The garage door was open; he parked inside and pressed the button to close it. He walked into the house, hung his coat on a hook in the mudroom, and went into the living room. Half a dozen men greeted him.
“Hey, Zeke,” Harv said. “You had breakfast?”
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
“We just finished some eggs Benedict and champagne,” Harv said. “Too bad you’re late.”
Everybody laughed.
Zeke lowered himself into a chair by the fireplace. “I could use a second cup,” he said.
“Mary!” Harv shouted. “Get Zeke some black coffee, will you?”
“Coming,” a female voice said from the kitchen. A plump, pretty woman in her late thirties brought in the coffee. “Morning, Zeke,” she said.
“Morning, Mary, and thanks.”
“Mary,” Harv said, “if you’ll excuse us, now, we’ve got some business to discuss.”
“Bye, gentlemen,” Mary said, closing the door behind her.
“Well,” Zeke said, “what did it come to?”
Harv grinned. “A little over a million eight,” he said. “I guess you want yours now.”
“I reckon I do,” Zeke said. “I reckon everybody does. Did you have to launder it?”
Harv shook his head. “Nah, it was all fresh out of three or four banks, a good mix of denominations, old and new bills. I put away some bundles of sequential serial numbers, nearly half a million.”
“Why didn’t you fence it?”
“Too soon. Everybody in the Northwest has heard that an armored car got hit. The feds are everywhere. We’ll keep it a year or two, then sell it to somebody who can get it out of the country.”
“Makes sense,” Zeke said.
Harv went to the woodbox beside the fireplace and removed six bundles, tossing one to each man. “A quarter of a million each,” he said. “I took my organizational fee and some expenses off the top.”
“Fair enough,” Zeke said, examining the bundle. The money was tightly packed and shrink-wrapped, then wrapped in brown paper.
“Don’t go splashing out that stuff,” Harv said. “The feds will be sniffing around, and we don’t want some citizen reporting that he took a lot of cash in payment for something. Let it cool off for a while.”
The other men nodded.
Harv glanced at his watch and picked up a remote control. The satellite TV came on. They were on mountain time, and the Sunday morning political shows were coming on. “Take a look at this guy,” Harv said. “Any of you know him?”
“I know him,” Zeke said.
“That’s right, you’re from Georgia. What do you think about him?”
“I think he’s everything that’s wrong with this country, all wrapped up in one man.”
“Maybe we should turn our attention to him; it’s been a while.”
“You better believe it,” Zeke growled. “Some friends of mine tried to take him out nine years ago, when he was first running for the Senate, but it all blew up in their faces.”
“Was this Willingham and The Elect?” Harv asked.
“Yeah; he and another guy bought it, and the rest scattered, including me. That guy has been too hot to touch since then.”
“What do you think about now?”
“I think if he got elected president, things would get worse for us. Christ knows I don’t have any use for Republicans, but I’ll be goddamned if I want another Democrat running things, especially this one.”
“Well, we’re refinanced now,” Harv said. “You want to take this on?”
“It would be my privilege,” Zeke said. “I’ll take ten thousand from each of you for expenses.”
The others nodded and began breaking open their packets of bills.
Zeke watched the image on the screen. “He’s got it coming,” he said.
21
It was Will’s third Sunday-morning television program. He sat behind a desk and stared into the hot eyes of Barnabas Pauling, a right-wing political commentator known inside the Beltway as the Prince of Fucking Darkness, or Pod, for short.
“Senator Lee,” Pod was saying, “your past is riddled with incidents of your placing expensive social programs ahead of fiscal responsibility...”
“Name three,” Will said.
“Let’s take welfare reform,” Pod said.
“I voted for welfare reform,” Will said.
“You also voted for a number of amendments designed to destroy welfare reform, before you finally gave in and cast your vote.”
“There were gaping holes in the welfare-reform bill and there were a lot of children in those holes. I and some other sensible people tried to make the blow fall less harshly on them.”
“Whatever,” Pod said. “Now, your love for these liberal programs...”
“What programs are those?” Will asked.
“You know very well which programs I mean,” Pod replied hotly.
Do you mean bills designed to improve public education? To fortify the Head Start program? To subsidize school lunches for kids whose parents can’t afford them? Those are programs that the vast majority of Americans think are very important to the kind of country we live in.” Will was glad it was color television, because Pod was turning red, now.
Sir,” Pod said, his voice rising, “this country cannot afford a lot of new social programs.”
“They’re hardly new,” Will replied. “Our people have been relying on them for a long time.”
Pod turned to the moderator, who was suppressing a smile. “Ben, it’s clear I’m not going to get any straight answers out of Senator Lee.”
“Come on, Barney,” Will said, “ask me some straight questions.”
All right, Senator,” Pod spat, “where do you stand on the balanced-budget amendment?”
“I’m all for a balanced budget and against the amendment. I think we ought to have the guts to balance the budget without mangling the Constitution.”
“I thought so. How about gun control?”
“I’ve hunted all my life, and I don’t want to make it more difficult for legitimate sportsmen to own hunting rifles and shotguns, but guns ought to be licensed so we know who owns them.”
“So they can be confiscated by the government?”
“I don’t know of any law that allows the government to go around confiscating lawfully owned weapons, do you?”
“That’s what people of your political stripe want, isn’t it?”
“Nonsense. What I want is to keep as many guns as possible out of the hands of criminals and crazy people.”
“The criminals are going to get handguns, anyway,” Pod said.
“Not if we stop them.”
With that, the moderator called on another commentator for questions, and Will greeted them with a smile.
Will walked quickly toward the car, with Tim Coleman hurrying to keep up. “Senator, I don’t think you ought to get nose-to-nose with guys like Pauling this early in the campaign.”
“It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it,” Will said. “Besides, Moss is telling us that I need name recognition out there in the country. I wouldn’t mind being remembered by the voters as the guy who didn’t take any shit from the Prince of Fucking Darkness.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Tim said. “I hope so.”
“Moss is doing another poll tomorrow, to see if the announcement and the Sunday-morning shows have had any effect.”