The Porkchoppers (6 page)

The two other men who got out of the Lear were Cubbin's keepers. Ostensibly, one was the campaign manager and the other was the public relations expert. Their principal task, however, was to keep Cubbin sober—or fairly so—until the campaign was over. They already had been ten days on the job and both looked haggard, having just spent most of the one-hour flight from Hamilton, Ontario, thinking up reasons why Cubbin shouldn't sample the two imperial quarts of Canadian whiskey that he had bought tax free at the airport. Fred Mure had been no help. He liked to see Cubbin take a drink. “It makes him feel better,” he had once said. “Makes him relax.”

“It makes him drunk, you dumb son of a bitch,” the campaign manager had told him.

Cubbin's principal supporters had thought of getting rid of Fred Mure until the campaign was over, of sending him to Miami Beach or better yet, to Bermuda. All expenses paid. But when he had been approached, Mure had shaken his head stubbornly and said, “Don needs me.”

The only person who could get rid of Mure was Cubbin himself, but when the campaign manager had mentioned it, Cubbin had looked at him strangely and then said, “He stays,” in a tone that made further argument impossible.

The campaign manager was Oscar Imber, who had taken his master's degree in economics at the University of Texas, writing his thesis on “The Use and Misuse of the Pension Fund of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America.” The thesis had won him an immediate job offer from the teamsters' union, which had been tempting, but he had turned it down for a similar offer from Cubbin's union that promised a little less money, but far more authority. After eight years, Imber was administrator for the union's pension fund which, at last count, was up around $611,000,000. Because of the Federal Landrum-Griffin Act, which outlined the rules that unions must follow when conducting their elections, Imber had cautiously taken leave of his official job to become the Cubbin slate's campaign manager. He had done so not because of any fondness for Cubbin, but because his own job was one of the ripest plums in the union. If Cubbin lost to Hanks, Oscar Imber would barely have time to empty his desk. He at first had tried to stay neutral, but it had proved impossible when in separate, equally heated discussions with both candidates, they had let him know that they regarded those who were not for them as against them.

Imber had flipped a coin to make his choice. It had come up heads and Cubbin. Once having made his decision, he informed Cubbin that he was taking over the managing of the campaign because “You haven't got anybody else around with enough sense to do it. If they've got any sense, they've gone over to Sammy.” Cubbin was so relieved that somebody was taking charge of the campaign's details that he hadn't argued.

As he watched Cubbin climb into the Cadillac Imber spoke to the man next to him. “What time's he due on that TV thing?”

“Midnight.”

“It's going to be a long day.”

“They all are.”

The man that Imber spoke to would have been tall if he had straightened up out of his slouch. He carried his thin body like a wire question mark that somebody had once started to straighten out but had given up on halfway through. His head jutted forward from his lean neck as if on some perpetual, private quest. His hair was black, long and touched with gray at its shaggy ends. He had bright blue eyes that seemed a little cold, a slightly hooked nose, and a thick, black moustache curving around the ends of a thin mouth that managed to look hungry.

The thin man was Charles Guyan and for the past ten years he had earned a comfortable if uncertain living by trying to get men whom he usually felt nothing but contempt for elected to public office. He had been successful three-fourths of the time and there was a steady demand for his services, which, along with inflation, now enabled him to charge $50,000 a campaign plus expenses. The $50,000 was all profit because Guyan had no overhead, not even a permanent address. When he wasn't working a campaign, he and his wife lived on their thirty-two-foot Chris-Craft and cruised the inland waterway from Florida to Virginia. Guyan felt that he had four years left before his steadily mounting disdain for his profession rendered him ineffective. In four years he would be forty and he wasn't at all sure what he would do then and he worried about it a lot.

Seated now in the back seat of the Oldsmobile 98, Charles Guyan and Oscar Imber listened patiently while the car's owner, a minor union official from Gary, gave them his version of the political climate.

“It's warming up,” he said. “We're stirring up lots of interest.”

