The Devlin Deception: Book One of The Devlin Quatrology (3 page)

Next in line were the Incontinentals, three of whom reached into
their bags for binoculars, seven for their cell phone cameras, and
all the rest of the men rapidly cleaned their glasses, except for the
ones who'd had cataract surgery, who silently thanked their doctors
for giving them such clear vision. The women looked on enviously.

In the water, Alice pushed the feathers away from her face and glared
at the blonde, and the rest of the Hat Squad followed, glaring and
adding their own catty comments to Alice's.

Still further south, Millie poked Alvina and hissed, "Do you
believe that? Doesn't Lee County have a law against thongs?"

Alvina replied, "Yup, but it only requires that the back be at
least two inches wide."

Millie persisted, "Well, that one may be legal, but it's
disgusting."

Fran muttered, "I'll bet she's airbrushed."

Alvina looked down her substantial nose at Fran. "That's only
in the magazines, dumbo. You can't be airbrushed live."

Millie sneered.

Fran blinked several times, then looked at Alvina blankly. "Are
you sure?"

Alvina waved her off. "Sure, I'm sure. Geez."

Seven of the Beach Potatoes pulled out their phones and started
shooting video. Jim, the Scalloped Potato, took off his hat, rubbed
his scalp and said to nobody in particular, “This is not a bald
head; it's a solar panel for a sex machine.” Carole, the sweet
one, looked at the blonde and thought again about getting implants,
even though to others, she had a great natural figure; three of the
guys in the group had already named her the Hot Potato.

When Norm turned to ogle the blonde, he stubbed his toe on the drill
sticking out of the ground next to his chair; Janet glanced at him,
then at the blonde, then back at Norm, and said, "She IS
gorgeous, isn't she?"

Norm quickly replied, "Not as gorgeous as you are, my love."

Janet smiled as she reached into their beach bag: "Good
comeback, Norm. I'll get a bandage for your toe. It's bleeding."

The blonde, who had been scanning the crowd from behind her
high-fashion sunglasses as she strolled, but never making eye
contact, stopped briefly to chat with an elderly couple, who
shrugged, but pointed further south.

A moment later, she stopped to ask something of a nondescript but
deeply tanned older man, who was lying on what looked to be a
homemade PVC lounge with a six-inch white fringe hanging down all
around it. He was reading one of Milton Berle's joke collections and
was known for his self-defecating humor. A T-shirt with a picture of
a man lying in a hammock and the words "American Idle" was
hanging off the end of his lounge.

In answer to her question, he shook his head sadly and pointed
further south. As she continued on, he heaved a deep sigh. His eyes
took a long time to return to the book.

The Mimosa twins glanced at the blonde, nodded to each other and
activated the miniature sound-and-video recording equipment embedded
in their beach bags. Jill whispered to Carie, "I hope we look
that good when we're her age." Carie smiled and nodded, but
kept her eyes on the blonde.

The blonde then sauntered up to another older man reclining on a
three-way beach lounge maybe fifteen feet further south, also near
the waterline; he was writing in a small spiral notebook.

In a gentle, melodious voice, she said, "Excuse me."

Startled, the man looked up and saw a face with high cheekbones, full
lips and either no or very natural makeup, a true movie star face,
framed in lustrous, luxuriantly wavy honey blonde hair. He didn't --
couldn't -- ignore her anatomically very correct figure, of course.

Perflutzed, he held up an index finger, then pointed to his mouth,
finished chewing a chocolate chip cookie, swallowed and mumbled,
"Mm-hmm?"

She waited, but when nothing else was forthcoming, she asked, "Are
you Jake Devlin, by any chance?"

He swallowed one more time and said, "Yes, I am, but not by
chance; that's the name I was given."

"You're writing The Donne Deal?"

Jake licked some crumbs from his lips. "Yup."

She held out her hand and Jake took it. "I'm Pamela93; I've
sent you some suggestions through your web site, back when you only
had Donne's speech up there."

"You're Pamela93? You don't look at all like I pictured you,"
Jake said, thinking that she actually looked precisely as he'd
pictured her. "But I loved your idea on the minimum tax; that
got me thinking."

