8

1971–1976

For four years Bart had lived through the days and had tried to sleep through a thousand despairing nights, his mind full of the crowding images and memories of Enid. He taught himself that she was alive until he knew she was alive. He tried to accomplish everything she had wanted him to do so that, when she returned, she would be proud of him.

He won the election to the Senate with a plurality of 29,812 votes. The national press consensus had him on the end of a rope and was pulling him toward some future White House. The state chairmen, county leaders, ward captains and block stewards had known in advance how much the plurality would be but they were bewildered by the extent of the unprecedented national ground swell, in terms of hard money, which the candidate kept generating. Of course, they revealed this phenomenon to all other professional politicians in the party. The press only knew what the professional politicians told them. When the Maryland people told the California state organization that Simms had pulled in $67,000 in cash from their western state while running for office 2,800 miles east; told the New York pols that their voters had sent him $209,000; Illinois, $174,000; Pennsylvania, $136,000; Massachusetts, $91,412, none of the professionals could explain how it had happened. But they knew that an awful lot of usually indifferent people had put their money where their mouth was.

Simms never said anything much himself. In the Senate, he didn’t do anything much either. Yet, in the first year after his election, his campaign managers, all full-time professionals who did not kid each other, admitted to the national fraternity that the party headquarters in seventeen states had received over $4 million in unsolicited campaign contributions from individual voters urging that he run for the presidency in 1976. The professional politicians were very, very much impressed. All of them cross-checked all of the seventeen states for confirmation. They knew in 1973 that he was a sure winner for 1976, but they were baffled by how to help the press interpret why he had this effect on the voters. They decided it must be something in his looks that they were not yet able to see. They decided he had something somebody had called charisma when they had to find a similar label for the also-mystifyingly popular John F. Kennedy.

None of them linked the $1,900,000 that Bart had paid over to state, county and ward level organizations in Maryland with the rest of the money that had poured in from outside the state for this totally unknown candidate. If a man didn’t have that kind of money to spread around, he wouldn’t be allowed to run for the Senate anyway. They didn’t make this connection because they were told that Simms had a limited amount of “inherited” money and they supposed his uncle, a power broker, was helping out for his own reasons. They believed the rest of the money was genuinely from the people because it was so profitable to believe it.

Smelling big money, the professional politicians of seventeen of the most populous states of the Union began to instruct the captive political press about Senator Simms’s destiny, his charisma and his man-of-the-future profile. The grand message was repeated in print, on the air and in front of TV cameras hundreds of times as early as 1974. Senator Simms remained aloof from the constant insistence that he was the next president. But he would be, every man and woman who made a direct living out of it knew that. As these party sachems bayed and tipped, Senator Simms went out after them to nail them down on their home bases.

He began with Pennsylvania because Senator Marvin Karp was already prospering so very well in the national heroin industry due to Bart’s own invitation. Senator Karp took Senator Simms to Harris-burg to “meet the boys” five weeks after Bart’s induction into the Senate. Bart hired national committeemen to do “research” for his candidacy. The fees were deposited in a Nigerian bank or in Switzerland—as they chose. By the end of Bart’s first year in office, while remaining respectfully silent, thereby earning the respect of his fellow senators, Bart was able to retain the “research services” of national committeemen and state chairmen from seventeen of the stronger key states.

In the ninth week after his induction, Senator Karp took Bart along with him to one of the Agatha Teel Thursday “cook-outs” that had become so important. There Bart met eight of the members of the Council on Foreign Relations (the lay body which was called “the real State Department” until Mr. Kissinger became Secretary). Bart felt himself persuaded that it would be smart if he were to attend Teel dinners every Thursday and used what charm he had on Teel to have himself invited again. As weeks went on he appreciated Teel’s tact and wisdom. He liked to think that they had become friends.

In the summer of 1975, Senator Simms accompanied Teel to open a clinic in Harlem. Three weeks later he accepted an invitation to attend the presentation, at the New York Daily News, in the presence of a cross-section of leaders of the eastern Negro community, of a Golden Disc for Teel’s latest recording, “Dance on Me, Baby,” which had sold 1,200,000 copies, from which Miss Teel donated all proceeds to the Black Easter Bunny Fund. They were photographed. In the picture, which ran in the Daily News, were Miss Teel and the Senator; Binchy Dawes, a community leader; and, somewhat in the background—to Senator Simms’s dismay—Joseph Palladino. The next day Bart telephoned Teel. “How did that man get in the picture?” he asked abruptly.

“What man, baby?”

“Next to the punch bowl. His name is J.D. Palladino.”

“Oh. Yeah. Well, he’s been a big donator to the Black Easter Bunny. He heads up the whole Italian-American Convention for a Cleaner Manhattan.”

