s thank our stars and go home, because I don’t know that it’s enough to convince twelve content civilians that they’re living under a tyranny. Maybe that’s for another day, you know? Who knows, maybe that prosecutor will do the right thing and ferret this out.”

“You’re saying we should eat this? Let them get away with it?” She was checking his math, though, and saw that he was right, just in risk-to-Dad terms.

Dylan shrugged his shoulders, exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “Unless…” And he did this cool little rapping of the air, with his smoking knuckle.

“Unless what?” she said.

“Unless you can get your Dear Diary friends to hook us up with some more of the good shit.”

Leo slept soundly, and ludicrously late, happy to be in his own bed again, certain in his dreaming head that the world had sent him word. A girl in a Toyota. So when he finally roused himself — ten fifteen! — and raced downstairs and found Lola’s note and her absence, his world spun again. What utter bullshit. Leo was a light sleeper. The universe sends you a Lola Montes, and you let her creep out of your house while you snooze like a fool?

He sat very still in his kitchen, wondering what to do. For an hour. Then he made some coffee and thought about getting stoned. He pushed that thought away and thought some more about Lola, about why she had come, why she had left. And when a car he did not recognize pulled up to his house, Leo didn’t know whether to run toward it or away from it. But the footfall on his porch was no threat, nor was the knock at his door. It was Daisy.

“You wanna tell me what the fuck?” she said to him.

The next morning. Daisy woke him very early, barging into his room and saying, “Let’s go to that diner I saw by the freeway. We can write your contract there.” She shook him hard. His sisters had always been physical and executive with Leo. He didn’t mind. Big brothers hold your head underwater and drive their knees into your solar plexus and throw your turtle out the window; big sisters just dress you up and order you around a lot.

They walked to the Overlook Diner and sat at a vinyl-and-Formica four-top by the window. The freeway. That’s what it overlooks, Leo thought. He had wondered for years about the eponymous claim.

Daisy waited until they had coffees before them, and then she turned over her paper placemat and slid it across to him. She pushed over a pen and said, “Here. I’ll dictate it to you.”

Leo gave her a seriously? look. But his sister stone-faced him, so he took up the pen.

“‘I, Leo Crane,’” she said, “‘will not drink alcohol or smoke weed, starting now until forever, or at least until all my sisters are dead.’”

“Oh, come on, Daisy,” said Leo, lifting pen from placemat. Daisy only made a don’t interrupt gesture.

“‘I will attend an AA or an NA meeting every day. I will meet with Alice Waters twice a week—’”

“The chef?”

“No, not the chef, you asshole. She’s a therapist and an LCSW and she’s good people and she’s smart. Keep writing. ‘And I will see Larry Davis, prescribing psychiatrist, once a week. My sister Daisy is old friends with Alice and Larry both, from PA school, and she will totally check up on me, and with them, whether or not that’s ethical or whatever. I will speak by phone or Skype to at least one of my sisters every day, and I will accept every single call I receive from them.’”

“What if I’m in the shower or something?”

“‘Unless I am in the shower or something, in which case I will return the call promptly. I will not sit in my house by myself. I can journal but I cannot blog. I will keep away from conspiracists.’ That one’s important, Leo. Also this one: ‘I will find a job—’”

“Can you give me a few weeks on that?”

“‘—within three weeks, maybe with that nice friend of mine the carpenter who fired me six months ago.’”

“Gabriel? I don’t know. He was pretty pissed.”

“I talked to him. He said he’s willing to do it.”

Leo nodded okay. “What’s in this contract for me?” he asked.