Leon Uris (34 page)

“Huggy-kissy is not my long suit.”

“We’ll teach you compassion. Once you get the drift of it, you can turn the shaky voice and the tears off and on in a blink.”

Thornton Tomtree had much to weigh. Move quickly to get the onus off the White House and shift the burden to Congress. It sounded like a plan. The compassion stuff? “Well, I got to the White House once,” he told himself, “I’m sure I am as compassionate as Nixon was.”

Darnell shrank back. An hour ago, a half hour ago, he had been filled with disgust, and he had arrived at the moment to tell Thornton to go to hell. In the flip of a poll, he was going to use any and all means of getting Thornton reelected. The disgust now was with himself.

Neither he nor the President had made mention of the Eagle Scouts—just how to spin the story.

IOWA CAUCUS-WATERLOO, IOWA
FEBRUARY 2008

“Hey, good-looking, how about buying a girl a drink?”

Quinn heard her, smelled her, and felt her touch on his shoulder. He turned on his bar stool and smiled apprehensively. Greer Little-Crowder, wearing exquisite pearls, wore no man’s tailored jacket. Her dress was soft and luscious, see-through violet, and gold bracelets anchored her wrists. She was still very slender in her fifties, and had never forgotten how to focus on her endowments.

Quinn’s eyes flashed on her tiny, volcanic breasts, then the hair, not straight anymore, but coiffured with stunning highlight streaks. Quinn opened his arms, and she tucked in. Thin girls wrap up so neatly, he thought.

“Jesus,” Greer said, “you look lousy.”

“You look absolutely delicious,” he replied.

Greer touched his cheek and let her fingers run through Quinn’s hair. Was she saying, “Fasten your seat belt?” Not necessarily. The two on occasion had been at political or media or civic affairs. Otherwise, neither attempted to contact the other on a personal basis.

Greer Little-Crowder had risen to be one of the top women executives in the country. She was a
media wizard, a CEO of Warren Crowder’s conglomerate, a queen of the world.

“Can I get you something, ma’am?” the bartender asked.

“Vodka rocks with a twist,” she said.

As some reporters and photographers drifted in, Quinn pointed at a booth out of their sight line. The bartender became so excited, he half spilled her drink. “Hey! You’re Governor O’Connell!”

Quinn held his finger to his lips. Their secret. “Your money is no good here, sir.”

Greer dipped the tip of her little finger into the vodka and slowly traced it about her fawning lips.

“Knock it off,” Quinn said.

“Quinn, have you forgotten we did it once in a little hallway between the bar and the kitchen…what was the name of that restaurant?”

It still rang a bell. “There’s a buffalo herd of media coming in looking for someplace to stampede,” she went on. “Did you think I might show up?”

“Always passes through one’s mind. But Waterloo?”

“That’s where the action is, bubba.”

“Run, Quinn, run,” he said. “See Quinn run…see Quinn jump…jump, Quinn, jump. I am acting out the role of reluctant candidate…or am I that reluctant?”

“Glad to see me? Mad? Sad? Thinking bad?”

“All of the above,” he said, taking her hand but avoiding her eyes. “Mostly sad,” his voice croaked.

“It’s been ghastly,” she said. “You should have been in the newsroom over the holidays. The land is permeated with fear and grief. It has been as though one of those black holes in the universe sucked us in. This tragedy was so terrible you start thinking that the day of a nuclear bomb has got to follow.”

“We lost thirty scouts and scoutmasters from
Colorado. In the middle of singing the anthem or at a cocktail party, people suddenly break into convulsive weeping. It was when the parents begged me: ‘Governor, is there anything left of my son? Just a finger, anything?’ I, uh, got a little bit unsteady, I have to admit. You remember Dan’s Shanty? I just sat crumpled in a corner, getting close to the edge of losing it. I was a madman in a cell tying on the biggest drunk in the
Guinness Book of Records.
I told Rita I wasn’t coming out until I could walk out and function as their governor…look, you hear this story all over the country.”

Greer caught sight of the bartender heading toward them with another man and patted his hand to be quiet.

“I just had to tell the boss,” the bartender said.

“What an honor,” the owner said.

“My pleasure,” Quinn said, giving him a hearty handshake.

“Governor,” the man said, “you have to get us through this Four Corners Massacre.”

The words blistered Quinn’s ears. He managed a sigh and a wan grin.

“Governor O’Connell, the restaurant will be filled with press people soon. I would be honored if you’ll let me prepare a special dinner for you and the lady. I’ll bring it up to your room.”

Quinn looked at Greer, who nodded.

