The Winner: Part Thirty-One

“Waiter,” I yell over to the skinny, bowtied twerp in the corner who is there just to serve our table. “I’m empty.”

He comes over and takes the empty brandy snifter from in front of me and scurries off to the bar to get me a refill, my third in fifteen minutes. The other three fellows at the table are talking some stock market shit I can barely follow and don’t pay me any mind. Van Hertzwelder leans over to me and says quietly. “You should slow down on those. Remember, you have a job to do.”

I belch in his face. “I can blow up just as good drunk as I can sober. I just won’t mind so much drunk.”

Van Hertzwelder visibly winces when I say the words “blow up” even though the other three haven’t heard me. “Yes,” he says. “You most certainly did blow up your stroke count the last time you had four brandies before a game. Care to wager on again on the likelihood of that happening again?”

“Stroke what?” I slur. Van Hertzwelder gives me a slap on the back and one of those artificial, upper class chuckles, then goes back to ignoring me and praying I don’t say something stupid.

Really, I’m acting a lot more drunk than I actually am since I know it will piss Van Hertzwelder off. Sitting here, trying to act nonchalant with a bomb strapped to my wrist, four snifters of brandy is barely dulling my edge. Between that and the asthma medication I took earlier, I doubt the liquor is gonna have much of an effect on me.

So I won’t get drunk, but I might choke to death off the cigar smoke at this table. Some butler looking guy passed around a box of Cuban Cohibas when we first sat down (“Please don’t worry about their legality. There are certain rules that can be bent here, especially during diplomatic functions…”) but I declined. The only cigar I’ve ever smoked was a Swisher Sweet I shoplifted from a 7-11 when I was fourteen, and that one made me puke for an hour. I feel on the verge of puking from smelling the four of these assholes smoke theirs.

One of the President’s twenty year-old aides walks up to our table and says in her perky, Christian fat-girl voice, “Hello gentlemen! I’m just here to inform you that the President will meet you all out on the course in about fifteen minutes. He just needs to finish a conference call and he’ll be with you.”

“Good,” the member of our party who introduced himself to me as Buck Hargrove says. “I’m itching to get out on those links, see if George has improved his game since the spell we played in his first term.”

There’s a series of grunts of agreement around the table. The scrawny waiter finally brings back my brandy. This one looks about an ounce and a half lighter than the other three, but I don’t waste time telling him to take it back and top it off. Even if I didn’t have a bomb strapped to me, being in the presence of these jerk offs would make me want to drink. Like this fucking “Buck” character. His fake cowpoke accent makes him sound like the product of breeding too close to the gene pool, but I doubt the guy ever worked a day on a farm in his life. Shit, I doubt the guy ever really worked a day doing anything in his life. His hands were softer than a six-year old girl’s when I shook them. Despite that, he says he’s the CEO of some construction outfit with a couple billion dollars worth of no-bid contracts in Iraq. He was quite shameless about saying how he’s here to (as he said in his own words) “butter up Dub,” so he could get a few billion more to build schools in Anbar province that he never completed the first time.

The fellow he’s talking, whose name is Horace or something to looks more like just a straight up, evil middle aged white man. He’s got a bit less good ole’ boy bluster than Buck, so I have no idea what he’s here to do. Seeing that I’m the sole person who hasn’t jumped in on the conversation yet, he politely tries to include me. “So, Mr. Peanutz, how is your game? Have you played this course before?”

I’m too busy checking out his watch, a gold Rolex similar to mine. Well, similar in everything except that mine could wallpaper the room with the flesh of every person sitting at this table. I quickly realize he’s addressing me and say, “Sorry, what was that?”

Horace clears his throat. “I asked if you’d played this course before. I mean, looking at the layout for the first hole, I can’t believe that it just has a par of four.”

Great. Golf talk. What do I say to this? I decide to shrug and just tell the truth. “I’ll be honest here fellas, I haven’t ever played golf in my life unless you count the miniature golf I played at the rec center for my birthday when I was ten.” I could add that that was the only birthday my mother ever did anything special for me, but I don’t think these guys want to hear that Dr. Phil bullshit right now.

