Terry busied himself with coming up with “Boomsday”-themed podcasts and flash and pop-up Internet ads designed to put the fear of God into the under-thirties. Cass blogged away on CASSANDRA to rally the troops. She was finding this harder than she’d thought it would be. It was easier getting them to assault gated retirement communities and golf courses. Getting them excited about the political process…bo-ring.
She did online focus groups. She told them, “Okay, some of it may be boring and hard work, but if you want to get it done, you have to get involved.”
“Why can’t we just, you know, vote?”
A generation that had grown up with the Internet and text messaging was not inclined to go around banging on doors and handing out pamphlets and doing voter registration drives. They were, however, willing to blog.
And you could, Cass found, get their attention.
“What would you say if I told you that one-third to one-half of everything you earn over your lifetime will go to paying off debt incurred before you were born?”
“That totally sucks.”
She thought, Maybe we should change Randy’s slogan to “Jepperson-He Won’t Suck.”
One problem they did not have was fund-raising. Randy was happy to be the first president in U.S. history to pay for his own campaign out of his own pocket. This didn’t sit well with Cass.
“I think we at least ought to try to raise some money,” she said. “It’ll look better.”
“Au contraire,” Randy said. “Lots of my colleagues in the Senate bought their seats. I think it sends a good message: He can’t be bought. He already has all the money he needs.”
Cass had noticed that Randy had started referring to himself in the third person. One night, during a rare dinner alone at the Georgetown house, he began speaking as if he were being interviewed.
“Do you want more chicken, honey?” she said.
“The chicken was delicious. The peas were delicious. Everything was scrumptious, in fact. I remember as a child, we’d have peas with every meal. Proper nutrition was a factor. Balanced meals were a factor-”
“Randy?”
“Yes, dear?”
“Who are you talking to?”
“You, dear. Why?”
“I got the impression that we were doing a live network feed.”
Randy looked around. “No, I don’t think so.”
Chapter 34
It had been a long time since he’d been back to Frenchman’s Bluff, overlooking the Coosoomahatchie River. Gideon Payne was attended by several campaign aides and the crew of 60 Minutes. The producers had even found a 1955 Cadillac Eldorado convertible with red leather upholstery.
“Will you be sending the car off the cliff?” Gideon inquired. The answer, thankfully, was no.
“It is a bit eerie,” Gideon told the reporter who was doing the segment. “Most eerie.”
“You’re a sport to do this,” the reporter said.
“My pleasure.” Gideon smiled faintly. “Well, perhaps that’s not quite the right word.”
“Okay,” said a cameraman, “we’re rolling.”
“Mother was sitting right where you are now, in the passenger seat. We often came to this place on our Sunday drives. We’d stop right where we are now. On that day, I put it in park, just like…so. Set the parking brake, so. I left the motor running. We never stayed very long. Got out of the car…” Gideon opened the door and got out, reporter, cameraman, and sound technician following. “And walked over to this spot here. There used to be a bush. So you see, I had privacy. I was standing here, facing away from the car, taking care of what had to be taken care of, and that’s when I heard this dreadful sound.”
“What kind of a sound?”
“A sort of grinding, mechanical sound. Then I heard Mother shrieking and expostulating. I zipped myself up and turned and saw that the car was rolling down toward the edge of the cliff. And I ran.”
“Can you show us?”
“I was more, shall we say, fit in those days. I ran toward the car. Mother was continuing her shrieking, and I think trying to turn the car, also doing something with the transmission. She went over before I could reach her. It was dreadful. I still remember the sound of the car.…?It’s a moment that has stayed with me all my life. As you can imagine.”
“But if the transmission somehow slipped out of park, wouldn’t it have gone into reverse?”
“One would think,” Gideon said. “Yes.”
“And yet the sheriff’s report states that the transmission was in drive when the car landed.”
“Yes,” Gideon said, patting his vest pocket for his watch, “I can only surmise that Mother, in her panic, managed to shift into drive. She was not very adept at driving to begin with.”
“The sheriff’s report also indicated that the parking brake was off.”
“Yes,” Gideon said, “I believe that was accounted for by the impact of the landing. It’s nearly four hundred feet down. Don’t stand too close.”
“Did you kill your mother?”
“No, ma’am,” Gideon said. “But I do appreciate your candor, and I appreciate your having come all this way to put this matter to rest.”
“Is it at rest? Some people around here we’ve talked to still seem to have doubts.”
“Well…” Gideon smiled. “I would say to you, let them come forward and present their evidence. I don’t think they will, for evil shunneth the light and hideth its face at noon. No, I did not kill her. In fact, this is part of the reason I find myself a candidate for the presidency. There are those who are advocating that we drive our dear old mothers and fathers off cliffs. Surely there must be some better way of resolving our Social Security and Medicare problems, critical as they may be.”
Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick…
Gideon watched the broadcast with his campaign staff at headquarters. When it ended, the place erupted in whoops and hollers. (Most of the staff was from the South.) His press secretary, Teeley, gave a thumbs-up, despite the bit with the aging coroner, who told the 60 Minutes correspondent, “I don’t think we’re evah really going to get to the bottom of what happened that day at Frenchman’s Bluff.” Gideon was accepting congratulations and pats on the back when his aide thrust forward and said that there was a call from a Ms. Tolstoy.
“Who?” Gideon said.
“Something about a gold watch.…?Reverend? Are you all right? Should I fetch some bicarbonate?”
Cass had watched 60 Minutes with Terry and Randy. Randy said, “He came off rather well, I thought. I still think he did the old girl in.”
“No,” Cass said. “He didn’t. But there’s something missing to it. Whatever. He came off well. He defused it.”
Randy said, “I’ll bet my guy Speck could find out if he sent her off that cliff.”
Cass said, “Now, now-we’re not going negative, remember?”
“Not yet, anyway,” Terry muttered.
“I thought the plan,” Randy said, “was to scare the shit out of the U30s?” U30s was their shorthand for the under-thirty voters they were after. It sounded like a German submarine.
“It’s not the same thing,” Terry said.
“We’re going negative against Boomers, not individual candidates,” Cass said. “We need a symbol. I’m tired of doing photo ops in front of the Social Security building.”
“We could trash a few more golf courses,” Terry said.
“Been there, burned that.”
Cass’s cell phone rang. She took the call.
“I guess the Today show watches Sixty Minutes. They’d like the senator”-she sighed-“to return to Bosnia.”