The Coyotes of Carthage Read online

  Dedication

  For Brandi and Alleah

  Epigraph

  The [First] Amendment is written in terms of “speech,” not speakers. Its text offers no foothold for excluding any category of speaker, from single individuals to partnerships of individuals, to unincorporated associations of individuals, to incorporated associations of individuals . . .

  —Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring, Citizens United v. FEC (2010)

  Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their “personhood” often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of “We the People” by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.

  —Justice John Paul Stevens, dissenting, Citizens United v. FEC (2010)

  Now what you gon’ do with a crew that got money much longer than yours, and a team much stronger than yours . . .

  —The Notorious B.I.G. featuring Puff Daddy, “Mo Money Mo Problems”

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Part I: The Straw Man

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Part II: The Canvass

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Part III: The Council Vote

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part IV: Goodbye

  Chapter Seventeen

  Part V: The Final Stretch

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part VI: Election Day

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part I

  The Straw Man

  Chapter One

  Andre marvels, watching a kid, a stranger of maybe sixteen, pinch another wallet. This lift makes the kid’s fifth, at least that Andre’s seen this morning—two on the train, two on the underground platform, and now this one on the jam-packed escalator that climbs toward the surface. The kid’s got skills, mad skills. He makes his lift and keeps on moving. There. Right there. The kid picks up another, his sixth, with the practiced grace of a ballerino, this time the mark, some corporate chump, probably a lobbyist, with slicked-back hair and a shit-eating grin. No one suspects a thing, and why should they? This kid blends in, looks like a prep-school student—and, who knows, perhaps he is—his aesthetic complete with a bookbag, khakis, and a dog-eared copy of de Tocqueville tucked beneath his arm. The kid reminds Andre of himself at that age—lean, hungry, steel eyes with smooth skin—but Andre concedes that he never possessed this kid’s talent.

  Aboveground the kid disappears into the big-city bustle, and Andre thinks, Good for you, li’l man. Go in peace. For sure, the kid has plenty of places to hide. Northwest this morning is a mess: snowy, busy, noisy, the perfect urban jungle in which to flee. Andre works around the corner, and a lifetime ago, his family made a home inside a boarded-up rathole six blocks over. Andre has, in fact, lived in the District his entire life, thirty-five years save a stint across the river, two years in juvie for a grift gone bad on a nearby street. Seventeen years ago, when he left kiddie correctional, he never imagined he’d work on K Street, or that he’d own a walk-in closet full of three-piece suits, and the sudden realization, that he might lose it all, cuts like shards of glass crushed into the lining of his stomach.

  He trudges a path through wet snow. Last night’s blizzard has caused panic in DC; the streets, slick with black ice, prove too difficult for all but yellow cabs. He wishes he’d taken a different route, perhaps down L Street, where hobos toss dice and the high-rises don’t funnel the cold. He’s tired of freezing winters. Tired of cold that blisters his fingertips. Tired of crowds and congestion and construction. If he loses his job today, and he’s pretty sure he will, he’ll move across the country, someplace with palm trees, someplace where no one bothers to vote.

  On the corner, a homeless man sits atop a grate, his fists punching a peg leg that peeks from beneath his blanket. The man howls, frustrated that no one will help a white veteran. Most folks ignore him. Some folks laugh. A doe-eyed blonde, maybe nineteen or twenty, drops coins into his tin cup. The man sifts the change, sorting nickels from pennies, then pitches the gift back into the blonde’s face. “Bitch, what the fuck am I supposed to do with eighteen cents?”

  The blonde, stunned and shamed, looks toward Andre, her wide eyes asking: What did I do wrong? Andre wants to shrug, to say the guy’s an asshole, but he has a point. Three nickels, three pennies: that won’t even buy you ramen noodles. Instead Andre furrows his brow and, in his most apologetic tone, the voice he knows comforts young white women, says, “My God, are you okay? He has no right to treat you that way. Should I call the cops?”

  He knows the blonde will say no, and when she does, her humiliation vanishing, she smiles with the confidence of a fool assured by a complete stranger. Andre pops his suit’s collar, breathes warmth into his fists, takes pride that he hasn’t lost his touch.

  The homeless man shouts, trembling with rage, his sunburned face and filthy beard giving the appearance of a downtrodden Santa. Andre suspects this guy’s newly homeless. If this bum had lived on the streets for long, he’d know that the archdiocese opens hypothermia shelters when the weather gets this cold. He’d also know that today, near Dupont, the Methodists distribute leather-bound Bibles and burlap sacks brimming with groceries. Louder and louder the homeless man screams, claims he’s a veteran of Kandahar, an assertion Andre doubts. The VA, for all its faults, can do a lot better than a peg leg, a wooden cone that looks like part of a preschooler’s pirate costume. Andre suppresses the urge to snatch the man’s blanket, to expose his working limbs, to prove that the peg leg is nothing more than a prop. Everyone else in Washington has a scam; why shouldn’t this guy?

