The Swing Voter of Staten Island (8 page)

“Exactly how much are you getting paid to destroy American democracy?”

“You think I’m evil because I work for a corporation … but let me set you straight, mister!” she said with baited breath. “Everything great and powerful about this nation was made … not in the halls of Congress, but by the laissezfaire system … Corporate interests
are
American interests!”

“Just tell me what to do to get the hell out of here.”

“Upstairs in my hotel room, on my bedside table, is a piece of paper with Newt Underwood’s phone number. Call him, tell him where I am, and I’ll have you out of here tonight.”

“What’s your room number?”

She glared at him uncertainly. “I smell a Crapper. Untie me and carry me up there.”

“That’s absurd.”

At that moment, a large man in a City Council Police Department uniform turned the corner and walked toward them.

“HELP! Pol—” Dianne started to scream.

Uli kissed her hard on her bright red lips. The officer walked past without even noticing that the woman was strapped to the roof of the car, or that a dead man was slumped in the passenger seat.

“So what room are we in?” he asked again, as he frisked her for her room key, finding nothing.

“I’m not telling you shit, asshole!”

For the first time, Uli noticed a strange bump on the front of Dianne’s neck. He tapped it gently.

“What do you think you’re—”

“How come I didn’t see this before?”

“See what?”

“You have an Adam’s apple.”

“What are you talking about?”

Uli reached around behind her legs, lifted up her skirt, and pulled her panties aside, revealing a set of small pink testicles. He didn’t know how he could have missed it before. The lobbyist was a transvestite.

“High crimes, high crimes!” Her voice had been growing deeper since her injury.

Uli pulled the burlap sack out from under her and shoved the end of it in her mouth, slipping the rest of it over her head and torso. Ignoring her muffled cries, he entered the lobby of her grungy hotel.

“Wanna room?” asked a bored desk clerk who was listening to Elvis crooning “Viva Las Vegas” over an ancient radio.

“Actually, I’m looking for my wife.”

“Who is she?”

“A tall thin blonde with too much mascara—Dianne Colder.”

“What a bitch,” the clerk muttered. “No offense, but every time she comes here she complains about something—the smell, the view, the furniture. I’m not responsible for the whole world, you know.”

“Just try living with her,” Uli replied, as the man looked up her number.

“Room 2-A, second floor in the back.”

“Would you have the key?” Uli asked, seeing hotel keys dangling out of almost every mailbox behind the counter.

“I can only give that to her.”

“Well, she’s probably up there anyway,” Uli said and headed upstairs.

“Hold on, I’m not supposed to let anyone up.” But the clerk was too lazy to pursue him.

The hallways had an old embossed wallpaper pattern that looked like a series of mushrooms. A funky, mildewy smell probably accounted for the hotel’s vacancies, Uli thought, as he sped up the two flights. Her door was locked, but that of the adjacent room was ajar, with the bed unmade. Uli went inside. A fire escape in the back connected the two units. He opened the window and climbed over to her window, which was locked. He pulled off his shirt, wrapped it around his fist, and shattered the glass pane. Then he reached in, unlocked her window, opened it, and climbed through. The first things he saw were several fashionable skirts and a cabinet full of mascara, along with an advance galley copy of a book entitled,
Boo Hoo, My Husband’s Dead: Whiny Vietnam War Widows
by Dianne Colder.

Shit
, he thought,
the only way I’m going to find out how she’s getting away from here is by forcing it out of her
. Stepping out into the hallway, he heard a distant ruckus. Racing down the stairs and into the lobby, he found the desk clerk slumped over his radio with the red handle of a longneck screwdriver sticking out of his right eye. The cash drawer was emptied out.

The victim moaned softly when Uli leaned him backward. He was still slightly conscious.

“What happened?”

“I gave him all my stamps,” the man groaned. “He didn’t have to—”

“What’d he look like?”

“He wasn’t human, he—” The clerk passed out before he could say anything further. Uli laid him down to die in peace, then dashed outside. His sports car was missing.

An old guy standing on the corner asked, “Was that your two-seater?”

“Yeah, did you see where it went?”

“Some kid just ran out of the hotel, jumped into the driver’s seat, and took off.”

