BLUE EYES

Political fiction is more than bitches slapping bitches inside the White House, suitcase nukes, dirty foreigners, and spies. Sometimes you have to take the whole shebang and turn it on its head. Most times killing off a politician or two is just part of the process.

“Everything that is contradictory creates life.” — Salvador Dali 

CHAPTER 1

Buddy Scarborough hated to hear the same spiel every time the secret society’s leaders met. “If the Blue Eyes Club is successful, it will be because the right leaders rise to its Murder Board. We are here today because we are the best this club has to offer; there are two hundred members across the South, and we’re the best at this game. Now we have to show our position on the Murder Board is deserved, and that means competing and rising on this Board. Rise and all you have to do is wait for patrons to step up and pay. There will always be the younger ones out there willing to do the dirty work, like us, and there will always be fat cats willing to pay for our services. And I don’t care if the money’s clean or dirty. Even if the biggest crooks in the country are paying us, I don’t care. It’s what we do and if you’re in this club…you better enjoy doing all of it. If you don’t, you’re in with the wrong people.”

Buddy could barely stomach such talk. He wasn’t doing this for the fun. For him, it was all about the money, and he reasoned others were in the same boat. He came from money, but it didn’t last. His family’s privilege dried up some time between the Reconstruction and the Depression. They still carried around the old trophies—some land, big white house, private schools, and the country club—but all old money southerners were good at keeping face after the money runs out, even if their drive to thrive had dried up too. Buddy wasn’t one of those types; he was hungry to get the money back and also to be in charge. So he had no choice but to listen to the leader, and the leader had a lot more to say. “Right now, it’s our time to do the dirty work for those willing to pay, and if we do it right…and dirty enough…we’ll be the ones paying the next generation. This is the way it worked in the past; this is the way it will work in the future. So forget about where the money is coming from; just get out there and destroy some politicians.”

Buddy was the needy wannabe type, but he hid that well too. He’d been quiet during most of the other Murder Board meetings, and when he threw out some ideas, nothing much stuck. But his passion to rise seemed to be hardwired in his head, and that can sometimes attract the wrong attention and that wrong attention—Buddy’s roommate from Tampa—had caused quite a stir when he voiced his hatred of politics to Buddy. They were both drunk at a fraternity party, and specifics were never spoken. But Buddy knew exactly what his roommate was offering and the plan had money written all over it.

Buddy was the newest member on the Murder Board, coming on nine months earlier and taking the lower right position on the board. This was his third meeting with the other eight and he was still on the bottom row. But he put the idea of plotting with the mafia to assassinate the President of the United States on the table and quickly had all of them talking. Their communications were cryptic, carefully coded, rarely written down, and if the idea were sinister enough, the Murder Board would meet.

In all honesty, this was Buddy’s meeting, but that still didn’t mean any shortcuts would be entertained. He had that careless, aloof look, that led mostly everyone to overlook his ability to deliver, even when his nervous eagerness was spilling out of him. But he also knew there were more rules from the Murder Board playbook that had to be stated before the real talk could begin. He always hated this part the most; he never knew whether to run or just sit there and wait. “If anyone in the Blue Eyes Club rises to the Murder Board, there will be no room to pull back when push comes to shove. The nine of us decide what actions the club takes, and when that decision is made…there is no turning back.”