Tim Dorsey Collection #1 (124 page)

“
RISE AND SHINE
!”

Marlon opened the motel-room door, letting in the morning sun, and Escrow pulled the covers over his head.

Pimento sat up in bed half awake and grabbed his watch off the nightstand. “Eight o’clock! Where are we?”

“Vero Beach.”

Marlon tossed the morning papers on Escrow’s chest, and Escrow swatted them off.

“Get the lead out. I’ve been up for two hours,” said Marlon. “Got your coffee here.”

“Where’s Jenny?” asked Pimento.

“Still asleep in the RV.”

Marlon opened the lids on three steaming cups in a cardboard McDonald’s tray. Pimento grabbed one of the newspapers off the floor. “Hey Escrow, look at this headline:
SENATOR INDICTED IN BRIDGE-GATE
.”

Escrow pulled the covers off his head. “Lemme see that!”

The chairman of the transportation committee had used his influence to get a bridge built out to his investment property, squaring the value of the land.

The paper quoted the senator as he was taken into custody: “I’ve earned this! You just don’t get it!”

Every few days the media christened a new -
Gate
. This week it was
Bridge-Gate
, last week
Lottery-Gate
, the one
before that
Cable TV-Gate
and
Emission-Gate
. There was even a scandal at the water plant. The press called it
Plant-Gate
…. Escrow was crushed. Another conspiracy and he wasn’t involved.

Marlon went out to the RV. It was unlocked and quiet. She must be somewhere getting breakfast. Marlon climbed in.

Jenny didn’t hear him as she stepped out of the tiny walk-in shower. She had her back to Marlon as she grabbed a towel.

He was about to apologize and avert his eyes. But before he could, he saw something he’d never forget, and it just blurted out.

“Holy Jesus! What happened?”

Jenny spun and saw him. Her mouth opened and her eyes betrayed shame. Her secret. She ran to the back of the RV.

Marlon knew the sight would bother him for a long time. Across the top of her legs and up her buttocks, a solid pile of scars. Mended, striated flesh, line upon line. God only knew how many times the same spot had healed and been flayed open again.

Marlon ran to the back. He had no idea what was appropriate. “Who did this?”

She was curled in a bunch on the floor, hiding her face in the corner. He put a light hand on her back and she flinched hard, so he took it away.

Marlon returned to the motel room. “Consider this a day off, guys. Go shopping or something. I’m going to stay with Jenny.”

“I gotcha,” Escrow said with a mischievous grin.

“You’re an asshole.” Marlon left the room.

Escrow turned to Pimento. “I was just trying to be one of the guys.”

“Ain’t what it’s cracked up to be.”

ESCROW
and Pimento split up for the day. Pimento headed for the beach, and Escrow went straight to the local campaign headquarters of “Tatum for Governor!”

A bell jingled as he opened the door.

“Hi! I’d like to volunteer,” Escrow told the young woman in a
VOTE TATUM
! plastic straw hat. “Got any campaign material you need passed out?…And can I have a hat?”

Escrow left with a bundle under his arm. He went to a news rack and bought a copy of the
Press-Journal
. He folded the paper over to the Senior Citizens Activity Bulletin Board and called a taxi.

Escrow tipped the cabbie outside a local retirement park, then went into the office and bribed the activities coordinator….

Four hundred seniors sat in the bingo hall of Puerto Lago Boca Vista Isles East, enjoying baked goods and juice at their regular Thursday-morning installment of Canasta-Mania.

The activities coordinator tapped the microphone on stage. “May I have your attention? This morning we have a special guest with us. He’s a top political official who’s going to discuss issues affecting senior citizens.”

Sounded important. They put down their sticky buns.

“He’s come all the way from the capital, so please give a warm Vista Isles welcome to Phil Striker!”

Escrow smiled and waved to the crowd as he passed the electric bingo board on his way to the podium. His
suit was blue, shirt white, tie red. On his lapel, an enamel American flag; on his head, a
VOTE TATUM
! straw hat.

“My name is Phil Striker,” said Escrow, “and I’m with the Tatum campaign. What I want to talk to you about today is the future. And, let’s face it, you’re not the future. The future is youth, but how are they ever going to get anywhere if you won’t take your bony little fingers off Medicare and Social Security?…”

The auditorium went silent.

