Chapter Nineteen

We Don’t Dial 9-1-1

EMPLOYEES ONLY. NO TRESPASSING. WE DONT [sic] DIAL 9-1-1!

The sign was meant to keep intruders at bay. There was even a little icon of a pistol, in case you were too dim to get the point.

Jimmie, however, wasn’t a trespasser. He was a White House employee. He ran his badge over the card reader and heard the door unlock.

He hesitated with his hand on the knob. Despite his obscenely high clearance level, he couldn’t entirely be sure he wouldn’t be shot on the other side. If he was going to do this, though, he had to move quickly. The White House opened up for tourists in another sixty seconds. He was in one of the most popular rooms: the Reagan Library. The room was stocked with VHS copies of Ronald Reagan’s favorite movies—everything from outlaw Westerns to gunfighter Westerns. No books. If there was a single book in the White House outside of Trump’s own, Jimmie hadn’t seen it yet.

Jimmie slipped through the door. He descended the maintenance staircase on the other side, down into the bowels of the White House. Past the basement . . . and to the subbasement.

There were only two ways to get to the subbasement: via the Reagan Library and via a service elevator in the family quarters. A men’s room attendant had advised him to avoid the elevator. It was primarily used by the kitchen staff, who were known to lick. Jimmie didn’t ask any other questions. He’d tipped the attendant a twenty for his troubles. Emma thought Jimmie had been in the practice of trading gossip for gossip. He’d been all too happy to not correct her. Cash was frowned upon in the news business, but cash was also king—Trump clearly knew that.

Jimmie pushed open the heavy fire door at the base of the stairs. He was in a walkway lit by what looked like backup lighting. It had that wonderful mid-twentieth-century bomb-shelter aesthetic. All bare concrete walls and exposed metal piping, like a hip coffee shop.

Jimmie was alone in the subbasement.

Uncomfortably alone.

Was the chief janitor’s closet down here somewhere? Jimmie had looked at the staff directory, which didn’t list a “chief janitor.” Whatever Christie was doing at the White House was off the books.

The subbasement seemed like the perfect out-of-the-way place from which to do dirty work. The kind of work that would normally be frowned upon in DC but was commonplace in Jersey. Jimmie hadn’t dared ask the men’s room attendant any questions about Christie, though. He didn’t want the guy to get in any kind of trouble over twenty bucks. God knew people had been killed for less, but still.

Jimmie passed a handful of metal doors, none of which were equipped with electronics for reading badges. He tried one. Locked. Maybe the subbasement was a dead end—his badge wasn’t going to do any good down here.

He turned the corner and paused. There was a door that stood out from the rest, with a Far Side cartoon taped to it: A nerd carrying a stack of books was pushing on a door marked “PULL.” A sign beside the door read “SCHOOL FOR THE GIFTED.”

It smacked of the smarter-than-thou humor a smarmy New York Times journalist would find funny.

Jimmie looked both ways and, still finding that he was alone, pressed the handle down. Amazingly, it wasn’t locked. He pushed the door open.

Or he tried to. Its hinges were rusted. He tried again, this time throwing his shoulder into it. The door didn’t budge, but his spinal column folded like an accordion. Needless to say, the pain was excruciating.

Jimmie stretched his back out. He was about ready to ram the door again when something hit him: The cartoon’s subject and placement weren’t incidental.

He pressed down on the handle and pulled.

The door opened without difficulty, and he was inside.