Landon really did eat at the Flying J.
Gage found a booth while Landon glad-handed his way around the restaurant. He’d ordered for both of them by the time Landon sat down.
“Where’s the menu?”
“You don’t need one,” Gage said. “You already told me what you were having. Chicken fried steak.”
An outstretched hand attached to a plaid-covered arm injected itself into their conversation. Landon shook it, then scooted out of the booth. A skinny, five-foot-two-inch truck driver swept his John Deere cap off his head and offered Landon a toothy smile.
“Just had to shake your hand, Mr. President.”
Landon smiled back. “We’re still over a year away from the election and there’s no guarantee I’ll win. Just call me Landon.”
The driver fidgeted, flustered by the offer. “I’m not sure I can do that, Senator.” He slipped his cap back on. “Sorry I interrupted your conversation, but I just had to tell you how much I support you and them two nominees. I’m tired-” The driver jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward the tables of truckers behind him. “We’re all tired of judges makin’ the laws. We elect you-all to make the laws and they’re supposed to follow them.”
“I agree with you…”
“Chuck.”
“I agree with you, Chuck. And I’ll do my best to get the nominees confirmed.”
“Thanks a lot, Senator.”
“Landon.”
“Okay.” The driver displayed a bashful smile. “Landon.”
Gage was still shaking his head when Landon slid to a stop on the bench seat.
“How many times do you go through that every day?” Gage asked.
“As many times as I can.”
Landon grabbed a napkin, then slid it under the table to wipe his hands.
“The funny thing is I always thought I was a solid person,” Landon said, “all of one piece. But every hand I shake is attached to someone who wants me to be something else.” He offered a weak smile. “Sometimes I feel like Frankenstein’s monster.” He glanced over at the tables of truckers. “These people don’t have a clue. Courts will always make law. There’s no such thing as strict construction or originalism, that’s why I never use the terms. The Founding Fathers never could’ve anticipated the Internet or stem cell research or nuclear weapons. The Court’s job is to maintain the national character as embodied in the Constitution, but applied to today’s problems, and sometimes that means restoring or even remaking the law when Congress or some lower court goes astray. Precedent and stare decisis can’t mean anything more than that or be any more restrictive than that. Not in the real world. That’s the only way the Court could have gotten to the Citizens United decision. It certainly wasn’t because prior justices were confused about what a person was. The world had changed since the Constitution was written and the Supreme Court-not the Founders-wanted to give corporations the same rights as persons so they could participate in the political process.”
Landon thumped the table with his finger. “The Boston Tea Party wasn’t just aimed at the Revenue Acts, but even more so at the all-powerful East India Company. The last thing the Founders would’ve done was grant corporations the personal rights of citizens. But times have changed and now we have statutory ways to control corporate lawlessness.” His eyes went vacant as though the thought was continuing to develop in his mind, then he said, “At the same time, a ruling not based on precedent or that the Court refuses to allow to be used as precedent subverts the legitimacy of the court. That’s why Bush v. Gore was a travesty-not because the decision was wrong-it was right-but because the court cowered in the face of its own reasoning and ruled that it could never be cited as precedent in any other case.”
“Why not just stand up and say all that?”
“Because people don’t like to be confronted by the nauseating reality that we build the bridges we walk on to get where we’re going and sometimes have to repair or rebuild them from the middle. Those who describe themselves as strict constructionists or originalists are engaging in self-deception. Did you see Justice Sunseri on CNN last week? The reporter asked him whether torturing enemy prisoners was prohibited by the Constitution as cruel and unusual punishment. He responded by asking her whether she would ever use the word ‘punishment’ to refer to torture.” Landon smirked. “What a stupid question. Idiotic. If originalism really meant anything to him, he would’ve asked whether the Founding Fathers in the eighteenth century would’ve applied the word to torture, not whether she would in the twenty-first. She didn’t write the Constitution, they did. I’d never before seen someone expose himself so completely as a fraud-and no one in the media caught it.”
Landon’s face flushed. “If your position is well founded, there’s no reason to create a mythology to support it.”
Landon paused, then shook his head as if shaking off a catcher’s sign.
