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Chronicles of the Shade – Episode 4 – “The Veep Weighs In”

by Editors

Chronicles of the Shade©*

Episode 4 -

“The Veep Weighs In”

June 2007.

Once again The Shade stood in the doorway to the private library adjacent to the Elliptical Office of the Grey House. He had been moved by Wil B. Goode’s entreaties to gather more evidence about the motives of those in power. The tape that he had delivered to Goode a month earlier had been blank! Goode had figured out why. Unbeknownst to all but a select few, President Ruston “Quicky Slick” Piston had installed tape erasers at each exit from the Elliptical Office and the library. Piston had wanted editing and copyright advantages over his own productions. He didn’t trust “all the President’s men” who were rushing to publish their stories before he could. Ergo, The Shade had to find a place inside the Elliptical Office in which to hide the evidence until such time as he could discover and neutralize Piston’s tape erasers. The Shade would have to spend time there alone.

As he was about to slip into the library, The Shade barely escaped colliding with a dynamo of a woman who was storming out of the library, chestnut curls bouncing as she flounced through the doorway.

“I don’t care how much it costs,” shouted Fancy Bugliosi as she brushed by The Shade, “the airplane was part of the deal! You get me my plane, or else impeachment gets put back on the table!” With that, the Speaker of the House of Representatives was out the door and gone.

The Shade slipped into the library and saw that both President Liar and Secretary Spice were staring open-mouthed at one another. He turned on his tape recorder.

“Well, I never,” said Ms. Spice. “Why can’t she act like a lady?”

“Aw,” said the President, “she’s one of them EAPs. I know how to handle her. All she needs is a little sweet-talkin’. But she sure isn’t like my Ada.”

Condo Spice knew that Mrs. Ada Liar had held his hand when he had undergone rehabilitation from cocaine abuse. She also thought that Mrs. Liar was one big, phony plastic woman who got a lot of mileage from her brief stint as a teacher. There was simply no comparison, thought Condo: I was a university president, and Ada can’t even play chopsticks on the piano.

“What’s an EAP, Mr. President?” asked Ms. Spice, ignoring the President’s mention of his wife.

“You know, Condo. It’s one of them Eye-talian American Princesses. Boy do they need to be pampered.”

“Um, I think that should be IAP, Mr. President,” said Condo.

“Whatever,” replied the President, “I can’t think about her right now. I got my veep comin’ over to see me. I asked him to meet me here.”

The President, The Shade knew, was referring to Ricardo “Shooter” Chancey, the Vice-president of the United States. Chancey rarely left his office. Ever since the hunting accident he had become more reclusive than ever. Fortunately, none of the hunting party had been killed when Chancey started shooting indiscriminately at anything that moved, but there had been a lot of birdshot plucked from the derrières of many prominent Texans on that unhappy evening.

“Do you want me to leave, Mr. President?” asked Ms. Spice.

“Naw, you stay, Condo. It sorta gives me the creeps to be alone in the same room with ol’ Shooter—especially since we had that, what did you call it? Thathallucigenation here last month.”

“That’s hallucination, Mr. President, said Condo, as she recalled with a shudder that totally disagreeable experience with The Shade. “But I told you that it was the paté we ate at that going-away party for Ron Dumsfeld.” Dumsfeld was the outgoing Defense Department Chairman who had ordered too many toilet seats for his soldiers in Jiraq, but not any body armor.

“Yeah, we shoulda’ stuck with the cheese dip,” said the President glumly, looking at his Mickey Mouse watch. “Say, ol’ Shooter should be here by now.”

As The Shade eased his way behind the drapes, he noticed that the room had suddenly become darker, and he thought he caught a whiff of sulphur in the air. He also noticed a slight clicking sound as the ponderous bulk of Ricardo “Shooter” Chancey lurched through the doorway. After his third heart attack, doctors had installed the latest Jarvik metallic model in his chest. It was a top-of-the-line J-23, guaranteed not to rust, and the ticking sound was barely audible.

“Hey, there, B.A.,” announced the veep with a sneer. “You, too, Condo. What have you two been up to here all alone?”

Condo Spice fixed a cold stare on Chancey with her coal-black eyes. She thought to herself how annoying the veep could be. Here he was, just a gofer who had climbed over the warm bodies of others more talented than he, and now he was the second-most powerful man in the world. She just hated it when he insinuated that there was some sort of hanky-panky going on between her and the President.

“Good morning, Ricardo,” said Condo with an icy smile. It’s good to see you up and about again.”

