Christopher Buckley - Boomsday

Cass, however, had no intention of turning herself in. She had a bully pulpit. One magazine had named her “the New Swamp Fox.” Her website postings were anticipated and reported by everyone the moment they appeared. The FBI, invoking some obscure antiterrorism statute, had shut down Cassandra, but Cass’s followers kept starting new ones, called Cassandra.2, etc. The latest Cassandra was.54. To judge from the millions of hits on the site, her following was growing every day.

A few days after Super Tuesday, Randy declared that he was withdrawing from the remaining party primaries and would be a candidate for the Whatever Party, proudly named for the generation it represented. Columnist George Will dryly recorded his gratitude that “we will at least be spared a party named STFU.” Randy’s operatives swiftly went about collecting the requisite signatures; his lawyers began suing all fifty states and U.S. possessions to get him on the November ballot.

One week later, Gideon Payne announced that he too was withdrawing from further party primaries and would run as the candidate of the Life Party.

All this left President Peacham facing the unhappy prospect of having to finish off his remaining four challengers for the party’s nomination-all of whom were staying in the race until the end so as to inflate their speaking and product endorsement fees-at which point, badly weakened, he would have to face Randy and Gideon in the general fall election.

“Where are you?” Randy said.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Cass said. Randy’s guy Mike Speck had informed Randy that his phone lines were not tapped. (Since the early 1970s, U.S. presidents have shied away from overtly listening in to their opponents’ telephone calls.) It was safe to talk. Even so, Cass kept these conversations short.

She said, “It’s warmer where I am now.” She had taken a series of bus rides south and was in New Orleans, where no one particularly cared who you were. Mike Speck had arranged for credit cards and an ID under an assumed name, so at least she wouldn’t have to go on sleeping in parks.

“I was thinking,” Randy said. “The night Peacham accepts the nomination, why don’t you show up at Jepperson headquarters. We walk out together. That would take the piss out of him!”

“You get a bounce in the polls, and I go back to playing hearts with Pulitzer Nation at the Alexandria Detention Center? Thanks. Pass.”

“They’re probably going to lift the warrant on you.” He said it with an unmistakable note of disappointment.

“I’m riding buses and eating out of Dumpsters, and you’re worried that they’ll lift the warrant for my arrest? Your concern for ‘the woman I love’ is really touching.”

“Eating out of Dumpsters? Not according to your latest American Express card statement.”

“Whatever. I did take the bus. Point is, you seem to be enjoying my life on the lam.”

“Darling, it’s for the cause.”

“The me cause or the you cause?”

“The us cause. You’re a symbol. Did you see New York magazine? They called you ‘the New Patty Hearst.’ How about a new photograph of you for the website. Holding a gun.…”

“A gun? Why don’t I just go down in a hail of bullets. A photograph? Are you totally crazy? Let’s make it really easy for them to find me.”

“Look, darling, I know you’re going through a lot. And I’m proud of you. Oops, I’ve got to dash. Speaking to the League of Transgendered Voters. Hey-we’re up two points in the latest tracking poll. We’ve got the big mo! Call me soon. Love you. Don’t get caught.”

He sounded as though he were reminding her to bring an umbrella.

Cass looked out the window of her hotel on Bourbon Street and wished she could call Terry. But they were listening in on his phones, so she would have to wait for his scheduled call at the pay phone on Poydras.

“Hey, girlie! You wanna party?”

“Get lost.”

Cass’s new outfit was a bit on the come-hither side: wig, short skirt, boots. She wondered if she’d overdone it. She was just trying to blend. How ironic it would be-for the cause-if she ended up in the New Orleans jail in a hooker sweep. She was waiting for the pay phone to ring. Pay phones. What a concept. Who thought them up? Finally, it rang.

“Sorry,” Terry said. “I’m late. But let me tell you why.…”

Someone had called Tucker Strategic Communications, got through to Terry. The person said he had “very interesting information that would be of great value to Cass Devine.” Terry tried to blow him off, but the man persisted. He got Terry’s attention when he told him that he worked for Elderheaven Corporation. He said his information involved a “business deal” between Gideon Payne and-Frank Cohane.

“He said he had it all on paper,” Terry said. “And computer files. Real hush-hush sort of stuff.”

Cass thought. “Did he say why he was contacting you?”

“He didn’t know how to reach you. He wants to give it to you personally. Says he’s your biggest fan. But you know, who isn’t?”

“Do you think it’s for real?”

Terry sighed. “Well, your other biggest fan at Elderheaven, Death Angel Clumm, lethally injected thirty-six Wrinklies. Bearing that in mind, I guess I would approach with caution. I don’t know. He sounded real enough. I could have Randy’s guy Speck check him out.”

“No. That might scare him off,” Cass said. “Speck scares me . You do realize that if the FBI is listening in on your office phone, they now know about this guy.”

“He’d figured all that out. Said he was calling from a pay phone. He said he’d get me-tomorrow-a safe phone number. He didn’t say how. I’m to give that number to you. Then you call him at three o’clock, the day after tomorrow. He’ll be at the number. I’ll call you tomorrow at the usual time with the number.”

Terry called her the next day with the phone number. The guy had sent it to him via FedEx, addressed to an employee of Tucker. The envelope inside was marked “Please give to Mr. Tucker URGENT.”

The next day, at three o’clock, from a pay phone on Napoleon Street, near Pascale’s Manale restaurant in the Garden District, Cass called the number. Jerome picked up on the first ring.

“Oh, Miss Devine,” he began, “I am such a fan.…”

“Reverend,” Gideon’s secretary said, “Monsignor Montefeltro.”

Gideon hadn’t spoken with Massimo in several months. He wanted to distance himself from him in just about every way-not only because of the deplorable (but ultimately felicitous) Russian business, but mainly because Montefeltro’s papal bull was backfiring spectacularly with the voters. Gideon wanted to make his own case against legal suicide without the heavy breathing of Rome over his shoulder.

“Call back,” he said.

“He says it’s very important, Reverend.”

Gideon hesitated, then picked up. “Massimo, my dear friend, pax vobiscum. How are you?”

Massimo did not sound well. He spoke in a harried sort of whisper. “Geedeon, I must speak to you.”

“I’m right here, Massimo.”

“The Russians. They are impossible!”

Oh dear, Gideon thought. Massimo knew nothing, as far as Gideon knew, of the relationship with Olga. And he preferred to keep it that way. “How do you mean, Massimo?”

“Ivan, that enforcer, or pimp, whatever he is-he keeps demanding money from me. I had to give him our Mercedes. Then he wants another Mercedes. It never finishes. We don’t have any cars left at the nunciature! The nuncio is riding in taxis!”

“Well, don’t give him any Mercedeses.”

“Every time I tell him. And still he demands money. I cannot give him from the Vatican funds. And I have already given him all of my personal funds. It’s a misery, Geedeon. A dee-saster .”