Uli sighed. The sadistic thug who had needlessly stabbed the clerk to death had also stolen the car with an even bigger sadist still strapped to the roof and poor Oric’s body inside.

Stepping around the clerk’s body back inside the Class-A Lady, Uli’s only regret was not giving his friend a proper burial. He picked up a phone and dialed 911. It rang and rang for about five minutes before an answering machine clicked on. The message said:
“If you wish to report an emergency of some kind, please leave the nature of the crime, the location, and the time. Oh, and your name
—beep.”

Uli reported that a robbery and homicide had just been committed, then hung up, failing to leave his name or the location. He went back upstairs to Dianne Colder’s empty room. Looking carefully through her stylish clothes and the usual personal items, he found nothing particularly helpful. Wrapped in her sheets he discovered a possible weapon—a small black plastic item shaped like a pickle. Uli slipped it into his pocket. Just before leaving, he pulled the mattress up. He noticed several objects dangling from the hollowed underside of the old box spring. Taped there were a face mask, eye goggles, a tank marked
Charon
, and a small plastic box containing a full syringe of some unknown substance. Uli took the four items, slipped them into an old shopping bag from the woman’s room, and hit the street just as a police car turned the corner.

He started running west. From the corner of 4th Street and Third Avenue, he spotted a brown three-story building with a small clock tower—Cooper Union. He vaguely remembered that the original one had been some kind of school and that Abe Lincoln was somehow affiliated with it, perhaps he had gone there.

Entering the large lobby of the building, he approached a group of fierce-looking guards sitting behind a long table and explained that he had an appointment with a woman named Mallory. One guard picked up the phone and called upstairs.

“You were supposed to be here yesterday,” Mallory said, marching toward him five minutes later. “Where the hell is Oric?”

“We almost made it,” he said somberly. “We were right over there, about a hundred feet away, before we got grabbed.” He pointed out the big bay window to the corner of 8th and Lafayette.

“Oh my god, the Piggers got him?”

“They tortured him. I don’t think they intended to, but they killed him.”

“Fucking bastards!” she shouted.

The security guard rolled Uli’s fingerprints on a card and slipped it into a bulky electronic scanning device. A few minutes later the results appeared on a small screen.

“He’s got no record, which means he’s a security risk,” the head guard announced.

“This is a special situation. He’s not going into any high-security areas,” Mallory assured him. “I’ll take full responsibility.”

“We’ll have to put him under escort,” the guard said.

“Fine.”

“What’s in there?” the guard asked Uli, referring to the shopping bag from Colder’s room.

Uli took out the small metal tank and the plastic case holding the hypodermic needle. “Oric’s killer had them in her room. I thought maybe you could tell me what they’re for.”

Mallory looked at them closely before shrugging.

“You can pick them up on the way out,” the guard said, putting them back in the bag and then into his desk drawer.

Uli was directed through a metal detector. Flanked by two guards, he followed Mallory upstairs into a small conference room. The guards stood outside and closed the door. Upon the table was a pot of warm coffee and a tray of Spam-and-Velveeta sandwiches from a meeting that had just broken up. When Uli mentioned that he hadn’t eaten since yesterday, Mallory offered him the food. He gobbled down a sandwich in three bites and a cup of coffee in a single gulp.

“So, exactly what happened?”

“This blond bitch intercepted us at the Fulton Street bus station just after you left,” Uli explained, cramming the second Spam-and-cheese sandwich into his mouth. “Her name was Dianne Colder.”

“Colder?”

“First she said she was a lobbyist for Feedmore, then she said she was the coordinator of this place and that the Piggers were
her
agents.”

“Ah yes, the sexy blonde who compulsively lies for the Piggers.”

“I wouldn’t say
sexy
. Actually, she’s a transvestite.”

“You’re lucky you weren’t her target,” Mallory said. “She leaves a trail of dead men behind her. So, she abducted you?”

“Not then—she accompanied us after you left. Of course, Oric had to blurt out one of his crazy predictions, which made her suspicious as hell. But she seemed to think I was on her side, and I didn’t want to alarm her, so when the bus reached Manhattan we jumped out the rear window and snuck away.”

“What was Oric’s final prediction?” she asked intently.

