The Ninth Wave (46 page)

"Tell the waitress what you want," Mike said. "We had to start. Terence
has got an appointment with his friends. Have some chopped chicken
livers and turkey. That's the best here. The stuffed eggs are terrible,
they've got anchovies in them. But I like anchovies . . . You won't.".
Hank and Georgia ordered.
"What did you think of the primary?" Hank asked Notestein.
"Me? Me, I liked it. Big victory for my friend Mike," Notestein said.
"Good things for my friends delight me. I'm happy when my friends
are happy."
"His business friends didn't like it, though," Mike said and grinned.
"They thought it was a fluke. They tell Terence Cromwell won't win in
the general. They tell him Cromwell will get clobbered."
"No, no, Mike, they don't say it like that," Notestein said. His face
was pained. "They're interested. They think Cromwell made a nice race in
the primary. But they have some doubts." He looked quickly at Hank and
then signaled to the waitress. "Cocktails for everyone, miss. Everyone
deserves a good drink."
"He's trying to get you liquored up," Mike said. "That's part of his
job. Get people drunk before you give them the bad news."
Notestein smiled grimly. Nobody ordered a drink, except Notestein. He
ordered a double martini. He waited until the waitress left and turned
to Mike.
"You've got it all wrong, Mike," he said. "They like your campaign. But
they're just not sure Cromwell can win."
"I've got a theory about your friends," Mike said. "My theory is . . . "
"You and your theories," Hank said. "You have to be careful about
theories, Mike. When I was in high school I lived at a boardinghouse and
the father of the landlady was blind. He said he was blinded in the war,
but his daughter said he had been born blind. Anyway he had cataract
growths over his eyes, white as eggshells. He used to sit on the front
porch and talk to people as he heard them walk by. He had a theory that
he could tell what job a person had by the way he smelled. He'd say you
could tell a woman was a librarian because of the smell of book varnish,
paste and dust. Or a schoolteacher because of the chalk-dust smell. He
could even smell out a plasterer on Sunday because the lime and mortar
hung around him."
He paused while the waitress put the double martini on the table.
Notestein was watching Hank attentively. He took his eyes away for a
second and drank off the martini.
"Go on. Tell us the rest," Notestein said.
"This blind man used to bet he could identify the passersby. He even
said he could tell an old maid because she didn't smell of a man. But
one day he bet five bucks and sniffed the next guy that walked by and
said he was a bank clerk. But the guy was a carpenter who just happened
to spill some d his wife's cologne on his suit before he left," Hank said.
"And there's a moral to the story," Mike said.
"Damned right," Hank said. "Don't believe your theory absolutely, the
next smell may be a mistake."
"But if you were blind it would be better than no theory at all, wouldn't
it?" Mike asked.
Hank smiled.
"You win," he said. "Wait till I eat my turkey leg."
Notestein had not eaten anything from his plate.
"Now that was a very good story. It reminds me of something," Notestein
said. He hesitated, looked quickly around the restaurant, and then went
on. "I was a Hungarian Jew, see? But my family lived in Gemany. Everything
got mixed up and we wound up in a ghetto. Every few weeks they'd call
us into a big auditorium to listen to the latest orders from Berlin. I
was young at the time; twenty-five maybe. This Nazi would come in the
auditorium to give us the orders. He was short, fat. Looked friendly. But
the second he walked in the auditorium you could smell him. It was a
funny smell. He'd look down at us and smile, but you knew he didn't
mean it because of the smell. It was like there was too much pressure
inside of him. Like it popped out and congealed on his skin; a sort of
beery, acid smell. Like he hated us so much, despised us so deeply,
that he smelled of it. And pretty soon all of us would be sniffing,
like dogs when there's danger in the air. Then when he left there would
be a new smell. But that would be us. That would be the smell of all of
us afraid, our skin crawling, trying to make out what the orders meant,
wondering if they applied to us."
Notestein held his finger alongside his nose in a strange European
gesture. He looked around him, his eyes wide, watering slightly from the
martini. Then his fingers touched the soft material of his sport coat,
he looked down suddenly and was embarrassed. He grinned at them. But
there was a tough, self-sufficient look on his face.
