“Let’s go, Jeanette,” I said and grabbed her wrist. Forget Michael’s sack of money, we needed to be gone. I tugged her arm. Cops don’t wait to track down killers, no matter how long the city fires burned.
She didn’t move.
“Let’s go,” I said. I tried to make my voice strong, but even to myself I sounded weak.
“Get your hands off me,” she said, and jerked away. She looked like the sight of me might make her sick.
Michael reached out to her and she went to him. He pulled her close.
“You shot him?” she said, her voice bedroom soft.
“The fat slob wouldn’t open the safe.” Michael lifted his arm and Jeanette cozied into his chest beneath it. She put her open hand on his belly. “Smart girl,” he said. His eyes burned right through me.
My heart closed down, I couldn’t breathe, I lunged toward Jeanette with both hands. Jeanette. My Jeanette.
“Who does he think he is?” she said, shrieking, dodging me. Something drove into the side of my skull and I sank to the lot like rocks in water.
All three men came on me like vultures. I couldn’t do anything.
“Fucker came after my girl,” Michael said.
The first kick caught me below the ribs, and I felt myself lift off the asphalt parking lot. I saw the shotgun stock coming and it caught me on the bridge of my nose and felt like it tore half my face away. Then the blood, my blood, spraying everywhere, and the smell of copper filled my head. I tried to stand but couldn’t make myself move. A boot heel crushed the fingers of my left hand, and I screamed, but no sound came. My teeth were gone and my tongue filled my mouth. A jumping foot snapped my forearm like a dried stick. Dee lifted my head by my hair and looked into my face. I saw the blur of Jeanette tight against Michael’s chest.
“You still living, motherfucker,” Dee said, and let my hair go. My face thudded hard against the asphalt, splashing in my own blood. He stomped my jaw, twice, and my body shuddered. Then, all sense was gone.
Olivet lived. So did I.
He fingered Michael’s gang and they fingered me, to cut down their own sentences. It cost me four on a three-to-five.
Visitor days came and went. I got some calls. Pop came once a month, my public defender twice in four, but not Jeanette.
Never Jeanette.
PART IV
The Hill & The Edge
THE BOTTOM LINE
BY JAMES GRADY
Capitol Hill, N.E./S.E.
The Capitol building glowed in the night like a white icing cake.
Can’t believe I’m here, thought Joel Rudd as he drove toward that fortress on a hill. The car wheels rumbled his eyes to the passenger he’d picked up at a prestigious down-town hotel. She had the edgy burn of a 1940s movie star. Used the name Lena.
As they neared Capitol Hill, she said: “So you’re the Senator’s number one boy.”
“I’m his Administrative Assistant, his Chief of Staff. A long way from boy.”
“Is this ride assisting administering?
“Call it the end of a long day.”
Joel had made his play earlier, when sunset pinked the marble Capitol. Legislative Director Dick Harvie and Personal Secretary Mimi sat with Joel on the leather couch in the Senator’s inner office, sipped cold beers while they waited for their boss.
Senator Carl Ness strode into his office, filled a glass with vodka and ice.
“Here’s to us fools on a hill,” toasted the Senator. “We got through another day without wrecking the country.”
They went over the schedule Mimi’d beamed to the BlackBerry the Senator carried along with two cell phones—the taxpayer provided one for official calls, the private one wrapped in blue tape for conversations nobody wanted logged in public records.
The Senator told Dick and Mimi: “Joel will drive me home.”
Meaning: Leave us now
The Senator and Joel sat alone in an office once assigned to assassinated RFK.
Senator Ness said, “Fuck it, I’m not making give-me-money calls tonight.”
“We’ll raise enough for reelection,” replied Joel.
“Nobody ever has enough cash.” The Senator frowned. “You look…shaky.”
“Did you call out to the state today and talk to Joyce?”
“She had that school award thing over in Personville. I’ll call her after you drop me off tonight. Maybe she’ll even pick up the phone.”
