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3
Back in the house, John found his mother standing before the kitchen TV, watching a replay of key moments from last night’s Presidential address.
“… can break the backs of these criminal empires. We can pull the economic rug out from under them by denying them the tens of billions of dollars—not tens of millions, tens of billions of dollars—they rake in a
She glanced up at him. “Has that Tommy Winston gone crazy? Was he sipping at the schnapps before he went on TV last night?” John could tell by the rhythm of her speech that she was upset. His Dutch-American father, raised all his life in the south, had married a girl from the old country. When she was upset her voice jumped half an octave and a Dutch accent began to creep into her otherwise perfect English.
“No, Mom. He was sober.”
“Then I am thinking he has gone mad. It is the only explanation.”
John shrugged. “You won’t have to go far in this town to find someone to agree with you. His staff has been trying to talk him out of it, but you know Tom when he gets his mind set.”
“You knew? Why didn’t you tell your mother?”
“It was a secret. I got wind of it last time I was at the White House but I never thought he’d go through with it. Besides, they made me promise not to tell anyone.”
“Even your mother?”
“Even my mother.”
She had the remote in her hand and started hitting the button, stopping on each cha
“Look at this. On every cha
“Tom expected this,” he told her. “He’s figuring— hoping—the initial ruckus will die down and people will stop emoting and begin thinking.”
“Let me tell you what I am thinking, John Vanduyne,” she said—and using his first and last name meant she was really a
“I am thinking you could be right,” John said.
4
The inbound traffic along Massachusetts Avenue seemed heavier than usual, giving John extra time to check out what the wonderful world of talk radio had to say about Tom’s address to the nation last night. He hit scan and let his tuner skip up the dial. Almost immediately he heard Tom’s voice.
“… so we’ve been attacking the problem with the full force of all the federal government’s law enforcement agencies and all the local police departments for a quarter of a century now, and where has it gotten us? We’ve spent three-quarters of a trillion dollars, jailed hundreds of thousands of people, but have we solved the problem? No. It’s worse. Are the streets any safer now after all these hundreds of billions of dollars? No. They are not. So what’s the solution? More of the same… ?” He moved on, stopping whenever he heard an angry voice.
Which was often.
Everyone was shocked, but not everyone was enraged. Howard Stern seemed to think it was a great idea, long overdue; Imus didn’t seem to know what to think.
But the call-in shows presented a chorus of condemnation from everywhere on the political spectrum: right, left, and center.
“Tommy, Tommy,” he said softly. “What have you done?” As he crawled downtown, John’s mind tuned out the radio. His thoughts drifted back to his boyhood and all the years he had spent with the kid from the neighboring farm. From grammar school in Freemantle through Georgia State, Tommy and he had been inseparable.
The things they did… God, they were lucky to have survived.
Both were reckless, assuming like most kids that they were immortal and serious harm happened to other kids—ones who weren’t quite as smart and agile as they—but Tommy had always had more of the daredevil in him. Always Tommy who thought up the most outrageous stunts.
John remembered the time he discovered he could drive his car down the wall of the sand pit outside town. The pit’s walls looked steep and sheer, but one night when he was seeing how close he could get to the edge with his old wreck of a Chevy—a junker that was ready for the scrap heap—he got too close and the car began sliding down the incline. To his relief, the walls were soft and slowed his progress. He made it to the bottom in one piece and was able to drive out the other side. He picked up Tom and damn near scared the crap out of him by driving up to and over the edge.
Which gave Tom a wonderful idea. The next night they got Eddie He
Well, Eddie He
John shook his head. Yeah… lucky to be alive.
They drifted apart after college: Tom to Duke Law, John to Tufts School of Medicine. He’d finished his residency and was just starting as an internist when he got a call from Tom: “I’m thinking of ru
So here he was, inching through the traffic around Dupont Circle. It finally loosened up on Co
5
“You don’t have to be here Mac,” Paulie said as the barber fastened the plastic drape around his neck.
“I mean, I know how to get a haircut on my own.” Snake stiffened at Paulie calling him “Mac”—he should know better than to use any sort of name when there was a third party in the room. He forced himself to relax. Mac was such a common term. Could mean anything.
Probably what Ronald McDonald’s friends called him. He didn’t like it, but he guessed it was okay… just so long as Paulie didn’t call him Snake. But how could he? Only packages’ families and friends ever heard that name. To Paulie he was simply Mac. Not Mike, not MacLaglen… just plain Mac.
Snake leaned his chair back against the wall of the private cubicle and stared at Paulie Dicastro—a stocky guy of average height, thirtyish with long red hair and beard, blue eyes, and fair skin. The least Italian-looking Italian he’d ever met. Snake had booked him with one of these upscale men’s hair stylists on Co