about him. I’m not even sure he has to.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
I didn’t understand it, but I believed him.
It was nearly half an hour later that the mayor came walking up to us at the bar. He was nervous and sweating, and he kept looking behind him as if to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He was obviously surprised to see so many of us. He kept staring at Mary.
“Glad you could join us,” Philipe said, extending his hand.
Horth shook it. “Who… who are you guys?”
“We’re Ignored,” Philipe said. “Like you. We call ourselves Terrorists for the Common Man.”
“Terrorists?”
“And we’ve come to help you out.” He stood, and the rest of us did, too. “Come on. Let’s go back to our rooms. We have a lot to talk about. We have a lot to discuss. We have a lot to plan.”
Dazed, confused, the mayor nodded, and all fourteen of us walked unnoticed through the crowd, past the doormen, and outside into the cool night air.
Thirteen
As I had, as Junior had, as Paul had, as Tim had, Joe Horth fit in with us perfectly. We were instantly close. He knew us, we knew him, and although in the past that immediate camaraderie had always made me feel warm and good and nice, watching it work this time, being so acutely aware of it, gave me the creeps.
It always came back to that.
We brought Joe to our motel, but he immediately suggested that we come with him to his house, and there was no argument. While the rest of us packed, gathered our stuff, Philipe talked to him about the terrorists, explained what we were about, what we hoped to accomplish. The mayor listened eagerly, enthusiastically, and he seemed genuinely excited by what Philipe had to say.
“We think we can help you,” Philipe told him.
“Help me?”
“Help you keep your job. And you, in turn, can help us. This could be the beginning of a true coalition. What we have here is the opportunity to give political power to a group that’s never even been recognized, much less catered to.”
The mayor shook his head. “You don’t understand. The only reason I have this job is because I’ll do what they say. And they know it. They want someone to follow their orders and be as unobtrusive as possible — ”
“Who’s ‘they’?” Steve asked.
“Why, our local business leaders and the desert’s most prominent and respected citizens.” Joe’s voice was sarcastic. “I dared to make a small decision on my own, without their approval, and that’s why I’m out.”
“We’ll see about that,” Philipe said.
“What exactly did you do?” I asked.
“I broke a tie on the city council and voted to approve funding for a new Softball diamond at Abbey Park. I was supposed to have tabled the discussion, held it off until the next meeting, and first asked them how I should vote.”
“No, you weren’t,” Philipe said. “You did the right thing. And now we’re here to back you up.”
“I have a meeting with them tomorrow,” Joe said. “Come to the meeting with me.”
“We will,” Philipe promised, and there was a hint of steel in his voice. “And we’ll see if we can’t get these guys to back down.”
Joe’s house was a nondescript dwelling on a street of mildly upscale tract homes. Exactly the sort of place that we found most comfortable. He had no wife, no roommate, no live-in lover, so all of the rooms were free, but with so many people the place was still pretty crowded. If we were going to sleep here, most of us would end up on the floor in sleeping bags.
We were tired, though, and didn’t care about the close quarters. I wound up sleeping in the living room with Philipe and James and Mary — Mary on the couch, the rest of us on the floor.
“You think I should go in there and fuck him?” Mary asked as we settled in.
“Give it a day,” Philipe said. “He needs a little time to adjust.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked.
“Me, you, and Steve will go to this meeting with Joe, scope it out, see where things stand. Then we’ll be able to decide what we’re going to do.”
“What do you
He did not answer.
We woke up early, spurred by Joe’s alarm, and after all of the showers had been taken, we headed to the International House of Pancakes for breakfast. Joe offered to pay, but Philipe explained that we didn’t have to pay, and after we ate, we simply left.
The mayor took us on a short tour of his city — Philipe, Steve, and I riding in his car, the others following — and we cruised through downtown Desert Palms, past the new mall, through the growing section of corporate office buildings. “Ten years ago,” he explained, “none of this existed. Desert Palms was a few shacks and stores outside of Palm Springs.”
Philipe looked out the window. “So, basically, these rich guys owned a lot of worthless desert land out here, and they stacked the city council with their people and got the land zoned the way they wanted, got the city to chip in for redevelopment projects, and they got even richer.”
“Pretty much.”
“How did they find you? What did you used to do?”
Joe smiled. “I was the personnel assistant for what passed for city hall back then.”
“And no one ever noticed you or paid attention to you, and then suddenly someone offered to support you in the race for mayor and you were treated like a king.”
“Something like that.”
“You must’ve done something else besides vote for a softball diamond,” I said. “They couldn’t want you out just because of that.”
“It’s the only thing I can think of.”
Steve shook his head. “I don’t understand how they can tell you you can’t be mayor anymore. The people around here voted for you. What if they want to vote for you again? You should just tell these guys to beat off, you don’t need them.”
“But I do need them.”
“Why?”
Philipe snorted derisively. “Are you kidding? How do you think someone gets elected in these small elections? You think candidates personally meet all the people in their districts? You think voters know where the candidates stand on all the issues? Be serious. People vote on name recognition. Candidates
Joe nodded. “Exactly.”
“But he must have name recognition already. He’s been mayor for a long time.”
“Who’s the mayor of Santa Ana?”
“I don’t know.”
“See? You’re from Santa Ana and you don’t even know. Besides that, Joe’s Ignored. You honestly think people are going to remember who he is?”
