The Porkchoppers (4 page)

Kensington went on prospering through the next four decades, becoming enormously rich. He contributed sporadically and almost indiscriminately to various Democratic and Republican candidates who caught his fancy, set up a foundation “to ease my conscience,” he told the press, and, in an unofficial capacity, he ran various errands for half a dozen Presidents.

Now Kensington had taken on yet another Presidential chore, not because he relished it, but to pay off some old political debts and, as he put it, “to sort of help keep a lid on things, at least for a while yet.”

The fat old man scraped up the last of the cottage cheese and poked it into his mouth. He spotted a few morsels that he had missed and mashed them up through the tines of his fork and licked them off. He put the fork down a little sadly and looked across the table at Walter Penry, whom he considered to be a bit simple.

“So it doesn't look too good for Cubbin?”

“No. Not too good.”

“Drinking too much?”

“Not so much that. They've got a couple of guys who keep him on pretty short rations. Or try to.”

“Been too long in his job, huh?”

“Partly. The big pitch is that he's lost touch with the rank and file.”

Kensington snorted. “That all?”

“There's more, but they're saving it, at least that's what Peter tells me.”

“He's that funny little fella of yours, ain't he? The one with the accent?”

“Yes.”

“He any good?”

“I think so.”

The old man looked down at his scraped plate. He abruptly shoved his chair back, muttered “to hell with it” as though to himself, and waddled across the living room of the hotel suite to its small kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, took out a container of Sara Lee Brownies, and carried it back to the table where he ripped off the top, carved out a four-inch-square chunk, and crammed it into his mouth, smiling at the comfort it gave him.

“That's not on your diet, is it?” Penry said.

“No, it ain't,” the old man said in a defensive tone. “You want some?”

“No, thanks.”

Kensington looked relieved. “About the only pleasure a mean old man like me has left, eating. Can't drink because of my heart. Stopped smoking when I was twenty-four because it was a damn-fool habit. As for women, well, I just don't think about that much anymore. Tell a damn lie, I just don't do anything about it.”

Penry watched while the old man ate the rest of the cake and then carefully scraped up the crumbs and icing and ate that, too. The foil container looked as if it had been washed. He won't last another year, Penry thought.

When Kensington was through with the cake, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the window of the hotel suite. “They claim to be pretty worried over there.”

“I can imagine,” Penry said. If he had gone to the window, he could have looked out over Lafayette Park and beyond it to the White House.

“It's not because they love old Don Cubbin either.”

“No.”

“They're worried about that other guy, Hanks.”

“Samuel Morse Hanks. Sammy Hanks.”

“Yeah, Sammy Hanks. He's the dingdong daddy from Dumas or tries to be, don't he?” Kensington said.

“It's the image he's cultivated over the years.”

“You still say that?”

“What?”

“Image.”

“Why, yes, I suppose I do.”

“Didn't think anybody said that anymore.”

Penry made a note in what he thought of as his mental tickler file to make sure that he never used “image” again, at least not around Old Man Kensington.

“Well, what's wrong with Hanks, don't they pay him enough?”

“As secretary-treasurer he makes fifty-five a year, ten less than Cubbin. His expense account is just as good or better.”

“So it's not money then?”

“No.”

“Too bad,” the old man said and began nodding his big head that was almost completely bald except for a fringe of cropped white hair around his ears and neck. He looks like a new baby, Penry thought for the fourth or fifth time that day. Like a new, smart, fat, sassy, red-faced baby.

The old man went on nodding for several moments, not conscious that he was doing it, but only of the thoughts that streaked through his mind. He could hold several thoughts in his mind at once and sometimes he wondered whether others could. Just now he was thinking about Sammy Hanks and what kind of a man he was and about whether Walter Penry was capable of successfully carrying out the assignment that he was about to be given, and just how long it would be before he could get rid of Penry so that he could get the remaining container of Sara Lee Golden Cake with the fudge icing out of the refrigerator.

