Empire of Lies (24 page)

"You Harrow?" he said. There was that voice, too—the same as it always had been: terse, rhythmic, distinctive, the admiral's voice.

I nodded down at him, tight and quiet in his starry presence.

"Have a seat. Have a seat," he said. He gestured to the chair across from him. He looked back over his shoulder. Startled me by shouting out, "Charlie! Two more!" Then he jacked the shot and finished the beer in two quick motions, his right hand flashing back and forth between the glasses.

I sat down. "Thanks for seeing me," I said.

He didn't answer. He looked me over, studied me, openly, not trying to hide it, cocking one outgrown eyebrow and running a sharp, narrow gaze up and down me. It gave him the aspect of a keen observer of men, a man who could peer right into your heart. As the moment went on and uncomfortably on, I began to get the feeling he meant me to think that about him. I began to suspect it was a part he was playing: the Keen Observer of Men.
I'm a guy you can't put anything past,
he seemed to be telling me.
Don't even try.

Charlie—the wrinkly Bartender from Ages Past—clapped mugs of beer and whiskey shots on the table in front of us. He swept Piersall's empties onto his tray and retreated to the front room.

I put my hand on the mug, grateful to have something to fiddle with while Piersall stared. Piersall went on staring, waiting until the barkeep was gone. Then he said, "You've been. Following the news. I take it," in that syncopated way of his.

I wasn't sure what he meant: news of his canceled show? His arrest? The arraignment this morning? "I saw the news last night," I said. "Not today though."

He gave a snort, a sort of man-of-the-world, seen-it-all snort. I got the feeling this was a performance, too, another part he was playing: the Man of the World Who Has Seen It All.

"The news," he said. "The media! It's like
Alice in Wonderland
—only without the Wonderland. They have this—story they want to tell. This nonsense story. 'Angry TV Star Goes Nuts.' That's the story and if you challenge that—if you're brave enough, if you're
—sane
enough—to challenge that—then—oh, then they go at you. Tooth and nail. Hammer and tongs. Off with his head. You must be a drunk, a madman, a..." He waved one pudgy hand about dramatically, as if to conjure the word he was looking for out of the air. And he did: "A has-been." He lifted his shot glass to
his lips, and added before he drank, "Which is rich, coming from a bunch of never-weres."

Then he did drink. He downed the shot whole and followed it with a knock at his beer.

I could only watch him, bemused. This was not what I'd expected. He didn't seem to care about the note I'd given to his lawyer. He didn't question me about it or try to find out more about me or what I wanted. He didn't seem interested in that at all. He didn't even seem interested in himself, in his situation. I mean, after the night he'd had—and the morning he'd had—I would've thought he'd want to at least try to appear sober in public. But no. He just showed himself as he was: a bitter and blasted man, a sort of Ancient Mariner with nothing left of life but the story he had to tell. And yet ... and yet, even as I thought that, I thought: That little speech he'd just made, the laconic drama of it, the staccato syncopation—tooth and nail, hammer and tongs, off with his head. It was classic Patrick Piersall stuff, wasn't it? It could have been written for him. It could've been written for Augustus Kane. Was it possible that this, too, was a role he was playing: The Bitter, Blasted Man Who Had Yet a Story to Tell?

I watched him gaze into his beer like a lost soul, or like a Lost Soul in a movie during the scene in which he gazes into his beer. He had changed his clothes since the arraignment. He was wearing a natty corduroy sports coat and one of those turtlenecks older guys wear when they start to get wattles on their throats. I could just picture him getting dressed, thinking:
Let's see. What's my wardrobe for the scene where I meet the informant in the bar?
Was everything about him—every word, every gesture, every expression on his face—part of a performance of some kind? Was he all actor and no man?

"Are you a hard man, Harrow?" he asked me suddenly with the air of a storyteller in a movie suddenly asking his listener
a piercing question. And when I opened my mouth without answering, he said: "Mentally, I mean." And added: "Forgive me," with that oily graciousness actors and drunks do so well. "Forgive me, but we don't know each other. I have to ask. Are you a hard man—mentally?"

"Yeah, sure, I guess," I said—it seemed the best way to get on with it.

