Too Close to Home

FORTY-ONE

Mayor Randall Finley said: “You. Are out. Of your fucking. Mind.”

“That’s what he wants,” I told him, both of us standing outside the town car, the engine still running. “He says if you don’t do it, he’s going to kill Ellen and Derek.”

“Oh, come on, Cutter!” the mayor said. “Has it occurred to you that he’s probably going to do that anyway? And that my saying a bunch of lies isn’t going to make any difference? Jesus, Cutter, I’ve got a reputation to think about here.”

I grabbed him by the lapels of his thousand-dollar suit and threw him up against the side of the car. “Randy, I don’t think you’ve fully grasped the seriousness of the situation. And if it’s any comfort, you won’t have to tell any lies at all. You’ll be telling the truth.”

“I didn’t know,” he said, shaking his head like a little boy. “I swear I didn’t know.”

“Don’t give me this shit,” I said. “The minute I walked in there, I could tell she was a child.”

“I didn’t force her to do anything,” the mayor protested. “I didn’t force her to choose that line of work.”

“That’s right,” I said, moving my face an inch away from his. “You’re totally blameless. You’re just an innocent consumer.”

“It was Lance,” he said, spittle forming at the corner of his mouth. “It was his fault. He’s the one set it up. He said he knew this girl, she was great, so I let him handle it. You see what I mean? How I was always better off with you handling everything? You’d never have booked her for me. You should never have let Lance do that.”

“It’s always someone else’s fault, isn’t it?” I said, still holding him, my nose up to his. “Because you don’t know how to control your impulses, and the rest of us should realize that, so if we don’t stop you, we’re the ones who’re to blame.”

“I’m just saying, that’s all,” he squeaked.

“Because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants, because you thought nothing of fucking around with teenage hookers, I’m in one fuck of a situation right now. There’s a guy with a gun holding my wife and my son hostage. Things have a way of coming back and biting you in the ass, Randy, and now they’re biting me, too. That girl’s father, you know how many people he’s killed so far, by my count? Six. Not counting the guy he killed in front of me a couple of nights ago. If you don’t go into that hall tonight and tell everybody what he wants you to tell them, he’s not just going to kill my family. He’s going to kill you, too. The only thing is, Randy, he’ll have to beat me to it.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Randy said. “Let me think, let me think.” He glanced at his watch. He was due at his own function in fifteen minutes. “Maybe there’s a way I can make this work… You know, the whole Jimmy Swaggart thing, confess my sins… Shit, it’ll never work.”

His cell phone rang. I moved back enough to allow him room to reach into his jacket.

“Hello?” he said. “Yeah… Right… I know… We’re on our way… Right… See you soon.” He put the phone away. “They’re having shit fits that we’re not there yet.”

“They’re going to be in for quite the surprise,” I said, backing away, opening the door, grabbing Randy by the arm and throwing him into the backseat.

Once I was behind the wheel, he said, “You know what this is, don’t you? This is kidnapping!”

“Randy,” I said, “I’m taking you to your own goddamn press conference. But I am issuing a death threat. If you don’t do what this guy wants, and my family ends up dead, I swear to God, I will kill you.”

I threw the car into drive and tromped on the gas. Randy, who was leaning forward to tell me something, was thrown back into his seat so hard I caught a glimpse of his shoes in the rearview mirror.

As Drew had instructed, I called the house.

Ellen answered. “Hello,” she said.

“It’s me. How you holding up?”

“We’ve been better. He’s right here, he wants to talk to you.”

Then Drew’s voice. “What did he say?”

“We’re heading to the press conference now. I’ve explained to the mayor what he has to do.”

“That’s great, Jim. I really appreciate it.”

Like I’d just offered to let him borrow my car.

“Jim, I’d like to talk to the mayor,” Drew said.

“Sure thing.” I held the phone away from my head, looked at Randy in the mirror, and said, “He wants to talk to you.”

“Christ, no, I don’t want to talk to him,” Randy said.

“Take the phone, Randy,” I said.

