Big If Read online

  “Yes, but how is she supposed to get back to Custis? She can’t walk there, Tash.”

  “Can’t she get a ride with Shane Gould?”

  Shane was Bo Gould’s daughter and Jeanette’s roommate at Custis. Shane had her own wheels, a puce Isuzu Trooper.

  Shirl flicked the lights on. “Don’t undress in the dark. I don’t like the image of you undressing in some dark room. Shane isn’t going back to Custis this semester—I’ve told you this five times. She interning at the State Department, working on the Balkan tragedy.”

  “What does Shane know about the Balkans?”

  “She knows they’re Balkanized. The question is, what next?”

  Tashmo started shaving in the mirror. “Jeanette should stay home until her eye clears up.”

  Shirl said, “That’s inane.”

  “No daughter of mine is going to school with a fat black eye. It doesn’t look right, Shirl.”

  “It’s not school, it’s college, Tash. Your daughter is a woman now.”

  “I’m aware of this.”

  “Shhh,” said Shirl. She looked at the wall. “Keep your voice down, Tash. Jeanette is finally sleeping.”

  “How in hell do you know?”

  “Listen—” she said. “The channels aren’t changing.”

  Tashmo drove his truck whenever he was home both because he liked the truck (sporty, sexy, tough—he liked to see himself in windows driving by) and because he wanted to show Shirl that it was a useful, sensible addition to their household way of life. He liked to drive the truck, but when he had to get somewhere in a hurry and didn’t feel like dealing with potential starter trouble, he took Shirl’s Nissan Sentra, which was more reliable. He drove the Sentra now, coming into Washington, rolling through the parking lot of a crappy public golf course. He parked between a silver van with Virginia rental plates and a second van, black, with Maryland tags and a Hertz sticker on the bumper.

  Tashmo hiked up the cart road to the first tee, where Loudon Rhodes was waiting with the others from the Reagan teams of long ago, Gus Dmitri and Julius Panepinto, blowing on their hands, dressed to golf in winter, bundled up but wearing the pastels. They stood with a young man with shaggy blond hair. The young man wore a red down vest and a faded denim jacket.

  The young man said, “Don’t you recognize me, Uncle Tash? I’m Kobe Rhodes.”

  Tashmo was appalled. The kid looked like an X-ray. “Kobe,” Tashmo said. “How’s it going, son?”

  Gus was looking down the fairway with binoculars, focused on two figures at the distant pin. The golf bags held a variety of gear, walkie-talkies, an extra set of binox, a D.C. police scanner with crystals for the feds, and a big thermos of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee.

  Panepinto said, “We eat them doughnuts?”

  “That’s a rodg,” said Gus. “Yo. The crow is flying.”

  The crow down by the second hole was John Hinckley, Jr., the boyish shooter of March 1981, acquitted by insanity, 1982, and ever since a resident of a D.C. mental hospital. Hinckley wasn’t flying. He was walking quickly with a woman, his girlfriend or his fiancée, an acquitted murderess and former fellow patient. Hinckley received periodic furloughs from the hospital. Loudon Rhodes, a nonstop operator, had a source inside the nuthouse who tipped him off to Hinckley’s furloughs. Whenever Loudon got a tip, he called the boys together, Panepinto, Gus Dmitri, sometimes Billy Spandau, sometimes Larry Aaron up from Padre Island, sometimes Dusty Jackson up from Hilton Head. Loudon insisted that the Hinckley missions be professional in all respects. Panepinto, white-haired and bifocaled, walking with a metal cane after hip-replacement surgery, was still a crack logistics guy, renting vans with non-sequential plates, different rental agencies if he had the time, scaring up the kevlar vests (they wore them under the golf clothes), handheld Motorolas, and night-vision glasses, even though Hinckley had a curfew and the glasses blinded you in sunlight.

  Hinckley and the girl sat down on a bench along the fairway, a little closer now. They glanced and saw the agents. Hinckley looked away, still talking to the girl.

  “We’re getting to him,” Panepinto said.

  Tashmo stood with Kobe, Gus, and Panepinto, laughing at Loudon’s jokes, acting all amazed at the big-time people Loudon knew. Tashmo rarely kissed this kind of flagrant ass, but he might need a job someday and Loudon had the jobs.

