The Porkchoppers (8 page)

“I'd always like to see you, Walter, you know that,” Cubbin said, “but I'd better tell you right now we're running a shoestring campaign and I don't think there's enough money in it to make it worth your while.”

“Don?” Penry said.

“Yes.”

“Did I mention money? Did I ever hint at it?”

“No, but—”

“Don?”

“Yes.”

“We're friends, aren't we?”

“Sure. We're friends.”

“Well, I just wanted to make sure you thought so because that's why I called you. Because we're friends and friends help each other out. Now you've helped me out in the past, haven't you?”

Cubbin didn't really like to think about that. Helping Walter Penry out had involved doing nothing. It had, in fact, involved not making a decision, so if anything, it had been a negative kind of help. “Well, I don't know, Walter,” Cubbin said. “I haven't really done much.”

This was true. One of the largest specialized manufacturing companies in the nation should have been organized by Cubbin's union years ago. It was a company that was owned 100 percent by an immensely rich, immensely eccentric recluse who was Walter Penry and Associates' principal client. He would remain their client as long as his company remained unorganized. The company had grown into a major concern during Cubbin's tenure as union president. Over the years, Cubbin had directed only token efforts toward organizing it. He had sent the union's malcontents, its failures, and its drunks to do the job and when they reported back that they had been unsuccessful, Cubbin had told them to try again. Some of the union's failures and malcontents had made a career out of not organizing that particular firm and whenever Cubbin got pressure from his board about it, he would send out some other incompetents. As in every organization, there were always plenty of them around.

The agreement between Cubbin and Penry that the eccentric recluse's company would not be organized had never been explicit. Penry wasn't even sure that it was tacit, but he had found that as long as he was pleasant, friendly and helpful to Cubbin, his client's company stayed unorganized. Being pleasant and friendly was Penry's stock in trade; being helpful was introducing Cubbin to various New York and Los Angeles actors and actresses who were told that their careers might be enhanced if they were attentive and flattering to the union man. Because Cubbin, at sixty-two, was still stagestruck, this had been an easy, even enjoyable task for most of them and some of them had even become his close acquaintances, if not his good friends.

Penry knew that if Cubbin's union made even a halfway serious attempt to organize the firm, it could be sewn up in six weeks. He also knew that if Sammy Hanks got elected president, the attempt would not be halfway serious, it would be completely so, and Walter Penry and Associates would lose its most valuable client.

The reelection of Donald Cubbin was the most important current project that Walter Penry and Associates had and Penry didn't want to think about what would happen should Cubbin lose—although he knew he would have to think about it soon and have a contingency plan ready to go just in case. It was what a realist would do and Penry prided himself on being realistic, which meant, of course, figuring out how to make a dollar from disaster.

“Don,” Penry said, “why don't you keep tomorrow afternoon free? The boys and I'll fly up tomorrow morning and then we can have a good talk—at my place.” By my place, Penry meant the Hilton. He almost always stayed at Hilton hotels because he had once done some work for the chain and the management was so grateful for having been extricated from a possibly embarrassing situation that Penry had been presented with a silver card that entitled him to a 30 percent discount. The Hilton chain also had gold cards that entitled the bearer to a 50 percent discount, but its management hadn't been quite grateful enough to give Penry one of those.

“Well, maybe I could drop around for a little while,” Cubbin said.

“Make it around one and we'll have some lunch.”

“Okay. Lunch'll be fine.”

“See you tomorrow then, Don. I'm looking forward to it.”

“Sure. So am I.”

After Penry switched off his desk speaker he looked at Peter Majury who by now had covered one page of his yellow legal pad with scribbled notes.

“Well?” Penry said.

“Interesting, but not startling.”

“What?”

“He's been nipping, but not too much,” Majury said. “That means that he's secured a steady supply—probably from that Mure person who shadows him. Ancient Age, as I recall.”

“Just how in the hell do you know it's Ancient Age?” Ted Lawson said.

“It's my job to know, Ted. Mure usually keeps four half-pints about his person. This enables Cubbin to have a quick one whenever the need arises and from his careful pronunciation of certain words such as ‘after' and ‘handle,' I'd say his intake thus far today has been nearly three-fourths of a pint.”

“How much would you say he's putting away every day?” Penry said.

“It must be nearly a fifth or a quart, if my research is right.”

“It usually is,” Lawson said, but without any admiration.

“Can he function?” Penry said.

“It depends upon what you mean by that. At a little over a pint he can still move around, but his control has diminished. After a quart he would be completely unconscious. If he follows his usual pattern, he has a quick one or two in the morning to get going, and then tries to do everything that needs any careful attention by noon. After that he can have several large drinks and still perform the duties that require little or no concentration— such as making public appearances, delivering a speech, and so forth. Fortunately, his duties are not too arduous.”

“He hasn't done a day's work in the ten years that I've known him,” Lawson said.

“It depends on what you mean by that,” Penry said. “I've seen him conduct round-the-clock negotiations. I was there at the request of industry, not his, but I'd say that he was damned near masterful.”

“How long ago was that?” Peter Majury said.

“Three years. About this time three years ago.”

“Well, for one thing he was on stage then,” Majury said. “He wasn't being the president of his union. He was
acting
the way that he thought the president of his union should act.”

“He did a damned fine job,” Penry said.

“He would have made a most competent actor, perhaps even a great one given proper direction. But you saw him at his best three years ago. I'm afraid his drinking problem has worsened since then.”

“Well, he's not going to quit the sauce,” Lawson said.

“No, he's not going to do that,” Penry said.

“Personally,” Majury said, “I think that under the circumstances his people are handling him almost as well as he can be handled. If we enter into his campaign, my only suggestion would be to shield him from as much stress as possible.”

