The Hanged Man's Song

the sun was going down. “A lot of these guys go back to their home states on weekends, right?”
    “That should have been mentioned on one of the schedules,” I said. “It wasn’t . . . and he’s not up for reelection for four years.”
    >>> THE house showed lights at seven-thirty and I headed back to the school yard. “You ready for this?” LuEllen asked.
    “Let’s just do it,” I said. We pulled into the turn-in, and I got out and did a quick touch-up on the front license plate with the black poster paint—changed an H to an M, a 7 to a 1, made a 6 out of a 5. When I was done, I screwed the tops back on the paint bottles and put them in a plastic bag in the trunk. I pulled the Clinton mask over my face, held in place by a rubber band stretched around my head, above my ears. Once it was on, I rolled it up onto my forehead, so that when I was wearing the ball cap, the roll of the plastic mask was obscured by the bill.
    “Ready,” I said, when I got back in the car.
    LuEllen was in the backseat. “You know what you’re gonna say?” she asked nervously. We’d rehearsed the possibilities all the way over.
    “Yup.” I yawned, as nervous as she was.
    >>> FOR all the sweat and preparation, we got this:
    I pulled all the way into Krause’s driveway, LuEllen lying down in the backseat. Once I was inside, she’d move up to the driver’s seat and get ready for a fast exit. I got out of the car, carrying a FedEx package full of newspapers and my Sony laptop, with the screen lit up. We thought that looked sort of like one of the FedEx delivery slates. If Krause’s wife came to the door, I would politely ask for her husband. If she wanted to take the package, I’d refuse, and say that I would come back the next day. If that didn’t get him, we’d leave.
    If Krause came to the door, I’d turn away as soon as I saw him, duck my head and pull the mask over my face, and show him the gun. I’d taken all the shells out, because if he did somethingweird, I didn’t want to wind up shooting him. Unfortunately, when you take the shells out of a revolver, the person who the gun is pointed at can see the empty cylinders. I’d have to be careful, show him only the side of the gun.
    >>> MOST of the working-out stuff wasn’t necessary. I walked to the front steps, rang the doorbell, and a minute later saw Krause walking toward the door. He was wearing shorts and a madras shirt instead of his usual blue shirt, but his long face was unmistakable.
    As he came to the door, I turned my face away. The hand with the FedEx package was visible from the doorway, along with the lit-up computer screen; I pulled the Bill Clinton mask down. As I heard the door open, I realized that we were losing just a bit of the light—not quite twilight, but the sunlight was dimming.
    The door opened and the senator said, querulously, “FedEx?”
    I turned toward him and he shrank back, seeing the face.
    I put the gun up but said, quietly, “I’m not going to hurt you. Shut up and don’t move. I need five minutes of talk and then I’m going to get out of here.” I was holding the door open with my foot, still had the package and the laptop in the other hand.
    He took another step back and looked over his shoulder, looked back at me, and I said, “I’m going to save your career if you give me five minutes. If you start screaming, I’m gonna run, and it’ll be the worst decision you ever made.”
    He said, “FedEx?”
    “No. Listen to me. Do you know the shooting in Jackson, Mississippi, of the black man, where the cross was burned?”
    “Yes,” he said tentatively. He looked back over his shoulder again. He thought about running, but knew he wouldn’t make it.
    “The man who was killed was Bobby. Do you know who I’m talking about? The hacker Bobby?”
    He frowned. Now, for the first time, he thought of something other than escape. “I saw it on the news, but they didn’t say anything about a hacker.”
    “But you’ve heard of Bobby?”
    “I’ve heard of him, but I—”
    “Did you know that two men from your DDC group were killed yesterday?”
    “Who are you?” He was a politician, trying to take the offensive; and he had heard.
    I cut him off. “Bill Clinton. Listen, one of your former staff members at the Intelligence Committee, James Carp, killed Bobby—murdered him, beat in his head, and stole a laptop with information that could hurt me and other of Bobby’s friends. Then he killed your people, while