Shoot (11 page)

“Wait for the FBI? You’ve got to be kidding? It’ll take them a year, minimum. Shepherd, we were not hired for an opinion. We were hired to find out who might be planning to harm Chesterfield—and put them out of business, ASAP. Clear?”

“Okay. The feds identified half of the speakers on FAX TV as possible suspects. I think it’s bullshit but we could start there. The problem is, if we question them openly, they’ll put it on the air before we can leave the building. It will be a public relations gift to them and to Dodge.”

“Yeah, I can hear it now,” Amy said. “The president declares war on patriotic Americans.”

I told Amy the feds didn’t know who the New Minutemen were but they had an informant inside another group, the Aryan Purity Nation cell, the APN.

“That tactical intelligence, about money and weapons, looked like the real deal to me.”

“How do we know that for sure?” she asked.

“Only one way to find out—kick in the door and see what you get. At least half of the intelligence I got in the field was bullshit—wrong, too old or disinformation. That APN tip sounded real to me. I need a name and an address in Brooklyn to check it out. I’ll start with Chesterfield’s people.”

“What should we tell Chesterfield?” Amy asked.

“No public appearances, a tightening of security and a roundup of bad guys.”

“Okay,” Amy agreed. “Tell them and see if you can get an address for that group. Meanwhile, I’m going to meet a source of mine, face to face. He may have something.”

I made the call. Tiffany Mauser told me to come right over.

“The same conference room,” Mauser said. “Just the two of you.”

“Just me. Amy is meeting a source.”

“Oh. Okay, fine,” Mauser said, before hanging up.

“Okay,” Amy said to me. “You go. Do you have any sources in the FBI?”

“No,” I told her. “But I know someone in the US Attorney’s office, which might be even better. I’ll try.”

I made the call and left a message on Mary Catherine’s cellphone. I didn’t mention my name or what I wanted.

“Hi, it’s me. Call me.”

I told Amy that if my US Attorney friend couldn’t help, we might try doing a story in the paper to shake something loose.

“We’ll see,” Amy said. “What if it really is Dodge and her fan club?”

“Then it will be one hell of a story.”

The taxi’s TV screen, mounted on the barrier between the front and back seats, featured a public service announcement by the billionaire mayor—an appeal for everyone to stop chewing gum—because discarded gum was a nuisance that got under your shoes and made a mess of the sidewalks. The driver, sporting the floppy homespun headgear favored by Tajik tribesmen in northern Afghanistan, muttered to himself in his native tongue—wondering if the mayor’s father had perhaps urinated up the mayor’s mother’s birth canal. I laughed at his crude joke, which caused him to shoot me a look of surprise. I responded in his language that it was unlikely—because that would require an erection. We both laughed. When we arrived at the police barricades outside the Knickerbocker Convention Center, he parked the vehicle and turned to examine me.

“Ranger?” he asked, the leathery gray skin around his eyes tightening.

I shrugged.

“You will go back?”

“No, my friend. I’m home and I’m done with guns. Forever.”

He laughed. “So are we all—God willing.”

At the barrier, I showed my Working Press Card to the cops. A chanting crowd of anti-Tea Party demonstrators, in their own barricaded enclosure, were waving well-printed protest signs:
FACTS DON’T LIE—BUT REPUBLICANS DO
! and
HOW MANY CHILDREN HAVE TO DIE
? Safely across the street, the Tea Party group shouted and waved signs back:
TAXED ENOUGH ALREADY
! and
TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK FROM FOREIGNERS
!

Fire trucks were in front of the Jurassic Parking entrance to the Knickerbocker. I went through security, past the dinosaurs, up the wide jungle escalator toward the mezzanine level. It was more crowded than my first visit. As I stepped off the escalator I saw people sporting red, white and blue three-cornered hats, black Abe Lincoln stovepipe hats, and Uncle Sam toppers. The delegates had arrived, all wearing big red
DELEGATE
ribbons on their chests, along with big bright buttons that read
CHESTERFIELD
or
DODGE
and whoever.

