Chapter Five

EDDIE BASHA GRABBED ME as soon as I stepped out of the service elevator.

Walter Robinson smiled at Eddie and waved, just before the elevator doors closed. “Who the hell is that?” Eddie demanded. “Is he with the FBI? And what’s this shit about you getting interviewed by the FBI, anyway?” Eddie insisted, not waiting for my answer.

“How the hell do you know about that?”

He looked at me with a smirk. I didn’t like this look. It made me feel like he knew something I didn’t know, and I was supposed to know everything. That was my job.

We were standing in the hall of the Windsor Court, on the floor completely taken over by Hilda Smith staffers. We had compressed an entire campaign into this floor and the trailers over at the Superdome. One room was devoted to nothing but the tracking, care, and feeding of delegates. Another room was filled with the finance staff, who were consumed with making sure the heavy-hitter donors felt special while also setting up fundraisers for the general election. I loved that group. They were a combination of boiler-room hustlers and special forces, incredibly driven and focused. Most of them were in their twenties, and there wasn’t one of them who, if not already rich, wasn’t sure to be absurdly so. Next to them was speechwriting. The two groups eyed each other with bemused suspicion. While the finance staff was banging the phones and making side bets on how much they could raise, the speechwriters would wander the halls in a daze, chewing on pencils and looking like every lost grad student who hadn’t slept in months. The advance staff was next to the speechwriters. They were the guys and girls who prided themselves on always making events look good. They were famously arrogant and known for partying hard after an event they had spent days putting together. I’d bailed out more than one from jail. Then there was the legal department, a small law firm that handled everything the campaign touched. It was a strange, highly functional family that was brought together not by idealism or ideology so much as a burning desire to win. And now we were close. Very, very close.

Eddie steered me away from a passing intern. She was pretty. As political director, Eddie Basha had made sure that every female intern was a looker. This did not go unnoticed or unappreciated by women like Kim Grunfeld and Lisa Henderson. They went out of their way to make life miserable for the young women.

“Come on, Tommy Singh has got numbers for us.”

Eddie pulled me into his room, just down the hall from the war room. Tommy Singh was sitting on the bed studying numbers on his phone. He was always studying numbers on his phone. If he died tomorrow, they would erect a statue of him peering at numbers on his phone.

“This bombing is bad for us. Very bad,” Singh pronounced.

“This is news?” I asked.

Eddie spoke up. “Don’t try to be sincere. Listen up, Tommy did a poll on the bombing.”

“This is the poll we agreed you were not going to do, right, Singh?”

“That would be correct, yes.”

“Jesus Christ,” I erupted. “Have you lost your goddamn mind?”

“I will not charge the campaign,” Tommy Singh insisted. “I would never do that, J.D.”

“That’s not the point. If it gets out that we are polling—”

“But you aren’t. I am,” Singh insisted.

“Oh, that will help. Everybody will buy that. The campaign didn’t poll, just the pollster. Oh, that’s just great. And by the way, if you paid for the poll, then we’re violating federal election law and we’re all going to jail.”

“Armstrong George wants to abolish the FEC,” Singh said.

“He also supports torture, so he’s probably cool if I waterboard you.”

This seemed to confuse him. He shrugged and started to read from his poll. “ ‘Does the recent bombing at the Republican National Convention make you more or less likely to support stronger measures to protect against crime and terrorism, including wiretaps, detention without bail, etc.?’ ” Singh looked up. “More likely: seventy-eight percent.”

“So?” I asked. “Did you poll whether or not blowing up Armstrong George made you more likely or less likely—”

“I’m thinking you shouldn’t keep joking about that stuff,” Eddie sighed.

“I can continue,” Singh insisted hopefully. He was like every pollster. Nobody ever paid any attention to him except when he was reading numbers. So he liked to read numbers. A lot. Slowly.

“But the bottom line,” Eddie said, “is that Tommy’s numbers make it clear that as long as everybody is focused on the bombing, we are screwed. Now, here’s my latest state-by-state breakdown of delegates.”