“The same with the Bible. Nobody could follow it word for word. I’m not even sure anyone knows what the original words were. If we tried, we’d be stoning people to death every day. Billy Graham’s greatness wasn’t because he could shout out passages like a nineteenth-century orator, but because of the way he interpreted them and wove them into a modern message of personal salvation.” Landon grinned. “He spent his life as a Frankenstein’s monster, too. Always a registered Democrat.”
The waitress placed a basket of dinner rolls and their salads on the table and winked at Landon before she turned away.
“Apparently she can’t see where Dr. Frankenstein made the stitches,” Gage said.
“She must be blinded by my star power among the blue-collar crowd.”
Landon bowed his head in prayer, then picked up a dinner roll and buttered it.
“How about your star power in Washington?” Gage asked.
“I guess that’s going to be up to you.”
“How do you figure?”
“I’m pretty sure I can survive a TIMCO scandal and-”
“You fly commercial this time?”
“I always fly commercial to Iowa. And because of our conversation today, whether your allegations are true or not, I won’t be accepting TIMCO’s largesse in the future.” Landon nodded with pursed lips. “Helluva fleet they have.” He set the uneaten roll onto his plate. “Let’s put it this way. Washington, and by Washington I mean President Duncan, will bless me if I get his nominations-”
“His nominations? That’s not what the press is saying.”
“Okay, my nominations… through the Senate. And you, my friend, are the only person in the country who can derail them. If you leak any of your, shall I say, suspicions to the press-”
“If your campaign funding scheme is legal, what difference does it make?”
“The public wouldn’t understand, at least right away. And people fear what they don’t understand.”
“You mean they’ll think it’s a corporate conspiracy to manipulate the electoral process, like the way many voters view super-PACs?”
Landon thumped a finger on the Formica table.
“The corporate conspiracy to manipulate the electoral process is called the liberal elitist media.”
Gage rolled his eyes. “Not this again.” He spread his hands on the table, “And now you’re going to tell me it will be the fault of the media if the public comes to the conclusion that your brother’s law firm-”
“Ex… ex-law firm-”
“-obstructed justice using a Cayman Island bank account later used to funnel loans to political campaigns?”
“I… no. If you put it that way, no. But that has nothing to do with me, and it’s not the issue.”
“Then what’s the issue?”
“The issue is political.”
“I’m not a political person.”
“You’re the most political person I have ever met.”
“What party do I belong to? Who did I vote for in the last presidential election?”
“Not that way.” Landon pointed at Gage. “Everything for you is a moral issue. If it’s between you and someone else, it’s called ethics. If it’s between you and world, it’s called politics.”
It was true, but Gage had never expected to hear it as an accusation. Except he recognized that Landon was dissembling, for by “political” he really meant “partisan,” exploiting the double meaning of the word to conceal-maybe from himself-the degree to which his own ethics had mutated since his first campaign.
“I didn’t realize I was a subject of your psychological analysis.”
“I pay attention to people who have become dangerous. And, at the moment, you’re the most dangerous man in America.”
“To these nominations, maybe, but not to America.”
“You don’t get it.” Landon started thumping the table again. “These nominations are the future of America, and I’m not sure you want to compromise that future because of some silliness by my brother-allegedly by my brother-fourteen years ago.”
S illiness.
The word ricocheted around in Gage’s mind as he stood in the boarding line at the Des Moines airport.
Four men incinerated on the top of TIMCO’s fractionating tower wasn’t silliness.
Obstruction of justice wasn’t silliness.
Bribing an OSHA investigator wasn’t silliness.
Paying off a witness wasn’t silliness.
What happened to the Landon Meyer I used to know? Gage asked himself. The Landon Meyer who prayed to a God he believed would someday judge him? He can’t really believe God is on his side in this one.
The man behind Gage tapped him on the shoulder and said, “The line’s moving, pal. Put it into gear.”
Gage closed the gap between himself and the woman in front of him.
It had all come too fast. Gage knew he hadn’t asked all the questions he should have. Even when he was sitting across from Landon in the Flying J, he knew it. Landon’s people had a decade to work it out, he only had a fraction of that time to grasp it.
He felt his stomach turn.
For a while, Landon had said about the debts his chosen candidates had shouldered during their campaigns. Only for a while.
And Gage then knew he needed to find out when that while would end, and where.