Big Guns Read online

  BIG GUNS

  Steve Israel

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  About this Book

  About the Author

  Table of Contents

  AN APOLLO BOOK

  www.headofzeus.com

  About Big Guns

  When American mayors start a campaign to ban handguns from their cities, Otis Cogsworth, CEO of Cogsworth International Arms worries about the effects on his company. He and his fearsome publicist Sunny McCarthy convince an Arkansas congressman to introduce the ‘American Freedom from Fear Act’: a law mandating that every American must own a gun.

  In tiny rural Asabogue, Mayor Lois Leibowitz passes an ordinance to ban firearms. But Otis Cogsworth’s holiday mansion sits nearby. Otis orchestrates a recall election against Lois. Asabogue resident Jack Steele, a has been action star, runs against her. Thousands of pro-gun militants armed to the teeth, and their opponents, descend on Asabogue. The village becomes a war zone. Meanwhile, Washington politicians and a cowardly President are caught between the mighty gun lobby and the absurdity of every American man, woman and child carrying a gun. And Sunny McCarthy’s loyalties are tested to destruction. Big Guns is a hilarious and devastating indictment of American politics.

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  About Big Guns

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Epilogue

  About Steve Israel

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Dedicated to Colonel William C. Church & General George Wingate, who founded the National Rifle Association in 1871. If they only knew then . . .

  PROLOGUE

  Chicago mayor Michael Rodriguez sat at a long, wide table in the darkened Crime Command Center, surrounded by city officials in suits, police brass in uniform, and aides in fear. They all stared, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, at a massive digital map of Chicago that was projected onto an entire wall of the room. Thanks to a generous grant from the federal government, ShotWatch Technology had been installed all throughout the Windy City and now, when a bullet was fired anywhere south of Devon Avenue, north of 138th, east of Harlem Avenue, and west of Lake Michigan, the sound was instantly tracked, transmitted, and indicated on the map by a flashing pinpoint of light.

  At the moment the map showed Chicago as a single gigantic pulsating orb.

  To make matters worse, the Cubs had just announced a postponement of that night’s game against the LA Dodgers, whose owner had cited “prohibitive local conditions” in a news interview. He meant gunfire.

  The only sound in the room was a persistent thumping. The mayor was an incessant leg thumper. When he was calm, he thumped gently, rocking his right foot on its heel, just barely lifting his toes and then lowering them softly. When he was excited, the thumping accelerated, his knee jumping up and down at a steady clip. And when he was angry, like he was most of the time, his leg became a jackhammer, pistoning up and down with a force that shook his entire short, lean body. The jackhammer stage was often accompanied by an eruption of curses in Spanish, and those present in the command center braced themselves for the torrent.

  The police commissioner rubbed his craggy face with his hands, looking defeated. His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks were drawn. “We’re getting our asses kicked,” he said. “I got thousands of cops flooding high-crime areas, and we’re literally outgunned.” He sighed.

  Rodriguez thumped and opened his mouth to speak. An aide winced. “Commissioner, what can I do to help?” he asked, in a surprisingly calm voice. “Would you like me to call the Pentagon and have them send in a squadron of F-16s? Would that make your job easier?”

  The commissioner knew better than to answer this, but the city counsel, a man who liked to demonstrate that he operated above the rough-and-tumble of Chicago street politics by wearing bow ties and smoking a pipe, and who had apparently taken the mayor at his word, said, “Your Honor, posse comitatus would prohibit the president from—”

  It was as if the pin had finally been plucked from a grenade. The mayor, still thumping, exploded. “Counselor,” he bellowed, “you can take your posse comitatus and shove it up your ass!” When no one responded, he shouted for good measure, “Maldito idiota!” Fucking idiot. One of the mayor’s signature insults.

  More flashes on the map.

  The mayor’s executive assistant cleared her throat and reminded him it was time for his daily crime scene press conference.

  Rodriguez ceased his thumping, finally, and stood. “Púdranse todos!” he shouted over his shoulder as he left the room. Fuck you all! Another favorite.

  1

  On the glittering East End of Long Island, hidden between the jewels of Southampton and East Hampton, sat the little village of Asabogue.

  You could easily drive through Asabogue and not even know you’d been there. The only indications of the village was Main Street, narrow and tree-lined, with flower boxes, an ice cream shop, a bakery, a café, and a few tiny boutiques that sold beach house paraphernalia and trinkets. There was also a triangular plot of grass on which sat Village Hall, a white clapboard house, constructed in the early eighteenth century, that creaked and groaned and drooped from age.

  Even if you knew you were in Asabogue, you wouldn’t know who else was there, and that was the point of the place. When East Hampton became passé, when Southampton became too common, the next and final step had been to head for the hills, and in this case, the hills were Billionaires Bluff. Here, several dozen summer residents of Asabogue could look down their noses at the rest of the Hamptons and, for that matter, at the entire Atlantic, which rolled placidly against their beaches, the only intrusion of the outside world on their lives by the rest of the planet. Whenever someone accidentally wandered onto the beach, it would only be a minute before a goon from a private security firm swooped down and redirected the interloper back to where he belonged—which was anyplace but Asabogue.