I spotted a man with a weapon and tensed. It was a black AR-15 assault rifle with telescoping stock and telescopic sight, slung over one of the Abe Lincoln’s shoulders as he walked by, thumbing his phone. I moved sideways, ready to run, grabbing my backpack by one shoulder strap. Why I did that, I don’t know. With my laptop and a water bottle, there was nothing in there that would stop a .223 round. The rifleman kept walking, ignoring me. I scanned around for other exits and realized Abe wasn’t the only one toting an assault rifle.

They all were. Hundreds of them.

Every jaunty Abe Lincoln, every goofy Tea Party guy with a tri-corner cap, every scary Uncle Sam, had a shooter. All of them were packing automatic weapons; more AR-15s, some Heckler & Koch assault rifles, Brownings, bolt-action hunting rifles, some AK-47s, and other trendy fire-sticks slung from fancy underarm shoulder rigs or strapped across their backs. They weren’t pointing the weapons at anyone, just toting the deadly machine guns around like fashion accessories. It was like hillbilly Disneyland. Looking closer, I noticed several of the heavily armed lunatics also had large buttons:
CARRY PROUD, ALWAYS READY TO DEFEND FREEDOM, USE IT OR LOSE IT
, and
SAM—SECOND AMENDMENT REMEDY
.

I watched the half-assed army parade back and forth for a few minutes and then spoke to one of the delegate gunsels, a short guy in a suit, with fuzzy hair and wire-rimmed glasses, who was packing a black Uzi.

“Excuse me. Why are you all carrying rifles?”

“This is an Open Carry convention, son,” he said with a loopy grin. “We’re making history. We are here to protect the Second Amendment.”

I thanked him and dialed Amy.

“Amy? Shepherd. You will not believe what I am looking at.”

I described the scene to her. She cursed and laughed.

“Really? All of them are carrying pop guns?”

“Everyone I’ve seen so far. Magazines in, ready to rock. Anyone with a delegate badge has a banger.”

“Wow. Wait, I’m Googling it. Hold on… here it is. Looks like the gun nuts announced they were going to carry weapons at the convention. There was some arguing about it… but after a poll showed that most Christian Tea Party voters thought that walking around with guns was sexy, the sensible Republicans caved in to the National Rifle Association crowd and announced it would be an Open Carry convention. The first.”

“Great,” I said.

“So, according to the gun lobby, this will be the safest convention ever.”

“Amy. These clowns are armed to the teeth. That’s what they look like. Clowns with semi-automatic weapons.”

I told her I had to change our report, to make it more extreme.

“Okay, Shepherd. I hope you’re right.”

“If I am, and Chesterfield does what we tell him to do, we’ll probably never be able to prove if I was right or wrong.”

“And if he
doesn’t
do what we tell him to do and nothing happens, we look like panicky pussies.”

“Maybe. But, on the other hand, if he ignores us and somebody wastes him, we look great.”

“Sometimes, Shepherd, I can’t tell when you’re kidding.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I found Tiffany Mauser waiting alone in the huge conference room overlooking the Hudson and the naval destroyer. Tiffany looked shipshape, in another tight business-style suit jacket. Except, where a man would have a shirt and tie, she had only a half-shirt of white lace, exposing enough cleavage so no one would mistake her for a man from any distance. Instead of pants, she wore a short matching skirt that showed leg from mid thigh down to her black stiletto heels. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail, with a puffy gather.

I started to say hello but she coldly cut the greeting short and ushered me through the southern door, past guards to an elevator, and took me up to the fourteenth floor. We got to a door and she opened it with a white electronic key card. It turned out to be her hotel suite, which had the main room set up as a living room, with a separate office and Hudson River views. There was also a kitchen area and an open door to a bedroom. The room probably cost $2,000 a day. Tiffany took two glasses from the kitchen and handed me one. It was half-filled with chilled arak. She had one also and took a slug, like she did it every day. She coughed.

“Does everybody say it tastes like candy gasoline?” she asked.

“Everybody says that the first time. Until they realize that’s a good thing.”

“I’m not there yet but I’ll try anything once,” Tiffany said in her sexy southern drawl, plopping onto the couch.

“Never do anything for the first time,” I warned her.

“What?”

“Nothing. Just something we used to say.”

“You mean I should listen to someone who’s been there before?”