No comment thought Joel, who knew all about wives, having never had one. Then he said, “We’re facing two issues. First is the Committee vote on the F-77 fighter program. It’s down to which firm wins, United Tech or Z-Systems, no real differences between either company’s bird.”
The Senator shook his head. “We got zero enemies with an Air Force so powerful that we need a new war bird.”
Spring it now, thought Joel. He said: “Second, you’ve got to be Senate sponsor for an aid package, only $8 million and change, for refugee camps in Sudan—”
The Senator sighed.
“—only $8 million, but it’ll save 10,000 starving people.”
“Foreigners. Hell, African foreigners. Not our constituents.”
“Our folks are still lucky.”
“High as back-home unemployment is, never call them lucky. Our opposition is drooling to smear me as a ‘big spender’. A ‘tax-and-spend’ guy ain’t who we can reelect.” Ice clinked in the Senator’s glass. “That trip got to you, didn’t it?”
Joel remembered wails from raped women now “safe” inside a barbed-wire desert refugee camp. Life fading from the face of a skeletal eight-year-old boy. Buzzing flies.
The Senator said: “You didn’t need to bring me that white canvas sack. Like a flour sack, only it’s a body bag for dead kids. Didn’t need to give me that sack.”
“I wanted you to remember.”
“I already wake up every morning with too much to forget.” The Senator sipped his drink. “You gotta drive tonight.”
“I know. I’ll hit the bathroom before we—”
“It’s not just me who you got to drive.”
Joel sank back into the leather chair. “I thought we were through with all that. What if there’s a problem?”
“Won’t be. Out-of-town Joyce won’t know. Would probably feel relieved.”
“Bullshit.”
“Yeah, but it’s bullshit that works.” The Senator looked away. “Tonight isn’t…personal.”
“Oh, great
“Who do you want to pick her up? Me when every cell phone in town is a camera? Some mailroom geek who’s got nothing invested in us except a job that pays him less than he could make bartending? A taxi with logbooks?”
“I didn’t sign on for this.”
“It’s gonna happen. All you get to do is choose how.”
So after driving the Senator home, Joel played chauffeur.
His passenger said: “Aren’t you going to ask?”
“I got no questions for your answers.”
“Bullshit. You’re all questions. Probably been getting away with that for years.”
“Why are you a whore?”
“I’m good at it. What’s your excuse?”
“I don’t need one. I’ve got a great job.”
“So I see.” She looked out the car window. “You’re driving me.”
He sped past the Senator’s huge town house. Drove into a courtyard of two-story dwellings created as stables and slave quarters. Now most of those boxes were homes for the thin slice of Congress’ 20,000-plus employees who lived on Capitol Hill.
Joel stopped at the Senator’s back door. Slapped a key onto the dashboard.
She scooped up the key. “Don’t catch cold out here.”
Long and lean and not looking back, she disappeared into that town house rehabbed years after the city-gutting King-assassination riots.
Joel sped to his own house five blocks away. He lived alone. Stood on the maroon rug in his living room with its Smithsonian art print
s and National Park Service black-and-white poster of a mustang in a blizzard. He charged upstairs, wrestled off his tie.
The cell phone filled his shirt pocket like a stone.
Joel looked out his bedroom window to the night.
Capitol Hill is a geography of mind, will, and luck. Gang turf carved by the blades of Congress. What matters on the Hill might not count in Chicago or Paris, not in the mile-away White House or at the Supreme Court, where Joel said the motto etched on that law cathedral should read: “Equal justice under the five-to-four decision.” Yet, what happens on Capitol Hill might change the world. As Joel had told his protégé Dick: “Up here, the bottom line never changes.”
Joel’s cell phone rang after 112 minutes. He said: “I’ll be right there.”
She stood alone in the night alley.
“You could have gotten mugged out there,” said Joel as she huddled beside him. “Or worse.”
“So what.”
He sped away from that back door. Stopped the car at the end of the alley. Idled.
