“Oh,” Steve said. He nodded. “I understand.”
We drove back to the mayor’s house. The meeting was scheduled for eleven o’clock in one of the corporate offices we’d passed on our tour. Philipe told the others they could hang around, go shopping, do whatever they wanted, but they had to be back by one o’clock because we were going to have a strategy meeting to decided on our next course of action.
Joe changed into nice clothes — a suit and tie — and Philipe, Steve, and I piled into his car. The four of us drove downtown.
The office building into which we walked reminded me uncomfortably of Automated Interface and I found myself thinking of Stewart’s dead, bloodied body, but I forced myself to push those thoughts aside, and we followed Joe through the lobby, to an elevator. He pushed the button for the fifth floor.
The metal doors opened on a long, plushly carpeted hallway. We walked down the hall to an office. The plaque on the wooden double doors read: TERENCE HARRINGTON, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD.
Joe knocked timidly.
Philipe reached over, rapped more loudly.
The mayor licked his lips. “Let me do the talking.”
Philipe shrugged, nodded.
The door swung open. There was no one behind it; it had been opened electronically. We stepped into what looked like an unusually opulent doctor’s waiting room. Another set of doors immediately opened at the room’s far end. Through the doorway, we could see an extraordinarily large desk, behind which sat one of the business-suited men from the foundation dinner.
“Obviously designed to be intimidating,” Philipe whispered.
“It is,” Joe replied.
We walked through the waiting room into the office beyond. All three power brokers from last night were there, two of them sitting in high-backed chairs flanking the man behind the desk. Three other equally important- looking men sat on a couch to the left of us.
The office itself was like something out of a movie. One wall had a fully stocked bar next to a partially opened door that led into what I assumed was a bathroom. The opposite wall was a floor-to-ceiling bookcase into which was set a combination high-tech stereo/television. Behind the desk was all window, a breathtaking panoramic view of the desert and Mount San Jacinto.
“Come in.” The man behind the desk smiled, but there was no warmth or humor in it. “Sit down.”
There were no chairs for us to sit in.
The man laughed.
The man — Terence Harrington, I assumed — was big, tall, with a florid face and the jowls of a bulldog. He wore his thinning gray hair long, combed across the bald spot on his head. I looked from him to the two men flanking him, both of whom were staring at us. The one on the left had a military brush cut and was chewing on the end of a huge unlit cigar. The one on the right had a thick white mustache and was rattling some sort of hard candy between his teeth.
The antipathy between us was immediate and was born full-blown. It was like we were magnets with opposing fields — we hated each other instantly. I looked at Philipe, at Steve, and for the first time in a long time we were in tandem. We knew instantly what each other was thinking, feeling. We knew what each other wanted because we all wanted the same thing.
We wanted these fuckers dead.
It was an unsettling realization, a frightening realization. I wanted to be able to get on my moral high horse and say that I could not condone violence, that I did not wish to harm anyone ever again, but that was not true, and we all knew it. The reaction within us was animal, instinctive.
We wanted to kill these men.
I glanced toward the three other men on the couch. They were obviously very powerful, obviously very rich, but they looked to me like members of an old movie comedy team: one was short, one was fat, one was bald with an unusually shiny head. All were staring at us disinterestedly.
Joe faced Harrington. “You wanted to see me?”
“I want you to give us your resignation. We already have one typed up. All you have to do is sign it. We’re going to hold a special election in mid-January and install our new mayor, and we need your resignation by the end of this week.”
“You can take that resignation and shove it up your ass,” Philipe said.
He’d spoken softly, but his voice seemed loud in the room. All eyes turned toward him, and I realized with a start that this was the first time the power brokers had noticed him. The antipathy we’d felt, the disgust, had all been directed at Joe. The men had not even noticed us until now.
“And who, may I ask, are you?” Harrington’s voice was also low, but it was filled with a sense of coiled menace.
“It’s none of your fucking business, you pig-eyed sack of shit.”
Harrington turned his attention back toward Joe. “Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friends, Mayor Horth?” The threat had not left his voice.
Joe was obviously frightened, but he held his ground. “No.”
“I see.”
The man with the cigar stood. “You’re through, Horth. You’re an ineffectual know-nothing nobody. We want a new mayor. We want a real mayor. We’re tired of putting up with your incompetence.”
Harrington pushed one of a panel of buttons on his desk. Through what I’d thought was the bathroom door strode two men, a tall, good-looking banker type in his mid-forties, and an average-looking man of approximately the same age. Harrington pointed toward the nondescript man. “We’re running Jim this time. This is the new mayor of Desert Palms.”
Jim was one of us.
Jim was Ignored.
I stared at Jim. He stared back. He knew I knew what he was, and I’m sure he knew Philipe and Steve did, too, but there was no way in hell that Jim was going to do anything to screw up his chances here. This was his shot, his opportunity to be someone, and he wasn’t about to fuck it up just to align himself with us. I knew how he felt, and I couldn’t blame him, but I also knew something he didn’t know. Something that Joe had found out the hard way.
No matter what happened, he would still be Ignored.
“We’ll finally have a real mayor,” Cigar said. “Someone who can get things done.”
“Come on,” Philipe said. “We’ve heard enough. Let’s go.”
Joe looked as though he’d been about to say something, but he apparently changed his mind and turned toward the door.
“You haven’t signed — ”
“And he’s not going to,” Philipe said.
Harrington’s red face was turning even redder. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m Philipe. Terrorist for the Common Man.”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with here!”
“No,” Philipe said. “
We hurried out the door. My heart was pounding, and I was shaking like a leaf. I was scared and angry at the same time, pumped up with adrenaline. I half expected the men to come after us and beat the shit out of us. I half expected a phalanx of armed guards to come running down the hallway. But none of this happened. The elevator doors opened when we pushed the button, we rode the elevator downstairs, went through the lobby, out into the parking lot, and got into Joe’s car.
The mayor was nervous as he fumbled with his keys. “Shit!” he said. “Shit!”
“Calm down,” Philipe told him.
“They know where I live!”
“We’ll move to a motel. They’ll never find us.”
“You don’t know them. They will find us.”
“They didn’t even see us until I spoke. We’ll just blend into the woodwork and they’ll never be able to track
