The Overton Window Page 5

  Noah sat in the straight-back chair across from her. “What’s this about? I mean, I understand the traffic stop—”

  “One second.” She left-clicked the mouse on a pad to her right and a few seconds later Noah’s photo appeared within an onscreen form on one of the monitors. There were still some blanks in the form but most of the information fields were already filled in.

  “Now hold on a minute,” he said.

  “Just a few questions, all right? It’s just routine, and it’s required.”

  He blinked, and sat back. “Could you show me some identification?”

  “Of course.” She took out a leather wallet, flipped it open, and held it out under the desk light so he could see. No actual badge, but the gilded crest from the side of the van was there again on her card, along with her embossed name and a title of Senior Field Investigator. And then he remembered where he’d seen that logo before.

  Several months earlier Doyle & Merchant had pitched for the international PR business of this company. They’d been in the market for a complete image makeover in the face of some major allegations in the news, the growing list of which ranged from plain-vanilla war profiteering, graft, and smuggling all the way up to serial rape and murder. Noah and his creative team hadn’t won the account, but ever since the pitch he’d followed the developments when related stories happened to hit the Internet.

  This woman, her hairdo, and her truck were from Talion, the most well-connected private military consulting firm in the foreign and domestic arsenal of the U.S. government.

  “Look,” Noah said, “I’m aware of who’s in town tonight, and I know the whole tristate area’s on red alert or whatever, but I was a passenger in a taxi with an overzealous driver, and that’s it. I don’t know what else I can tell you.”

  “Are you acquainted with this man who was driving?”

  “No.”

  “Not at all?”

  “I don’t know anything about him. There are twenty thousand cabs in this city. I hailed one and he pulled over.”

  The woman was taking her notes on a keyboard beneath the desk with her eyes on one of the monitors. “And where were you coming from tonight?”

  “From work.”

  “And where were you going?”

  His heart rate was picking up; adrenaline will do that whether you like it or not. Before he’d been afraid, but now he was getting angry. He didn’t answer right away, waiting until she acknowledged the silence and looked over to him. Then he spoke. “Do I need to call an attorney?”

  “I don’t see why you’d want to do that.”

  “Am I being detained here?”

  “Well …”

  “Am I being detained.”

  “No.”

  “So I’m free to go, then.”

  “I’m not sure I understand your reluctance to speak with us—”

  “Thanks for everything,” Noah said, and he got up. “Good night.”

  “Is this where you’re headed this evening?”

  She held out the meeting announcement from the break room that he’d folded up and brought along in his pocket.

  From some lecture in his first doomed semester of pre-law at NYU, a wise bit of counsel came back very clearly: The first thing you tell your clients when they call you from custody, innocent or guilty, is don’t say a word: never, ever talk to the cops. But for good advice to work, you’ve got to take it. And besides, this stiff was no cop.

  “I’m just dropping in to meet someone there, and then we’re going somewhere else.”

  “What do you know about this group, Mr. Gardner?”

  “Absolutely nothing at all. Like I told you—”

  “They have ties to the Aryan Brotherhood,” she said, having begun to thumb through a file folder on her desk, “and the Lone Star Militia, the National Labor Committee, the Common Law Coalition, the Earth Liberation Front—”

  “Hold it, wait up,” Noah said. “The National Labor Committee? The National Labor Committee is a little shoestring nonprofit that busts sweatshops and child-labor operations. You want my advice, lady? You people had better update your watch list if you don’t want to get laughed out of this nice truck. And, like I told you, I don’t know anything about this group or what they do or who you think you’ve linked them to. I’m meeting someone there and then we’re going somewhere else. Believe me, I wouldn’t have many friends in the Aryan Brotherhood.” He pointed to her computer screen. “But you’ve probably checked out my record by now, and you know that already.”

  “We know who you are, Mr. Gardner.”

  “By that, I think you mean you know who my father is.”

  “All right.”

  “Good. So unless there’s anything else, I’m going to leave now.”

  She nodded, then gestured to the evidence bag of his belongings on the desk. He picked up the bag, plucked the flier from her hand, and left without another word.

  As Noah hit the street the rain had subsided again to a chilly drizzle. He walked away, refilling his pockets with his things as he went. Halfway down the block he heard someone calling out behind him. It was the cabbie being manhandled toward the truck by two guys who were each at least twice his size.

  Their eyes met, Noah and that driver. What he was yelling now wasn’t hard to understand, probably words he’d practiced from a phrase book for some bad night that might come along when he’d need them.

  Help me, my friend.

  That’s what he was saying, over and over in simple variations, as if maybe with the next repetition Noah would understand that this guy was in serious trouble and just needed someone to step up and vouch for him so he could get out of this mess and maybe get back to his family tonight.

  But what could Noah do? You can’t get involved with every unfortunate situation. It wasn’t his place to intercede. For all he knew, the guy was the leader of a major terrorist cell. And besides, he was late for an appointment with a certain young woman who was in dire need of a dose of reality.