“Why don’t you stop being so selfish and accept the inevitable? I say we slash benefits and use the money to cut the capital gains tax so those out there still actually contributing to society can make some money and get this country moving again! Who’s with me?”

The first thing to hit Escrow was a cinnamon roll. Followed by slices of cantaloupe and papaya, blueberry muffins, crescent rolls and a crumpled-up Styrofoam cup weighted with a rock that had somehow made its way into the auditorium.

“Wait!” Escrow yelled. “Would you for once think of the poor young executive instead of your incontinent butts?”

They charged the podium with canes and electric scooters.

“Kill him!” someone yelled. A metal folding chair flew up onstage.

“Go ahead, live in the past!” he yelled and threw a batch of
VOTE TATUM
! campaign brochures at the mob and escaped off the side of the stage.

ACROSS
town, another group of senior citizens sat in another hall, their coffee cups long since empty, doughnut
crumbs on the tables, napkins wadded and rewadded dozens of times. They fidgeted painfully.

The group was ninety minutes into a high-pressure time-share pitch that had been guaranteed to last “no more than a half hour.” That was the price they had to pay for all the breakfast pastry and beverage they could hold. The time-share people knew their audience. To retirees, free doughnut holes and orange juice were like crack.

A hunched old man in a Pearl Harbor vet baseball cap got up to leave. The salesman blocked his path.

“But I want to go.”

“Just a little while longer.”

“You said it would only be a half hour.”

“Sit down!”

The man sat down.

There were about fifty of them in the audience, all at least sixty-five years old. Except one guy. He was fortyish and making his ninth trip to the food table. He was on the thin side, with blue eyes and short hair that had touches of gray at the temples.

“Must have a high metabolism,” one senior whispered to another.

A second retiree got up, this time a woman.

“And where do you think
you’re
going?” asked the salesman.

“I have a doctor’s appointment.”

The salesman pointed at her seat. She sat back down.

Everyone was distracted by a loud rattling noise in the back of the room. During his latest trip to the food table, the younger man had wrapped his arms around the massive plexiglass orange juice sprinkler-dispenser and was
tipping it forward to get the last drops. Then he drained the tiny paper cup and headed for the door.

“Not so fast,” said the salesman, stepping in front of the man.

Pimento pointed back at the juice machine. “But it’s empty.”

“Nobody leaves until I say so.”

Pimento grinned and gave the salesman a solid head butt to the face that broke the man’s nose, and he punctually went to the floor yelling and bleeding.

The seniors erupted with a big “Hurray!” and charged out of the room like a slow-motion storming of the Bastille.

ESCROW
and Pimento arrived back in the motel room at the same time. Marlon was watching the evening news. The anchor desk had just wrapped up a pair of segments involving local seniors. First was a small uprising at a local bingo hall—some broken windows, a lounger set on fire. Then the station cut to an assault at a time-share seminar. Nobody would identify the assailant, but a Pearl Harbor survivor had taken responsibility, and the anchor desk joked about his becoming a hero for the second time.

Marlon eyed the pair as they walked in the room. “Guys?” he said suspiciously, pointing at the TV.

“Look at the time!” said Escrow. “We’re going to be late for the book-signing!”

“Whose book-signing?” asked Marlon.

“Yours!”

“
WHEN
did I write a book?” Marlon asked as they drove over to the Vero Beach Book Center.

“It just came out,” said Escrow. He pulled a copy from
his briefcase and handed it to Marlon. “I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Marlon examined the impressive hardcover. The front had a soft-focus picture of Marlon walking barefoot on the beach at sunset, with an inset of the famous Reuters photograph from Kosovo. He read the title.

A T
RUST
R
ENEWED
:
G
IVING
G
OVERNMENT
B
ACK TO THE
P
EOPLE
An Outsider’s Blueprint for Bold New Reform
My Own Courageous Journey
by Marlon Conrad

Marlon bounced the book in his hand, gauging the heft.

“Pretty heavy—lot of pages,” said Marlon. “Who wrote it?”

“I did,” said Escrow.

“I see,” said Marlon. “Where’d you get the title?”

