The French Revolution (40 page)

SECOND CHANCES WORK, announced Robespierre’s campaign literature as she called for providing the homeless with psychiatric help instead of bussing them to Modesto and Stockton, increasing police walking patrols in the Excelsior rather than razing crime hotbeds for strip malls. Her parents went to campaign events as often as she could rope them into it, Esmerelda tucked under Jasper’s arm like a baseball in a glove. Sometimes they told their story of separation and reunion; mostly they stood offstage and clapped. Everyone who heard them speak felt inclined to vote for Robespierre just a little bit more.

Marat recognized his father’s charm, his mother’s verve, their poetry cooking within him. Hanging with them wasn’t awful, they were polite and respectful now, even tried to pay for meals. He felt their reunion stemmed from easiness and desperation, which sickened him, but the part of him that crafted cheesy ads for Middle America knew they made a terrific story, a delicious pile of comeback and true love horseshit, ripe for a TV miniseries.

But the facts still seared: Jasper was a coward, Esmerelda a fuckup, his sister a manipulative thief who’d nearly let him die. This he could never ignore.

Twenty million simoleons hung in the air without a place to land. He took a Cohiba out of his office humidor, repacked it with bud, and puffed until the smoke detector went off.

The guys from his unit were in the right places. It took an hour of phone calls to get things moving: the guys in private security, the psychiatrists, the financial advisors, the cops, the
lawyers, the computer guys, the high-clearance government staffers. All had seen Joel Lumpkin’s footage from the Iranian plains, their permanent disgrace. Poking Iranian detainees’ penises with sporks. Dog piss poured into soup. The Koran rolled and smoked in front of prisoners; hysterical, vengeful cries; boots dead on their ribcages. Spiked knuckles and lighter fluid. Blindfolds and pistol whips, involuntary evacuation. And the ugly kid with the hidden camera whirring away in his helmet the whole time. They hadn’t known about the spy system until they came back stateside, when Joel showed up on their doorsteps and demanded the deeds to their homes.

Between friendly fire and munitions accidents, no chance that shit’d fly on the battlefield. But in tranquil Homeland America, Joel Lumpkin had more guys than they did, plus those incredible videos that they played on a portable TV right on the porch. So much blood, they hadn’t remembered how much, pouring shame down their shirts, blackening names and faces, totaling hard time and probably worse. Even if they managed to find a legal loophole, these were obvious atrocities—what else could they do but sign? And when Marat went back to the well years later looking for dirt on Joel Lumpkin’s behalf, they gave him what he wanted, ready to be done with it, no fight.

They packed her story into the American Dream template: local girl rises up from a dysfunctional family, overcomes poverty and bad parenting, excels at Stanford, gets her feet wet interning for Pelosi and Obama, wins election young, energizes the city, puts principles first. They leaked the
Examiner
clip of when she wandered into the mayor’s office during her parents’ wedding ceremony and it was everywhere—the featured story on gossip websites, batted around with coworkers over Friday beers, a punch line for area comics. It helped a lot that she was devastating through the lens, her pouty lips and spread-out eyes appearing mysterious and desirable through a judicious application of
cosmetics, her hair vivacious and springy, her body contorted into attractiveness by her ultrastylish, form-sensitive wardrobe. She drove a 50 percent bump in traffic when pictured on news websites and spoke fluent sound bite:

“Joel and I are both young and energetic and running for mayor. The difference is I’m running on ideas, and he’s running on greed.”

“I’ve seen Joel’s new commercial. Never have accident lawyer ads looked so professional.”

“You may have noticed Joel’s obsession with construction. He calls it visionary. I call it an edifice complex.”

“Out of touch with San Francisco? I’d say by his social programs he’s out of touch with the twenty-first century.”

“That’s not to say Joel Lumpkin’s a bad guy. Bad guys pick on poor people. Joel won’t even let poor people stay in the city.”

