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 Now or Never
Getting Down to the Business
of Saving Our American Dream

J A CK CAF F ERT Y

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Copyright ©2009 by Jack Cafferty. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Cafferty, Jack.
Now or never : getting down to the business of saving our American dream / Jack
Cafferty.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-470-37230-2 (cloth)
1. United States—Politics and government—2001– I. Title.
JK275.C344 2009
320.60973—dc22
2008055858
Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
 This book is dedicated
to my greatest source of pride:
my daughters, Julie, Leigh, Jill, Leslie.
 Contents

1 Our Last Best Hope / 1

2 The Primaries: It Was Their Party and They Cried If They
Wanted To / 16
3 As the Iraqis Stand Up, It’s Time for the United States to
Clear Out / 37
4 China: The Global Superpower Goes for the
Gold . . . Ours / 57
5 The Family’s a Corporation Where I Hold All the
Voting Shares / 77
6 The Bush Legacy: Imperial Reign, Impeachable
Ruin / 95
7 Time to Raise Our Grades in Education, Immigration,
and Energy / 116
8 Are We Safer Yet? A World of Foreign Policy Troubles Left
Behind / 143
9 Marriage and Fatherhood Work Best as Sobering
Experiences / 169
10 Debt and Revival / 186

v
vi CONTENTS

11 The $1 Billion Battle to Mortgage Our Future / 209

12 The New Prez’s Real Campaign Begins: To Fix Our
Broken Nation / 233
Epilogue: One Change We Didn’t Need but Are Learning
to Live With / 255

Acknowledgments / 259
Index / 260
 1

Our Last Best Hope

n my 2007 book, It’s Getting Ugly Out There: The Frauds, Bunglers,
I Liars, and Losers Who Are Hurting America, I went way out on a
limb and wondered whether there might actually be a positive, if unin-
tended, consequence of the otherwise miserable legacy of President
George W. Bush’s eight years in office. I speculated that it might come
in the form of a sudden nationwide awakening near the end of the
Bush era, leading to a 2008 stampede to polling places as the citizenry
desperately fought to save its democratic system—a runaway train
heading off a cliff into oblivion.
I had been screaming, in my way, about “broken government” for
a couple of years in hundreds of “Cafferty File” segments on CNN’s
The Situation Room. But as the economic crisis seizing America
became the story that drove the election, voters were desperately fight-
ing to save not only their political system but also their homes, their
jobs, their 401(k)s, their bank savings, and, no doubt, their sanity. And
people were paying attention: my “Cafferty File” blog often got three
million hits a day and as many as ten thousand e-mail replies flooding
in after one of my questions of the hour.

1
2 NOW OR NEVER

I’m still screaming about what’s gone wrong, and I’ve written it
all down in Now or Never: Getting Down to the Business of Saving
Our American Dream. The book captures our country at a cross-
roads unlike any we’ve ever faced in living memory—a momentous
period of crisis, threat, challenge, choice, and change as we emerge,
finally, into the Barack Obama era. The book also fixes its unflinch-
ing, take-no-prisoners sights on what now needs to go right in the
first term of President Obama if we hope to survive as the nation
we know ourselves to be before it really is too late. As Now or Never
makes urgently clear, this is a time for change we not only need, as
Obama’s campaign mantra put it, but for change we will believe
when we see it.
So many of the things that I suggested were wrong in my first
book, It’s Getting Ugly Out There, have proved to be quite wrong.
The nation’s confidence in its leaders took a huge hit during Presi-
dent George W. Bush’s two terms in office. Warning signs that we
saw a couple of years ago weren’t taken seriously. With, arguably, the
exception of the sharp decreases in sectarian violence and U.S. troop
casualties in Iraq, we’re in a lot worse shape now than we were two
years ago—for a lot of the reasons that I suggested in the first book.
The incompetence, dishonesty, and corruption of Washington under
President Bush had come together to create the dark economic storm
now raging over the Obama administration as it faces the enormous
challenge of turning America around.
This book examines the issues, turning points, and personalities
that shaped 2008’s historic White House race and Obama’s victory—
notably the astonishing two-year economic slide toward the unprec-
edented $700 billion bailout plan signed by Bush a month before
Election Day; the treacherous new phases of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan; and the rival characters and strategies of the Obama-
Biden and McCain-Palin tickets that made the ’08 campaign such an
extraordinary moment in our history.
 OUR LAST BEST HOPE 3

The stakes could hardly have been higher. Domestically, our sink-
ing economy is making the new president’s search for solutions—from
war-zone strategies to energy and health-care reform; from funding
Medicare and Social Security to securing our borders—as daunting
as any since Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932, during the Great
Depression. Globally, the new commander in chief faces escalating
tensions in our dealings with Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Russia,
China, North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, and India, particularly
since the horrific terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008.
Obama has eight years of George Bush to thank for the immensity
of his task—and for inciting an angry American electorate to action.
Now or Never examines the corrosive legacies of the Bush reign; they
include its fiscal recklessness, its illegal surveillance and sanctioning
of torture, and a sweeping agenda of secrecy, deception, and expand-
ing executive power. Bush is gone, but damaging precedents have
been set. As I wrote in It’s Getting Ugly, my hunch was that Bush’s
two-term record would prove to be “so misguided, ineffective, and
reckless while his political base was so egregious and arrogant in its
corrupt abuse of power that Bush & Co. unwittingly woke up the
American people and proved to them that their country was indeed
broken and in urgent need of repair before it got too late to undo the
harm they had done.”
If I was clearly on to something, I underestimated how bad things
would get.
This was a year before the Treasury Department and the Federal
Reserve started to commit hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to
shore up, bail out, and seize control of giant financial and insurance
institutions better known for boundless greed than for bended-knee
groveling. It was months before Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr.
scratched out what read in parts like a three-page ransom note (“Deci-
sions by the Secretary . . . may not be reviewed by any court of law or
any administrative agency”) laying out terms of the initial $700 billion
4 NOW OR NEVER

Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to buy back worthless mortgage-

backed securities from failing banks as a way to keep credit flowing.
The economy was strangling itself, he said; only a massive infusion of
credit between banks, and from banks to businesses, consumers, car
loan seekers, home buyers, and so on, would keep it breathing.
Phrases in the air evoked the Great Depression—“a race against
time,” “grave threats,” “bank runs,” “bread lines,” “Armageddon,”
“once-in-a-century financial crisis”—that from former Federal Reserve
chairman Alan Greenspan. Former General Electric chairman Jack
Welch predicted “one hell of a downturn”; Warren Buffett called the
markets an “economic Pearl Harbor.” Was this crisis about Wall Street
extortion or Main Street extinction? Thirty-five senators and 435
congressmen were up for reelection. No one wanted to vote for a risky
rescue bet that could go bad and turn 2008’s electoral battlegrounds
into 2009’s dustbowls. This was Congress, not a casino, yet its mem-
bers were under intense pressure to move fast and approve a complex,
high-stakes, instant wager that would cost more than all the mountains
of chips Bush had blown on his five-year war of choice in Iraq. Law-
makers worried about signing over a blank check to Treasury without
any clear plan to protect taxpayers and homeowners. They required
some strict oversight. Writing in the New Yorker, John Cassidy called
Paulson’s three-page proposal for the rescue “suspiciously vague and
scandalously arrogant”—with virtually no mechanisms in place for
oversight and regulation.
Could we trust anyone’s judgment on the largest fiscal gamble in
our history? When would we learn to say no to these people? Guys
like Paulson and Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke go, well,
we’ve got to have $700 billion to fix this mess, and we go, sure, here
you go. It was absolute insanity—Monopoly money. Who knew what
the fallout would be on Main Street from the fat cat bailout on Wall
Street? As Joseph from Illinois wrote, “I would rather lose my job and
starve to death than see one person get bailed out for their bad deci-
sions. These idle threats of complete disaster if we do nothing are bold
 OUR LAST BEST HOPE 5

