(2004) Citizen Vince (11 page)

“Mr. Camden, would you agree that the Republicans and Democrats have a stranglehold on the political process in this country?”

“Well—”

She keeps talking. “By keeping John Anderson out of the debate this week, even though his support was in double digits, Carter and Reagan unwittingly showed just how badly we need someone like John Anderson. Mr. Camden, our system is closed to real political dissent. And John Anderson believes—”

“But he can’t win.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Well, he’s at what, ten percent, four days before the election? I just don’t get why you’re still out here, doing this.”

“Well…John Anderson has a chance to poll the highest percentage of any third-party candidate since—”

“But he can’t win.”

She shifts uncomfortably and slides her lips over the big teeth. “Well, no. But John Anderson believes—”

“Look, I’m not talking about that guy. I’m talking about you. Why go door-to-door trying to drum up support for some guy with no chance?”

She looks down at the brochures in her hand. Deflated. “I…Well, I signed up for this week and—”

Two blocks away, Len’s Cadillac turns onto Vince’s street. He pulls the woman into his house. “Please, come in.”

Vince closes the door behind her and looks around for something…he doesn’t quite know what.

Shirley looks around, too, at the piles of clothes and food, cab
inets open, TV taken apart, everything broken and on the floor, dusted with volcanic ash. The pipe in his hand. “I really shouldn’t be in here.”

Vince waves off the mess with the pipe he was prepared to hit someone with. “I left my dog inside and he chased a mouse.”

“Oh. You have a dog?” Shirley smiles. “I love dogs. Can I see him?”

Vince parts the blinds and peers out. “He got hit by a car.” The Cadillac eases up to the curb across the street. Shit, shit, shit. Vince backs away from the window and his eyes cast around wildly, landing on the pipe in his hand.

Shirley is not comfortable. “I really should go.”

It’s a stupid idea. Vince knows it’s stupid and yet it must be occupying all of his idea-producing brain cells, because he can’t think of anything else. He hands Shirley the pipe and points to the metal mail slot at knee level of his door. “Listen, Shirley. I need you to do me a favor. If you do it, I’ll vote for Anderson. I’ll even wear a button.” Even as he asks her, Vince hears his own words:
Why help some guy with no chance?

A few seconds later, Vince walks confidently out the front door. Len and Ray are climbing out of the car. They look up and see Vince coming. Len takes off his aviators. “Speak to the devil.”

“Speak
of
the devil, you dickhead.” Vince strides across the lawn. He meets Len and Ray in the middle of the street. They stop ten feet from one another, in a close triangle.

“How you doin’, chief?”

Vince looks at Ray. “A little tired.”

“That was stupid what your friend pulled last night,” Len says. “No more screwing around. Gimme my money and let’s go get the mailman.”

“No,” Vince says to Ray.

Len makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Damn it, Vince. It’s like you’re trying to make me an asshole.”

But Ray and Vince are staring at each other, ignoring Len. Ray steps toward him.

“I wouldn’t do that.” Vince turns and points.

Ray and Len follow Vince’s eyes to the front door of his house, and what appears to be the barrel of a gun sticking out of the mail slot, pointed right at Ray’s chest. Ray moves in the street to get a better view. The gun barrel follows him.

Nice job, Shirley.
She’d looked at Vince as if he were crazy, but it turned out she loved practical jokes as much as dogs; he explained that all she had to do was crouch down on the floor and watch this guy through the pipe. Now Vince allows himself a moment of self-congratulation. See, it’s not the cards so much as the way you play them.

“Is that a pipe?” Ray asks, squinting.

Len is squinting, too. “Was that supposed to look like a gun, Vince?”

Ray grins. “You got us surrounded by plumbers, chief?”

As if on cue, the gun barrel is withdrawn from the mail slot. The door opens and Shirley Stafford comes out, a big smile on her face, waving the section of pipe. “Did we trick your friend, Mr. Camden?”

Okay, so sometimes it
is
the cards. Still, Vince is surprised how calm he feels. Fifteen minutes or fifteen billion years—what does it matter? Or an hour? What do you do with the last hour of your life? You try to think of the best hour you’ve ever had. Great sex, a run in poker, the time your old man took you to the Natural History Museum? But you can’t really separate just one hour like that. Just like you can’t take one brushstroke from a painting. You remember everything at once; your memories are impressions made upon layers of fabric. What does the whole know of a single hour or a single minute? Fifteen minutes or a lifetime? What does it matter?

