36

“IF NOTHING CHANGES, RICHIE, this campaign could be a breeze.”

Richie Cardella reached for some nachos and cheese from the large platter sitting on the table. He was sharing the food with Jack Lucas, his campaign manager, and Phil Witts, his best friend, who agreed to handle publicity and media relations. Witts and Cardella were the starting guards on the basketball team for Barrington High School in both their junior and senior years—that’s when his name was still Witkowicz—and they grew closer as the years went by. Their wives became good friends also, as if that were a condition of the two marriages.

“Murphy’s Law says that something bad will happen, Jack,” Cardella answered.

They were sitting in Chi-Chi’s Bar & Grille in downtown Providence. It was the same Friday night that Doug Fiore was bringing his two-week road show to a close with several meetings in Woonsocket. Located just two blocks from City Hall, the bar had a fairly regular clientele for the three hours between five and eight o’clock at night. The customers enjoyed the food prepared by Maria Gonsalez, wife of Luis, the owner and bartender. The drinks were honest and priced at the lower end of the scale. Maria chose the name when they purchased the business seven years earlier. She never even hinted to her husband that her first lover, Carlos, was known as Chi-Chi by everyone in their San Juan suburb. By now, Gonsalez was used to everyone calling him by that name.

It was Cardella’s favorite after-hours watering hole, a place he frequented about twice a week when he needed some transition time between the problems he worked on in the office and the ones he had at home. He and his wife, Anita, weren’t sure whether they had outgrown each other or were both going through a midlife crisis. They had been at each other’s throats for a long time, arguing repeatedly over everything and nothing. Neither of them seemed able to muster enough control to let the things that displeased them just pass without comment. When a truce was declared, they agreed that it would have a better chance of taking hold if, for a while at least, they spoke to each other only when it was necessary.

The situation was made worse by the fact that Anita’s mother lived with them. She was there more than three years already, ever since her own husband suffered a heart attack shoveling snow and died a week later. He was warned by his doctor at the HMO, as well as by Richie, that it was dangerous for him to be doing that sort of thing at his age. But he continued convincing himself that he had better things to do with twenty-five dollars than pay it to a plow every time snow filled his driveway. Anita’s mother had an advanced form of multiple sclerosis, requiring help from one of them with almost everything she did. Whenever Richie fought with his wife, her mother came into it on Anita’s side. Inevitably, he found himself standing over her wheelchair, telling her to mind her own business and keep out of it.

At least four months had gone by since Cardella and his wife had sex. Despite the tension, they slept in the same bedroom, in the queen-size bed they purchased at an estate sale just before they got married. It was big enough to let them lie on their own sides, facing away from each other, their bodies not touching. They did it because they knew that if one of them moved into the spare bedroom, Anita’s mother would blab it out to everyone in the family and anyone who came to visit her.

But it couldn’t continue much longer the way it was. They both knew they had to either get counseling and try to pull the marriage together, or they might as well go their separate ways. He was still virile and was sure Anita missed the sex as much as he did.

Cardella realized that trying to pick up women in bars was fraught with danger for several reasons. And he was certain that his wife’s strong Catholic upbringing would never let her sleep with any man to whom she wasn’t married. It was ridiculous for them to be wasting away sexually, he thought. But the rift had grown wide enough so that it was still going to take some time, if it happened, before they turned toward each other in bed. Richie could live with the fact that he was going to campaign without Anita at his side. He knew Phil Witts was right when he took the position that there was no sense bringing the matter to a head right now. It wouldn’t help to have word of an impending divorce get into the newspapers just before the election.

Lucas finished his beer and called out to the waitress who was standing at the end of the bar, across from their table. He held up the empty bottle for her to see.

“You want a round?” she asked.

Lucas didn’t bother to check with the others. “You got it,” he answered. He smiled at Cardella and Witts. “I can’t think of anyone I’d rather see going up against Bruce Singer in the primary than June Bates,” he said. “She’s perfect. She won’t beat him, but she’ll cut him to ribbons in the next five months. Singer will bleed, believe me when I say that. Then, when it’s you against him, the women’s vote will go to you, Richie. I love it.”

Bates announced her candidacy that morning, and used the occasion in front of the TV cameras to lob her first bomb against Singer. She was serving her sixth term as a State representative from Warwick. Her name was invariably in the forefront on legislation that involved the rights of women and other minorities. She and Singer won their seats in the House as democrats in the same year, but were never particularly friendly toward each other. They served together on a few committees, and she thought of him as a humorless lawyer who couldn’t restrain himself from lecturing everyone whenever he spoke. For his part, Singer saw this former real estate broker as a woman with much more vim than vision.

During the years in which Singer was lieutenant governor, Bates had several run-ins with him. She felt that he ignored her calls to speak in support of certain issues—both to the governor, whose ear she assumed he had, and in public appearances—because he refused to take her seriously. “That hypocrite keeps putting me down,” she told her husband a number of times. “As far as he’s concerned, nothing’s important unless he’s all for it. Some day I’m going to get even with him.”

