Chapter Ten

I’D DRIVEN PAST BEAUVOIR, a big white house facing the Gulf, hundreds of times, but I’d never been inside. “This place really means something to you?” I asked Tyler when we were driving over early the next morning. It was just the two of us in Tobias’s old Lincoln Continental. It drove like a boat floating on air. It took a full half turn of the steering wheel to get any response, but it was comfortable like a deep-cushioned couch.

“Can you imagine a bigger fuck-you to the government than seceding and starting your own country? That’s why we love it. It’s not all that slavery bullshit. It’s just the balls to walk away and say you won’t put up with the bullshit any longer. You spend some time in the army and that has a lot of appeal. Just the biggest screw-the-system protest in the history of the country.”

“Protest? Are you out of your mind? Hundreds of thousands slaughtered?”

“Dude, you don’t get it. Forty thousand fucking people die in car crashes every year driving around America. What do we say? ‘As goes Detroit, so goes America.’ Cars are the ultimate killing machines and we love ’em. Even this piece of shit. It’s the identity.”

He wasn’t dumb. I had to give him that. He had Powell’s and Renee’s brains, and that was a powerful gene match. “Look,” I said, “Paul and I, we fucked up. I fucked up, anyway. We shouldn’t have disappeared on you and your mom. We should have tried to be there more.”

“Oh, please,” Tyler said. “Don’t get sensitive on me. I hate sensitive. But thanks, okay?”

We rode in silence for a while, the Gulf to our right, Tobias’s car floating along the road. Behind us were Walter and Paul in Paul’s car and Jessie in her own. She had wanted to bring her car and Walter figured that the Joey Francis crowd might be tracking his cruiser. It was quite a little caravan we had going.

“You’re trying,” Tyler finally said. “I give you that. And it’s not that I think you’re a total shit. But what you have to understand, sort-of brother of mine, is that my mother and I had zero desire to have anything to do with anybody named Callahan. You got that? You disgusted us. It wasn’t that you didn’t come around to us; we were trying to forget that we ever knew anybody named Callahan. You were just a bunch of entitled fucks who stumbled through the world fucking things up for other people and thinking you were morally superior. And I’m not real sure that much has changed. My mom’s too nice to say it and I never gave enough shits to track you down to tell you, but that you didn’t realize it just sort of proves the point, right? You think you can play with people. That’s what this whole politics thing is to you, right? A way to feel powerful. Master of time and space. You’ll pull the strings and decide who gets to be president. Our Tommy pal is sick, no doubt about it, but you think he and you are that far apart?”

We didn’t say anything else until we got a half block away from Beauvoir. We parked at a Waffle House just off the beach. The parking lot was half filled with the usual combination of tourists and locals, some clearly coming down from all-night gambling sprees at the nearby casinos. Walter tried to take charge, but no one really took him seriously.

“So you drive,” he said, pointing to Tyler, “and then we wait for your text that he’s there. And then we come in.”

“Do you think that Waffle House coffee is drinkable?” Jessie asked, and that’s all anyone said. Tyler drove off. It was nine fifteen when Tyler left. I went inside the Waffle House with Jessie and ordered coffee. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in one of these sober,” she said. “Or when it was daylight.” I thought about it and realized I hadn’t either. Waffle Houses were ritual last stops after nights of partying.

“Holy fuck,” she said.

“Hey, there are kids in here,” said a woman sitting in a nearby booth with two young kids. Both were giggling.

Jessie dragged me outside by the arm and pointed down the street at a car. It was one of those awful electric GM things that the convention was using. “Somerfield fucking George just drove by,” she said.

“What?”

Walter and Paul were sitting in Paul’s car arguing over the 1999 LSU–Ole Miss game and why they had lost. When they saw us running toward Jessie’s car, Walter jumped out. “What?”

“Somerfield,” I yelled. “He drove past.”

Ahead we could see the electric car pulling in to the mostly empty Beauvoir parking lot. “What do I do?” Jessie asked, as she drove slowly ahead.

I shrugged. “Park, I guess.”