“You’ve got a deal.”

“And I’ve got to tell you something, Governor,” the owner said. “This here was my father’s booth, God rest his soul.” He pointed at a photo on the wall. “Nobody’s got their picture on this wall except for my father with Joe DiMaggio. I want yours, too.”

Quinn scribbled the owner’s address and promised a personalized signature.

“Go by the side door. There’s an alleyway to the
hotel. Leave your drinks, I’ll send up a couple of pitchers.”

“Thanks, buddy,” Quinn said.

The penthouse suite of the Millard Fillmore Hotel was not all that corny. Old, deep window seats and high molded plaster and mahogany furniture and clanking radiator pipes all seemed in rhythm with a new snowfall outside. It was lovely.

Quinn changed into a running suit and woolly slippers. In a few moments Greer appeared in chic comfort. She went to him and deployed her body against his for maximum contact. They kissed deliciously. Her hand took his and guided it down, between her legs. Quinn held up his other hand weakly to stop.

“That’s got to be it,” Quinn said.

“Before we won’t do again what we won’t do,” she said. “Oh, brother, could we create a scandal.”

“I had hoped that after the humiliation of Clinton, America might have gone beyond such things, but oh, boy, would we sell newspapers. I say, not with a great deal of pride, that we of the boomer generation wanted American society to come out of the closet: stop hypocrisy, be politically correct, no N word, no heroes, no goals, except money. Well, my son understood what homosexuality was in the fourth grade and listened to language on TV that the Marines wouldn’t even use. I think we’d better go back into the closet on some things. Greer, you own a piece of me, forever, but Rita is my life. That’s the real reason.”

The rebuff to Greer was soft and simple but, she knew, final.

“So how’s life by Greer?” he asked.

“Mrs. Warren Crowder or Ms. Greer Little Crowder? I’ve always given you a wide berth because moments like this one can lead to self
destruction. Anyhow, when your mother and father came to New York and patched me up, years ago, there was no stopping me. Brilliant as he is, Warren was an ignorant innocent about a lot of things, including the birds and the bees.”

“Hadn’t he shed a couple of wives?”

“That’s right, but Greer baby came to play and to stay.”

Pitchers of martinis and vodka came with a lovely bottle of Chianti. Greer sipped and looked sad like a torch singer at the piano. “Warren wanted a tour guide through the hellfire clubs. I was better than good. I did things to please him and fetched my price: Mrs. Crowder, stock options, and the top woman in media in the country. You cannot imagine how rich I am, Quinn. Actually, Crowder owes more money than most third world countries…but wealth is counted not by what you have, but by what you owe. You see, his banks have to keep him solvent because if he ever defaults, he will take down a dozen banks with him and shake a number of economies.”

“Well, now, that’s power, isn’t it?”

“I care for Warren. I love his ruthlessness. So what if he found a little of his lost youth in
ménages
? He was a voyeur and we touched the edge of the drug scene, but Warren didn’t want anything that would fuzz his mind. After a while, even my dance of the seven veils became a bit static, so we drifted into a real marriage with a real calling, making hundreds of millions. I’m pretty straight now. I go into heat every once in a while. Maybe I’m still looking for Quinn.”

The food arrived with a robust aroma, as if to say in Waterloo there was something in the world other than meat and potatoes.

Quinn poured the Chianti. “Bang!” he said.

“So what brings you to Waterloo on this snowy night?” she said as she prepared the table.

“Greer, I came here kicking and screaming, and I’m not talking false modesty. All right…I came here because so goddamn many people told me to come here. So, I’m here, I’ll look around and say, include me
out
. I’ve been to Waterloo, folks, and there’s no way I can make the presidency.”

“You’re full of shit,” Greer retorted.

“No, ma’am, I’m not going to be meat for buzzards. I’m not putting my family through it. During my first campaign for governor, AMERIGUN threw the book at me, including the rumor that I was buggering sheep. Truth can be a little pebble that gets washed over a roaring dam. Yet some of those lying, rotten stories will stick on me to the day I die. Is there life beyond the presidency, or do they all leave office as dead meat?”

“I see snow out of the window,” Greer said. “I’m afraid you see acid rain. A tidal wave is forming up and could become unstoppable. You have rung the bell on an issue whose date is due. You are gun control to a nation pleading for it. You can’t walk away, man, no matter how it intersects your own life. Your country is bleeding, and that’s all the reason you have to know. There is another reason you won’t back out. You crave for your birth mother and father to look down from heaven and be proud of you: ‘Our son is running for president!’”

Quinn paled. “Is that why I’m doing this?”

“Yes.”

