Leon Uris (35 page)

Maldonado answered the phone. Senators Ebendick and Harmon were in the hotel and wanted a few minutes. “Phew!” Mal said, “some real big hitters just blew into town.”

“Who?” Greer asked.

“Ebendick and Harmon.”

“That is a statement,” Greer said.

“I’m going down and enroll them,” Mal said. He wanted to say more about hoping he could trust Greer and Quinn. Once they had melted cannons with their heat. How can an odd moment of stress or passion or joy not hurl them into one another’s arms? But Rita believed. What game was God playing putting a decent man like Quinn into the shredder as he slouches toward Jerusalem?

Governor Quinn Patrick O’Connell walked to the rostrum in a crammed ballroom at the Millard Fillmore Hotel. A blast of TV lights blared while still photographers ate up film.

“Hi,” Quinn said when it quieted. “I’m Quinn O’Connell, governor of Colorado. Any national recognition I may have is pretty much based on my penchant for gun control. There is a long list of serious issues on the American agenda, and if my candidacy continues on, I will issue my position within days.”

Greer laid her head on Mal’s shoulder and she cried a little.

“But we’re here today because much of America’s bright hope lies silent in the box end of Six Shooter Canyon. It could have been avoided by the political will of the people, and it will happen again without the political will of the people to change it.

“I stand before you, not as a saint running for sainthood or as a sinner dodging hell. I intend to live my private life privately, and I intend to bring back a great measure of dignity and authority that has been missing from the presidency for almost a decade.”

Quinn became silent, and the room suddenly fell
under his spell. He opened a small book on the rostrum.

“‘Article…’” he read, “‘…A well-regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.’”

A murmur of disbelief buzzed about the room.

“When the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights came into being, our new nation had no standing army to contend with hostile neighbors, England, France, Canada, Spain. We also were fighting many Indian nations, and part of the population was still loyal to the king.
Therefore!
Each colony, each new state set up their own militia. These militias were not very good.

“Now look at this Second Amendment. It has nothing to do with the rights of the citizens to own guns, but the formation of
well-regulated
militias.”

Quinn was parched, but he feared his hand would tremble if he held a water glass. To hell! He took a swig, steady as a rock.

“If anything in the entire American panorama has been distorted and convoluted, it is the Second Amendment. The militias failed. After the Civil War many state units were converted into a national guard. A
well-regulated
national guard, as required by the Constitution, with their weapons under government control.

“For far too long, men of questionable intent have hidden behind the skirts of the Second Amendment, claiming it as their divine commandment to own guns.

“Bull! Because of federal inaction on gun control, many towns and cities and counties and states, including Colorado, have legislated their own gun-control laws. But the gun lobby is powerful. One gun comes off the assembly line every seven seconds,
and during that same seven seconds another gun is imported into the country.

“I intend to cut to the chase!” Quinn belted out, “because most of the court cases in the states and towns could be eliminated with the passage of a single national bill. The right of gun ownership is not and has never been a constitutional guarantee, and in order to get it right and get it clear…the Second Amendment of the Constitution must be repealed.”

WASHINGTON, FEBRUARY 2008

If tears had been stars, there would have been enough shed to double the size of the universe. The nation passed to the new year with darkness at noon, in a fetal position. No ball had dropped from Times Square; half the bowl games were rescheduled or canceled. Only the Super Bowl went on bravely, bravely. There was just too much money involved. The stock market plummeted, and soon finger pointing began in earnest. Panel shows of experts begat panel shows of experts.

The Four Corners Massacre was a unique event in American history. No one really knew who to turn to, but Thornton Tomtree was there and made a strong case of distancing himself from Congress. He began to take delight in his new mode of compassion.

After the Super Bowl, T3 had emerged as the “tall” man, the shepherd, the big father.

Then came the dispiriting initial findings of the investigation.

All evidence on the ground in the vicinity of Six Shooter Canyon and the White Wolf Ranch had been obliterated. The perpetrators had all been killed in the blasts.

The FBI hunted down White Wolf Patriots who
were not present in order to fashion a line of events. The more the FBI pieced the story of Wreck Hudson together, the more it fell in the realm of fantasy. The existing White Wolf patriots faded into an underground run by the White Aryan Christian Arrival.

As for resolving the fate of Six Shooter Canyon, there was a terrible rub.

In the deepest pit of his life, President Thornton Tomtree moaned over the recommendation on his desk. The investigation commission, which included the breadth of the society from engineering genius to religious leaders, had made a rapid first finding, and it made its way to the Oval Office by late February of 2008. The President had no choice but to take it to the American people.

“My fellow Americans. The report which I am about to render to you was previously communicated to the families of the Four Corners Massacre. The commission has now come to an initial recommendation…please bear with me…I must conjure up some horrible images.

“We cannot get earthmoving equipment into this narrow stretch of canyon. The alternative would be to dynamite the walls to widen access. After that, we would be embarking on an earthmoving project the size of several Hoover Dams, which would take years to complete.

