The Ninth Wave (39 page)

Notestein sat quietly while Mike filled the beer glasses again.
"How does the convention look, Terence?" Mike asked. "Think Cutler will
get it?"
"Can't tell," Notestein said. "Dese tings are crazy. Cutler looks strong
now. But you haven't moved Cromwell. I'll vait and see how you handle
Cromwell's nomination. Den I tell you."
"Notestein, you're an old hand at this game," Hank said. "You tell me.
Has Cromwell got a chance?"
Notestein rubbed his cheek and then leaned toward Hank with his finger
alongside his nose.
"Look, Mr. Moore, just in dis room I tell you someding," he said in a
grotesquely loud whisper. "It's like a crazy chess game in vich the pawns
get excited and can jump around. Dose delegates are the pawns. Excitable
people. Cry easy, laugh easy, easy to make enthusiastic. The queen, king,
knight and rooks . . . all sensible pieces, all able to deal with one
another. But the pawns get excited, jump from square to square, advance
too fast, retreat too soon, jump crazy sideways. You can't win unless
you make the pawns do the right things. Maybe that's democracy. I don't
know. How vould a Hungarian Jew refugee know?"
Notestein fluttered his fingers and drew a crazy erratic pattern. He put
his hands over his ears and shook his head from side to side, moaning.
"Your people going to support Cromwell?" Mike asked.
"Not
my
people, Mike," Notestein said. His face was pained. "I don't
control what they do. I just giff advice. But you esk a question, I giff
an answer. Cromwell won't get the support that Cutler gets. My friends
would giff more quickly to Cutler. After da primary dey giff to both
candidates . . . Republican and Democrat. But dey would giff more
to Cutler."
"Why?" Mike asked bluntly.
Notestein looked steadily at Mike.
"Cutler is the more steady man, Mike," Notestein said.
He said it as bluntly as Mike asked it. Hank felt warmness for Notestein;
a quick admiration for his directness. He leaned forward and whispered
to Georgia.
"This guy's tough," he said. "He won't roll over like those old-age
people."
She looked up at Hank and nodded, but he could not tell what she was
thinking. He thought she looked frightened.
"What difference does it make that Cutler's more steady?" Mike asked.
"Mike, dese are hard times for businessmen. Especially businessmen in
the oil business," Notestein said. "All kinds risks. Terrible risks. What
if gas tax goes up another cent or two? Maybe people stop driving their
cars so much. Z .. u .. t .. ," he hissed and drew his hand across
his throat. "End of profits in the oil business. Or what if the oil
companies don't get the offshore oil. Z .. u .. t. Or what if the mineral
exploitation clause is cut out of the tax law. Z .. u .. t. Profits gone,
men out of work, equipment obsolete. Awful business."
"They want to be reassured?" Mike asked.
Notestein smiled. His accent had thinned out; was less consistent;
almost as if he were an American who had learned an accent.
"That's it, Mike. Dey want to be reassured. Also, Mike, just as a friend,
I tell you something else." Notestein paused, bit the soggy end off
his cigar and dropped the moist wad of tobacco in the wastebasket. He
lit the cigar and waited until the tip was a round perfect circle of
red. "On this Communist thing, Mike, my friends act like pawns. Crazy,
wild, excited. Jist on this one thing. I got a theory why dey act that
way. Because dey hated Roosevelt and the New Deal and all that government
interference with business and when dey were told it was due to Communist
agents it was good to hear. Also, Mike, they are scared. Like everyone
else. The atom bomb is too big to worry about from day to day . . . but a
Communist. Now dere is something you can hate every day in your life. So
dey don't worry about the bomb; dey worry about the Communists. That's
my theory, Mike."
"They think Cromwell is a Communist?" Mike asked.
"Of course not," Notestein said quickly. "But look at 'im. Rich son
of a rich family, but always out talking to anarchist and radical
groups. Always signing petitions to get Tom Mooney out of jail. Always
supporting the newest thing."
"Terence, your friends are way off base," Mike said. "They ought to calm
down and get reasonable. Cromwell's no Communist. They know that. He talks
to all those little groups because, taken together, they've got a lot of
votes. A thousand Italian anarchists here, a thousand CIO votes there,
five hundred longshoremen in L.A. or San Francisco . . . pretty soon
you've got enough people to swing an election. You know that, Terence.