I smiled back and raised my glass, wondering where she heard what I drink.

“Okay, Shepherd. Shoot. What do you want to tell us?”

“I was all set to give one set of recommendations until I got to this clown convention. Now I have to add more suggestions. If you don’t adopt them, I have one final suggestion.”

“Hmmmm.” Tiffany smiled. “Mysterious.”

“Not at all. Which do you want—short or long version?”

She smiled again. “I prefer long,” she drawled in a wicked voice. “I’ve got time.”

“Okay,” I said, ignoring her flirty tone. “Our first idea was we think the Speaker should not wander around in public unless and until we can nail these threats down. Also, you should take down any bad guys you can. Now.”

“So you are taking this seriously?”

“Yes. Very.”

“Really? How long have you been a private detective?”

“This is my second day.”

“As you can see, the speaker has
very
heavy security.”

“All of that means nothing the second he steps out in public.”

“Why?”

“Because of equipment like the Barrett M107 sniper rifle and many other weapons that could take a person out from a long distance. All they need is a line of sight and one shot.”

“From how far away?”

“A mile. Two, maybe.”

“Chance of success?”

“Assuming a professional team? Highly probable. No warning, no sound. The bullet arrives before the sound of the shot. Nothing left but bloody shreds of laundry in the breeze.”

She winced and took another drink. So did I.

“You’ve seen this kind of thing firsthand?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“We would have to cancel a series of planned events,” she snipped. “One with the mayor, a few with local congressmen. It wouldn’t look good.”

“Him getting shot to death on camera would probably look worse.”

“Okay, so, for now, you are recommending that he not appear in public at all?”

“Or in front of any uncovered windows, like that one in the conference room downstairs. That is a gift to a sniper team. Or two or three RPGs from a truck bed—it would be more messy but would also do the trick nicely.”

“RPGs?”

“Rocket-propelled grenades. Better than hand grenades. Best infantry weapon ever invented.”

“Oh. Those bazooka things? So, you’re saying the best security in the country is not good enough?”

“About the window? Yeah, definitely. Glass is not security, it’s an invitation.”

“What if it’s bulletproof?”

“No such thing. At least not yet available. Besides, they can use a bomb. By the way, the cops downstairs are not scouting and searching traffic for two blocks in all directions outside the barriers.”

“Why should they?”

“Two words. Truck bomb.”

“Okay, which threat are you most worried about?”

“I think it’s weird that three members of Congress are suspects in this investigation and two other people in your boss’s party are talking openly on TV about popping him. It has a familiar ring to me. According to the FBI intercepts and intelligence you gave us, that TV blogger is arranging for illegal weapons here in New York. Pick him up. Arrange for a ‘routine’ stop, in which he gets busted. The most credible threat looks like the Brooklyn cell, the APN—the Aryan Power Nation group—with the undercover in place. Sounds like those boys want to make news. Put them in jail first. Today. The New Minutemen online make me very nervous but we have no info on who or where they are. They have to be found because right now we cannot assess whether they are a dedicated group or one blogging schmuck and his hamster. The question is whether any of these three groups are linked. Until we nail that down, fresh air is poison.”

“You mean outside of the security zone here at the convention center?”

“Exactly.”

“Shoot!” she said, gulping the rest of her drink. “I thought this was mostly a political problem. I thought we might find… other uses for some of that stuff.”

“What did you think?” I asked her. “That I’d read that racist transcript of Governor Dodge and her buddy Littleton and just put it into the
Daily Press
to embarrass your opponents?”

“The thought had popped into my head,” she said, with a sly smile. “That’s still an option.”

“I think that would be a major mistake, Tiffany, but I leave the
politics
up to you.”

She laughed. It was a hell of a laugh.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You say the word ‘politics’ like it’s a disease.”

“More fatal than most,” I told her.

“So, that’s it?”

“No,” I said. “I told you everything changed when I got here.”

“What?”

“Haven’t you noticed that every delegate in this hotel is carrying a loaded assault rifle?”

“Oh, that,” Tiffany chuckled. “That’s just political theater.”

“The props looked real to me. Chesterfield shouldn’t be anywhere near these gun fanatics.”