As soon as Singer declared his intention to run for governor, Bates began soliciting her colleagues in the House to see how much support she could get if she opposed him. She also did a lot of telephoning to find out what kind of financial help to expect from women’s groups throughout the State. The results in each case weren’t overwhelming. Still, they were good enough to persuade her that she could put up a decent fight against him. The bonus was in having a terrific forum in which to get attention for the issues she championed. The exposure would give her a golden opportunity to move them into the public’s awareness.

Bates knew that elections were unpredictable events. Thousands of votes could ride on one wrong answer, one impolite remark, or a single inexplicable goof. Who knows? she told herself, maybe Singer will do something stupid and hand me a victory. After all, she thought, if a nobody like McGurty who sold automobiles could beat him in a primary, Singer was far from invincible.

The hardest part she faced was the phone call from Dave Waller, the Democratic Committee Chairman. Someone told him that she was canvassing for support around the State, he said. So he wanted her to know how passionately the Committee felt about her staying out of the race. “We can win the governor’s seat with Singer,” he told her, “and we’re endorsing him. You’ll only take votes away from him in November if you run in the primary. You don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating him, June, and you know it. If you make things difficult for us, you’ll never see another dime in financial support from the Committee when you’re up for reelection in the House or if you run for the Senate. Think about it and do the right thing.”

She thought about it into the early morning hours and decided it would be hypocritical for her to back off. With the media following her, she knew she’d get more publicity for minority rights during a primary campaign than in ten more years of speeches to a mostly empty House chamber that saw its members leave in droves when she took the podium to protest against gender and racial inequality.

Bates did some meaningful research before her Friday news conference. Checking the payroll records and staff photographs for the four years that Singer occupied the lieutenant governor’s office, she discovered that every one of his aides and assistants during that time was a white male. The only females he employed were his secretary and two receptionist/clerks, one of whom was black. Characterizing Singer’s support for women and minorities as “dismal” and “disgraceful,” she castigated him for it in the speech in which she declared herself a candidate. She emphasized the need for more representation of those groups in state government, and promised that at least half her appointments within the governor’s office would be either female or “people of color.”

“To hell with Singer and Bates,” Witts said to Cardella as he poured what was left in his bottle of Sam Adams beer into the long narrow glass in front of him. “You won’t give a damn who wins that one unless you finish first in our own primary. I just can’t believe no one else is going to run against you.”

“I’m with you, Phil,” Cardella answered, “except I’ve thought about it and I can’t put my finger on who it’ll be. There are plenty of ambitious guys up at the Statehouse, but my contacts there tell me they don’t hear any names getting tossed around.” He turned to Lucas. “But he’s right, Jack. Wait and see. Someone’s going to come out of the woodwork one of these days with his running shoes on. I can’t see me getting a free ride through the primary.”

Lucas lit up a cigarette. Before he inhaled once, Witts told him not to blow any smoke in his direction. “You have to be stupid to still be smoking today,” he said.

Lucas ignored the remark, but exhaled straight up into the air. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, Richie,” he said. “How many guys do you think are out there who figure they’d stand a chance to beat you in the primary? I can’t think of more than two or three up on the Hill, and it looks to me like none of them want to get into it if we haven’t heard anything by now. No one expected there’d be a contest for governor this year, so they weren’t gearing up for a campaign. The Hardiman thing and Sacco leaving office caught them all with their pants down.” Lucas paused to take a long drag on his cigarette. This time he turned to his left and blew the smoke at the wall. “Who else has the name recognition in Rhode Island you’ve got, and who else can match the money the Party will be putting up for you?” he asked.

Cardella didn’t answer. He knew Lucas was right but that didn’t allay his apprehension. He looked pensive and shook his head from side to side several times.

“Wait and see,” Lucas said. He wagged his finger in the air. “Let’s ask Chi-Chi. He knows everyone in town and hears everything that’s going on.” He called to the short, dark-skinned man behind the bar.

Chi-Chi came over to their table. Cardella introduced him to Witts who was in the bar for the first time. Chi-Chi’s broad smile revealed a small fortune in gold crowns in his mouth.

Lucas spoke. “I’ve been telling our mutual friend here, the esteemed former attorney general, that no one’s going to run against him in the primary. We figure that if anyone knows whether I’m right or wrong, Chi-Chi, it has to be you. We come to you for guidance, oh guru of the underworld.” Everyone at the table smiled.

Chi-Chi looked at them one by one, as if trying to decide who should be the recipient of his wisdom. He leaned over, his fingers resting lightly on the table. “Of course someone’s running,” he answered, with certainty in his voice. The smiles on the three faces watching him quickly disappeared. “And I can tell you everything you have to know about him,” he added.

There was silence in the group. Lucas appeared hesitant, like a lawyer afraid to ask the witness one more question, the answer to which could win or lose the case for his client. Witts and Cardella looked at each other. Their eyes affirmed the correctness of what they predicted earlier.

“Okay, Chi-Chi,” Cardella said finally, “let’s hear who it is.”

Again, he took his time to eyeball each of them before speaking. “Here’s everything,” he said. “He’s an asshole. That’s it.” Chi-Chi laughed and walked back toward the bar.

Lucas laughed the hardest. “Well, if Mr. Asshole does show up, we’ll kick his butt, or something like that.” Forgetting himself, he exhaled some smoke directly at Witts.