up in my email. Going the other way, from them to me, isn’t a problem, of course. They send what they call ‘white papers’ to my email. I take the papers to a printing company and then send the printed documents to congressional or other influential leaders at their office addresses. Whether or not anyone reads them, I have no idea.”
“Do you have a contact address now?”
She shook her head: “No. I used the one I had to tell the ANM person at the other end of the line about Charlie Lang’s call, about you. Charlie said that you’re investigating this 1919 group. I gave the ANM the website address for 1919. ANM got back to me and told me to get in touch with you and to tell you that they are not 1919 and have no idea who might be behind the website.”
Her beer arrived and when the waitress had gone, Miller took a sip, said, “Good, it’s been a long day,” and then added, “I told them what Charlie said about the website—that it seemed to be an invitation for somebody to shoot a child, possibly as part of a vote extortion scheme.”
“Did they react?”
“Yes. They said that was crazy.”
“They’re right about that. Now it’s out in the media.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Won’t last long, as a story, unless something happens. With all the insane politics going on, the cable networks will have moved along in two days.”
“I hope.”
“So do I, or you might actually get an attack from a crazy person. Anyway, Old John or whoever is on the other end of the email said I should give you the white papers so you could see who they were.” She reached down into her bag and pulled out a stack of computer paper, maybe twenty-five sheets, stapled in separate packs of three or four pages each. There was a simple “ANM” in large type at the top of the first page of each pack, with blocks of professionally laid-out type filling the pages. “They send us the material, we edit and format it and send it to the printer. I pay the printer, send the billing amount to the ANM when I get an email address, and they pay me.”
Lucas took the paper, but said, “This is not going to help much. I don’t care what their papers say—I need to talk to one of the leaders, preferably Old John, if he’s a real person.”
“He is,” Miller said. “Or at least there’s a person who calls himself that, and the three times I’ve spoken to him, it’s the same voice. He sounds older and gruff.”
“Then when you get an address, give him my number and tell him to call me. There’s a reason that I need to talk with him.”
“Which is?”
“I’ll tell him,” Lucas said. “He might not want you to know.”
“Okay.” She took two large gulps of beer, then pushed the glass away and slid out of the booth. “I don’t know when they’ll send me a new address. I don’t even know if they will, since I’ve been talking with a federal marshal. If they do, I’ll give them your phone number.”
“Do that,” Lucas said. “We don’t need any kids killed by nutcases. They might help prevent that.”
She nodded and walked away.
* * *
—
LUCAS FINISHED HIS BEER, paid for both of them, and carried the ANM material up to his room. He spent a half hour reading it—and it was more interesting that he’d expected. The ANM was apparently a radical libertarian organization, unlike the usual race-based whack jobs. They didn’t like taxes and didn’t think there should be any, or very few.
They didn’t like a big military, they didn’t like authority, they didn’t like cops or social workers or any kind of welfare, in which they included Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and school lunch programs. They did like private property and self-reliance. They apparently didn’t care about a lot of stuff. They didn’t care about race, they didn’t care about gay marriage, they didn’t care about feminism, they didn’t care about prostitution or gambling or drugs.
“We don’t care what people inject in their arm. That’s their business. If they overdose, it’s not our business to take care of them—it’s theirs.”
They did like guns. Guns, the papers said, were a practical symbol of self-reliance. Their media list of recommended titles, contained in the shortest of the white papers, included both Henry David Thoreau and the movie Fight Club.
None of the papers were signed.
* *