She reflected, looking about her, that it was an apt venue for this rendezvous. The thought hadn’t occurred to her until just now.
Cass had proposed to her curious whistleblower, Jerome, that they meet at the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in West Potomac Park, south of the Mall in Washington. Not because FDR was the president who had created Social Security, the system with which Cass was at war, but because the design of the memorial, sprawling over seven and a half acres, allowed for multiple exits in the case of an ambush.
It was late afternoon. There was still daylight, which they needed. She had instructed Jerome to meet her by the statue of FDR in his wheelchair. When she and Terry did their preliminary reconnaissance, he had taken one look at the depiction of FDR, with opaque bronze eyeglasses, upturned hat, and sitting on his almost invisible wheelchair, and said, “He looks like that Irish writer, James Joyce, sitting on a toilet.”
Now she stood, waiting.
A voice said, “Miss Devine?”
Cass wheeled. She’d instructed Jerome not to call her that. But one look at him reassured her that it was, in fact, Jerome. He looked like a Jerome.
He was carrying an attachй, surprisingly sophisticated: leather, with straps; not something that looked as if it also contained a brown-bag lunch, milk carton, and banana.
“Gosh,” Jerome said nervously, looking around. “This feels like a movie or something.” He whispered, “Shouldn’t we move off to the side, out of sight?”
“No,” Cass said.
Twenty yards away, in another section of the memorial, but with telephoto-lens line of sight of Cass and Jerome, stood Terry and a Tucker technical employee, operating a tripod-mounted videocamera and parabolic microphone.
Jerome patted the attachй and said to Cass, “It’s all here.”
“And what are these documents, exactly?” Cass said.
Jerome seemed puzzled by the question. “What I told you over the phone.”
“Tell me again,” Cass said.
At that moment, a National Park Service ranger saw Terry and his cameraman. He approached, all business.
“Hey. Excuse me?”
“Hm?” Terry said.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like we’re doing?”
“You can’t film here.”
“Why not?”
“You need a permit.”
Jerome said to Cass, “The documents pertaining to the sale of the actuarial prediction software by the Cohane company to Elderheaven Corporation.”
“I see,” Cass said, nodding like some TV reporter doing an on-camera interview. “And what exactly does it do?”
Jerome seemed nonplussed. “Do? It, well, predicts with great accuracy how long someone is going to live. Elderheaven uses it to decide whom to admit to their nursing homes. This way, they can only admit people who aren’t going to live very long. But they still have to basically hand over their life savings in order to be admitted. And under the terms of the sale, ten percent of Elderheaven’s increased profits get kicked back to Cohane.”
“Fascinating,” said Cass, nodding away. “Fascinating.…”
“You need a permit to film on these premises, sir.”
“It’s a documentary,” Terry said, leading the Park Service ranger away from the microphone. “About how people react to the memorial. In particular to that statue.”
“That’s not the issue, sir.”
“Some people think he looks like that Irish writer James Joyce? They say he looks like he’s taking a dump.”
“Sir, you’re going to have to stop filming. Now.”
As the befuddled Jerome continued with his explanation of the contents of the attachй, two men approached. One of them Cass recognized as-her father.
“Hello, Cass.”
“Hello, Frank.”
Frank Cohane stared at Jerome, who reflexively clutched the attachй to his chest. He said to Jerome, “You’re in a world of shit, pal. That’s stolen property.” Jerome blanched. Frank turned his attention back to Cass. “As for you, you’re in a universe of trouble, young lady.”
Cass said, “What are you going to do? Ground me?”
Frank said to Jerome, “Hand it over.”
“Sir, if you don’t stop filming right now, I’m going to have to call the park police.”
“I was just kidding you,” Terry said. “We have a permit.”
“Let me see it,” said the park ranger suspiciously.
Terry patted his pockets. “It’s in the car. C’mon, I’ll show you.”
“Sir, tell your person there to turn that camera off. Now. Or I am calling the police.”
“It’s in the car, right over there. I’ll show you.”
The stricken Jerome began to hand the attachй to Frank. Cass intercepted it.
“Frank,” she said in an oddly declamatory sort of voice, “what would people say if they knew that the president’s own campaign finance chairman had sold software to someone running against the president? Software that allows him to get rich by only admitting people into his nursing homes who are about to die? What would you call such an arrangement?”
Frank, alerted by Cass’s peculiar tone, swiveled. He saw the camera twenty yards away, aimed right at him.
“Shit!” he said. He barked at his companion, a Cohane security man, “Get the goddamn case!”
The man stepped forward and grabbed it out of Cass’s grip. She wasn’t about to get in a wrestling match with him. She let it go. The man and Frank turned to leave.
“Frank,” she said. Her father turned. “Would you call such an arrangement…morally repellent?”
“Okay, okay,” Terry said to the ranger, “if you’re going to make a federal case out of it.” He signaled his assistant to stop. They had what they needed. As they walked off, Terry said to the ranger, “You know, he does look like James Joyce on a toilet. You ought to get the sculptor down here and do something about it. It’s embarrassing. He was a great president, and look what you’ve done to him.”