Eddie laid a printed chart on the bed. It was a list of every delegate and their likely voting status. For the next hour, we debated each delegate, all 2,242 of them and another 2,180 alternates. What would it take to crack each Armstrong George delegate? Was it hopeless, possible, likely? For each Hilda Smith delegate, we tried to imagine if we were working for Armstrong George, what we would do to get one of the Smith delegates to flip. As VP, Hilda Smith had certain toys we’d already used to scarf a few of George’s delegates. We invited a half-dozen from California to ride with her on Air Force Two from LA to San Francisco in May, and four of the six had flipped. Nobody seemed to care about visiting the vice president’s residence on Wisconsin, but we’d been able to give a handful of delegates special tours of the White House when the president was at Camp David, followed up with a lunch in the White House Mess. The White House Mess seemed to always really get them, despite the mediocre food. Then some of George’s big donors who were also heavy hitters for the president had heard about it and leaned on the president to cut us off.

We went through the database on each delegate. Some stuff was routine: lawyer, involved in environmental causes, married, lost lots of money in the big crash. Lots of it. Some was dark, closet stuff and it was creepy that we even knew about it: what websites a delegate liked to frequent late at night, what sexual harassment lawsuits had been settled out of court, who spent too much time and money in Vegas. But tantalizing as the personal stuff was, it was always hard to find a way to use it. Like a nuke: great to have, hard to use without blowing yourself up.

After an hour, we had evaluated every delegate and narrowed the universe to just thirty-seven delegates we thought might be likely to switch. But of those thirty-seven, only eleven were Armstrong George delegates that might possibly switch to Hilda Smith. That left twenty-six delegates who were technically committed to Smith but were likely to switch to Armstrong George if it looked like he was going to win.

“This is not good,” Tommy Singh observed in his annoying, neutral tone.

“Thanks, Tommy,” I grumbled. I was still pissed at him for going ahead with the survey.

“We will lose unless something changes,” Singh continued, undeterred. “That is clear.”

A long silence ensued.

“We can shake it up,” I said. I wasn’t sure if I believed it at all, but I needed to be cheered up, and if nobody else was going to do it, I would have to try it myself.

“How?” Eddie asked.

“I’ve got some ideas,” I insisted. It annoyed me how skeptical they looked. “What ever happened to believing in your campaign manager to work miracles?” I chided them.

“I believe in delegate counts,” Tommy Singh said dryly. But he said everything dryly.

They waited for me to continue. When I didn’t, Eddie just said, “Well, good. Because otherwise, I think we are fucked pretty.”

“We keep these numbers to ourselves, right?” I looked at each of them hard. “The world thinks this is a three- or four-vote deal. If it gets out how soft our numbers really are, this whole thing could collapse on us.”

“J.D.,” Tommy Singh said in his flat, unemotional voice, “it is time for rabbits out of hats. These numbers are not encouraging.”

“Thanks, Tommy, I’ll try to get serious about this now. I promise.”

I turned and left.

—

I met them at a coffee shop on St. Charles just up from Lee Circle. Big brother Paul and Walter Robinson were sitting in the middle of the empty shop when I walked in.

Walter tapped his watch. “You’re late.”

“You guys,” I grumbled, “don’t have much to do. I do.”

“Ungrateful, I’d call him,” Paul said. “Downright ungrateful.”

The coffee shop was bland and hip, with prices that were high for New Orleans. “Nobody ever comes here,” Walter explained. “It’s owned by a guy who has some clubs in the Quarter and he uses it to wash money he takes under the table at the clubs.”

“Glad you’re right on top of it,” I said.

Walter shrugged. “He’s useful. A lot of people come in those clubs and he helps us out.”

Sitting at the table with the two large men, I felt like I was back at the kitchen table when I was a teenager, Paul and his oversized football buddies dominating everything. All that was missing was my loony dad pouring bourbon for everyone, probably wearing his naval flight helmet.

“Can we talk about this letter?” I couldn’t stop thinking about that delegate count. We were losing, that was clear. The only good thing was that nobody had realized it yet. But they would. I had to change the dynamic while it was still possible. “It came to me. The guy must have seen my name in the paper or me on television or something. Maybe he knows me. Hell if I know. Can I see it?”

Walter stared hard at me with an impressive ferocity. It was his best game face from the Tiger Stadium days and I had to admit it was an intimidating sight. “So here’s the deal,” he said. “I’ve kept the letter tight.”

“Tight?” I asked.

“Just me and a couple of my guys. I haven’t given it to Joey Francis.”