He reached over the seat and took it from my hand. “Hello?” he said. “Yes, it is… Uh-huh… Of course, I can understand how you might feel that way… I’m afraid I was unaware of that… Well, let me put this to you, sir. What sort of father lets his daughter get into that line of work?”

I couldn’t make out the words, but I could hear Drew shouting at that point.

Randy, backpedaling, said, “Okay, okay, okay. I’m sorry. You’re right, perhaps that was a bit out of line… Yes, well… Okay.” And he handed the phone back to me.

I put it to my ear. “Yeah?”

“He’s an asshole,” Drew said.

“You see, Drew?” I said. “There are things we can agree on. I’d like to talk to my wife again.”

“I don’t know, Jim. I think it’s better you just get done what you have to get done.”

“Drew,” I said, “if the mayor does what you want him to do, does that settle things? You going to do to him what you’ve done to the others?”

There was a long pause at the other end of the line.

“Drew?”

“I want to talk to him after. I want you to bring him here. I want him to explain himself to me face-to-face.”

Then Drew ended the call, without promising he wouldn’t kill Randy, and without promising he wouldn’t kill me. The only ones he’d promised to spare, if he got what he wanted, were Ellen and Derek.

“What did he say to that?” Randy asked.

“Your performance better be a good one,” I said. “What’d he say to you?”

Randy was quiet, then, “He said a bunch of stuff. Told me I should be ashamed of myself. Seems to me there’s plenty of shame to go around. He’s the one got sent to jail, didn’t look out for his daughter.”

I wondered if Randy would ever get it.

When we pulled up out front of the Walcott, Maxine Woodrow, Randy Finley’s campaign strategist, was standing there, waiting. She looked liked she was about to have a heart attack.

If she hadn’t had one yet, she surely had one coming.

The moment the Grand Marquis stopped, she had the mayor’s door open and said, “We were all getting so worried about you! We’re all ready to start!”

She took the mayor by the elbow and started leading him into the hotel. I left the car sitting there and followed them inside. As we rounded a corner and headed to where the convention hall was located, we could hear upbeat music—“Don’t Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)” by Fleetwood Mac, it sounded like — and people talking. As Randy entered the room, the eyes of about fifty supporters were on him and cheers went up.

“Randy! Randy!” they chanted.

There were a couple of local news crews there as well. The lights on their cameras came on, and suddenly Randy was bathed in white light. He held his hand up, shielding his eyes, but waved at the same time. The son of a bitch was actually smiling. Adoration, even when it’s coming only moments before total humiliation, was impossible for him not to enjoy.

“Everyone’s so excited!” I heard Maxine shout above the chanting.

“Yeah, well, me too!” Randy said.

“Randy! Randy!”

I stayed close to him. Normally, I’d hang back, grab something to eat. I was, after all, just the driver. But this time I wasn’t letting him out of my sight. I was barely going to let him out of arm’s reach. I didn’t trust him to do the right thing once he got to that podium.

The supporters were waving signs in the air. There was Finley for Congress and Finally, a Man Like Finley and Finley First! Music was pulsing through the speakers, the kind of stuff you hear at sporting events to get the crowd going. It wasn’t all that big an event, and wisely, Maxine had not booked that big a room. Rule number one in politics: Always book a room that’s too small.

Maxine was approaching the microphone, holding up her hands to get everyone to settle down. She blew into the mike and a raspy blast shook the room. “Is this on? Can you hear me?”

A number of people shouted yes. “Well,” she said, “it is my extreme pleasure to be able to introduce to you this evening a man who has served you so proudly for many years now as your mayor, a man who’s always put the constituent first, a man who knows what the people need and is willing to fight for them to get it, our man of the hour, Randall Finley!”

The crowd applauded. The mayor mounted the three steps to the raised platform on which the podium stood, gave Maxine a hug, and positioned himself by the mike. He looked down at the first row, saw his wife, Jane, sitting there, and gave her a wave. He must have decided that wasn’t enough, because he walked back off the stage, down to where his wife was seated, leaned over and embraced her. He put his arms around her, pressed his cheek to hers and kissed her. He also took a moment to whisper something in her ear. Maybe something along the lines of “Get ready.”