But during commercial breaks Joel Lumpkin’s face plowed down the screen on his overdressed walk along Fisherman’s Wharf, swinging by a kitschy tourist shop blabbing something about business and a foundation, sea lions woofing in the background. Viewers complained about the frequency of the ads, the ridiculous market saturation, the indeterminate point, the obvious unfamiliarity with the city’s values, but they grew to know them intimately. Joel Lumpkin was a guy they spent time with whether they liked it or not, and the stability of his routine implied some dedication, a guy willing to put in the time and money. Possibly this man was reliable. Feasibly someone to vote for.

And there was something about running as an Independent that stirred the latent nonconformist in all San Franciscans.

Phone calls from vets flooded Marat with tales, hearsay, conjecture, myth, the occasional factual nuggets mixed in. Names of every man his sister had kissed, credit card numbers and passwords, an itemized list of all the garments she’d had dry-cleaned in the past four years. Medical records since birth. Her favorite brand of soap. An inventory of her garbage. He confirmed that
she was a compulsive liar, an adroit manipulator, a backstabber and an under-the-bus thrower, but by public official standards there was nothing particularly repulsive—her rap sheet was no worse than a frat boy’s blog.

In the second week of September he met Joel for starchy bagels. “Inedible,” Joel decided. “How much to hire your mom back?”

“I didn’t find anything,” Marat reported.

“Marat, come on.” Joel telescoped his neck and puffed up his cheeks, an incredulous screwball-comedy smile. “You mean to tell me no blow jobs in the office john, no fast-tracking her friends’ business permits, no girls-gone-wild trip to Cancún on the government dime?” He took another bite of his bagel sandwich and chewed in a flurry of angry contractions. “Everybody does it.”

“She lies about things. Weird things.”

“Go on.”

“Her favorite food. The number of times she’s visited Asia. How much her clothes cost. The time her next meeting starts. Her location. All this small stuff.” Executed with a samurai’s touch, he’d heard over and over again, these tidbits of misdirection cultivated fear and affection and huge respect, painting a portrait of power.

“What about money?”

“She keeps it clean there. Doesn’t misuse city funds or embezzle. And nothing’s on the record, either. It’s all hearsay, small talk.” Each button pushed just long enough to get what she wanted and leave. “That’s all I’ve got.”

Marat heard himself say it and knew it was false. He hadn’t even started. It was hard to cut Robespierre out all at once.

Joel choked down a half glass of OJ. The pressure point was nearby, he knew; all Marat had to do was follow his nose to where the shit stank worst. “Get dirt on your parents,” he directed. “Between the two of them, somebody’s covered in it.”

It took Marat two days to track down Sven Johanssen, teaching phys ed at a Fresno middle school, twice divorced and living
with an auto shop manager. They got drunk at a bar that smelled like hay, domestic beer four bucks a pitcher. Raising his voice over a player piano in the corner, Sven explained the one-armed monster and mad Swedish bacchanalia, Esmerelda’s sleeping spot on the couch, Jasper’s huge snoring problem, the unpleasant but necessary hubbub with the eviction board due to Esmerelda’s penchant for rent-ducking. “Nice voman, ya,” he said, his face warming, “and ahl-vays ready to hahmp. Like bouncing on maarshmellows, sveet and soft. Oy, de gurl could eat!”

Marat sped back to San Francisco in a hot lager stink, smoking and repacking his pipe every five miles, his hotboxed BMW steamy as a rainforest at lunchtime. Even soaked in relaxants, the only thing on the planet that made any sense was going back to Fresno and beating Sven senseless with the tennis rackets he kept in the trunk. His angry hands scrolled through radio stations and briefly settled on loud church music, a roof-rattling hymnal that called up fractured memories of minivan rides, the fable about his grandmother at the diner, Jasper’s mom, the one who’d cracked open the past and could probably do it again.

A few calls around the city got him an address in the worst part of Hunter’s Point, no phone number. He went first thing in the morning. Fifteen gangsters monitored his parking job through red eyes, and he hustled up caved-in stairs and rapped the weak door as hard as he could, staying low and moving around to make for a difficult target, until an array of locks were slowly unwound and he fell inside.