“You mean nursemaid him?” Lawson said, making it clear that he didn't like the idea.

“No, he's got a number of those around—all of whose good intentions are subverted by the Mure person who, in effect, is Cubbin's bootlegger. No, I think we leave Cubbin alone as much as possible.”

“You're getting to your point, aren't you?” Penry said.

“Yes. I think I am.”

“Well?”

“Sammy Hanks.”

“Yes,” Penry said, “Sammy is the problem, isn't he?”

“He has those tantrums, you know.”

“I've heard.”

“Have you ever seen one?”

“No.”

Majury looked at his shoes. “I once spent three hours with someone who had. She was a rather good observer. She gave me a graphic description. Most graphic.”

“So?”

“While her description was interesting, she told me something else that was even more so.”

He's going to tell it in his own time, Penry thought. In his own way. Nothing will hurry him. “What?” he said.

“She told me what it was that could make him—uh—blow. Invariably.”

“Yes, I see,” Penry said.

Lawson was nodding. “Now it's getting more interesting.”

“She said she discovered it quite by accident,” Majury said. “But that it always worked. She tested it, just to make sure.”

“And what do you think we should do about it?” Penry said.

It took Majury fifteen minutes to describe what he thought should be done about it and when he was through, Lawson said, “When'd you dream all this up?” There was nothing but envious admiration in the question.

“While Walter was talking to Cubbin.”

“Jesus, it's rotten,” Penry said.

Majury smiled and used his right hand to smooth his long, black hair. “Yes,” he said, “isn't it.”

9

The television show that Cubbin was scheduled to appear on that night started at twelve in Chicago and was aimed at those insomniacs whose thirst for banality remained un quenched even after an hour and a half of Johnny Carson or Dick Cavett.

The host of the show was an ex-
Chicago Tribune
police reporter who did his homework, or had it done for him, and who liked to ask his guests depressingly personal questions that had won him the sobriquet of “Mr. Nasty Himself.” At least that's how he insisted that he be introduced before each program.

The host's name was Jacob Jobbins and the official title for his program was “Jake's Night.” It was an hour-and-a-half show and the number of guests varied from one to three. The attraction of the program, of course, lay in Jobbins' ability to make his guests squirm, which delighted and fascinated his audience at home who couldn't sleep anyhow and who told themselves, or anybody who was still up and willing to listen, that by God, he'd never get me up there and ask me questions like that, but who really yearned to be up there telling it all.

So the various flacks around the country tried to get their client writers and actors and politicians and flashy criminal lawyers and singers on “Jake's Night” because Chicago was a big market and it was felt that humiliation paid off at the box office and the bookstores and the record shops.

Jobbins got many of the questions that he asked from the enemies of the people whom he planned to interview. He was always getting scrawled notes that urged him to ask so-and-so things like “why they tossed him in the clink in Santa Monica in April 1961.” And often, after careful checking, Jobbins would ask about it and his guest would either freeze or try some maladroit verbal fencing until Jobbins' gentle but persistent probing broke through the guest's defenses and then the entire, often sordid story would tumble out to the delight of those who were lying in bed at home and watching it all through their toes.

If Jobbins knew how to ask questions, he also knew how to listen. In fact, he may have been one of the world's great listeners, a skillful user of the long silence and the sympathetic, understanding nod that seemed to say, “I know, I know, God, how well I know,” as his guests stripped themselves of their last shred of dignity, reveling, it often seemed to Jobbins, in their self-abasement.

But immolation paid because “Jake's Night” commanded a large and loyal audience that actually bought the books and records and went to the shows that the writers and singers and actors crucified themselves to tout. As one publicity man put it, “Christ, after you see some poor slob strip himself bare you feel so sorry for him that you go out and buy his record just to cheer him up.”

This would be Donald Cubbin's third time on “Jake's Night.” When he had first appeared on the show three years before, Jobbins had been unable to penetrate Cubbin's formidable dignity and the show had been dull. The next time Cubbin had unbent a little and admitted that yes, he thought that Jimmy Hoffa was a thief and that the late Walter Reuther had been a damned fool to take his auto workers out of the AFL-CIO and besides that Reuther had been a smart aleck who never knew when to shut up. As for the war in Vietnam, George Meany could say whatever he wanted to say, but Cubbin thought it was senseless, tragic waste and Cubbin had said so since sixty-four and would go on saying so even if a cut in defense spending would throw his members out of work. Furthermore, Cubbin felt that if Hubert Humphrey hadn't sold his soul to be Johnson's nominee and had come out against the war when he should have, back in sixty-six or even sixty-five, he'd be the most popular man in the nation today instead of a has-been. And no, Cubbin wasn't worried about becoming an alcoholic although sure, he took a drink every now and then, but who didn't?

If Jobbins' second interview with Donald Cubbin hadn't been too revealing personally, it had at least produced enough pungent remarks to make the wire services move a seven-paragraph story on it. This time Jobbins had a little more material to work with and almost before Cubbin could seat himself, Jobbins began.

“The last time you were here, Don, you called Hubert Humphrey a has-been among other things. Now that's what a sizable portion of your membership is calling you. They say that you've lost touch with them. Why do they say that?”

“The man who wants my job says that, Jake. The members don't say it.”

“I checked with a couple of Chicago bookmakers this afternoon and they're willing to lay eight to five that you won't get reelected.”

“You should have bet five; you'd make yourself some money.”

“Let's get back to this charge that you're losing touch with your membership. You belong to some rather exclusive clubs around the country, don't you?”

“I belong to some clubs; I don't know how exclusive they are.”

“But not everyone can join them, right?”

“Not everybody would want to.”

“You belong to one in Washington called the Federalists Club, don't you?”