Vince finds himself laughing. At first he thinks his laughter
is what causes Len and Ray to take a step back in the street. But then Vince sees they are looking past him, down the block, and he turns to see what they see: an unmarked police car tooling down the street toward them. Vince steps back on the curb and the car stops between the men, Vince on one side, Ray and Len on the other.

The thin young cop from Doug’s Passport Photos and Souvenirs—Alan Dupree—steps out of the car, smiling at Vince.

Len and Ray shift their weight and stare at the cop. Vince can see Ray sizing up Dupree—five-foot-seven maybe, 140 pounds—and Vince knows how easily Ray could take care of this wrinkle if it came to that.

“Hey, Hash Browns.” Dupree says. “This is quite a coincidence.”

Vince just nods.

“You cut all your hair off,” the cop says.

“Summer cut.” Vince runs his hand over his buzzed head.

“It’s the end of October,” Dupree says.

“Indian summer.”

“It’s forty degrees.”

“Well, there’s always next year.”

Ray and Lenny look back and forth, off balance.

Vince rocks on the balls of his feet. “So what can I do for you,
Detective?
”

Lenny takes a short step back. Dupree cocks his head, too, at the way he leaned on the word
detective.

“Still working on the passport thing,” he says. “The victim’s Rolodex was open to this name here—” He looks down at his notebook and flips a page, makes a show of looking up a name. “…Vince Camden. You fellas know this guy Camden? According to the victim’s Rolodex, this is his address.” Dupree shows Vince the notebook as if he needs proof of what he’s saying.

Vince raises his hands like a magician finishing a trick. “That’s me. I’m Vince.”

“Really?” Dupree smiles. “You’re Vince Camden? Now, this is a coincidence.”

Ray and Len stand dumbly on the curb.

“Who are your friends?” Dupree asks.

“Criminals,” Vince says.

There is a split second of tension that Vince breaks with laughter. They laugh like dominoes: Vince, then Dupree, then Ray, and finally Lenny, who giggles frantically like a car that won’t start. “Ha! Ha, ha. Ha! Good one, Vince.” Len says. “We’ll see you later.” He and Ray walk toward Len’s Cadillac.

Vince watches the young cop take note of their license plate. The Cadillac eases out of the neighborhood, comes to a complete stop before turning. Len’s hands are at ten and two.

“Mr. Camden?”

Vince and Dupree both turn to see Shirley Stafford, who has been waiting patiently.

“I figured out my answer.”

Dupree looks from Vince to Shirley.

Vince rubs his temples.

“You caught me off guard when you asked why I’m still out canvassing when John Anderson has no chance of winning.”

“Look, Shirley—”

“No, Mr. Camden,” Shirley says. “I’m glad you asked. I should be able to explain why this is so important to me. I know you’re right; this time we won’t win. But if we can get ten percent, maybe the next outsider will get twenty. And maybe one day, twenty years from now, we’ll have more than these two corporate choices and maybe someone outside this corrupt system will become president. For me—for my kids, that’s worth it. The chance that someday it will improve.” She gives Vince a handful of brochures and a button that reads
Anderson for President.
As Officer Dupree watches
with a look of bemusement, Vince puts the button on his shirt, and the smile on Shirley’s face makes it all feel strangely worthwhile.

“
I’M SORRY
.”
DUPREE
shrugs as he drives toward downtown. “I’m trying to understand. I really am. But you have to admit…it doesn’t make much sense.” He looks over at Vince. “I just don’t see how, four days before the election, you can still be thinking of voting for Anderson.”

Vince is in the front seat with him. “So you think I’d be wasting my vote?”

“The only thing he’s running on is the fact that he’s not one of the other two guys. He’s like the guy in high school who wanted to be student body president so he could abolish student politics.”

Dupree turns the car toward the river. “But more than that, I just can’t believe you still don’t know who to vote for. I hear about people like you, undecided, and I just don’t get it. What are you waiting for—one of these guys to walk on water?”

Vince stares out the window as buildings slide past. They roll over the huge Monroe Street Bridge, its arches sided with bleached buffalo skulls. “You’ve known all along who you’re going to vote for?” Vince asks.