Senator Karp stopped him in the corridor of the Senate Office Building the following day to ask him if he were out of his mind to allow his picture to be taken with J.D. Palladino and Benjamin Disraeli Dawes.

“Who is Benjamin Disraeli Dawes?”

“You were standing beside him in the picture.”

“Who is he?”

“He’s the most important black wholesaler of heroin in the United States.”

“I’m shocked!”

“You’ve got to do something about that, Bart.”

“What? What should I do?”

“I think you should ask for Agatha Teel’s help to get that negative out of the newspaper files.”

Bart got on the telephone in his office and insisted that Teel set an earliest meeting, then and there. He felt he had every right to be indignant. He was running eleven points ahead of the nearest party rival for the nomination, and two point four points ahead of the president. He was about to announce his candidacy and on the fifteenth of January he would begin real campaigning around the country, barnstorming and bribing his way into the hearts of the people. So he was truly irritated that Teel had put him on this spot. He had to go up to New York for the appearance on Meet the Heat and to talk to the Southern District people. He pressed Teel for a meeting after that.

“Why don’t just the two of us have a real nice little supper right here?” Teel said.

The wine was a very good Taittinger ’59 bubbly, and he enjoyed hearing the cork pop and watching the smoke curl out of the bottle and seeing the golden champagne pour into big, paper-thin crystal glasses because Teel had handed him the negative of the annoying picture in a Daily News envelope as he had stepped out of the elevator into her living room.

They clinked glasses and smiled happily at each other.

“How did those two men ever get anywhere near that picture?” Bart asked amusedly.

“Well—they are big contributors.”

“To the Black Easter Bunny?”

“Well, yes. To the Black Bunny, too.”

“And to what else?”

“I am a criminal lawyer. And Mr. Dawes and Mr. Palladino are my clients.”

“Ah. Yes, of course.”

“I’d like you to become one of my clients, too.”

“Me?”

“Why not?”

“What for?”

“I think I can get your sister back, for example.”

He dropped the glass of champagne and did not know he had dropped it. He stared into Teel’s eyes, unable to speak. His face drained. His mouth moved convulsively. He put his hand tightly across it.

“Four years is a long time,” Teel said sympathetically.

“How did you know that?” He was able to whisper.

“I guess interest is the key to life,” she said.

“Where is Enid?”

“Safe.”

“Oh, God!” He stood up and walked away from Teel. After a while he got control of himself. He stood facing the window as if he were watching the street. “How long have you known this?” he said.

“About four years.”

He turned to her. “Why are you telling me now?”

“I thought—about now—you’d want her back.”

“How much do you want?”

“Senator—please! I am not the agent for the kidnappers.”

“What do you want?”

“There are two separate transactions here,” Teel said. “One is getting you your sister back. The other is having you sign a paper which I need signed—and that’s all there is to it.”

“What paper?”

“Have a glass of this good, old champagne,” Teel said. She got another glass, then filled it and hers too. “Sit down, Senator,” she said pleasantly, smiling at him sympathetically. He returned to a chair near her, lifted the glass and took three sips from it.

“You’ll want to read the papers I’ve drawn, but we’ll talk about them first,” Teel said. “They are a statement from you which tells the world at large that you made all arrangements to supply J.D. Palladino with raw opium, that you used your influence with members of the Senate to secure the cooperation of the Inter-American Bank and restored foreign aid for Haiti, in payments to the President of Haiti, so that the opium could be processed into heroin in Haiti for sale throughout the United States and that you used your share of the profits from this to secure your nomination and election to the Senate as you have been doing to get the Presidency. That’s all.”

He wanted to have the single-shot Liberator pistol in his hand. He wanted to kill her. He covered his face with his hands and leaned forward on his knees for a few moments, then he looked at her and said, “Miss Teel—I am more than halfway there. I have over twenty million dollars committed to key state organizations. I—I am almost certain of the nomination. If you—”

“Senator Simms!” she said in a troubled voice. “You have this all wrong! I want to help you. I think our country needs you in the White House.” She filled their glasses again to the brims. “Hear me out,” she said. “I intend to give these papers back to you and so that you will know that they could not have been copied we will put them in the nearest bank, under an escrow agreement. When your sister arrives here we will make an exchange. I give you your sister. You sign the papers, then together we take the papers to the bank.”

“Why?”

“I may need help and if I need it I may need it fast.”

“What help?”

“I don’t need it yet. And if I don’t need it by inauguration day, on the second of January 1977, you get the papers back to burn.”

Bart closed his eyes and leaned back, breathing irregularly. Teel sipped champagne as she flipped through the pages of The New Yorker. More than five minutes went by.

“When can you have my sister brought to New York?”

“You can meet her in this room on January fourteenth.”

“Must it be here?”

“Yes. I give her to you. You sign the papers for me.”