“You’re kidding me? You and a couple of NOPD blues are sitting on a letter from a guy who is scaring the crap out of the convention? And, more importantly, is hurting my chances to elect my candidate?”

Paul smiled. “Glad you got your priorities straight.” He held up a coffee cup in salute. “Walter doesn’t trust the FBI, and Walter, well”—he hesitated and looked over at Walter, who nodded—“Walter is like us. He has some dreams.”

“Dreams?” I said.

“Needs,” Walter said.

The two of them were looking at each other and smiling. “Oh my God, you want to be the hero and bust this thing, right? That’s why you haven’t turned over the letter. You want this to be the Walter Robinson show?”

“Well, I—” Walter said.

“Exactly,” Paul said.

“Good God. Isn’t that illegal?” I asked.

“You remember that black stripper who got sliced and diced and used as crab bait?” Walter asked, leaning toward me.

“That was a movie, right?”

“Exactly!” Walter shouted. “That was my case. But the FBI took it over as a federal investigation. Hate crime, like that made a difference. They got all the glory. I’m not letting that happen again.”

“What do you want?”

“I’ll tell you what I want. I want to be on ESPN.”

“ESPN?”

“You know how they always have guys who were the shit in college in the booth to talk trash about the game? I want to be one of those guys.”

“You don’t want to be on CNN or NBC? You’re a serious guy now, Walter. This thing breaks, you got some big-time respect coming.”

“CN fucking N? NBC? Are you out of your mind? Nobody in my world watches the news. We watch sports, man! What kind of people do you think we are? If I can break this thing, get some attention, I figure I can parlay this on ESPN. But I want you to help.” He leaned in close again. He liked to do that. “Can you promise me you’ll help?”

“Sorry, sorry. Got it. Sure. I’ll do everything I can to get you on ESPN.” He stared at me like he was deciding exactly where to put the bullet. “I’ll get the vice president to make some calls. We’ll be all over this.”

“The vice president?” he asked. “Really?”

“Promise.”

“And she has got some suck?”

“She’s the second most powerful person in the goddamn country. What the hell do you think?”

My brother spoke up. I’d almost forgotten he was there. “J.D.” He sighed. “Walter is trying to help. He gets paid to deal with little shits every day in his job. Don’t be one.”

God, it was the same voice I’d grown up with. It was strangely reassuring, to be back in a world in which my older brother was giving me a hard time for mouthing off to one of his friends.

“I don’t want to tell him anything else,” Walter said. I think he may actually have been pouting.

“Oh, Christ,” Paul groaned. “This is ridiculous.” He got up.

“The letter beat the crap out of chinks and spics and sand niggers,” Walter blurted.

“Yes?” Oh, Jesus, this could be good. Maybe the gods had decided I deserved a gift.

Paul sat back down. “I’ll translate. It was an anti-immigration, full-bore hate piece. Lock up the borders. Throw away the key.”

“It said that?”

“Calm down, boy,” Walter said, grinning. “You biting on that bone?”

“America has to be saved for Americans, you know,” Paul added.

The pretty hipster with bright purple hair brought us over fresh coffee and gave Walter a certain look. She was definitely sleeping with him.

“Did your bomber pal mention Armstrong George in the letter?” I asked.

“Might as well have,” Walter said. He hesitated. “Other things.”

“Like what?”

“All this crap about sovereign nations and purity and honor and crap like that. Signed it ‘C.N.’ ”

“C.N.? What’s that mean?”

Walter shrugged. “His initials, I guess. What do you think?”

“Go ahead,” Paul told Walter.

“What?” I asked. “Go ahead what?”

Walter paused and sighed. “He enclosed a copy of the man’s greatest hits.”

“What are you talking about?” I was getting tired of this. It was like they were determined to take up as much of my time as possible by laying it out to me bit by bit.

“The New Bill of Rights. He sent a copy along. Drew a little Confederate flag at the bottom.”

“We’ve got to leak this,” I said right away. “Now.” Jesus, I mean, an Armstrong George supporter behind this bombing? It was perfect. Hilda could take the high road, make Armstrong George take the heat. Beautiful.

“What about my deal?” Walter demanded. “I got to get some guarantees here.”

“Whatever the hell you want, big guy. And I mean it. She wins, you write your ticket.”