He's got guts, Hank thought. He's been through the mill. Mike can't
scare him. Suddenly, Hank felt better.
"Terence, tell Hank and Georgia what your friends think about the
election," Mike said.
Notestein put down his fork.
"Mike misunderstands them," he said. "He thinks they're not friendly. But
they're businessmen. They have to calculate. They just can't pour money
down a rathole. They don't think Cromwell can beat Daigh. They say Daigh
is better known. They say he's got a reputation. They believe that
California voters vote for a big reputation, a name, and Daigh's got
the name."
"So they don't want to contribute to Cromwell's campaign," Mike added. He
grinned.
"They can't, Mike," Notestein said. "They're responsible to a board of
directors. They have to account for every penny. They just can't throw
money away."
"And they're right," Hank said suddenly. "Cromwell hasn't got a chance.
Your friends are smart."
Notestein smiled at Hank. Hank felt a surge of confidence; or relief.
"Well, everyone's in agreement," Mike said. "What about you, Georgia?
What do you think?"
"I don't know," she said. "I haven't made up my mind."
"Look, Mike, be reasonable," Notestein said. "Settle for what you've
got. You've managed Cromwell very well. People won't forget it. It will
help your law practice. Don't ask anything more than that."
Mike picked up a salad egg that was flecked with bits of anchovy. He bit
it in half, chewed slowly and then put the other half in his mouth. He
took a swallow of beer.
"You don't deserve to know, Terence," Mike said. "You don't really
deserve to know how Cromwell will win, but I'll tell you. See, we know
a few things about the undecided voters. And they're the ones that will
decide the election . . . like always. We know that they're the people
who are worried about something. So they hold off, don't make up their
mind, keep trying to decide."
"So what, Mike?" Notestein said. "That's old stuff. But how are you going
to find the undecided votes? And what do you do when you find them?"
"First, you find big groups of people that are worried," Mike said. "You
don't worry about isolated individuals; big clots of worried people."
"Like the old-age people in the primary," Georgia said. "Tell them about
that, Mike."
Mike looked at her and smiled.
"O.K.," Mike said. "You brought it up, so we'll tell Terence about it.
Remember, Terence, in the primary we didn't run much of a campaign. We
did that deliberately. We didn't want a lot of excitement. We just wanted
a slow, average primary. Because that brings out an almost equal number
of Democrats and Republicans. Normally they would tend to favor Daigh
because he's better known, and if we hadn't done anything he probably
would have won both nominations. But we did something. We talked to
Mr. Appleton, one of the old-age leaders who, for some reason, seems
dedicated to Cromwell. And very quietly, with no fanfare, we sent each
person in the state over sixty years of age a letter."
"Tell them what the letter said, Mike," Georgia said. She looked at Hank
as she spoke.
"Scared people don't vote for something, they vote against something or
somebody," Mike said. "They vote their fears. So the letter, which was
signed by Mr. Appleton, didn't even mention Cromwell. It just reviewed
Daigh's voting record. In the last paragraph it just raised a doubt
. . . a little tiny subtle fear that Daigh might not be for old-age
pensions. That's all. And that's the only thing we did during the primary
campaign. The only thing."
"How do you know the letter did any good?" Hank asked. "People might
have voted against Daigh for a thousand reasons."
"Good question," Notestein said. "How do you know the letters worked, Mike?"
He looked over the edge of his glass at Mike.
"Because we had a polling service take a sampling of all people over
sixty in the state and see how they voted," Mike said. He grinned. "They
voted eight to one for Cromwell. And the letter didn't even mention
him. It just raised a doubt about Daigh. That's all it did. Raised a
doubt that he might not give them a bigger pension or might reduce the
pension they're already getting."
Unaccountably, for no reason that he understood, Hank felt a tiny gush of
terror somewhere in his mind. Mike had just described a simple political
trick and suddenly, inexplicably, the leakage of terror started in Hank's
mind. For a wild second he tried to reason the matter out. But it did
not make sense. Then he looked at Notestein. Notestein was holding the
martini glass against his lip and faintly, almost inaudibly, his teeth
were chattering against the glass.
Hank looked down at the white scraped turkey bones on his plate. He
turned them over with a fork. Notestein had felt it, too. The terror
flowed evenly across Hank's mind; was almost beyond control.