“How old a man is Hanks, forty-three, forty-four?” Kensington said.

“Thirty-nine.”

“Ah.”

“How ‘ah'?”

“Well, he's young enough to get his personal concern for the future of the union so mixed up with his personal ambition that he can't tell 'em apart. He's a pisscutter, huh?”

“He tries to be.”

“Well, Cubbin does that pretty well with that voice of his when he's a mind to.”

“It goes over better when you're on the attack.”

“How long's Hanks been secretary-treasurer?”

“Six years.”

“Wasn't he sort of a protege of Cubbin's at one time?”

“Yes.”

The old man nodded. “At least we got us a familiar pattern. The president's out acting big shot and shooting his mouth off on ‘Meet the Press' while the secretary-treasurer's out meeting with the locals, doing favors, building up his political capital until wham, the president's out of a job and the secretary-treasurer's got it. It's happened before often enough.”

“I know.”

“Their contract runs out when, October thirty-first?”

“Yes.”

“And the election's October fifteenth?”

“Yes.”

“So whoever's president is going to be doing the final negotiating when it comes to nutcracking time. What's Cubbin got his mind set on?”

“Well, he already got thirty percent over the next three years from fabricating and processing.”

“That's fabricating and processing. What about the basics?”

“He figures he can get twenty-one percent from the basics without a strike. Maybe twenty-four percent with one.”

“It ain't worth it then.”

“No.”

“And Hanks wants to go for thirty percent?”

“More.”

“So he'll pull 'em out.”

“It looks that way. He says there's no reason why they shouldn't beat or match the auto workers.”

Kensington sighed. “Well, Hanks has got a point, but those people over in the White House ain't interested in it. They don't want any strike and they sure as hell don't want any thirty-percent wage increase because they think it'll hurt the economy which, translated, means it'll hurt their own chances of getting reelected.”

“So?”

“So over there in the White House they've decided that they'd like to see Don Cubbin reelected president of his union. Can you fix that?”

“It'll cost.”

“Yeah, well, anticipating just that we had a little meeting in Philadelphia last week. Some of the boys were there from Chicago and Gary and Los Angeles and New York and. Denver and all and they agreed to get up a little kitty to help Cubbin out, although it'd be best if he don't find out too much about it.”

“He won't.”

“So how much you gonna need to get him reelected? Just roughly.”

“Three quarters of a million.”

“That all?”

“His own people will come up with another quarter of a million.”

“So that's how much it takes nowadays, huh, about a million?”

“About that. We've heard that Hanks is going to try to get by on five hundred thousand.”

The old man grew interested. “Where's he getting his?”

“From banks, the ones that he's kept those big, low-interest union deposits in. They're grateful. So are the outfits that he's loaned money to from the pension fund. He's tapping them hard, too, we hear.”

“What's he call that committee of his?”

“Hanks?”

“Yes.”

“The Rank and File Committee.”

“Well, just how much can he count on from the rank and file? In other words, how much will the membership cough up to get themselves a new president?”

“Not much. Maybe fifty thousand.”

Kensington shook his head slowly. “Trade-union democracy will never cease to amaze me. Or amuse me, maybe I should say. How much you want for your fee?”

“A hundred thousand.”

“Including expenses?”

“It's going to be a short campaign and they'll be low so I'll donate them to the cause.”

“And you won't have any trouble working yourself into the thing?”

Penry smiled for the first time and Kensington wished that he hadn't. It was an animal's smile, the rogue kind who has left the pack and gone off on his own. “I owe Cubbin a few favors. I'll just let him know that I'd like to pay them back.”

“What do you think his chances are?”

“Without our help?”

“That way first.”

“Six-to-four against.”

“And with?”

“Better than even for reelection, but it'll be close.”

Old Man Kensington rose slowly and with effort, wheezing a little. “Well, I'll take care of the money; you take care of the election.”

“All right.”