“I thought I had a grip on it.”

“You lied to yourself.”

Greer responded to a knock on the door with movements that had been polished over the years to gain and hold the observer’s attention.

“Professor Maldonado, I do believe.”

“Greer!”

Mal came in, bussed her slightly, and made for an inspection of the bedroom and bathrooms…and the big walk-in closet. “So, what brings you to Venice?” he asked on returning.

“The same thing that brought you,” she said.

Mal went right at their dinners. “The veal is like butter.” He had grown old lovely.

“What’s going on out there?” Quinn asked.

“A phenomenon,” Mal said. “I’m being contacted by several Democratic governors who are interested in your candidacy. The party is lining up quickly behind you.”

“Do not count Quinn as a shoo-in. T3 is no pushover,” Greer said. “He has done a masterful job of distancing himself from the Congress. Fewer and fewer people hold him responsible for Four Corners, particularly with this new humility, stiff back when the flag is lowered, occasional teary eye, and those gripping hugs to the parents. And Pucky Tomtree has done just as good a job.”

“They say that Darnell Jefferson has engineered it,” Mal said. “He and T3 are like non-identical twins. Whatever he’s done, the President has fought his way back.”

Quinn noticed a quick, mousy smile from Greer. “You run with that crowd,” Quinn said.

“Well, I did have an interlude with Jefferson a few years back, on Martha’s Vineyard. He was on a diet of white meat,” she purred.

“I thought Tomtree’s humility schtick was transparent,” Mal said, tossing down the tiramisu.

“People want transparent,” Greer shot back. “Look at the lineup of sitcoms. English not spoken here. Back up the garbage truck and carry off this week’s show. No! It’s worth billions in syndication. We recycle more shit in a year than the
Chinese dump into their holes in a decade.”

“Yeah, get the children out of the room,” Quinn said softly. “Some kids today say ‘fuck’ so much they think it’s their middle name.”

Mal pushed his chair back, patted his feel-good stomach, and checked all the pitchers. The vodka looked promising.

“What we have shaping up here,” Mal began in a professorial manner, “is a recurring cycle. The human race is no less cruel, no less murderous than it was ten thousand years ago. Yet every so often it runs into a moral imperative that it has to overcome for civilization to advance. In America? The revolution against England was a moral imperative. The destruction of slavery was a moral imperative. The decision to fight Hitler and commence with atomic energy were moral imperatives.”

“You’re talking about Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt,” Quinn said, laughing.

“And maybe Quinn O’Connell. A great moral imperative ended in bleeding tragedy in Six Shooter Canyon. AMERIGUN isn’t going to roll over and die easily, but you’re the man who faced them down,” Mal said. “So how are you going to live with yourself without giving it every ounce of fight you have?”

“The nation is ready to do some serious gun control, and the people know they will have a tough-ass president taking it on,” Greer added.

“Thanks for sharing that with me,” Quinn said.

“Wait, there’s more,” Greer jumped in. “It’s nine months till the election, and you have no national, state, or local campaign machinery, no money, no endorsements. But you are the king of the hot-button issue. Can you take the lies and taunts? Can you lead? If you think you can, I want to play!”

“Thanks for your glorious offer, Greer, but, baby,
the American people may not be as sophisticated as you believe, and this won’t fly.”

“That’s a point,” Mal mumbled.

“I resigned from Crowder Communications yesterday.”

Her thunderbolt knocked them speechless.

“What? How? You’re a married woman!” Mal said.

“Oh, I’ll bet Warren Crowder likes this,” Quinn said. “It will bring his illustrious lady’s career to a crescendo.”

“Warren’s a player,” Greer said. “And he knows I’ll be back.”

“You two have got to behave yourselves,” Mal said. “I mean, really behave yourselves. If we can put Greer in charge of the nuts and bolts, she knows every political person in the country. She knows all the hired guns. She has access to money overnight.”

“I’d have your national committee in place in five days,” Greer said, “and in a week I’ll have a strategy on the table.”

“The voters will take a long second look at me. Better stay in Colorado, cowboy. Every time they’ve heard of Quinn O’Connell, it’s been the result of a fight. Urbakkan…AMERIGUN…and now the Six Shooter Canyon Massacre,” Quinn espoused.

“Slight difference,” Greer said. “The people may have the political will to follow a moral imperative.”

“I’ll call Rita,” Quinn said. “It has to be dead right for her.”

“You don’t have to call her,” Greer said. “I talked it over with her before I got my air ticket to Waterloo. Rita said, ‘Thank God you’re going to him. At least you’ll give him a fighting chance.’”