Dead on Arrival

53

Mahoney was at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, but it hadn’t been easy to get there.

Since Broderick’s death, security for senior poli ticians had been ratcheted up to a degree not seen since 9/11 or maybe since World War II. Homeland Security’s color-coded threat level was now at red, the only time Mahoney could remember its being above orange since the system had been invented. He guessed that if they could’ve come up with a color more alarming than red, they would have used it.

The president was in the White House but the vice president was somewhere else, not in Washington, and the Secret Service wouldn’t divulge his location. The White House itself looked like it was under siege: armed men stationed every few feet, armored personnel carriers parked in the driveway and outside the gates, guys with sniper rifles and rocket launchers visible on the roof — and those were just the secu rity measures that could be seen.

Cabinet members were under guard too, as if they were actually more important than the figureheads that most of them really were, and senior leadership in the House and Senate were flanked by armed men whenever they left their offices and were driven to meetings in armored cars. Mahoney himself, being third in line for the presidency, was being smothered by his security, four guys so big they all looked like they could have played on the line for Notre Dame. And that was the problem. He felt smothered, and he needed to get away, to someplace where he could be alone and think.

He had them drive him to a restaurant on Capitol Hill and made two of them wait outside, saying four inside was just too many. Then, once in the restau rant, after he’d had a drink, he rose from the table. The two remaining security guys rose with him but he waved them back to their seats. ‘I’m just goin’ to the head,’ he said, ‘and I can’t pee when I’m being watched.’ This embarrassed them so much that Mahoney was gone before they could move.

But instead of going to the restroom, he ducked into the kitchen, borrowed a ski jacket and stocking cap from one of the cooks, and boogied out the back-door, the cap pulled down low on his forehead. Then, feeling momentarily gleeful, he sprinted down the alley — well, for a guy his age and size it was a sprint — and caught a cab to the memorial. The security guys were gonna be pissed when they caught up with him, but screw ’em; he needed some space.

So now he sat on a bench near the memorial, that stark black granite wall that lists the names of the fallen and mostly forgotten. There is no memorial in Washington that is more poignant than that simple wall. Mahoney, bundled in the cook’s stained jacket, the stocking cap on his head, looked like a broken-down old vet who had come on a dismal day to mourn those who had fought beside him.

And Mahoney was mourning, just not for the men on the wall — although he had known several of them. He was mourning Bill Broderick — not because he had liked the man but because Broderick’s death was having a horrible galvanizing effect on the passage of his damn bill.

An ordinary bill Mahoney could have kept in committee indefinitely. He could have bounced it from committee to committee until Congress recessed or until it died a quiet death. But not this bill. There was just too much media heat and too many congressmen feeling the heat. Two days ago, it had reported out of the committee, two Democrats voting for it. Mahoney then began to do what he could to delay a floor vote, hoping — though without optimism — that something would happen to give him what he needed to get folks turned around. But then Broderick had to go and get himself killed, burnt to a crisp while screwing his secretary. The idiot.

Now practically every member of the House was screaming for Mahoney to bring Broderick’s bill to the floor for a vote. They didn’t scream directly at Mahoney, of course — they screamed via the press. And the press, at least the conservative press, was starting to make John Mahoney sound as patriotic as Benedict Arnold.

There was something else that irritated Mahoney. Before his death, Broderick had tried and failed to come up with a clever name for his bill, something like the ‘Patriot Act,’ a name that would make it sound as if the bill were really in the country’s best interest. He had tried to get the media to latch on to a couple of different names, such as the Domestic Security Act or the Muslim American Validation Act, but these names were neither particularly euphonic nor sufficiently misleading. And no matter what name Broderick tried to give his proposal, the liberals insisted on calling it the Muslim American Registry Act, a name Broderick had hated because it focused attention on the most controversial aspect of his bill. But now the bill had a name. It was being called the Broderick Act.

Jesus.

Nor could any advantage be taken of the fact that Broderick had been diddling his receptionist the night he died. A tidbit like that might have been useful if the man was still alive, but to bring it up now would be considered by one and all as a despicable thing to rub into the face of Broderick’s widow. So the press, in a rare act of decency, was pretending to accept the story given by Senator Broderick’s aide Nicholas Fine.

Fine had said that the senator had attended a meeting with some constituents the night of his death — this story matched the lie that Broderick had told his wife — and Fine assumed that the senator had stopped by Ms Talbot’s apartment afterward to give her some urgent task related to the meeting. Maybe, Fine said, Broderick had given her something he wanted typed up that very night or possibly something that he wanted her to get into the mail first thing in the morning. Yeah, he was giving her something, all right, the reporters thought, but they didn’t print what they were thinking.

Then the last straw floated down and landed on the camel’s back, prompting Mahoney to ditch his security so he could be alone. The FBI had discovered a note in Broderick’s car, a note that had apparently been left there by the bomber. The previous night when the cop had opened the car to find out who the car belonged to, he hadn’t seen the note. In fact, the cop had planted a knee right on it when he reached over to open the glove compartment to get Broderick’s registration. But after the FBI arrived and began to examine the scene in an organized manner, the note was discovered. The note was typed and unsigned but appeared to have been written by a Muslim American, one not particularly well educated. There were references to Allah, the Koran, and the worldwide Muslim brother hood, and there was the implication that al-Qaeda had helped the bomber, a statement to the effect that wise men across the sea had aided his efforts but al-Qaeda was not mentioned specifically. In the note Broderick was thoroughly denounced as a godless infidel whose bill was proof that America had declared an unholy crusade against all Muslims.

So even though the FBI could not prove it — even though the FBI said repeatedly that they could not prove it — the public was convinced that an American Muslim was responsible for the death of a United States senator, a man whose character had already improved tenfold in the hours since his passing.

Mahoney thought about calling DeMarco but decided not to bother. Unless DeMarco could find something in the next forty-eight hours, the Broderick Act was going to become law.

‘Mr Speaker.’

Mahoney turned his head. Aw, shit. His four secu rity guys were jogging across the grass toward him, the Notre Dame offensive line for sure.

They’d found him fast. These guys were good.