“Standard stuff. It’s how all campaigns are run now. Just keep promising change and reform out the wazoo…”

“And then get reelected and keep giving them the same old thing?”

“Exactly.”

“I can see how you got to be where you are.”

“Can’t take all the credit,” said Escrow. “They teach it in college now.”

The Winnebago pulled into the bookstore parking lot. An impressive line of book-toting people spilled out the door and snaked around the building. Across the street, protesters waved signs behind a police barricade.

Marlon read the placards as he climbed down from the RV.
BOOK OF SHAME! VILE VOLUME! BOYCOTT THE OPPRESSIVE WRITINGS OF CONRAD! CHARACTERS HAD NO DEPTH
!

The bookstore’s author liaison came out and shook Marlon’s hand. “I’m a big admirer,” she said, leading him inside. “Love what you’re doing on the campaign.”

“What did you think of the book?”

“Your economic theories are quite impressive, but…”

“But what?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but your day-care ideas seemed a little, well, heartless.”

“Is that so?” said Marlon, scowling at Escrow.

Marlon took a seat at a table in the back of the store and was soon signing books at a furious pace. The people were gracious, requesting a variety of inscriptions to themselves, relatives, friends and pets.

“Make it out to ‘Debby, the hottest account representative I’ve ever laid my eyes on.’”

The line went on forever. People smiled and shook his hand and heaped on the compliments. A man in a camo hunting cap handed Marlon a book. His T-shirt read
FLORIDA MILITIA JAMBOREE
’99. He patted Marlon on the back and winked. “Good to see you’re with us!”

Marlon looked up puzzled. “Oh, right. Sure thing.”

There was a commotion at the front of the store. An Orthodox rabbi had broken through the police line and burst in the doors. “I can’t believe what you wrote about the Holocaust!” The police caught him from behind and wrestled him back outside.

Marlon grabbed Escrow by the arm. “What did I write about the Holocaust?”

“I’m gonna get you some more pens,” said Escrow, pulling away. “You never know when you could run dry.”

TRAFFIC
was insane as the
Orange Crush
rolled down Interstate 95 after the book signing. Not the volume. The peo
ple. Every fourth driver speeding and weaving like a maniac, darting between other cars with barely enough room, starting in the far left lane and cutting across three vehicles for the exit ramp. Ahead of them, Marlon saw a gun momentarily pointed out the window of a Camaro, a traffic gesture which, due to its frequency in Florida, is ignored.

Marlon took exit 51.

“Where are we going?” asked Escrow.

“West Palm airport. Have to pick up someone for Jenny.”

“That reminds me,” said Escrow. “You never told us about your day.”

And he wasn’t going to.

He had left Jenny in the Winnebago most of the morning but kept an eye on it through the motel window. At noon, he picked up a sack of fast food and knocked on the RV’s door. No answer. He went inside. She was still in the back, so he left the bag on a fold-down table.

Back in the motel room, he dialed the phone.

“Belvedere and Associates,” said the receptionist.

“Elizabeth Sinclair, please.”

Marlon was told she was no longer with the firm. “I’m not supposed to do this,” said the receptionist, and she gave him a new number.

Marlon dialed it.

“Sinclair and Associates. This is Elizabeth Sinclair.”

“Ms. Sinclair, this is Marlon Conrad. I’m in Vero. I’d like you to join the campaign.”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Conrad, but we’re completely booked with clients.” She was lying. She had only a couple of small local candidates and was wondering how she would pay the electric bill.

“Name your price. We really need help.”

“I appreciate it, but I’m sorry…” She started to hang up.

“Look, I know how I used to be. This isn’t like that. I have an emergency and I don’t know who to talk to.”

Marlon told her about Jenny.

“This is out of my league,” he said. “You’re the only mature person I know.”

“You don’t even know me.”

“There are five Learjets at the Tallahassee airport and five corporations just drooling to give me one. I’ve called ahead and said you’re our top campaign adviser. They’ll do anything you say….”

“I don’t know.”

“Please do this and I’ll never bother you again. We’ll pick you up at West Palm International.”

A
Learjet from Big Pharmaceutical landed after dark at the executive hangars in West Palm Beach. It had a giant gelcap on the tail.