George Pelecanos (36 page)

"Jordie..."

The
K Street lobbyists and White House staffers who peered with curiosity at the
two men couldn't tell from appearances what they were saying. They saw the
twinkle in Port's pale-blue eyes and his dimpled smile, an expression familiar
to millions of Americans from talk shows, book jackets, magazines, and
newspapers. All seemed well.

"Middle
America is being compelled to act against its own interests," Port said, as he
returned the chilled glass to the table. "They need tax relief, affordable
health insurance, a promise fulfilled on Social Security...Doug, the ACCC can
help them. We can help--"

"Oh
Lord." Weil sat back, resting his folded hands against his vest.

"We've
moved light years from what Ronald Reagan believed, and what I believe."

"Are
you kidding?" Weil sat upright and plopped his hands on the table. "Jordie, do
you think we give a good god-damn what you believe?"

Port
started to reply, but stopped when Weil lifted the bottle to refill his guest's
glass.

"Listen,
we plucked you out of the cornfield because we knew you would do what you were
told," Weil said, as the golden wine flowed. "You've still got that farm-fed
puppy look, but by now, people have been trained to know what's coming out of
your mouth before you open it. Hell, you go off message and they'll shut you
down."

For
effect, Weil laughed, reached across the table, and punched Port on the
shoulder with the side of his fist. Not for a moment would he let Port know he
was concerned. The manuscript Port had written used Reagan's words and ideals
to challenge the direction the Right had taken since the opportunity of 9/11.
Once Mendes massaged the prose and smoothed out his newfound fanaticism, the
book would be another Jordan Port bestseller. That could be deadly dangerous, a
blueprint for a moderate coalition.

"So
here's how it works, Jordie. We're going to issue a press release telling
people you're on sabbatical. You're going up to the cabin our money bought you
in the Casper Mountains to write another book. You won't answer the phone and
there'll be no email. You'll return when we tell you and we'll give you your
next manuscript."

"Wait
a minute, Doug, I--"

Anticipating
the protest, Weil held up his hand. "Don't worry. Mendes will be involved.
She'll make it sound enough like you."

"I
wrote those books, Doug. You can't--"

"The
words are yours, sure; yours and Mendes's.
But not the
ideas."

Weil
took a short sip of the wine he considered pretentious and feminine, holding
the glass by its stem.

"If
it was up to me, we'd be done with you," he said, as Port looked on in silence.
"But my father likes you. You helped us get Hollywood on board and you helped
us turn around the FCC. But the end is in sight if you don't wise up."

Port
did not
so
much as blink.

"Think
you'd be happy working your way back up to the copy desk in Davenport, Jordie?"
Weil asked. "No, I would think not."

The
next day, Port joined Ana Mendes for lunch downstairs at Red Sage, a smart
restaurant with a Southwestern theme. He ordered the salmon paillard, and his
former mentor the pecan-crusted chicken dusted with red chili. In her briefcase
was his latest manuscript, Betraying Ourselves

"Ana,
if he could've gotten away with it, he would've shot me right there," Port
said
, sipping the Sancerre he'd ordered.

"Wrung
your neck is more like it," Mendes replied. "Jordie, what were you thinking?"

She
recommended him out of college for his first full-time job at the Quad Cities
Times. Something about Jordie brought out
a tenderness
in her, and so they kept in touch and she felt a sense of pride when he became
the paper's film critic. She followed his career when he moved to Fox's
KLJB-TV, and in 1991 she wrote a reference letter to the ACCC. He was
telegenic, personable, reasonably bright, and she knew Ronald Reagan was his
hero. A true believer, he'd be a perfect public face for Douglas Weil's
political action committee.

Some
years later, she asked one of Weil's lawyers why they'd decided on Jordan Port.

He
fit the profile, she was told. His father, a son of a Roosevelt Democrat, was
described as aloof and unsympathetic, and he died when Port was nine years old.
In turn, Port spent his school days and early career in an unwitting search for
praise and validation, particularly from older, plainspoken men. They knew he'd
adore Douglas Weil, whose warm, folksy manner belied his cunning and drive.

The
clincher was his behavior as a film critic. Port gulped down every perk offered
by every studio, from a sixty-nine-cent pen to a flight to Nice for Cannes.
He'd convinced himself he had to do so for the job, not once questioning
whether he really needed a foot-high figurine of Schwarzenegger as T2 for his
desk, Molly Ringwald's voice on his answering machine...

This
kid was waiting to be bought, the lawyer said.

Mendes
now sat across from Port and saw fear and determination mingling in his eyes.

"Jordie,
there are faster ways if you want to kill yourself--

She
stopped short, remembering Port's mother had committed suicide.

"It's
all true, Ana. I challenge you to tell me it's not."

Mendes
sighed. "Jordie, this town is fucked. You're not going to get anything done
here. This book...I can't make it happen."

"I
can take it to New York," he said.

"Jordie,
ask yourself if you want to blow up the bridge. Ask yourself if you have any
friends on the Left."

"Ana,
I want to do what's right," he said earnestly. "Reagan's legacy--"

"Jordie,
will you...Jordie, stop," she said sternly. They were a block from the Treasury
Department, a short walk from K Street, and she was no longer certain she could
match a face with a title. Looking around, she whispered, "Jordie, there's no
right or wrong. There's no dissent and no discussion. There is what is."

"They
mock Reagan," Port said, ignoring his salmon. "They call his philosophies
'paleo-conservatism.' They say his lessons don't apply."

"Jordie,
I know," she said tiredly. "I read your manuscript. So did Randy."

