Pineapple Grenade (7 page)

He’d cornered the market on fear.

And when it came to sales, Glide could package utter terror like a tit to a baby. During campaigns, it was his hottest seller.

It hadn’t always been that way.

Just a few short years earlier, the firm Glide founded, Nuance Management Group, was renowned throughout the nation’s capital for thorough policy research, unflagging accuracy, strident ethics—and losing a record volume of elections.

It changed overnight.

It was a Tuesday.

Four
A.M.

Malcolm Glide sprang up from his pillow in a cold sweat. Heart pounding like a conga drum. Another nightmare about zombies. Except now they’d learned to walk faster.

Malcolm grabbed his chest. “Holy Mother! I’d vote for anybody who could stop that!”

The next morning, Malcolm charged confidently into the boardroom. “Throw away everything.” He walked to an easel and ripped down a chart of international exchange rates. “It’s all fresh.”

Murmurs around the conference table.

“We’ve been going at this completely wrong.” Glide crumpled the chart into a ball and threw it at a secretary’s head. “You know how we excruciatingly track swing voters, the base, independents?”

Various levels of nodding.

“Fuck that margin of error!” Glide grabbed a marker and scribbled rapidly on the washable easel. “Behold, our new business model.”

They stared in blank thought:

I
T’S THE STUPID VOTE, STUPID!

Furtive glances across the room.

An intern dared raise his hand. Veterans gasped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Malcolm pounded his fist on the table. “Everyone tries to get elected by leading. Instead we follow.”

“Follow what?”

“The emotions of the people.” Malcolm stood and began pacing. “They’re a massive disenfranchised class out there who feel abandoned.”

“That’s awful!”

“Tell me about it,” said Malcolm, spinning at the wall and heading back. “Millions of people across our great land who want nothing more than to be left alone and pursue their own happiness of believing mean-spirited bullshit. Except society has evolved away from ignorance. And that’s where we come in.”

“How?”

“We make being shitty feel good again.”

More glances and murmurs.

Another hand went up. “What are we supposed to do?”

Malcolm pounded the table again. “We lie.”

A junior partner cleared his throat. “But in politics, everybody else lies. That’s what has set us apart.”

Malcolm smugly folded his arms. “Except they don’t tell the Big Lie.”

“What’s that?”

Glide leaned forward and seized the edge of the end of the table. “We don’t simply say something that’s untrue. We make statements so insane that there’s no possible intelligent response. Like arguing with some old fart in a rocking chair who claims we never landed on the moon. Any educated person can only laugh. Meanwhile, we’ve just won over all the non-moon-landing votes.”

“Example?” asked the same partner.

“Most of our clients are against health-care reform, right?”

Nodding again around the table.

“Get those pens ready and take this down!” said Glide. “Tomorrow we send out this talking point to our top candidates: The government wants to create death panels to kill your grandmother.”

The table laughed.

They weren’t laughing long. Next meeting:

“. . . I can’t believe they bought it . . .”

“. . . Even Palin’s quoting us . . .”

“. . . It’s all over Fox News . . .”

Glide swiveled side to side in his high-backed leather chair and puffed a fat cigar. “Remember you heard it here first.”

“But how did you know?” asked their mass-mail manager.

“There’s a new dawn in America! It isn’t enough just to disagree with your opponent anymore. True patriots hate their fucking guts!” Glide got up and kicked the chair out from under a speechwriter. “Anger is sweeping the country! Tea bags from sea to shining sea! Voters everywhere exploding from frustration!”

“Why?”

“Because the facts don’t support their beliefs. And we mean to fix that.”

“But how?”

“Talk in code.” Glide poured a glass of ice water from a sterling carafe. “From now on, the president is a socialist.”

“He is?”

“No, but he’s black.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“Tons of people can’t stand that the president is the wrong flavor.”

“That’s racism,” said a pollster.

“And racism’s not cool anymore,” said Glide. “Even for racists. So we call him a socialist.”

“That’s nuts.”

“The people we’re trying to reach will get it,” said Glide. “
Socialist
is the new ‘N-word.’ Have that imprinted on some stress balls.”

Chapter Two

Tampa International Airport

A cab pulled into the departures lane outside Delta.

Two passengers got out with luggage, and the taxi sped off before Serge had a chance to pay.

Coleman jumped back to avoid getting a foot run over. “What the hell was that about?”

“Beats me.” Serge clicked open the handle on his bag. “He was acting weird the whole way, ever since I hopped in the front seat with him.”

“I think we’re supposed to sit in back.”

“And that’s why I always sit up front.” They walked through automatic doors. “It’s about class struggle. You sit in back like King Tut, and you’re saying, ‘Dance, monkey.’ But if you jump up front like equals, it’s a bold statement that you’ll tolerate B.O. to pull our country together.”

Coleman got on an escalator under a sign:
ALL GATES.
“Then maybe it was when you handed him your gun.”

“Could be a new driver,” said Serge. “Anyone who works the airport knows you can’t take guns on a plane. I could have just thrown it away, but I figured he’s got a dangerous job and could use a piece. Even mentioned the serial number had already been filed off.”

