The Day of the Donald (24 page)

J
immie had never seen the Lincoln Memorial at night before. The famous statue of Lincoln seated like Captain Picard in his captain’s chair was brilliantly lit from all sides. The stone columns supporting the ceiling cast majestic shadows across the wide cement staircase where Jimmie stood. He’d chosen to meet Cat here because it was the one place in the city Trump hadn’t fingered with his Midas touch. Lincoln was the lone president that Trump was on record as admiring—because, as Trump once said, “He’s the greatest vampire hunter our country has ever seen.”

But Jimmie wasn’t here to admire the unmolested monument. If everything went according to plan, there’d be time for admiration later.

“Where is everybody?” Cat asked, approaching from the south. She was walking with purpose. She wanted to get this over with as fast as possible.

That made two of them.

Jimmie rose to greet her. “It’s nine o’clock on the Sunday night before Labor Day,” he said. “They’re all at home watching the
Game of Thrones
series finale. Even G. R. R. Martin is watching to see how it ends.”

“I never understood that fantasy shit,” Cat said, keeping a few feet between them. That was fine by Jimmie—he had no interest in being smacked again or thrown to the ground.

“I don’t watch it either. I’m still on season two of
The Wire
,” he said. “I’m, like, five premium cable series behind.”

His choice of date and time had been deliberate. Once night had fallen, the Memorial and the adjoining National Mall had cleared out. An eerie calm had come over DC . . . an eerie calm that would soon be shattered.

“You said you know who killed Lester,” Cat said. “But that’s impossible. He committed suicide. He jumped off the roof of the White House. His body was found in the Rose Garden.”

“You said before that his death was news to you,” Jimmie said.

“I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

“So why didn’t you write about his death, then?” Jimmie said.

“You know as well as I do that this is a click-driven business.”

“So you didn’t even investigate it? He was your boyfriend.”

“
Was
my boyfriend. Remember that I’m a member of the White House press corps. I’m not paid to investigate,” Cat said. “Besides, ‘Old-School News Reporter Kills Self at White House’ isn’t exactly going to garner many views.”

“Let the people make that decision,” Jimmie said.

She shook her head. “The people
did
decide—years and years ago. Before the advent of blogging, before the advent of the Internet. There’s maybe some political intrigue there.
Maybe
. But it’s miniscule. Bottom line is reporters aren’t celebrities. Nobody cares when they drop dead.” Cat pulled a snub-nosed revolver from her handbag. “That’s why nobody’s going to care when you’re found facedown in the Reflecting Pool, drowned.”

J
immie sighed. “I hoped I was wrong about you.”

“How does it feel being right about me?”

“Like a kick to Little Jimmie,” he said.

“We can arrange that. Now get moving,” she said, waving the gun toward the pond. “What tipped you off?”

“You mean, when did I first suspect you had a hidden agenda?” Jimmie said. “You slipped up a few times when we were talking outside the museum. When you tried to slap me and I grabbed your wrist, however, I knew for sure. You didn’t have any rope marks or handcuff imprints.”

“Maybe they weren’t tied very tight.”

“I thought about that, but you’d have at least struggled. You put up a fight the other day when I just tried to say hello,” Jimmie said. “So we know you didn’t struggle. My first thought was that you orchestrated the kidnapping. But using Occam’s razor, the simplest answer is usually correct. You
were
kidnapped, but you didn’t struggle. Why was that?”

“I suppose you have an answer for that,” she said, prodding him down the steps.

“I do,” he said. “Trump used you as bait—bait for the Socialist Justice Warriors to make a move. I’m guessing that some time ago, you noticed one of their hackers had found a
back door into your phone. That’s how they knew where you were going to be last Friday night; that’s why you accepted my invitation to dinner. That’s why you had to set it up a few days in advance—to surreptitiously give them a heads-up.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t suspect something was up when I agreed to go on a date with you. Men. You all think with your dicks.”

Jimmie swung around. “It wasn’t a date. Was it?”

Cat leveled the gun at him. “Keep. Walking.”

“Or what, you’re going to shoot me?”

“I’m seriously considering it,” she said. “The idea is becoming more attractive by the minute. Now move.”

She prodded him with the tip of the pistol. Even though it was a small, snub-nosed handgun like you’d see a dame carrying in an old noir movie, it could probably poke a hole or two in him if she pulled the trigger.

