This book is based on real events. Only the people, places, and events are fictionalized. The stupidity is 100% real.
Cynthia spent 20 minutes convincing a pair of police officers that, no, she wasn’t the victim of an attempted murder and, no, she wasn’t the perpetrator of an attempted murder. She was simply the recipient of some extremely welcomed news. Cynthia finally closed the door on the cops after they somewhat accepted her story and rushed to her laptop.
She couldn’t believe her luck at cashing in such a massive, unsubstantiated bluff. Before her conversation with piece-of-shit-Harry’s contact, she hadn’t the slimmest hard evidence that the governor’s call to Elzos had anything to do with the Bulge or her reelection campaign. It was all just conjecture and Cynthia’s massive, ironclad ovaries that led her to take the leap when she could’ve easily fallen on her face. But she hadn’t. Welp, she thought to herself, no risk, no reward. And she was about to be handsomely rewarded.
Upon logging into her computer, Cynthia noticed that Thing 4’s document had finished downloading from an encrypted file sharing service. She stopped herself before opening it.
First things first.
Cynthia marched to the bathroom, dug through the medicine cabinet, and downed a wholly ill-advised dose of Adderall. She traipsed to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and chugged a 32-ounce energy drink that had been banned in 22 European countries. Then she took a shot of vodka for good measure.
Wired to the bone, she was finally ready to do battle, and she wouldn’t relent until the bloody work was done.
The transcript was mercifully short. It seemed important people only dedicated the bare minimum amount of time to speaking with each other. The call began innocuously enough: bland pleasantries, small talk about the ubiquity of blue light devices and being unable to get enough sleep. Then they got to brass tacks.
SANTOS: I’m sure you saw the news about that neighborhood in Miami.
ELZOS: Who hasn’t? Pretty wild stuff. How many people were affected?
SANTOS: We think around 15,000, but they’re mostly illegals and socialists, so no skin off my back.
ELZOS: What are you going to do?
SANTOS: That’s a very good question, Griffin. What do you think should be done?
ELZOS: Well, it’s an unprecedented natural disaster so, of course you need to house the victims and cordon off the area.
SANTOS: We’ll put them up for a couple of months, then it’s up by their own bootstraps and all that.
ELZOS: A wise decision. You don’t want them suckling the state’s teat forever.
SANTOS: Precisely.
ELZOS: They’ll want to return to their properties, of course.
SANTOS: Not happening. It’s far too dangerous. I’m using eminent domain to put the entire neighborhood under state control.
ELZOS: That’s… brilliant.
SANTOS: I know. So, we boot the occupants and seize the land. What would you do afterward?
ELZOS: Well, this could be a very interesting opportunity to rebuild from scratch—design and construct a readymade utopia, if you will.
SANTOS: A capitalist utopia.
ELZOS: There’s only the one.
SANTOS: Interesting. And who would you pick to build this capitalist utopia?
ELZOS: Well, I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but Griffin Ventures does have a storied track record of excellence.
SANTOS: That’s true. That’s very true. The only issue would be that a public bidding process could take years. You’d be up against dozens of national and foreign firms, all racing to the bottom, squeezing their margins to present the lowest possible price.
ELZOS: That might be the case. But you’ve made quite a name for yourself as a governor who excels in cutting red tape and government bureaucracy.
SANTOS: True again. There’s just so much tape to slice through. It wouldn’t be easy.
ELZOS: Is there anything I could do to help the effort?
SANTOS: You know, on a completely unrelated note, my reelection fund hasn’t quite hit its fundraising goal this quarter.
ELZOS: How much are you down?
SANTOS: $65 million.
ELZOS: I see. Well, I’d have to make some calls, but I believe our corporate political committee might just have exactly that amount lying around.
SANTOS: How serendipitous. I’m glad we’re understood.
ELZOS: Likewise.
SANTOS: Well then, it’s back to the grindstone. Have a wonderful day, Griffin.
ELZOS: You too, Madam Governor.
And that was that.
Cynthia started with the lede: Governor Santos was evicting 15,000 lower income Floridians from their homes, seizing their properties, and turning them all over to a billionaire real estate developer in return for the largest political bribe in state history.
Cynthia shuddered. That was a hell of an opener.
She took another shot of vodka.
She included background information on the publicly known sequence of events just before and during the Bulging from open governmental and news outlet sources. Then came the call log insert followed by the choice section of the transcript, corroboration from “two individuals with intimate knowledge of the proceedings,” and her own analysis of the whole kit and kaboodle.
By the time she was done writing, editing, and proofing the 1,000-word article, the sun had long since risen. It was now time to get quotes.
Cynthia called FEMA for an update on disaster relief efforts, Miami-Dade County for exact numbers of displaced people, a local university economist for an estimate of property damage and value, and finally, a former Seabreeze Ridge resident for her account of the night of the Bulging. It all went into the text, which had now ballooned to 1,500 words.
Cynthia took a break at 3 PM for a hearty lunch of a candy bar, second energy drink, and third shot. She open-mouth chewed through the bar’s nougaty-caramelly center and considered her options for publication. If she took it to a big Tier-1 paper, they’d just steal her scoop. She needed to partner with an outlet used to dealing with freelancers. Cynthia called up her contact at The Atlantic.
“Hey Cynthia! It’s been a long time!” came the voice on the other line. “How are…”
“Hey Frank!” she rattled off at a breakneck pace. “I have the biggest fucking breaking story of your entire fucking career. It’s already written. It’s about the Bulge.”
“Cynthia, are you OK…”
“I’m fine! Thanks for asking! In broad strokes, Santos is kicking everyone off the neighborhood and giving the whole thing to Elzos to develop for a political donation in the tens of millions.”
“Whoa. OK. Do you have…”
“Corroborators? Yes. Two. And the call log. And the call transcript. And quotes from everyone we need quotes from. It’s all wrapped in a bow.”
“Wow. Alright. How much do you…”
“I want $10,000.”
Frank paused.
“That’s a lot of money. We usually only pay $3,000 to freelancers, even for major scoops.”
Cynthia’s cadence revved up again.
“You’d make back that amount in ads on the first day alone. This’ll drive millions of clicks, but if you don’t want the story, I’m hanging up and calling The New Yorker right now…”
“No, no, no,” he interrupted. “We want it. I’ll need to see the draft but, if what you say is true, the suits will OK it.”
“It’s true,” she responded. “Give me half an hour to solicit quotes from the governor and Elzos. In the meantime, you send me a contract, I’ll send you an invoice, and you’ll have it up by tomorrow morning.”
“OK, Cynthia. Sounds good. Thanks for reaching out. And one more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Get some sleep. You sound like you need it.”
“Thanks, but fuck that.”
She hung up the phone.
Cynthia emailed Griffin Ventures’ and the governor’s respective public relations offices for comment. Fueled by a potent cocktail of alcohol, caffeine, amphetamines, adrenaline, and the ever-present sense of impending financial doom felt by all immigrants’ children, Cynthia signed her contact, fired off her invoice, and performed jumping jacks, lunges, and squats around her apartment (the most physical exercise she’d done in a year) while waiting to hear back from the PR flacks. She took some joy in picturing them running around their offices, arms in the air and hair literally alight, as they desperately sought to strategize some way to put out this gargantuan crisis management conflagration.
Once the allotted 30 minutes had run its course, Cynthia sent the article to Frank, collapsed face-first into the couch, and passed out for the next 18 hours.
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