Then he was back on the stage, something close to a spring in his step, and looking at him, you’d never have had an inkling.

I stood off to the side of the small stage, no more than ten feet away, my phone out. I’d bought this gadget to take video of customers’ yards when they wanted landscaping done, but never got much more out of it than two-minute snatches. I’d have to make that work.

“Good evening, good evening!” Randy said. “Thank you for that wonderful welcome. It’s really terrific to be here. It’s truly an honor. We are on the threshold of exciting times!”

“Exciting” wasn’t the word I would have chosen.

“As you know,” he continued, “I’ve always tried to do my best for you as mayor of Promise Falls, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately, and the skills I’ve brought to bear on a local level, I would like to apply on a national level.”

There was some murmuring in the crowd, some applause, then people whispering “shh” so Randy could continue.

“This nation is in a terrible mess,” he said. “It’s in an economic tailspin, it’s being eaten away by a pervasive moral decay.”

He had that right.

I hadn’t hit the record button on my phone yet. Nothing Randy had said so far stood a chance of rescuing my family. Or saving his ass, either.

“This nation needs to be put back on the right path, and I believe that if you send me to Congress, I can help put it back on that path. I am the person for that job.” He paused, giving the room a chance to cheer and applaud. Everyone obliged.

“And there are a number of reasons why I may be,” he said, “the perfect person for this assignment. I know what it means to be on the right path, and I know what it means to have strayed from it.”

I held up the phone, got ready.

“As you know, I speak my mind, I’ve gained a bit of a reputation for doing things to excess occasionally. I’ve had to pay to clean a few rugs in my time.”

That brought laughter.

“I think a real leader needs to have done a few things wrong in his life to know how to get things right,” he said. “My father, God rest his soul, was a wise, decent man, and he used to say to me, ‘Randy, you show me a man who’s made no mistakes along the way and I’ll show you a man who hasn’t gotten anywhere.’ He was the kind of man who knew that to embrace life, to accept its challenges, meant making mistakes, because without mistakes there are no accomplishments. If it weren’t for mistakes, and failures, how would we be able to measure our successes?”

He was taking the long way there, but he seemed to be going in the right direction. Maxine Woodrow whispered in my ear, “He’s gone off text. What’s he doing?”

I held up my hand to shush her. Randy glanced over, locked eyes with me, and I felt him sending me a message. Something along the lines of If this is what you want, you’re going to get it, and then some.

I started recording.

Randy looked back at the crowd and continued, “There are many different kinds of mistakes. You design a bridge, you make a mistake in the engineering, that can result in catastrophe. You overthrow a dictator with the best of intentions, to eradicate his weapons of mass destruction, and they turn out not to be there, well, there are consequences to those kinds of mistakes in judgment.

“But I want to talk to you about a different kind of mistake today. A mistake of the heart. A mistake of the soul.”

There wasn’t a person in that room not listening to every word Randall Finley had to say.

“My wonderful wife, Jane, is here today,” Randy said, looking down at her. Jane Finley, fiftyish, plump, black hair piled on top of her head into something that looked like a bird’s nest, blushed. She had in her lap a copy of the prepared speech, and if she’d been reading along she must have been as puzzled as Maxine.

“A lot of you know Jane, and you know how she’s always been there for me, how she’s stood by me, sometimes through very dark times, often when I didn’t deserve her support. I’m not an easy man to stand by. I live to excess. I am a man of appetites. And far too often I’ve indulged those appetites without thought to how my actions might affect others.”

“What the hell is he doing?” Maxine whispered into my ear again. I ignored her and kept holding up the phone.