“And if she doesn’t?”

“Christ, Walter. We’ll get you famous, don’t sweat it. I just have to figure it out. We need to leak it. That’s what we need.”

“You know how to do that?”

“God, yes.” I laughed. “That I know how to do.”

“How? When?”

“Let me think about it. Just keep the letter in a safe place.”

“Don’t you worry, sugar pie. We’re covered.”

—

The Secret Service ushered the three delegates into Hilda Smith’s suite. Eddie had confirmed that so far only three had left town, so we needed three replacements. Meeting at the VP’s suite was part of the strategy, of course, to wow the alternates with the office itself—we didn’t want them being reminded that they were about to spend time with the second most important person on earth. She was waiting with a smile and a can of Diet Coke in her hand. That was planned as well, like the personal photos of Hilda and her husband and twin sons that were placed around the room. You wanted them to think they were seeing the personal side of this powerful person, not just getting the standard tourist tour—keep behind the rope, please—but having a chance to walk right into the living room and have a can of Diet Coke with the vice president. She had a glass, but she drank straight from the can, opened it herself, and when they brought around some cookies, she grabbed a handful of the chocolate chips like they were the last food on earth. I had to bite my tongue to not laugh, but it was smart as hell.

The secretary of agriculture was there too, and the secretaries of defense and transportation as well. Agriculture was there because the three delegates were from South Dakota. Agriculture still counted big in that state, and two of the three delegates were from farm backgrounds themselves. Defense was there because he was an Iraq War hero and a regular on the talk shows, so everybody knew him. He helped protect Hilda Smith’s right flank, too, being ex–Special Forces and all that; it made her seem less squishy just to have him there looking like a soldier. And though it wasn’t like anyone particularly cared about the transportation secretary one way or the other, she was there because it was always good to have one more person around and she had been available. And, besides, she was the former mayor of Orlando and an old college friend of Hilda Smith’s, which meant that she understood a little bit about politics and would be loyal, two rare traits for any cabinet member.

The vice president was positioned in an overstuffed chair at the center of a half circle, framed by the cabinet secretaries. Lisa and I hung out on the side, half leaning, half sitting on a bookcase against the wall.

Under my arm, I had Eddie Basha’s dossier on the three people who had suddenly moved up from alternate delegates to the real thing. Lisa promised me that Hilda Smith had studied the stuff, but who knew? She didn’t like this kind of politics, the sucking up, the stroking, the implied threat. She was no Lyndon Johnson or Bill Clinton, or even George W. Bush.

“I visited Terri Clark this morning at the hospital,” she began, after greeting each and making sure they were introduced to the cabinet members in the room.

“I hear she’s one tough cookie,” Ted Jawinski said. “Hard to scare her.” He was not young, somewhere over sixty-five.

“She’s a brave woman,” the vice president said gently. “She’s made us all proud.”

“Killin’s too good for that son of a bitch who set this thing off, scaring the bejesus out of everyone. You know what I think, Mrs. President? I think we ought to have public executions. Ought to have to do firing squad duty just like jury duty. Civil obligation.”

Lisa turned toward me, a sick look crowding her eyes. I wanted to laugh. One of the problems with Hilda and Lisa and their little inner circle from Vermont was how easily they were shocked. They’d never learned to embrace the whole sick joy of the total American strangeness in politics. You needed to love the weird, the deformed, the deranged.

Hilda Smith smiled. “It would be Mrs. Vice President, but you can call me Hilda,” she said, still in the same soft voice. “I want to be president and I need your help. I need each of you to help.”

Perfect, I thought, relaxing a bit. She can do this.

“We’re formally uncommitted, of course,” spoke up Bruce Dent. “Those are the rules.”

“I believe,” the secretary of defense said, friendly but with an edge, no doubt about it, “that the vice president is well aware of the party rules.”

I knew all about this kid Bruce Dent; his “shit sheet,” as we called it, was tucked under my arm. I had never met him before but didn’t like him. He was twenty-one years old and had been named a Marshall Scholar a few months earlier, not an everyday occurrence at the University of South Dakota. Now he was sitting in a hotel suite with the vice president and cabinet members. He had scored a perfect 2400 on his SATs. The kid was so full of himself it was going to take more than a mild brush-off, even coming from the secretary of defense, to make him cower.