“You killed Lester, didn’t you?” Jimmie said. “It wasn’t Lewandowski. It was you.”

“Is this supposed to be the scene in the little suspense novel running through your head where the villain explains herself? Sorry to disappoint you or your nonexistent readers, Jimmie, but if you don’t know by now, you’re too shitty of a detective to live.”

“You’re not denying you killed him.”

“Trying to get me to implicate myself again?” she said. “I might as well tell you, if only because I think you’d understand why I did it. I lied about the last time I saw Lester alive. It wasn’t in June—it was in July. It had been a few months since we’d split. We saw each other in passing a few days before the Fourth of July, and he asked if I wanted to watch the fireworks
from the roof of the White House. Of course, he just wanted to get back together, but how do you say no to that?”

They reached the edge of the Reflecting Pool. In the water, Jimmie could see President Lincoln staring out over Cat’s shoulder. The gun was at Jimmie’s back.

“Wade into the pond,” Cat said.

“Can I take my shoes and socks off first? If I were going to drown naturally, you know, that’s what I would do. You want this to look realistic, I assume.”

She sighed and motioned for him to hurry up. As he stripped his shoes and socks off, she continued her story.

“At quarter ’til nine, we went up to the roof using his orange-level clearance. I guess because he wanted to impress me, he let it slip that he had some ‘explosive’ recordings of things the president had said to him. Due to his nondisclosure agreement, he couldn’t publish them. Or he was too scared to. He was thinking about handing the recordings off to some of his liberal pals. Just handing them over to a bunch of Bernie bros!”

“What a waste,” Jimmie said. He wasn’t ready yet to mention the recordings were worthless. He dipped a toe into the water, and it sent a chill up his spine. Though the weather had been in the sixties all week and was probably there right now, the water felt much, much colder.

“Exactly—that’s what I said. Think of the pageviews! He had hours and hours of this stuff, with the president on tape saying the most outrageous stuff. To use Trump’s own terminology, it was a gold mine.”

Jimmie stepped into the pool. The water came halfway up his shins. Goose bumps rose all over his body.

Cat said, “Lester said he’d hidden the recorder within the White House. Somewhere in his office was my guess. He wouldn’t listen to reason, though. I did the only thing I could do: I went for his badge. There was a struggle . . . and he went over the edge. I tried telling myself it was an accident . . . but I know it wasn’t.”

“You didn’t get the badge, I’m guessing.”

She shook her head. “He took it with him, right into the Rose Garden. After the Secret Service shot him to death, I got the hell out of there. I thought the recorder had been tossed or erased . . . until you showed up. I began to think there might be some hope—and, as it turns out, I was right. You know, that thing was my ticket out of this town. Then you went and fucked that all up. Not only that, but you cracked the case of Lester’s death. I’m not ready to go to jail. Orange is not the new black. I look worse than Christie in orange.”

At least he agreed with her there.

“Why kill me?” he asked.

“This is all your fault—all of this,” she said. “If you hadn’t posted that stupid Ted Cruz sex tape without my approval, neither of us would be in this mess right now.”

“I thought you’d be impressed by it.”

“Impressed that someone leaked you a tape? You were the only journalist with low enough scruples to post something that . . . disgusting.”

“I thought it would win a Pulitzer.”

“A Pulitzer?” she said. “This is about Lester, isn’t it?”

“Not entirely. But—”

“I didn’t leave you for Lester because he had a Pulitzer Prize,” she said. “I left you for him because he wasn’t so insecure.”

Okay, that hurt. Jimmie inched his way across the cement floor of the pool. If she was going to kill him, why did she have to be so mean about it?

“How far do you want me to go, your highness?” he said.

There was no answer from behind him.

He turned his head.

Ted Cruz was standing at the edge of the pool, his chiseled body illuminated by the moonlight. He had an arm around Cat’s neck. She’d gone limp.

“Jesus, don’t kill her!” Jimmie said, sloshing his way back to the grass.

A gunshot rang out across the yard, and Cruz and Cat both fell into a heap. Jimmie swung around, looking for the assailant. Could be the Human Hiroshima; could be an assassin from any number of government organizations.

He felt a thump on the back of his head, and everything went black.

W
hen Jimmie came to, he found himself tied to a pillar facing Lincoln. The thick rope wrapped around him several times, pinning his arms to his sides. There was a pounding sensation in the back of his skull where he’d been hit.