“About this fellow Hanks.”

“What about him?”

“What's his problem?”

“I'm not sure I—”

The old man made an impatient gesture, flicking his left hand down and out. The fellow was simple, after all. “Cubbin's a drunk. What's wrong with Hanks?”

“I see. Well, not much really, although there is one thing.”

“What?”

“They say he's just a bit crazy,” Penry said, smiling again, but the old man didn't see it because he had already turned away, heading for the refrigerator.

5

A little over five blocks away that September afternoon in Washington, in another hotel, a cheaper one at the corner of Fourteenth and K, Samuel Morse Hanks was having a fit.

It was really more of a tantrum than a fit, but he was lying on the floor, face down, pounding his fists into the carpet and screaming something that sounded like “cawg.” He screamed it over and over while the spit trickled down his chin. Four men sat around in chairs and watched him with expressions that registered a little interest, if not much concern.

The bed and bureau had been removed from the hotel room and now it contained a scarred wooden desk that looked rented and was, a couch, eight or nine folding gray metal chairs with padded seats, two telephones, one of them with an outside line, and a green metal filing cabinet whose drawers were doubly secured by a built-in combination lock and a metal bar that ran through their handles and that was fastened at the top with a padlock that looked tricky.

The room was one of twelve on the hotel's third floor that had been rented as its campaign headquarters by the Rank and File Committee whose candidate for union president now lay on the floor, pounding the carpet with his fists, and screeching the word that sounded like “cawg” again and again.

Finally, one of the four men stubbed out his cigarette, rose, and walked over to where Sammy Hanks lay screaming. He nudged Hanks in the shoulder with the toe of his shoe. “All right, Sammy,” he said, “you've had your fun.”

The screams stopped. “For Christ's sake, get up and go wash your face,” the man said. “You've slobbered all over it.”

Sammy Hanks pushed himself up to a kneeling position, hiccupped once, and then rose to his feet. Saliva glistened on his jutting chin that at one in the afternoon already looked as though it needed a shave. Hanks glared at the four men, three of them white and one black. “You know what you bastards are?” he said.

The black man, the one who had shown the least concern while Hanks lay screaming on the floor, smiled lazily and said, “What are we, Sammy?”

“You're fuckin pathetic, that's what,” he said, snarling the words so that their tone nicely matched his scowl. Before any of the men could reply, he turned quickly and darted into the bathroom, making sure to slam the door.

The four men looked at each other, exchanging glances of exasperated commiseration. The one who had nudged Hanks with a toe sat back down and lit another cigarette.

The four men were near enough in age and size and demeanor almost to have been cut from the same pattern. They were all in their late thirties or early forties, bigger than average, all of them over six feet, carrying a little too much fat, with shrewd eyes set in seamed faces that weren't aging well, especially the black's, whose face looked as if it had been hastily chiseled out of some dark, porous stone.

Although the four men did not look pathetic, they did look wary, as if they had made some dubious bet that there was no way to hedge. They were, in fact, the porkchoppers in charge of the palace revolt, the highly paid professionals who would be out of a job if they lost. So if they had nothing to say to one another now, it was because it had all been said before when they had first decided to put their jobs and careers on the line, knowing all about Sammy Hanks and his tantrums and his mercurial moods that could jitter from hard, bright cheerfulness to raging despair and back again in less than fifteen minutes.

The black man had said it all when they were discussing Sammy Hank's candidacy six months before. “Okay,” the black had said, “so he's a manic-depressive, but he's our manic-depressive and he's sure as shit the only one who's got a chance of beating Cubbin.”

After that, there really hadn't been much more to say although each of them, alone and a little afraid with his dark night thoughts, had wondered about the gamble he had made and whether he was really willing to risk his $30,000-a-year job that had provided the house and the pool and the GGG suits and the boat and the cars and all the rest of the crap that was supposed to be the answer to everything, but which had turned out to be just something else that you had to take out insurance on.