  Kobe Rhodes looked jumpy. He said, “Dad, which one is Hinckley?”

  Loudon didn’t answer.

  Tashmo said, “The guy.”

  “I feel like going down there,” Kobe said. He cupped his hands and yelled, “Hinckley, you’re an asshole!”

  “Kobe,” Loudon said.

  “I do, Dad. I feel like going down there.”

  “Kobe,” Loudon said. “Why don’t you go wait in the van?”

  “But Dad, I want to help you. I want to be with you.”

  “Help me in the van,” said Loudon to his son. “Keep an eye out for the groundskeepers.”

  Tashmo watched Kobe Rhodes walk down the cart path to the van. He said, “How’s he doing, Loud?”

  Loudon shrugged, “The kid? He says he’s clean, he swears to me. He says being off the coke gives him lots of energy.”

  The old agents stood around, trying to look numerous and ominous, watching Hinckley as they passed the thermos. Tashmo heard all about Gus Dmitri’s paddleball, Loudon’s millions, Panepinto’s hip.

  “Larry Aaron got remarried,” Panepinto said. “I saw them up in Scottsdale, Larry and the wife. She’s Puerto Rican, Costa Rican, one of them. They met when she was cleaning out the house after Gladys passed away.”

  Tashmo took the thermos, poured a cup. “Gladys passed away?”

  “It was a blessing really. She was in such pain.”

  Gus Dmitri took the thermos. “What’s the new wife like?”

  “Sweet kid,” said Panepinto, “and a total piece of ass.”

  “Young?”

  “Young.”

  “How young?”

  “I don’t think she’s even forty yet. Larry’s on Viagra, don’t you know.”

  “So am I.”

  “Join the club.”

  “How’s it working?”

  “I don’t like to brag,” Panepinto said. “So, anyway, I says to Larry, ‘Watch it, bunky. She’ll give you a coronary on that waterbed of yours. That’s probably her plan, fucking you to death. She’s after your fat Tier VII pension package.’ Larry says, ‘I can live with that. She’s earning every penny, the crazy kid.’ So I says, ‘Larry—’”

  “Wait,” said Loudon, peering through the glasses. “They’re mobile.”

  Hinckley and his lady friend stood up. The lady stretched her legs, sat down. Hinckley opened a book and started reading to her, making small dramatic gestures with his hands.

  Gus Dmitri took a leak against the bushes.

  Tashmo said, “Hey, didn’t Billy Spandau move to Arizona too?”

  “Sure,” said Panepinto. “He rented, then he bought, but he didn’t like the climate, the desert is so dry. Now he does guest protection at a Club Med compound in Chiapas. We played a round of golf in Mesa last December. Billy’s born again. This was his big news. I’m lining up a putt and he asks if I accepted Jesus Christ. I’m like, ‘Billy, do you mind?’ I shot a ninety-six that day.”

  “With mulligans?”

  “Without. Best round of my life. My putter was on fire.”

  Tashmo said, “Wasn’t Billy born again before?”

  Loudon nodded. “’84. He cornered me with pamphlets at Camp David. I told him to go peddle his salami somewhere else.”

  “I guess it didn’t take that time,” Panepinto said. “He backslid, got mixed up with No-Doz and his workout buddy’s wife. Then he contracted liver cancer and was born again, again. He asked me if I’d noticed how many guys from Reagan had contracted the Big C. He kept saying that, contracted. Like it’s something you sign up for.”

  Tashmo said, “How many?”

  “Well, there
’s Billy. There’s Gladys Aaron, Ken Howell, and Ken Ochs. Dusty lost his sister. And Reagan too, the man himself—remember, with the polyps? And Mrs., with the breast. It’s a pattern, Billy says. He says the Reagan era had become a cancer cluster. We’re all contracting growths, and why is this? Billy has two theories. One, cancer is secretly contagious. The other is that we were all exposed to some powerful mutagen on Air Force One.”

  “Like what,” said Gus Dmitri, “some chemical or ray?”

  “Billy didn’t know for sure, but he thought maybe it was fallout from glitzy campaign advertising. Maybe ads have rads and they bombard our genes. We fill the air with glitz. It has to effect something.”