Although his vision was slightly blurred from being knocked out, he could make out two other figures tied up in a similar fashion—to his left, Ted Cruz, who was bleeding profusely from a wound in his shoulder. To Jimmie’s right, Cat Diaz. She was still unconscious.

“Wish somebody could sing the national anthem right now,” a familiar voice said. Trump. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

“Ooooh saaaay can you seeeeeee, by the Donald’s early light—”

“Can it, Christie.”

Jimmie could hear Trump marching triumphantly up the steps, each footfall echoing through the stone corridors of the great monument. Finally, Trump came within view of Jimmie. The president was dressed the same as always, in a dark-navy suit and Day-Glo-red power tie. Chris Christie trailed him, wearing a scuba-diving suit. Had he been hiding in the Reflecting Pool? Trump’s press secretary, Corey Lewandowski, brought up the rear. He was carrying an AR-15 with a steak knife duct-taped
to the end like a bayonet. The gun should have blown a hole the size of a softball through Cruz’s shoulder, but the bullet must have had a difficult time digging through all that muscle he’d put on doing push-ups in the Pit.

Trump examined Cruz, who snarled at him and gnashed his teeth.

“Somebody needs to go back in their cage,” the president said before moving on. He stopped in front of Jimmie. “And you . . . I had such high hopes for you.”

“That’s kind of what I do—disappoint people.”

“You were supposed to be my eyes and ears. I never asked you to be my dick.”

“The first lady—”

“Shut it,” Trump said. “She told me everything.”

The president and pals moved on to Cat, who still hadn’t shown any signs of life. “And you . . . where do I even start?”

Trump shook his head and returned his attention to Jimmie. “You thought you were being all smart, didn’t you? Slipping that paper clip to Ted in his cell, which allowed him to escape this afternoon. When I got the surveillance photos of you being checked in, I said, ‘No friggin’ way is Jimmie Bernwood that dumb.’ But here you are. Not feeling so smart now, are you?”

Jimmie didn’t answer.

“That’s okay, don’t say anything,” Trump said. “Even though you helped spring Ted from the joint, I bet you still don’t have any idea who leaked you that sex tape of his, do you?”

Jimmie had thought about it briefly when he’d received the DVD in the mail, but the package had been sent anonymously. No return address, except for an obviously fake name (“John
Miller”). No one ever claimed ownership of it—which was just as well, because it had allowed him to state in court that he truthfully had no idea who sent it. But c’mon. If not Trump himself, it was
someone
in Trump’s camp.

Trump turned to Cruz, who was struggling to stay conscious. “It’s time to stop lying, Lying Ted. Care to tell Jimmie the truth?”

“I did it,” Cruz said.

Trump grinned from ear to ear.

Jimmie stared incredulously at the tied-up former senator. Was it true? The more he thought about it, the more he knew it had to be. There was, after all, only one person in the sex tape: Ted Cruz. He’d filmed himself making love to an inflatable orca. He’d even supplied all of his “costar’s” dialogue himself, speaking in a falsetto. Even though Cruz wore boxers throughout the entire film, it was easily one of the most disturbing things Jimmie had ever seen—and he’d seen every David Lynch film.

“Why’d you do it?” Jimmie asked.

“People kept mocking me,” Cruz said. “They said mean, hateful things about me . . . that I was a serial killer, that I was an extraterrestrial wearing a human suit. I wanted voters to know I wasn’t some weirdo. I put on music and taped myself having sex with an inflatable toy lady whale, just like your average Joe Six-Pack.”

Jimmie shook his head. “Well, that seriously blew up in your face.”

He immediately regretted his choice of words, as it echoed the final frames of the video where the orca popped and nearly suffocated Cruz. It was actually a scary moment, because at
first Jimmie had thought he was watching a snuff film. It was a snuff film, in a way—for that poor orca. No wonder the jury had awarded SeaWorld such a large sum.

But Cruz’s head was slumped down. The blood loss had finally gotten to him.

Trump returned to Jimmie. “Nine o’clock on Sunday night.
This
Sunday night. You prick.”

“Somebody missing their dragons and tits?”

“If somebody spoils
Game of Thrones
for me before I have a chance to see it, I’m going to dig your body up and kill you again.” Trump paused. “Oh, wait. I still have to kill you the first time, don’t I?”