“Next time, get your boss café au Viagra.”
Crimson flames roared in Joel’s head.
She said: “Are we going to sit here and stare at the road?”
“Tell me where to go.”
“So much to say, so little time.”
“I need to know—”
“But you never get to.”
“I know what I’m doing!”
“Congratulations,” she said. “How do you like it so far?”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I wouldn’t take your business.”
“And you’re all business.”
“What’s your label? Politics?”
“Look, all I want is…” He stared out the windshield.
“Oh. I see. It’s about what you want.” Her hand pulled on the emergency brake. She drew toward him like a slow falling star.
“What are you doing?” he said as her face floated closer, closer.
“Guess.”
Her mouth covered his. He tasted lightning. She drew back. Met his gaze as he managed to say: “I thought girls like you never kissed on the mouth.”
She raged at him, both hands slapping.
Joel shook her. Lena’s hair flew wild in the streetlight’s glow. She fought free and he let her. She didn’t run or look away, and he saw her. Felt her shiver.
Streets of fire drove them to his living room.
She ripped his shirt. Wore black lingerie. Her bare legs clamped around Joel’s waist as he laid her down on the living room’s maroon rug.
Two hours or a lifetime later, they lay naked in the white sheets of his bed.
Her hand stroked his cheek. “What were your women like yesterday?”
“All I see are characters in movies.”
“How do they look?” she said.
“Smart. Funny. Successful. Pretty. Like the kind of woman a man needs.”
“Couldn’t fix them, could you?” She said: “Don’t save me. And don’t make me your personal Jesus.”
Joel smiled. “Jesus was a man.”
“Don’t be so limited.”
“Who knew you were so full of don’ts
“I’m about out,” she said. “How about you?”
“All I know is this is going to drive me crazy.”
Lena sealed that with her kiss.
Come morning, Dick grinned when Joel finally walked past his desk: “Get lost coming to work?”
“Whatever,” said Joel. “What’s happening?”
“Money wars,” said Dick. “We’ve got three weeks to decide our F-77 vote.”
“What’s up with the Aid to Sudan bill?”
“They should have waited on that over there,” said Dick, nodding toward the House side of the Hill. “Made sure they had a champion over here.”
Joel said nothing about his visits to the key House staffer for the bill’s author, nothing about urging speed on the bill. Now, to Dick, he said, “Polish our armor.”
“The boss went for that? It’s the right thing to do, but he’s so freaked about reelection I can’t believe he’ll stick his neck out on something for nothing.”
“He’s not there yet,” said Joel. “But be ready.”
Mimi buzzed Joel: “The boss wants you.
The Senator sat behind his desk. Looked up as Joel entered the private office.
“About last night.” The Senator shrugged. “We all have our needs.”
“Really.” Joel walked out.
The Senator’s eyes burned Joel’s neck through the door he shut behind him. At Mimi’s desk, Joel told her, “Call Joyce wherever she is. Get her back in town.”
“Home to her husband? Not likely.”
“Mrs. Senator loves her job as much as he loves his. Reelection on the horizon, gossip about his solo ways…Joyce knows we all gotta do what we all gotta do.”
The workday wall clock stretched Joel tighter with every sweep of its red second hand. He left the office for home as soon as he could. She showed up seven minutes early. Stood on his stoop holding a pizza box and a clunky cloth purse. Hair floating free, she wore no makeup or perfume, a hooded sweatshirt under a denim jacket, torn blue jeans on slim legs and black-and-white sneakers.
“This is nothing but me,” said Lena.
He pulled her inside.
Ninety minutes later, they ate cold pizza while sitting naked on his bed.
“Your arms,” she said. “How did an indoor guy get such a tan?”
He told her about Sudan, the refugee camp, the three-day “fact finding” trip that he blew up to a two-week tour in Hell that the State Department finally insisted he abandon. “The worst part was seeing the faces of real people fall away from the helicopter as it lifted me up. I saw their eyes. I saw them believe my promises.”
