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BLACK HELICOPTERS EPISODE 25 FRIDAY the SEVENTH - 5:38 PM In the sudden silence from the Masty podium as Yvette Hall wrapped, a thousand voices... angry or awestruck, conspiring, inspiring or simply gossiping... could be heard humming, for several seconds, like a giant, ailing refrigerator. Then, language exploded like pus from an aural boil. Discerning that Beedle might not prove the most amiable of companions, Glenn sidled towards Anne and Rinker before the lawyer was aware of his defection. |
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"...maybe
two?" Anne was bargaining. "You can do two, that would be Craig and
Tom Maputi. They're the instigators, aren't they? Let's just get this thing
settled."
"I
can't go back with two," Glenn heard Rinker object as he rocked back and
forth on his heels. "Give me four."
Anne
pulled a little calculator out... the logo of a public television station being
almost as large as the keyboard... and toted up some figures. "The numbers
aren't going to be a problem, it's the people. Arnold Bissonnette is out, he's
too disruptive, too close to the old David Duke down in Louisiana, there. Jena people. Rayna's not budging on him. What about one of the
alternates?"
"Anne..."
Glenn tried to break in.
"Just
a minute," she hushed, brushing an unruly blonde cowlick out of her eyes,
self-consciously brushing the sleeve of her gray suit in the event something
unpleasant had fallen out of her cuff. "We're almost home! Talk to Tom...
Maputi's got to have a protege he wants inside, everybody does.
Check it out!"
Rinker
hesitated. "Anne, I don't think..."
"Craig,
Maputi, Brother Ecker... right?... and Maputi's alternate. No Bissonnette. Feed
him some bad clams. That's four delegates... the offer stands for fifteen
minutes. Do it!"
Rinker
flung his arms up, his dark blue suit unwittingly revealing the large, even
darker ellipses of fearful perspiration. "I'll try..."
"Whatever!"
And she turned her back, dismissing him. "I think that takes care of the
Virginia delegation," she muttered to Glenn.
"What's
the score?"
"They're
taking the media caucus, but we've got the convention."
"How's
that?"
"Ohh..."
Anne said, suddenly realizing that she was still holding the calculator with
the add-key down, running up the tab of delegates well into the millions. She
flicked it off, returned it to her purse. "Pat O'Neraghty worked out a
compromise on that Middle East thing, bringing the boys home from Baghdad, he
says, but with honor now that the Saudis and Iraniacs are… quote unquote…
peacekeeping among those various Muslims. He's downstairs with some Arabs and
that Jewish guy..."
"Morcanteur?"
Glenn tried to show off.
"No,
the Israeli. What's his name... anyway we're just plodding along, running them
down with the numbers. And either they don't know it, or Tillerman's more comfortable
with his role as martyr!"
A
voice interrupted from the podium...
"Brothers
and sisters, we're magnificent!
Over
the applause, Glenn wrinkled his nose and pouted... "who's that?"
"Carruthers.
Evan Carruthers. Environmental Action Network... they blow up bulldozers, save
trees, stuff like that. Also with Pop Zero, but I suspect Austin's warned him
to wear the white hat while he's here."
"Isn't
that the racist group that shot those people crossing over the border down in
Arizona and hung 'em from their heels from telephone poles? Like
Mussolini?"
"If
you believe the government's rumormongering," Anne sniffed, nodding
towards the podium as if the words coming therefrom might be valuable.
Carruthers,
with his blue Western shirt and thick, white hair, dyed almost blue, reminded
Glenn of a kindly old sheriff in a Western, or one of the grand ol' opry sort
of drinking buddies that Catfish had flown in from Nashville and Branson by the
dozens to get his picture taken with. "Without a popular movement,"
he began in a deep, Western twang, "without the force of a mass
movement, like that of the Coalition, we face more than planetary doom... we
face the extermination of our entire Western culture. But... we are going to
prevail! We will prevail! America
will prevail!"
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FRIDAY the SEVENTH - 5:58 PM
Andy
didn't feel very prevalent as he and Rael followed Sylvester into the Bureau of
Permits where Tom Jenks and the two attorneys, Hill and Goldman, were already
cooling their heels. Placing a finger to his lips, Sylvester smiled at them
enigmatically, whispered to Disson's secretary, then quickly entered the
sanctuary of the strange little bureaucrat... slipping the door open and
closing it behind him before any of the petitioners could sneak a peek inside.
"Damn!"
said Emil, "I wanted a look at his busted-up mug!"
"Folks,"
Andy acknowledged, "...didn't think I'd be seeing you again."