“You know, sir,” he addressed the defense secretary directly, in a firm, calm voice, as if he did this every day, “my father served with you in Iraq. Eighty-second Airborne.”

Goddamn it, why the hell didn’t we know that? I started looking through my folder on Dent frantically. I hated being surprised.

The defense secretary smiled. “Glad to hear it, son.”

“He was killed in the first week of the war.”

So what, you little prick? I wanted to shout. You think that gets you off the hook?

The defense secretary nodded solemnly. “He was…”

“Richard Dent, sir. Did you know him?”

I felt like my head was exploding. What in God’s name was happening? I tried to get Hilda’s attention, motioning her to move on, get going. But she was just staring at this little prick with his plain, almost baby face, dressed in a black suit and thin tie. He looked like he ought to be pushing Watchtowers door to door.

“You must be very proud of him,” the defense secretary said after a long pause. “And I know you must miss him greatly.”

“He always put his country first,” Dent said, “and taught me to do the same. That’s why this isn’t an easy decision for me, who to support for president. I know I was elected as an alternate delegate for the vice president, but given recent events, I find myself rethinking.”

No one said anything for what seemed like an eternity. I wanted to throttle the self-important little shit. “Jesus Christ,” I mumbled, and got an elbow from Lisa.

“I believe, Bruce,” the vice president finally spoke up, “that I very much have the best intentions of this country at heart. I’m a first-generation American. A deep patriot. I love this country with all my heart and soul, and that’s why I want to be president.”

Bruce Dent nodded politely. “Mrs. Vice President, the country is coming apart. It’s just getting worse, even since I ran as a delegate. Now this bombing. You said you didn’t want to be president. Are you really ready to lead?”

This kid should die immediately.

Hilda laughed. “Well, Bruce, you were a Boys State president yourself, president of the student body at South Dakota, I’m sure you understand that sometimes in politics you say what you think is politic.” She smiled, but the softness was gone from her voice.

Well, at least she has read the briefing files, I thought. That was something.

The “I don’t care to be president” quote came when she had suddenly emerged as a vice presidential possibility and was asked about her ambitions. She had said, without thinking about it for more than a moment, that she had no desire or interest in becoming president.

She turned and faced Sue Johnson, who had yet to say a word. She taught ninth-grade American history. “Sue,” Hilda Smith asked, “is there anything in particular you’d like to ask me?” She smiled at the schoolteacher. I had to give her one thing, she did have a great smile.

“Well, Mrs. Vice President, there is one issue that we have been working on for quite some time.”

Lisa and I fumbled through Sue Johnson’s file as if it held the secrets to eternal life. Issue? She had written letters to the editor against school vouchers and had once run for the state legislature opposed to homeschooling. That was all safe enough. Hilda could fudge the school voucher stuff, she’d done that already a million times in front of a thousand different teacher groups, and homeschooling, who cared?

“Yes, Sue?”

“There’s a railway crossing three blocks from our school, and we have been trying and trying to get one of those mechanical arms that come down when there are trains, but for some reason, it just hasn’t happened. The governor got so mad about it, he’s been keeping a highway patrol car there to warn people, but they can’t do that forever and that’s not right and—”

“I’ll look into it personally,” the secretary of transportation said.

“It’s near the school, is it, Sue?” Hilda asked sympathetically. “I remember when two kids were hit in Burlington by a train. It was terrible.”

Sue Johnson was nodding frantically. “Terrible. That’s what happened to us. We lost a senior girl that way.” Her eyes reddened.

“I know that crossing,” Ted Jawinski said. “Hell of a thing, Mrs. President.”

It seemed that Ted was determined to be in the presence of the president.

“Do you know about Crazy Horse?” Ted Jawinski suddenly demanded.

“The Indian leader?” Hilda asked, then corrected herself. “Native American leader.”

“The statue,” Jawinski corrected. “The carving.”

There was a pause. “Crazy Horse the statue?” she finally asked. The other cabinet members looked at each other. No one knew what the hell this guy was talking about.

“Crazy Horse was a great warrior.” The secretary of defense finally spoke up to cover the silence.