  Andre pushes forward, passing chain bakeries and trendy cafés, remembers when white folks feared walking down these streets. This morning, the tourists have flocked here, defying the cold, crowding the sidewalks, in search of apple-spice muffins, pumpkin lattes, and silly trinkets like bobbleheads that double as proof of patriotism.

  Two more blocks, his woolen socks now soaked, Andre reaches his office building. A dozen women huddle fifteen feet from the entrance, shivering, cigarettes in hand. He recognizes each of them—analysts he’s led in the field—and his stomach sinks when each avoids meeting his eyes.

  He enters the building through brass revolving doors, finds custodians mopping footprints from the marble floor. He crosses the lobby, access card in hand, and rushes the turnstiles that separate him from the elevators. This is the test, he knows. If the turnstile fails to read his card, he’s finished. So when the security light flashes green, allowing Andre to pass, he feels a moment’s relief. He strolls toward the elevator, head held high, shoulders pinned back, the smoothest brother he could possibly be. Behind the front desk, the guard, a barrel-chested ex-marine, stands and clears his throat.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Ross,” Sabatino whispers. It’s not his fault. Sab’s just doing his job. Still, Andre remembers getting Sabatino
’s smart-ass nephew an internship on the Hill.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mr. Ross. Mrs. Fitzpatrick, she called down, said to call ahead when you got in.” Sabatino looks both ways, then leans close. “But say I didn’t see you? That’ll give you time, five, six minutes. Get you a good head start?”

  Andre chuckles. Never doubt the loyalty of a U.S. Marine. He claps Sabatino’s shoulder, smiles to show his gratitude, says, “Thanks, I’m good. Go ahead. Call her. I’m heading up now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Sabatino says. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “A small favor. There’s a homeless guy by the Metro stop.”

  “The lying fuck who says he’s a vet?”

  “Contact city hall. Tell them to send a van. Use the firm’s name. Someone needs to get that asshole off the streets. Otherwise he’ll freeze to death.”

  Sabatino agrees, then calls the elevator. The brass doors open, inviting Andre inside, where, over a hidden speaker, plays Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things.”

  “Good luck, Mr. Ross,” Sab says. “Let me know if you need backup.”

  Andre presses his access card against the control panel, and the doors shut. The panel beeps twice, and the elevator whisks him skyward, past six stories of analysts and researchers: the well-paid statisticians, pollsters, accountants, media trackers, copywriters, and investigators, many of whom will be happy to see him gone. Their glee isn’t personal. They simply want his job. A senior associate falls, one of them rises. Office politics, plain and simple.

  The elevator doors open. The lights of the eighth-floor lobby flicker, and Andre knows this may be the last time he steps into the nerve center of Martin, Fitzpatrick & DeVille. He sidesteps the receptionist, pursues the hall that leads toward his office. The path is a straight shot between the offices of the other senior associates, with their Ivy League degrees and inherited vacation homes. Halfway down the busy hall, he passes a glass-enclosed conference room and casts a sideways glance inside. He recognizes a face, no, two faces, no, three, four, five, six, seven. Shit. Then he spots a poster-board map of Indianapolis, and a heavy weight shifts inside his chest. He knows he’ll be fired by the end of the day, but now he’s pissed. For Christ’s sake, he’s worked Indianapolis for six months, made media contacts, registered his political action committee, presented an electoral strategy that pleased the finicky billionaire client. He feels his anger spike but resolves to play it cool, left hand slipped inside his pocket, a dash of swagger in his step. He knows they’re watching him, judging him, sizing him up, and he will never—never—let these white people see him sweat.

  In his office waits Fiona Fitzpatrick, the sole female founding partner. He appreciates that she’s come in person to announce his fate. For nearly seventeen years she’s been good to him, a second mother, the trusted mentor who shepherded his career. He has few regrets about his most recent campaign—his assignment was to form a political action committee that would get a governor elected, and that’s precisely what he did. But he understands that his tactics may have brought shame upon the firm and, quite possibly, embarrassed the woman who has shown him nothing but kindness. The notion that he’s complicated Mrs. Fitz’s life, that he has somehow tarnished her reputation, that he may have betrayed her faith in him—these accusations burn the blood around his heart. He takes a deep breath, struggles to cool his rage. It is the same rage he felt at the peg-legged man, at his gleeful colleagues, at her decision to reassign Indianapolis, but, if he’s being honest, it’s mostly the rage he feels toward himself.

  Mrs. Fitz, seventy-something years old, her pantsuit the shade of red wine, wastes no time. “Our internal polling had your candidate ahead by twelve points. Twelve points. You could have won in a landslide. And, bright boyo that you are, you decide to do what? You decide to run up the score. To go after the opponent’s family. For the love of God, what could’ve possibly possessed you?” When Mrs. Fitz gets angry, she prefers to ask and answer her own questions. Andre adores this about her. “I’ll tell you what possessed you. Your pride. You wanted bragging rights. Wanted to come back here a hero, to strut around this office like—”

  “Excuse me, ma’am. My ego is not that fragile.”

  “Don’t interrupt me again,” she says. “And your ego is precisely that fragile.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I know you want to make junior partner,” she says. “I want that too. But when you make reckless mistakes like this, you don’t make it easy. I mean really, Dre. Really. Thoughtless. Lighting a fire that you couldn’t extinguish. Did you not think of that? No.”

