Black Hat Blues (26 page)
in Congress. They marched in single file past the posh Georgetown
townhouse, making a block-long circle of light and silent accusation
without ever blocking traffic or taking up the whole sidewalk. Tip offs
from the NGOs and legitimate groups that had helped organize the
protests had brought out TV camera crews from two of the local sta-
tions, along with a
Washington Post
reporter and journalists from a few
political magazines and websites. Combined with the online streaming
video, the protest was sure to get some solid airtime on the local news
on what was an otherwise slow Saturday news night.
As the pamphlets explained, inside the townhouse at the epicenter of
the march a fundraiser for Rep. Wolverton and several other Republican
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Geek Mafia: Black Hat Blues
congressmen was underway. It was a standard Washington D.C. kind
of affair, and there were probably two or three others going on that
very night within a twenty-block radius. They contrasted the well-
dressed, well-fed, wined and dined Congressman and his $500 a plate
supporters with the plight of textile industry slaves in the Marianas. It
was not a flattering comparison, and the congressman remained holed
up in the townhouse until well after the marchers had dispersed of
their own accord, which happened to coincide with both 11:30 and
the last opportunity for any of the local news teams to run a live feed.
One reporter stuck around long enough to get Wolverton’s official “no
comment” on tape as he ducked into a waiting limo with his wife by
his side.
Sacco stumbled into the crowded hotel room after 3 AM, drunk and
high and happy as hell, waking up the three of them. As grumpy as that
made the rest of them, his enthusiasm was contagious as he recounted
the night’s events. They all agreed that it was great that the protesters
could actually make a difference, even if it took their Crew breaking a
bunch of laws and manipulating events behind the scenes to actually
make their work pay real world dividends. Paul wondered how the
well-meaning, good-hearted civilians who’d gone out on a cold night
to march in silence would feel if they knew the truth of their role. He
liked to think that if there were any way to let them know what was
really going on (and, oh hell, there was no way that could happen),
they’d approve.
Paul’s hope that the Sunday morning talking head news shows would
pick up the story didn’t work out, but there were stories in both
The
Washington Post
and
The New York Times
as well as mentions on CNN
and all the major news blogs. C1sman’s Digg bots moved the story up to
front-page news there as well. The story was getting some real traction,
as Rep. Wolverton, heretofore hardly known at all in national circles,
became a much-discussed figure. Especially once bloggers and report-
ers picked up the threads Paul had laid out connecting him to big time
classic scandal names like Jack Abramoff and Tom Delay. Their scandals
might be years in the past, but they weren’t forgotten by policy wonks
and political junkies.
He’d planned to pass on an anonymous tip to Danny for the Congress-
man, but there wasn’t any need. All he was talking about the next morn-
ing in both e-mails and on his phone was what to do about the bad press
and protesting that it had materialized out of nowhere. As Paul had
suspected, Wolverton was only dimly aware of the Marianas situation
and what exactly he’d been voting for when he came out against bills
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135
and funding for reform. He’d certainly never heard the words “slavery,”
“prostitution,” or “abortion” used in conjunction with his name before
and he didn’t like it one bit. His initial instinct was to deny, decry, and
divert attention from the issue, and Danny started working up some
language and strategies to do just that, putting off any official comment
from the Congressman’s office until Monday morning.
Paul didn’t let Danny flounder too long. Using Clover’s e-mail, he
sent the harried aide an email:
From: [email protected]
Subject: RE: Referral
Danny,
Couldn’t help but notice our boy is having a little trouble in
the papers this morning. Never fear though, you’re in luck.
I’ve got just the solution to all his bad press, and best of all
he doesn’t have to do anything but crow about what he’s
already done.
The procurement on the Farm Bill includes funding for new
enforcement measures on labor violations. It calls for direct
enforcement of laws on the books that will crack down on
abusive labor practices and all that. Just have our friend
trumpet his efforts to fight the very abuses these yahoos
are yelling about and he should be fine. I’ll send you a link
to the DOJ site that details the programs the procurement
funds.
hope that helps
ken
Danny read the e-mail minutes after it arrived and sent a big thanks to
Ken (which Paul deleted). Then he e-mailed the Congressman, telling
him all about the great opportunity the earmark in the farm bill offered
him. Paul got a kick out of the fact that Danny took full credit for
coming up with this strategy, not mentioning Clover, even in passing.
The Congressman ordered up a full position paper on the procurement
along with a press release and talking points for him to run with come
Monday morning.
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Holy shit, thought Paul, this shit’s really going to work. He had really
passed through legislation and conned a United States Congressman
into doing his dirty work for him. He wanted to shout for fucking joy,
except Sacco and Sandee were passed out on the bed beside his table.
Instead, he jumped up, ran over and kissed Chloe on the back of her
neck as she leaned over her laptop, headphones on while she read a
thread on Daily Kos. She yelped in surprise.
“What?” she laughed. “What’s up?”
“This is really, really going to work isn’t it?”
“Did you ever doubt it?”
“Every minute of the day.”
“Me too, but yeah, I think it just might.”
“That’s fucking nuts.”
“I did the math last night, I’m not entirely sure it wouldn’t have been
cheaper to pay a lobbyist to just push the earmark through.”
“But then we’d be supporting some dirtbag lobbyist, not ruining
one’s life forever.”
“I was more pointing out the irony of it all,” she said. “Did you get
any sleep at all last night? You were tossing and turning.”