  The joke was that Asabogue was an Indian phrase meaning “place of many assholes.” The people of Asabogue weren’t big fans of that translation.

  *

  On a glorious June morning on Billionaires Bluff, Otis Cogsworth, chairman and CEO of Cogsworth International Arms, awoke to what he thought would be another fine day.

  His eyes opened upon the immense master bedroom of Trigger Happy, his summer encampment in Asabogue. He could feel a salty ocean breeze drifting through an open window, and hear seagulls squawking over the sound of softly rolling waves. He sucked in a breath and held it. Sometimes—rarely, but sometimes—Otis experienced flickering acknowledgments of what a good and enviable life he had. He was an immeasurably successful busi
nessman. His work was something he believed in. He had a steady marriage with a loyal and loving, if boring, wife, and he had, among others, this beautiful home on the most expensive street in the greatest country on earth. This was one of those mornings when, for a few waking seconds, he took stock of his triumphs and said to himself, It is good.

  Then he fumbled for the remote control on the bedside table, pressed a button, and proceeded to ruin his day before it began. From the large television above the marble fireplace, Otis heard scraps of a news broadcast: “. . . epidemic of violence . . . Chicago overnight . . . six separate gunfights . . . seventeen fatalities . . . death toll here to over three thousand . . . Rodriguez demanding a federal ban on handguns.”

  On the screen, in what must have been a press conference from the previous night, the pugilistic mayor of Chicago was barking, as if, Otis thought, he were about to take a bite out of someone’s thigh. He was standing in front of a children’s playground, now festooned with yellow crime scene tape, which some journalists had grimly taken to calling the new flag of Chicago. A kaleidoscope of police lights swirled behind him, and uniformed cops stood at his side.

  “Look,” Rodriguez said to a bouquet of microphones, “our city has the strictest gun laws in America, but without federal laws, it doesn’t mean shi—squat!” He held up a black semiautomatic pistol. “The police found this on the playground behind me after last night’s shooting. It was manufactured by Cogsworth International Arms and sold by one of their distributors. My city has banned this weapon. But it came in from another city that doesn’t give a fu—a damn. Enough! I’ve had it with the gun lobby. I’ve had it with death merchants like Cogsworth International Arms. I’ve had it with fuh—freaking guns! It’s time to ban them! Ban them all!”

  Behind him a crowd started cheering: “Ban! Them! All! Ban! Them! All!”

  Otis mumbled at the television in a low, gravelly slur.

  “Otis?” his wife murmured, next to him.

  “Go back to sleep, Lucille. I’m taking breakfast in the solarium.”

  “Okay,” she murmured. “Remember we have brunch at the Steeles’ later.”

  Of course we do, thought Otis. As if today won’t be bad enough. He needed to deal with the crisis in Chicago, not schmooze his way through another Asabogue charity affair. Especially with Jack Steele, that awful B-list actor from those hideous movies. Jack Steele. Living just down the street. (“Down the street” on Billionaires Bluff meant several beaches away.)

  Otis wrapped himself in a cotton bathrobe and shuffled out into the hallway and down the dark main stairway, passing under family portraits mounted on the mahogany walls. Every painting, across generations, captured the Cogsworth genes: heavy jowls that dropped over shirt collars, thin lips that seemed to sneer even though their intent was clearly to smile, and black, skeptical eyes set deep in ruddy faces, as if some strain of Cogsworth evolution had slowly buried the eyes deep enough for them to watch you without you watching them. All these traits had been passed on to Otis, and yet the portraits made him uncomfortable. They passed judgment on him with every step. They haunted him.

  There had been great worry about Otis as a child. He was the only son of Charles and Eleanor Cogsworth, and, in his earliest years, he seemed uninterested in firearms manufacturing, which had been the family business since before the Civil War (when the family had made an acceptable profit by managing to sell to both sides). Young Otis had stared blankly at the guns he unwrapped on Christmas and birthdays. He’d seemed ambivalent when Charles would take him shooting on the estate in Connecticut. He’d spend an inordinate amount of time in his room, reading books and painting the view of the Long Island Sound from his third-floor window. But there eventually had come a day when Charles summoned Otis to the family library. He was going to have a heart-to-heart minus one heart.

  Animal trophies peered sadly at Otis as he entered. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were crammed with books on hunting and hiking and sportsmanship and nature and many other subjects that bored him. A heavy cloud of cigar smoke had fouled the air, stinging his eyes.

  Charles directed Otis to sit opposite him and said, “I don’t know why, but the good Lord only gave me one son, and you happen to be it, which means the future of our company and the Cogsworth name will depend on you and you alone. The company has prospered since your great-great-grandfather Adolphus Cogsworth started it, from one generation to the next, and one day it shall fall to you.”

