Leon Uris (37 page)

“The man has a rock-solid reputation for honesty.”

“Nothing festering on the Greer Little-Crowder hump-up?” Thornton asked.

“That was thirty years ago, Mr. President. They were college students. Besides, we are in an era that flinches away from sex scandals,” Turnquist said.

“Bullshit,” the President shot back. “They’ll stop flinching when they get another juicy one to chomp into. We’re not going to lose sight of this odd relationship. If not O’Connell, Greer Little has had a reputation as a naughty girl.” They all laughed and sipped, save Darnell.

“If we can find one major indiscretion to take him down off his god pedestal, we’ve got to push it, hard. The instant he’s cut down to human status, the coyotes will ravage him.”

“We’ll do a rerun of his history,” Turnquist said. “You are right on, Mr. President. When a holier than thou falls by the wayside, he’s cooked.”

“Having established his persona, O’Connell is going to switch to issues—” Mendenhall said.

“But,” Tomtree said, “each time we nail him, we also bring up the gunslinger, reckless, irresponsible, dangerous side of the man. This is where the cowboy is most vulnerable.”

The vice president called from Washington. He would be helicoptering to Camp David within the hour. Good!

“Should we do anything about him being an orphan…you know, a puzzled childhood…all that?”

“There could be rumors floated about his biological parents. Certainly we have friends who can raise the issue. And that wife of his. Any nudes of her around?” Mendenhall asked.

“Look into it, Hugh, but very, very carefully. Now, here’s what we’re going to do. TV and print ads are almost ready. There will be three takes of each ad: high, medium, low, low meaning negative, fuck the truth, innuendo or personal attack. If, for example, the low ads don’t work in Seattle, we try medium and high ads in Kansas City and Chicago until we know what works where. That’s a big, big job for you, Hugh. Don’t make any goddamn accusation we can’t slip out of!”

“Yes, Mr. President.”

“I want all future ads run past Darnell.”

“Absolutely, Mr. President.”

“Got that, Darnell?”

“Ummm,” Darnell said, refilling his glass.

“Darnell, you’ve been very quiet,” Tomtree said.

“Just awed by the process.”

“What part of this don’t you like?” Tomtree pressed.

“Most of it. You’ve got to ride out to meet this Quinn on the mountainside. You’re not going to tunnel up to him. He’s breaking down our coalitions, for chrissake. He has become somewhat Churchillian in his speeches. He knows he is on the great issue of the century.”

“And?” the President asked.

“Take the Second Amendment issue away from
him or cloud it up. Or, for God’s sake, even join him.”

“Join him?”

“Join him.”

“Join him?”

“It would show that you realize the time of the gun is over and you have the courage to come forth with a staggering and enlightened position. That’s how to beat this guy!”

The President pressed his fingers together and closed his eyes. Ballsy idea, but mad. “What are we looking at, Hugh?”

“After the convention you had a fourteen-point lead, plus or minus three percent. It’s down to eleven, but you know, it could be virtually the same.”

“Jacob, do we take this campaign up into the plains of heaven?”

“It’s a political campaign, and my feeling is that he has alienated the press, which will jump on your bandwagon the instant he slips.”

“Excuse me, I stand corrected,” Darnell satirized. “What do you want to do about the debates?”

“Well, he needs to debate me to try to catch me. I’d set down extremely restrictive terms, limitations on questions and positions. If, God forbid, my lead falls down to single digits, then we slide into serious negotiations. No more than two debates and keep the rules confusing.”

“Bear in mind,” Darnell said, “that if O’Connell keeps gaining, we may have to go to him for the debate.”

“It will never happen,” Mendenhall said.

“Never,” Jacob Turnquist agreed.

When it was apparent that Governor O’Connell was going to sweep the Democratic convention, the governors of Texas, New York, Florida, and California, hat in hand, pitched for the vice-presidential nomination.

Quinn instead pulled a rabbit out of the hat by reaching back for Senator Chad Humboldt, his main opponent in the primaries, even though there was a difference on some issues. Humboldt was, quite simply, the best man. Moreover, the senator could neutralize Vice President Matthew Hope in the South.

After a year of mourning, the public looked anxiously toward the coming election. Quinn hit the ground running.