  “Billy is an idiot,” said Loudon Rhodes. “I love the guy like a brother, but let’s face it, he’s an idiot.”

  The girl stood up and walked along the path. Hinckley followed her, still holding the book.

  “They read each other poetry,” Gus Dmitri said. “I saw that in a magazine.”

  Loudon shook his head. “It makes me sick, seeing Hinckley walk around like that. Look at him. Look at him. He should be in jail, the very coldest hole. Oh, but that might violate his precious little rights or mess up his precious little therapy.”

  “That’s the problem with this country,” Panepinto said. “We’re afraid to punish. No wonder the young generation is walking around lost.”

  “Hinckley needs a bullet,” Gus Dmitri said.

  “Bang,” said Loudon Rhodes.

  He still liked sex with Shirl. He liked it best just before he went away. He’d find her with her orchids in the UV room and take her in the kitchen from behind, or any old way she wanted. Married couples didn’t bang enough; this was, he felt, the root of many national problems. Sex with his wife made him feel patriotic.

  They lay in bed, Tashmo drifting off to sleep. Shirl was bundled under covers, as she always was when naked in this room. She was talking about the problem with the car, the truck, the starter and the brakes, the trip to Generoso’s, Nigel, Mandy, and the car seats, sounding very far away.

  Tashmo had a crazy thought, lying there. What if Lydia Felker had called Shirl? What if Lydia had told Shirl the whole story, the old affair, all of it? Was this why his wife was so on edge?

  Shirl was up and busy. She copied Nigel’s number from her Palm Pilot, reaching to the night table, holding the covers to cover her breasts, like if she wasn’t careful he might see one. She brought the phone to Tashmo and he dialed.

  Nigel taught a seminar on plagiarism at UMaryland. Tashmo didn’t like professors as a group and wasn’t wild about Britons either, except for Winston Churchill, who seemed like an okay guy. Tashmo had told the guests at Mandy’s wedding that Nigel taught a course in plagiarism, rather than on. Nigel, who was drunk, got pissed, saying that in meant he was teaching how, whereas on meant that he was deconstructing. The number rang somewhere in the District.

  Nigel here. Kindly leave a message at the tone and I’ll return your call.

  Tashmo waited for the tone. “Hi, Nigel, it’s your father-in-law, Sunday around six. I’m calling because we really need the car seats first thing tomorrow and I figure you don’t need them, since you dumped your family like the scumbag punk you are, and three weeks is probably too soon for you to have new kids with someone else, I’m assuming, so kindly drop the car seats at the Goulds’. You remember Bo and Leah from the wedding. They live down the street, the brick house on the corner, number forty-one. Don’t let us down, okay?”

  The pickup started in the driveway.

  Shirl said, “Hallelujah,” and threw it in reverse.

  They took Laurel Road to the Balt-Wash. Tashmo made Shirl drive so that she could feel the leftward drag for herself and better describe it to Generoso.

  He said, “Brake.”

  She braked.

  “Feel it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s like an aaagh. Tell him that. Try again.”

  She tried it. She didn’t feel it.

  He said, “I swear it was doing it before.”

  It was dark. They were southbound on the Beltway.

  “Try it now.”

  She tried it.

  “Feel anything?”

  “A pain in the ass.”

  “Oh that’s funny, Shirl. That’s really really funny.”

  Shirl pulled in front of Building 00 at Andrews Air Force Base. They sat in the no standing zone and still there was this bullshit with the car.

  “You mean the truck,” he said. “It’s a truck, a pickup truck. Say truck.”

  “I can’t walk home.”

  “Nigel will bring the seats, you’ll see. Mandy can follow you to Generoso’s.”

  “Nigel will let us down.”

  The jet beyond the fence was fueled and floodlit, waiting. Tashmo knew that Nigel would let them down.

  He said, “Get one of your girlfriends to follow you to Generoso’s. Jeanette can take the bus to Custis.”

  “That’s just great,” said Shirl. “A girl alone on a Greyhound bus with a fat black eye. Knowing our luck, she’ll be captured by a documentary photographer and become a famous haunting icon of American disaffection. How embarrassing for her—it could devastate her self-esteem.”

  Shirl.

  “You and your book club,” Tashmo said. “Besides, there ain’t nothing wrong with our luck.”