  Noah turned away and kept on walking, letting the man’s pleas fade away and then disappear behind him. It wasn’t nearly as hard to do as it should have been.

  CHAPTER 7

  A lot of empty cabs had passed by on his walk downtown but Noah hadn’t been able to bring himself to raise a hand and flag another one down. The gridlock was still a citywide nightmare, and despite the sporadic rainfall it just seemed like a better idea to suck it up and hoof it rather than risk another ill-fated ride. In any case, in keeping with the evening’s unbroken run of bad decisions, walking was what he’d decided to do.

  Eyes down, shields up, keep a brisk steady pace, and you can get almost anywhere on this island in a reasonable amount of time. Focus is the key. It’s not that New Yorkers set out to be rude as they walk along; they simply want to get where they’re going. With seventy thousand people coming at you per square mile, the only way to try to keep a schedule is to avoid connecting with random strangers.

  But, try as you might, you can’t always avoid making contact.

  The look on that driver’s face earlier, it hadn’t really registered until Noah had fully turned his back on the guy, and by then it seemed like it was too late to turn around. It was dark enough and he’d been far enough away that the picture of that hopeful, desperate face should have been too dim to recall, but it was somehow zoomed in close and crystal clear in his memory.

  Help me, my friend.

  Noah took a deep breath and shook it off as he pressed on. First of all, buddy, I’m not your friend. Second, it wasn’t my responsibility. And third, there is no third required. You can’t take them all under your wing. Once you start trying to rescue everybody, where would it ever stop?

  This sort of glib self-acquittal had worked pretty well in the past but now it left him feeling empty, and worse, guilty. And then as he forced himself to change the mental subject, he found there were some still darker things nagging at the back of his mind.

  What had rea
lly happened in that meeting back at the office? And what might still be happening there now?

  Noah’s father had built an empire in the PR industry based almost solely on his reputation as an unrepentant firebrand, a ruthless hired gun for any cause with the cash to buy his time. He went wherever there was a fortune to be made, and those opportunities were everywhere, in good times or bad, provided a person could maintain a certain moral flexibility when scrolling through the client list.

  Survey the landscape, identify the players, pick a side, build a battle plan, and execute. That’s the game, and old Arthur Gardner had always played it to win. A huckster of the highest order, he could make a do-or-die conflict out of thin air and then cash in selling weapons of mass deception to either side, or, more likely, to both.

  And it had long ago gone beyond Coke versus Pepsi. Pseudoliberal Democrats versus faux-conservative Republicans, union versus management, pure-hearted environmentalists versus the evil corporations, oil versus coal, rich versus poor, engineered problem/reaction/ solution schemes to swing elections, manipulate markets, and secure the dominance of the superclass at home and abroad—these were world-spanning issues he exploited, whether real or manufactured, from global cooling in the 1970s to global warming today. Right versus wrong didn’t matter to the bottom line, so it didn’t matter to him, either. War and peace and politics had always been a part of the business because that’s where the real money was.

  But money alone wasn’t the key motivation. Not money at all, really, not anymore. Arthur Gardner could burn through $30 million a week for the next twenty years before he even came close to clearing out those offshore accounts. The goals and rewards had gotten steadily larger over the years until they’d gone far beyond the merely financial. Today it was only power and the wielding of it that could still fascinate a man like him.

  In his distraction Noah had drifted close to the curb on the sidewalk, an error no seasoned pedestrian should ever commit when it’s been raining. Right on cue a city bus roared by, shooshed through a sinkhole puddle the size of Lake Placid, and a rooster tail of oily gutter water splashed up and soaked him to the waist. As the bus rolled on he could see a bunch of kids in the back pressed to the windows, pointing and hooting, absolutely delighted to have played a part in his drenching.

  Perfect.

  Noah stopped under an awning and took stock of himself. Now he’d reached a milestone: head to toe, there wasn’t a single square inch that didn’t feel soaked to the skin. He checked the street signs for a gauge of his progress—just a few more blocks to go.

  As he walked he thought back to that meeting with the government reps at the office. Maybe he was overthinking it. Over the years he’d heard his father give a similarly passionate call to action many times, hawking everything from a minor come-from-behind congressional campaign to some spin-off brand of laundry detergent. Whether it was a revolutionary new choice in artificial sweeteners or this afternoon’s so-called fundamental transformation of the United States of America, it was all just the same empty carnival-barking the clients loved to hear, and the old man loved to deliver.

  That sounded good enough to ease his mind, at least for the time being. Besides, what was that old saying? Don’t ask the question if you don’t want to know the answer. Noah most certainly did not want to know the answer. It was far easier to follow orders and cash the checks if you honestly had no idea what the consequences of those orders were.

  According to the flier the location of tonight’s all-American shindig was the Stars ’n Stripes Saloon, a charming, rustic little dive down here in Tribeca. Noah had been there a few times before on downtown pub crawls with clients. The Stars ’n Stripes was known as something of a guilty pleasure, a little patch of down-home heartland kitsch complete with friendly, gorgeous waitresses, loud Southern rock on the jukebox, and cheap domestic beer on tap.