face lies. Of course the Wall Street folks are going to say that so we
save their ass. We will survive even if the market ‘melts down.’ Sure
it will be tough, but as long as the government steps out of the way it
won’t be more than one bad year.”
Stepping aside wasn’t going to happen. Bush briefly, belatedly
addressed the nation to warn that “our entire economy is in danger”
and that “without immediate action by Congress, America can slip
into a major panic.” His grim, fearmongering tone echoed the Iraq
war run-up, only now the WMD (weapons of mass destruction) were
mushroom clouds of toxic subprime mortgage debt rising over our cit-
ies and towns. The Fed applied a choke hold of its own: the New York
Times quoted Fed chairman Bernanke, a Great Depression scholar,
as telling lawmakers on Capitol Hill, “If we don’t do this, we may not
have an economy on Monday.” Was a bailout really the lesser of two
evils, or just another looting of the little guy by the golden-parachuted
masters of the universe—one final $700 billion Bush-era bridge to
nowhere?
This crisis threw congressmen, candidates, commentators, and
even economists into uncharted territory. I didn’t pretend to know
whether a $700 billion or $1 trillion bailout package would work.
Pessimists suggested that if we did nothing, we’d be headed off a
cliff. Granted, the markets, in time and left to their own devices,
would likely self-correct. But could the country stand the pain that
this would undoubtedly involve? On the other hand, to allow the
federal government to, in effect, take over and/or manage some of
our biggest financial institutions is to compromise our capitalism.
The engines that drove our economy to be the most powerful the
world has ever seen are free markets and an entrepreneurial spirit
that allows those willing to take big risks to reap big rewards. You
didn’t hear pundits or stock-pickers talking much about the long-
term effects of messing with that.
In late September, the bipartisan House leadership assured us
all weekend that an agreement and passage of a rescue plan were
6 NOW OR NEVER

at hand. As the vote on the bailout approached, Wall Street and the
stock market were hinting that they wanted passage. As the votes were
being tallied and approval loomed, the Dow Industrials recovered a
large part of a 600-point loss—a good thing for the middle class that
had stood by and watched their 401(k)s hemorrhage for months.
But in the end, politics trumped everything else. The elected lead-
ers had lied. Again. They weren’t so close to a deal, after all. Nancy
Pelosi had given a partisan, Bush-bashing speech that angered some
House Republicans, and, bingo, the whole project went right down
the toilet. The last-minute mutiny by those Republicans sank the first
vote (228 to 205) on Monday, September 29, 2008. After a later roll
call, the bill bit the dust and everyday Americans bit the bullet: the
Dow registered a 778-point, 7 percent drop, its largest single-day point
loss in history. In one five-minute span of the roll call, the Dow Jones
Industrial Average went into a 450-point death spiral. As the sun set on
Black Monday, $1.2 trillion of investor wealth had been vaporized.
At the end of the day, Bush couldn’t get it done because he had
zero political capital left. Nancy Pelosi couldn’t get it done, and
minority leader John Boehner couldn’t get it done. Obama couldn’t
get it done. And all of this despite the efforts of Arizona senator John
McCain, who impulsively “suspended” his campaign, parachuted
into the Washington fray, said he’d bail out of the first debate with
Obama in two days if his maverick magic was still working “across the
aisle,” and anointed himself the “country first” savior of the rescue
bill. The more he claimed that his intent was to transcend partisan
politics, the more partisan his media-grabbing gamble seemed. As
House Financial Services Committee chairman Barney Frank put
it, “We’re trying to rescue the economy, not the McCain campaign.”
With McCain in town to save the day, he and Obama, who both
urged bipartisan cooperation, were summoned by Bush to a Thursday
powwow with House leaders. They didn’t get it done, either.
Bottom line: the middle class had taken it once again in the shorts.
“Why any of them deserve to be reelected is a mystery to me,” I said
 OUR LAST BEST HOPE 7

on the air the day after Black Monday. “By the way, the market rallied
[485 points] today because of talk in Washington that this idea is not
dead yet. Once it is dead and buried, watch out.”
Within a week, the Senate easily passed its own rescue version
(Paulson’s 3-page plan swelled to 110 pages in the House and 450 in
the Senate). Its eventual passage in the House was greased, of course,
by what the New York Times called “old-fashioned political induce-
ments added by the Senate.” Most notably, they included $125 billion
in pork barrel sweeteners and a wide and bizarre array of tax breaks
(more on these later); they also raised the limit on FDIC protection of
consumer banking deposits from $100,000 to $250,000, put a cap on
participating CEOs’ pay, and imposed tighter regulation of lenders.
Pressured by everyone from Bush to fed-up blue-collar wage-earners
contacting their representatives, the House passed the vote.
Bush signed the rescue package into law less than a week after
Black Monday. “We’ve just performed emergency surgery,” said House
majority leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, “but unless the patient
starts eating right and exercising, the problem’s coming right back.”
In the six weeks that followed, the stock market fell roughly another
20 percent. Recovery would indeed be slow, not without recurring
pain, and the patient’s long-term prognosis remains unclear at best.
What else was new? The government and its leadership have
repeatedly failed us big time, Democrats and Republicans alike. After
the September–October surprise of 2008, do we need further proof
that our entire system is not only broken but hurtling beyond repair?
McCain was left with egg all over his face for his impulsive, debate-
week campaign gamble; Obama called his actions “erratic.” Postdebate
polling had the Obama-Senator Joe Biden ticket slowly pulling away.
(More later as well on McCain’s other bizarre “country first” gamble:
picking running mate Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, and her brash,
if vacuous, mission to babble her way to victory and sit a heartbeat away
from the presidency of the United States.) In the prevailing climate of
voter fear, mistrust, and anger, I asked on the “Cafferty File” whether
8 NOW OR NEVER

the House’s initial rejection of the bailout was reason enough to vote
all of its incumbents out. Dave from Arizona wrote, “Now I know why
revolutions happen. Our revolution must happen in November at the
voting booth and get these self-serving, incompetent, and plain old
dumb clowns out of office.”
Long before Election Day, the housing boom made millions of
people feel rich and extravagant while we as a nation were going
broke and were hated around the world. Our national debt ceiling had
doubled under Bush from $5.6 trillion to $11.3 trillion. The Iraq troop
surge helped point us toward a phased pullout, possibly within three
years, while a wave of attacks by Taliban and al Qaeda extremists tight-
ened their grip on towns and cities across Afghanistan and made 2008
the deadliest year there yet for U.S. troops in a war we were told we
had “won” in 2002. Now, the Treasury-draining war had finally come
home to haunt the economy. Voters’ attention shifted from the dusty,
distant Fallujahs of Iraq to the picket-fence foreclosures next door.
We endured mounting unemployment; inflation; soaring energy,
food, and health-care costs; the housing bust; the subprime mortgage
meltdown; and alarming rates of foreclosures, credit card defaults, and
personal and business bankruptcy filings. Forty-six million Americans
live without health insurance, while twenty-eight million live on food
stamps. We’re still being held hostage to foreign sources of energy. In the
middle of all this, the administration spent $43 million tax dollars just
to let you and me know that Bush would be sending out $160 billion of
someone else’s money in the form of economic stimulus rebate checks.
Those checks were barely in the bank before stimulus deteriorated into
rescue and rescue into panic.
Small wonder the voters sent a resounding message to their elected
officials: the game as you slimeballs have known it and played it is
over. November 4, 2008, was arguably the most significant Election
Day in the last hundred years. Bush, Cheney & Co. had seen fit to
turn it into nothing less than a national referendum on our economic
survival and, more fundamentally, on our future as a nation of laws
 OUR LAST BEST HOPE 9

and the inalienable rights of its citizens. McCain promised change,

but he had voted for Bush policies 90 percent of the time. Obama,
four years into his first term as a senator from Illinois, offered a stark
alternative to a virtual third Bush term under McCain-Palin. By pick-
ing the forty-four-year-old Palin, the moose-huntin’, pro-life, “drill,
baby, drill” oil-exploration booster and lipstick-loving pit bull of a
hockey mom of five, not to mention ex-mayor of a town of six thou-
sand now just twenty months into her term as governor, McCain won
the conservative base’s embrace. But it practically made a travesty of
his own core attack on Obama’s “inexperience.”
The 2008 presidential election played out as a sometimes nasty,
race-tinged, history-making drama in two acts. Act I was dominated
early on by McCain’s stunning comeback from oblivion to win
his party’s nomination and, for far longer, by the bruising, divisive
fight for the Democratic nomination between the first-ever woman
candidate—then New York senator Hillary Clinton and President-
elect Obama’s eventual pick for secretary of state—and the first-ever
African American candidate from a major party. There were a number
of provocative characters and plot twists featuring Bill Clinton, onetime
Weather Underground founder and “unrepentant bomber” terrorist
Bill Ayers, and the ranting, racist, paranoid Reverend Jeremiah Wright,
Obama’s longtime, now former, pastor in Chicago.
Act II was shaped at first by McCain’s shocking pick of the unknown
Palin, a fresh, far-right voice of blue-collar, red-state, you-betcha, darn-
tootin’, tax-hatin’ Joe Six-Pack America. Her wow factor at the GOP
convention, unloading sassy, smirking talking-point zingers scripted
by a Bush speechwriter, energized the party’s social conservative base,
which had resisted the unpredictable, too-moderate McCain. It show-
ered its love on Palin and family, even after news promptly broke
that she was under investigation in Alaska for abusing her power,
and that her unwed seventeen-year-old daughter was five months preg-
nant. God bless ’em, those flexible (or was it hypocritical?) enforcers of
GOP family values. Then came the race to the finish line—from the
10 NOW OR NEVER