I thought that this Horace fuck would be taken aback by this, instead he just smiles. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about that today,” then he leans in closer to me. “If you say I said this, I’ll deny it. But even having never played golf before, you’ll still likely give the President a run for his money. George seems to populate his staff with nothing but sycophants that shield him from the reality that he can’t play golf worth a damn. I admire the fact that you’re honest about it though.”

“Well, I’ve always said honesty is the best policy,” I lie as I take another sip of my brandy.

Horace lets loose another insincere chuckle. “Cliché’s are cliché’s because they are true, my dear man. Since we’re being honest with each other, I’d like to talk with you about your prison privatization ideas.”

“Prison what?…oh, oh yeah,” I’d totally forgotten my the story I’d used for my cover. Probably not a good thing at this point. “How did you know I was here about that?”

Horace smiles. “My dear sir. A man in my position does his best to know as much about the people he’s paying a considerable amount of money to meet as he can before he steps in the room with them. Now, I know what Mr. Hargrove here is about. He wants to snatch up as many no-bid contracts as he can so he can purchase a yacht before we’re finally forced out of that Iraq mess. Carl Van Hertzwelder wants to make the jump directly from law to a Senate seat this election cycle and figures getting as much face time with the powers-that-be will help him. I myself am trying to lobby a plan to privatize the intelligence field as a way to supplement the CIA, NSA, and ONI, but really more to supplant them. Kind of like what groups like Blackwater are doing with the military.”

“Oh, and here I was thinking you were just another Jesus freak,” I say snidely, motioning towards the gold cross he’s wearing around his neck. Horace, however, seems non-plussed.

“My Catholic faith is important to me, yes. But the defense of free market capitalism means so much more since that is the only way to true religious freedom. I digress though. You, Mr. Peanutz, are something of a cipher. All I’ve been able to find out is that you’re hear to lobby the President about the privatization of prisons. Now, I’ve been able to put together that you’ve been in prison yourself and that you’ve come about your windfall from winning the state lottery.”

“Wow,” I say, gulping the rest of my brandy. “You’re good. I’d totally turn over the nation’s intelligence services over to you.”

“So why are you lobbying for more privatization of the prison system?” Horace comes out and says. “All the analysts I’ve read say that the prison privatization boom ended at least five years ago. And if anything, sentencing guidelines in the courts have been lightening up, meaning that privatized prisons are a low growth market. So my question is, why would you spend so much to try and lobby for such a low growth market?”

I glance briefly towards Van Hertzwelder, but he doesn’t seem to be too concerned that I’m talking to some wannabe spook (or at least just hides it well). Shit, if he can’t even see through the holes in my cover story, he can’t be that good at his job. So I tell him, “Well, I just happen to have some inside information that you don’t know about and I’m not really at liberty to tell about, so that’s that.”

“Very well, Mr. Peanutz,” Horace says. “If I can’t bend your ear as to what you’re up to now, perhaps sometime we should talk about what I do believe is a growth area. Privatized black sites in nations with few human rights laws. It will be the future of the intelligence industry as I see it. Nations typically can’t torture suspects without much public outcry, but companies within companies which are subsidiaries of companies owned by shell corporations would have fewer such restrictions.”

I’m kind of amused by the conspiratorial tone that Horace has taken with me, especially considering the fact that two of the people he’s sitting with are part of a bigger conspiracy than he could even comprehend. However, I don’t want to continue talking to him in case he isn’t a total dumbshit and puts two and two together, so I dismissively say, “Have your people talk to my people. We’ll lunch.”

He grins and claps me on the back, “Believe me, you’ll want to hear what I have to say. Remember, anything not done for the profit motive is inherently socialism. National security is no different.”

Horace pulls away from me and suddenly stands up. “Mr. President, how good to see you!”

In my peripheral vision, I see the President’s personal detail move in around us. They are all dressed in casual clothing, but their stern visage makes them unmistakably Secret Service. Then, I hear his voice, the voice I’d only heard filtered through news broadcasts or Internet clips of him flubbing some common homily: “Hey there, Horace, good to seeya again!”

George W. Bush is fucking standing right behind me.