“Hell yeah,” Jawinski exploded. “Out near Rapid City. South of Rapid, really. Damnedest thing you ever saw. Like Rushmore, only this Indian up there on a horse with his lance. Hell of a thing. Ought to be a national monument. No doubt about it.”

“I see,” the vice president said. “It sounds…impressive.”

“I’m part Sioux, you know,” Jawinski announced.

Everyone in the room stared at the man.

“Really, Mr. Jawinski?” the vice president finally asked.

“That’s what they tell me. My great-great-great-aunt or something. Just didn’t tell me which part!” He laughed heartily. “All kinds of crazy stuff happening out there then, you know? Anyway, this Crazy Horse is really something. We gave some money for it in the Lions Club. No federal money, though, not a cent. Ought to be a national monument for sure. It’ll knock your eyes out.”

“We’ll certainly take a close look at it, Mr. Jawinski. It’ll get our attention right away.”

He nodded.

Now! I begged silently. Close the sale now! Ask for the damn order!

“What I’d like to do,” the vice president said, “is walk out of here today and be able to announce that I can count on each of you for your support. It would mean a great deal to me and, I believe, to the country.”

There was a long pause. Ted Jawinski looked down at his cowboy boots. Sue Johnson clutched her hands tightly together in her lap. Bruce Dent looked the vice president right in the eye.

“Bruce?” she asked with that great smile.

“Well, Mrs. Vice President, as I think you can understand, I do need to talk with Armstrong George first.”

The cabinet secretaries stiffened.

“I would think you know where he stands on the major issues. Tell me, Bruce, do you support closing our borders to all non-Europeans? Do you support English not only first, but English only in all our schools? Do you support withdrawing from the UN? Do you support ending NATO?”

It was a sudden, angry burst. The secretary of defense was so shocked his mouth was hanging open. I liked it. If she showed this side more often, we’d be a hell of a lot better off.

The young man reddened. “I just think it would be best if I spoke with him, Mrs. Vice President.”

“Of course, Bruce.” She smiled. “Even Armstrong George hasn’t done away with the First Amendment. At least not yet.”

Yes! Ram it right up the little twerp’s ass!

A long silence hung in the room. It was not pleasant. Finally, Ted Jawinski spoke. “Could I kind of get back to you on this thing?” he asked.

“Of course. But let me remind you that the next twenty-four hours could determine the future direction of our country, and you can play a critical, positive role. This is no time to play politics with our national interests.”

They all looked down. Playing the shame card at the end was a good move. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was better at this than I thought. It was funny how people changed when they had to. I can’t tell you how many candidates I’ve had who started out promising to stay positive, no attacks, but by the end were begging you to just nuke the other bastard and get it over with. Nuke him, nuke his wife, nuke his damn kids if that’s what it takes. Just don’t let me lose.

As soon as the three delegates left the room, Lisa Henderson started applauding. Everyone joined in.

“If I may say so,” the secretary of defense said, “I only wish every delegate at this convention could have been in this room.”

“Well, no one committed.” Hilda Smith sighed, but it was clear she was pleased. “J.D. has been telling me we have to up the stakes for this nomination, and I think it’s time I took his advice.”

“I thought I suggested kicking them all in the ass,” I said. “I’ll be back in a second,” I added, and slipped out the suite door while everyone was laughing. It was a dark laugh, nervous and edgy.

I caught up with Bruce Dent at the elevator. “Bruce,” I said, waving him over. The young man still looked flushed from his encounter with the vice president. I put my arm around his shoulder and walked him down the hall.

“Listen,” I told him in a warm, friendly voice, “you’re a Marshall Scholar, right? Smart as hell.”

The intense young man did not attempt to dissuade me from this opinion.

“A quick study,” I continued. “So here’s a little lesson in Crime and Punishment.” I smiled and Bruce Dent nodded, focusing on me with his myopic eyes. I felt like grabbing his ears and ripping them off.

“It’s really quite simple, you arrogant little shit,” I said in the same warm voice. “Come out for us in the next hour and I make you assistant deputy campaign manager, and when we win, you get a nice, juicy position in the White House.” I smiled.

Bruce Dent turned red and then swallowed, a process that looked painful. “You’re offering me a job for my vote. That’s illegal.”

I punched him playfully in the shoulder. “That’s why we call it Crime. Now here’s the Punishment part. If you don’t, or if you jerk us around, then I and my entire opposition research operation will spend the rest of our lives digging up the nastiest shit we can find on you and making sure it gets in the right places.”

