By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon Maxwell Book
BBC-Guardian UK - Honduras - ESPN NY Mag
LITERARY UN GATE, April 20 -- Big Tony was vivid, pacing or waddling around in his big mansion on Sutton Place. Who did these retirees think they were, telling him he should do more on Ukraine?
It was an American plot, Antonio Guterres decided. He had never trusted Jeff Feltman, one of the signatories, and this was why. Biden didn't have the gumption or energy to go to Kyev and now he was trying to move to spotlight to the UN.
But of course Feltman was the least of it. Another signer was Dmitry Dovgopoly, a man so corrupt he'd gotten suspended by the UN. It had been Kurt Wheelock who did it, maybe just be dumb luck, before Fat Tony had him roughed up and thrown out of the UN. Kurt had gotten a photograph of Dovgolopy with his hands all over two women he had invited to a UN Procurement party in the basement of the glass house. This was worse than stealing money from drone bidding exercises. One of these drones ended up dead.
Still Tony had to deal with the letter, he decided. "Set up the cameras at the Twisted Gun!" he ordered his overpaid spokesman Dujarric. How did this man afford a penthouse on the Upper East Side and a big house on the beach in the Hamptons? Let him work for once.
Dujarric of course palmed off the work on others. Actually, the zombie like press corpse would do most of the work, standing out on the windy plaza and live streaming Tony's canned Orthodox Easter speech even though they weren't allowed questions, no matter how lame.
Someone had made a cartoon once of John Bolton trying to untie the gun. But at least he had tried to do something with it. Guterres just used it as a prop.
And it didn't work, really. The pressure continued to build, and not only on Kurt's incoherent Twitter feed. The Guardian wrote an article about the letter, gentle to be sure; in house Blue Pass which always gave Big Tony a pass published it - without the signatories of course. They had gotten so close to the UN they had faux editorials by former UN Presidents of the General Assembly, themselves involved in corruption, about upcoming hot air conferences that accomplished nothing but through which aforesaid former UN big wigs would get paid. Tony would be on the payola circuit soon, like Ban Ki-moon already was. But first he had to weather the tempest in the UN teapot about this failure on Ukraine.
And so, another idea. He would write or deliver a letter to both the Ukraine and the Russian mission, asking to visit and belatedly try to play peacemaker. Both Mission were in the same white brick building on the Upper East Side, so it wasn't hard.
But would Putin deign to meet Big Tony? Guterres had always sucked up to Vlad, essentially calling him Papacito. Vlad no longer spoke to his Ambassador in Washington, and in his duo at the UN the younger one was looking more active, a more accurate representation of how Vlad felt. Maybe he'd call him.
But Kurt Wheelock, even at the UN gate, was listening...
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