That was a good meal.
The State Dinner, however, was giving that stolen room-service meal some serious competition. The White House chef, Guy Fieri, had prepared an array of appetizers, culled from the finest fast-food joints in the DC area. They’d all provided the food gratis for the free advertising. No president had ever had sponsorship deals in place with fast-food restaurants before, but the United States had never seen a president like Donald J. Trump before. It was all quite practical-and, dare to say, somewhat genius.
For Jimmie, the best part was that it was all on the house. He wasn’t expected to tip the waitstaff even 10 percent. The White House was taking care of the bill.
No, scratch that. The best part was when he spotted Cat Diaz seated at one of the press tables… and then she spotted him sitting next to the world’s two most powerful leaders.
Jimmie raised his Miller Lite to her from across the room in a mock toast. He thought about dialing his smirk down a notch or two but couldn’t bring himself to do it. It was like those bracelets, the ones they sold in the White House gift shop: WWTDYL? (What Would Trump Do, You Loser?). When Trump won-which he did often-he let people know about it. “If you don’t talk about your successes, nobody’s going to know about them,” Trump wrote in the expanded coloring book edition of Trump: The Art of the Deal, which Jimmie had only colored a quarter of the way through. “And if nobody knows about your successes, then you haven’t really won, have you?”
Jimmie puckered his lips and threw a smooch Cat’s way.
She rolled her eyes and looked away in disgust.
Hashtag: WINNING.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Panda Express
“It’s good to be king,” Trump said, startling Jimmie. The president had seen his little back-and-forth with Cat.
“President,” Jimmie said. “Don’t you mean, It’s good to be president?”
“Same difference.”
A trio of waiters rolled carts up to their table. The main course had arrived: burgers. Trump’s favorite food. Distinctly American.
Unlike the rest of the appetizers and side dishes that had been rolled out, the burgers weren’t served in fast-food wrappers. The burgers stood half a foot tall, with buns the size of Trump’s ego. The meat bleeding onto the plates had to weigh at least a half pound. At least. And the smell… the smell was so invigorating that Jimmie had to shift the napkin in his lap because of how hard it made him.
The KGB agent stepped in to sample Putin’s burger. Jimmie eyed Trump’s plate, awaiting an order to do likewise.
“Touch my burger, and I cut your fingers off,” Trump snapped. “No joke, buckaroo.”
Jimmie dug his teeth into his own burger, tearing off a chunk like a velociraptor tearing into the belly of a just-felled triceratops.
“This… is… wow,” he said while chewing. What few manners he had had completely gone out the window. “Trump Steak?”
“Panda Express,” Putin said, causing Trump to giggle with a full mouth.
Panda Express didn’t serve burgers, as far as Jimmie knew. Then again, when you were the president of the most powerful nation in the world, you could probably call in a few favors from your friends in the fast-food industry. Maybe they’d made MSG burgers, just for the State Dinner.
Putin took a sip of beer. “I kill it myself. You like?”
Jimmie nodded. “Venison?”
A look of confusion crossed Putin’s face.
“Deer,” Jimmie said. “From when you guys went hunting today?”
“Panda,” Putin said. “Is panda. Is most challenging animal to track since they sleep so much.”
“You have pandas in Russia?”
Putin shook his head. “You have pandas here. In zoo. We go hunting at zoo.”
Jimmie stared at the burger in his hands. Red juice ran down his palms and dripped onto the plate.
He’d visited the National Zoo a couple of years back. Which of the giant pandas was he eating right now? Tian Tian? Mei Xiang? Bao Bao? Or-God forbid-the cute-as-a-button cub, Bei Bei? Any of them but Bei Bei!
Jimmie looked around the room at the packed tables. The State Dinner guests were busy gnashing their way unawares through panda burgers. It would be a miracle if Trump and Putin had left a single giant panda alive at the National Zoo. It would be a miracle if they’d left any animal alive. How they’d let Trump and Putin stalk and kill caged animals was beyond him. Diplomatic immunity, perhaps?
The first lady was right to be distrustful of Putin. The man was a bad influence on Trump. How much of the talk about “going for a three-peat against England” was just Trump trying to impress his BFF? Was the Russian president influencing the American president in even more direct ways… advising him, perhaps? Had this clearly dangerous man thrown Lester off the roof so that they could continue beating the war drums together?
Jimmie set the burger down. The thought of eating one of the last two thousand pandas in the world disgusted him. He couldn’t bring himself to finish the burger.
However, he couldn’t let it go to waste, either.
He flagged down a passing waiter. “Could I get a to-go box for this?”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Check, Please
Jimmie glanced in the direction of Clinton Plaza as he stepped off the bus. Had the president known about his little clandestine meeting last night? Unlikely. The “dangerous people with dangerous ideas” could have been the Occupy protestors who camped out in the park when the weather was nice enough. If the president had known about his midnight meeting, Jimmie would surely have been fired by now.
Or worse.
As Jimmie turned the doorknob to his room, he noticed the frame was splintered around the lock. It hadn’t been damaged this morning.
He pushed the door open slowly, holding the key out like a knife. It was the only weapon he had on him. He hoped the key might catch the streetlight and appear to be a weapon in his hand.
“I’ve got a knife,” Jimmie announced, peering into the darkness. Then as an afterthought, “And a gun.”
Why not add some nunchucks to that list while you’re at it, genius?
There was no response from inside the room, save for the sound of his own voice rattling around his head. He flipped the light switch on.
The room was empty. There was no assassin in the bathroom. Ditto with the shower and the closet and underneath the queen-size bed.
His laptop was still under the pile of soiled laundry. Nothing had been stolen. Maybe somebody had opened his laptop-maybe they’d hacked into it-but why not just take it? While there were unanswered questions, he had no doubt that someone had been in his room. Somebody besides the cleaning staff.
He ran down the list of suspects. While Putin had been with Trump all day, he could have sent one of his KGB goons over to do the dirty work. Corey Lewandowski could have snuck away from the White House at any point during the day, though it seemed unlikely with his busy schedule. Chris Christie? Yeah, that sounded about right. A little B and E seemed right up the White House janitor’s alley.
The Socialist Justice Warriors could have also been upset he rejected their offer. They could have come for his laptop, looking for evidence of presidential wrongdoing on it. If so, they were pissing up the wrong tree. Jimmie knew better than to access his work e-mail from his home computer. He didn’t want to pull a Hillary.
Regardless of who the culprit was, the Royal Linoleum Hotel was no longer safe. If it ever had been.