The Swing Voter of Staten Island by Arthur Nersesian Read Free Book Online Page B

vote.”
    “This is all way too—”
    “There’s something else,” she added, lowering her voice to a whisper. “What I’m going to tell you is highly classified: We have reason to suspect that the Piggers have had their own election psychic for years. He’s just a kid, supposedly the only person actually born in this hellhole.”
    “Are you lying to me?”
    “A high-ranking Pigger who defected told us about him. They call him Karove. He’s one of the reasons they’ve been able to hold power for years. Study the election results over the past decade and you’ll see that the Piggers pulled off nearly eighty-five percent of the the paper-thin victories. We can’t locate Karove, but we’re pretty sure he exists. Maybe with Oric we can balance the scales.”
    Uli let out a long sigh. “So how exactly do I get to the Manhattan Crapper headquarters?”
    “I’ll go with you to Fulton Street and put you on a bus to the Lower East Side.”
    “What do you think of that?” Uli called over to Oric. “Would Mallory lie to us?”
    “Mallor—Mallor—Mallor—” The challenged man seemed to be having difficulty pronouncing her name. Finally he just blurted out, “Mayory!”
    “I seem to be fated to go there,” Uli conceded. First Underwood had tried to program him to assassinate the rival candidate there, then Jim Carnival had told him it was where he could get the tracking device extracted from his head.

    W hen the group finally reached the Sunset Park bus stop, the dispatcher there immediately reassigned their one-armed driver to a southbound route. The others waited at the end of a long line for the northbound vehicle. Nearly an hour later, when the bus finally pulled up, it was already packed. Mallory let the baby marsupial stretch its legs and relieve itself one last time before slipping it back into her shoulder bag. Then she squeezed on board and they started north.
    The new bus chugged up Fort Hamilton Parkway toward Flatbush Avenue, and here the street became pure asphalt—apparently the local assemblage of sand refunders had swept the street down earlier. When the bus made a stop on 39th Street, a cluster of seats opened up in the rear.
    Uli hastily grabbed a seat next to a window, pulling Oric with him. Mallory sat across from them. The bus moved through bumper-to-bumper traffic until they came to a standstill alongside the western edge of the Greenwood Cemetery. All got an up-close view of some closed-coffin funeral in progress.
    “What can I say about the passing of my own brother?” a bearded minister asked a crowd of gray ponytailed men and women. “From a divine point of view, we live in a devil’s playground where each person’s greatest and darkest temptation is truly tested. And while we live, only God can see through our meager disguises.” The minister looked up and over the crowd. His gaze suddenly locked onto Uli through the bus window. “But lo! From where I presently stand, I too can see the shame and pain that a single man can inflict upon an entire nation! And that man is … you lee!”
    “What’s that, padre?” someone yelled out from the crowd.
    “He’s the reason we’re all here!” The minister began pointing at Uli, and called out some name that Uli didn’t catch.
    “Which one?” he heard someone in the crowd shriek.
    “That one sitting in the back of the bus!”
    The mourners turned, almost as one, and stared up at him, then started racing over to the bus. Uli slid his window shut, but their collective hands, arms, and torsos began rocking the vehicle as though it were hit by a wave.
    The bus was frozen in traffic, so the many wrinkled and arthritic fingers working together were able to pop out the emergency back window. Uli tried to rise to his feet but Oric was squeezed up next to him, making a quick retreat difficult. All at once, a dozen hands and arms thrust in and grabbed him. He punched at them, furiously trying to defend himself, but it was too much. In