For Roland there was something liberating about the fact that this was not a video conference; it was on speakerphone only. He was annoyed, focused yet again on Harlan Lazarus’ presence in the room with Andrew Carter in Washington. He had the sense that Lazarus passed that question along to the president. Roland glanced around the office at the other people he had assembled for the conference. He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. He said, “Hans Richter is here. He oversees much that happens on the streets. His people are out there. They have eyes. And there is less waste being picked up at supermarket sites, because the stores have been swept clean by customers. Is that right, Commissioner Richter?”
“It is.”
“Are you saying,” Andrew Carter asked, “that the amount of trash waiting on the streets in front of supermarkets indicates something significant?”
Roland made an effort not to show contempt for the questions Andrew Carter, obviously prompted by signals or notes from someone in the Oval Office with him, was asking. Roland said, “Let’s be clear, Commissioner Richter, so that President Carter and Mr. Lazarus understand. We don’t want to alarm them unnecessarily. Are there any bodies in the streets of people who have died from starvation?”
“Of course not,” Hans answered.
“And that’s because you followed the plan and dumped them in the East River as soon as you found them, right?”
Hans, who was modest, methodical, and business-like, was startled by the sarcastic question. This was not the well-organized and cordial Roland Fortune with whom he’d spent many hours at highly structured meetings. Hans thought of saying the plans were “to dump the bodies in the Hudson River, not the East River” but instead said nothing. Hans knew he had no sense of humor. He was a nice man who never made anyone laugh or smile.
Roland was exasperated, persistent. “But you heard the president, didn’t you? Are there any bodies in the streets dead from starvation?”
“No,” Hans said again.
In pain for the last hour, Roland picked up one of the blue pentagon-shaped Vicodin pills on his desk.
Without appearing to notice, Gina counted that as the third Vicodin he’d taken in the last half hour. She had been told by people on the regular security team assigned to Roland Fortune that he was a drug user, with prescription pills as his drug of choice. She genuinely admired Roland and had no intention of doing anything about his drug use. But now she was concerned that he was entering the cozy, yummy, cottony world of Valium, Xanax, Vicodin, and Percocet. She knew about addictions. Her brother Victor, at one time a heroin user, had in the end become dangerously addicted to prescription pills, and they eventually killed him. She let the cops who served on the mayor’s security detail, more loyal by far to her than to the mayor, know that she wanted to be kept informed about the mayor’s drug use and that they had to keep it a secret from everyone else.
After Roland swallowed the pill, a look of anticipatory relief spread over his face. He said quietly, “Mr. President, let me tell you what I need. I need some symbol at least that the cavalry is coming to town. So far there’s a smattering of Marines on the streets. That’s not enough. We have a city where even on ordinary days people call the 911 and 311 emergency lines to ask questions and just to plead and just to complain and moan. This is New York, after all. So please have food delivered by helicopter drop into Central Park if you have to.”
“You can’t mean that, Roland.” The president’s tone was skeptical, his words almost a rebuke.
In the background, Lazarus said, “Helicopter? I think the public associates helicopters with the ones on the top of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon as the last Americans were leaving Vietnam.”
“That was 1975, Mr. Lazarus. Ninety percent of the people in the city weren’t even born then. Nobody knows what the hell you’re talking about.”
Andrew Carter, by nature a conciliator, said, “Let’s not get distracted by the history of 1975 or the Vietnam War.”
“Mr. President,” Roland said, “I’m a politician, not a military strategist. Why don’t you come up here today?”
There was an interlude of dead silence. Roland and the other people in his office looked at each other, exchanging glances as though the speakerphone connection might have been lost.
Then Andrew Carter said, “We’ve given that some thought, too. After all, Bush was in New York the day after 9/11.”
“I was here then,” Roland said. “No matter what you thought of him, that was reassuring. I was a new city council member at the time, and I was nearby, and it was a striking image watching him speak through a bullhorn with the towers still smoldering behind him.”
A new voice spoke. It was Gloria Reynolds, the head of the Secret Service. “This is different. We knew then that no further attacks were probable. Today we don’t know that.”
Roland knew that they would have anticipated that he would raise this issue and that they had choreographed this response. They planned to have the authoritative head of the Secret Service rule out a visit on the ground that the president would not be safe. Andrew Carter himself did not want to say that.
“Let me tell you, then, what I’m going to do,” Roland said.
He was speaking too loudly. Gina, who knew something about the impact of opiates, also knew that magical thoughts could almost instantly flourish in the mind of a user. Anything and everything seemed possible when an opiate was in the blood.
Suddenly the line went silent, a void with a barely perceptible hum. Roland and Gina glanced at each other. Roland paused for five seconds. “Mr. President?”
No answer. Hans Richter, a master of technical data as well as a master of logistics, touched the laptop computer on the edge of the mayor’s desk. His adroit fingers glided over some keys. He said confidently, “No problem on our end. They put us on mute.”
“I guess we wait,” Roland said.
“This is sick,” Gina said. “Are we on our own here?”
“Let’s be careful, Commissioner,” Roland said. “You never know when they’ll open the line again.”
“Funny,” Gina said, “that didn’t seem to bother you a minute ago.”
“We can mute our end,” Hans said.
Still standing but increasingly relaxed as the soothing web of Vicodin took deeper hold, Roland said, “Hans, I know you love to demonstrate the beauty of the technology, but let’s just wait.” He smiled.
As he waited, Roland gazed out of the eastern-facing windows. The mayor’s grand office was on the second floor of the three-story building. Barely changed over the years, it had been the office of more than twenty mayors: Theodore Roosevelt, LaGuardia, John Lindsay, and Rudy Giuliani. And Roland Fortune’s favorite, Jimmy Walker, flamboyant and racy. Through the tall windows he could see the Brooklyn Bridge, its myriad suspension wires dazzling in the brilliant sunlight. He’d often looked at the bridge. In the daytime on typical days he could see colorful streams of traffic flowing into and away from Manhattan like unfurling ribbons. Today the bridge was empty.
A resonant sound filled the room. The connection was reestablished. The president’s voice rang out, “Roland, we need to suspend this. Our embassies in Nairobi, Dar Es Salaam, and Zaire have all just been attacked.”
And the connection went dead.
“Who gives a fuck about Dar Es Salaam?” Gina said.
Roland felt the onslaught of fear and confusion. He was, he realized, the leader of a city of millions of people, a place larger than many countries. But what did he really know about a crisis? He’d spent his adult life as a law student, a deputy commissioner when he was in his mid-twenties at the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, a member of the squabbling city council in his early thirties, a young congressman, and now the Mayor. He saw himself as a conscientious man with the flair of an actor and the ability to attract hundreds of thousands of votes, and the skills to keep the largest city in America running.