“For at least a year.”

“You’re confident one of these guys can run the country?”

“Run the country?” Dupree laughs. “Who told you these guys run the country? That’s not what it’s about. It’s more like an honorary position. Or like a jockey. He’s important, but it’s the horse you put your money on, not the jockey. He’s just the little guy along for the ride.”

Vince is trying to follow the metaphor. “So…what’s the horse? Congress?”

“No. No. We’re the horse.” Dupree turns his car in behind the classic Gothic towers of the Spokane County Courthouse—one of Vince’s favorite buildings in town—and into the parking lot of the Public Safety Building. The cluster of buildings is built on a shelf above the river, across from downtown, surrounded by clapboard homes and empty fields. Behind the cop shop is the county jail—rectangular and dotted with beady little windows, as dull as the courthouse is ornate. Old habit; Vince always scouts the jail in a town.

“I got this theory,” Dupree says. “The presidential election is a big mood ring. Four years ago we were pleased with ourselves. Content. So we elected the sweetest guy we could find, a real outsider, because we were tired of shifty insiders like Nixon and Ford. The only reform president of the twentieth century. But then the lunatics took our people hostage in Iran and the economy went in the toilet, and you know what? We’re in a bad fuckin’ mood now. And we can only blame ourselves. We asked for this. And we don’t want the nice guy anymore. We want Dirty Harry. John Wayne. We want Ronald Reagan, a guy who couldn’t have gotten thirty percent four years ago. Now, hell, he’s just a good Tuesday from being president.

“See.” Dupree puts the car in park, turns and faces Vince. “This isn’t really about them. This is about us. The government doesn’t change. It’s the same buildings, same ideas, same pieces of paper. What happens is, every eight years or so, we change.”

Vince stares at the young cop, and the thought flashes that they could be friends if things were different. “So…who are you voting for?” he asks quietly.

A smile. Dupree nods at the dark Public Safety Building. “I’m sorry, Vince,” he says. “But now it’s my turn to ask the questions.”

FOUR CIGARETTES, TWO
Frescas, a donut, and some Corn Nuts later, Vince shrugs his shoulders. “You know, that’s really all I can tell you.”

The walrus detective, Paul Phelps, is sitting across the small table from him, rubbing his jaw, unable to shake Vince off what is really a simple story: Yes, he did know Doug. They met at the donut shop. Vince was hoping to sell Mount St. Helens volcanic ash out of Doug’s store but they hadn’t actually gotten around to it.

Sitting against the wall, Dupree listens with a half smirk on his face, appreciating Vince’s cool under questioning.

So why did Vince lie and say that he didn’t know Doug? Because Doug’s death shook him, and the young cop surprised him. He felt under suspicion. He got nervous. He really didn’t know Doug well and he didn’t want to answer a bunch of questions because he wanted to get to breakfast. He was hungry. As proof, he offers the receipt from Chet’s.

Just then, another detective, gray-haired with glasses, comes into the room, bends down, and whispers in Phelps’s ear. Then he hands Phelps a sheet of paper. The big detective reads the page, nods, and the old cop shuffles out of the room. Phelps turns to Dupree and shrugs.

“Sorry, Alan. Mr. Camden’s alibi checks out.” He looks down at the page. “This…Beth Sherman says he did go to hear Reagan’s son just like he said and that he was with her until after three
A.M
.” Phelps smiles, like someone working a tough puzzle. He waves the sheet of paper and looks up at Vince. “And, since your story checks out and you don’t have a criminal record, I don’t think there’s anything else we need from you. I appreciate you coming down and clearing this up. Next time, don’t lie to a cop.”

“I won’t,” Vince says.

Dupree is still smiling at Vince, as if admiring the expertise with which he handled the interrogation, and even managed to get a small meal out of it.

Phelps stands and hands Dupree the sheet of paper, then pats the young cop on the shoulder on his way out. “It was good work,
rook. Don’t let it get you down.” Dupree never stops staring at Vince, even when the big detective walks out of the room.

Vince looks at the clock above Dupree’s head. Quarter after three. His flight is at 4:30. He might just make it after all.

Finally Dupree looks down at the page that Phelps handed him. He stares at it for a long time and then cocks his head and smiles.