“Test bores indicate that the victims were crushed by the initial avalanche and then buried under ten to twenty feet of rock. Another forty to ninety feet of rock came down atop them.

“The test bores also tell us we will probably not retrieve sufficient remains for individual burials. The forensics experts and the DNA experts feel that no one is truly going to be identified, as the remains are so interlocked and pulverized.

“If an excavation was ordered, we would remain
in the grip of this tragedy for many years. In the end, it would be a futile gesture. The survival of our nation depends upon overcoming our national grief. Therefore, I have asked the Republican and Democratic leadership for a bipartisan bill to seal the canyon and erect a suitable memorial.”

“Some promising news, Mr. President. Three-fourths of the families are in agreement, right from the get-go. On your telecast…sixty-two percent of the editorials in the hundred-thousand circulation class think that the closure and monument are right on…only eight percent think we ought to remove the canyon…On your message, seventy-two percent of the CNN/TIME/CBS/
New York Times
/
USA Today
polls said we should get on with the life of the nation…CBS/
New York Times
has a seven percent of ‘don’t know’…If this sampling holds, we’re through the worst of it!”

Thornton Tomtree felt blood circulating through his body again.

“And, sir, a little cream on the pudding. The Iowa Republican caucus wants you to run for reelection by over seventy-three percent.”

“Who took the Democratic caucus?” the President asked.

“That yahoo, the Colorado Kid…”

“Quinn Patrick O’Connell?”

“Yes, sir.”

Would/could the American people ever trust another politician, even if they knew of his warts in advance? They gathered about Thornton Tomtree. At that moment T3 was all that was left. He was super calm, and much in control.

And along came Quinn.

“Savior” was too strong a word, but a nation desperate to get off its knees had moved him onto center stage. An enormous media focus on New Hampshire bespoke the arrival of a new force.

In Denver, down by the railroad tracks, a big old warehouse was donated for use by the O’Connell for President committee. It had long been derelict as a warehouse and later went belly-up as a disco. Greer corralled an overabundance of volunteers and opened a bank account.

Contributions of office furniture and computers arrived from Chicago to Salt Lake City.

Quinn’s midnight arguments with Maldonado, Greer, and Rita, his most inner circle, took on a legend of their own. The three of them came to realize that with Quinn, it was “the campaign will be my way or the highway.”

Half a candidate’s time was consumed with fund-raising among the high and the mighty. No serious candidacy could go far without the major contributors…who found unlimited, ingenious ways to bypass the legal donation limits. Quinn made a daring decision on the night he left for New Hampshire.

“I will not take contributions from PACs. I will not accept soft money. Soft money is slimy and difficult to catch, but you know what soft money is and I know what soft money is. I want my candidacy to be supported mainly by contributions from ordinary people. I’m being asked to do a difficult job, and if you think I’m the man, then let me hear from you.”

For the first of many times, one was certain that O’Connell had shot himself in the foot.

However, by the time he hit New Hampshire, a deluge of pledges came in to Quinn, conveniently
charged on Diners Club, MasterCard, VISA, Discover, and American Express cards.

BROTHER
,
CAN YOU SPARE A DIME
read the headline.
I AM THE PEOPLE
’
S CANDIDATE
.

Quinn held up his daily press bulletin. On the top were several boxes giving donations of the past twenty-four hours, expenditures, and total in the bank. This degree of openness chilled the American house politic down to the marrow.

At Manchester there was a sudden and urgent feeling of in-gathering of people from Maine and Vermont. They just had to see this fellow. Please, God, make him real. In the winter drearies, the streets were thickly lined, and an unlikely scene unfolded of New Englanders showing public passion.

The pundits dug deeply into the history of the American presidency to find more of a “down-home” candidate: witty, environmentally brilliant, sound on his issues, and completely modest and at ease among the people.

Quinn and Rita skied a treacherous run known as the Oh Shit Trail and ended up on their feet.

Look at that couple!

Was he too good to be true? Have we forgotten the terrible besmirchment of the president’s office in the Clinton era? Have we forgotten the pain? Can we ever trust another politician?

Surely the voters could be venting their pent-up hurt, and surely they could be gambling their own future aspirations. But don’t stop the carnival!

In his town hall meetings, Quinn often shocked with his common sense and candor. He spoke the truth, more than once, to criticize his own failings.
Quinn ignited the rebirth of many values thought flown from the society.

The result? Startling! Quinn Patrick O’Connell polled more votes than five other Democrats combined and went head to head with the Vermont governor, running as a favorite son.

Less than a month after the Iowa caucus he had established a legitimacy, even though his insistence on populist financing barely kept the campaign running. The day after New Hampshire was a good day for collections. And, well, it had to be, for there was no time for a pit stop. Quinn and his staff suddenly stared at Fat Tuesday, a few days off.

Fat Tuesday was a coast-to-coast twelve-state primary and caucus with American Samoa thrown in. Quinn might have a foot in the door, but the phone bill had not come in yet.