Somerfield had parked next to Tobias’s car. We pulled in as far away as possible and Walter and Paul parked next to us. Then we sat there, not sure what to do. There had been no text from Tyler. I sent him a text and waited. Nothing.

I got out and walked over to Paul’s car. “What do we do?”

“You sure it was Somerfield?” Paul asked.

“Jessie was. And that’s a convention car.”

I turned toward the brick path that led to the entrance. “I’ll text you or call,” I said over my shoulder. In an instant, Jessie was beside me. “No, please. Let me just do this,” I said, and to my surprise, she stopped.

“Don’t fuck up,” she said, turning back to the car.

Inside I paid ten bucks to a middle-aged woman in a Civil War–era hoop skirt. She handed me a pamphlet, The Confederate Summer White House. I thought that was odd, calling the house that was used by the president of the rebellion against the White House the same name, but I suppose it made it easier for people to grasp. The house had high ceilings and hardwood floors, rebuilt after it was almost leveled during Katrina. I looked through all the rooms and found only a few French Canadian tourists. Then I started to walk out the front door to look at the Gulf and heard Tyler talking on the porch.

“Tommy, look, dude, you got to chill.”

Then a high voice I didn’t recognize, which I knew had to be Tommy. He sounded like he was about to cry. “You wanted me to do this. I did it for your old man. Everybody on television says it’s helping him.”

“Come on, Tommy, it wasn’t like that,” Somerfield said.

“You talked to Tommy?” Tyler asked. “You guys talked, Tommy?”

“I met him before the convention,” Tommy said. “Come on, man, don’t act like that.”

“We met for old times’ sake. He got in touch, and I didn’t want to be an asshole,” Somerfield said. “Tommy, look, this is serious shit.”

“I was trying to help your old man. He’s like us.”

“You know what I think?” Tyler said, and he had that hot edge to his voice I knew so well. “I think Tommy is telling the truth and you’re lying, Somer. I think Tommy did just what you wanted him to. And then you saw I posted that message and you freaked out.”

“You didn’t post that?” Tommy asked.

“Sure I did,” Somerfield said. “I just wanted to see you and make sure you were okay.”

“Gimme a break,” Tyler said.

“What do you want me to do?” Tommy asked in a tired voice.

“You want to help my dad? You know what would really help, would clinch this whole deal, is if you let it out that you blew up that stuff to help Hilda Smith. Like you were helping her frame my dad.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Tyler said. “Nobody would believe that.”

“I don’t think so,” Tommy said, sighing. “I didn’t think you’d fuck me, Somer. I really didn’t. I’ll leave you guys alone now.”

I could hear Tommy start to walk away. “Don’t do that, Tommy,” Somerfield said. “Come on with me. We can talk to my dad about all of this.”

“We can do that?” Tommy asked.

“He’s fucking you again,” Tyler said. “Jesus Christ. Don’t believe anything he says.”

“Call your dad,” Tommy said. “Call him and put him on the phone with me.”

“I can’t do that now, Tommy. Come on.”

I heard Tommy walking away. “I gotta go now,” he said.

“Let me go with you, Tommy,” Somerfield said.

I stepped out the rest of the way onto the porch. Tyler saw me, but Somerfield was walking away, his arm around Tommy. I could still hear them talking.

“I’m not stupid, Somer. But I thought you would be a stand-up guy.”

“Come on, Tommy. Don’t be like that.”

Tommy looked at Somerfield like a lover who had just been jilted. “Is your dad going to win?” Somerfield brightened and nodded. “And you still won’t have anything to do with me, right?”

“Come on, Tommy.”

I went back inside while they walked around the big house to the parking lot. I called Walter on his cell phone. “Tommy’s coming around with Somerfield. Don’t do anything now. You don’t want Somerfield to see you. Shoot some video of him with Tommy on your phone.” Walter started to argue, but I hung up.

When I got back outside, Tommy and Somerfield were standing by an old Honda Accord that belonged to Tommy. Tyler walked over to me, and it seemed that his awkward, off-center walk was more pronounced than ever. “What’s going on?” I said.

“Fucking Somerfield. I believe Tommy. I think he put him up to this shit. Somerfield saw what I posted and showed up here.”