bailout drama to Palin’s blathering interview sound bites, to negative

(and patently misleading or false) ads by both candidates, to disturb-
ing rabble-rousing rallies on the increasingly desperate McCain-Palin
trail, as their poll numbers slid week after week.
Before McCain-Palin tried to co-opt Obama’s message of hope and
change in Washington, Obama campaigned as a no-strings-attached
newcomer determined to raise the level of public debate, stick to the
high road, and avoid smears and the politics of personal destruction.
With his camp’s brilliant, youth-targeted use of the Internet, he trans-
formed the rules of political engagement and redrew the electoral
map by turning some red states blue. He took the fight to McCain in
places where McCain shouldn’t have had to defend himself. Obama
was just a once-in-a-generation candidate. His style was buoyant,
graceful, and eloquent, but some backers and critics alike called him
too aloof, too condescending and cerebral to connect with everyday
Americans. Even his supporters worried that he couldn’t summon
the killer instinct or populist passion needed to counter smears and
negative ads and to cut through racial or class issues that were possibly
hiding beneath the polling numbers.
Obama is the son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother
who bore him at age eighteen when she and Barack Sr. were University
of Hawaii students. Obama grew up in Hawaii and, for several years,
in Jakarta, after his parents split and his mom, Ann Dunham, married
an Indonesian. (His dad went to Harvard and became an economist
in Kenya; Obama rarely saw him again.) Back in Hawaii, Obama was
raised largely by Ann’s parents before attending Columbia Univer-
sity and going on to become the first African American editor of the
Harvard Law Review. He worked for several years as a community orga-
nizer and a lawyer on Chicago’s South Side, but despite his modest
background and activist community legal work, his aura of cool, calm,
and intellectual prowess later earned him his opponents’ “elitist” rap.
Yet his message resonated with the people, especially the two-
thirds of the country that, like him, wanted out of Iraq; he vowed to
 OUR LAST BEST HOPE 11

raise taxes for the wealthy and cut them for 95 percent of working
families; he called for racial and political unity and enlightened
leadership. His ability to inspire first-time registrants, young voters,
Hispanics, Catholics, and this group and that group was a testament
to our appetite for change. Obama came along at the right time with
the right message and the right organization—an awesome political
and fundraising machine that raised an astonishing $745 million
throughout the long campaign, more than twice the amount raised
by the McCain camp. It was as if fate had stepped in and said, all
right, you guys have suffered enough for eight years with this jerk,
so now we’re going to give you somebody better. Obama spoke to
the nation’s craving for a leader with character, wisdom, and moral
integrity—and a real-world vision and plan for restoring America’s
greatness at home and around the globe. Suddenly, everyone was
riveted by politics. When 82 percent of the people polled in spring
2008 said we were on the wrong track, it dawned on voters that we
were at a now-or-never crossroads nearing the end of the morally and
fiscally bankrupt Bush era.
The primaries unleashed a tsunami of voters who racked up unprec-
edented registration and ballot-box numbers, particularly on the hotly
contested Democratic side. In Pennsylvania, 200,000 folks registered
as new Democrats; 178,000 registered Republicans switched parties
just to vote in the Democratic race. North Carolina and Indiana saw
close to 300,000 newly registered voters combined. In Ohio, young
and first-time Democratic voters exceeded the 118,000-vote margin
of victory over Senator John Kerry that clinched Bush’s second term.
(Obama won Ohio for the Democrats by 207,000 votes.)
Another sign that Election 2008 was itself a huge news story: con-
stant coverage turned to ratings gold for broadcast and cable news
networks alike, including CNN. Eight million viewers tuned in to
follow the Obama-Clinton debate way back in January 2008. By late
summer, thirty-eight million watched Governor Palin’s convention
speech at Xcel Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, just days after McCain
12 NOW OR NEVER

had plucked her from the Alaskan ozone (the one not caused by
“human impacts,” as she claimed). Just as many watched Obama’s
speech before eighty-four thousand people at the Democratic Con-
vention at Denver’s Invesco Field, while an astounding forty million
saw McCain’s speech at the Republican Convention, and seventy mil-
lion viewed the Biden-Palin vice-presidential debate. These were all
more like Super Bowl numbers.
Having felt ignored, abused, or deceived for years, the American
electorate, too used to venting rather than actually voting, was itself
now a major election-year story line. “The sleeping giant may be
starting to wake up,” I said on March 25, 2008. Give Bush credit:
for the lamest of lame ducks, W. rocked the vote like none other
before him. The Obama “youthquake” was showing up to vote in
numbers we had never seen before. “All it took,” I said one day, “was
the illegal invasion of Iraq, which led to a war that’s now in its sixth
year; the destruction of our civil liberties in the name of the war on
terror; the quadrupling of oil prices; and the early signs of a recession
that could be as bad as anything we’ve seen in a long time. And sud-
denly, the American voter is all ears.”
As I said during the primaries, if our worldwide reputation was shot
for the first time in our history, it was because we had allowed it to hap-
pen. “By not being proactive in participating in our democracy, the
forces that would exploit it and ultimately destroy it had a free rein,”
I said. “But these voter registration numbers are very encouraging,
because when Americans finally get up off our collective butts and
decide to do something, they’re a force that’s simply unstoppable.”
We had largely abdicated the role of a vigilant citizenry, surrender-
ing the country to the people whose self-serving agendas and more
active and vested interests in working the system screw us year in,
year out. It’s the lobbyists, corporations, and special interest groups
that see the angles, work the loopholes (and often draft legislation),
and manipulate the government (and a lazy electorate) as they amass
not just money but political influence. But with an ironic assist from
 OUR LAST BEST HOPE 13

W. himself, voters were fighting back—from seniors to slackers, from

New Hampshire to New Mexico.
Change comes about in a democracy only when millions of ordi-
narily silent citizens get riled up enough to be mad as hell about the
status quo that’s crushing them and leaving the country teetering
on the edge of economic collapse. When that poll showed more
than four out of five of us feeling downright pissed off, McCain and
Clinton were caught standing knee-deep in four decades of business-
as-usual. Early attempts to tarnish Obama’s glow by focusing on his
inexperience and “extreme” liberalism and preposterous later charges
that he was “palling around with terrorists,” as Palin put it, reinforced
his appeal as a legitimate, trustworthy advocate and change agent.
On the day that I asked what it meant when as many as 80 percent
of voters showed up for the primaries, Ifeanyi from Houston wrote,
“It says that the people have risen to the call for change. Win or lose,
Obama has done something that he should be very proud of forever:
his clarion call for change was heeded by groups that never considered
voting important, and his superb organization has been galvanizing
people to register and vote. This is novel and should be a blueprint
for motivating Americans in all spheres.” Jean from Arizona wrote,
“It tells me that eighty percent of Americans are gravely concerned
over the present condition of this nation and its future. The U.S. is no
longer exercising leadership here at home or abroad. I worry for the
future generations of Americans. They will never know the country
that so many of us have known and loved.”
Whether W. wants to take credit for it or not, his legacy, beyond
ending voter apathy, is actually an African American political progeny
named Barack Obama, who owes his astonishing triumph to Bush,
Cheney, and the arrogant neocons who loyally served their imperial
regime. If it’s not the legacy Bush wanted, it’s the one American vot-
ers felt he deserved. Obama could not have gained maximum traction
without the administration’s wartime record of epic misjudgment, ille-
gal spying, torture, corruption, cronyism, tax cuts for the wealthy, and
14 NOW OR NEVER

