Frank had watched the famous episode of Greet the Press where Cass told Gideon she wasn’t about to be lectured by someone who’d run his own mother off a cliff. He’d had a good laugh at that. A scrapper, his little girl. He reflected, with mixed emotions, that he had no doubt played a role in that aspect of her development.
Now he found himself thinking back to the call a few weeks ago from Bucky Trumble, asking him to denounce her publicly: The president would very much appreciate it if…Hell of a thing to ask a father to do.
The White House drafted his talking points. Morally repellent? Jeez, Bucky, that’s a bit…harsh, isn’t it? Bucky said, Look, Frank, if you’re going to do it, do it. He gave in. But Frank had taped Bucky’s phone call. He taped all his calls. In life as in engineering, Frank Cohane believed in zero tolerance.
A week later, his security people reported a hack into Applied Predictive Actuarial Technologies’ phone system. The weird part was that they’d traced it to a server in Winchester, Virginia, maintained by an obscure division of the U.S. Treasury Department. Why was the government suddenly interested in his company’s phone calls? Then he thought: Is it possible Bucky Trumble has something to do with it? Did he suspect that Frank had taped their phone call? Was he trying to send Frank a warning?
Concentrate, Frank told himself. RIP-ware. RIP-ware. RIP-ware. It’s going to make you one of the richest people on the planet.
His cell phone rang. The caller ID said: LISA. He hesitated before answering.
“Yeah, Leese?” he said, trying to sound hurried so as to keep the conversation short. “What?…When?…Jesus, Lisa. What does he think college is? A four-year-long wet T-shirt contest, for chrissake? I told you it was crazy to send him to Yale. He couldn’t get into…I’m not being hard on him. I’m being realistic. I haven’t said one goddamn word to him. Not that he’d understand if I did. You’re right I’m pissed off. Cost me ten million dollars to get that nitwit into…I didn’t mean it that way.…?Lisa…Lisa…will you…Well, fuck you, too!” Frank Cohane hurled the cell phone across his office.
In the distance, a sea lion surfeited on salmon bellowed.
Randy and Cass were in bed. For all his flaws, it was good to be back there with him. Dear Randy. He was so obvious, but in men it can be a kind of saving grace. Transparency confers absolution.
Cass lay next to him, head nestled against his shoulder, fingers idly twirling a strand of his sandy-colored hair. She was happy and at peace. She’d missed this more than she cared to admit.
Randy said, “I heard some more from my guy Speck.” Odd choice of pillow talk, she thought.
“Um?”
“So guess who flunked out of Yale?”
“George W. Bush?” she said, not terribly interested.
“Your stepbrother. What’s-’is-name. Byrd. Boyd.”
Cass wasn’t sure how to process the information. “I never thought of him as my stepbrother. I’ve never even met him.”
“Quite the party animal, it would seem.”
She felt a twinge of indecent curiosity. “Randy, why would your guy Speck be investigating my stepbrother?”
“You know how it is. You point these guys in a direction and they keep going. They don’t stop. You do want to keep track of all the pieces.”
“Why is Boyd a piece?”
“Well,” Randy said, “your father more or less declared war on you. Calling you morally repellent. Know thy enemy, I always say. The Jepperson family motto is, ‘Don’t be caught with your pants down.’ Goes back to Baron Guy de Jepperson. Fourteenth century. Or was it thirteenth?”
“I’m not sure I think of some seventeen-year-old college kid as my ‘enemy.’”
“Eighteen. And he’s an ex-college kid. His mother-your stepmother-now she’s a piece of work, I hear.”
“Do we have to talk about this now?”
“Former tennis pro,” Randy said. “What is it about tennis pros? You know the type.”
“Not really,” Cass said, rolling over and staring up at the ceiling. “I never spent any time at country clubs. So, tell me, what kind of moral deficiency is implicit in the job description for ‘tennis pro’? Shoplifting? Serial murder? Terrorism?”
“They’re rather keen at the networking. She’ll make a dandy ambassador’s wife.”
Cass flumped a pillow and sat up. “You’re awfully informed about all this.”
“It’s my business.”
“Why is it your business?”
“Darling girl. I’m trying to protect you. Don’t you want to be protected?”
“Are you serious? In this relationship, who protects whom?”
Randy shrugged. “Knowledge is power. These people are out to get you.”
“Are you familiar with the word buzz kill?”
“Military term?”
“No, sweetheart. It’s what people my age say after they’ve made love to someone and they’re lying in their arms thinking soft, wonderful, dreamy, lilac-scented thoughts, and suddenly their lover announces that his private investigator and personal executioner has learned that some stepbrother they’ve never met and don’t even care to know has been kicked out of a college that they got into once without their asshole father donating ten million dollars to it and that the evil stepmother now wants the asshole dad to give huge amounts of money to a corrupt U.S. president so that she can become an ambassador’s wife. And suddenly she’s gone from warm and fuzzy to cold and trembling. Buzz kill. It’s in the dictionary, under B. You could look it up.”
“Good word.” He rolled toward her. “Can we…”
“What?”
“Go back to the buzz?”
“Yes,” Cass said, rolling back to him, “I like that part.”
The first meeting of the Commission on Transitioning and Tax Alleviation was gaveled to order.
There were several dozen commissioners, roughly the number required to satisfy every special interest group clamoring to have “input” into the question of whether Americans should be allowed to kill themselves in return for a tax break.
ABBA was of course represented, as were various other Boomer advocate groups: the National Organization of Baby Boomers (NOBB); the Association for the Economic Enhancement of Persons Born Between 1946 and 1964 (AEEPBB46-64, one of the more unwieldy lobby acronyms, but still not an organization to be trifled with). Also present were representatives of the Mortuary Association of North America (MANA); the National Association of Lethal Injectionists (NALI); the Reverend Gideon Payne of SPERM; the Association of Floridian Assisted Living Facilities (AFALF); the American Association of Actuaries; the Botox Institute; the Organ Transplanters Network of North America (ONTNA); the National American Body Part Exchange Network (NABPEN); the American Golf Cart Manufacturers Association, which had formed a kind of alliance with the Segway Owners of America (also present); the American Association of Expensive Estate Attorneys; the Canadian Association of Providers of Cheap but Not Altogether Reliable Pharmaceuticals, an increasingly powerful voice in Washington, despite being based in Ottawa; Senator Randolph K. Jepperson; and Ms. Cassandra Devine, representing the eponymous CASSANDRA. The chairman had taken care to seat her at the opposite end of the semicircular dais from Gideon Payne.
“Mr. Chairman,” Gideon said as soon as Randy had gaveled the first meeting to order, “may I be recognized?”
“Yes, Reverend Payne.”
“I move that we commence our deliberations with a prayer.”
“Reverend Payne,” said the chair, “I’m sure that we are all in our own ways prayerful that we will conduct our hearing in a-”
“That being the case, then may I proceed to ask Almighty God’s blessing upon our work?”
Cass raised her hand. “Mr. Chairman?”
“Yes, Ms. Devine?”
“I second the motion.”
“You do?” There were puzzled looks all around.
“Yes. If the gentleman from SPERM is in need of spiritual assistance, who are we to deny it to him? If I’d done the things he’s done, I’d certainly want the Almighty’s forgiveness-”