“I don’t have to tell you people,” the mayor said, “the kind of scrutiny public figures live under. Some politicians and celebrities will tell you it’s terrible, that they want to be left alone, that their private lives are nobody’s business. Well, I’m not so sure about that. I think, when you vote for me, when you trust me to make decisions on your behalf, you’re entitled to know what kind of a man I am. My values, what I stand for, what I believe in. Like when I’ve accomplished great things, like the new hospital wing I pushed through this past term, with its state-of-the-art burn unit, or the grant I delivered only yesterday to Swanson House to help young women whose lives haven’t gotten off to the perfect start they might have hoped for.

“But you’re also entitled to know about the less than great things I’ve done, because how can you trust me if you don’t know everything there is to know about me?”

My phone stopped recording. I set it up to start again.

The crowd could feel Randy getting closer to something, and judging by their rapt expressions, the suspense was killing them. I knew what was coming, and I was feeling the suspense, too.

“So here I am before you tonight, announcing my intentions to represent you in the nation’s capital, to do greater good than I have ever done before, but I also stand before you tonight to tell you about a period of darkness in my life, a darkness I was able to emerge from only through my own personal commitment to be a better man.

“What I have to tell you I’ve never revealed before, not even to my wife, because I’m not proud of it. I allowed my baser instincts to control me, I surrendered to a power greater than greed or alcohol. It was lust. I was unfaithful. But I was more than that. There was an occasion when I availed myself of the services of a sex worker, and as if that was not bad enough, I subsequently learned that this person was underage.”

There was a collective gasp in the room. Jane Finley looked decidedly unwell. Maxine said, “Oh my God.”

“I exploited this young woman in a way that shames not only me but all men everywhere. Not a day goes by that I’m not tormented by my contribution to this woman’s life of degradation. I have done detestable things. I have hurt people. But what good is a man if he cannot learn from his misdeeds? If a man cannot be redeemed, even a man such as myself, then what point is there in going on? If I knew in my heart that my past misdeeds made it impossible for me to do good in the future, I’d end it all right now, right here, on this stage. But that’s not what I believe. I believe I have the ability to make this nation safer, and stronger, and more committed to the values that have made it the greatest country on the face of the earth, and that’s why tonight, I stand before you, a humbled man, a man with many faults, but still a man with a dream, a man who is asking you for your support so that I may take my fight to Washington to make this country everything it should be!”

At first, silence. And then, a smattering of applause.

“I know you’re shocked by what I’ve told you,” he said, “and you’re entitled to be. You’re entitled to judge me. And some of you will judge me harshly. I certainly deserve it. But I would ask any of you here tonight who has not strayed, who has not sinned, who has not had a dark moment in his or her life, to come up on this stage right now and strike me down.”

He paused, and we all waited for someone to rise to the challenge. No one took the bait.

After waiting an appropriate time, Randy finished up. “Let my challengers make of this what they will. Will they be as honest with you as I’ve been tonight? Are they willing to lay bare their sins for others to judge? If there’s someone else out there willing to be more open with you than I have been tonight, then not only will he deserve your vote, he’ll have mine as well, because that’s the kind of man that I am, faults and all!”

This time, a bit more than a mere smattering of applause.

“I know that this room is filled with good people. I know each and every one of you wishes you could go back in time and change at least one thing, one thing that you wish you could undo, a time when you hurt someone close to you, a time maybe when you were deceitful, a time maybe when you broke the law even though you knew better, and believe me, if I had such a time machine, I’d be putting so many miles on it it’d be out of warranty in no time.”

No applause, but actually a few chuckles.

“But no matter what you’ve done, what mistakes you may have made, I will represent you. I will be there for you, just as I’ve always been there for you in the past. And I’m going to be there for you in the future, because my name is Randall Finley, and if you make the decision not to give up on me, I swear to God I will never give up on you!”

Real applause this time, slowly spreading across the room.

“I thank you!” he said, waving his arms. “God bless you all!” Now nearly everyone was applauding, and about half the room was on its feet. Someone shouted, “Give ’em hell, Randy!”

Maxine looked like she’d swallowed a frog.

“Thank you!” Randy said over the applause. “Good night!”

They were still applauding as he strode off the stage, pausing long enough to whisper in my ear, “Put that in your cock and smoke it.”