America Rising (4 page)

I could feel Mongoose’s scorn on the other end of the line. It was like asking Michelangelo to paint your bathroom. But I knew how to play him.

“He’s one of the assholes who beat Eldrick Brown.”

The scorn vanished.

“Done. Expect. Soon.”

And the line went dead.

* * *

The package delivered to Lauren Pinter’s Capitol Hill row house arrived by private courier a little after noon. There was nothing unusual about this. Spending as much of soon-to-be ex-husband Jake’s vast fortune as possible was Lauren Pinter’s chief pastime; deliveries of everything from designer outfits to expensive jewelry were as regular as sunsets. She’d even joined a wine club that sent a dozen bottles a month of whatever wines were currently trendy.

But there was something unusual about this particular package. For one, the thick padded envelope bore no markings from any retailer, no markings from anyone, just Lauren Pinter’s street number, city and zip code on a computer-printed label. But what really grabbed her attention was the name on the label: former Senate Minority Leader Jefferson Dalworth, with whom she’d been having a year-long affair and who at this very moment was in her shower, washing off the musky residue of their morning’s love-making.

Her breath caught in her lungs as the implications of the mysterious package penetrated her post-coital fog. She threw open the door and rushed outside to confront the anonymous man in the gray uniform who’d rung her doorbell and handed her the envelope but the street and sidewalk in front of her house were empty. Worried now, she ducked back inside, closed and locked the door, set the envelope on the desk in her study and fled the room as if it might suddenly burst into flames.

Jefferson Dalworth emerged from the shower toweling off his tanned body and tousled gray hair. He was in his mid-sixties but looked ten years younger, not exactly handsome but with a personal magnetism that could instantly draw people, especially beautiful women, into his orbit like smaller planets revolving around a shining sun.

Professionally he was on a roll, having been voted Republican majority leader after winning a fifth term representing Texas in the U.S. Senate and leading the fight to kill President Elias’s half-hearted attempt at healthcare reform. His on-camera appeal, coupled with ambition totally unfettered by scruples and the ability to generate millions of dollars in campaign contributions had convinced many of the party’s bigwigs he was presidential material and put him at the top of the list for next year’s nomination.

Personally he wasn’t doing so bad either. Over the past months he’d cemented his relationship with Lauren Pinter, a fortysomething blonde in the process of divorcing her tycoon husband. Marriage was even on the horizon, giving him access to her share of the Pinter fortune, estimated at $500 million. There was still the matter of smoothing things over with Meryl, his wife of more than two decades, but the promise of a generous division of property plus $10,000 a month for life, that last his payoff from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries for killing Elias’ healthcare bill, had persuaded her to forgo both her marriage and any public comment.

Even through the clouds of steam hugging the marble walls of the bathroom he could see Lauren was upset. He moved to take her in his arms but she recoiled and said, “I just got a package for you.”

Dalworth looked puzzled.

“I just got a package for you, Jefferson,” Lauren Pinter repeated, her voice riding the edge of hysteria. “In your name. Delivered. Here.” She put her hands on his chest and pushed. “You said no one was going to know. You promised. You promised! If Jake finds out before the divorce is final he’ll want to renegotiate everything. You know what a bastard he is. He can buy lawyers, judges, investigators, anyone; they’ll do whatever he wants. This is my future, money for the rest of my life and
somebody knows!”

Instantly, his politician’s instincts took over. He took Lauren Pinter by the shoulders and said soothingly. “Let’s not get carried away here. It may not be as bad as all that. We don’t know what’s in the package; it might be just a simple mistake. Even if it’s not, whoever did this wants something. Probably money. I have some and I can get more. If anyone wanted to put this story out they’d have done it already; the fact that they haven’t means they want to cut a deal. We can do that, give them what they want and be rid of them. It doesn’t have to go any further.”

His mind was racing—cataloging his enemies, evaluating their destructive potential, game-planning his response. But he kept his face calm and stroked Lauren Pinter’s hair.

“We can get through this,” he said. “It’s just something we have to deal with and then things will get back to normal.” He made a mental note to ask his contacts in the FBI to get any footage of surveillance cameras in the area to try to determine just who and how the package had been delivered. “First thing I need to do is put something on and see what’s in that package. Then we’ll decide where to go from there. Okay?”

“Alright, Jefferson.” Lauren Pinter took a deep breath and managed a semblance of a smile. “I trust you. Just make this go away. Please?”

“I will, sweetheart. I will.” He kissed her absent-mindedly on the forehead. “Now, where did you put that thing?”

* * *

“Soon” came two hours later with an email from Mongoose that laid out Armando Gutierrez’s thirty-three years like a butterfly pinned to a board. Processing all the data in the dozens of scanned pages and attachments would take days, but for now I was interested in only two things. How did Gutierrez get his money and where did he spend it?

Income tax filings gave the answer to the first question. Gutierrez was employed as a “security consultant” by something called Genesis Group, a company I’d never heard of. They paid him twenty grand a month, not including bonuses, enough to afford a new Corvette and his expensive South Beach condo. For that kind of money, I decided, he must be one hell of a consultant.

His bank and credit card statements answered my second question. Gutierrez was not only a well-paid consultant but a well-traveled one, with cash withdrawals and airline, hotel and rent-a-car bills in cities large and small across the country. I already knew what he’d been up to during election years so I focused on the last eighteen months, and in a few minutes had his complete itinerary—trips up and down the East Coast, to a pair of cities in the Midwest, to Miami, to Los Angeles and Sacramento and up to Oregon.

It was an ATM transaction in a small Illinois town that piqued my attention. I remembered reading about it a little over a year ago, how the workers in a foundering manufacturing plant there, hoping to replicate the earlier, well-publicized success of the employees of Republic Windows and Doors in getting severance and vacation pay when its owners suddenly shut it down, took over the plant and embarked on their own quest for economic justice.

