前段时间kindle搞活动，看的一本全英文小说
Simple—the Senator talked only about guns, God, and America. Like the two Blount senators before him.
the Democrats had won the last presidential election, but after twelve years of having things their own way, the Republicans knew a pendulum swing would come,
Thanks to two-term neocon President Gregory Watson Bennett, the GOP still controlled the Supreme Court. But then the sure-thing next prez—Vice President Michael Hasten—had been upset by the African American Democrat Devlin Harrison,
The next election would surely see the Grand Old Party taking back political control of the other two branches of government.
Another black man in the White House was not enough to take the grin off Nicky Blount’s well-tanned face.
Nicky’s older brother, Governor Nathaniel Blount of Mississippi, was odds-on favorite for top of the ticket next time.
What the hell—it had worked for those damn Kennedys.
Some in the GOP thought the Blount boys too inexperienced for high national office, but Nathaniel was only the fourth Republican governor in Mississippi since 1876, a feat not easily shrugged off by the old guard of the party. Nathaniel would be forty-three, the same age as JFK, when he got elected two years from now. Nicky would be thirty-six (about the same age as Bobby K. had been),
A pink mist lingered between him and the falling Associate Justice, and blood and brain matter splattered the nearby fire exit.
“The nigger didn’t have to die. You hesitated,
Reeder was a member of a very exclusive club: a Secret Service agent—in Reeder’s case, former agent—who had taken a bullet for a president of the United States. This granted him, and others like him, special dispensation to wander the grounds at any time that suited him.
Reeder still had the anonymous look of a Secret Service agent: fit, with regular features that split the difference between rugged and handsome, his dark brown eyes behind sunglasses on this already bright morning.
he might have been a ghost haunting the place. Maybe he was. Maybe that was why he felt so much at home here.
found himself in front of the grave of John F. Kennedy. Not a perfect man, but a great one nonetheless, and a hero.
Most visitors had been taught in school about that day in Dallas. They rightly thought of the assassination as a tragedy, the day America lost its innocence,
Hill, a decorated agent who finally retired in 1975 (a decade before Reeder’s birth), had always been haunted by not making it to Kennedy’s car in time to take the third shot himself. When his turn to take a shot came, Reeder was there, saving President Gregory Bennett, but he well understood Hill’s frustration.
To this day, he didn’t know for sure exactly what tipped him: a narrowing of the eyes perhaps, a subtle shift in body language—something—but a millisecond before he saw the shooter raise his pistol, Reeder moved. The only reaction he had time for was to dive in front of the President, taking the bullet.
As it happened, a president he despised, a leader of the Free World who stood against everything that Reeder believed in.
For almost four years, liberal-minded Reeder had stood in the background like any good agent, watching mutely as Bennett and his neocon cronies subverted, and sometimes just flat-out ignored, the Constitution of the United States.
Reeder did not hate Republicans. His father had been a Republican,
he could see where his dad was coming from. Small government, states’ rights, balanced budget.
But he knew deep in his DNA that his fair-minded pop would have hated these excuses for real Republicans.
Venter, he considered a borderline fascist. Venter had voted to uphold laws that expanded the Patriot Act and gave law enforcement a no-knock policy so lenient that it allowed the government, from the local police on up, to enter any citizen’s dwelling at any time.
Venter also voted to uphold laws that allowed religious relics on public grounds, sanctioned prayer in school, and advocated the teaching of creationism. He even authored the majority opinion when the Court upheld new legislation resurrecting the Sedition Act of 1798.
What they ended up with was a law that made it legal to arrest anyone for speaking, writing, or publishing anything against the government of the United States.
“Why isn’t the FBI handling this?” He could almost hear Bishop grimace. “They are, or will be,” the cop said. “But right now DC Homicide has it.
but knowing that the FBI, and every other agency in the federal alphabet soup, would be on this made him hesitate.