  As the youngest agent on the VP’s team, Vi drew the duty of driving Gretchen Williams. Vi would leave Tower South in a four-door Taurus from the government’s leased fleet of four-door Tauruses, pick up Gretchen at her house in Maryland, take her to meetings at Old Treasury downtown, at the Pentagon, or out in Beltsville with the planners. Vi didn’t hate the duty. It was long days of no thinking, of focus on the road, as Gretchen shot the rapids of official Washington, pestering the higher-ups for better gear, or more down time, or replacement agents. Gretchen rarely got the things she lobbied for, but she tried, which Vi thought was impressive.

  Vi pulled into Gretchen’s driveway around four that Sunday afternoon. She saw Gretchen in the doorway of her house, fighting with her son. This went on for ten or fifteen minutes, then Gretchen came down the steps with her suit and duffel bag.

  From Gretchen’s house to Beltsville was twenty minutes without traffic, and there wasn’t too much traffic going northbound. In the twenty minutes, Gretchen said two things: “Hey” (as in hello, when she first came down her driveway and got in) and “Hey” (as in Pass this asshole already, when Vi was caught behind a rattle-trap Toyota in the slow lane on the Beltway). Gretchen spent the ride looking at the VP’s schedule for the New Hampshire trip, a fat printout in a plain manila folder. This was another good thing about driving Gretchen Williams: not a lot of claustrophobic small talk in the car.

  They pulled up to the gate of the Protection Campus, passed their creds out the window to the guard, who ran them through a reader and waited for approval on his screen. The buried sensor net around the grounds was undergoing routine maintenance. Vi saw the techies and the backhoe and the trench, the SWATs in ball caps drinking coffee, standing by the trench, everybody looking like they were making overtime. The guard handed the IDs through the window and stepped back to let them pass.

  A short road up the hill, lawns on either side. Three cars at the crest, parked end to end along the shoulder, flashers flashing, two Tauruses and a big black Lincoln Town Car with a whiplash aerial. An agent saw them coming and stepped into the road. The agent was a black guy, Levi Harris, one of the Director’s bodyguards. The Director, being king of all the details, had the Town Car and a driver and a detail of his own, and Levi was the weekend guy apparently.

  Gretchen passed the VP’s schedule to Vi. “Run this by the planners. I’ll meet you on the quad when the Director’s done with me.”

  Gretchen got out, walked around the hood, saying not a thing to Levi Harris. The doors of the Town Car were opening. Legs were coming out, followed by the bodies of three people: Boone Saxon, the threat i
nvestigator, wearing a stiff raincoat and one of his plaid vests which always made Vi think of TV Christmas specials; Debbie Escobedo-Waas, the Director’s new gal Friday, so perky and gung-ho; and finally, slowly, like a bureaucratic Elvis, the Director himself, emerging from the car, pulling on his suit to straighten it.

  They started down the road on foot. The Director walked in front, letting Debbie make his points, Gretchen on the other side of Debbie, Boone Saxon a step or two behind them. The driver in the Town Car swung out and followed them, pausing to let Levi Harris hop in the shotgun seat. The bosses walked slowly, talking more than walking, Levi and the driver following discreetly in the big car. Vi, uncertain of the etiquette in such situations, followed the Lincoln down the road and around the quad, Debbie talking, the Director interjecting here and there, Gretchen nodding as she walked, Boone Saxon listening in case his name was called.

  The quad was a grass oval, big enough for soccer, browned over for the winter. The buildings on the quad—Threats, Plans, Movements, Psych Services, the Weapo School, and Technical Support—were of a set, if not a mind-set, red brick and cream steel, sculptural, abstract, like if you pushed them all together, they would fit and make a giant checkered cube.

  Vi parked outside the Plans Pavilion, a building with a wingspan if such a thing is possible, and carried the VP’s schedule upstairs to the cubicles and glass-walled conference areas. The president was flying out of Andrews in the morning and the planners were in air-raid mode, scurrying around, trying to assemble a halfway decent security assessment for a weekend in New York.

  “Okay,” said one planner. “We got a fund-raiser at the Waldorf followed by coffee with opinion-makers at a mansion in Bedminster. What’s the safest covered route from Manhattan to New Jersey?”