America Rising (19 page)

Ed Bane paused again and smiled as the bank of tiny screens built into his console filled with the names of callers itching to express their fury at this desecration of everything right and good and holy. I am the conductor of a great and powerful symphony, he told himself happily. A symphony that moves only at my command, with a single wave of my wand. And there is no one—not Russell Millar, not William Bigby, not Nancy Elias—who can stand in my way. Satisfaction warmed him like the heat of a tropical sun. I am a force of nature. I am untouchable. Unstoppable.

He returned to stoking the fire ever hotter.

“But even that’s not the only outrage. What do you think the government of this imposter, this hater of America, this sick, corrupt, demented president, our Rug Muncher in Chief, is going to do to about it? I’ll tell you what, ladies and gentlemen. Not a single, solitary thing. She’ll put out the welcome mat for these liberal socialist terrorists, roll out the red carpet.”

He gave a snorting chuckled as if he had stumbled on a particularly interesting thought. “You think our Rug Muncher in Chief and this SayNo woman, this ANNA-Lynn CON-tee have a little carpet action of their own going on? You think maybe that’s why the President of the United States has the spine of a wet noodle when it comes to defending the honor of our nation and everything it stands for ? Or maybe she’s really one of them, one of those left-wing sickos who hate America and despise real Americans, who want to take our freedoms and make us slaves in their socialist-communist-totalitarian paradise.”

Now he let his voice soar, moving in for the kill.

“Well, my fellow Americans,
real
Americans, patriots, Bane-iacs, it’s time for us to stand up for our country, to stand up for America, to tell these radical communist fascist revolutionaries and that socialist-loving, America-hating, rug-munching hag in the White House to stand down. Stand down or we will stand you down! This is our country—
our country—
and we will not hand it over to these scum!”

He relaxed for a moment, let his audience breathe, then delivered the coup de grace: “This is the Ed Bane Show. And liberals, terrorists, socialists, rug munchers,
we
are the bane of your existence.”

He pointed at the engineer sitting behind a glass panel across from him in the studio and the faux-pop commercial theme song of a major bank bounced cheerily over the airwaves. He slid off his headphones and took a sip of tea from a heavy ceramic mug.

“That was brilliant, Mr. Bane,” his young call screener cooed over the studio intercom. She was Bane’s latest hire—smart, beautiful, hot and hopefully willing. He had to make sure Olivia didn’t get wind of her.

“Yes, it was,” he answered matter-of-factly. One thing Ed Bane didn’t believe in was false modesty.

“I was wondering about something, though,” the young woman said. “I think that SayNo group wanted to camp out in Anacostia Park across the river from the Capitol building. Not in front of the Washington Monument.”

Ed Bane slowly raised his head and shot a look that made the young woman blink and clutch her silk blouse tight around her shoulders.

“Don’t you
ever
question anything I say,” he snarled, every word enunciated with cutting precision. He waved his hand at the audience beyond the studio. “I know what these people want, I know it better than they do. They don’t care about your facts and your figures, what’s right and what’s fair and what’s true. They want to believe. And they want to be told
what
to believe. By
me.
And they
do
believe. And they do believe in me.”

He slammed his fist on the console so hard tea sloshed out of the mug. “And you and everyone else around here better goddam not forget it!”

* * *

Before Ed Bane signed off the air for the day the impact of his words was already being felt.

In New Orleans, a mob descended on SayNo’s Warehouse District office, threw rocks through the windows, broke down the front door and trashed the place, heaving furniture and computers out onto the street and trying to set the building on fire. Warned of the mob’s coming, AnnaLynn Conté and the rest of her staff had already fled. Police arrived after the damage had been done. They made no arrests.

 

In his opulent hotel suite in St. Barts, William Bigby listened to the Ed Bane Show on his laptop, mood alternating between pleased and vaguely unsettled. There was no such thing as excess when it came to taking it to those SayNo traitors. Putting pressure on Nancy Elias to shut their act down was gravy. Yet Bane was sounding ever more messianic, ever more drunk on his own power. Russ Millar better make damn sure all those ass-kissing Bane organizations Bill Bigby funded knew what side their bread was buttered on. He might not be able to control their fearless leader, but he sure as hell would control them.

 

In the All-American News building in New York, Russell Millar clicked off the broadcast and groaned. His meetings with the heads of the various Bane-affiliated groups had not gone well. They were almost as megalomaniacal and out of control as Bane himself. If Bill Bigby thinks he can turn these people off and on at will, he’s making a very serious mistake. Russ Millar sat down at his computer and tried to calculate how many years he could afford his current lifestyle if he was fired tomorrow.

 

In his Manhattan office, Frank Bernabe too had listened to the Ed Bane Show on his computer. The only clue to his feelings was a nervous tic that tugged repeatedly at the corner of his mouth. When Wei Lee entered to get her day’s assignments, the chill in the room was so deep that she turned and fled and didn’t enter again for the rest of the day. Frank Bernabe ignored her and sat lost in thought until the noontime sun broke through the clouds and directed a thin, quavering beacon at his feet.

 

T
utis International occupied the top floor of a downtown Miami highrise clad in iridescent sea-green glass that glittered like a fifty-story emerald in the brilliant South Florida sun. Or so it said in my Christmas Papers, though there was no mention of the company in the directory posted in the building’s severely modern lobby.

I’d made myself look as corporate as possible and attracted only a fleeting glance from a pair of bored security guards as I walked briskly past them like a man on important business. The elevator rose like a guided missile to the top floor, and when the stainless steel doors peeled back I found myself in a tiny foyer barely large enough for me and a much more attentive security guard who resembled a heavily muscled SUV stuffed into a blue uniform.