  In the last remaining block Noah had been holding out hope that the rally, or whatever it turned out to be, would be sparsely attended and quiet enough to allow him to corner this Ross woman for a quality conversation. The odds of a low turnout seemed pretty good. After all, how many right-wing nutcases could possibly live in this enlightened city, and how many among them would knuckle-drag themselves out of their subbasement bunkers for a club meeting on a chilly, rainy Friday night?

  The depressing answer to that question, he saw as he rounded the final turn, was absolutely all of them.

  CHAPTER 8

  From the corner of Hudson and West Broadway, Noah could see the overflow crowd spilling out onto the sidewalk. The place was packed wall to wall; light from inside the tavern was dimmed by the press of a standing-room-only audience lined around the interior windows.

  Just keep on walking—this sage advice piped in from his rational side—write off this whole wretched night, and get home to that nice, hot Jacuzzi. Maybe a wiser young man would have listened, cut his losses, and punted, but he felt a stubborn commitment that trumped any thoughts of turning back. To stop now would mean the miserable trip had all been for nothing.

  Noah checked his look in a darkened shop window, ran a rake of fingertips through his hair until it looked somewhat presentable, straightened his dirty, wet clothing, and crossed the street to wade into the rowdy sea of redneck humanity.

  Live music from inside was filtering out through the buzz of the crowd. There were so many people it was impossible to keep to a straight line as he walked. The diversity of the gathering was another surprise; there seemed to be no clear exclusions based on race, or class, or any of the other traditional media-fed American cultural divides. It was a total cross section, a mix of everyone—three-piece suits rubbing elbows with T-shirts and sweat pants, yuppies chatting with hippies, black and white, young and old, a cowboy hat here, a six-hundred-dollar haircut there—all talking together, energetically agreeing and disagreeing as he moved through them. In the press, these sorts of meetings were typically depicted as the exclusive haunts of old white people of limited means and even more limited intelligence. But this was everybody.

  As Noah edged his way inside the door he saw the source of the music, a lone guitarist on a makeshift elevated stage. His appearance didn’t match up with the power of his voice—on the street you’d never notice him, just another skinny little guy with bad skin and a three-day stubble—but he was owning that stage like a rock star. He was in the middle of a 1960s-era grassroots folk song, singing and playing with a quiet intensity that let every note and phrase say just what it had been written to say.

  At the turn of the chorus the musician pointed to the audience, lowered his lips to the harmonica harnessed around his neck, and played on with a rousing, plaintive energy as the people raised their voices and sang along.

  This music and the mood it was creating, it was a smart PR move if they could make it work. If their enemies were trying to paint them as a bunch of pasty-white NASCAR-watching, gun-toting, pickup-driving reactionaries with racist and violent tendencies, what better ploy could these people make than to subtly invoke the peace-loving spirits of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi? If nothing else it would drive their critics on the left right up the wall.

  Noah ducked a passing tray of Budweisers and was jostled from behind as he stepped back to let the server squeeze by. He turned to see whom he’d run into, and there, standing before him, was Molly Ross.

  The first thing he noticed was that she’d changed her outfit. More stylish jeans and a warm autumn sweater, nails freshly done, a little purple flower in her hair instead of the pencils. But more than just her clothes had changed. The difference was subtle but striking and it probably boiled down to one thing: she gave a damn how she might come across to these people, in contrast to her obvious disdain for those at the office. That’s what it was; she seemed like she was right where she belonged, and the effect was very easy on the eyes.

  “Well,” Molly said, allowing him only a conditional hint of a smile, “look what the cat dragged in.” For the first ti
me he noticed a light Southern lilt in her words.

  “Yeah, I made it. I said I would.”

  She pulled aside the lapel of his overcoat, tsked, and shook her head. “What did you do, walk all the way down here in the rain?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Hold still.” With a disapproving sigh she helped him off with his overcoat, then folded it over her arm. “Come on, I’ve got a table over there by the jukebox. I’ll go look around—somebody here’s got to have an extra shirt you can wear.”

  “No, really, don’t bother—”

  But she’d already turned, offering her hand so he wouldn’t lose her. He took it, following as she worked their way through the thick of the crowd.

  Soon they arrived at a little round pub table for two near the stage, with high stools on either side. In a higher-class joint, seats this close would have been reserved for the VIPs.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, and then she disappeared into the noisy multitude.

  After one more all-American number the singer finished his set to spirited applause and loud bar-thumping. As the ovation subsided a passing waitress asked Noah what she could get for him.

  “For some reason,” Noah said, “I’ve suddenly got a craving for a Samuel Adams.” She took the order down on her pad, but his not-so-subtle dig at the goings-on in the bar seemed completely lost on her.

  Molly came back with two cups of coffee, a choice of three dry shirts, and an enormous bearded man in jumpsuit coveralls and a Beech-Nut baseball cap. The clothes she’d apparently foraged from the luggage of some out-of-towners in attendance. It wasn’t clear where she’d picked up the big guy, but he looked like he might have hiked here straight from a hayride.