You get votes wherever you can; the vegetarians, the Bohemian Club,
the churches, the Italians, the Portuguese, the sardine fishermen. Your
friends think Cromwell is radical because he talks to those little
off-beat groups, but he's always been looking toward an election.
All those little chunks of votes are what will put Cromwell in."
"But why not talk to the regular Democrats and Republicans a
little?" Notestein asked.
"Because the Democrats will be for him if he gets the nomination," Mike
said. "He doesn't have to talk to them. But those little blocs of votes,
those are the real difference in this state."
"And Cromwell has influence mit them?" Notestein asked. He smiled at
the tip of his cigar.
"Sure."
"Evidence, Mike? What is the evidence?" Notestein asked.
Mike stood up and walked to the table. He picked up a briefcase and
turned it upside down. A stream of letters poured out on the carpet.
"Pick any one of them," he said. "Read one."
Notestein bent forward. The tip of his cigar broke away, the ash fell
on one of the letters. He picked up the letter carefully, slid the ash
off into the wasetebasket.
At the top of the letter was a small red and white engraved sailboat. At
the left was a list of officers.
"Dear Mr. Cromwell," Notestein read. "The Executive Committee of the
Balboa Yacht Club would like to thank you for your efforts in having the
Corps of Army Engineers widen the Eslay Channel. As you know this makes
it possible for the members of this club to use their boats throughout
the entire year. This means, of course, that our seamanship skills,
so valuable in time of war, are not allowed to grow rusty . . . "
Notestein waved the letter in his hand, "and so forth and so on."
He picked up another letter. It was written on plain white expensive
paper with no letterhead.
"Mr. Cromwell," Notestein read. "We have watched your efforts to restrict
the import of Italian prunes with very real gratitude. As you know the
livelihood of many hundreds of Californians is dependent upon a healthy
prune industry. It occurs to us that we might best reward your fine
efforts by making a contribution to some charity or other activity
of your choosing." Notestein paused and said, "The 'other activity'
is underlined. That means political contributions." He went on reading
from the letter. "We hope that you will see fit to oppose H.S. Bill 7320
which is now pending before a House Committee in Washington. This bill
would allow importations of fruits in years when our native crops fall
below a certain level, but it overlooks the fact that we already have
a surplus of dried and canned fruit which should be disposed of. This
un-American attempt to flood our markets with . . . and so forth."
Notestein picked up a handful of the letters and thumbed through them,
only glancing at the letterheads. Hank walked over and stood behind
him. Some of the letters could be identified by the objects pictured on
the letterhead: briar pipes, a tanker moving through the sea, an orange
tree in bloom, a bottle of wine, a tiny bicycle. Others were written on
plain parchment paper and bore the heavy uniform type of an electric
typewriter. Others were written in longhand. Some were from patriotic
societies, chambers of commerce, political-action groups. Notestein
shuffled them as if they were cards, muttering under his breath.
Suddenly he snapped the letters straight, neatly arranged them in a pile
and dropped them on the floor.
He looked quickly at Mike and then threw his cigar butt into an ash
tray. He took out a fresh cigar.
"Very good, Mike," he said when he had the cigar lit. His mouth and
lips were bored, but through the cloud of smoke his eyes glittered with
interest. "But don't kid yourself. It's not enough to win an election."
"It is enough to win an election," Mike said. "We've made calculations. We
know how many people those letters represent. Our figures indicate that
with the right kind of a campaign after the primary Cromwell would win."
"May I see those figures?" Notestein asked. "My friends would be
interested."
"No. You can't see the figures," Mike said and smiled.
Notestein sighed and leaned back in his chair. He nodded his head.
"I know, Mike, I know," he said. "I just thought I'd ask."
Hank noticed that Notestein's language had changed as he spoke. At first
he sounded like a newly arrived, harried, nervous Jewish refugee. But
gradually the accent and the nervousness had dropped away. Hank realized
suddenly that Notestein spoke poorly on purpose. He deliberately played
the role of a nervous, grasping, outlandish Jew. He was a kind of antic,
overdressed person who would do the difficult and dirty things for his
clients that they would not do for themselves. His rich and vulgar clothes
were a badge of his competence to do the unsavory things that a gentile
executive could not do.
"Mike, my friends will be impressed," Notestein said after a moment of
silence. He smiled. "Maybe, even, they will support Cromwell. Not publicly
of course, you wouldn't want that. But they would want reassurance on
one thing. Just one thing."