Then it came to Hank. Mike had just proved that he could do it; he had
supplied the final piece of evidence. He had proved the point.
"That's not enough," Hank said, without thinking, blindly. "You need more
than just the old-age vote. You have to pick up five hundred thousand
votes to win in the general."
"That's right," Mike said, and his voice was hard and flat. "And up in an
office on the top floor of the Golden State Building, we've got a research
staff picking out every group, every locality, every organization that's
got something to worry about this year."
"For example?" Notestein said. His eyes were bright and he had taken
the glass away from his teeth.
"For example, Buellton," Mike said, "The little town of Buellton. A few
restaurants, half dozen motels, a few giftshops. Five hundred people of
voting age. They all make their living off the traffic that goes past on
Highway 101. It runs right through the town. But the state engineers have
a plan to bypass Buellton. Make a new freeway that runs a mile south of
the town. Every person in Buellton thinks it will ruin the town if the
highway is moved. So you suggest to them that Daigh wouldn't object
if the highway was moved. You don't have to say what Cromwell would
do. You just let them know that Daigh favors moving the highway. That's
enough. They won't care what Cromwell stands for. They'll vote against
Daigh. And the only person they can vote for is Cromwell."
"How are you going to let them know?" Hank asked.
He was hoping that Mike would not have the answer. But he knew that Mike
would. His fingers were trembling and he put them under the table.
"Lots of ways," Mike said. "Maybe you send a liquor salesman into Buellton.
You have him mention in a few liquor stores and bars that Daigh is tied
up with the asphalt interests and they want the new highway to swing
around the town."
"What if Daigh doesn't have an interest in the asphalt business?" Hank
asked.
"You think I'm going to say that the liquor salesman should say it,
anyway," Mike said. "Well, you're wrong. Because what he says has to
be plausible. The people in Buellton might check around. So if Daigh
doesn't have an interest in the asphalt industry you look around until you
find something he has done or said that indicates he would favor the new
highway. Like a vote he cast for a highway appropriations bill four years
ago that authorized a highway that bypassed a few towns. There's always
something. And you have the liquor salesman say that. That's all you do."
"This takes a lot of money, doesn't it, Mike?" Notestein asked. "To find
all these groups and localities with a grievance?"
"That's right. It takes a big research staff. A lot of college graduates
in sociology and agriculture and city and regional planning. You don't
have to pay them much, but you need a lot of them. About a hundred and
fifty thousand dollars worth. And your friends, Terence, haven't
contributed a cent toward that fund. Not a cent."
Notestein smiled and it was the same, identical smile, except for one thing:
it was fawning.
Hank suddenly had to move. He shifted in his seat and still felt stiff
with tension. He saw the waitress pass.
"Bring me some pie," he said. "Apple pie. A la mode. Vanilla ice cream."
When she brought the pie, he scooped the entire ball of ice cream into
his mouth. It was creamy and sweet. It gushed past his teeth, chilled
his throat. It drove back the leakage of terror; his fingers stopped
trembling. He looked at Georgia. She was watching Mike.
"That's a lot of money. One hundred and fifty thousand dollars,"
Notestein said.
"Not when you're sure your man is going to win," Mike said. "Then it's
very cheap indeed." Mike grinned at Notestein. It was a grin that Hank
recognized. It was a grin in which Mike's teeth stayed together and the
lines around his eyes did not crinkle. It was a grin without humor.
All right, Notestein, Hank thought. Stand-by for a ram. Here comes your
turn. See how tough you are. You're a big-time operator, you deal with
this kind of thing every day. So get ready. Stand by.
"Terence, you're going to have to give your friends an opinion," Mike
said. "You're going to have to tell them who's going to be governor."
Notestein put the beer glass down. He reached for his lapels, carefully
straightened the coat around his shoulders. He smiled carefully.
"I know, Mike. I know that."
"It's a hell of a job, being an adviser in politics," Mike said. "Guess
wrong once and you're through. I know that, Terence. I sympathize."
Notestein's eyes dropped, he hunched forward protectively. Hank felt
his stomach tighten. He looked at Mike's strong face, the brown planes
of his skin and bone, the white teeth, the familiar hands. Mostly he
watched the grin.