Joe’s house was a nondescript dwelling on a street of mildly upscale tract homes. Exactly the sort of place that we found most comfortable. He had no wife, no roommate, no live-in lover, so all of the rooms were free, but with so many people the place was still pretty crowded. If we were going to sleep here, most of us would end up on the floor in sleeping bags.
We were tired, though, and didn’t care about the close quarters. I wound up sleeping in the living room with Philipe and James and Mary — Mary on the couch, the rest of us on the floor.
“You think I should go in there and fuck him?” Mary asked as we settled in.
“Give it a day,” Philipe said. “He needs a little time to adjust.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.
“Me, you, and Steve will go to this meeting with Joe, scope it out, see where things stand. Then we’ll be able to decide what we’re going to do.”
“What do you think we’re going to do?” I asked.
He did not answer.
We woke up early, spurred by Joe’s alarm, and after all of the showers had been taken, we headed to the International House of Pancakes for breakfast. Joe offered to pay, but Philipe explained that we didn’t have to pay, and after we ate, we simply left.
The mayor took us on a short tour of his city — Philipe, Steve, and I riding in his car, the others following — and we cruised through downtown Desert Palms, past the new mall, through the growing section of corporate office buildings. “Ten years ago,” he explained, “none of this existed. Desert Palms was a few shacks and stores outside of Palm Springs.”
Philipe looked out the window. “So, basically, these rich guys owned a lot of worthless desert land out here, and they stacked the city council with their people and got the land zoned the way they wanted, got the city to chip in for redevelopment projects, and they got even richer.”
“Pretty much.”
“How did they find you? What did you used to do?”
Joe smiled. “I was the personnel assistant for what passed for city hall back then.”
“And no one ever noticed you or paid attention to you, and then suddenly someone offered to support you in the race for mayor and you were treated like a king.”
“Something like that.”
“You must’ve done something else besides vote for a softball diamond,” I said. “They couldn’t want you out just because of that.”
“It’s the only thing I can think of.”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t understand how they can tell you you can’t be mayor anymore. The people around here voted for you. What if they want to vote for you again? You should just tell these guys to beat off, you don’t need them.”
“But I do need them.”
“Why?”
Philipe snorted derisively. “Are you kidding? How do you think someone gets elected in these small elections? You think candidates personally meet all the people in their districts? You think voters know where the candidates stand on all the issues? Be serious. People vote on name recognition. Candidates get name recognition through ads and posters and newspaper exposure. Money buys ads and posters and newspaper exposure. You get it? If these guys back you, you’re in. That’s it. Your name’s plastered on red, white, and blue poster board on every telephone pole in the city.”
Joe nodded. “Exactly.”
“But he must have name recognition already. He’s been mayor for a long time.”
“Who’s the mayor of Santa Ana?”
“I don’t know.”
“See? You’re from Santa Ana and you don’t even know. Besides that, Joe’s Ignored. You honestly think people are going to remember who he is?”
“Oh,” Steve said. He nodded. “I understand.”
We drove back to the mayor’s house. The meeting was scheduled for eleven o’clock in one of the corporate offices we’d passed on our tour. Philipe told the others they could hang around, go shopping, do whatever they wanted, but they had to be back by one o’clock because we were going to have a strategy meeting to decided on our next course of action.
Joe changed into nice clothes — a suit and tie — and Philipe, Steve, and I piled into his car. The four of us drove downtown.
The office building into which we walked reminded me uncomfortably of Automated Interface and I found myself thinking of Stewart’s dead, bloodied body, but I forced myself to push those thoughts aside, and we followed Joe through the lobby, to an elevator. He pushed the button for the fifth floor.
The metal doors opened on a long, plushly carpeted hallway. We walked down the hall to an office. The plaque on the wooden double doors read: TERENCE HARRINGTON, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD.
Joe knocked timidly.
Philipe reached over, rapped more loudly.
The mayor licked his lips. “Let me do the talking.”
Philipe shrugged, nodded.
The door swung open. There was no one behind it; it had been opened electronically. We stepped into what looked like an unusually opulent doctor’s waiting room. Another set of doors immediately opened at the room’s far end. Through the doorway, we could see an extraordinarily large desk, behind which sat one of the business-suited men from the foundation dinner.
“Obviously designed to be intimidating,” Philipe whispered.
“It is,” Joe replied.
We walked through the waiting room into the office beyond. All three power brokers from last night were there, two of them sitting in high-backed chairs flanking the man behind the desk. Three other equally important-looking men sat on a couch to the left of us.
The office itself was like something out of a movie. One wall had a fully stocked bar next to a partially opened door that led into what I assumed was a bathroom. The opposite wall was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase into which was set a combination high-tech stereo/television. Behind the desk was all window, a breathtaking panoramic view of the desert and Mount San Jacinto.
“Come in.” The man behind the desk smiled, but there was no warmth or humor in it. “Sit down.”
There were no chairs for us to sit in.
The man laughed.
The man — Terence Harrington, I assumed — was big, tall, with a florid face and the jowls of a bulldog. He wore his thinning gray hair long, combed across the bald spot on his head. I looked from him to the two men flanking him, both of whom were staring at us. The one on the left had a military brush cut and was chewing on the end of a huge unlit cigar. The one on the right had a thick white mustache and was rattling some sort of hard candy between his teeth.
The antipathy between us was immediate and was born full-blown. It was like we were magnets with opposing fields — we hated each other instantly. I looked at Philipe, at Steve, and for the first time in a long time we were in tandem. We knew instantly what each other was thinking, feeling. We knew what each other wanted because we all wanted the same thing.
We wanted these fuckers dead.
It was an unsettling realization, a frightening realization. I wanted to be able to get on my moral high horse and say that I could not condone violence, that I did not wish to harm anyone ever again, but that was not true, and we all knew it. The reaction within us was animal, instinctive.
We wanted to kill these men.
I glanced toward the three other men on the couch. They were obviously very powerful, obviously very rich, but they looked to me like members of an old movie comedy team: one was short, one was fat, one was bald with an unusually shiny head. All were staring at us disinterestedly.
Joe faced Harrington. “You wanted to see me?”
“I want you to give us your resignation. We already have one typed up. All you have to do is sign it. We’re going to hold a special election in mid-January and install our new mayor, and we need your resignation by the end of this week.”