The Race (23 page)

Christy chuckled without mirth. "You need me, Magnus—just like you always did, only more. The question is whether I need
you
anymore."

The overheated bathroom felt more and more stifling. "You do," Price answered. "We know each other, Bob—all too well. You want a seat at the table, and you know I'll give you one. Otherwise you'll end up as the candidate God chose to shun."

Christy received this with an air of complacence. "What seat, pray tell?"

Price felt his forehead becoming damp. "First, the conditions. Next Tuesday, you're going down in New Hampshire, which will give you an excuse to get out. You'll attack Grace from now until then, after which you'll withdraw and endorse Marotta."

"For which I get ...?"

"Secretary of education."

This time Christy's laugh was a bark. "So President Marotta can fire me at will? Actually, the job I have in mind is a good deal bigger."

Through the door, Price heard one of Christy's advisers leading the others in prayer. "And what might that be?" he inquired.

"You'll just have to guess, Magnus, until you get it right. In the meanwhile, I'm not running to be Marotta's lapdog—or his attack dog." Christy smiled again. "Politically and morally, Corey Grace may be the Antichrist. But I kind of like the boy's style. In fact, I've taken to watching him on C-SPAN just to get a chuckle or two. Compared to Grace, your boy has all the charm of rotting fish—tonight, I could smell the flop sweat coming off him like I can see the sweat on your forehead." Christy's voice became cold. "Get your sorry self back to Marotta, Magnus, and ask if he'd like to be
my
secretary of education. Then maybe I'll go after Grace."

This is surreal, Price thought suddenly—I'm sitting in a hotel bathroom with mold between the tiles, talking to a megalomaniac I created while some lunatic's droning prayers outside. Standing, Price placed a hand on Christy's shoulder. "Next Tuesday, Bob, is your political sell-by date. Consider repenting before it's too late."

THAT WEEKEND, AT Price's urging, Mary Rose brought the kids to New Hampshire.

On a wintry Saturday morning, they took a ski lift to the top of a mountain—Marotta, Mary Rose, and all five children, bundled against a bone-piercing chill—followed by reporters recording the moment for the Sunday papers and the evening news, and a film crew shooting footage for a TV ad that would ask, "Can
your
family take a chance on Corey Grace?"

As Mary Rose dabbed their three-year-old's runny nose, Marotta felt the girl's misery. "Let's skip the skiing," he murmured, "and buy Jenny a hot chocolate."

Price was waiting for him inside the chalet. "A moment please, Rob."

Excusing himself with a glance at his bored fifteen-year-old son, Marotta followed Price back into the biting cold. "What is it?" he said impatiently. "Jenny's day to get pneumonia for that bedside photo op?"

"Schedule's changing. You can't go to South Carolina on Monday."

"Why not? The governor of this icebox promises that his organization will pull us through."

"That was yesterday," Price said with precarious calm. "Last night's tracking polls show the undecideds breaking three to one for Grace. Beat Grace here, and he's finished. But if you lose to him ..."

Marotta knew the rest. Angry, he said, "So I'm staying until Election Day."

"Three more days to go." Price placed a hand on his candidate's shoulder. "For all our sakes, tell Mary Rose to keep the kids here."

ELECTION DAY DAWNED clear and bright. At three o'clock, when Corey finished his last round of radio interviews, he got back in the car to find Dana Harrison grinning.

"Why so cheerful?" Corey asked. "I thought you hated it here."

"I do—they've got more moose than black folks. But there's life after New Hampshire." Dana's thick glasses seemed to magnify the excitement in her eyes. "ABC's confidential exit poll is showing you up on Marotta by ten. You're killing him, Corey."

Elated, Corey left a message on Lexie's cell phone. "Miss you," it began. "But it's looking like I'll be on the road awhile longer."

AT NINE O'CLOCK, in Concord, Corey spoke at a meeting room crowded to overflowing. "Today," he said, "New Hampshire families decided to take a chance on Corey Grace. I guess no amount of negative advertising can substitute for fifty-three town meetings."

Across town, in another hotel room, Marotta and Price watched CNN as Mary Rose zipped their suitcases. "Before tonight," Jeff Greenfield told his viewers, "conventional wisdom held that if Grace lost New Hampshire, he was done. Now there's a new conventional wisdom: if Marotta loses South Carolina to either Grace or Christy, he's history."

"South Carolina," Price said softly. "Home sweet home."

"WE'RE CHANGING PLANES," PRICE TOLD MAROTTA WHEN THEY reached the airport. But only when he and Mary Rose boarded, leaving the kids in the care of an older niece, did Marotta realize that the Gulfstream G5 belonged to Alex Rohr.

With cool courtesy, Rohr greeted Mary Rose, then shook Marotta's hand, a perfunctory smile briefly creasing his face. Except for Price, no one from the campaign was there. "We need to plan South Carolina," Price explained, placing a hand on Marotta's shoulder. "Without the media snooping around."

Marotta caught Mary Rose's troubled gaze. "Next time," he said coldly, "tell me before you start changing plans."

"This wasn't the plan," Rohr answered. "I didn't expect you to lose so badly."

For an instant, Marotta considered walking off the plane. "I'd better get some sleep," Mary Rose said quietly. "Why don't you three do your business."

The door of the Gulfstream closed, sealing them inside.

AS THE THREE men sat at a conference table, Mary Rose found a seat in the back. Now and then Marotta glanced at her; her eyes shut, she was attempting, or perhaps pretending, to sleep.

"South Carolina's your firewall," Price told him brusquely, "Lose, and you're dead in presidential politics. Not just this year, but forever."

Rohr, Marotta noticed, was studying him closely. "And so?"

Leaning forward, Price spoke coolly and succinctly. "We're not touching down in Plato's republic. South Carolina's my home, and things work different here.

"Before now you've skated across the surface—speaking to the right groups, visiting the right churches, meeting the right politicians. But below that placid surface is a pretty rancid pond." Price's smile was mere conversational punctuation. "A good bit of the electorate is natural selection in reverse—racists, Confederate flag nuts, gun fanatics, and fundamentalists so dumb they think Jesus spoke English. We're not going to wrest them away from Christy just by promising to abolish the federal income tax.

"Alex and I have laid the groundwork. Last year, he bought the state's biggest newspaper, and the major TV stations in Columbia and Charleston. Two weeks ago, I started telling our biggest donors where to place their money if they want to protect their investment." Price paused for emphasis. "What you need to do, Rob, is leave the details to me."

As Rohr spoke for the first time, his eyes betrayed a bleak amusement at Marotta's plight. "I assume, Senator, that you still wish to become president."

Appalled, Marotta saw his dilemma with utter clarity: for months or even years, these two men had gauged the point at which ambition would place him in their grip, and now that moment had arrived. "You forget something," he said tautly. "I'm not some disposable part in your grand design. Without me, you've got no one.

"Christy's out of control; Grace can't stand either one of you. Right at this moment, it would almost be worth losing to watch one or the other of them fuck with both your worlds."

Price's face betrayed neither worry nor surprise. Angrily, Marotta grasped his wrist. "You didn't make me majority leader, Magnus. You didn't make me anything I am today. That honor goes to my wife, my friends, my family, and, most of all, to me. Maybe I'll win; maybe I won't. But don't expect me to mortgage my balls to you and Alex in midair."

Rohr laughed softly. "Bravely spoken, Senator."

His tone hovered between admiration and derision. Price stared at Marotta's fingers until, grudgingly, Marotta released his wrist.

"All right," Price drawled. "We've all had our
West Wing
moment. If we offended you, Rob, I apologize. But would-be presidents play to win. That's what you hired me for. If you've had second thoughts about my methods, just say the word."

Turning, Marotta looked at his wife. She was curled beneath a blanket, her face placid in repose. As he gazed at her, it came to him with absolute certainty that were Price to leave him now, his campaign would collapse in disarray. He turned back to Price and said quietly but firmly, "If you choose to stay, it's on my terms."

Price merely shrugged. "As long as they include winning," he answered.

ROHR MIXED THREE bourbon and sodas, affording time for emotions to settle.

Sipping, Price raised his head, tasting the whiskey on his lips. "Before we take down Grace," he said after a time, "we gotta take down Christy."

Marotta shrugged. "That's elementary. To beat Grace, I need to own the South. Starting with South Carolina."

"But for
that,
" Price said, "you have to become the Christian alternative to Reverend Bob—the believer who can win. That involves making Bob look like the candidate of folks who babble in tongues and cure deafness by snapping their fingers next to some retardate's ear. For
that,
we need the Reverend Carl Cash, and the righteous folks of Carl Cash University."

Marotta felt a fresh resistance. "From all I read," he objected, "the man is nuts. Didn't he call the Catholic Church a cult?"

"Yup," Price said serenely. "Don't find many of you papists at Carl Cash University—_or_ alcohol,
or
dancing,
or
interracial dating. But as much as Cash hates Catholics, he believes to the bottom of his heart that God made blacks an evil and licentious race. That means he'll support damn near anyone to keep Corey Grace from becoming president. Even you."

Listening, Rohr raised his eyebrows, as though hearing an anthropologist's account of a primitive tribe in New Guinea. "Why not Christy?" Marotta asked.

"Christy's rich, he's arrogant, and—to a southern gentleman like Cash—he's a low-class huckster." Observing Marotta's displeasure, Price cautioned, "In South Carolina, the graduates of Carl Cash are officeholders, preachers, teachers, and businessmen. Without the Carl Cash network, you can't win.

"That's why our friend Alex here just pledged two million dollars to help fund the Carl Cash Center for the Study of Intelligent Design. That's why your first speech in my great state will be at Carl Cash University, where Carl himself will introduce you to a thousand sober, short-haired white kids aflame with the love of God."

In the dim yellow light of the cabin, Marotta stared at Price. "Have you considered what the national media will do with this?" Marotta's throat, raw from the rigors of New Hampshire, caused his voice to roughen. "You've got me sidling up in public to a bigot who's the poster boy for scientific ignorance, and who thinks my own religion relegates me to a special place in hell. I'll be a national laughingstock."

"Only if you lose," Price corrected. "Win, and most people will forget. It's the American way.

"You're not coming out for segregation, Rob. All you're doing is giving Cash what a proud man needs: tickets to the inaugural ball, dinner at the White House, the privilege of getting his calls returned. A small down payment on the Marotta administration—"

Abruptly, the plane vibrated, transforming Marotta's outrage to apprehension. "Thunderstorms," Rohr explained. "Pilot says we'll be through them in an hour."

Turning to his wife, Marotta saw her stirring, arms tightly folded as though awakening from a troubling dream. "Cash has got mailing lists," he heard Price say. "Tens of thousands of addresses, phone numbers, and e-mails, and we can use them any way we want. His lists alone could tip the election."

"Tell Rob about Dorrie Hoyle," Rohr suggested.

Price sat back, folded hands resting on his stomach. "Besides Christy," he explained, "Dorrie Hoyle's the biggest evangelist in the state. She's got a local TV program, a mailing list second only to Carl Cash's, and a creationist theme park outside Columbia—an absolute must for evangelical families. She's also fucking your most distinguished supporter, former governor Lin-wood Tate. Take a thrill ride through Adam and Eve's Garden, complete with serpent and the apple tree, and Dorrie will more than return the favor."

Marotta mustered a rueful laugh. "Will she bite the apple for me?"

"No. But a week of biting your tongue, Rob, is a very small price to pay."

There were so many prices, Marotta thought, some dearer than we can know. With an odd detachment, he saw himself: as a husband whose wife was beset by unspoken misgivings; as a parent who was missing his oldest daughter's middle school play; as one half of a couple who, for their children's sake, feared flying together and now were flying into a thunderstorm to further his ambitions; as a presidential contender who, newly desperate, was facing choices that might tarnish him as a candidate and as a man but might be the only way to keep his dream alive. "There's also Christy," he said to Price. "He won't be biting his tongue or turning the other cheek."

Price removed his wire-rimmed glasses, inspecting them for smudges. "Evangelists have a way of imploding," he observed. "Look at all the ones brought low by the sins of the flesh."

"Not Christy," Marotta said firmly. "He's too ambitious and too smart."

Price permitted himself an enigmatic smile. "But you never really know about people, do you? Except for Mary Rose and you."

"SOUTH CAROLINA," DAKIN FORD ANNOUNCED TO COREY WITH A grin. "Too small for a republic, too large for an insane asylum. You're headed for the heart of darkness, boy."

A gifted political renegade, the junior senator from South Carolina sprawled next to Corey in the plane, flying in the dark of night toward Ford's native state. Smiling, Corey jerked a thumb toward Rustin, sitting across the aisle. "So I hear. Blake's just thrilled to be here."