Somerfield turned and left Tommy standing by his car. When he saw me standing with Tyler, he shook his head and walked over.

“What a goddamn mess,” Somerfield said.

“Nice to see you,” I said.

“What the hell were you doing, Somerfield?” Tyler said. “You know Tommy’s a basket case. What were you fucking around with him for?”

“Truth?” He started to answer but stopped. “What are we going to do about Tommy?”

“Do?” Tyler asked.

“We need to take care of him.”

“You mean hush him up,” I said. I looked over Somerfield’s shoulder. Tommy was still leaning against the car, staring down at his phone.

“What a mess,” Somerfield said. “Look, you got fired, right?” he asked me.

I shrugged. “What’s that got to do with this?”

“Can we just agree that if I can talk Tommy into getting some kind of help, we won’t call in the dogs?”

Tyler looked at me. All of a sudden, I really didn’t care. Seeing how pathetic and broken Tommy had looked, it was hard to argue that he should be dragged in front of the country and humiliated. Or thrown in jail. Somerfield was right. He did need help. I was running out of hate.

“Sure,” I said. “Go talk to him.”

We watched him walk over to talk to Tommy. From across the parking lot, Walter, Paul, and Jessie were looking at us, wondering what was going on.

“You’re going soft,” Tyler said.

“So are you,” I said.

Tommy and Somerfield got in the car. “They going to run out on us?” I asked, not really caring.

“I doubt it. Probably just talking in the car.”

—

Jessie Fenestra was the hottest reporter on the planet. She had the perfect scoop, not one that depended on a source, because she was the source, an eyewitness to the—as it was now being called everywhere—“fiery deaths” of Somerfield George and Tommy Mayfield. And she had video. Goddamn Jessie had shot it all on her iPhone. She had the two of them walking together. Then the explosion.

Most of the even quasi-legit news outlets on cable and broadcast didn’t run the full video, on the pretense that the public should be spared the gruesome spectacle of two people blowing up in a ball of fire. What a joke. Online, the video damn near broke the Internet. If there had only been a little sex in it, the clip would have been the ultimate snuff film.

For a few minutes after the explosion, while waiting for the cavalcade of emergency vehicles, we had argued about what had really happened. Not that it wasn’t clear that both Tommy and Somerfield were still smoldering in the heap down at the end of the parking lot, but had it been an accident, or had Tommy blown up the car on purpose?

Tyler was adamant. “Tommy was a pro. No way he would have screwed up enough to blow up his own car by accident.”

But Jessie answered the question. “Look,” she said, holding up her phone with the video.

“No, thanks, I saw it,” Tyler said.

“Watch,” she said, and then she played back the video in slow motion, freezing it just before the explosion. “There,” she said, with a touch of glee that only a reporter with a scoop could muster after watching two people being blown up. We crowded around her phone as she cupped it to shade it from the bright sun. And there it was: just before the explosion, Tommy’s left hand came out the window with an upraised middle finger to the sky.

“Jesus,” Tyler said. “He went out with a big fuck-you.”

Tyler wandered off, and I followed him. He was looking out at the Gulf, just across the beachfront highway. His usual mad glint was gone, replaced with a deep sadness. He suddenly looked a lot older. “Tommy,” he said. “I really let him down. I should have done something. Anything.” He shook his head. “To go out that way.”

Paul walked up to us. I tried to remember when the last time was that the three of us had been together without anyone else around, and it hit me that this might have been the first time. Paul put his big arm around Tyler, and when Tyler tried to pull back, he just pulled him in closer and hugged him.

—

Jessie had the biggest story in the country, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t room for one more hot item. Before I called Paul Hendricks, I checked with Sandy Morrison and laid the track for the express train that was about to leave the station. She listened, understood immediately, and signed off with “I love you, J. D. Callahan. You are almost as evil as I am.” I took it as a compliment.

