Born to Run (18 page)

T
WO WEEKS AFTER the
Close-up close-down
, as dispirited Diaz supporters had dubbed the depressing night, the temperature was dropping, not as
fast as the Republicans’ electoral prospects had plunged, though out in the skipping heart of the seniors’ sunbelt, you wouldn’t have known it. According to the placards, the
crowd hailed from not only Phoenix, Arizona but from miles around: Scottsdale, Sun City, Mesa, Chandler, Peoria, and even the quaintly named Surprise.

To Isabel—up on the stage forcing a laugh and swaying arm-in-arm with Hank Clemens and Perry Patein—two things seemed remarkable. One was the vast difference from yesterday’s
rally in Long Beach, California: there, they’d been surging on a roiling sea of predominantly sun-bleached hair yet today they’d submerged into a languid grey lagoon, where the only
buzz came from the faulty hearing aids and pacemakers down in the mush pit. The other was that Isabel was here at all.

As a tentative “Isa-bel” quivered over the somewhat ambiguous “Go Hank, Go” chants of the new campaign, she stepped forward to the microphone.

“Friends,” she said, launching into the stock introduction she’d perfected over the last ten days, “Let’s give a big, warm Arizona welcome to the two men with my
vote for the next president and vice-president of the United States… my very good friends, Hank Clemens and… Perry Patein.”

It wasn’t as bad as Bobby Foster’s rockstar version of “
Hel-l-o-o, Phoe-e-e-nix
,” or Pi-i-tts-burgh, or wherever he happened to be, but she knew it wasn’t a
whole lot better.

TRAMPING city-to-city and breakfast-to-dinner, Isabel was doing her best to repair the damage she was responsible for, unwitting or not. Putting the Republican team back on top
was what drove her, regardless of the painful fact she wasn’t going to be the one enjoying the trappings of office. Despite her reservations about Hank, shared by many, she was convinced that
the country would be better off with him in the White House than Bobby Foster. Especially with backup from Perry and with her in Hank’s Cabinet, as his secretary of state.

Isabel had strong-armed her own campaign team to embrace Hank; especially Gregory, though he held Hank at a distance. They hired extra speechwriters. Hank’s skills in the insight
department followed the edict that genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Merely giving Hank a pen made him sweat.

Isabel’s stocks were still booming with the public, perhaps more so due to her demonstrable altruism. Almost instantly, “We was robbed” became a rally mantra.

The Karim Ahmed affair fizzled as an election truncheon since it was Isabel-specific and the Democrats couldn’t beat Hank over the head with it; though Ahmed’s disappearance did
linger as mainstream news, peaking if someone reported a sighting. Between Elvis and Ahmed, shopping malls were getting crowded.

The Foster-Taylor campaign finally catapulted over the important 45-percent approval rating poll barrier, and was now tickling 50. With Hank cast against him, voting for Foster became enticing,
like sliding into the driver’s seat of a blood-red V-8 Mustang convertible with the top down. With Hank, it would be sitting astride a well-mannered thoroughbred, or rather a sculpture of
one: graceful and born to lead, but going nowhere. Even if Isabel was in his Cabinet.

The Independents were thriving, too.

The only good news for the Republicans was that with Isabel their effort was resuscitating, and the Clemens-Patein team were pushing back up, to 35 percent and higher.

Inspired by Isabel’s apparently selfless example, her supporters wiped away their tears and resumed campaigning for Hank. If Isabel could do it, they’d do it with her.

The Democrats fired off new sharpened barbs to keep their rising opponents down, especially on the theme that if Clemens-Patein won, they’d be Isabel’s—or worse,
Ed’s—puppets in the White House. But they miscalculated the strength of the public’s “she was wronged” sentiment, and the tactic backfired, boosting the Republicans up
a few notches. Most Americans still hankered for Isabel in the Oval Office, so if Clemens-Patein was the only way to do it, well, that might be worth considering.

MIKE Mandrake’s hate mail had started even before
Close-up
ran its credits that Sunday night. Within three days, he’d tallied six death threats and CBS was
forced to give him a 24/7 bodyguard. Security in CBS studios around the country was bumped up: targeted protests were breaking out everywhere. It might have been synchronicity, but within four
days, after several separate and nasty incidents of “mistaken beard”, there was not a single hair left on any CBS chin apart from Mike’s, and his was fast turning grey.

The network became a hackers’ haven. For three days running, the nightly news bulletins were interrupted and each time it was with the same vision: Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and the old
Looney Tunes gang with the signature finale,
Th-th-that’s all, f-folks
played on a loop for fifteen very long seconds, with Mike’s face fading in and out before it burst into
flames.