As governor he had sought and brokered an environmental and land-use bill that encompassed ranchers, mining interests, the ski industry, developers, and private landowners, preserving open space and ranch land forever.

The University of Colorado had been upgraded to one of the top ten state schools.

Colorado was the best-managed tourist state.

Colorado had more foreign import-export deals than any state west of the Mississippi River, other than California and Texas.

The Denver Symphony had been made into one of the nation’s best, and Denver became a cultural oasis.

There was an impressive list of accomplishments in secondary education, child care, welfare, and he had shut down two of the state’s more obnoxious HMOs.

Leading the parade, the issue to repeal the Second Amendment now opened for business.

DENVER
OCTOBER 1, 2008

Greer heard the nasty sound of the phone and put a pillow over her head. The ring persisted. She clicked on her table lamp and simultaneously clicked on her head.

“Greer,” she said.

“This is Darnell Jefferson.”

“Hi, Darnell, what have you been doing with yourself lately?”

“Greer, you’re going to have to excuse the hour, but I just got through with my meetings. Are we on a secure line?”

“You bet.”

“Do we trust each other?”

“To do what?” she asked.

“Anything beyond this phone call. If we meet, where we meet, what we say is not taped or bugged or leaked.”

Greer mulled a moment. “I don’t know. What do you have in mind?”

“The President’s kicked ass on me. We’re trying to complete his campaign schedule, and we can’t do it unless we agree on the debates.”

Bingo! Greer thought.

“All right,” Darnell said, “so we blinked first, but you know and I know every campaign pussyfoots around the debates, then always conducts them. The responsibility falls on both sides. And you know damned well, we’ll end up with debates.”

“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“The President is really leaning on me. He wants it settled in the next couple of days.”

Darnell was calling from Washington. It was two in the morning there. Pretty late to clean one’s desk. Presidential urgency. They must have gotten late polls. Quinn was running neck and neck with Tomtree. Were they soft, or was T3 trying to set Quinn up?

“So, what’s the program?” Greer asked.

“Chicago is midway between Denver and Washington. We have a safe house there, or if you are too suspicious, you can set it up in a hotel of your choice. We’d send a charter jet for your negotiator.”

“And yourself?”

“I’m authorized to cut a deal.”

“I’ll get back to you in a few hours, Darnell. If I come to Chicago, I can’t leave until tomorrow evening. It should be me and Professor Maldonado.”

“The governor’s father-in-law?”

“Yep.”

“I’ll be waiting for your call. It will be nice to see you again.”

Greer could not fall back to sleep, so she finally arose, yawned and stretched, and set the coffeepot into motion. Since the Iowa caucus in February, she had expected someone to tap her on the shoulder and say, “I know what you know.”

Every day her secret grew, like a tumor, and every day she ignored her own sense of propriety, it enlarged. Greer walked through her arguments
again, but she found herself in the same place, with the madness of holding a secret. The fear of letting it go made her shiver.

Call Warren? Christ, she knew what he would say. He’d tell her to press her advantage, as in hostile takeovers. No prisoners.

“Oh, Christ,” she whispered and punched a phone number.

“Hello,” a dreary voice said.

“Hi, Rita, it’s Greer.”

“Anything wrong?”

“Are Mal and Quinn at the condo with you?”

“Yes.”

“Get them up. I’ll be over in a half hour.”

The three of them were draped around the living room, knowing, at this time of night, they were going to be talking “rotten apples.”

Greer came rumpled, and she showed the wear of executive decision making. “I got a call from Darnell Jefferson, two in the morning Washington time. They want to get together with us and nail down a debate.”

“They must be hurting,” Rita said.

Greer shook her head and, although it was a serious moment, she could not help but see how voluptuous and filled with Quinn Rita was. Greer felt a pang of jealousy.

“What did you wake us up to tell us?” Reynaldo Maldonado asked.

Greer took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and lifted her face. “Pucky Tomtree has been having an affair for two years.”

“Well, you’ve got this old boy’s attention,” Mal said. Both Quinn and Rita stared, puzzled.

“Go on,” Quinn said softly.

“I’ve personally known Pucky Tomtree fifteen, maybe twenty years,” Greer began. “She chaired an awful lot of community services from Boston. Committee to Save the Llamas, Committee to Bring Caruso Back from the Dead, Up the Symphony, Artists Against Starvation, Artists for Peace. She either chaired or served on the boards of a hundred national groups. We’ve been on a dozen committees together. I find her to be a lovely woman.”

