Grass Roots (26 page)

you were a shoo-in. Now there’s work for me to do.”

Will laughed.

“Okay, where do we start?”

“We’ve been working on your schedule,” Tom said, handing him some papers.

“You start at the Atlanta Rotary Club at lunch today, then you hit the shopping malls in the afternoon. I want you on Atlanta TV tonight charming housewives right out of their socks. I think given our press over the weekend, we’ll make all three channels.

Tomorrow, we head for south Georgia. We’ve got three fundraisers, in Thomasville, Waycross, and Savannah, later on in the week, and half a dozen speaking engagements in small towns.”

“I sound pretty busy,” Will mused.

“You are, as of this moment,” Tom said.

“Let’s get started. I’ve written you a stump speech.” He handed over more papers.

“There are three main points: a strong defense, education, and family values.”

“Not Mom and apple pie?” Will asked.

“Oh, we’ll get around to that,” Tom said.

“And listen to me, this is important: Every time you meet a woman from now on in this campaign—I don’t care if she’s eight or eighty, beautiful or ugly—I want you to -gaze into her eyes and squeeze her hand. I want five seconds of seduction for every one of them, okay?”

“I’ll do my best,” Will said.

“Do you like women. Will?”

“Sure I do.”

“Then it won’t be such a chore, will it?”

they hit the road at sunup the next morning. By noon, Will had given the stump speech three times, and he knew the words by heart. He marveled at the advance work that Tom’s people had done. In every town they hit, there was a stand of some sort, with a public address system, a Dixieland band, and a small crowd, getting bigger. In every town, there were a white leader and a black leader to shake hands and be photographed with.

Will paid particular attention to the women, and they responded. By late afternoon, what had begun as a tactic was second nature to him. He kissed cheeks, hugged, and grinned into a hundred Instamatics.

That night, in a motel somewhere south of MacOn, Will sat on the bed and massaged his feet.

“You were right about the wingtips,” he said to Tom.

“This is no territory for Gucci loafers.”

Tom laughed.

“I’m nearly always right. Better start getting used to it.”

Will lay back on the bed and sighed.

“My face hurts from smiling. What time is it?”

“Just after ten. Sorry about the food at the Kiwanis meeting, but we couldn’t pass it up.”

“Don’t worry, I didn’t eat much of it,” Will murmured.

He was drifting off.

“All right, up and at’em,” Tom cried, pulling him upright.

“We’ve got to get a steak inside you. You can’t campaign and diet at the same time.”

“Have mercy,” Will moaned.

“I want to sleep.”

“We’ve got to get you on a schedule,” Tom said.

“You go to sleep too early, you’ll wake up too early. And you’ve got to eat. Come on.”

Will trudged into the motel restaurant behind Tom and Kitty. As they slid into a booth, a blowsy-looking woman at the bar raised her glass to him. Will waved and started to sit down.

“Will…” Tom said reprovingly.

Will groaned, got up, and went over to the bar.

“Hello, how are you?” he asked, smiling broadly.

“I’m Will Lee.

I sure need your support in the Democratic primary.”

on Saturday night, in Savannah, Will stood in a private dining room at a local country club and asked for questions from people he hoped would give him money. They came to the point quickly.

“We’ve been reading some funny stuff about you in the papers,” a man said.

“What’s going on. Will?”

“Mr. Partain,” Will said, glancing fleetingly at the man’s name tag! “I’m a great believer in a free press. But I don’t have to believe everything I read in the papers.

Neither do you.”

There was laughter, and Will thought he was over that hurdle, but then a man at one side of the room stood up.

“Mr. Lee, let’s get this right out in the open,” he said, and his accent was sharp.

“Are you a homosexual?”

Will looked at the man for a moment; he didn’t bother with the name tag.

“Where were you born?” he asked.

This was dirty, but it was a dirty question.

“Ohio,” the man said, a little too boldly.

“I’ve been down here for two years.”

“Then,” Will said, “you’ve been down here long enough to know that, in Georgia, a man doesn’t ask another man that kind of question”—he paused—”unless he really wants to know.”

There was a mixture of laughter and applause; a Yankee had got himself nailed by a home boy.

At a table near the rear of the room, a woman leaned over to her female friend.