“That's good,” Imber said. “How does it look?”

“Oh, Don's gonna make it okay if he keeps his eye on the ball.”

“John?” Imber said.

The minor union official whose name was John Horton turned his head around and away from the road he was supposed to be watching. “Yeah?”

“You want to know something?”

“Sure,” Horton said, his attention back on the road and his driving again, “what?”

“You don't know what the fuck you're talking about.”

It didn't bother Horton. “You just wait and see, Oscar. Old Don's gonna make it all right, if he keeps his eye on the ball.”

“John's supposed to deliver his local,” Imber said to Guyan. “I doubt if he could deliver a bottle of milk.”

“Don't you worry about my local,” Horton said over his shoulder. “You don't have to worry none about that. You'd better worry about those nigger locals, that's what you'd better worry about.”

“Your local's eighty-percent black, John,” Imber said.

“Uh-huh, about that, but they're all good niggers; you don't have to worry none about them.”

“Just the other ones, huh?”

“Well, you don't have to worry none about mine, I'll guaran-goddamn-tee you that.”

Imber slumped back in the seat. Guyan stared moodily out of the window. They rode in silence for several minutes until Imber said, “Well, you've had ten days of it. What do you think?”

“It's a throwback to the thirties.”

“How?”

“I can't use commercials on TV or even radio because we're only trying to influence about nine hundred thousand votes in what … forty-some states?”

“About that.”

“So the cost is prohibitive. I've got the world's most natural TV candidate, but I can't use him. If this were a regular election I'd say spend every dime you've got on TV but it's not, so I can't use it, and that leaves only one thing.”

“What?”

“Print.”

“So?”

“So it bothers me.”

“Why? Hanks has the same problem.”

Guyan sighed. “I've never run a print campaign before. Not all print. I've got a candidate who looks like he oughta be voted for and I've got an opposition candidate who looks like somebody just dug him up out of the cellar, and I can't use either of them in commercials. Jesus!”

“Well, what about printed stuff?” Imber said.

“I don't have much faith in it.”

“Why?”

Guyan sighed again. “Who the hell reads anymore?”

Three blocks from the Sheraton-Blackstone Hotel Fred Mure told the cab driver to stop at a liquor store. He went in and paid six dollars for four half-pints of Ancient Age bourbon. He put two of the half-pints in his coat pockets and two in his trouser pockets. Back in the cab he told the driver, “Let's go.”

“That stop's gonna make us a minute late,” the driver said.

“Don't let it worry you,” Mure said, taking out his notebook and writing down “HFO—$12.” HFO stood for “hospitality for others.”

At the Sheraton Mure jumped out of the cab and pushed through the revolving door. Waiting in the lobby was a group of five men. One of them stepped forward, but Mure waved him back. “Wait right there, Phil. He'll be here in five or six minutes.”

“We just wanta see him for a minute.”

“You can see him upstairs.”

“Appreciate it, Fred.”

But Mure was already heading for the bell captain's desk. The captain rose quickly when he looked up and saw Mure.

“How are you, Jimmy?” Mure said.

“Fine, Fred, and you?”

“Keeping me on the run.”

“What'll you need?”

Mure looked at his watch and then pointed at the bank of elevators. “Give me number one and number two in five minutes.”

“Right. How many bags?”

“Need a couple of boys.”

“You've got 'em. Staying long?”

“A few days. I'll take care of you later.”

“Sure, Fred.”

Mure moved away from the bell captain and stationed himself in the lobby where he could keep an eye on both the elevators and the revolving door. He also let his gaze wander about the lobby, mentally classifying its occupants. No nuts, he thought. Just people.

The captain had summoned four of his bellhops who nodded as he gave them instructions. “Cubbin's due in about three minutes. You two get on the door. You two bring number one and two down and hold them. Just like always.”