Quinn needed a strong showing in the Southern states of Georgia and South Carolina and the quasi Southern state of Maryland. Unable to visit even a sampling of states, he chose to deliver his message at Emory University in Atlanta.

Through great civic pride, entrepreneurship, leadership, and a migration, the city had become the power center of the South, sophisticated, dancing far into the night, ambitious, and a wonderful place to raise a family.

In the very beginning of his career as a young Colorado state senator, Quinn had been shy as a speaker, but buoyed himself through self-deprecating wit. By the time he won the governorship he had grown into a strong and confident—but measured—speaker.

All things seemed to come together when he arrived in Atlanta as a growing national curiosity. Quinn sensed that the people were longing to hear what he would say. He felt, for the first time, he had
the power as an orator to grip his audience.

As Quinn spoke, softly at first, he felt the vibrations, and he fell into a rhythm, dancing a ballet, endowed with a grace, aware of what was happening to him.

Determined not to be labeled a dog with one trick, Quinn set aside the Second Amendment issue and wrote himself a visionary political essay.

Quinn’s staff held their collective breath.

“…we have nurtured a mighty forest of law and values and decency. We are trashing it without planting new trees. Under the disguise of freedom of expression, our boundaries of morality are pushed so far twelve-year-olds know the vulgarisms of our language, or of the explicitness of sexual behavior, or of crime and of drugs. So, have we shed the old hypocrisies, or are we caving in to the claptrap foisted on us by people who are really out to make a buck and will push and push until our sense of disgust is finally stilled?”

Ka-boom!
Quinn knew the speech was flying.

“A decade ago, the American people were subjected to listening to a president forced to give a discourse on oral sex. We swore, never again. But it has happened again and again and again. The nation can no longer afford this prurient blood lust, which is already robbing it of brilliant candidates who no longer want any part of public service.

“The world prays for us, waits for us to get out of the gutter. It is incumbent that each citizen have a long, quiet talk with themselves and not succumb to mendacity.”

Ka-boom!
The vibrations from speaker to listener trembled in the air. Quinn departed from the rostrum, microphone in hand and went from side to side of the stage.

“Are we closing out personal relationships, and
have we grown distant from one another? We surge on great waves of billions of bytes…but do we know each other anymore? We bank, shop, vote, play the market, purchase groceries, fly, vacation, read at the whim of an electronic device that, despite all its miraculous wonderment, has no heart, no soul, no compassion.

“When salvation comes, it will not come in the form of a computer printout but from the Word brought down from Sinai. We must go back to one another and establish the rules of decency.”

It was a strange speech. It hardly seemed political, but more from the pulpit. How did Quinn realize the public’s thirst for a moral direction? Still in mourning over the Four Corners Massacre, they needed a spiritual direction.

Quinn had deftly drawn a line in the sand and taken the moral high ground. Clever or political genius?

Fat Tuesday.

The primaries said that O’Connell was in to stay. He won Maryland by an eyelash, lost Georgia by the same amount, but he polled forty percent of the South Carolina vote. Do the West and South identify with one another? Perhaps in being treated as a cultural wilderness. This stranger from a strange place was no stranger at all.

Quinn and his people staggered into New York for a hit-and-run visit. This was Greer Little-Crowder country, and she filled the Plaza grand ballroom with a bursting crowd of financial wizards, stars of the entertainment business, developers, attorneys, CEOs, tall athletes, bankers.

(Gawd! He is gorgeous!)

(Well, she’s not exactly chopped liver.)

Quinn went to them as a successful businessman. “To retain our exalted commercial status in the world, let us run a gut check on ethical standards. Hey, soft money is greed money. Greed money is soft money. Soft money erodes our underpinnings.”

Just about everyone in the ballroom was uncomfortable but emptied their wallets to the limitations. Maybe Quinn was not for them, but it was nice to have a spokesman for the conscience before reelecting Thornton Tomtree.

Now for the grand entrance in a late rally at Columbia University with students bussed in from NYU and St. John’s and Fordham and Yeshiva and City College.

“We can no longer afford racism. A short century and a half ago we fought a civil war to erase the ogre of slavery. The twentieth century was all about people liberating themselves, declaring their freedom and dividing the planet into a hundred and eighty-five independent nations. This new century is the century we will get rid of one of mankind’s oldest scourges. We will rid ourselves of the curse of bigotry.”

A hundred cameras ate up several thousand exposures of Quinn shaking hands with Warren Crowder, of Quinn shaking hands with Warren Crowder and Greer Little-Crowder.

Meanwhile, Rita had garnered a great deal of attention of her own.

The Madison Square Garden fund-raiser turned away over three thousand people. The fever was like a Lindbergh parade down Broadway. Quinn left New York with over a million and a half dollars and fifty-eight percent of the Democratic vote.

*  *  *

“Governor O’Connell, Charles Packard, Reuters. Would you care to comment on the
Newsweek
story concerning your campaign chairperson, Greer Little-Crowder?”