“You were being considerate.”

“Plus I gave him an ammo box to get started and explained that those hollow-point bullets fragment and rattle around inside the body, so there’s no way ballistic tests can connect him to anything I might have done.”

“That’s when he totally wigged,” said Coleman. “Shaking real bad, nearly hitting that family unloading their car.”

“Must have been carrying some emotional baggage from a domestic fight at home this morning over mysterious phone numbers on the bill that his wife called, and somebody named Loretta answered.” Serge got off at the top of the escalator. “Hey, I’m not the one fucking Loretta, so he shouldn’t be dumping his wife’s shit on me.”

“I heard you tell him that,” said Coleman.

A bustle of people crisscrossed the hub of the main terminal. Others stared up at arrival and departure screens. Serge stopped for coffee. “. . . And a cup of ice on the side please.”

“Iced coffee is more,” said the young clerk.

“I didn’t order that,” said Serge. “Just regular coffee with ice on the side.”

“That’s still considered iced coffee.”

“I don’t want iced coffee. I want temperature control. I want a lot of other things, too, but I won’t burden you with my agenda because there’s a really long line behind me, except if you don’t vote, please consider your grandchildren, who could end up in a bizarre futurescape with thought police zipping around ten feet off the ground on antigravity platforms, using pocket brain-erasers to curb individuality and coffee-clerk annoyance. Ice please.”

She warily handed him a small cup. Serge walked to the preparation area, counted six cubes into his beverage, then drained the whole thing in one guzzle.

“I love airports!” Serge briskly rolled a suitcase toward the security checkpoint. “All the norms from the regular world are out the window.”

“How so?”

“Like that tavern between those gates. People drinking in the morning.” He looked at Coleman. “Okay, bad example. Let’s go in this gift shop. To enhance the airport gift-shop experience, I pretend I’m a historical figure who’s just been time-ported to the twenty-first century. I’m Leonardo da Vinci now. What would such a quotable Renaissance man say in a place like this? ‘Five dollars for water from an atoll in the Pacific? Fuck me in the ass!’ ”

“Serge, people are staring.”

The pair walked to the back of the security line. They produced authentic state driver’s licenses with fake names acquired from a street broker who hooked them up with a contact in the motor vehicle office. Then they entered the queue leading to the X-ray machines.

“Coleman, here’s another example of airport world. See that sign with pictures of prohibited items? Power tools, can of gasoline, a big ax, and my favorite: the Rocky and Bullwinkle bomb shaped like a bowling ball with the fuse actually lit.”

“It’s pretty funny.”

“It’s pretty freaky,” said Serge. “They don’t put up signs before there’s a demonstrated need. Terrorists obviously ignore them, so they’re meant to solve a problem from the law-abiding public. I mean, who were all these people bringing hatchets and chain saws to the X-ray machine?”

“Sir, excuse me.”

Serge looked up at the next security guy checking boarding passes. “Yes?”

“Sir, did you mention hatchets and chain saws?”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t hear your full remarks,” said the guard. “But I must warn you, there are serious penalties for making jokes about airline safety.”

“Oh, I wasn’t joking.” Serge pointed back down the line. “We were just discussing your sign. That’s the idea, right? You want people to pay attention to it. Most people walk right by, but not me. And I can’t get my head around those illustrations. But then I’ve never been to Denver, so I don’t know what’s required to survive at that altitude. Maybe everyone drinking for breakfast in the airport bar has a snow ax and private supply of gasoline. And what’s with that last item? Have you had to fire some X-ray people for letting cartoon bombs get through with lit fuses?”

“Please, just no more remarks.”

Serge took off his shoes. “It’s your sign.”

Moments later, he stared up at a departure screen in Airside A. “Son of a bitch!”

“What is it?” asked Coleman.

“Our flight’s delayed!”

“But only fifteen minutes,” said Coleman.

“I’ve seen this movie before. ‘Fifteen minutes’ is code for ‘at least three to five hours.’ They know the plane’s stuck in Pittsburgh, where they wrestled another drunk pilot to the runway, but they don’t want an open passenger revolt, so they incrementally string us along fifteen minutes at a time, until you’re across the international date line.”

Serge paced in front of the departure screen.

Fifteen minutes later, Serge grabbed Coleman and pointed. “Sweet Jesus! They just added another fifteen minutes!”

“Serge, your face is that color again.”

“Can’t help it.” More pacing. “If I’m told to be somewhere important at a specific time, I’m there with an extra wristwatch and breathing exercises to enhance my cooperation. But then they do it to you again! Every fucking airport and doctor’s office teasing you along like strippers brushing your crotch with the back of their hand, because the
back
of the hand is the legal loophole. Probably learned that from airport security who pat you down that way so they can’t be accused of groping. There are meetings going on somewhere.”

“You might be getting worked up over nothing,” said Coleman. “For all we know, that could be the last fifteen-minute delay.”

“You’re probably right,” said Serge. “Let’s find a seat and relax near screaming infants.”

Two hours later. Serge sat near the gate with his head hanging back over the chair and his mouth open.