He eventually trailed off, having disposed of Jews, teachers, Hispanics, and Arabs—“Maybe nice people as individuals, butthey don’t share our culture and they don’t want to have anything to do with it; they want our money and nothing else”—as well as mentally ill street people and “welfare queens,” a phrase Lucas hadn’t heard since the ’90s.
When he stopped to take a breath, Lucas broke in with, “I have to say I don’t totally agree with you on all of that, but I think I understand your point of view. I guess I’ve lived something of a socialist life myself—except for a couple of years with a software start-up, I’ve worked for governments most of my life.”
“Then you know what I’m talking about,” Lang snapped, pointing a yellow pencil at Lucas’s chest. He leaned back, took a breath, got a grip, and smiled again. “Anyway, that’s really... for another discussion. I will try to help you hook up with the 1919 organization. I do want to speak to them myself, though. They have kept themselves, whoever they are, very carefully secret. I find that intriguing.”
—
GIBSON,WHO’D SAT QUIETLYthrough the rant, showed Lucas out of the house. At the door, he said, quietly, “Charles is doing important work. When he’s gone, which I hope won’t be for many, many years, people will look back and wonder why they didn’t listen to him in his prime.”
“It’s a thought,” Lucas said.
His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he took it out as he was walking down the walkway to the car. Jane Chase. He poked Accept and asked, “Did something happen?”
“No, I wanted to find out if you’d come up with anything new,” she said.
“Jesus, it’s not even noon.”
“You’re a fast worker.”
“Let me get in my car,” Lucas said.
He got in the Cadillac, started it, punched up the air-conditioning, went back to the phone, and said, “I’m at Charles Lang’s place. He’s a fuckin’ Looney Tunes. So’s his assistant. You got anything on a guy named Stephen Gibson? He’s worked for Lang for thirteen years?”
“I haven’t heard the name, but I’ll look. Is Charlie going to help out?”
“He’s already put out the word for a 1919 contact. I’m not holding my breath on that. He’s going to try to hook me up with a group called the American National Militia, ANM, and the Greene Mountain Boys.”
“I’ve heard of those. The Greene Mountain Boys are not harmless—they’ve participated in a couple of marches that got ugly. They weren’t the instigators, but they were out there swinging signs. The ANM is something different. We’ve heard about them, tried to get inside, but no luck so far. They’re pretty picky about their membership. They don’t let anyone in that they don’t know about, a lot of times through family connections. Their leader is supposedly called Old John. No last name. We’ve heard that the movieFight Clubis a cult film with them—that’s where they want to go.”
“Love that movie,” Lucas said. “But I guess you could take it the wrong way.”
“No kidding. Anyway, if Charlie hooks you up with the ANM, tell me. We’ll want to cover you.”
“We’ll see,” Lucas said. “I’m not an FBI agent...”
“Lucas...”
“Lang said there are rumors in the alt-left that the ANM has killed some people,” Lucas said. “He has three or four examples, if you could get me what’s available on those killings.”
He told her about the Erie, Pennsylvania, developer, the two Michigan shootings, and the execution shooting of the alleged rapist in Ohio. Chase said she was familiar with the rapist killing, from news stories, but the FBI hadn’t been involved in the case. She hadn’t heard of the Pennsylvania or Michigan shootings.
“Why do you think the ANM might be involved with 1919?” Chase asked.
“Lang suggested it. That they could have created a fake site to hang the blame on the alt-right, while they take advantage of it. They are apparently willing to shoot, if the rumors are true. And they’re at least somewhat media-aware—they have a PR woman. Lang’s going to try to get me in touch with her.”
“Keep me up on that.”
“We’ll see,” he said again. “Another thing: I hate to say this, but there’s something not quite right about Audrey Coil and her story about finding 1919. I don’t know what to do about that.”
“What’s wrong with her story?”
“I don’t know, but something is. She was lying to me about something, but I can’t think what it might be.”
“Audrey and I had a little talk away from her mother, and—keep this under your hat—there’s been a little sexting going on there,” Chase said. “With her friend Blake and probably some other boys at the school. But she knows a lot about the workings of the internet and she’s been careful not to let any really identifying... stuff... get out there. Bare breasts, maybe somebelow-the-waist stuff, but not anything that you could say, ‘That’s Audrey Coil.’ At least, not unless you’d visited the neighborhood in person. She told me that she was completely aware of the problems sexting could cause downstream in her life, and was careful. I believed her.”
Lucas said, “Huh.”
“That was a skeptical-sounding ‘Huh,’” Chase said.