"Good. Good. It takes a hard man to see the truth when everyone is telling him the lies he wants to hear." He raised his beer mug to me in a toast—a toast to that little piece of wisdom, perhaps, or maybe to my hardness, or maybe just a toast so he could drink some more.

I toasted, drank. The beer was tart and cold. It had a zingy little tang to it. I wasn't used to drinking this early in the day. "What happened at the arraignment?" I asked him. I guessed now that's what we were talking about. "I haven't seen the news about that."

Another studied gesture—lowered eyelids, a casual movement of the hand—as if I had missed the point somehow, as if my question was a matter of no importance and he was brushing it aside. "Do you want the news—or do you want the truth?"

I nearly laughed out loud at this. I couldn't help it. If he was going to behave as if he were in a movie, I couldn't help watching him as if I were a critic. I was thinking:
"Do you want the news or do you want the truth?" What kind of crappy, overwritten, corny dialogue is that?
"Well ... I'd like to know what happened at the arraignment," I said, dryly.

"I was released," he declared in orotund tones, "on five thousand dollars bail."

Now here, I felt the line was okay, but he delivered it with way too much melodrama. The pause between
released
and
on,
the pregnant turning of his hand in air, the rolling tone of the bail
amount—it was all meant to suggest there was a deeper meaning to the words than there seemed to be. But I mean, come on, what meaning? He was released on bail. What was the big deal?

"Was there anything else?" I asked him. "Did you get to make any kind of statement? In court? To the press?"

He held up a finger and half-smiled, as if, ah, now I were beginning to see into the heart of things. "Ah," he said, "now you're beginning to see into the heart of things. Now you're starting—to ask—the right—questions."

I managed not to roll my eyes. "So did you? Make a statement?"

Up went the beer. Down went the empty glass with a bang. "Charlie!" he shouted over his shoulder. He waved a questioning finger at my drinks as well, but I'd barely touched them. "One more!" Then turning back to me, he said, "No statement. Not in court. Not to the press. On the advice—of counsel: no statement."

"So you haven't told them—the court or the press—you haven't told them any more about Casey Diggs."

"You don't understand. You don't—understand. The story ... Oh, thank you, thank you, my friend," he said with a gracious, actorly smile as Charlie set another round in front of him. The wrinkly barkeep exchanged a glance with me, that expressionless yet somehow sardonic glance that sober men exchange over a drunk. Then he was gone again. "This is what you don't understand. The story boxes you in. Trust me. I've been in this business a long, long time. That's how it works." Piersall lifted his shot glass but set it down without drinking. "The story—their story, their prewritten script—ties you up in its own logic. It refuses to tell anything but itself. 'Disgruntled has-been actor arrested for DUI after holding a gun on the executive who canceled his show.' That's the story. That's the plot people are following. And if you—if you say, 'Listen. You dumb shits. That's not the story.
The story is that just because a couple of—
camel-jockey—rag-headed—dune-coon
pressure groups—who probably have fucking terrorist connections of their own—turned the screws on the cable station, we are being silenced. Silenced! We are failing to investigate a possible terrorist plot against the city of New York.' If you try to tell that story, see, if you break in on their script with the truth, it's too sudden, too unexpected for people. It's as if a love scene were interrupted by a helicopter crash. The audience says, 'What? No. No. That—doesn't make sense. That—doesn't fit. That's not what we expected. It's not the story.'"

There was no helicopter crash, and Piersall continued in his staccato way, with many a graceful gesture, many a knowing smile.

"So the truth is swallowed by the story line. The media, the audience—they
incorporate
the interruption into the plot and it disappears without a trace. 'Drunken has-been actor who waved disgruntled gun at canceled show exec goes on foulmouthed rant, calls Muslims dune coons.' And while you—because you're so furious—because no one will listen—while you rant like a lunatic trying to get someone to hear the truth, they air an interview with the elegant, articulate Ahmed Muhammed Ahmed, you know, of the Camel Jockey Ragheads for Media Fairness Association." Here he slipped into what I'll politely call an
outrageous
Middle Eastern accent. "'It is quite unfor-choo-nate dat Meester Pierce-all would stoop to cheap racial stereotyping...' Blah-de-blah-de-blah ... You see? So the story continues on its way: 'Angry Actor Goes Nuts.' The story's like—like a road—a road that carries you where it wants you to go, even if the truth lies in the opposite direction."