Randy
Dawson, her boss and stepson of a nationally syndicated columnist. The house, Patriot
Publishing, was a subsidiary of a marketing firm funded by the pharmaceutical
industry and an ad-hoc coalition of brokerage firms.

Port
said
, "I'm sick of going to these luncheons where they
praise Reagan in public and then mock him when the paying guests leave."

"Jordie,
will you listen to yourself? I know you almost twenty-five years and you're
lecturing me," she said.

She
reached across the table and held his hand. "Please. You have to stop. You have
no chance of success. They will bury you. Do yourself a favor and burn the
manuscript."

"I
can't," he said, drawing up. "Someone will publish it. It's good and it's
right."

"Jordie,
I'm trying to help you. You have to under--"

Port's
cell phone rang.

It
was Douglas Weil Jr., and he asked Port if he was alone.

Without
knowing it, Port had stood and was now next to the table. Last night, whenever
he closed his eyes to sleep, Weil was there, teeth bared.

Mendes
saw him quiver.

"Find
a corner," Weil told him.

Port
walked to one of the private dining rooms, and he shut the door behind him.

"You've
booked yourself on MSNBC tomorrow night," Weil said.

"Yes.
Yes, I did."

"Cancel,"
Weil said forcefully.

"Doug,
I can't. I'm--"

"Cancel,"
he repeated and cut the line.

When
Port returned to the table, he saw it had been cleared.

Mendes
was gone.

Jordan
Port was in the lead-off slot on MSNBC's Hardball
The
producers knew him well--the appearance was Port's seventy-third in the past
fifteen years. There hadn't been a more charming Clinton basher.

The
guest host, with whom Port had scuba dived in the Caymans, called him Jordie.
On air, he referred to him as "still one of Washington's young wise men."

He
threw Port the softball he asked for.

"You've
written a book Washington doesn't want to see in print. Am I right?"

Eleven
minutes later, Port ended his comments with a quote from Ronald Reagan:

"When
we begin thinking of government as instead of they, we've been here too long."

As
he stepped into darkness outside the MSNBC offices on Nebraska Avenue, Port's
cell phone rang.

A senior producer from Larry King Live, who excoriated him for going
elsewhere.
She then cheerfully invited him to
appear tomorrow night, asking if he'd messenger the manuscript to her.

Friday
was a dead night for news, Port knew. But he figured he could parlay a King
appearance into fodder for Sunday's TV roundtables and shout fests. He'd send
the show a chapter, but he'd hold the work close until he went to New York on
Monday to find a high-powered agent. The media buzz would give him wings.

No
sooner had he cut the line than the phone rang again.

The
caller, whose voice he couldn't recognize, gave him the address of a website
and a password. In the e-address, the jordanport came after the second
backslash.

Heart
pounding, Port raced his ACCC-owned Lexus back to Dupont Circle. He parked at a
fire hydrant, the car's flashers flickering on his nineteenth-century red-brick
row house.

Running
into his dark apartment, he ignored the blinking light of his answering machine
and scurried to his desk, still wearing his camel's hair topcoat and the blue
blazer, blue shirt, and blue-and-pink club tie he'd chosen for his Hardball
appearance

His
hands shaking, it took him several tries before he typed the correct address.
He'd kept trying to put an ampersand between the letters.

Finally,
the screen went blank, and then it flashed a site for S&M aficionados.

Port
used the password he'd been given, drove down two pages, and found photos of a
burly man in leather, cat-o'nine-tails dangling from his broad fist. On a
table, face burrowed into a short stack of towels, was a naked man whose butt
had been whipped raw.

The
next photo showed the man's face, and it was Port's.

Port's
face, as clear as if in a Sears portrait, though he had never--not
once--participated in such activity.

Much
of Washington assumed Port was gay, but he n't. He had little interest in sex,
and hadn't been with anyone in almost five years.

But
there he was, in every photo.

Including
several on the final page where the burly man in black-leather chaps was
sodomizing him.

In
the harsh light of the monitor, Port sat with his mouth hung open. His mind
raced as he stared at the images.

He
jumped when his cell phone in his pocket rang.

The
same man who'd called earlier said, "Make it right on Larry King and the site
comes down. Fuck up and the password comes off."

Anxious, distraught, Port arrived at the CNN offices on First Avenue for
the interview.
A hard-driving storm
pounded the city since dawn and though it had passed, he wore a Burberry
trenchcoat over his suit, shirt, and tie. He wanted to give the impression that
he spent the day running from meeting to meeting, but in truth he hadn't left
his apartment, answering the door only for the CNN messenger.

When
the interview ended, he planned to stay at the Dupont 5 Cinema for as long as
they'd allow, dodging calls by watching movies, hiding in the dark, preparing
to flee by train to New York.

The
segment producer, a young Asian woman in a khaki crewneck sweater and
ill-fitting cargo slacks, met him at Security.

"What
are you doing here?" She held a silver clipboard. "You're cancelled."

Port
frowned. "No, I--"

"The
ACCC called," she said. "You're not feeling
well,
you're
under some kind of stress..."

Port
tried to smile. "I'm right here, Hisa."

She
touched his coat sleeve. "You look awful, Jordie."

She
was right: dread, a second sleepless night; listening to footsteps in the
apartment above, cars on Riggs Place..."

But
I can do it, Hisa." He bucked up, thrusting out his chest.
"Raring
to go.
Dependable as always."

She
looked at him. Agitated, fidgeting in place...

Her
boss told her the pages he sent were an incoherent rant.

He
saw confusion and sympathy on her face.