staggering incompetence that is still stinking up the Katrina coastline

three-plus years later. Bush & Co. proved you could do anything you
wanted—legal or not—and nobody questioned it, but if you ques-
tioned them, you were unpatriotic. Nobody was held accountable,
unless you count Scooter Libby, whose sentence for his perjury con-
viction tied to the CIA leak case was commuted by Bush. There was
no price paid, nothing. They pulled it off, like the Brinks Gang, and
they all left town, pockets bulging.
As Now or Never amply demonstrates, politicians all crawl out of
the same slime, with few exceptions. The political establishment,
lobbyists and corporations included, couldn’t care less about you. No
wonder voters under thirty finally got off their asses in 2008. They saw
what was in store for them. They saw how these aging white people
in office screwed this country up. They saw that their own American
Dreams—solid, upwardly mobile careers, well-schooled kids, and
affordable homes, gasoline and heating fuel, food, and health care—
might soon slip beyond their reach.
Voters got it that if we don’t start to do things differently, the preda-
tors, the parasites, and the blood-suckers will continue to drain and
weaken us until there’s nothing left. Obama’s edge was that he hadn’t
been inside the Beltway long enough to become covered (or at least to
nearly the same extent) with the special-interest barnacles, the lobbyist
sores, and the slime oozing from the pores of the slithering hacks we
send there for decades on end. For all their love of patriotism, small
government, fiscal control, and family values, the GOP could have
nominated Jesus Christ and still lost in 2008. Shake up Washington?
Please. Not a goddamn thing would have changed in a McCain-Palin
White House. Now or Never reflects how desperate we are to fix our
fractured nation and make it work for all of us.
I want to believe that goal is within reach, although I may still be
from the “don’t hold your breath” school. Even if we’re just daydream-
ing through our despair, we cling to some tiny sliver of hope that
our country can be saved. Will Obama deliver? His smart, hopeful
one thing though; you're going to have to get the police without
letting the police get you."
"Huh?"
"It seems the entire force is out scouring the city for you, and I get
the impression that they're supposed to rush you along to the
operating room without messing around with any conversation."
"Golly," Marc said. "How am I going to work it? Even if I get a chance
to tell them about Entwerp, they'll just think I'm delirious."
"Be your own bait," Toffee suggested. "Entwerp will be busy
murdering George and me. All you have to do is get the cops to
chase you to the scene of the crime so they can catch him red-
handed. I'll see to it that the door's left unlocked long enough for you
to get out of here...." She stopped as the key sounded again in the
lock. "Anyway, work it out as you go along, and I'll see you later..."

"What took so long?" the congressman demanded. He was standing

by the green sedan, holding the door open.
"It was the dame," the thug said breathlessly. "When I turned to lock
up the storeroom, she let out a yip and took off. I had to chase her
all over the joint before I caught her."
At his side, Toffee shook her head to get the hair out of her eyes. "I
just wanted a little exercise to get up the circulation," she said.
"We certainly circulated," the thug agreed sourly. "All over the place."
"You didn't leave the storeroom open?" the congressman asked.
"I went back and locked it."
"I see you got Pillsworth in the car."
"Yeah," the thug said. "But he handled awful funny, like he was all
strung together with invisible wire. I had a job spreadin' him out in
the seat."
The congressman looked at him sharply. "You've probably been
drinking that dummy whiskey again," he said. "Anyway, let's get
going. The girl will have to drive."
"I don't know how to drive," Toffee said. "Besides, I haven't got a
license."
"Never mind, sister," the thug said, "that's even better." He nudged
her toward the door of the car, as the congressman moved off into
the night. Toffee gazed inward at the dismembered George sprawled
across the seat.
"Do I have to get in there with him?" she asked.
"The boss doesn't want you to be lonesome," the thug said.
"I'd rather be lonesome," Toffee said, but she got into the car
anyway.
The thug closed the door after her and leaned through the window.
"Just so you'll know," he said, "I'd better explain. This car hasn't any
brakes, and the steering is fixed. It's okay now, but after a few
minutes it will break and the car will be out of control. We have it
timed out with the curve at the end of the speedway, the one called
Dead Man's Curve. By the time you reach that the wheel will be just
about as much good to you as a set of knitting needles. In other
words, you're going to drive due south with your foot to the floor and
crack up on the curve. No one's missed that curve yet and lived."
"There's always a first time," Toffee said brightly.
"Don't count on it, sugar. And just to make sure you do what you're
told, the congressman and me will be alongside in the congressman's
car. I personally will be holding a rod aimed at your head, so don't
get notions. Also, we want to be around to report the accident."
Toffee nodded approvingly. "It only seems the sort of thing any good
citizen would do," she said.
The gunman stared at her. "Too bad a good looking dame like you
has to be so wacky."
"We all have our little flaws," Toffee said chattily. "That's life."
"Aren't you even worried?"
Toffee shook her head. "I've always wanted to learn to drive," she
said, smiling.
"Oh, my God!" the thug moaned. "Maybe, it's best; you're sure to kill
yourself sooner or later anyway."
"Of course," Toffee said, patting his hand. "I don't want you to blame
yourself. Just consider you're doing a public service."

Meanwhile, a lanky figure had emerged warily from the warehouse

and was lurking, in a twitchy sort of way, in the dimness of the alley.
Obscured in shadow, Marc had watched Toffee get into the green
sedan, the thug instructing her in the art of driving. He glanced
anxiously down the street, praying for a police car.
A small coupe, with a man and woman inside, pulled up to the curb
at the end of the block, and the man got out and disappeared into
the telegraph office on the corner. But that was all.
Marc jumped as he heard the green sedan start up. He turned to see
a black limousine, driven by the congressman, pull up beside it. The
thug crossed and got inside and a moment later the barrel of a gun
caught light from the window. Time was seeping out.
Ducking from cover, Marc raced for the coupe and the waiting woman
on the corner. Reaching it, he threw the door open and jumped
inside. The woman, a faded blonde, pressed back against the seat
with a startled cry. Marc, however, was too relieved at finding the key
in the ignition to notice.
He started the car, threw it into gear and set it in motion almost in a
single action. The woman's reaction to this was a shrill, braying
scream.
"Please," Marc said distractedly. "Don't." The woman screamed again.
"Do you have to do that?" he asked annoyedly.
"I have to do something, don't I?" the woman enquired wretchedly. "I
can't just sit here, can I?"
"I don't see why not," Marc said, peering down the street intently. "It
doesn't help anything to scream like that."
"It helps me plenty," the woman retorted hotly. "When naked men
come leaping into a lady's car and driving her off to God knows what,
it gives her a great satisfaction to scream." As though to prove her
point she paused to scream again. "Anyway, it makes her feel a hell
of a lot better."
"I don't see why," Marc said with rising irritation.
"Well, put yourself in my place," the woman snapped. "What would
you do if a naked man came leaping into your car?"
"Naked men don't leap into my car." Marc said self-righteously. "I
wouldn't let them."
"Are you suggesting that I invite naked men to come leaping into my
car?" the woman asked frigidly. "I'll have you know...."
"The way you carry on about it," Marc said, "one just automatically
draws his own conclusions. One pictures a whole procession of naked
men just waiting their turn to leap into your car, you're such an
authority on these occasions."

For a moment the blonde fell into a sulky silence. She glanced out
the window at the rapidly passing scenery.
"What I want to know," she said at length, "is what is my husband
going to say."
"Not knowing your husband," Marc said, "I'm in no position to guess.
If I were you I'd judge by the way he's expressed himself on other
similar occasions."
"There you go again," the woman said, "insulting me. Where are you
taking me?"
"I'm not taking you anywhere," Marc said. "I'm taking myself. You
just happened to be here."
"Oh," the woman said, not, it seemed, without a touch of
disappointment. There was another lapse of silence.
"Do you know where there's a cop?" Marc asked, after a few more
blocks.
"If I did," the woman said, "I'd be with him instead of you. What do
you want with a cop?"
"I've got to find one," Marc said anxiously. "It means everything."
By this time the woman had resigned herself to the unhappy fact that
she was out for a spin with a raving lunatic. She nodded sagely, as
though agreeing with this last remark entirely.
"Sure," she said, "sometimes I feel that way myself. Cops are
everything. It just sweeps over me all of a heap."
"What sweeps over you?" Marc asked absently.
"Cops," the woman said.
"Do you think you ought to be making these little confessions to a
total stranger?" Marc asked distastefully. "Or do you mean your
husband is a cop?"
"Of course not," the woman said. "My husband is a butcher. What's
that got to do with it? I was just saying that sometimes cops just
seem to surge over me." She giggled with nervous desperation. "A
sort of blue serge, you might say."
"Well," Marc said, "since you seem to know all these cops so well,
you ought to be able to tell me where they hang out."
"I don't know all these cops," the woman said.
"You mean they're a bunch of total strangers?" Marc asked,
thoroughly shocked. "My word!"
"Couldn't we just drop the subject?" the woman asked defeatedly.
"I'm all confused somehow."
"I should think you would be confused," Marc agreed. His voice
trailed away on a rising inflection as he spotted a police car parked at
the curb across the street. "Cops!" he breathed. He glanced ahead.
"You see that green sedan up ahead with the black limousine beside
it?"
The woman nodded vaguely. "The one that just cut up over the
sidewalk? What about it?"
"Keep your eye on it," Marc instructed, "while I get the cop's
attention. It's a matter of life and death."

