Interface (96 page)

Mary Catherine was stark naked by this point. She ripped open
one of the bags to expose folds of dark green cloth, and a few pairs
of running shoes. The shoes were labelled in magic markers:
WILLY, M.C., and JAMES. She tossed the appropriate pairs to James and William, then hauled the clothing out: three identical
sweatsuits.

The change of clothes ate up about thirty seconds and then they
were running down the footpath again. Mary Catherine was
carrying a small black plastic box in her hand; the blazing red light
on one end danced up and down as she pumped her arms. She had
dropped to a slower, sustainable pace. They passed under several
more towering stone bridges, at one point fording the creek again
in order to keep it between them and the Parkway.

The path dead-ended at the fence of Oak Hill Cemetery, which
ran downhill from Georgetown and all the way to the creek's edge. They made a left and ran parallel to the fence, following a footpath
in the red, rocky soil, terraced by innumerable exposed tree roots.
A few stray gravestones poked askew from the carpet of ivy.

Cemetery gates loomed on their right and they had emerged into the city again. They were in Montrose Park. It was two blocks long
and a couple of hundred feet wide, bordered on one side by the
woods and on the other by an alley that ran behind a row of old
four-story red brick apartments. This was a bad stretch of blacktop,
patches on top of older patches, covered with mud, leaf litter, and parked cars with the usual odd D.C. mixture of license plates. A
delivery van, painted with the logo of a ubiquitous local diaper service, was sitting there with its motor running.

Mary Catherine ran up to it, hauled open the back doors, and
motioned James and William in. They climbed in the back and she
followed, pulling the doors shut behind them. They all collapsed, unable to do much more than suck in oxygen. But Mary Catherine was laughing, James was sputtering and starting to ask questions, and William's mind was elsewhere.

Mary Catherine was thinking that, no matter what else happened
today, they had all gone out for a vigorous run together, just like
the old days, and they had gotten wet and messy and enjoyed
themselves. Now she was ready for all hell to break loose. She
caught her father's eye for a moment and realized he was thinking the same thing.

They drive for fifteen or twenty minutes, not really knowing
where they were, and then the truck stopped, and they could hear
a garage door grinding shut behind them.

They staggered upstairs and found themselves in an old town
house with plywood windowpanes. Mattresses and a few pieces of
junk furniture were scattered around. But it had a few touches that
made them feel at home: a coffeemaker on the floor, its red light
shining cheerfully, and a sack of bagels next to a stack of paper
plates, and, sitting on the floor in the middle of the room, chewing
on a bagel and going over some papers, one Mel Meyer.

"Willy, if you can hear me, get your left hand over here and grab
this pen. You have a hell of a lot of papers to sign before we get
you dressed," Mel said.

"James," Mary Catherine said, "grab some coffee. I have a few
things to tell you."

59

In downtown Rosslyn, Virginia, a man in a nice suit and a
trench coat, wearing a neatly trimmed beard, and hair so short that
his scalp almost showed through, emerged from a Metro station and
walked up the street to a mailbox. He removed a standard legal-
sized envelope from his breast pocket, held it between his hands,
and contemplated it for a few moments. Then he dropped it into the mailbox. He continued down the street, turned a corner, and
walked downhill toward Key Bridge. Ahead of him, on the far side
of the Potomac, he could see Dixie Liquors, which was on M
Street, which would take him through the center of Georgetown
and on to Pennsylvania. You could fire a bullet straight down the
centerline of Pennsylvania and it would pass through the middle of
the White House and continue down to the presidential lectern on the reviewing stand on the Capitol steps.

Unfortunately Floyd Wayne Vishniak's Fleischacker was not
quite powerful or accurate enough for that. He would have to
follow much the same route on foot. But that was okay. He had
planned this thing pretty well, had left himself plenty of time to get
there. As he walked across Key Bridge, pounded by a cold
crosswind that found every leak in his trench coat, he mentally
reviewed the contents of the letter, which he had written at one
o'clock this morning in the front seat of his pickup truck, parked in
the holler in West Virginia.

Floyd Wayne Vishniak, esq.

Parts Unknown

United States of America

Letters to the Editor

Washington Post

Washington D.C.

Dear Mr. (or Miss, Mrs., or Ms.) Editor:

As of yesterday A.M
.
I have spent, or maybe the right word is
wasted, a total of $89.50 on your worthless rag, and this is not
counting money spent on the other papers and magazines I
had to buy just to cross-check all of the so-called facts you
printed and find out which were true and which were false.

So I know full well that you will screw everything up. So here
is some information. The name is spelled V-I-S-H-N-I-A-K
(see top of page). I am not a psycho. Just a concerned
American citizen.

And please don't screw this up: I - me - Floyd - did this ALL
BY MYSELF. I did not get help from anyone - no co-
conspirators, foreign governments, terrorist groups, or anyone
else.

Yes, hard as it might be for you smug East Coast bastards to
comprehend, a hick from the sticks is actually capable of doing
something ALL BY HIMSELF.