"Minimum tax? That wasn't mine. I did the Roth IRA and the
capital loss offset increases."

"Oh, geez, I'm sorry. My memory isn't what it used to be."

"No problem. You missed a bit, there on the right. May I?"

She reached down and brushed a final crumb off the corner of his lip.
"Got it.”

"Thanks."

"May I sit and talk with you for a while?"

"Sure. Right here on the other side of my cooler okay?"

"Great. And just call me Pam." She set her beach bag
down, unwrapped her sarong, flipped open a chair and slithered into
it, giving Jake a winning smile and batting her dazzling blues at him
over her elegant sunglasses.

-5-

Friday, December 9, 2011

7:55 p.m. EST

Bonita Springs, Florida

Slinky Joe's is a popular restaurant and bar in Bonita Springs,
Florida, with a live band every night and a diverse clientele of
retirees, bikers, rednecks and tourists, a true cross-cultural local
icon. Debbie Jackson, in a skimpy red halter and denim short shorts
that revealed the top of a red thong and a "tramp stamp"
tattoo, sat at the bar, nursing her sixth beer of the night, looking
around to see who she might con into buying her her seventh, when
Pete, one of the owners, took the mike from the band and spoke to the
crowd.

"Folks, we're gonna take a vote here. I know you've been loving
Salt and Pepper's music, but there's apparently a MAJOR announcement
about the future of our country coming on the TV in five minutes.
Joe and I have been seeing the promos all afternoon and evening, and
we know many of you have seen those, too. This sounds like something
that'll probably affect all of us, so we're gonna do a mini-democracy
exercise here. Brittany and Justin are due for a break at 8:30, but
if we move that up half an hour, we can all see just what this
announcement is all about.

"So let's see some hands. First, those who want them to break
now and watch the announcement? Okay. And now those who don't want
that?" At that, Debbie put up both hands and yowled a loud
Confederate yell, then saw that she was the only one yelling, so she
sat lumpily back down on her barstool.

"Okay," Pete continued, "looks like about
three-quarters of you want to watch. So let's have a BIG round of
applause for Brittany and Justin" -- and the crowd whistled,
hollered and applauded -- "and let's see what's gonna happen."

Debbie turned to a mullet-cut guy in a wifebeater T-shirt who had
just returned to his stool next to hers and mumbled, "What the
fuck? I LOVE Brittany; she's got a great voice, better'n Whitney
Houston. And now we gotta watch that lyin' (N-word deleted) AGAIN?
Buy me a beer, Darryl, so I can get through this shit. I'll make it
worth your while later." She leered suggestively at him.

Darryl, five beers into his usual twelve, and having been the
recipient of Debbie's well-practiced favors several times in the
past, debated with himself for perhaps two seconds and then agreed;
he'd just settle for eleven beers tonight.

Seventy-nine-year-old Marion Herman and her eighty-four-year-old
hubby, George, retired co-CEOs of a custom steel manufacturing
company in Indianapolis, were sitting at a table in the front corner
of the dining area, far away from the bar, pool tables and the stage.
Visiting Slinky Joe's for the first time, they felt completely out
of their element, but had been enjoying Salt and Pepper's music, on
the recommendation of their neighbors, Ron and Eileen Roderick.

Marion looked at George and said, "Honey, have you got your
hearing aids turned up?" George nodded and murmured, "Tuesday."
Marion sighed and rolled her eyes.

Pete grabbed the remote, changed all the TVs to the 24-hour news
channel and ran the audio through the band's amplifiers, catching the
news anchor in the midst of his commentary:

" ... -itzer, and we're on pins and needles here. The White
House has not issued any hints of what this speech is going to be.
We don't even have an early release of it, so we're completely at sea
on what he might say."

He paused, listening to his earpiece. "I'm just hearing that
we're ready to go live to the Oval Office. So here we go."

At that point the picture shifted to the Oval Office, but instead of
President Obama's well-known visage, a stranger smiled awkwardly at
the camera. He looked to be in his early fifties, smallish, bald
with a light fringe around the sides and back, a bulbous nose, ears
too big for his head, an overbite and a weak, receding chin.