A bare bulb illuminated junky furniture obviously excavated from trash piles, a trash-bag-covered loveseat, a green plastic lawn table balanced out with folded newspaper under the legs, a couple of folding chairs and a hot plate and two twin beds in the corner, a wheelchair parked in front of a black-and-white television featuring Alex Trebek sans mustache. An ancient midget in a bathrobe held a broomstick warily. “We won’t have the rent until the Medicare check comes,” the midget said slowly, her voice a dying frog. “I told the last three that.”

“I’m Marat,” he said.

“Marat?” She dropped the broom and took a step closer, eyes widening like blooming black flowers. “Got your father’s eyes,” she ribbited. “Can I fix you a drink?”

“I’ll get it,” he said, and picked two chipped mugs off the dish rack, scrubbed them with a filthy rag, and filled them up with lemon-colored water from the tap.

“Thank you,” she said, easing into a folding chair. She held the mug under her nose. “I’m glad you came,” she said, “and I’m sorry we haven’t met sooner. I don’t get around like I used to.”

“You need help,” he stated. “You gotta get out of here.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Her watery eyes circled the grim room. “Been home for a long time. We’re used to it.”

“You’ll die in this room,” he pointed out. “They might not find you for months.”

Her face shuttered and reopened, fresh purple discoloring her irises. “That’s your Aunt Tina, watching television,” she said somberly.

“Jasper never gave you money?”

“He tried.” Insinuating something deep and dirty, everything Marat needed.

“Ditch this hole,” he said. “I’ll get you into the Sequoias today. It’s the nicest old-folks home in town. Gourmet meals, round-the-clock medical. They’ll take care of Tina too, from here on out, I’ll see to that.”

“I don’t know,” she warbled.

“They’ll be here at noon. Otherwise I’ll get this place condemned. It should have been torn down years ago.”

“Well.” Dabbing her hand at her face like a moist towelette. “I guess we’ll try it out.”

“Good.” He sniffed the tap water, detected chemicals and rust, then placed the mug on the table. “I need you to tell me about my father,” he said.

“What is there to know? He’s a big star now, up from the streets.”

“He’s had problems,” Marat said. “Made a lot of mistakes.”

“We all do,” she nodded.

“I need to know what he did,” he said. “He must have told you things. You must have seen things. I need to know where I come from, what’s inside me, so I can stop it.”

A long slow
pssh
, air leaving the tire. “He’s my son and I love him,” she said, “but part of him will never be right.” In slow, dispassionate detail Karen described the swimming pool abduction, the impromptu stop at the gas station bathroom, the massive gravity of diamond rings. Jasper ducking prophylactics, Esmereda’s judo press and cruel taunts setting off heartbroken thrashing, self-immolation, the darkness from which he could never dig out. A decade camping in the woods under the Golden Gate Bridge, his meals begged off the visitor center snack bar at closing time. Learning to climb hills sightless and fend off thugs with sweep kicks. Washing hollowed eye sockets with salt water, padding over excisions performed with a wheelbarrow wrench.

Nighttime trips to Tina’s bed. Forced entries and hanger abortions. Then hitchhiking to Louisiana and years on the hot sidewalks, stealing vodka out of grocery stores and singing in the sewers.

Marat walked to Tina’s wheelchair and stood behind her, placed his hands on the taped-up handlebars and watched half of
Jeopardy!
over the top of his aunt’s gray hair bun while she gurgled and snored. All the details lining up, much too right to be wrong.

How everything hurt. He kissed his aunt and grandmother goodbye, then walked to the car and called Joel. “Schedule a debate.”

“Not now. I got major cost overruns on the Manama project. They don’t tax their own people in Bahrain, but apparently it’s OK to tax me triple.”

“Last chance. Do a debate.”

“So I can get my ass waxed on live television? She has the training, the pedigree, the moves. I can’t hang.” Gobbling noises, the rapid and sloppy consumption of life force. “In other
words, this dirt has to be mind-blowing. Sloppy pigpen election-winning stuff. And all truth too, or else—consequences.”