  She throws up her hands, plops into the chair beside his desk. He worries about the strain that creases her face. When he’s her age, he’ll have the good sense to retire. She’s accomplished so much, a trailblazing career: aide to Bobby Kennedy, counsel to Teddy, deputy White House chief of staff—then there are the six sons she’s raised and the two husbands she’s buried. She should be living in Miami, angry at squirrels that invade her bird feeder. Instead she runs a political consulting firm that bears her name, trying her best to get the right people elected, she says, comfortable with the reality that she’ll get the wrong people elected along the way.

  He says, “I’ll clear out of here in an hour.”

  She dismisses his resignation with a wave.

  “I don’t want to cause you any more trouble.”

  “If you didn’t want to cause me trouble, you wouldn’t have hashed it up in the first place.”

  “Ma’am, I know. I—”

  “Stop trying to be noble,” she says. “It’s tacky.”

  Andre reads her expression, and, for the first time, he clearly sees the predicament. He suspects she’s already called around town, trying to find solid ground, a comfortable place for her protégé to land. But finding him another job, he now recognizes, presents challenges even beyond her influence. To begin with, she has few friends among the Republicans who control both the White House and each chamber of Congress. But even if she could find a quiet, out-of-the-way post—a press secretary to a friendly senator, an advisor to a politically ambitious NGO—she still would have to convince the firm’s two other founding partners not to invoke the ironclad noncompete, the clauses of which would prohibit Andre, for one federal election cycle, from lobbying, campaigning, or pursuing any paid political activity, a nebulous phrase whose meaning could be decided only by an arbitrator of the firm’s choosing. And if, by some miracle, she overcame the arbitration obstacle, a herculean task at which others have tried and failed, he’d still be a thirty-five-year-old black man with a criminal record, four felonies the court long ago sealed but that still appear each time he Googles his own full name. Toussaint Andre Ross. He sits behind his desk, changes his socks. “So what do we do?”

  She points toward a manila envelope on his desk: Carthage County.

  He skims the executive summary: $250,000 in dark money to pass a ballot initiative in the boondocks of South Carolina. Secret corporate-financed campaigns keep this firm afloat, but everything about this specific assignment is offensive: the puny budget, the insignificant location, the utter lack of prestige. Worst of all, no bonus if he wins. And though he knows this assignment is beneath him, Andre will not be ungrateful. He realizes that to save his career, his patron has had to horse-trade, sacrificing something she valued to soothe the angst of others. So, for her, he will not whine; he will not complain; he will not act like a homeless man too good for eighteen cents.

  “It’s rubbish,” she says. “But the assignment is short, thirteen weeks. You’re close enough if an emergency arises with your brother.”

  “Probably best I lie low,” he says. “What did you have to give them?”

  “It is what it is.” She takes a tin from her pocket, plucks a mint from inside, then tosses him the tin. “Didn’t I buy you gloves for Christmas?”

  Andre eats a mint, which is bitter and tart. Who eats these things as treats? Maybe, if he does find a new job
, he’ll summon the courage to finally tell her that, while he loves her, she has terrible taste in sweets.

  She says, “You leave tonight.”

  “Thirteen weeks in South Carolina?” he says. “I can do that.”

  “Good.” She rises, straightens her suit. “It’s not like you have a choice.”

  * * *

  One hour later, Andre raps on the door of a two-story rowhouse. He doesn’t like this Northeast neighborhood: icy sidewalks, pulsing music, teenage boys who loiter on stoops. Two weeks ago, while Andre was away, rival gangs sprayed bullets across this street, the sole casualty a seeing-eye dog that seemed to know every command except for duck.

  “Dre? Honey.” Vera opens the door, hugs him and invites him inside, where he’s overwhelmed by a stench that he guesses is sour milk. Yet the smell is only the beginning. Dirty clothes litter the living room carpet, and oyster pails lie spread across the table. He tries to resist the urge to judge but can’t help himself. Damn, Vera. You don’t have a job; the least you could do is tidy your home.

  “I’m so glad to see you.” She points toward a sofa that he must clear to sit. The couch, lumpy, sticky, faces a bare wall, where, a year ago, a flat-screen TV hung. The television was a gift, something Andre bought to comfort his brother. Vera swears a burglar snatched it. She even filed a police report. Andre suspects she hocked the television and pocketed the cash, insurance against the possibility that, if Hector dies, she might again be cast onto the streets. Andre doesn’t hold that against her—he remembers sleeping in alleyways, remembers the compulsion to squirrel away cash—but he’ll never again buy this house nice things.

  “Excuse the mess,” she says. “Handsome, baby, c’mon in here.”

  Handsome, a square-headed eight-year-old, stomps into the room wearing only plaid boxers. Andre cannot see himself in his nephew. Nor, for that matter, can he see Hector. But Vera and Hector have a complicated relationship, forged first as junkies, then maintained through sobriety. If Hector doesn’t question the boy’s paternity, then Andre’s happy to ignore the obvious.