Interface (57 page)

Mr. Markham approached the lectern, pulled down the micro
phone, and spoke into it. "I'd like to ask everyone to please remain
in their seats for now. Give Karl some air."

The stricken man was Karl Fort.

McLane couldn't keep his eyes off the man. Fort had ruled over
the McLanes' portion of California like a demon king. McLane had
known the man's name and face since he had been a toddler. He
had been fearsome and omnipresent to those Okies who worked
for him, who suffered beatings from his goons and who wondered,
each week, if Fort would see fit to sign their paycheck. Uncle
Purvis had, for a period of three or four decades, personally vowed to kill Karl Fort with his bare hands at least once a day. And now,
after all that, Karl Fort was dying right in front of Nimrod McLane's
eyes. If only Purvis could have been here to see it.

There was sudden motion off to McLane's left. Someone had
vaulted the high table and now was striding confidently across the
lawn toward Karl Fort. Tip glanced over and realized that it was the
Reverend Doctor William Joseph Sweigel.

In the same instant the entire press corps realized it too.

Karl Fort's attack had been an unfortunate coincidence. But
when Rev. Sweigel stepped in to lay on his hands, it became
something else: a campaign event. The plastic ribbon snapped. It
was like a dam breaking. The journalists charged toward Karl Fort.
There were three long rows of tables. Karl Fort was in the
middle row. The first row formed a low barrier standing in the way of the journalists. The vanguard - nimble print reporters - made an
end run. The second wave - burdened by minicams - simply rolled
directly over the top of it, their knees nearly buckling from the
weight as they jumped to the grass on the far side, and headed the
print reporters off in the narrow pass between the first and middle
rows.

Three minicam operators, with their instinct for seizing the high
ground, jumped to the top of the middle row. One of these three
planted his foot in the midst of a paper plate heaped with baked beans and slipped; his boot shot off to the side and slammed into the chest of the fifth richest man in California so hard that it sent
him toppling backward on to the ground. The cameraman slithered
to his knees and then his feet, trashing a few more plates of food as
he tried to accelerate in pursuit of the two other minicam operators
who were now well ahead of him. His boots got traction on the
tablecloth but the tablecloth slipped over the table, and so for the
first few moments he actually ran in place, like a cartoon character,
his feet churning madly and his body going nowhere as the
tablecloth, with its burden of plates and cups, accordioned down to
one end of the table, depositing a slippery obstacle course of beans,
ketchup, MOO-tard, and ice cubes as it went.

Finally he got traction and pursued the others, who had run into an obstacle of their own. Between them and Karl Fort was an ice
sculpture, an intricately carved bowl of ice filled with pink
lemonade. It had gone unnoticed by the cameraman who had
momentarily taken the lead. His only concern was getting Karl Fort
and Billy Joe Sweigel into his viewfinder as quickly as possible, and
so he was running with one eye squinted shut and the other eye
pressed into the neoprene cup of his eyepiece. Seeing the world in
out-of-focus, black-and-white tunnel vision, he missed the ice sculpture entirely and slammed into it at a full sprint, catching it
with both knees. The impact knocked his legs backward. The
weight of the minicam on his shoulder jerked his body forward. He
spun in midair, appeared to become completely horizontal, and
then fell straight down on top of the ice sculpture. Half of the
lemonade went up in the air and then all of it burst down and
sideways as the cameraman's body crushed the sculpture into con
venient bite-sized fragments. Nearby luncheon-goers caught the
tsunami of ice and lemonade full in the face.

The second cameraman was only a pace or two behind the first,
he tried to stop, his feet got ahead of his body, and he landed on his ass in the midst of the ice storm, sliding to a halt and then careening
off the edge of the table and landing full-length in the laps of three
consecutive luncheon-goers.

The third cameraman, also suffering from video tunnel vision,
planted one foot in the small of the first cameraman's back. That leg
buckled. He caught his full weight on the other leg, hopped on it three times like a wide receiver trying not to go out of bounds, planted that foot on some ice, and skidded on one rigid leg for a
distance of several feet, now looking perfectly like a figure skater.
He finally got the other foot down on the edge of a serving platter,
catapulting a dozen fresh grilled burgers into the chest of a
prominent comedian-turned-real-estate magnate.

At which point he realized, finally, that he was about to run over
Karl Fort's body. He planted both feet and once again created an accordion effect on a tablecloth. This carried him forward until he
reached the edge of Fort's table, where his rubber-soled boots
contacted solid, clean, dry formica, and stopped dead. This
slammed him forward on to his knees, which was perfect: he
stopped in a kneeling position with the lens of his camera about
four feet away from Karl Fort, looking straight down on his body.

Unfortunately, from a strictly media-conscious point of view, Fort's face wasn't visible; the view was blocked by the beefy arms of a young man, possibly a security person, who had the heels of both hands in the middle of Fort's naked breastbone and was
rhythmically shoving off it, compressing his entire ribcage, making
his bony thorax bulge outward around the sides like a stepped-on
balloon. Even if this man had not been there, Fort's face still would
have been obscured by another man who was gripping Fort's chin
in one hand and his temples in the other, holding his mouth open in a yawn, bending forward to fasten his mouth over Fort's.

