The Day of the Donald by Andrew Shaffer Read Free Book Online Page B

PLAZA AT MIDNIGHT. TELL NO ONE. LEAVE YOUR PHONE BEHIND. YOUR LIFE IS IN DANGER.
    Jimmie had plenty of questions. Meet where in Clinton Plaza? How would he recognize who he was supposed to be meeting? Why not pick a meeting place without a Z in its name? (Those twenty-six taps had taken forever .) For that matter, why not cut a few words out of that message? It was quarter past ten already. Had this guy never sent a code before? And if Jimmie’s life were truly in danger, why not just tell him face-to-face right now? They were just some cheap wood and insulation apart. Why meet clandestinely in a park at the witching hour?
    Jimmie rapped on the wall with knuckles to begin his own Morris code message. Before he got to his third rap, the television went silent. Jimmie heard the door open and close. There were footsteps on the stairs. His neighbor was on the run.
    Jimmie rushed onto the outdoor balcony that connected the hotel rooms. He leaned over the second-floor railing. He couldn’t see anybody down in the parking lot. Whoever had been next door was gone. But he knew where the mysterious wallbanger would be in just a few short hours. The same place he would be: Clinton Plaza.

Chapter Fourteen

We Honor and Remember Their Sacrifice
    J immie strolled through the park, kicking a hypodermic needle along the sidewalk like a can. Though the pathway was well lit, Clinton Plaza was still a war zone of drug users, transients, and anonymous-sex seekers. And it was all by design.
    One of Trump’s earliest executive actions was to have the Federal Bureau of Land Management take over Logan Park. It had long been known as the most degenerate of public spaces in the city. Instead of cleaning it up, however, Trump simply renamed it after his Democratic rival. With the twelve-acre land under federal jurisdiction, local authorities stopped patrolling it at night. Trump conveniently didn’t approve funds to staff it with federal officers, and things went downhill even further. On a scale of one to ten for safety, Clinton Plaza scored just under a Trump rally.
    Clinton Plaza was only a short walk from where Jimmie was staying. He arrived about fifteen minutes ahead of time. At least, that was his estimate—he’d left his government-issuedphone back at the hotel. Now that he was here, though, he kind of wished he had ignored the stranger’s request to leave his phone behind. What if it was all a ruse to get him away from his room so that somebody could ransack it?
    The phone was useless without his thumbprint. But there was always a chance they could lift his prints from the bottle of coconut oil beside the bed and cast a replica of his thumb, and—
    Okay, now you’re moving from “conspiracy theories” into “hospitalization” territory , he told himself. All that’s missing is for you to hear voices .
    As if on cue, he started hearing voices. Whispers from an element-battered tent; a hushed argument taking place somewhere deep in the woods. Closer to him, the chirping of a house finch. The same type of bird that had landed on Bernie’s podium at a Portland rally. The poor bird had become an unofficial symbol of the last of the protestors in America.
    Jimmie kicked the needle into the grass and picked up his pace. He was headed nowhere in particular, but he was in a hurry to get there. Whoever wanted to meet him would find him.
    He stopped at the polished granite wall in the center of the park. The structure stood ten feet tall and stretched at least fifty feet along the pathway. There were hundreds of names engraved on it. The plaque bearing the wall’s name and dedication was covered in moss. One word was visible: BENGHAZI.
    So this was the Benghazi Memorial. Jimmie remembered the press conference where Trump had announced it. Speaking alongside his then wife Megyn Kelly, Trump had said, “Let us remember the sacrifices made in the wake of Hillary Clinton’sterrible, embarrassing foreign policy disasters when she was the