If Mike dared emerge in public, he was hissed and jeered. His car, a new Mercedes, was key-scratched along both sides and sprayed with ugly graffiti. Even his wife turned against him, courtesy
of an anonymous phone call about his fidelity. What should’ve been Mike’s finest hour was a fiasco.

The following week, CBS announced that Mike was on assignment outside the country. It was a lie. He’d gone into hiding.

“T
HREE WEEKS LEFT… this campaign needs something big... something to really stoke the votes… to start a stampede…”
The six joined on this conference call were no bunch of hand-wringers or nail-biters; these were women and men who knew their duty.

“Obviously, I have to tread carefully about how far I go publicly,” Isis added. This time the voice-masking software turned the words into those of a robotic Arnold Schwarzenegger,
adding a creepy tone to the call, though any chance eavesdropper would have shuddered at the conversation even without that.

“Doing it in private is more fun,” laughed Diana, her voice-mask mimicking the actress Meg Ryan.

Isis ran through the latest research. Even though the Clemens-Patein ticket was picking up steam, the experts predicted it would top out at 40 percent. The numbers were running marginally better
in some of the all-important swing states, and even some traditional blue states, but whichever way the data was stretched, the magic 270 electoral college votes stayed just out of reach.

“We’ve upped the effort,” said Isis. “I’m out there every day now, but we’ll still have to activate…”

“The shockwave?” guessed Diana.

“Yes,” said Isis.

Diana’s face cracked into a smile; her work with Jax Mason wouldn’t be wasted.

THE “One Hundred Club” dinner was at Harvard’s Museum of Natural History. Hank’s idea was to shift the campaign focus to his intellect, away from his
wealth. Gregory sniped it would backfire: “So now they’ll say Hank went to Harvard… for dinner.” Isabel opposed the event for a different reason: the campaign
couldn’t afford to waste precious time preaching to the converted, especially this pile of withered old bones who shared more with the museum’s skeletal exhibits than with the swing
voters they needed to win over.

“Why’d they call it the One Hundred Club?” Isabel had asked Gregory before either of them knew it was the capacity seating.

Gregory scanned the crowd, “Minimum age of membership?”

The function ended at ten, late enough for most guests, so Hank decided to treat the travelling campaign team to drinks at the Railcar, a nightclub overlooking the tracks near the B&M Rail
Yard. His family trust owned a one-third share of the club.

Once inside, Isabel turned to both Ed and Gregory—Ed was now also full-time on the campaign—“Not many voters… it’s fake-ID-city in here.” But over the
pounding doof-doof of the music, if you could call it that, neither man could hear her.

Hank hustled them over to his showpiece. “My idea,” he pointed to the Cocktail Wall.

“He’s had an idea!” Gregory tisked.

Isabel didn’t catch the comment, though his smirk told her it was a slam of some sort. She scanned the Wall, which was entirely black apart from the flashing fluoro discs, which were the
glass faces of, she counted, thirty refrigerated cylinders slipped horizontally into the wall and filled with every vibrantly coloured liquor and cocktail imaginable. For a few seconds when the
music faded down to the mere landing squeal of a passenger jet, Hank pointed out the six kinds of Daiquiris—from raincoat-yellow mango to fire-engine red strawberry—the hot-pink Cosmos
and the Sex-on-the-Beach, even more candy-pink than the Cosmopolitans if that were possible. When he mentioned the Screaming Orgasm, Isabel lowered his arm, “Enough.”

The sound built up and the spotlights behind the Wall started strobing randomly through the cylinders, making them jump like bouncing balls.

“Cost a fortune,” Hank mouthed. He pointed to the nearby bank of speakers, now pumping harder than a steroid-sucking body-builder. “More power than the Pentagon.” He
laughed, but the strobes prevented him noticing that none of the others thought it was funny.

AFTER Isabel and Ed got to the sanctuary of their hotel—set back from Boston Common—the manager came up to their room to hand-deliver an envelope. It was marked
“
Isabel Diaz: Important but not Urgent
.”

The term jolted her—until a few years ago she’d seen it typed on memos every day, until its devotee vanished, along with four million dollars.

“It arrived a few minutes ago,” the manager told her.

How did Karim Ahmed know she’d be staying here? “Who delivered it?” she asked.

“Here’s the thing,” said the manager, “it just appeared on the bell desk… while the night boy was helping a guest to the elevator.”

The letter weighed on her as she closed the door.

“What is it?” asked Ed, wiping his hands on a towel as he came out of the bathroom.

She waved it at him. “I think it’s from Karim.” She lifted it to the light and saw it contained only one sheet.

Ed took her wrist and brought it to his nose to smell the packet. He nodded and let go. Isabel sat at the desk and flicked on the lamp. She slit the envelope open. A single sheet… typed,
but with Karim’s signature. A scrawl that looked genuine.