I jotted down the date and went through Gutierrez’s credit card statements. An ATM withdrawal of two-hundred dollars occurred towards the end of what hotel, rental car and restaurant receipts suggested was a stay of at least two weeks in Peoria, about forty miles away. I accessed local newspapers’ archives for the period and began flipping though stories, realizing as I did that I never knew how the occupation of the manufacturing plant turned out.

Now I did.

During the weeks Armando Gutierrez was around a series of accidents befell the families of the men and women holed up in the plant. The foreman’s wife was seriously injured in a hit-and-run, another’s house burned down in a suspicious fire, the husband of one of the few female workers was mugged and severely beaten. Several families reported threatening phone calls, burglaries, car tires slashed and windows broken. It was a mini reign of terror, and no one was apprehended. After three weeks, the workers gave up, left the plant and were cited for trespassing. Armando Gutierrez moved on.

I ran through other dates with building anger. Gutierrez’s East Coast trips matched up with town hall meetings, demonstrations, sit-ins, local elections and other political actions where violent confrontations had been reported. His trip to Oregon coincided with a statewide campaign to boost taxes on the rich and corporations. I’d seen enough. There was a lot more to this than just Armando Gutierrez. What that was would be my job to find out.

* * *

Jefferson Dalworth locked the door to Lauren Pinter’s study and examined the envelope on the desk. Despite his confident dismissal of her fears, his mind was churning. Stomach too. Lauren Pinter’s millions were crucial to his planned run for president, and a vengeful, cuckolded, well-connected husband with the means and will to make life difficult for him was a problem to be taken very seriously.

He slit open the envelope and shook out a clear plastic case containing an unmarked DVD, not noticing the plain white business card that fluttered silently to the floor. He turned on Lauren Pinter’s computer and shoved the disc into its slot, trying to ignore a nagging sense that he had just handled the instrument of his own destruction.

The DVD whirred, an image flashed and that nagging sense became a physical shock that had him gagging on his own bile. The computer screen filled with the imposing façade of a five-star hotel on exclusive Brickell Key, a posh and pricy retreat where he stayed whenever he was in Miami. That segued into footage of him striding through the lobby, standing at the concierge’s desk, slipping his key card into the door of his top-floor suite.

He knew what was coming next and moaned aloud. From somewhere in the ceiling a camera’s unrelenting eye stared down at him, propped up on the bed in his bathrobe, a bottle of chilled champagne and two crystal flutes on an end table. Seconds later the bedroom door opened and a knife-like pain shot through his chest that made him want to retch all over again. Even through the pain and horror he was still stirred by the boy’s almost feminine, pre-pubescent beauty. His creamy, coffee-colored skin and midnight-black hair and slim, hairless body, the air of innocence that only vanished if you looked too long into his deep brown eyes.

The boy shrugged out of his clothes and stood naked at the bedside. Then he knelt down and slowly opened Jefferson Dalworth’s bathrobe. The pain and horror only built as the camera showed him fall back in bed, his hips jerking, face twisted with pleasure, the boy’s head bobbing, bobbing. . .

“No!
No, no, NO!!”

Jefferson Dalworth rose from his chair and swept the computer off the desk. His chest felt wrapped in barbed wire. He fell on the machine and scrabbled at it with numbing hands, desperate to remove the offending disc from its slot. Then something exploded inside of him and he collapsed on the floor. Jefferson Dalworth died with the DVD just beyond his grasp, the business card he’d never noticed only inches from his sightless eyes.

A
nnaLynn Conté stifled a yawn and took a sip of water to steady her nerves. She could have had coffee but was afraid it would make her even more jittery. As a lawyer and former legal analyst for a New Orleans television station, she was used to being in front of the camera. And it loved her petite figure, her short-cut, pixie-ish hair framing delicate features and luminous green eyes. But this was the big leagues, the Sunday morning network talk show circuit, and she was only too aware that she was this Sunday’s sacrificial Christian about to be tossed to the lions.

An assistant producer led her out of the “green room”—the waiting room for guests about to go on-air, actually painted a dull industrial shade of beige—and into the studio, sitting her down across a large, Formica-topped desk opposite moderator Charles Wheatley. Wheatley, a one-time Congressional aide turned political operative turned TV talking head, had in eleven years as ringmaster of
In the Know
made the hour-long show a font of inside-the-Beltway punditry and faux wisdom. He was talking to the show’s producer over his lapel mike and didn’t bother to look up.

AnnaLynn Conté didn’t mind. She could use the minutes of quiet time to gather her thoughts and boost her sagging energy. She’d gotten only a few hours’ sleep in her Washington D.C. hotel room, fielding a constant stream of updates about the sophisticated denial of service attack on the website of the organization she founded and led, SayNo.org. At one point she might have thought it coincidental the site was attacked on the eve of a national TV appearance sure to result in thousands of desperate inquiries. But after the burglary of her group’s offices, intermittent cyber attacks, and inexplicable and repeated telephone and power outages, she didn’t much believe in coincidence.

Wheatley finished his conversation, turned to her and said curtly, “Thirty seconds.” She took a deep breath, put on her most composed, impassive “TV face” and waited for the show’s producer to count down the final ten seconds to open. At the magic “one,” the host’s normally dour countenance instantly transformed itself into a mask of avuncular munificence, the rich uncle passing out Christmas presents to his disadvantaged nieces and nephews, the little bastards.

“Good Sunday morning, and welcome to
In the Know,”
he intoned gravely. “I am Charles Wheatley, and today the subject is middle class anger and what can be done about it.” His tone suggested a good whipping would suffice.