Paul Hendricks assumed that I was calling about the bombing, and it took a moment to get him to focus. “Hendricks,” I said, “I’ve got a huge scoop for you if you will just shut the fuck up and listen.” He did. I explained to him how Eddie Basha had gone behind Hilda Smith’s back and planted the fake push poll calls about abortion that were intended to smear her. “I thought it was crazy and didn’t believe it at first,” I said, then gave him Sandy Morrison’s number to confirm it. “You got to keep her out of it, but on background she’ll talk to you. It wasn’t her idea. She’s just a vendor who was hired to do it. Don’t blame her.”

“Is this why you left the campaign?” Hendricks asked.

“I don’t want to go into that. But I know Hilda Smith doesn’t know a damn thing about this. She deserves better.” That last might have been a bit much coming from me, but Hendricks was already thinking how great the story would be. For him. For his career. He was only worried about one thing. “This is exclusive, right?”

Within twenty-four hours, Joey Francis was on his way to becoming famous as “the FBI agent uncovering the secrets behind the mystery bombers,” as The New York Times put it. And right beside him, at least in most stories, was Walter Robinson, “the former football star turned New Orleans police detective who had been on the trail of the bomber when he exploded.” It hadn’t been really difficult to talk Joey Francis into including Walter and sharing the spotlight. “It’s like this, Francis,” Walter had said. “You don’t have shit, and you look like the fucking idiot who couldn’t find a bomber in your own backyard. Plus, you don’t know a damn thing about this guy Tommy. I do. So you either look like a moron or a genius FBI go-getter, it’s up to you. But the last one comes with me.”

Francis stuck out his hand and said one word: “Partner.”

That was right before I got the first call from Hilda Smith asking me to come back to the campaign. She was reeling from hearing the news about Eddie Basha’s involvement in the abortion push polling and had just fired him. “I hear Armstrong George is withdrawing,” she said. “Terrible tragedy with his son. He must have been a very disturbed soul. I need you to win the general, J.D. I can’t do it without you.”

I told her I’d think about it, but I knew what I wanted to do. I made one call to Ginny and asked her if she’d like to run a presidential campaign. “Fuck yes,” she said. “For whom?” I told her what was going on and that I was going to get Hilda Smith to hire her. “You’re not going to come back?” she asked, shocked, but before I could get the words out that I wasn’t, she was already moving on in her head. “I know how to win this thing,” she said. “We can kill that piece-of-shit Democrat.”

“There you go. Kill ’em all and let God sort it out.”

And that’s how I ended up running Paul Callahan’s campaign for public service commissioner. It’s looking pretty good. We had a monster fundraiser at Tyler’s strip club that set the record for a single event in Louisiana. Who could have guessed that a bunch of rich men would actually like the idea of having a legitimate reason to go to a strip club? What a shock. Tobias Green is the campaign chairman, and I’m pretty sure he’s getting it on with our best intern from Tulane, who is quite a number. Tobias says they have a “harmonic convergence.”

“I guess that means she’s fun to screw,” Jessie said when she heard Tobias’s description. Amazon and I had both agreed to put the idea of a TV show on hold, at least until the election. Lately I’ve been thinking it wasn’t such a good idea. Jessie got a nice six-figure advance for the inside story on “the mad bombers” Tommy and Somerfield and was working like a fiend to finish the book. Sometimes I’d wake up at four a.m. and she’d still be out in the living room, pacing and writing. It never bothered me, and I liked hearing her sounds. I’d moved in right after the bombing, when Hilda had left town as the Republican nominee for president. We’re both busy, her with the book and me with Paul’s campaign, but on Sundays she likes to take me out to her favorite shooting range across the Causeway and shoot the hell out of anything she can get her hands on. I can’t shoot for a damn next to her, but I’m getting better. Tyler joins us sometimes, and the two of them duel it out. Jessie beats him a lot, but Tyler tells me, when she’s not listening, that he lets her win. I’m not sure I believe it.

Next Sunday we plan to drive out to see Tyler’s mom. She’s been a big fan of Jessie’s for years and really wants to meet her. I think they might hit it off. Tyler says he’s not coming, but I think he will. Jessie reminded him that they could do some shooting in his mom’s backyard. And Sundays are slow at the club. Paul says he’ll come. He hasn’t seen Renee in years. I think it will be a nice family get-together.

For once, I really do.