Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

He wondered if he ought to change “attempts” to the singular.

“Who’s got a phone?” Frank Cohane snapped his fingers. “Who’s got a phone? Someone’s got to have a fucking phone !”

The tactician rummaged in a carry case and handed him his.

“Take the wheel,” Frank said. Expensive was back on an upwind tack now, having rounded another marker. Frank stormed forward, stepping on the hands of several crewmen who were leaning over the rails, hiking to windward to counterbalance the boat. They knew better than to say, “Ow!” much less, “Hey, watch where you’re going, asshole!”

“Jean. It’s me. Patch me through to that Yale kid.”

“Mr. Kane? I have Mr. Cohane on the line. Go ahead, sir.”

“Mr. Cohane? Hello. My name is Charles-”

“Yeah, yeah. Look, this is Frank Cohane. What the-”

The portion of Frank Cohane’s brain that was not on fire with rage and fury tried to say, Easy does it, big shot. But when driven men board their own yachts and assume command, the inner Bligh is invariably released and does not easily relinquish the helm. Frank Cohane couldn’t help himself.

“- fuck is this you’re telling my secretary? Did you use the word bribe ? Did you actually say bribe ?”

Charlie Kane, all of age twenty-one, had not yet in his brief career as a reporter been bitch-slapped by a California billionaire. He had only one thought in his mind: editor in chief .

“Ah, well, sir, it does appear that you visited the president’s office on the twenty-fourth of last month. According to the president’s appointments calendar. And the development office records do show a donation made later that same day from the Cohane Charitable Trust in the amount of fifteen million”-Charlie’s source had inflated the amount of the bribe, but he’d caught the error-“and your stepson, Boyd Baker, had, previous to that, been informed that he was on academic suspension. He confirmed that detail himself.”

Frank winced. Boyd! Imbecile!

Charlie Kane continued, “And the fact is that he is still enrolled at Yale. So in connecting the dots, I-”

“Connecting the dots? Connecting the dots? Do you think this is some kind of game? Let me ask you something, Mr . Kane,” Frank said. “Do you know how many lawyers I have, just on staff?”

“I wouldn’t have that information, but from the way you’re asking, I’d guess, quite a few, sir?”

“Twenty-five. Twenty-five lawyers. Full-time. Sharks, all of them. Great whites. They never sleep. They just keep moving forward, suing everything in their path.…”

“That does seem like a lot of lawyers, I agree, sir.”

“You’re fucking damn right it’s a lot! And if they’re not enough, I can afford to hire every other lawyer in the country. And I will, if you print a false and malicious story-false, malicious, libelous, and defamatory. I’m formally putting you on notice here that-Jesus Christ, I…I can’t even believe I’m having to tell you this. Is there a crime in giving money to your college? Don’t you think I care about Yale? Do you think I give this kind of money to, to-Harvard ? ”

“I don’t think that’s really the point here, sir.”

“Mr. Kane,” Frank said, trying a calmer, cooler-indeed, icier-tone of voice, “understand something. For your own well-being. Understand that I will sue you-you personally, not the Yale Daily News -if you print a story saying that I quote-unquote bribed Yale. I give you full warning. I will take the food from your table, from your parents’ table, and from your grandparents’ table. Am I making myself clear?”

“Actually, sir, my grandparents are deceased.”

“Don’t fuck around with me, you little zit! Look me up in Forbes magazine. I have resources you can’t even imagine. I will grind your bones to dust and use them for fertilizer. Do you hear me?… Kane ?”

Charlie Kane could hardly believe his luck. Dude was postal! His fingers flew over the keyboard. “Um-hum.”

“What you do mean, ‘Um-hum’?”

“So that is your comment? That you’re going to impoverish my family and turn me into fertilizer?”

“My comment? My comment, Mr. Kane, is that you’re a dead man. Let me spell it for you, so you get at least that much right: d-e-a-d. Got it?”

“Yes, sir. D-e-a-d. Thank you. Good luck with the race.”

And with that, Frank Cohane hurled another innocent cell phone into the vast deep of the Pacific Ocean. He stormed aft to the wheel. As he did, the crew leaning over the rail withdrew their hands, one by one.

A winch grinder murmured to the man next to him, “Skipper’s in a good mood today.”

All Bucky Trumble got to tell the president these days was bad news, and as the axiom has it, in the long run this does the bearer no good. The high-and-mighty much prefer to hear, “Sir, your approval ratings are through the roof!” or, “Sire, the enemy has capitulated!” than the endless servings of distress and gloom that seemed to constitute Bucky’s daily political briefings. Today was no exception.

“What?” the president grunted without looking up. “What?”

In the old days, he would have said, “Well, if it isn’t the Buckmeister! Sit down, you sad-ass cocksucker, pour yourself a drink, and gimme all the dirt.” Now all Bucky got was, “ What? ” short for, “What now?”

“I have the FBI report on Cassandra Devine’s computer, sir.”

“Go ahead.”

“They didn’t find anything on it that would link her directly to Arthur Clumm, the male nurse.”

The president looked up at Bucky sourly. “I was under the impression that you were working on that.”

“I thought I had worked on it. I don’t know what to tell you. I’m certainly going to call Frank Co-”

“Don’t.” The president held up a hand. “Don’t tell me anything I don’t need to hear. Tell me something I want to hear. Even if you have to make it up out of whole cloth.”

“As a matter of fact, there is something. Seems Devine and her PR boss, Tucker, may be involved in illegal business dealing with North Korea.”

“North Korea?” the president said, brightening. “Well, goddamnit. Why didn’t you tell me that first? That’s good work, Buck. Fine work. Ho, ho. Oh, you’re a clever cocksucker, Bucky boy.” The president chortled.

Bucky thought, He thinks I planted it.

“Sir, I’d love to take credit for it, but, uh, this fact is in fact a fact. That is, it’s real. They found it on the computers.”

The president looked taken aback. “Oh. Well, fine. Okay. Even better. So can the FBI throw her ass in jail?”

“Well, sir, it’s not like they were selling F-16s or missiles to North Korea or anything like that.”

The president frowned. “What were they selling ’em?”

Bucky tried to make it sound as traitorous as he could. “Sir, these two jokers were conspiring with the government of North Korea, a government declaredly hostile to the United States, to”-he cleared his throat-“to put on a golf tournament.”

“Golf? Did you say golf tournament?”

“Yes, sir. A corruption of one of the most democratic pastimes in the civilized world. A totalitarian golf tournament. In Pyongyang. Behind enemy lines. Ostensibly to promote-I’m quoting directly-peace and understanding. In actuality to provide cover, to paste a big smiley face on a ruthless regime. And God only knows what else they might be up to. It’s big, sir. Big.”

The president stared. “Who in hell gives a rat’s ass about a golf tournament? Goddamnit, Buck, you had me thinking they were giving ’em enriched plutonium or anthrax or-”