Orange juice all around.

“Providence has a very active theater life. Sort of a bedroom community for Broadway. She loved to hang out in the garret scene. There were a few moot whispers about affairs. Nothing to write home about.”

“I don’t want to hear any more of this,” Quinn interceded.

“Shut up and listen,” Mal ordered his son-in-law.

“Okay, gang,” Greer said, “hand me the envelope, please. And the winner is…Aldo de Voto,” she said, “the reigning conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra. I worked with him before he moved to Washington, when he directed the New York Philharmonic. Events…committees…fund-raising. He’s a very charming guy with wife and kids safely tucked away in Spain. No, we were never lovers, but Aldo and I were bosom buddies.”

Greer went on that Crowder Media kept a company apartment at the Watergate where Aldo de Voto lived. They spent a lot of time rapping, as friends, each having the key to the other’s apartment.

“Why did you think you needed a key to his place?” Mal asked.

“Because my place often looked like the interstate, with the Crowder people coming and going and a line of politicians at the door. Aldo seldom came home until very late, and I could hide out there. Washington trips ain’t no fun, folks.”

To this day, Rita found discussions of infidelity discomforting, but she tried not to show her reaction. Quinn seemed to be hardly listening, while Mal cleared every sentence in his mind.

“I hadn’t been to Washington for about three months, and after the FCC hearings I had the bird dogs on me, even from my own network. I gave Aldo a ring, but his voice machine said he was in Philadelphia. Anyhow, his key still worked. I stretched out on his couch for a while, then went to freshen up. There was a cosmetic bag at the vanity mirror with the top opened. Have you ever noticed the jeweled Japanese fighting-fish brooch Pucky wears?”

“Yeah…” Mal sighed.

“It was there in the cosmetic bag as well as her lipstick, an initialed notepad, her perfume, et cetera. And, a name tag.”

“It would be impossible for anyone to plant it,” Mal said.

“Particularly a brooch worth several hundred thousand dollars,” Greer said. “There were a few other things in Aldo’s closet that a lady would wear for an afternoon tryst. Her size.”

“What about her Secret Service detail?”

“She drives her own damned car sometimes. Pucky is an independent lady.”

“Didn’t we stop all this with Clinton?” Quinn asked in disgust.

“It’s been eight years without a whisper of scandal in the country,” Rita said. “Do you think the American people even care?”

“Look, daughter, the President can ball any alleycat he gets his hands on. But the First Lady! The Capitol dome would fall to the floor,” Mal said.

“Adultery is a man’s misdemeanor and a woman’s felony,” Greer said.

“Who knows?” Mal asked.

“We and the principals. They do not know that I know. My educated guess is that Tomtree is oblivious of it.”

Quinn saw Rita shaken up by it all. His hand pressed her shoulder. “That’s all we need to hear,” he said. “We are going to do absolutely nothing except to vow to each other to do absolutely nothing. Done. End of discussion.”

“That is extremely decent of you, Governor,” Greer exploded. “But do you have any idea of the broadsides these people are going to fire at you on the Internet and TV and in the press? And don’t tell me the American people can tell the difference.”

“Quinn, if Tomtree found out, he’d want to keep a lid on it until after the election. Then he’d let it fly. This is a real ace in the hole. We squeeze just a little bit on the debate negotiations,” Mal said.

“I said no, and I mean no. Maybe I’ve come this far on the dead bodies of those kids in Six Shooter Canyon. No, no, no, no!”

“Vintage O’Connell!” Greer snapped. “Woweeeee!”

The four of them gasped at each other, as fighters who had gone a nonstop round.

“Maybe it is vintage O’Connell,” Rita said. “Maybe a lot of people out there are beginning to understand what kind of man he is. Maybe he’s the last honest politician the world will ever see. Maybe the thought of hurting me makes it too difficult for him to bear. Maybe he is self-destructing. But he’s a Marine. Take him or cut bait.”

Oh, man, did Rita chill them out.

“I need your promise you’ll never mention Pucky or your resignation,” Quinn said.

“Shit,” Mal groaned. “All right, include me in. You’ve my word.”

“It remains between us,” Greer promised.