  Otis blinked, said nothing.

  “Honestly, if your sisters weren’t girls, I’d feel much better about them taking over, but we must play the hand that God gave us in His infinite mystery. So, Otis, all this will be yours, and you had better not fail.”

  Otis was six when this happened.

  The solarium looked out onto the reflecting pool, which looked out onto the Atlantic, a placid blue void this morning. In the middle of the pool, a dozen brass dolphins spit bullet-sized water pellets from their smiling mouths. The Cogsworths’ household assistant, Andre, had already set up a coffee service and tuned the television to CNBC.

  Otis sipped his coffee and turned up the volume. On the screen, two pundits sat at a table. Empty, talking heads, he thought. One of the analysts, bearded and bespectacled, looked like he taught Econ 101 at a community college. The other was a CEO who was most famous for running six companies into the ground before becoming a cable news pundit who specialized in talking about how to grow a business.

  The Cogsworth International logo flashed on a screen behind the men, stopping Otis in mid-sip.

  The professor said, “My sources tell me the Department of Justice is considering an investigation because at least eight hundred semiautomatic pistols traced to crimes in Chicago have been manufactured by Cogsworth International Arms and sold by its distributors.”

  The CEO nodded knowingly. “Today could be a bumpy ride for Cogsworth stocks. We’ll keep our eyes on it.”

  There were some phrases Otis preferred not to hear while sipping his morning coffee, and certainly not on national television. Those phrases included, but were not limited to, “Department of Justice,” “investigation,” “bumpy ride,” and “Cogsworth stocks.”

  He pulled a phone toward him and punched in a number. After a few rings he heard an inappropriately cheerful “Helloooo” from his nephew, Bruce Cogsworth Davies.

  “Conference call in an hour,” Otis said brusquely. “You, me, and Sunny McCarthy.”

  2

  Asabogue mayor Lois Liebowitz pedaled her bicycle against the steady breeze blowing off the ocean. Her short legs pumped rapidly, and she emitted small, determined gasps and grunts. A burlap tote bag from a recent ACLU conference banged against her waist. Sweat had beaded on Lois’s cheeks and gradually dampened her cropped gray hair beneath her trademark straw hat. No one would have blamed her for being miserable during her commute—she was seventy-four, short, flabby, and out of shape—but Lois loved it.

  Her daily ride to Village Hall allowed her not only to see the village but to feel it: to taste the salty ocean air on her tongue; to hear the sounds of the merchants sweeping the sidewalks outside their shops on Main Street; to pedal by the organic community garden and check the daily level of the giant community fund posterboard thermometer.

  Lois turned her face into a gust of wind that swept down from Billionaires Bluff and pedaled harder, trying her best not to think about the Bluff for too long. To Lois and her neighbors, Billionaires Bluff was merely a barrier that separated downtown Asabogue from its own white beaches. It was created by an ancient glacier that must have slowed just enough to deposit additional earth for the privileged few who would one day call it home. It rose subtly, but may as well have been the Great Wall of China. When people asked Lois what it was like being the mayor of the prestigious Bluff, she often answered by saying, simply, “I play in my sandbox and they play in theirs.” Their sandbox, of course, was raked and cleaned every morning and dotted with signs that read “NO PUBLIC BEACH ACCESS.”<
br />
  Louis saw the first sign of trouble that morning at the intersection of Route 27, a commercial corridor that plowed straight through the village, and Asabogue Bluff Lane, a private road that curved gracefully up a steep and winding hill.

  A streetlamp at the intersection was flickering in the morning sun, which meant that by nightfall Asabogue’s most dangerous intersection in absolute darkness. For months Lois had asked the Department of Public Works to repair the light. For months the department ignored her. She composed a memo in her head: “If you don’t fix it, I will.”

  She turned away from the Bluff and continued pedaling.

  More trouble ahead, at Veterans Park, a grassy expanse in front of Village Hall, with a few tall oak trees shading two wooden benches. At the center of the park was the International Pole of Peace, a seven-foot granite obelisk engraved with the word peace in dozens of languages. (There had been some controversy when Lois had agreed to a request by the Long Island Alliance for Togetherness and Harmony to install the pole. An editorial in the Asabogue Bugle had opined that since the village didn’t conduct foreign policy or maintain a standing army, it shouldn’t display a pole dedicated to world peace, no matter how virtuous the cause. On the Bluff, there had been a clucking of tongues about whether Lois was too busy saving the world to run the village. She shrugged it all off. After all, she thought, who could be against world peace?)

  Two empty beer bottles had been propped against the base of the pole. Lois glided her bike to a stop at the small circular brickwork that surrounded the monument. She pulled a small trash bag from her ACLU tote, snapped it open with a flick of her wrist, gingerly picked up the bottles, and placed the bag back in the tote, ignoring the throbbing in her lower back. She resumed her ride to Village Hall.

  Lois Liebowitz, she thought. Mayor. Giver of streetlight. Sanitation crusader. Global peace envoy.