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.