"What's that, Terence?" Mike asked.
Notestein looked at Mike and then around at Hank. He smiled and shrugged
his shoulders as if what he were going to say was foolish; he shared his
sense of preposterousness with them. He was the picture of the pacifier,
the middle man, the compromiser.
"The Communist thing, Mike," he said. "They're crazy on that. They
worry, worry, worry about that. If Cromwell could just make a little
anti-Communist statement. Nothing big or dramatic, just a little thing.
They'd feel better." He spoke with no trace of accent.
He stood up and walked to the door. He shrugged in his suit, swaggered
slightly. He twisted the big and expensive hat in his hands.
"We'll think about it, Terence," Mike said.
Notestein went out the door. The room was silent for a minute.
"So that's how it's done?" Hank said softly. "So that's how you get a
governor elected?"
"I don't know if anyone else does it this way, but this is the way I'm
going to do it," Mike said and grinned. "Usually they do it the way
those people are doing it down in the convention hall. I'm trying a
different way."
"Mike, you're crazy," Hank said. "When Notestein reports back to those
oil-and utility people, they'll just laugh. You haven't got a chance. Why,
my God, you haven't even got the Democratic endorsement yet. And nobody
knows Cromwell. They won't give money to an unknown person. And those
old-age peoplel Mike, they'll slaughter you. You scared the hell out
of them. They'll fight Cromwell like he's poison. I think I'd better
go get my bottle of bourbon and start relaxing."
Mike drank the rest of the beer from his glass. He walked over to a drawer
and took out a fresh shirt. He peeled off the damp shirt and draped it
over a chair. He put the fresh shirt on. He opened the door. The booming
sound of applause drifted down the corridor.
"Cutler must be giving his speech," Mike said. He closed the door and
leaned against it. He grinned at Hank. "Hank, you're just about fifty
years too late. You're like all those people down in the hall. They all
think that politics is being nice to people; giving them pensions and
cocktails and placards and sugary speeches and never offending anybody."
"You think that the American voter likes to have a candidate that sends
a little shiver of fear down his backbone?" Hank asked. "Well, I can
tell you he doesn't. He likes a glad-hander, a Jim Farley, a candidate
that's old-shoe."
Georgia licked her lips and then spoke slowly.
"Hank's right, Mike," she said. "You scared those pension people. They'll
fight you."
Mike buttoned his shirt and began to knot his tie. They saw his grin in
the mirror.
"Maybe so, but I doubt it," he said. "Maybe people don't really vote for
the guy they like the best. Maybe they vote for the guy they're a little
afraid of . . . someone like F.D.R. who was cool and artistocratic. Or
Teddy Roosevelt who despised them. Do you think the voters liked Lincoln
or Woodrow Wilson or Washington? Were they glad-handers? Don't kid
yourselves. They were cold fish. Just a little awesome; not a lot,
but a little."
"You're nuts, Mike," Hank said. "For a while you really had me
worried. But now I think you're nuts. You'll see when we get down
on that convention floor. They'll ruin you. But you're all right,
Mike. Now how about buying me that quart of bourbon?"
"Right away," Mike said. "Let's go down to Cromwell's room for a minute. I
have to talk to him. You can call room service from there and have them
send up a bottle. Get the best."
When they went in Cromwell's room, Clara was sitting on the sofa. Cromwell
was leaning against the bureau. He had a glass in his hand. The room smelled
faintly of good sour-mash whisky.
"Hail, the big fixer arrives," Cromwell said. "The mastermind comes to
announce the terms of defeat."
"Go easy on the bourbon, John," Mike said. "You have to make a speech
this afternoon."
"Not me, Mike. The will of the Democratic Pre-Primary Convention has
been plumbed and I have been found wanting," Cromwell said. "Alas,
they have gone for Cutler."
Mike walked over and picked up the bottle of sour-mash. He held it up
to the window. It was a quarter full.
"Don't give him a lecture on drinking," Clara said. She stared angrily
at Mike.
"Not with the whole damned convention marching around and cheering for
Cutler, don't give me a lecture on abstinence," Cromwell said. "Now
that it's all over, don't start to lecture, Mike." Cromwell hesitated
and looked down in the glass. He looked up bewildered. "God, Mike,
they're all for Cutler. Tell me, how did you ever think we'd win?"