The green sedan, as it turned out, was eminently worth keeping an

eye on. Toffee, beleaguered as she was with the mechanics of
keeping the vehicle in motion, had come upon other problems. Early
in the game, feeling vague stirrings at her side, she had looked
around to see George's dismembered head yawn thickly and open its
eyes. Then, as if this wasn't loathsome enough, a set of fingers
wriggled to the edge of the seat, gripped it and boosted the halved
torso around so that the disjointed feet dropped to the floor. George,
rising from unconsciousness had hauled himself into a sitting
position. Toffee looked on this development without favor.
"Stay down, George," she hissed. "Get back where you were."
The head swiveled around hideously, a wounded look in its eyes.
"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said sadly. "You hit me."
"And I'll hit you again," Toffee promised, "if you don't get down."
George merely looked baffled at this. "Where are we goin'?" he
asked.
"To an accident," Toffee said.
George's face brightened. "Was Marc in it?" he asked.
"It hasn't happened yet," Toffee explained. "We're going to be in it,
you and I. In fact, we're the whole accident."
"Huh?" George said, edging up a bit. "Us?"
"That's right," Toffee nodded. "They figure we know too much."
"Too much about what?"
"About this subversive business," Toffee said. "They think we know
their plan to overthrow the government."
"So they're going to kill us in an accident?"
"Uh-huh."
"Aren't you scared?"
Toffee shrugged. "Why should I be? I'm a product of Marc's mind. I
can't possibly be destroyed unless he is. And he's perfectly safe."
"He is?" George said, his voice heavy with disappointment. "Why
don't these people want to kill him?"
"They think they are killing him," Toffee said. "They think you're
Marc. In fact they believe you're already dead."
"What!" George cried. "You mean I'm acting as a decoy to save
Marc's life?"
Toffee nodded smugly. "Some onions, eh, George?"
"Stop the car!" George shouted. "Let me out!"
"No brakes," Toffee said. She nodded toward the limousine. "Besides,
they won't let me. You'd better get down in the seat or they'll think
it's funny."
"I hope they do," George said sullenly. "I hope they think it's funny as
hell and do something about it. It's so damned unfair." And with that
he leaned across Toffee, jutted his head out the window and began
baying in the direction of the limousine.
"Stop that!" Toffee said. "It sounds awful."

George swiveled his frightful head around in her direction. "It

should," he said. "It's the Torment Lament. I learned it in the
Moaning Chorus and it's guaranteed to drive you mad in nothing flat."
He turned back to the night and the limousine and sent his voice
wailing into the wind.
It was an effort that was not lost on its audience. The occupants of
the limousine looked around sharply with horrified eyes.
"Jesus in Heaven!" the thug gasped.
At his side the congressman was so taken with the fearsome recital
that he completely forgot he was driving. As the car careened
dangerously, the thug reached out and pulled the wheel.
"Isn't it awful, boss?" he breathed.
"Awful doesn't begin to tell it," the congressman choked. "It's—it's
awful!"
"Yeah. That's what I mean to say."
"How can anything sound like that?" the congressman asked
hauntedly.
"If it can look like that," the thug said, "I guess it shouldn't have no
trouble soundin' like that."
"And look at that girl, will you? She's actually talking to the filthy
thing."
"She looks plenty hot under the collar."
"Why not? I'd be sore as hell myself."
"When do we get to the curve, boss?"
"I don't know," the congressman said. "But I can't wait. The sooner
that car crashes and takes that frightful thing with it the better."

Meanwhile, as the two cars skidded and reeled toward the appointed
spot of disaster, Marc continued to loiter several blocks behind.
Having deliberately cut across traffic in the middle of the block, he
pulled up beside the police car and leaned out the window.
"I just cut across traffic!" he called out.
The cop behind the wheel left his conversation with his companion
and observed Marc dubiously.
"So what?" he asked. "You want me to give you a gold star on your
driver's license?"
"I don't have a driver's license," Marc offered hopefully. "What are
you going to do about it, you big, thick-headed slob?"
The cop turned back to his partner. "A kidder, we've got here," he
said. He turned back to Marc. "Beat it, comedian, you and your girl
friend take off."
"Aren't you going to chase me?" Marc asked. "I'm a lawbreaker."
"Move along, chum," the cop drawled, "before I sell you a ticket to
the orphan's picnic."
"But you've got to chase me," Marc said urgently.
"No I don't, friend," the cop said. "I've got to sit here and listen for
radio leads on this goofy Pillsworth guy."
"But that's me!" Marc said. "I'm Pillsworth!"
The cop looked at him with forced patience. "Sure, sure," he said.
"And I'm Miss Atlantic City. Beat it." He turned back to his
companion.
"What if I told you I knew where a murder was going to happen?"
Marc ventured.
The cop looked around. "You're just full of news, aren't you?" he said,
and turned away again.
For a moment Marc sat in silent indecision. Then he turned to the
blonde.
"Why don't you scream?" he asked.
"Why should I?" the woman asked interestedly. "Do you really know
where a murder's going to happen?"
"You said screaming made you feel good," Marc suggested.
"I feel fine," the woman said. "I always do with a lot of stuff going
on. Who's going to get murdered?"
Marc glanced desperately from the woman to the cops and back
again. A determined look came into his eyes. He cautiously extended
two fingers to the woman's thigh. "I'm sorry," he said, and pinched
as hard as he could.

The results were everything to be wished for—and more. Stiffening in

her seat, the woman let out a bleat that surpassed even her previous
efforts. Even George might have envied the torment in her voice as it
soared, swooped, scaled the heights and dipped into soul-shattering
depths. At its completion, the blonde turned and took a clawing
swipe at Marc's face.
Marc ducked. "That's the stuff!" he said happily, noting from the
corner of his eye that he had finally gained the undivided attention of
the police force. Pinching the blonde again and nodding his
satisfaction at the second chorus, he threw the coupe into gear, cut
across traffic and headed down the speedway. It was only a moment
before the wail of a siren mingled with the shrill vocalizations of his
companion. He pushed the gas feed to the floor.
To the witnesses along the speedway, the pedestrians, the vendors,
the shop owners and just plain malingerers, the events of the
evening were never entirely clear. Some, judging simply by the
volume of noise, settled for the notion that what had passed was
nothing more than an overly exuberant wedding procession. The
sticklers, however, rejected this notion flatly, pointing to the
significant details of the affair.
Which, they demanded to know, was the wedding couple? Certainly it
couldn't have been the redhead and the wailing man in the green
sedan; certainly no bride—or at least very few—had ever used that
kind of language to her groom on the wedding night. And it took the
most wretched husband years to achieve the note of despair which
this poor fellow was loosing on the evening air.
As for the black limousine, that was out. Though its occupants
seemed locked together in some sort of mad embrace, the
arrangement appeared to have its roots in terror rather than
affection.
The couple in the coupe that followed was even more difficult to
wedge into the picture of the young couple united. After all, wasn't
she screaming her lungs out and hammering on his head with both
fists?
As for the police who followed—and they probably knew the truth of
the matter—they looked shocked to the core. So there simply wasn't
any answer for it until the morning papers came out.
The participants in the demented chase along the speedway,
however, were far too engrossed in their own problems to care for
the conflict they introduced into the lives of innocent bystanders.
Toffee, for one, could not have been less concerned; she was too
mad at George.
"Stop that caterwauling!" she yelled. "Stop it, you idiot."