Reeder knew with deadly certainty that he wasn’t watching a robbery at all; he was witnessing a cold-blooded execution. He shook his head in disbelief.
Last night, at the Verdict Chophouse, a sitting Supreme Court justice had been assassinated.
If only. Che Guevara here was probably sleeping over most nights,
“I’d kind of like to get away for a few days,” she said. “We have a break coming up.” What, with this fuckwad?
“Ever hear of cognitive dissonance?” “I had Psych 101, thank you,” Sloan said, a little testy.
“It’s when you hold on to a belief when all the facts say the opposite.”
You know damn well that half a dozen Islamic fundamentalist groups would be bragging this up already, if they were behind it.”
I sort of figured you’d fly in.” “My cape is in the wash,”
No, Charles Granger did not seem to be somebody you might hire to kill a justice of the Supreme Court. Rather, he was the kind of slimeball you met in a bar and offered a few hundred bucks to, to kill your ex-wife who lived in a trailer.
be replaced by a liberal, thanks to the Devlin Harrison presidency. Conservatives would still control the Court, true, but the balance would now be only five to four.
The goal, the strategy, now was clear: Stay in good health, and in top shape, and no matter what awful thing might happen in your personal life, don’t even think of resigning. The conservative justices needed to maintain the balance of the Court until the right kind of president sat behind the desk in the Oval Office.
“We just lost the two most conservative members of the Court,” Reeder pointed out, “and we have a liberal president sitting in the White House. How do you think those vacant seats will likely be filled?”
the twenty-one steps and seconds representing a twenty-one gun salute.
“The key word there is partner. Look, I know I can be remote. That I lapse into this . . . ‘people reader’ mode. Since I’ll be your partner for a while, I’d appreciate you cutting me a little slack on that score. Okay, Patti?”
The tall, slender African American President, second in US history,
The President sat back on the sofa across from Sloan and Rogers with his arms folded, legs, too. How fucking guarded could one man be? Reeder wondered.
that a domestic left-wing terrorist group is trying to reconfigure the Supreme Court by removing its most conservative members.”
Then the Patriot Act, opening so many dangerous, terrible doors . . .
“Kennedy was the last liberal president not to nominate a clearly liberal justice. Byron White, admittedly a longtime Kennedy supporter, was not strictly speaking a liberal.
“Sure. Simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”
Things in DC are never black and white.” “Oh, I know,” she said. “Everything’s gray . . . except murder.” “No,” Reeder said, shaking his head. “Especially murder.”
“Maybe it won’t have to come out. A lot of people in our history who did worse than Henry Venter are remembered as heroes.”
“He made this country a worse place to live in, and we both know he died a coward.”
Blount had the blond, plasticine good looks of a career politician, or maybe a functionary in the Hitler Youth.
He’s written his script and has it memorized. Nicky Blount would be telling this story until the day he died, needing to make himself look as good as possible,
“Well, uh . . . his right.” “You’re quite certain of that?” “Quite certain,” Blount said defensively. Like any liar, he became indignant when one of the true parts was questioned.
“He could just . . . look at you and know what you were thinking. But you could never tell what he was thinking. Drives my mother crazy.”
He nodded. “Passive-aggressive. My old man’s like that.”
They had done a lot of things on that sofa, including her satisfying him with her hand and even her mouth, but they always stopped short of intercourse.
And she did, telling him how her best friend, Kathy, in high school got pregnant and had an abortion from some sketchy pseudo doc and died horribly. Since then, Amy hadn’t had sex, and she’d only been with two guys before that, anyway. She was on the pill, but she knew that wasn’t infallible. Mostly she just liked having her periods regulated.
The only thing she knew for sure was that his parting advice had been sound: Trust no one.
Roe v. Wade,
My daughter didn’t have to die. She wouldn’t have, before you came along. And now a new, more liberal Court will reestablish Roe v. Wade. And all the girls like Kathy, like Amy, will be safe from the interference of old white men like you.”