See you in Hell - where we can look forward to many
interesting conversations.

You will be hearing from me again soon, I am sure.

Sincerely,

Floyd Wayne Vishniak

By the time he had made it across Key Bridge he had decided that it was a good letter. He turned right underneath the red neon sign of Dixie Liquors and headed for the center of Washington.

On the southeastern fringe of Capitol Hill, just beyond the
boundary between the yuppified zone and the ghetto, a tour bus
made a difficult turn into a narrow alley running through the center
of a block. Facing on the alley was a long, low, one-story cinder-
block building, a former box-printing plant. Air burst from its
brakes and the bus settled to a stop in the alley. The door opened
up and men began to climb off. They walked in single file around
the front of the bus and entered the building through a wide steel door, which was flanked on the inside and the outside by middle-aged men with nervous eyes and guns in their armpits.

Most, but not all, of the men were enormous. They ranged in age
from their early thirties to their mid-fifties. Some of them were
wearing dark suits already and some were carrying them in garment
bags. They filed into the building, which was a single huge room. It was mostly empty; its concrete floor was scarred where huge pieces
of machinery had been uprooted and dragged away. Most of the
illumination was provided by skylights. But when all of the men had
come inside, the door had been closed, more lights were turned on.

Already in the room was a busload of more men matching the
same general description, drinking coffee from a couple of big
industrial percolators set up on a folding table, eating vast quantities
of doughnuts. A lot of these men knew each other and so in some
ways the atmosphere was like that of an old class reunion. But they
were generally subdued and serious. This was especially true of
those men who weren't huge.

The huge ones were former professional football players. The
others were Vietnamese veterans. They instinctively formed up
into two separate groups, on opposite ends of the room. The
Vietnam veterans had served with Cozzano in the mid- to late-
sixties and were, for the most part, older than the football players,
and from a wider economic range: this group included corporate presidents, highly paid lawyers, janitors, auto mechanics, and
homeless people. But today they were all dressed more or less the
same, and they greeted each other wordlessly, with hugs and long,
intense, two-handed handshakes.

A few minutes after the second bus had arrived, one of the
veterans, a big, round-headed, round-shouldered black man,
walked to the center of the room, whistled through his fingers, and
shouted, "Listen up!"

The conversation rapidly dropped to zero. All of the men moved
to the edges of the room, facing inward. "My name is Rufus Bell.
For today, you can call me Sarge," said the man. "I have three
people to introduce. First of all, the woman who will be our new
Vice President in an hour and a half: Eleanor Richmond."

She had been standing by the coffee table. Now she walked to
the center of the room. Scattered applause started up and rapidly
exploded into an ovation. Rufus Bell whistled again.

"Shut up!" he yelled. "We don't want to bother the neighbors."

"Thank you all," Eleanor said.

Bell continued. "I would also like to introduce Mel Meyer, who
will be the acting Attorney General of the United States."

Mel acknowledged by removing the cigar from his mouth
momentarily.

"Finally," Bell said, "the Chief of the District of Columbia
Police, who's going to swear you all in."

The Chief was snappy in full dress uniform. He walked to the
middle of the room and got no applause at all; his appearance, and
his bearing, radiated no-nonsense authority. He turned to face the
men around the edges of the room and examined them closely for
several moments, making individual eye contact with every man in
the room.

"This is some serious shit," the Chief said, "not some kind of a
fun little field trip. If you're not willing to lay down your life in the
defense of the Constitution of the United States, right now, then stay in this building for the next three hours and you'll be fine."

He stopped for a while to let that sink in, and surveyed the men's
faces again. They all stared back at him, like statues. A couple of
them couldn't hold the eye contact, and glanced away.

If you are willing to take that risk," the Chief said, "then repeat
after me." He held up his right hand, palm facing forward.

All of the men in the room did the same. Then the Chief swore
them all in as deputies of the District of Columbia Police
Department.

In the meantime, Mel had taken Eleanor aside and was talking to
her in a corner of the room. "You ever bought a house?" he asked.

"Once or twice," she said, surprised and mildly amused.

"Remember all those fucking documents they pulled out for you to sign?"

"I remember them well."

"That's nothing compared to what we're doing today," he said.
He opened up a time-worn leather satchel that was resting on the
floor. "I have two sets of documents for you," he said, "depending
on what happens. I have spent the last several months holed up in the
middle of nowhere with a word processor, a laser printer, and a whole
lot of law books, drawing these things up. Some of them you need to sign. Some of them Willy has already signed. It's all organized."

Mel pulled a white nine-by-fifteen envelope out of the satchel.
"This is in case we're lucky," he said. "In that case, there's not
much for you to do - most of your duties will pertain to your role
as President of the Senate."

Mel reached back into the satchel and pulled out a black
envelope. This one was the expanding type, with bellows on the
sides. It was two inches thick. "And this," he said, "is in case we're
not so lucky."