George pulled his disconnected head inside the window and eyed
Toffee owlishly. His other parts adjusted themselves and the head
sank into Toffee's lap. There, gazing up at her, it lazily crossed its
eyes and began to whimper piteously.
"Ugh!" Toffee cried. "I'll go mad!"
The head relaxed its face obligingly into an expression of feeble-
minded delight, letting its tongue loll loosely from the corner of its
mouth.
"That's all!" Toffee screamed. "I'm getting out of here!"
Without further consideration for the occupants of the limousine and
the approaching curve, she relinquished the wheel, threw the car
door open, and with one last agonized glance at the loathsome head,
which was now foaming prettily at the mouth, prepared to depart its
company. In the limousine this bit of action was not unobserved.
"She's trying to get away!" the congressman yelled. "Stop her!"
The thug turned to the window and looked. "Get back!" he hollered.
"Get back or I'll blast you!"
"Go ahead," Toffee cried. "It'll be a positive pleasure next to what
I've just been through."
"Okay!" the thug said grimly. "You asked for it!"
His finger closed down on the trigger. It was just at that moment,
however, that the green sedan, no longer benefitted by a driver,
swerved toward the limousine, throwing Toffee back inside. The
congressman cramped the wheel of the limousine sharply to avoid a
crash. The gunman, thrown sharply against the door, fired wildly into
the night. From the rear there was the sound of screeching tires and
forced brakes.
"Good night!" the congressman panted, righting the limousine as the
green sedan veered away again. "What did you hit?"
"I think it was that coupe back there," the thug said, peering out the
window. "I must have hit a tire: it's out of control."
"Good Lord!" the congressman yelled, "the curve's right ahead! We're
pinned in between them. We're going to crash. Everybody's going to
crash!"
No sooner was this dire prediction out of the congressman's mouth
than it became a deafening reality. Ahead, the green sedan raced
headlong into the concrete embankment with a rending smash and
almost literally flattened itself into two dimensions.
This was the signal for the two lesser crashes that followed. The
limousine engaged its radiator forcibly into the wreckage just in time
to receive a skidding broadside from the coupe.

A moment of silence followed, emphasized by the approaching

scream of a siren. The police car jolted to a stop and the two cops
ran forward to the scene of destruction. They reached the coupe first.
"Here!" the first cop said. "What's going on?"
The faded blonde jutted her head out of the window. "He blew out
my tire!" she rasped. "Not to mention all that pinching!"
"Pinching?" the cop asked curiously. "What kind of pinching, lady?
Where?"
"All kinds of pinching," the woman said evilly. "Everywhere."
The cop peered at Marc. "Why's he dressed in that nightshirt?"
"How should I know?" the woman said. "Maybe he thinks he's cute or
something."
The cop leaned closer. "Here, you," he said, "why are you dressed
like that?"
"I'm tired," Marc said exhaustedly, "and I want to go to bed. I had a
little drink about an hour ago...."
"Stop that now," the cop barked. "No nonsense."
"But it's all perfectly true," Marc said.
The cop started to speak further, but he caught sight of the
congressman and his companion climbing out of the limousine and
tore himself away.
"There are people dying in that car!" the congressman shouted
tragically, hurrying forward. "It's awful, officer!"
"All maimed and cut up," the thug put in. "Loose heads and legs and
stuff all over the place."
"Have you seen them?" the policeman asked.
"Well, they must be," the congressman put in quickly. "How could it
be otherwise? The man in the car is Marc Pillsworth. I saw him just
before the crash."
The policeman did a take. "Yeah?"
"Sure," the thug said excitedly. "Only now he's all cut up—loose head
and arms and...!"
"Shut up," the congressman snapped.
"They might still be alive," the cop said. "We've got to do something
about it."
"Indeed we do," the congressman said. "Perhaps we can assist
them."
"Come on," the cop said. "You can give a hand."

Dutifully the three turned to the sedan. They turned and then
stopped with a harmonized gasp, the cop taking the bass. In the
moment of their turning there had been a sudden movement in the
car and the door had swung partially open. In the opening there
appeared a leg of provocative shapeliness.
"A leg!" the thug shuddered. "I told you!"
"A dame's leg," the cop breathed. "And just think what the rest of her
must have been like with a leg like that! Just imagine...!" He sucked
in his breath as the leg began to show unexpected signs of life. It
quivered, turned and was quickly joined by a mate of equal
perfection. It was only a moment before Toffee appeared in total,
quite unmarked. Her mood, however, was hostile. Quitting the ruined
car she turned back to the door and thrust her head inside.
"Of all the beastly, rotten, evil-minded, stinking things to do to a girl!"
she snapped. "Come out of there you slimy-souled son of Satan and
fight like a man. I'll teach you to make foul passes at a girl when she
is stuck under a clutch. I'll show you...!"
"Good gosh!" the cop said. "Who's she talking to?"
"She must be hysterical," the congressman said, thoroughly shaken.
"Probably got a crack on the head and isn't accountable for what
she's saying."
"That's certainly no way to talk to the dead," the cop said.
"It's no way to talk to the living," the thug said. "If she hauled off at
me like that I'd rather be dead."
"The poor child's obviously insane," the congressman said firmly.
"There's no question about it."
Meanwhile Toffee was still at it. "Come out of there, you hulking
lout," she grated, "before I come in there and drag you out by your
ears!"
"Poor little thing," the cop said sadly. "She really believes Mr.
Pillsworth can come out of that car. She refuses to believe he's dead."
By now Toffee had stepped forward and yanked the door all the way
open. As the three in the background stared in varying degrees of
apprehension, a thin figure in a brief linen gown crawled out on its
hands and knees. The congressman swayed slightly as though about
to faint.
"You look more natural down on all fours, you beast," Toffee rasped.
"I ought to kick you right in the slats. Get up and try to face me if
you've the nerve!"

Apparently the shock of the accident had given George's ectoplasm a

further jolt for now he was completely materialized. He looked up at
Toffee ruefully and got to his feet.
"I was only trying to get you loose," he said.
"The way you were pawing me was enough to get any girl loose,"
Toffee said. "Just don't try it again."
"Gawd a'mighty!" the thug whispered. "Pillsworth!"
"Pillsworth?" the cop said. "But that's the same guy who was pinching
the other dame in the coupe. My gosh! how he gets around!"
Just then the other policeman, who had retreated to the background,
arrived on the scene with Marc and the blonde in custody.
"Hey," he said, "I caught this creep on the creep. He was trying to
sneak out."
The cop looked quickly at Marc, then back to George. "It's the same
guy!" he said. "Which one of you birds is Pillsworth?"
Marc and George went smoothly into their routine of pointing to each
other in unison.
"He is!" they said.
The cop turned to Toffee. "Do you know which is which?" he asked.
"Sure," Toffee said and nodded at George. "He's Pillsworth."
"She's crazy," George retorted hotly. "She's as crazy as bedbugs in a
bathtub."
"That's right," the thug put in. "She's a looney if there ever was one."
Marc moved urgently to gain the cop's attention. "You've got to arrest
that man," he said, pointing at the congressman. "He's a subversive
and a murderer."

The congressman whirled about. "You must be insane, sir!" he rasped

in frantic denial.
"You must be," Marc said. "You must have been ripe for the hatch
years ago."
"You're a fine one to talk," the blonde put in nastily. "Officer, this man
is off his rocker like a busted hobby horse. He's done nothing but
pinch me ever since we met."
Toffee levelled her gaze at Marc. "What were you doing pinching that
tomato?" she demanded. "Just what were you getting at?"
"Oh, don't be crazy," Marc said distractedly.
"Oh, so I'm crazy, am I?" Toffee said, doubling her fists.
"You sure are, sister," the thug put in. "You're the most hopped up
dame I ever saw." He turned to the cop. "She ought to be locked up."
"Oh, yeah?" Toffee said. "At least I didn't put anyone in a busted car
and send them off to get killed. Officer, I want you to arrest that
killer."
"Look, officer," Marc insisted, "you've got to take this man into
custody. He's a menace to the whole country."
"If you take anyone in, officer," the blonde put in harshly, "make it
this skinny bimbo. Pinch him like he pinched me."
The congressman moved in aggressively toward Marc. "You're making
slanderous accusations!" he blustered. "You should be committed to
an institution!"
"You're crazy!" Marc raged.
"You're crazy!" the blonde screeched.
"You're crazy!" Toffee hollered at the blonde.
"You're crazy!" the thug insisted moodily.
The cop turned dizzily to his companion and held out a palsied hand.
"Hurry!" he pleaded, "call the wagon, and let's take the whole bunch
of them in. In another minute I'm going to be crazy!"

