Distraction - Bruce Sterling [10]
“No.” Fontenot lowered his voice. “I might have. I’m an old man, I’m old-fashioned. But I’ve seen you at work, so I know you better now.” He thumped his artificial leg against the ground. “That’s not why I’m leaving you, Oscar. But I am leaving. The campaign’s over, you won. You won big. I’ve done a lot of campaigns in my day, and I really think yours may have been the prettiest I ever saw. But now I’m back home to the bayous, and it’s time for me to leave the business. Forever. I’m gonna see your convoy safely through to Buna, then I’m outta here.”
“I respect that decision, I truly do,” Oscar said. “But I’d prefer it if you stayed on with us—temporarily. The krewe respects your professional judgment. And the Buna situation might need your security skills.” Oscar drew a breath, then started talking with more focus and intensity. “I haven’t exactly broken this to our boys and girls on the bus, but I’ve been scoping out the Buna situation. And this delightful Texas vacation retreat that’s our destination tonight—basically, it looks to me like a major crisis waiting to happen.”
Fontenot shook his head. “I’m not in the market for a major crisis. I’ve been looking forward to retirement. I’m gonna fish, I’m gonna hunt a little. I’m gonna get myself a shack in the bayou that has a stove and a fryin’ pan, and no goddamn nets or telephones, ever, ever again.”
“I can make it worth your while,” Oscar coaxed. “Just a month, all right? Four weeks till the Christmas holidays. You’re still on salary, as long as you’re with us. I can double that if I have to. Another month’s pay.”
Fontenot wiped rain from his hat brim. “You can do that?”
“Well, not directly, not from the campaign funds, but Pelicanos can handle it for us. He’s a wizard at that sort of thing. Two months’ salary for one month’s work. And at Boston rates, too. That might swing the earnest money on your standard bayou shack.”
Fontenot was weakening. “Well, you’ll have to let me think that over.”
“You can have weekends.”
“Really?”
“Three-day weekends. Since you’re looking for a place to live.”
Fontenot sighed. “Well …”
“Audrey and Bob wouldn’t mind doing some real-estate scanning for you. They’re world-class oppo research people, and they’re just killing time out here. So why should you get taken in a house deal? They can scare you up a dream home, and even a decent real-estate agent.”
“Damn. I never thought of that angle. That’s true, though. That could be worth a lot to me. It’d save me a lot of trouble. All right, I’ll do it.”
They shook hands.
They had reached their vehicles. There was no sign of Norman-the-Intern, however. Fontenot stood up on the dented hood of his hummer, his prosthetic leg squeaking with the effort, and finally spotted Norman with his binoculars.
Norman was talking with some Air Force personnel. They were clustered together under the sloping roof of a concrete picnic table, next to a wooden walkway that led into the cypress-haunted depths of the Sabine River swamp. “Should I fetch him for you?” Fontenot said.
“I’ll get him,” Oscar said. “I brought him. You can call Pelicanos back at the bus, and brief the krewe on the situation.”
Young people were a distinct minority in contemporary America. Like most minorities, they tended to fraternize. Norman was young enough to be of military age. He was leaning against a graffiti-etched picnic roof support and haranguing the soldiers insistently.
“… radar-transparent flying drones with X-ray lasers!” Norman concluded decisively.
“Well, maybe we have those, and maybe we don’t,” drawled a young man in blue.
“Look, it’s common knowledge you have them. It’s like those satellites that read license plates from orbit—they’re yesterday’s news, you’ve had ’em for a zillion years. So my point is: given that technical capacity, why don’t you just take care of this Governor of Louisiana?