For a second I glimpsed a frosted-glass door framed by twin glass panels. Tutis International was inscribed on one of them in small, plain type. Then the SUV stepped in front of me, blocking out everything but his massive chest straining the seams of his soon-to-shred uniform.

“Can I help you, sir?” he said. His voice was somewhere between thunder and the rumble of a freight train; it seemed to come from somewhere south of his ankles. If God was looking for a voice double, this guy would be first on His list.

“I’d like to speak with Leland Elliott, please,” I said, trying not to squeak too badly.

“There’s no one by that name here, sir,” the giant responded.

“Sure there is,” I said. “I’ve got his address and phone number in my pocket. I’m sure you’ve seen him: thin, mid-sixties, white hair, likes dark suits. Sometimes he even wears a hat. He runs this place.”

“I’m sorry, sir, there is no Mr. Elliott here.”

“This is Tutis International, right? I didn’t take a wrong turn coming out of the elevator, did I?”

That was a little joke. Apparently SUVs have no sense of humor.

“I think it’s time you left, sir,” he rumbled. I was surprised the building didn’t shake.

“Just a sec, okay? Let me call him on my cell. I’m sure he’ll want to—”

“Now.”

The giant took a small step toward me, his bloated pectorals almost touching my nose. Testosterone rose from his pores like cologne.

“Now.”

“Well, since you put it that way. . .” I said, always gracious in defeat.

He grabbed me with a hand the size of a canned ham attached to an arm the size of a tree limb, turned me around and shoved me into the elevator. I bounced off the back panel, then straightened my clothes and stared back with as much dignity as a man who knows he almost had the shit kicked out of him could muster. The monster banged the “down” button and by the time the doors peeled open in the lobby the pair of guards were waiting for me. They didn’t look bored any more. Each took an arm and then they frog-marched me through the lobby and onto the sidewalk.

“It’s best you don’t come back here, sir,” one of them said.

He was probably right about that. But I still had Leland Elliott’s phone number. I walked down the street to a little sidewalk café, ordered a café Cubano and took out my cellphone. Leland Elliott answered on the second ring.

“Who is this? And how the hell did you get this number?” He was obviously looking at his caller ID and seeing I wasn’t on his Christmas list.

“And a good day to you too, Mr. Elliott,” I said. “This is Leland Elliott, founder and president of Tutis International?”

“I asked you a question,” he snapped.

“Actually, you asked two questions,” I replied, ever the wiseass. “But just to show you what a good sport I am, for this day and this day only I’m offering a two-for-one special. You answer one of my questions and I’ll answer two of yours. How’s that for a deal?”

“Listen, you little shit. You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”

“Oh, I do, Mr. Elliott. Really, I do. You don’t mind if I call you Mister, do you? You run a company that specializes in what might be called ‘dirty tricks,’ except some of your tricks are downright filthy. The trio of goons you sent to beat up Eldrick Brown in San Francisco, the ones employed by your shell company, Genesis Group. That’s some pretty nasty shit. Of course, they got a little carried away and now he’s dead. You’ve had people do all kinds of bad things, Mr. Elliott. Beatings, fire-bombings, intimidation, bribery, payoffs. And I’ve got the records. Times, dates, places. Names too. Not all of them, but enough.

“You remember Armando Gutierrez, right? He got blown into dog food in New Orleans, breaking into the house of a woman who runs the kind of organization Tutis International seems to have a real hard-on for. So I have a very good idea who I’m dealing with, you arrogant sack of shit. And soon the entire country is going to know as well.”

Silence. Then a low, menacing hiss, an animal bearing its fangs. “Whoever you are, however you got this number, you’re a dead man.”

“Eventually, we all are, Mr. Elliott,” I said.

* * *

The Diamond Rock subdivision in North Las Vegas was at the epicenter of the national real estate meltdown. Hundreds of virtually identical, faux-Mediterranean-style houses, laid out on a perfect grid, were thrown up as quickly as possible by mostly immigrant labor and peddled as a “vibrant new community” by real estate agents who collected fat commissions with the regularity of the rising and setting sun.

Most of those agents were now broke or working at Starbucks, and the homes they touted were worth less than half of what their over-stretched, over-stressed owners had paid for them. There was nothing vibrant about Diamond Rock now, and little sense of community. Fewer than half of the planned two thousand homes had been built, the rest were either patches of hard-packed dirt or half-finished frames, wooden skeletons baking in the desert sun like the bones of a dead animal.

Of the eight hundred or so homes that were actually constructed, nearly half had been abandoned or had never found a buyer. Thieves and former owners had stripped them of everything of value, carting off appliances and fixtures, dismantling plumbing and pulling out copper wiring. Then they savaged whatever was left and moved on to the next opportunity. Squatters, drug dealers and predators of all sorts saw opportunity there too, while the remaining homeowners tried desperately to keep their lives together. They kept to themselves, bought large-caliber handguns and waited for a miracle that would allow them to escape with body and bank account intact.

For all these reasons the handful of residents on Goldmine Drive paid no attention to the battered red pickup truck with a rusting camper shell that one day in early February appeared in the driveway of a dirt-colored three-and-two in the middle of the block. As long as there were no wild parties or steady stream of junkies looking for a fix or posse of thugs looking for trouble, neighbors minded their own business.

But then something remarkable happened. In just a few days the waist-high weeds in the home’s front yard disappeared, those in the yards of the empty homes on either side too. The dirt-brown paint had been replaced by a sunny gold with off-white trim, and lights shone in windows that had been dark since the power was turned off ages ago.