Debbie leaned over to Darryl and said, "Geez, who the fuck is
this guy? He looks like a fuckin' munchkin."

George whispered to Marion, "Is that Harold Lloyd?" Marion
whispered back, "No, George; Harold Lloyd is dead." George
whispered, "Did we go to the funeral?" Marion whispered,
"Shh."

"Good evening, my fellow Americans. I know you expected to see
President Obama sitting here, but I've just fired him, along with
Congress, the Attorney General, the Solicitor General and the Supreme
Court, and it's all perfectly legal."

At that, a collective gasp arose from the crowd, and Debbie looked at
Darryl and mumbled, "What the fuck? What'd he say?"

"Shhh," hissed the matron sitting to her left.

George took Marion's hand in his and said, "This isn't Friday
Night Live, is it?"

On all the TVs, the stranger said, "My name is Gordon Donne,
D-o-n-n-e, and up until right this moment, I was the owner and CEO of
Donne Enterprises International, a private multinational corporation
which may be familiar to some of you. For the rest of you, there's a
lot of information about me and my company on the Internet."

At that point, journalists, hedge fund managers, CEOs, and heads of
state all around the world typed his name into their search engines,
which nearly crashed those search engines' servers.

"This morning, after President Obama signed the 1500-page Save
The Economy Act, three clauses in which authorized my actions, I
bought the federal government, lock, stock and barrel, and I've taken
over the executive, judicial and legislative responsibilities. Since
I'm taking on all three of those roles, my salary will be triple what
I would ask for just one, so you taxpayers will be paying me three
dollars a year instead of one.

"Before I go further, I want to acknowledge something that I
have no doubt will be uncovered and exploited in the next few days.
I have suffered for my entire life from a mild form of Asperger's
Syndrome, which I have worked diligently, but with sometimes limited
success, to overcome. That syndrome has made me much more
comfortable with numbers, systems and macro concepts than with words
and social interactions, but in my new position as owner or whatever
title people wind up giving me, I will work even more diligently to
overcome that difficulty. So I apologize in advance if that syndrome
surfaces as you and I have our conversations over the next several
weeks, months and years, but especially tonight as you all get to
know me a little bit for the first time.

"Over the next year, I'm going to make our government work
efficiently and productively, something that our Congresses and
Presidents have not been able or willing to do for decades, as most
of you probably know already. They've just been 'kicking the can down
the road,' burying their heads in the sand and outright lying to the
American people."

Several people at Slinky Joe's murmured, "That's right" and
"F'sure" and "Right on." Joe and Pete, watching
in their cramped office behind the bar, exchanged skeptical looks and
then focused back on the 13-inch black-and-white TV sitting on their
file cabinet. Joe, the more mathematical partner, reached for a
notebook and a pen. "I think we need to take some notes, Pete."
Pete just nodded.

"In fact," Donne continued, "many of you have realized
that our political system has almost completely hijacked and
corrupted the so-called 'representative democracy' envisioned by our
Founding Fathers, and that both the Democrats AND the Republicans
have put the interests of party ... and the special interests they
serve, and themselves ... above the country as a whole, using all of
our citizens as unwilling ... or sometimes willing ... pawns in their
political power plays. It's like the Democrats and Republicans are
children sitting in a sandbox, throwing sand at each other, but that
sandbox is on the back deck of the Titanic, with no one up in the
wheelhouse steering the ship away from the icebergs that they've all
been warned about.

"Like many of our citizens, I've become disgusted with the
continuous political posturing and the inability of our politicians
to set aside their constant quest for reelection and come to
agreement on MAJOR issues confronting the United States. Just look
back to how the President and Congress dropped the ball and virtually
ignored the ideas from the Simpson-Bowles commission and the
incongruously named Super Committee, and don't forget the idiot
brinksmanship and mudslinging in the debates about raising the debt
ceiling this past summer; to finally come to an agreement just ONE
DAY before the deadline was not only irresponsible, but should have
been criminal. And don't forget that that debacle triggered a
ratings downgrade of the United States, the first ever in our
history.