The four bellhops nodded and moved toward the elevators and the revolving door. Five minutes later the green Cadillac bearing Donald Cubbin pulled up at the hotel entrance. The uniformed doorman jumped for it. Cubbin was first out followed by the vice-president and the other two members of the Chicago reception committee. From the blue Oldsmobile came Oscar Imber, Charles Guyan, and John Horton, the minor union official. Before Cubbin had made it to the revolving door the bellhops had already gathered the bags from the two cars.

Cubbin was first inside the lobby, his long, double-breasted raincoat open and flapping, a cigar clenched between the white teeth of his smile, his eyes restlessly moving from side to side searching for anyone who deserved a wave or a nod or a hi-ya, pal. When he saw the group of five men he winked and jerked his head toward the elevators, not breaking his long stride.

“Number one, Don,” Mure murmured as Cubbin flashed past him. The idlers and loafers in the lobby had turned to watch the entrance that had now swelled into a small procession.

“Who is it?” an idler asked a loafer.

“Lorne Greene,” the loafer said, not wanting to seem stupid.

“Who's that?”

“Pa Cartwright. On TV. You know, on ‘Bonanza.'”

“Oh, yeah. I thought it looked like him.”

Cubbin entered the elevator swiftly, Mure just behind him. Well schooled, the bellhop who was piloting the automatic car turned the key, closing the door.

“Stop on six, Carl,” Mure said.

“Right, Mr. Mure,” the bellhop said.

The elevator stopped at six, but the doors didn't open. The bellhop kept his face carefully to the front of the car as Mure handed Cubbin one of the now opened half-pints of Ancient Age. Cubbin tipped the bottle up and swallowed greedily. Then he handed it back to Mure who told the bellhop, “Okay, let's go,” and slipped the bottle back into his coat pocket.

Donald Cubbin closed his eyes and sighed appreciatively as he felt the whiskey go to work.

7

Truman Goff, who had looked up the man he was going to kill in
Who's Who,
had three weeks' vacation coming from the Safeway store in Baltimore and he arranged to take one week of it during the second week in September and the other two weeks beginning October 9, a Monday.

The manager of the Safeway wasn't surprised at Goff's request because his produce manager always took his vacation at odd times and actually it made things easier because Goff was always there during the summer to fill in when others were away on vacation.

Goff's decision to take his vacation so late in the year was no surprise to his family either. For the past three years, since their daughter had turned seven, the Goffs had vacationed separately. His wife had returned in July from a three-week tour of Europe which had cost Goff $995 plus the $300 he had given her to buy stuff with. His daughter had spent six weeks of the summer at a Methodist camp in Pennsylvania, just as she had done the previous two summers while her mother had taken packaged tours to Hawaii the first year and to Mexico the second. Now whenever she and her husband watched television together, which wasn't often, and a foreign city was shown, Mrs. Goff usually said, “I been there,” even if she hadn't, which irritated Goff who had never been out of the States and had no desire to go. But his wife's “I been there” still irritated him which, of course, was why she said it.

Truman Goff's wife wasn't sure where her husband got the money to pay for her tours. He said he played the horses with a scientific system, but she didn't believe it. Still, for the past three or four years he always seemed to have plenty of money and as long as he spent some of it on her she wasn't going to worry about where it came from.

When Goff came home after arranging his vacation he told his wife, “I'm gonna take a week off starting Monday.”

“Where you going?”

“I don't know. Maybe Florida.”

“It's still hot down there.”

“I like it hot. I'll leave you the car.”

“You'd better leave me some money, too.”

“Yeah, well, here's four hundred. You can buy the kid some new clothes for school.”

Goff handed his wife four one-hundred-dollar bills. They were old, well-used bills and one of them had a rip in it that someone had neatly mended with a strip of Scotch tape.

“Well, have a good time,” his wife said, putting the money away in her purse.

“Yeah, sure,” Goff said and started carefully turning through
The New York Times.

“What're you reading that for?” his wife said.

“They got a better racing section than the
Sun
,” Goff said, stopping on page 13 because it contained a one-column headline that read: