The Candidate (3 page)

“Of course,” he said.

Dee grinned and extended her arm. She shook Mike’s hand, held onto it and stared deep into his eyes. Mike fought hard not to flinch. Dee’s grip was vice-like.

“Hodges is not just our man now, Mike. He is more than that. He is our cause. You know about causes. You proved that in Florida. And a cause is much more powerful than just a campaign. People
work
for campaigns, Mike, but they
believe
in causes. That’s a big difference. But a cause is also something that needs to be protected. At all costs. You got that?”

Mike nodded. Dee released her hold. Together they marched across the bridge and into the lobby of the hotel.

* * *

JACK HODGES and Christine sat alone in their suite. They looked up as Dee and Mike entered. Hodges cracked a grim smile and nodded a hello, but Christine, her makeup smeared with tears, just buried her head in her hands. Hodges rested a hand on her shoulder, touching her lovingly, and squeezed.

“It’s been tough on her,” he said. “I guess everyone who runs for president thinks something like this might happen. You just never think it will happen to you…”

Dee sat down and waited a moment. She was clearly itching to talk but wanted to be polite; respect the enormity of what might have happened. A few inches to one side and the bullet would have hit home. Then they would be planning a funeral, not a talk show appearance. But it was Hodges, not Dee, who broke the silence.

“What happens now, Dee?” he asked. “I know you must have a plan.”

Dee’s face was serious. There was no trace of joy or thrill. It was down to business.

“I’ll issue a statement tonight. Then tomorrow we’ll have you do one of the morning shows. A day after that we’ll soak up all the media we can get and it will be a lot. We keep it straight and simple. Make it personal. Make it all about how you stood tall when the shooting began.”

Hodges laughed. “Dee, I’ve been a soldier all my life. That’s not the first time I’ve heard gunfire,” he said.

Dee pumped a fist. “Yes!” she said. “That’s the sort of line you use. You’re a natural, Jack.”

“What about campaign appearances?” Mike asked. “We’ve got three town hall meetings set for tomorrow.”

Dee nodded. “Good question. We stick to them. Do the TV around them. They’ll come to us now. We don’t have to change our schedule.” Dee then turned to Hodges. “We keep you in the public eye.”

A small moan cut through the room. Christine’s shoulders shuddered up and down and her head sank to her breast. Hodges bent down and put his arms around her, whispering something in her ear. Then he looked up and shrugged at them. “She thinks there may be more shooters out there,” he said.

Dee and Mike glanced at each other.

“Yeah,” Dee said. “That’s my next question. Sorry, to have to ask this. But you need to tell me everything you know.”

A look of puzzlement crossed Hodges’ face. He frowned and exchanged confused glances with Christine. “What do you mean?” he asked.

Dee was blunt. “Who tried to kill you, Jack? I need everything you know. I need the truth and I need it now.”

Hodges stood up. He may have been wearing a politician’s suit but he looked a military man now. He paused before answering, just the same way that he worked a crowd before he spoke. “I have no more idea than the cops, Dee,” he said. “They say it was a woman. But they have no idea who she is. She doesn’t speak. She has no documents. They think maybe she’s mentally ill or something.”

Dee nodded. Something in Hodges’ tone seem to imply that further questions would be unwelcome. She smiled. “That line is good enough for me. It keeps things simple. Just your average nutcase in a country full of them. But I tell you this, Jack, when you win this election, you’re going to want to thank her for what she’s done for you. You really are.”

CHAPTER 3

MIKE SAT ON the bed in his hotel room in Des Moines surrounded by a fan-like spread of newspapers. It had all played out just like Dee predicted. Hodges had dominated the media for three days straight, right up until this night: the last Iowa debate.

The picture of the Senator, shielding his wife from a killer’s bullet, was on every front page in America, before spreading across the world. Overnight, his public meetings went from a handful of bored farmers and a local journalist or two, to banks of TV cameras with standing room only. Through it all Hodges did not change a thing. He opened every meeting and every interview with his familiar phrase: “Let me tell you how we are going to save this country…”

Mike stared at the newspapers like he was hypnotized until a distant ringing in his ear grew suddenly clearer and he snapped into focus. It was his hotel phone. He picked it up and heard the clipped upstate New York accent of his mother.

“Hey, sweetie. I thought I’d just check in with you, before it begins,” she said.

The debate started in a few minutes. The cable news shows were already counting down the minutes, a sea of talking heads filling the airspace with meaningless analysis until they had something actually concrete to discuss.

“It’s a big night,” said Mike. “Been a crazy few days.” It was good to hear his mother’s voice. Calming.

“So, is he all he’s cracked up to be? Your Senator Hodges. Should he get your mom’s vote for any reason other than out of loyalty to her son?”

He could feel his mother’s warmth down the phone line, her tone gently mocking. She was always like that. Walking the line of tough love, with a joke and a twinkle in her eye. But he was surprised she was genuinely asking after Hodges. Moira Sweeney did not take politics lightly. She lived and breathed it. Always had. It was a way to rationalize their hardscrabble life in Corinth Falls, struggling to make ends meet in a factory town in the middle of New York, abandoned by a country that did not make anything anymore. She always distrusted mainstream politicians, damning them as
all the same.

But now she was asking of Hodges: “Is this guy for real or does he just come in better packaging than the rest of his kind?”

He paused for a moment, before answering. He couldn’t lie to her. He could not spin her the same lines that he did the student volunteers, the bloggers and the journalists. “He’s the best I’ve seen, Mom,” he said. “I’m pretty close to him. They’ve made me the opposition research director and I see him every day. You should vote for him and not just because of me.”

“That’s wonderful, Mike,” she said.

But Mike could tell there was something else behind her phone call. Her whirring mind was almost audible down the phone line; the cogs and wheels of disparate thoughts coming together. “What is it, Mom?”

She sighed. “It’s Jaynie.”

Those old, familiar words. His high school sweetheart. The love of his life who was now his ex-wife. It was a name he dreaded and feared hearing and yet still somehow, he longed for. It seemed there were few big moments in Mike’s life that did not begin with someone saying: “It’s Jaynie.” Some were the happiest times of his childhood, others the worst nightmares of his adult years. His heart quickened.

“What’s she done now, Mom?”

“Nothing specific. She just came around the other day, knocking on the door. She seemed kind of confused. I gave her some coffee and tried to get some sense out of her. But she didn’t stay too long.”

Mike knew what it was his mother would not bring herself to say. But the signs were clear enough. He would make the point for her.

“Do you think she was on something? Was she high again?” he asked.

“She didn’t look good, Michael,” she said. “I know you’re divorced now but you two have always been close and…well, I just thought you should know.”

There was no hint of reproach, but there didn’t need to be. Mike met Jaynie in high school, when they were both 15. Her family lived only a few blocks away and they formed a bond so close it seemed it would never break. She was the most beautiful creature he ever saw, and the most wild. She was like a crazy, free spirit, a shining light in the grim surroundings of their dying, little town. They were married by age twenty, but it was a disaster. Jaynie’s crazy streak grew progressively more out of control and Mike struggled to contain it. Her drug problem began with pot which Mike dabbled in, but never found a taste for. But Jaynie didn’t stop there. She quickly became lost in a maze of hard drugs and alcohol, trying to make meaning out of her life by driving it to the extremes. Mike tried to keep her grounded, struggling against her addictions like a boy clinging to a kite in a storm. But the tempest was too strong. He had to let go. To cope, Mike headed to Florida and flung himself into community organizing. Work became his own drug, but Jaynie was unable to follow him out of her chaos. The divorce came through five years ago, although they were separated long before that. Yet still Mike felt a responsibility; a sense that he failed her by grasping at escape and not being able to take her with him.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said. “I’ll get someone to check up on her and make sure she’s okay.”

His mom seemed satisfied with that and Mike glanced at the TV. The screen showed a panning shot of the seven or so top candidates in the party, all of them, save Harriet Stanton, were men dressed in dark blue or gray suits. Hodges and Stanton stood next to each other, neither looking at the other, their heads down, reading their notes.

“The debate’s about to start, Mom. I gotta go,” Mike said, and he put down the phone.

Mike darted across the hallway and knocked on the door to Dee’s room. She opened it quickly and ushered him in. A tight knot of campaign workers were already there, huddled around the TV like it was some sort of religious shrine. The atmosphere was tense and no one spoke as the on-screen moderator began introducing everyone. Dee smiled at Mike but he could tell she was feeling the strain. The lines around the corners of her eyes were pulled taught like fishing line on the end of a big catch — perhaps too big — and her forehead was deeply furrowed. She ran a hand through her close-cut graying hair, grasping for locks that were not there. For the first time, Mike thought, she looked every single one of her 52 hard-living years.

“I’ve done all I can with him,” Dee said. “Now we let him fly.”

She need not have worried.

The first exchanges were dully educational. Each candidate made a beginning statement and then the talk drifted between issues. Stanton and Hodges never looked at each other, though neither seemed ill at ease. Stanton, in particular, appeared relaxed and happy enough to let the debate go through the motions. After all, it was she, as one of the most well known figures in national politics, who stood twenty points up in the Iowa polls. It was she who assembled a fund-raising machine that out-raised every other candidate,
combined.
She stood by Hodges and did not even glance across at him. He was not there to her.

At least not until the final question.

It was about national security and each candidate gave a boilerplate answer. Stanton had just finished speaking when it came to Hodges. He was quiet for a moment — his usual trick to focus an audience’s attention — and then he seemed to stretch himself taller. He cleared his throat and his voice was crystal clear. For the first time, he looked directly at Stanton and Stanton’s face froze. She looked puzzled. Just a little. Just enough to indicate that underneath that calm visage, the ice was creaking a little.

“Unlike my fellow candidates, I am not a career politician,” he said, keeping his eyes on her and letting the implication hang just a moment in the air. “I don’t think of politics as a job. Seeing it that way makes every decision about polls. It makes every move you make about the next election. You fail to understand that there are problems in this country that need fixing and that are far more important things than any one politician’s popularity. I view my candidacy the same way as my time in the army. I am here to serve my country. I’ll take the hits for it if need-be. I’ll stand in the line of fire.”

He left the words hanging, the subtle reminder of the week’s past events. Then he turned away from Stanton and back to face the cameras.

“I would ask the people watching at home: how many of my fellow candidates really know what it’s like to serve their country? Or are they just serving themselves?”

In the hotel room Dee, Mike and the other staffers leapt to their feet. Hodges’ attack was so unexpected but so perfectly delivered that no one saw it coming. Dee grabbed Mike and hugged him.

“Did you prime him with those lines?” he asked.

Dee shook her head. “I primed him with a bunch of others, but he didn’t use them. I tell you, Mike, this son-of-a-bitch is a natural. I knew it when I signed on. We’re going to be the headline news again after this.”

She gazed upwards, seemingly seeing beyond the dull, cheap plaster of the hotel room’s ceiling and far out, beyond, and up into the sky. “There’s something special here. Do you feel it?”

Mike looked at Dee. Her face was utterly alive and animated.

“You know what it is, Mike?” she asked. “It’s belief. People can believe in Jack Hodges. That’s rare. That’s special.”

“I know,” said Mike. “I’ve never felt this way about a politician before.”