one of the many perks of being president of the american empire was that you could go through customs without being stopped and searched (at least insofar a searches were carried out by human agents) .
so it was that president al capone walked out of great american airport and walked to his limousine with an initialed copy in his breast pocket of the secret agreement he had reached with chancellor hitler of the teutonic empire to back the same alien empire if and when those empires started squabbling over whatever the goddamn stuff they wanted in the earth’s oceans was.
it was about eight thirty at night. a light rain was falling, mixing up some slush with the remnants of the previous week’s snowstorms.
a bunch of reporters were penned behind a wire fence on the side of the airport. a few of them waved half heartedly at him, and he heard the clicks of a few old-fashioned cameras.
capone ignored them. what a bunch of wusses, he thought. he remembered the old days, when life was life and politics was politics, and real reporters like rebel russell and cowboy grant could give a poor aspiring power hungry hustler a run for their stories.
he got in the limousine and it pulled out on to the highway and headed downtown. there were no accompanying cars, the limo was unmarked, and they made good time through the wet, snow lined streets.
“stop somewhere and buy the paper,” capone ordered. none of the four secret service men were surprised at this. despite being continuously briefed by the empire’s own information gatherers, and having a phone in his pocket that accessed every large and small news service, the president liked to “look at the papers” because “you never know, they might miss something”. he thought the more sophisticated news gatherers were too sophisticated and would miss things that the salt of the earth, like himself, would see the true meaning of.
the secret service men thought he liked to look at the old fashioned comic strips in the daily papers, although none of them had ever seen him glance at them while they were in his presence.
the limo pulled over to a convenience store.
“the ledger” capone said. they all knew that he always wanted the ledger, but he liked to make sure they knew. if they didn’t have the ledger - and they probably did - they would drive around until they found a place that did. the limo was unmarked , and such vehicles as were on the streets of the capital were as likely as not to be limos, so they were not that conspicuous.
the convenience store had a copy of the the ledger, and the limo moved on to next destination - capone’s favorite restaurant in the city,, heinie zimmerman’s german delicatessen. heinie’s was not a particularly well known place, and no tourist attraction.
although he could not patronize it as often as he liked, he almost always stopped by when he returned to the capital, especially if he had been out of the empire.
old heinie had been dead for years, but his son, and the entire staff, knew that capone did not like to be greeted, and liked to be treated as “just another customer”.
but they always had a table for him. usually two, to comfortably accommodate the secret service men.
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