“You know something?” she whispered loudly.

“There ain’t nothing queer about that boy.”

Tom Black, who was standing nearby, allowed himself a large grin. mickey Keane looked up at the girl’s crotch.

Funny, he thought, it was the only part of her that had any clothes on it, and it was the only part he wanted to see. He tucked a five-dollar bill into her G-string and hoped for the best. She squatted in front of him and made the money in the G-string move around, but her crotch remained covered. Then, having given him something less than his five bucks’ worth, she moved on down the bar. Keane waved at the barman.

“Gimme another Johnny Walker Black,” he shouted over the din of the music and the screaming customers.

“Why don’t you let me buy that one for you?” a familiar voice behind him asked.

Keane turned around to find Manny Pearl leaning on an aluminum crutch.

“Hey, Mr. Pearl, how are you?” he yelled. He liked Manny Pearl, and he was glad to see him.

“Call me Manny,” Pearl said, “and come on back to my office.” He waved the bartender over and took the bottle of Scotch from him.

“Follow me,” he said to Keane.

In his office, Manny waved Keane to a huge sofa, then stumped around his desk and settled into a large chair.

“I read it in the papers,” he said.

“I was sorry to hear about it.”

“Thanks,” Keane said, pouring himself a shot from the bottle.

“What the hell is going on down there, anyway?”

Manny demanded.

“Letting good officers like you leave the force.”

“I don’t know what’s going on down there,” Keane replied, downing the whiskey, “but I’d sure like to know.

Nothing has gone right since we identified the Ferkerson guy. People just seemed to draw away from Chuck and me, you know?”

Manny looked solemn.

“Pittman was a fine detective,” he said.

“I felt like I lost a son when he was killed.”

“I shouldn’t a let him go in that house by himself,” Keane murmured, pouring another shot.

“So, you should have died with him? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Manny shook his head.

“That’s dumb. It wasn’t your fault. Tell me, did this burglary thing have something to do with Pittman?”

Keane told him about the raid on the shop and his reasons for breaking in.

Manny nodded.

“I figured. Listen, don’t take that drink, okay? I want to talk to you, and I want you to understand me.”

Keane paused with the glass at his lips, then put it on the desk.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m all ears.”

“What are you doing for a living?” Manny asked.

“Drinking,” Keane replied.

“I thought so. I want you to do me a favor.”

“Sure.”

“I want you to stand up, take that shot of whiskey, and pour it back in the bottle.”

Keane stood up, steadied himself against the desk, and poured the Scotch into the bottle, not spilling a drop.

“That’s the first thing,” Manny said.

“The next thing is, I don’t want you to take it out again.”

“Huh?”

“Listen, Michael—can I call you that?”

“Call me Mickey.”

“Mickey, I been in this business long enough to know when a fellow doesn’t have no business drinking whiskey.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Have you got enough guts to give it up?”

“For what?”

“For me. I want you to come to work for me. But I want you sober.”

Keane shook his head.

“Thanks, Mr. Pearl, I appreciate the thought, but I’d make a lousy bouncer.”

“I don’t want you for bouncing.”

“I’d make a lousy bartender, too.”

“Not that either.”

“What, then?”

“I want you to go find this fellow Ferkerson. For me.”

Keane sat up straight.

“It looks like, to me, the police department isn’t too interested.”

“It looks that way to me, too,” Keane said.

“I will pay you one thousand dollars a week to find him.”

“And kill him?”

“No, that would make me no better than him. You, too.

I want you to arrest him and put him in jail. Please don’t misunderstand me, I don’t want you to put yourself in danger. I got reason to know how dangerous a man he is, and if you have to kill him to protect yourself, I would understand. Just like you were still a policeman. Nobody expects you to die.”

“And just why do you think I can find Ferkerson when the whole department can’t?”

“Because you’ve got motivation, my boy. It’s important, motivation—in business, in everything. You want Ferkerson. So do I.”

“You understand, I don’t have access to the homicide bureau anymore, to computers and all that.”

Manny smiled.

“You’ll get what you need, I’m not worried. That’s what you were doing in that printing shop.”

He held up a finger.

“Just don’t get arrested anymore.