“Save the pleasantries, Condo. You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

“I haven’t the foggiest,” said Condo. “Is it because your approval ratings have dipped into the minus territory?”

“Ha, ha,” replied the veep mirthlessly. “You know I don’t care about ratings. I just want to get the job done. It’s a pity that the press won’t buy my line anymore about the progress we’re making in Jiraq. You’ve got to do more to back me up, B. A. No more of this nonsense about mistakes having been made.”

“Well, Shooter,” said the President nervously. “I’ve been up to my eyeballs reading all these newspapers with Condo here. Stoney what’s-his-name says I got to say what the public wants to hear.”

“Pfaff,” grunted the veep. “who cares what they think. We’ve got the executive power here, and we’ve got to use it. We’ve got to tell people how it is, and they’ve got to swallow it—wiretapping, secret prisons, waterboarding—it’s all a matter of executive privilege.”

The Shade resisted the urge to give Chancey a verbal blast that would send his Jarvik-23 into overdrive. But he had to keep silent so that he could gather more evidence and find out where those hidden tape erasers were.

“But enough of this,” said Chancey with an exasperated tone. “B. A. knows why I’m here, don’t you, B.A.?”

“Um, yeah,” said the President. “You see, Condo, Shooter wanted to talk to me about what happened to his number one boy. You know, Chester Glibby. Maybe you could stay awhile and help us out on this.”

Condo shrugged her shoulders. Yes, she knew all about Glibby. That blabbermouth had really messed things up, she thought, talking to all those reporters and not keeping his story straight. “Yes, Mr. President,” she said, “I’ll stay if you want me to.”

“What I want to know,” said the veep grimly, ignoring Condo’s presence, “is whether you’re going to get Glibby off the hot seat. He took one for the team, and you’ve got to make sure he gets pardoned if he’s found guilty after all his appeals run out.”

“Well, I don’t know, Shooter,” said the President. “It’ll look kinda funny if I pardon him after he’s been convicted of lying about who outed that CIA agent.”

“That’s irrelevant, B. A.,” said the veep. “You can do anything I say you can do. You’re the decider, the commander-in-chief, the war-on-terror president. Anyway, Glibby shouldn’t have been the one to scapegoat. He’s a darn sight smarter than Cal Stove. Stove should have been the one to go.”

The President glanced over at Condo Spice, blinking rapidly. She knew that this was a sign of his nervous disorder. He needed help before he started foaming at the mouth. Even now some tell-tale spittle had begun to form in the corners of his lips.

“Now, now,” Mr. Chancy,” said Condo in her best school-teaching manner. “We all know that Mr. Stove had an election to manage. We couldn’t let him get thrown to the wolves.”

“Oh, yes,” sneered the veep, “we know how well he managed that election. We lost both houses of Congress because he couldn’t tell a red state from a blue one. He’s lost his touch. ‘Liar’s brain’ indeed. He hasn’t got half the smarts of Glibby.”

“Well, it’s too late to cry about that, Mr. Vice-president,” said Condo soothingly. “You can be sure that we’ll do something about poor Chester when the time comes. Oh, would you like to have some tea? The President and I usually have tea in mid-morning.”

“Tea? No, that’s a sissy drink. I drink beer. But I bet you don’t have any beer around here, do you? I don’t see any refrigerator in here.”

With a swift glance around the room, Chancey saw that indeed there wasn’t any refrigerator there. Then he turned and moved his considerable bulk towards the door. “Got to go,” he said, “but you remember what I said. You back down when you’re attacked and you’re dog meat. Just get Glibby off the hook.”

Then the Vice-president was gone, and the room seemed to lighten by at least 10 watts. Condo took a handkerchief from her purse and dabbed at the President’s lips. “There, now,” she said comfortingly, “he’s gone. We just won’t worry about Chester until we need to. Perhaps you should commute his jail sentence and have your campaign donors pay his fine. You can give him a full pardon before you leave office.”

“Just fix me some tea, please, Condo,” said the President wearily. “I just got to think about goin’ to Crawdad this weekend and cuttin’ some wood.”

“Everything will be all right, Mr. President,” said Condo brightly. “Just think happy thoughts while I fix you some tea.”

The Shade turned off his tape recorder and placed it behind a picture frame. His encounter with the Vice-president had put a strain on his powers. Experiencing such unremitting, petty evil was difficult, and there was also that incessant whirring and clicking sound that came from his chest. That was all that even The Shade could take for one day. He would return when he felt refreshed.

To be continued…

NEXT WEEK: Episode 5 . . .