The morning sun poured through the high windows of the courtroom,
wasting its brightness on a scene of sullen dementia. Judge Carper's
heavy face had achieved a shade of dyspeptic vermillion in record
time this morning. Even the flies clung to the walls in muted terror as
his gavel banged on the substantial wood of the bench and set the
room atremble.
"Silence!" the judge roared. "Silence, damnit! And if one more
defendant makes just one more crack about the sanity of any other
defendant I'll lock the whole crew of you up and melt the key down
for a watch fob." He ran his shaking hand over his forehead.
"Besides, so far I don't even know which ones of you are the
defendants and which are the complainants." He turned to the
policeman. "Do you know?"
"I'm not sure," the cop admitted uneasily. "I think they're all both."
"Both what?" the judge asked confusedly.
"Both defendants and complainants. As far as I can tell everybody's
mad as hell at everybody else. It sort of goes around in a circle."
"And I'm burned up at the lot of them," the judge said malignantly.
"Who are those two over there without any clothes on?"
"I think they lost their clothes in the crash," the cop said vaguely.
"The guy is really two guys, so it's hard to tell."
"What?"
"There are really two guys like that," the cop said. "Dressed alike."
The judge peered across at Marc with deep speculation. "I only see
one of him," he said dryly.
"The other one disappeared," the cop said, casting down his eyes.
"He—well, sort of evaporated."
"Evaporated? What are you talking about?"
"It's a fact, your honor. It happened on the way in. The only way I
can explain it is that one minute he was there and the next he just
sort of melted away."
"Rooney," the judge said, "have you lost your wits?"
"It wouldn't surprise me, judge," the cop sighed. "Everyone else has.
Why not me?"
"There's only one man there, Rooney," the judge said harshly. "And
judging by those skinny legs of his, maybe not even that."
"Yes, sir."
"Are you bucking for another vacation, Rooney, is that it?"
"Well, your honor, I do feel tired. It seemed to come over me all of a
sudden, after I ran into all those people."
"All right, we'll see what can be done. In the meantime let's have no
more of this falderol about one man being two, only one of them
evaporated."

"Yes, your honor," Rooney said, greatly saddened. "There's only one
man. I guess I was mistaken."
"Or drunk," the judge murmured sourly and turned his gaze to the
assortment before him. "Now what happened with this gang?"
"They were all in a wreck that involved three cars. The young lady in
the underskirt was driving the first one. She claims that the dark man
with the scar tried to murder her by forcing her to drive a car with a
broken steering gear."
"What does he say?"
"He says the young lady is mentally unstable and of low character. It
seems that he and the congressman observed her in the car for some
time before the crash. They say that her behavior was most erratic,
that she wailed and shrieked and at one point tried to abandon the
car in full motion."
"How else can you abandon a car?" the judge said sharply. "You have
to be in full motion."
"I mean the car was in full motion."
"I see. Where was this gentleman and the congressman while they
were doing all this observing?"
"They were in the second car. The congressman was driving. The
dark man is his body-guard. He was cleaning his gun at the time and
that's how he happened to shoot the third car, although the young
lady insists he was trying to shoot her."
"I think I've lost the thread," the judge said foggily. "Who was in the
third car?"
"The man with the skinny legs who says he isn't Pillsworth, and a
blonde woman."
"He says he isn't Pillsworth and a blonde woman?" the judge asked,
his eyes loosening in their sockets. "Why should he say a thing like
that?"
"No, no," the cop said earnestly, "he just says he isn't Pillsworth."
"Then he admits to being a blonde woman?" the judge gasped. "He
must be mad!"
"No," the cop said, "he doesn't admit anything about being a blonde
woman."
"Then he denies being a blonde woman," the judge said with relief. "I
wish you'd give me this story straight. Who accused him of being a
blonde woman in the first place?"
"No one," the cop said, almost tearfully. "He was only accused of
being Pillsworth."
"Pillsworth? You mean the fellow the hospital's looking for? Who said
he was Pillsworth?"
A look of doom came into the cop's eyes. "The—the other one, your
honor," he said.
"The other what?" the judge glowered. "Stop being evasive and
answer my questions."

Rooney swallowed fatefully. "The other Pillsworth," he answered. "He

accused Pillsworth of being Pillsworth—that is unless he's Pillsworth
himself. Only he melted away so I guess we'll never really know. The
blonde woman insists she can't identify him."
There was a dreadful silence as the judge tapped the palm of his
hand with the gavel. He lifted his gaze to the ceiling then levelled it
slowly on Rooney.
"So we're back to the blonde woman again, are we?"
"I'm afraid so," Rooney admitted weakly. "That's her over there,
looking mad."
"I had hoped we were through with the blonde woman," the judge
said acidly. "I thought we'd washed the blonde woman up."
"No, your honor, I'm afraid not."
"This isn't the same blonde woman that Pillsworth denies being, is
it?"
"No, sir."
"Does she deny that she's Pillsworth, is that it?"
"No, sir," Rooney sighed hopelessly. "She's just a blonde woman. She
refuses to give her name because her husband's a butcher."
"Is she a defendant or a complainant?"
"A complainant," the cop said. "She said that Pillsworth stole her car
and pinched her. That is if he's Pillsworth, and he denies it."
"Don't you mean he pinched her car?"
"No, sir. He stole her car, but he pinched her—on the thigh."
"My word!" the judge said.
The cop nodded. "She wants to sue someone, only since there were
two of them she doesn't know which one did the pinching. She can't
be sure whether it was this Pillsworth or the other one—if you follow
my meaning."
The judge paled. "Are you being deliberately cryptic, Rooney, or is it
simply that you can't see your way clear to be clear, if I make myself
clear."
"I'm afraid I don't follow you, your honor."
"Just a taste of your own medicine, Rooney," the judge said
vengefully. "How do you like it?" He turned his gaze moodily on the
blonde. "About this blonde...?"
"Yes, your honor?"
"She gets everything all snarled up. Every time she enters the picture
it ceases to make sense. Do you suppose this would all clear up if I
just had her thrown out of court?"
"I don't think so. With or without her, things are snarled up just the
same. I've never seen so much snarling in all my life; these people
just don't seem to like each other."
"What about this fellow who denies he's Pillsworth?" the judge asked.
"Is he the only pure defendant in the bunch?"
"Oh, no, your honor. He's the biggest complainant of the lot. And he's
far from pure. He's accusing the congressman of being the head of a
gang of subversives who are planning to kill the entire population
with bacteria."

The judge leaned across the bench, plainly scandalized. "The

congressman!" he gasped. "Why Congressman Entwerp was a
classmate of mine!"
"Yes, your honor. And he's threatened suit against this fellow for
slander."
"Good," the judge said. "Have this Pillsworth or whoever he is
brought before the bench. Obviously, he's a low criminal type. It
sticks out all over him."
The cop nodded and turned in Marc's direction. "You," he said. "The
judge will hear you."
Across the room, however, Marc gave no sign of hearing. Instead, he
was gazing intently at the vacant chair next to his own. On his face
was an expression of anxious annoyance.
"Now, look, George," he said, "You owe it to humanity to show
yourself and help get this mess cleared up. Why not be a good loser
for a change?"
The empty chair shifted, just perceptibly, with an air of complacency.
"Maybe they'll hang you," George replied hopefully from thin air.
"Don't be silly," Marc said. "There's no reason why they should. Come
on, now, be a good fellow and help get this over with."
"Oh, I'm going to help get it over with," George said pleasantly.
"When I'm through, they'll lower the boom on you so hard you'll be
the first man in history to be buried in an envelope."
Just then Toffee leaned forward and touched Marc's arm. "The judge
wants to speak to you," she said. "Come on, let's go."
Marc glanced around. "Did he call you too?"
"Well, no," Toffee admitted, "but I'm an interested party. I want to
see that you get fair treatment."
"Couldn't you just stay out of it?" Marc pleaded. "Couldn't I just
handle this myself?"
"Nonsense," Toffee said. "You need me. Come on, the old gaffer's
beginning to look apoplectic again."
"Oh, all right," Marc sighed. Getting up he followed Toffee to a
position before the bench. The judge glowered down at them
critically.
"So glad you finally found you could come," he said.
"Thank you," Toffee beamed. "It's nice of you to have us."
The gavel barked irritably. There was silence until the judge's
eyebrows ceased to twitch.
"What are you doing here?" the judge enquired with forced
composure. "Who called you forward?"
"Lots of people have called me forward," Toffee said, "but that's just
talk, judge. I'm just impulsive."
"Silence!" the judge said. "Good God, girl, no one asked you for any
sordid confessions. I just want to know what you're doing here?"
Toffee nodded toward Marc. "I'm with him," she said.
"Then he's the man who was with you in the green sedan?"
"Oh, no." Toffee shook her head. "He's the other one."
The judge blanched. "The other one?" he asked apprehensively.
Toffee nodded. "They're exactly alike. Only this one is nicer. That's
why I switched."
The judge raised his gavel warningly, and turned to Marc. "Are you
twins, sir?"
Marc opened his mouth to speak, but before he could George's voice
sounded immediately behind him.
"Do I look like twins, you thick-headed joker?" the voice asked. "And
if you must drink in the morning, for Godsake lay off the cheap stuff
so you don't see double. I always heard justice was blind but I didn't
know it was blind drunk."

