Power Play (26 page)

“Outscore you how?” Jake asked. “What issues is he going to run on? I haven’t heard anything from him except the old ‘vote for experience’ line.”

“It’s been a strong enough line for him for the past eighteen years,” the elder Tomlinson pointed out.

“Leeds hasn’t had to say much, so far,” Amy explained. “He wasn’t challenged in his party’s primary, so he could just keep his mouth shut and wait.”

“And hand out patronage,” said Tomlinson’s father.

“Pork,” Jake said.

Easing back onto the couch, Tomlinson said, “Jake’s raised an important question: What issues will Leeds push? We’ve got to be ready for him, whichever way he goes.”

“Who’s backing him?” Rogers asked.

Amy went to the couch and sat beside Tomlinson. His father gave the two of them a look that was somewhere between disapproval and disgust. Jake felt much the same way.

Turning to Rogers, the elder Tomlinson put his glass down on the serving cart and ticked off on his fingers, “Leeds is in bed with the unions, including the teachers’ union. He’s always had great support from the state’s construction industry. And the car dealers; they think he saved them when GM and Chrysler needed bailouts. He’s in solidly with the political structure, down to the ward levels.”

“And the gaming industry,” Amy added.

“The casinos,” said Rogers.

“The guys from Vegas,” Jake added. “They can play rough when they want to.”

Tomlinson Senior h’mphed. “You watch too many TV shows, young man.”

Jake fought back the response that flashed in his mind, about three murders and the threats he’d received. No, he told himself. They’ll just think I’m going off the deep end. Not unless I’ve got proof. I’ll just look like a scared idiot unless I can show them some proof.

“So what issues will Leeds run on?” Tomlinson asked again.

“Construction jobs,” his father replied immediately. “More highway construction.”

“And more graft for the construction companies,” said Tomlinson.

“Education reform,” Amy said. “Leeds has been in bed with the education bureaucracy for years.”

Rogers shook his head. “It’s a crock. They don’t reform anything—except maybe lower standards so they can claim more kids are getting better grades.”

“There’s a lot of votes among those teachers and school administrators,” Amy said. “Plus the parents who think their children are doing better in school.”

The elder Tomlinson pointed a bony finger at his son. “Don’t you go out and criticize the school system! They’ll crucify you!”

“But Bob is right, Dad. All this folderol about reform is just so much bullshit.”

“Keep out of it!”

Jake said, “I’d like to see a positive campaign, for once. You can use MHD as an example of what you intend to do: push for new ideas, new ways to inspire smart students to get into science and engineering.”

Tomlinson nodded thoughtfully. “That could be a good way to handle the education issue.” His father said nothing, which Jake took as a tacit vote of approval.

Rogers prodded Jake’s shoulder. “You going to tell them about the Fourth of July?”

Jake looked from Tomlinson to his father and then back to Amy.

“Tell them, Jake,” she prodded.

“I … uh, I got this idea about decorating the whole town of Lignite with patriotic light displays and having the whole thing powered by the big rig. Fireworks and everything. Keep the lights on all night.”

Rogers broke into a wide grin. “You’d be able to see the town on satellite photos, if it’s a clear night.”

“I could give my campaign kick-off speech at Lignite,” Tomlinson said, his face lighting up.

Jake realized that Amy had already told Tomlinson about the idea. Now they were springing it on the old man.

Tomlinson’s father grumbled, “Give your kick-off speech in that one-horse town? Nonsense! The speech should be made here in the capital, with a big crowd and all the news media.”

“Bring them all to Lignite!” Amy said, suddenly excited. “Busloads of people! All the news media.”

Rogers laughed. “That’ll put Lignite on the map, all right.”

“It’ll put MHD on the map,” Jake said.

Even Tomlinson Senior cracked a tight smile. But then he said, “If your generator works.”

“It’ll work,” Rogers said. “We’ll make it work!”

Jake thought that they’d have to get Tim Younger to make it work. And to do that, they needed Glynis to make Tim make it work.

PREPARATIONS

The hardest part was keeping all the preparations secret. There was no way to disguise the hullabaloo in Lignite. Trucks trundled into the quiet little town laden with long strings of lights and other patriotic decorations. Tomlinson’s campaign office started sending out invitations all across the state to attend the Glorious Fourth in Lignite. The news reporters were amused by the idea that Tomlinson was trying to make the sleepy old town the launching pad for his election campaign.