The Reverend had just arrived by Fort's side; despite all of the
above-mentioned hindrances, most of the journalistic corps had
actually beaten Sweigel to the scene of the action.

"Please step aside, please make way," Sweigel was saying, in the
rising, chantlike intonation of a preacher quoting Scripture. Since
most of the people in his way were journalists who had come speci
fically to see what Sweigel was going to do, they made way willingly.

Sweigel stood belly-up to the table, only inches away from Fort,
and clasped his hands together for a moment, praying with his eyes
tightly clenched shut. Then he held out both hands, palms
downward, and laid them gently on Fort's bare skin: one on the shoulder, one down on the belly, where they didn't interfere with
the CPR. Billy Joe Sweigel knew how to hedge his bets.

Twenty feet away, Tip McLane stood numb with horror.

He had been fighting the primary campaign for almost a year. It had been very much like an Okie bar fight: desperate men wielding brass knuckles, ice picks, and broken bottles in a dark back lot. In
Iowa, New Hampshire, Super Tuesday, New York, he had taken
on all comers. He had not made many friends, but, with Drasher
providing the strategy and Zorn providing the media kidney
punches, he had thrashed all of his adversaries into bloody, inert
sides of meat. Norman Fowler had hung on all the way to
California and then taken his own political life. He had come here,
to safe, comfortable ground, to celebrate victory.

And now he was being dry-gulched. Sweigel was going to nail
him right between the eyes.

If the CPR worked, if the ambulances got here in time, if the
doctors arrived to deliver their miraculous clot-dissolving miracle
drugs, then Sweigel would be two for two on national TV: first
Cozzano, and now Karl Fort.

Between his memories of Fort in the old days, and the prospect that the old son of a bitch might, by surviving, now torpedo his political career, Tip McLane had never wanted anyone to die quite
so badly.

"It's fake," Zorn said, standing very close to him and muttering
into his ear. "Fort's not really having a heart attack. Cy Ogle set this
whole thing up."

"You're a lunatic," McLane said. But Zorn's words had made
him nervous anyway.

"Lord, hear our prayer," Sweigel said. "This man has been
stricken. We pray that, in the name of JEEE-zuss, he may be
healed, and walk among us once again."

Then he prayed silently, while the two men continued with CPR and mouth-to-mouth, until the ambulance showed up and
the EMTs took over the job.

McLane was a little surprised. He had expected that the EMTs
would bundle Fort up and whisk him straight back to the
ambulance as fast as possible. But instead they set up some
equipment and worked on him for a few minutes, right there on
the table, doing CPR with a sort of large plungerlike object and
squeezing air into his lungs with a resuscitator.

The attention of the guests, of the media, and especially of Billy
Joe Sweigel could hardly have been more focused on Karl Fort. Standing at the periphery of the crowd, Tip McLane realized that, for once, absolutely no one was paying attention to him.

From a media standpoint he was just like Gyges, ancestor of
Croesus, who was able to become invisible. This was a story mentioned in Plato's
Republic.
Gyges, being invisible, could get
away with anything. If he used his power to do evil, but no one saw
him, and he was thought to be a just man, then did he ever suffer
for his crimes? Tip McLane decided to ponder this issue as he went
for a bit of a stroll around the Markham estate.

They were in the backyard, hemmed in between a sheer cliff
wall on one side and the almost equally massive Markham mansion
on the other. Perfectly manicured gardens wrapped around the
mansion on both sides - neat paths winding between trellises of
roses. Mrs. Markham adored her roses. Tip McLane walked into
the fragrant and colorful jungle, quietly at first, then with long
strides as he became confident that his departure had gone
unnoticed.

Within a few seconds he had worked his way around the side of the house to the front. He stood for a moment, framed in an arched trellis groaning with peach-colored roses, and took in a broad view
of the horseshoe drive, which was paved with little interlocking
geometric tiles.

A few minutes ago this drive had been clogged with limousines
and media vans. When the ambulance had been called, all of the drivers had pulled out of the horseshoe, down the long driveway,
through the twelve-foot-high gate, and parked on the road. Now
the whole front of the house was empty except for the ambulance,
square in the middle of the horseshoe, doors open, engine running.

Representative Nimrod T. ("Tip") McLane sauntered out of the
rose garden and into the horseshoe, trying to look like a man who
was just out for a stroll, trying to clear his head and get away from
the chaos out back. He looked carefully in all directions: into the garden, into the windows of the mansion, into the front seat of the
ambulance itself. He saw no one. Everyone was out back.

He had one or two incredible habits that he had picked up when
he was just a boy, working in the broccoli fields, and that had remained unbroken through years of parochial education, Ph.D.
study, conservative theorizing at various think tanks, White House
dinners, and service in the House of Representatives. One habit
was that he always carried a pocketknife. It was amazing how often
a pocketknife came in handy.

He squatted down against the left front tire of the ambulance,
unfolded the small blade of his pocketknife, which he always kept
sharp as a scalpel, and paused for a moment to ponder his next
move.

As Socrates had pointed out, the highest reach of injustice was,
like Gyges, to be deemed just when you were not. Karl Fort was Gyges. He went to White House dinners, gave money to charities,
spent half his life at various testimonial dinners where the most
important people in the country stood in line to gush about what a
wonderful man he was. No one ever said a word about the ax
handles.