“
Big blast
was all he said.”

“I wonder where.”

“While dodging her, we went through midtown and I saw someone blow up a truck in front of Rock & Filler Center. I think that was probably it. Anyway, they chloroformed me.”

“Who
chloroformed you?”

“There were at least four of them,” Uli replied. “One was the man I ended up killing in Staten Island—and there was also a chubby boy with bangs and glasses.”

“Do you remember him having any scars or identifiable marks?”

“No, I don’t think so … Actually, he had a missing tooth,” Uli suddenly recalled.

“A front tooth?”

“No, it was
here
,” Uli said, pointing inside his own mouth. “An incisor.”

“Oh god! Did he speak with a—”

“I didn’t hear him speak, but I could probably identify him again.”

Mallory grabbed the phone. “Security, get me Manny Lewis!”

“You’re holding him?” Uli asked.

“No, but he’s an intern in my office. He knew I was expecting someone important all day, but he didn’t have any details.”

“How could he have helped my assailants?”

“He must’ve told them you hadn’t arrived and to keep a team in the area—” The ringing phone interrupted her. Mallory listened quietly for a moment, then cursed and hung up. “Shit, he didn’t come in today.”

“Maybe he’s sick,” suggested Uli.

“He’s never missed a day. He’s gone—but we’ll find the cocksucker.” Mallory ran her hands through her hair. “Tell me what happened after you were abducted.”

“Well, when I woke up, I was dangling upside down like a side of beef in some barnyard in Staten Island.” He remembered an odd detail: “The only reason I woke up was because I heard some voice in my ear screaming at me.”

“Whose voice was it?”

“I can’t really describe it,” he replied. “I heard it my first day here, when I was being chased by dogs. I thought it was my wife, who I don’t really remember, and then I thought it was this blond guy I saw in Brooklyn yesterday, but it’s probably just a recurrent daydream.”

“This place is a little bizarre.”

“Yeah, it’s like everyone’s a terrorist,” he said, remembering the newspaper articles.

“Before I came here, I was in one of the splinter groups of the Weather Underground called the May 19th Brigade.”

“Really?”

“Why would I lie to you?”

“So I guess this place
is
full of terrorists. Are most of them Crappers?”

“No. In fact, one of the big fallacies about Rescue City is that all the former terrorists up and became Crappers. A bunch of them, mainly the younger ones, sold out and went Pigger.”

“Hold on a second. What exactly did your May Brigade do?”

“The usual: protested the war, visited Cuba, blew up draft offices, ROTC offices, recruiting centers. Stuff like that. You have to realize that a lot of disenfranchised groups saw terrorism as a legitimate alternative. Anyway, did you get some sense of what the blond lobbyist was after?”

“She said she was here in Rescue City to bribe the borough president of Staten Island.”

“Bribe him to do what?”

“To cast the swing vote to give the Democrats the one electoral college vote this place has for the upcoming presidential election.”

“Yes, it all makes perfect sense. The Piggers are terrified of Ronald Reagan.”

“The actor?” Uli asked.

“He was elected president in ’76 after Nixon,” Mallory said. “His reelection is our one great hope.”

“Why?”

“They don’t think we know. That’s why the Feedmore Corporation doesn’t ship in radios or TVs.”

“But I’ve seen people using them.”

“Those government-issued radios and televisions don’t pick up reception beyond about two miles or so. Hell, they can barely pick up the stations transmitted here. But using parts from them, some people have managed to rig together shortwave radios, so we can occasionally catch news from the outside world.”

“And what have you heard?”

“Reagan has been going head-to-head with the Russians, outspending them on defense.”

“So?”

“He’s cut every social program in order to come up with the cash for his arms race.”

“That’s awful.”

“Actually, it’s good for us. The money that goes into Rescue City is one of the biggest expenses in the national budget.”

“What are you saying?”

“In order to pay for his military buildup, Reagan’s been talking about closing this place down. It’s supposed to be a close presidential election,” Mallory continued. “If Reagan gets reelected and cuts funding, we’ll all be returned to New York.”

“So if the Staten Island borough president votes Democrat and Reagan loses his reelection,” Uli concluded, “we’re stuck here.”