“You’re exactly who belongs in this town. Get out while you can.”
“What about you?”
“Where can I go? I started out letting guys be generous to a hot girl who didn’t want a slave-labor job or a soul-sucking career. Then one day you realize that you added it up all wrong and you’re stuck being your score.”
Joel cupped her wet face. “Who you are right now is all you need.”
She shook her head no “Remember Sudan? You’ve either got power or vultures get you. Plus, the shit I’ve done has to be worth it. Has to get me beyond it with enough nobody can touch me. Except you. The best I am is being who you want.”
Thursday night she only called to say she couldn’t see him.
Friday night her plans were to be not there, but he called her so many times that she relented. Said she’d see him around midnight.
Lena rang his doorbell at ten minutes into tomorrow. Stood on his doorstep looking like a magazine ad, all hair and lips and sheathed legs in a black dress that plunged between her teardrop breasts. Her eyes were broken windows.
She stalked upstairs to his bathroom and closed the door.
He sat on the bed. Listened to the shower run for twenty minutes. The hot water tank must be empty.
He found her huddled on the floor of the tub, naked, icy liquid bullets spraying down on her as she looked at him, sobbed, “Not enough soap in the whole damn world.”
He stepped into the shower and pulled her up, held her in that cold, cold rain.
By the next afternoon, smiles softened her jaggedness. They walked past Saturday shoppers who’d come from the Eastern Market food stands where J. Edgar Hoover sacked groceries as a boy. Joel tried to show her the secret grotto tucked into the Senate side of the Capitol grounds, but Homeland Security had kicked the terrorist alert level up to YELLOW. Even his Senate staff ID wasn’t enough to get her past SWAT-geared Capitol Hill cops swarming around America’s democracy factory.
“It’s okay.” She squeezed his hand. “Take me home.”
And he knew she meant to his house.
Sunday, she urged him to do one thing she’d never sold and they did.
Monday, he went to work.
“Getting down, Dick said, as he opened the Washington Post on Joel’s desk. “Here on A20, a full-page ad from United Tech salutes their planes with ‘American-built technology.’ Then on Page A24, a quarter-page ad where Z-Systems proudly announces their F-77A ‘simulator’ performed flight tests with ‘superlative success.’
“And,” continued Dick, “here’s an ‘According to government sources’ news story about a General Accountability Office ‘investigation’ into cost-overruns by Z-Systems on their flying tanker. Of course, no mention of which Congressman or Senator ordered GAO to kick Z-Systems’ butt or why the story got leaked.”
“Seen it before,” said Joel.
“Yeah,” said Dick. “Our boss ambushed me this morning at the coffee pot. Told me that he doesn’t care which company he votes for.”
Joel said: “Did he go off again on reelection?”
“Naw, but speaking of running that Sudan relief bill ain’t got no legs.”
“They’ll show up any day now. Trust me.”
“Always,” said Dick.
That night, as Joel’s kitchen echoed with laughter, Lena’s cell phone buzzed. She said, “Excuse me.” Walked as far away as she could. Came back in ten minutes. Said, “I’ve got to go.” Left him alone with his nightmares.
Tuesday evening she was sitting on his front stoop with a smile that lit her face.
Wednesday her restlessness woke him with the dawn. She wore only his tattered high school football jersey. Told him: “I can’t do this anymore.”
Joel felt his ceiling fly away.
“I can’t leave you,” said Lena. “I can’t go back and do what I do. And I won’t let my whole life until now add up to worse than nothing.”
“If it’s about money—”
“No! If it’s your money, then you’re just like all the rest. I can’t let you be that!”
“What about me? You say you protect yourself against psycho killers and getting…and I have to believe you. But you fuck other men and it’s like you let them rape you! Can’t you—”
“Start all over?” He heard the tremor in her voice. “Baby, I ain’t got the time. All I’ve done is like a long black cloud swelling up behind me. I’m running out of sky.”