He
collapsed into one of Disson's costly leather chairs, picking up a brochure on
the coffee table: Security Golf Course Homesites in one of the northern burbs,
exclusive to Morrow Properties... Reduced! Starting from $240,000!
He
dropped the ad like a piece of radioactive waste.
"Didn't
think I'd see any of you either," Jenks recalled. "They made us lie
face down on the pavement out at that old base, for what must have been
hours!"
"Oh
no!" cried Rael. "Are people still out there?"
"No,
that's the funny part," said Goldman. "Couple of hours ago they just
started releasing prisoners... even some of those striking restaurant workers,
snatched up for picketing."
"Something
hopping," seconded Hill. "Jail doors flying open all over this
town."
Tom
remained unconvinced. "I don't trust them. It's a trap. It's like... maybe
they want the demo to go on, so they can pull off something really
big!"
"Tom,
I don't think..." Leo began, wearily...
"Oh
cut it out, Leo!" Hill shook his shaggy head, removed a small silver flask
from his jacket and downed a healthy draught. "You were out at Marston,
too, spent half a day being kicked this way and that, and you're still with
that liberal's business-as-usual attitude..."
"Well,
there was provocation," the ACLU man said. "I don't
know who, or why, but someone inside Dorritt Square did throw a
bottle, or a rock... I don't know which..."
"I
think it was the U.N.!" Rael asserted. "Making everyone look bad, so
people trust them, keep giving them more power until they clamp down and repeal
the Law of the Sea. They want the dolphins extinct... because, like, dolphins
are more intelligent than we are... people reduced to living off the land, like
locusts..."
"Little
Miss Tillerman!" Tom Jenks grunted.
"Well,"
Leo allowed, "whoever did do it certainly didn't stand up and identify
themselves... which means they couldn't have been Movement, because the
Movement boasts. Always! And then the Guard went a little crazy..."
"The
Guard?" This interested Andy. "Those nuts they had to take back from
San Jose for raping all those nuns… who called them in?"
"That,"
Emil speculated, "is the million dollar question. Probably, quite a few
millions. Let's put it this way.... suppose what we have here is not the
burning of the Reichstag, or Moncada, or Monicagate, even, but a disagreement
among pillars of the ruling class. Mayor Potter, formerly a Democrat until that
primary two years ago where he had to run independent, is, at least, a nominal
supporter of the Conks. Governor Drummond's a Republican who might be thinking
that, if Catfish runs as a third party candidate, the Democrats get hurt next
year.
"So
somebody in the CNC is dealing with the GOP? Hey!..." Leo Goldman added,
"I made a rhyme."
"Quite
possible," Andy ventured. "Look at all those so-called ecologists in
the Coalition!"
"So,
as we all know," Emil continued, "the easiest way to ensure a maximum
of disruption and rotten publicity is to take all of the responsible
elements... I use the term very loosely, in your case... out of circulation,
leaving a headless mob."
"You
know," Tom remembered, "there were a couple of crazy guys in Rambo
suits at Marston, you know, walking around in circles with this attitude...
nobody knows where they came from, nobody wanted to talk to them. They were
prisoners, but nobody beat them down; I even saw one trying to chat up this
news reporter, but he wasn't buying it. Some kind of heat..."
Hill
masticated this information, took another swallow from his flask, smacked his
lips. "Let us suppose you were an official of one faction... you, perhaps,
believe another faction's out to get you by handing out harsh, unlawful
treatment to people in police custody. Now... if you had something to say about
whether these people continued to remain in custody until something... well... embarrassing
happened... well, you see where this leads! Now this just happens to be idle
conversation but, as a member of the Bar, at least for the present, I was
comped into one of Pinhead's parties for charity leeches last night, while you
all were guests of the state..."
"You
sure get around, Emil, for a cheap lawyer," Goldman needled.
"Hey,
I ain't cheap... just ask the dealers and drunk drivers, whom I make pay my fee
up front, as opposed to those I let run up a tab. Conks fuck with
me, I sue them. Rayna Finch... she's
got deep pockets, deep everything!" He took another pull from the silver
flask. "But another thing..."
The
office phone rang, cutting him off like the blade of a guillotine, slamming
down on a neck. Though the Permits Bureau Five strained to hear, they could
not, until the Director's secretary put down the phone, glanced at them,
wrinkling her nose as if at the smell of prison, and said:
"The
Director will see you now."
"Hope
someone brought a videocam, or at least on of those spy cellphones, this time.
Tape recorder?" Andy suggested ruefully, extracting himself from Disson's
comfortable chair.
"Somehow,"
Emil predicted, "I don't think that will be necessary."
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