Okay, Jake conceded. But no one was to mention the MHD connection to the upcoming holiday festivities. Bob Rogers worked as liaison between the Tomlinson campaign and the city fathers of Lignite, but that was explained by the fact that Rogers was a native son of Lignite, the local boy who went to the big city, got himself an education, and made good.

Lignite’s mayor was an accommodating soul, cheerful and outgoing. But Jake insisted that he shouldn’t be told about the MHD connection until the very last possible moment. The man had been the town’s undertaker until he’d run for town council, eleven years earlier. Once on the council he’d handed his funeral parlor business to a cousin and got the council to elect him mayor—which it had faithfully done every year since.

Jake felt almost paranoid about security. “No leaks,” he said to Rogers at least once a day, even while they were puffing and sweating on the basketball court. “No talking about MHD to anybody.”

Rogers grinned good-naturedly, but muttered, “They should’ve put you in charge of the CIA, Jake.”

At least once a week Jake drove up to the big rig facility, where Younger was testing the MHD generator on runs of up to twelve hours.

Growing more nervous with each passing day, Jake insisted to Younger, “If you’ve got the slightest doubt about this, Tim, we can call it off. Just have the celebration and buy the electrical power from the utility company.”

“Don’t worry, Jake,” Younger told him. “The generator’s working like a charm.”

Surprised at the dour Yankee’s uncharacteristic optimism, Jake sputtered, “Like a charm?”

“Yup,” Younger said, straight-faced. “We have to pray over it.”

Humor from Tim Younger? Jake asked himself, almost dumbfounded. Yet he felt better that Younger was still as doubtful and reluctant as usual. It’s good to be careful, he told himself.

Amy Wexler kept Tomlinson away from Lignite. “Franklin’s too outgoing to keep our secret for long,” she explained. “He’ll start schmoozing with the mayor or somebody and let it drop that the whole town’s going to be lit up by the MHD generator.”

Jake agreed. Tomlinson was getting enough coverage from the news media, giving speeches around the state about creating new industries and new jobs.

Senator Leeds was giving speeches, too. He held a mammoth rally in the capital to announce a new federal grant for education.

“This will allow us,” he said, from the steps of the capitol, “to hire hundreds of additional teachers and reduce the teacher/student ratio in our state’s classrooms.”

The crowd roared its approval.

Jake watched Leeds’s speech on the TV in the faculty lounge on campus. Glynis had come in to watch it, too, sitting on the faux leather couch beside Jake. Hardly anyone else in the faculty had bothered to watch; there were only half a dozen others in the lounge.

Jake sighed as the crowd’s applause went on and on and Leeds stood at the podium, smiling handsomely, his arms raised above his head.

“I’ll bet most of the people in that crowd belong to the teachers’ union,” said one of the professors.

“Maybe so,” the woman sitting next to him agreed, “but you’ve got to admit, Leeds brings home the bacon.”

The pork, Jake corrected silently.

Glynis looked somewhere between contempt and disgust. “Have you read the details of the grant he’s talking about?” she asked Jake.

He shook his head. All the others were getting up and leaving the lounge, heading back to their offices or classrooms. Glynis hadn’t budged and Jake didn’t move from her side.

“Well, I have,” she said. “Most of the money will go to hiring administrators and staff: counselors, school nurses, librarians, positions like that. Very little is devoted to new teachers.”

Jake shrugged.

“It’s the old game,” Glynis went on. “Tell the voters you’re giving them what they want, when in reality you’re giving the special interests what
they
want.”

Pushing himself reluctantly up from the couch, Jake asked, “You see the educational establishment as a special interest group?”

Glynis stood up beside him. “Don’t you?”

“I guess you’re right,” he agreed, “now that I think about it.”

As they walked down the corridor toward Jake’s office, Glynis said, “By the way, I think I know where Perez has hidden himself.”

“Nacho?” Jake stopped in mid-stride and grasped Glynis’s arm. “I don’t want you to have anything to do with Nacho Perez!”

