The Nix(205)

“I suppose my big book contract wasn’t some huge coincidence.”

“Your mother was snooping on the internet,” Periwinkle says. “She found out you were a writer. Or trying to be one. She called me and asked for a favor. I figured I owed her at least that much.”

“Good lord.”

“Bursts your bubble, doesn’t it?”

“I actually thought I’d gotten famous on my own.”

“The only people who get famous on their own are serial killers. Everyone else needs people like me.”

“Governor Packer, for example. He needs someone like you.”

“Which brings us to the present.”

“I saw you on TV defending him.”

“I’m on his campaign. I’m a consultant.”

“Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Working on his campaign while you’re publishing a book about him?”

“I think you’re confusing your role here with some kind of journalism. What you call conflict of interest, I call synergy.”

“So the day my mother attacked the governor, you were in Chicago, weren’t you. You were with him. At his fund-raiser. His grub-down.”

“That is his delightfully folksy name for it, yes.”

“And while you’re there,” Samuel says, “you also schedule a meeting with me. At the airport. To tell me you’re suing.”

“For totally failing to write your book. For completely f*cking up the giant contract we gave you. A contract you didn’t deserve in the first place, I should add now, since we’re putting all our cards on the table and everything.”

“And you told my mother about this, this meeting with me, this lawsuit.”

“As you can imagine, she was pretty upset that she’d screwed up your life for a second time. She asked to speak with me, before I met with you. She wanted to talk me out of it, I’m guessing. I said okay, let’s meet in the park. She asked to meet at the exact spot where, many years ago, police fired tear gas at us. Your mother is a nostalgic sap sometimes.”

“And then you showed up with Governor Packer.”

“That’s correct.”

“She must have truly despised that you were working for someone like Governor Packer.”

“Well, let’s see. She threw away her marriage for some vague liberal antiestablishment idealism. And Packer is the most pro-establishment authoritarian candidate, like, ever. So it’s fair to say she was not pleased. She had the same reflexive hatred of him that most die-hard liberals do, comparing him to Hitler and so on, calling him a fascist. She just doesn’t understand what I understand.”

“And what is that?”

“Packer has the same stuff inside him as anyone else who runs for president. Left or right, they’re all made of the same material. It’s just that he’s shaped like a missile instead of a chip.”

The drumming outside slows for a moment and falls apart. Everything goes silent for a few seconds and then begins again with that familiar driving thumpa-thumpa-thumpa-thumpa. Periwinkle raises a finger. “There’s the repeat,” he says.

“You wanted all this to happen,” says Samuel. “You wanted my mother to react the way she did.”

“Some might call it a crime of passion, but I say I presented your mother with an opportunity.”

“You set her up.”

“In one moment, she had the chance to give you a story that would fulfill your contract, get herself off the hook for screwing up your life again, and give my candidate a much-needed visibility bump. Win win win win win. You’ll only be angry with me if you fail to see the big picture.”

“I cannot believe this.”

“Plus remember that I only masterminded it. Your mother was the one who actually picked up the stones and threw them.”

“She wasn’t aiming at Governor Packer. She was aiming at you.”

“I was in his entourage, yes.”

“And the photograph in the news? The one from ’68, where she’s leaning on you, at the protest. You had a copy of that.”

“A nice present from a great poet.”

“You cropped yourself out of it and gave it to the news. You leaked the photo and you leaked my mother’s arrest record, which you also knew about.”

“I was adding heat. It’s what I’ve always done, what I’ve always been good at. I should say that your mother attacking me with rocks was a sincere gesture on her part. She really does, I believe, hate me. But afterward, the two of us agreed that in order to make the most of the situation, she should stonewall you completely. Tell you absolutely nothing. That way, you’d have no choice but to agree to my version of events. Speaking of which?”

Periwinkle fetched a book from the shelf behind his desk and gave it to Samuel. It was a plain white book, with black letters on the cover: The Packer Attacker.

“That’s an advance copy,” Periwinkle said. “I had my ghostwriters whip it up. I’m going to need to put your name on that book. Or else we’ll have to move forward with that lawsuit of ours, unfortunately, for you. There’s a piece of paper on my desk indicating such in bewildering lawyer language. Please sign it.”

“I assume this book is not very kind to her.”