"Well, all right," I said, trying hard not to sound impatient with him. "I'm listening. What is the truth? What is this possible terrorist plot? What exactly did Casey Diggs think was going to happen?"

"You see," Piersall mused, suddenly changing his tone to that of a Man Who Looks Back Wisely on a Much-lived Life. "America is an imaginary country." This, as everything, in that patented rhythm.
America. Is an. Imaginary country.
"Other countries have bloodlines. History. The ancient earth. Bloodlines that run through history into the ancient earth."

Oh, for Christ's sweet sake!
I was thinking.

"Americans," he went on. "All we have is"—he tapped the side of his head with his forefinger—"up here. Ideas. Images. Who we are. What we're like. What we believe. Stories. Movies. The Bible. The Constitution. TV. Characters. In our mind. Jesus Christ. Thomas Jefferson. Augustus Kane. Patrick Piersall..."

His voice meandered off like a river winding away into the distance. He made another gesture with his hand and bowed his head, as much as to say: I could go on, my friend, but these deep things are understood between us.

Which they weren't, of course. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about. I sat there, bewildered, looking at the top of his head. If you're interested, I can tell you that his hair was dyed to its old reddish hue with a distinguished touch of silver left showing at the edges. I had thought it was a toupee on TV but, from that angle, I could see the line of scars where the Hair Club boys had put the plugs in. Not entirely without some Christian pity, I found myself thinking:
This poor bastard. What a loser. What a clown.

"Just getting back to the terrorist plot for a minute," I said. "What was Casey Diggs's theory, exactly? I mean, he thought Professor Rashid was up to something, right? What exactly did he think he was going to do?"

"Ah!" he said—and he looked up—and he knocked down another shot, guzzled some more beer by way of an exclamation point. He leaned toward me, a Man Imparting the Secret History of the World. Also a Man Breathing Whiskey All Over My Face. "He.
Diggs: He. Understood. America. The Country of the Imagination. He—saw: that—that would be Rashid's target. Not some ... towers." He waved off the three thousand people who had died in the Islamo-fascists' destruction of the World Trade Center—waved them away as if they were nothing.
Only in Hollywood,
I thought. "That's just money. That's just the economy," he said. "The Pentagon, too. What's that? The military." Another wave-off. "The Capitol? The White House? The government? No. No. None of those is what really matters. Casey—he understood. The Country of the Imagination. That—is what Rashid has spent a—a
lifetime
attacking, undermining. With his—theories—ideas—propaganda. Not the economy, the military, the government, but..." And here, unbelievably, Piersall lifted his two hands and tapped his fingertips against himself three times, each hand against one breast, rat-tat-tat. "The American Imagination. The Bible. The Constitution. Jesus Christ. Thomas Jefferson. Movies. TV. Augustus Kane. Patrick Piersall. That's what he's out to destroy."

I hid a smile behind my hand. I couldn't suppress it. I suppose I was smiling at myself as much as him. I mean, what an idiot I'd been to come here, right? To think that this goofus might have some information that could help me decide what was true and what wasn't. Hell, look at him.

I looked at him. He was an ego acting the part of a human being. He wasn't obsessed with Casey Diggs's theories because they were true. How could they be true? The police and the FBI had already investigated them, already dismissed them. But that didn't matter to Patrick Piersall. To his pickled mind, Diggs's theories were valid because they recentered the news of the world around the only thing that really mattered to him, the only thing that even existed to him: himself.

Once again, I felt as if I had stepped from reality into Television Land. Only now, I had followed the land's Yellow Brick Road
to its conclusion and stood before the Great Citizen of its Emerald City: the Wonderful Wizard of Me.
Pay no attention to that narcissist behind the curtain. Just talk to the Giant Transparent Head.

Which is what I did. "Did Casey have anything more specific to go on? I mean, other than the idea that Rashid was organizing an attack on"—I gestured at Piersall himself. I couldn't resist the comedy of it—"the American Imagination. Had he uncovered some specific plan?"

"Oh, yes! Oh-ho, yes," said the onetime admiral of the spaceship
Universal.
Then he barked in those very tones of command that once struck fear into Borgons throughout the galaxy, "Charlie! Another!"