“A little maybe.”
“Me neither. You know what would perk me right up? A shower,” she
looked at the clock on her computer. It was 12:42 PM. “Shmoocon’s
about over, but Bee and c1sman won’t be here for hours yet. There’s
a whole hotel’s worth of hot water. Care to join me, Congressman
Reynolds?”
“Absolutely Madame Speaker. Absofuckinglutely.”
Their clothes were off before the water got hot. Paul came running
out a minute later with a wet towel wrapped around him and woke up
Sandee, who looked very startled to see a nearly nude and obviously
excited Paul. “I need you to watch the e-mails while we’re…”
“Fucking in the shower?” Sandee said.
“Come get me if anything exciting happens.”
“Oh yeah, the e-mail is where the interesting stuff will be happening
I’m sure. Well if you two are going to leave me alone with a snoring
anarchist and a keyboard while you have steamy hotel shower sex, fine.
But you owe me one serious party when we get back to Key West.”
“Deal!” said Paul, pointing him towards the laptop and rushing back
into the warm, wet embrace of the bathroom.
Chloe
Slow to anger, slow to forgive, that’s how Chloe liked to think of
herself. OK, sometimes she was really quite quick to get pissed off,
or annoyed, or irked, but those were just responses to negative stimuli,
and she did a good job of never letting those fleeting feelings dictate her
actions. But real, honest to God anger, now that was something that
could motivate a woman to get some shit done. We’re talking the rage
of Achilles here; deep, deep anger at how fucked up the world is treat-
ing you or someone else. Anger that leads to abolitionist movements,
civil rights marches, anti-war protests, and getting out and changing
things for the better (OK, yeah, or the worse, but those people weren’t
just angry, they were angry assholes).
Aside from some very notable and very personal affronts to her and
her loved ones, Chloe hadn’t ever gotten mad at the great big forces at
work in the world that were constantly screwing people over. Railing
against the hurricane just wasn’t her thing—there was no upside in
it, no angle she could see to make a shit’s worth of difference. So she
had ignored those big picture issues and focused on other things. Then
Paul came along and fucked everything up with his Robin Hood fetish
and insistence on doing some good with their bad. And, damn him,
it worked—she started to care and even enjoy the whole helping the
helpless shtick; it made the victories sweeter and the takedowns more
satisfying because the fuck being taken down really deserved it. OK,
their profit margins were tighter, but it seemed all good.
They added new Crewmembers and racked up some lovely scores
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against nasty-ass developers and bankers and the like. Then Isaiah came
back into their lives and fucked everything up yet again. Granted, she’d
been the one who approached him, but only because it was clear he was
up to something big and she couldn’t ignore it. It was clear to Chloe
at least that Isaiah and whoever else he was working with had bitten
off more than they could chew. She’d seen echoes of their activities in
the greater Miami area, signs that they’d committed heavily to a zone
of operations far from their native New York. She had to admit, she’d
been all kinds of curious about what he was up to (Paul said she was
obsessed), so when she asked for a face to face meeting to pitch his plot,
he’d agreed, and even came down to Key West to do it.
The man could talk. Not just talk, but inspire. And in Chloe and
Paul’s case, he inspired them to be angry. The target Isaiah had in
mind was a multinational conglomerate of agriculture and manufactur-
ing concerns, which sounded dull as dirt. But in fact they were, quite
simply, modern day slavers. They oversaw a network of scumbags that
formed every link in the chain that brought in penniless illegal work-
ers from places like Mexico and China, set them up in labor camps or
locked factories where they worked off their “debt” under unregulated,
inhuman conditions. And those were just their operations in the US.
Look abroad, to the Caribbean and Africa, and things got much, much
worse. Slavery, without even the pretense of calling itself anything else.
Isaiah called this Gordian Knot of nastiness The Enemy, since there was
no single, easily identifiable corporation that seemed to control it all.
Isaiah and his Crew had spent the better part of two years untangling
the connections and levers of control until they identified the handful
of assholes in charge. Now that he had, now that he was able to lay a
bill of charges as long as a dictionary at their feet, now he was ready to
move, and he wanted to move on all of them at once.
Isaiah, Marco, and whoever else, were concentrating all their efforts in
the tropics, home base to most of what they were going after. But there
was one piece on the board safely ensconced in Washington DC, and
they needed some help with him. He was a plump prize pig asshole and
Isaiah’s research would give them a nice head start on taking him down.
How they did it was up to them, all he asked in return was that they coor-
dinate the timing with his Crew. Paul and Chloe had taken the night to
talk it over with the others, but it hadn’t been a hard sell. They all felt
ready for something bigger, and Isaiah’s speeches (along with the photos
and the videos and the rest) had worked their magic and made them
angry. They agreed to help, and as the plan unfolded and they decided
to attack under the cover of Shmoocon, it ended up that they were the
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139
ones determining the timing of today’s final blow. And now the time had
come, and the ax was falling fast towards a whole mess of heads.
Monday morning Paul had them up and watching the computers
early. There was no more street work to be done, no more face-to-face
cons to be pulled. Just send the e-mails and tip the dominoes and make
sure nothing interfered with the falling, sprawling mess that was about
to ensue. Sandee had gone out and, wonder of wonders, brought back
both bagels and donuts. He didn’t approve of donuts at all, but the rest
of them had pounced on them. Sacco was still bleary-eyed but focused,
becoming even more-so as the coffee kicked in. Paul was in the sort of