And when you catch Ferkerson, I’ll give you fifty thousand dollars more.”

“That’s very generous, Mr. Pearl, especially when you know I want him bad, anyway.”

“Manny. And it’s not so generous. You’ve got to live, like everybody else. Another thing: I’m going to offer a hundred-thousand-dollar reward. I’ll run an ad in the paper.

That should get you a few clues, yes?”

“That should,” Keane agreed.

“It might also make it easier to get a little help from inside the department. If somebody in there helps me nail Ferkerson, you’ll take my word? He’ll get the reward?”

“I’ll slice it any way you say,” Manny said.

“Now, you didn’t answer my question—about the whiskey.”

“I’m off it as of right now,” Keane said.

“Good. Tell me, you have a few debts, you’re behind on a few payments, maybe?”

“You’re a good judge of character, Mr. Pearl.”

Manny shrugged.

“Manny. Don’t call me Mr. Pearl no more. Even my girls call me Manny.”

“Manny.”

Manny went to his safe, opened it, and took out a steel box.

“Here’s five thousand,” he said, peeling bills off a stack.

“I’ll take it out of your fifty when you’re done. Will that get you off the hook?”

Keane nodded.

“It will.”

“Good. I don’t want your mind distracted by unimportant things.” He reached into a desk drawer, took out a box, and handed it to Keane.

Keane opened the box. In it was an expensive-looking 9-mm automatic pistol.

“Keep it,” Manny said.

“I’ve got two, since Mr. Ferkerson.”

“Thanks,” Keane said.

“I had to turn mine in.”

“I figured,” Manny said.

“Wear it in good health.”

When Will got back to the Atlanta office, it was humming. His Aunt Eloise was prowling among a corps of young volunteers, watching their telephone manners. There was a stack of credit-card chits in front of each of them, and a growing stack had been filled out.

“The money looks fair for this stage, considering our unwanted publicity,” Tom Black said.

“Your dad’s on the phone now, and he’s doing okay.”

“Come on, Tom, what’s the bad news?”

“You’re getting to know me, aren’t you?” Tom said, shaking his head.

“The bad news is, the telephone company demanded a fifty-thousand-dollar deposit for the phone bank.”

“What?”

“The good news is, I got them down to thirty.”

“That’s good news if we had the money,” Will said.

“We had it. When I wrote the check, it left eight dollars and forty cents in the account.” He held up a hand.

“We’ve taken in some more since then; your aunt Eloise is doing a great job.”

“She’s been doing it a long time,” Will said.

“All my father’s campaigns. Where is he?”

“Upstairs in your office.”

“Come on, let’s see how he’s doing.”

“He’s working on something special,” Tom said.

They went up the stairs and into Will’s large but ill furnished office. Billy Lee was on the phone, and he waved them in and put a cautionary finger to his lips.

“Tell you what, Marvin,” he was saying, “how about we each pick one, and they each pick another one. Fair enough? All right. Yes, Sunday afternoon, the station’s standing by for confirmation. You get MacK’s okay. No, I’ll hang on. I know damn well he’s standing right there.”

He covered the phone.

“I think we’ve got him,” he said to Tom.

Will was puzzled.

“Got who? MacK Dean? Got him for what?”

“Just hang on a minute,” Billy said.

“Yeah, Marvin, all right, you’re on. Three o’clock Sunday at the PBS station. Who are you choosing? If that’s who you want, that’s who you get. I don’t know, I haven’t talked to Will yet.

I’ll let you know. Bye.” Billy turned to Will.

“Your first debate with MacK is Sunday at three.”

“How’d you get him to do it?” Will asked, astonished.

“Oh, I’ve still got a card or two up my sleeve. He’s agreed to two meetings; I tried to get him to agree to three, but he won’t. If he thinks he does well enough in this one, he might agree to another.”

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Will said.

“I never thought I’d get a shot at him face to face.”

“Hang on,” Tom said, “don’t get too excited. You haven’t won the debate yet. Don’t underestimate MacK Dean. I’ve seen some tapes of his debates last time around, and I want you to see them, too.”

“MacK’s picked Shirley Scott, the anchor lady at Channel Six, for his panel member. We get to pick somebody, then they each pick one.”