There was an ominous silence in the court as the judge raked Marc
with a glance of pure loathing. "Are you deliberately in contempt of
court?" he asked.
Again Marc started to speak and again the voice beat him to it. "In
it?" it said. "I'm fairly swimming in high octane contempt."
The blonde who had been watching these proceedings with growing
agitation suddenly sprang from her chair. "That's him!" she yelled
hysterically. "I'm positive!"
"Be quiet, you!" the judge barked. "I've had enough out of you!"
"But he pinched me!" the blonde cried.
"You're lucky that's all he did," the judge snapped.
"But you don't know where!"
The judge eyed her distantly. "With that lumpy figure of yours," he
said, "it could scarcely matter. Now, shut up." He turned back to
Marc. "I understand you've been making libelous remarks against
Congressman Entwerp."
Marc looked around hopelessly, afraid to open his mouth lest George
would take over again. He compressed his lips into a thin line.
"Speak up, man!"
Marc looked up unhappily. "I—I—," he murmured fearfully.
"What's the matter with you?" the judge asked. "Let's hear your
accusations against my good friend the congressman."
"The congressman?" Marc ventured, then brightened as he noticed
there was no interference from George. "Oh, yes. The congressman
must be imprisoned at once, your honor. He's a national menace. He
instigated a propaganda program to dope the public against the
threat of the foreign powers. But worst of all, he has enough bacteria
culture to murder the entire population."
"And what's more," Toffee broke in, "he pinched my gadget."
The judge's eyes swiveled about hauntedly. "He what?"
"Pinched my gadget," Toffee insisted. "The one with the button."
"Now just a minute," the judge said a little wildly. "Wasn't it the
blonde woman who had her gadget pinched?"
"Don't be silly," Toffee said. "She hasn't a gadget to be pinched."
"She hasn't?" the judge said in a startled whisper. "What happened to
her gadget?"
"I guess she just didn't have one in the first place," Toffee said. "You
can't just go out and buy them, you know."

The judge turned to the cop. "Do you know anything about why this
blonde woman doesn't have a gadget?" he asked interestedly.
"Search me," the cop said. "I didn't know she didn't. Maybe it's
because her husband's a butcher. Maybe...."
"Don't," the judge cried, shuddering. "Don't go on! I don't even want
to think about it."
"Well, who cares about her gadget anyway?" Toffee asked
bewilderedly. "It's my gadget I'm trying to tell you about."
"And I don't want to hear about it," the judge said shortly. "This court
is no place for examination room discussions."
"Or much of anything else," Toffee retorted angrily. "Especially
justice."
"Look, judge," Marc put in desperately. "You've got to listen to me.
About all this bacteria...."
"Bacteria?" the judge said, startled. "What about bacteria?"
"It's a threat," Marc said. "It's got to be stopped."
The judge nodded. "My dentist said the same thing the other day. Are
you a dentist?"
"Of course I'm not a dentist," Marc said. "It's the congressman."
"That's preposterous," the judge said. "The congressman isn't a
dentist, never has been. You're just trying to rattle me."
Again, as Marc started to speak, the voice from behind took over.
"That's rich, that is," it slurred. "You were rattled the day you were
born, you old tosspot, and you've been getting balmier ever since. If
you have the brain of a gnat...."
The gavel smashed down on the bench like the crack of doom.
"Go!" the judge said. "Go and leave me alone! You're all trying to
drive me out of my mind."
"With a mind like yours," Toffee said, "it would be a fast drive on a
kiddy car."
"Go!" the judge screamed. "Go away!"
Defeated by sheer volume, Marc and Toffee retreated back to their
chairs and sat down. The one next to Marc's scraped back a trifle of
its own volition.
"You fiend!" Marc hissed at the empty chair. "That was a fine mess,
wasn't it?"
"Glad you admire my work," George said complacently out of thin air.
"Isn't it remarkable how exactly alike our voices sound?"
"Go to hell," Marc said sullenly.
"If I do I'll probably meet you there," George said. "The old boy has
you marked down for a sanity test. I heard him say so as you left up
there. Somehow, it warms me to think of you locked up with a bunch
of homicidal maniacs. Who's to say what might happen to you?"
The gavel rapped on the bench again, this time more calmly.
"I'd like to speak to the congressman," the judge announced. "Not
that I put any stock in the ridiculous accusations of that black-
hearted nit-wit, but I would like to talk to someone rational for a
change."
Across the room, the congressman rose from his chair with portly
composure.
"I'm happy for the opportunity to defend myself against the ravings
of this lunatic," he said smoothly, "though I'm certain the court hasn't
taken them the least bit seriously."
"Of course not, congressman," the judge said grandly. "This court is
always fair and impartial. Step up and have a chair. I'm sorry I can't
offer you a drink during session, but perhaps we could have lunch
together somewhere?"
"Good grief!" Toffee whispered. "They're carrying on like old sweet-
hearts."

The congressman smiled pityingly at Marc. "Actually, I have the

greatest compassion for our poor friend here," he said
magnanimously. "Who knows what dreadful experience drove him out
of his senses?"
"Why the old foghorn!" Marc hissed between clenched teeth. "He's
got enough gall to float a fleet."
"As for his fantastic charges," the congressman continued, "they're
almost too silly to refute." He beamed on the judge. "I think you
know just about how subversive I am, your honor."
The judge smiled broadly. "Call me Ralph," he said.
"Okay, Ralph," the congressman smiled. "And about that bacteria
business; the only bacteria culture I have is home in the refrigerator.
I just happened to let some cheese go mouldy."
The judge laughed immoderately. "Oh, Congressman!" he gasped,
wiping his eyes. "You always were a wit!"
Toffee frowned her disapproval. "This is worse than television," she
said.
"What am I going to do?" Marc said. "I can't let him get away with it.
I'll wind up in an asylum while he sells the whole country down the
river."
Toffee nodded morosely. "We've got to think of something," she said.
"If they won't listen to sense, I guess the only thing to do is resort to
madness."
"How do you mean?"
"Trade seats with me," Toffee said. "I want to talk to George."
"It won't do any good. He won't listen to sense any more than the
rest of them."
"That's all right," Toffee said. "What I have in mind is more nonsense
—and a little hypnotism."
"Hypnotism?"
"Uh-huh. I told you I've been studying. Come on, trade."

As unobtrusively as possible they changed seats. Toffee settled

herself, crossed her legs with care, and turned to the vacant seat at
her side. When she spoke her voice was husky and confidential.
"Look, George," she said, "I've been thinking...."
The chair quivered interestedly. "Yes?" George's voice said out of
emptiness. "What about?"
"You and me," Toffee said. "I've just been going over things in my
mind, and you know, George, I've really been sort of foolish."
"How do you mean?"
"Well take the way I always favor Marc against you. Suddenly it just
occurred to me that there's no logical reason for it. After all you're
just alike—except for a few little differences, of course."
"Oh?" George said, a note of interest creeping into his voice. "What
differences?"
"Well, for instance, you're more aggressive, George. You have a more
active, dynamic personality. You're the sort who knows what he
wants and goes out after it."
"I suppose you could say that," George admitted. "What else?"
"You're cleverer, too. Look at the way you've got Marc bottled up
right now, for example. He's a dead duck. In fact, to tell you the
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