She pulled her arm free. “Jake, he’s a murderer.”

“We don’t have any proof of that. And if it’s true, it’s all the more reason to stay away from him.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“You should be,” Jake insisted, ignoring her unspoken implication that he was frightened.

“I think he’s up in Vernon,” Glynis said.

“Vernon?”

“It’s the logical place for him to hide away. The whole town’s controlled by the gambling casino. I’ll bet that Captain Harraway is protecting him up there.”

Jake had to admit that she could be right. But he said, “You stay away from Vernon. If you’re right, the whole police force up there must be in on the deal.”

“We can’t let him get away with murder, Jake! If we can show that he was in town on the day Arlan and his wife were shot—”

“You could join the list of casualties.”

Glynis looked at Jake for a long moment, her face solemn, cold. At last she said, “Very well, Jake. I’ll have to go it alone, then.”

Before he could think of anything more to say, before he could reach out to her, to stop her, to protect her, Glynis wheeled around and strode down the corridor, away from Jake.

FOURTH OF JULY

Cursing himself for seven kinds of a fool—and a coward, to boot—Jake went through the motions of the final preparations for the big Fourth of July celebration in Lignite. He phoned Glynis every day, getting her answering machine most of the time. When she did speak to him, it was brief and cool.

“No, I haven’t gone up to Vernon,” she said, her voice steady, steely. “I’m calling the hotels and boarding houses, trying to find out if Perez is staying in one of them.”

“You can’t expect them to tell you anything,” Jake objected.

“I tell them I’m from Senator Leeds’s office. That makes them cooperative.”

“Christ, Glynis, you’re heading for trouble!”

“I don’t care, Jake. He killed Arlan. I can’t just sit here and let him get away with that.”

Meaning that I can, Jake understood her unspoken accusation.

“For god’s sake, be careful,” he pleaded.

Glynis hung up.

Jake tried to concentrate on his university work and Tomlinson’s campaign, but he kept worrying about Glynis. He thought about calling Tim Younger and telling him about the situation, but couldn’t make up his mind to do it.

Meanwhile the election campaign was swinging into high gear. Senator Leeds had a twelve-point edge in the statewide polls, but Tomlinson was inching up. In his campaign speeches, Leeds hammered away at how well the state’s economy was doing: Employment was holding steady, thanks mainly to new construction jobs that depended heavily on federal funding.

Tomlinson pointed out that outside of the construction and gaming industries, employment in the state was actually in decline.

“And what kind of an economy do we want?” Tomlinson asked in his typical stump speech. “Full employment for card dealers from Las Vegas while honest, hard-working men and women in local industries are being laid off?”

As June turned into July the gap between incumbent and challenger narrowed slightly, but only slightly, and slowly, very slowly.

Tomlinson’s father complained to Jake, “This stunt of yours up in Lignite had better give my boy a big bump in the polls. Otherwise he’ll never catch up.”

Amy Wexler helped to arrange a convoy of buses to take VIPs and news teams on the nearly two-hour drive from the capital city to Lignite on the Fourth. Newspapers and TV broadcasts showed the preparations for the big patriotic celebration. Veterans of wars from Iraq and Afghanistan down to the elderly men from World War Two were invited to Lignite for the big day. Amy even located the state’s last living veteran of World War One and made arrangements to bring the centenarian up to Lignite in a paramedic van.

Tomlinson’s campaign people enlisted all sorts of civic and service organizations in their preparations: the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Elks and Moose, Boy and Girl Scouts, statewide police and firefighters groups. All promised to send delegations to Lignite on the Fourth of July.

Jake grew more antsy with each day. He drove to the big rig regularly, where Younger seemed strangely confident.

“Soon as Tomlinson presses the button, we’ll fire up the rig and the town will light up,” the engineer said as he stood by the silent generator.

“Don’t you have to warm it up first?” Jake asked.

“Nope. The plasma equilibrates in five, ten seconds. She’ll put out full power before you can blink an eye.”

“But if something goes wrong…”

“We’ve interlocked with the power grid,” Younger told him. “If anything goes wrong with the rig we can switch over to the regular grid within a second or two. Hardly a flicker. Nobody would notice.”

Jake nodded, waiting for the other shoe to drop.