Bruce Dent’s face reddened even more. “That’s outrageous.”

“Of course it is. So is the fact that sometimes we just make up this shit and leave it to some poor fuck like you to deny it. Got a little secret or two there, pal? Maybe smoked a little dope over there in England? But hey, the choice is yours.”

I beamed as if I had just offered my favorite nephew a choice job. I took my arm off Dent’s shoulder and moved in front of him, gesturing with both hands. “I want to hear a little communication here, Bruce. The problem with the world today, nobody communicates enough. I want to include it in my own personal New Bill of Rights. Humans must communicate more.”

Bruce Dent stared at me. “How much does a deputy campaign manager make?”

“Assistant deputy campaign manager, Bruce. Now we’re talking.”

—

I met Sandy Morrison late in the afternoon at her suite at the Royal Orleans on Bourbon Street. It was a sprawling space, with louvered windows and French doors leading out to a balcony overlooking a courtyard. The curtains were drawn and the air conditioning was on so high that I shivered as I stepped inside the room, sweat forming in the small of my back. Somewhere Brazilian jazz was playing. It felt like a nightclub.

Sandy was wearing a tailored red suit that seemed to match her fingernails perfectly. It didn’t look accidental. In a high wingback chair, she crossed her legs and steepled her hands.

“Of course I can do it,” she said.

“But will we get caught?” I knew the answer, but I just wanted to hear some reassurance.

Sandy shrugged. “If we use my people, my regular phone banks, maybe. You never know who might talk. Christ, J.D., I have twenty-two hundred people who make phone calls for me in a dozen cities. You think I can nursemaid every one of them? All I can do is strangle them when they fuck up.”

She smiled. It seemed to be a notion that had particular appeal to her.

She stood and walked over to the curtains in front of the French doors leading onto the balcony. Pulling them back, she revealed a stunning Asian woman in a string bikini lying on a chaise longue. She looked to have been doused in oil.

Sandy let the curtain drop. “Nineteen,” she mouthed, almost shivering in delight. She crossed over and picked up a pack of menthol cigarettes off the wet bar and lit one with a gold cigarette lighter. She snapped it closed with a hard click, inhaling half the cigarette in one long gulp.

I’d used Sandy Morrison phone banks for years before we finally met, when I was running a Texas governor’s race and found myself in her home base of Dallas. To my astonishment, she insisted on picking me up in a limo and took me on an all-night tour of Dallas’s strip clubs, the “best tittie bar circuit in the world,” she’d proudly announced. All the doormen had known her and many of the dancers. I’d never seen anybody have as much fun.

At the final club of the evening, a massive place known as VIP, with what seemed like hundreds of dancers, Sandy had summoned a dozen of the most attractive to a private room known as the Champagne Club and, with obvious delight, told me to take my pick, any or all would be happy to accompany me back to the Mansion on Turtle Creek hotel, where I was staying. More overwhelmed than aroused, I passed.

“You sure, honey?” she’d asked, gently waving a handful of hundred-dollar bills toward the women. Sandy fanned the bills between her fingers, like a Vegas dealer. I wondered where she had learned the trick. “You take that car back, sweetie, ’cause little Sandy is going to have herself some fun. God, I do love being rich.”

When I left, she was surrounded by the dancers, handing out hundred-dollar bills like candy to children. She was smiling and looked supremely pleased to be alive.

“We elect your Hilda, she going to take away my cigarettes?” That was one of the accusations Armstrong George had made, that a President Hilda Smith would push to make tobacco illegal.

“God, I hope so,” I said.

“Fuck you,” Sandy said, lighting up another. She held the smoke for a moment, then blew it in my direction.

“Fuck you, too.” I smiled at her.

“Here’s how it ought to work,” she announced. “What we do is get somebody else to make the calls. I hire another outfit, a small firm, and tell them that I was approached by Armstrong George’s campaign to make the calls but couldn’t do it because I was already working for Hilda Smith. But I thought she was going to lose and wanted to help Armstrong George, so I was setting it up.”

I thought about it for a minute. It was a typically devious and effective Sandy plan. “I like it,” I said.

“Okay. Great. How are you going to pay for it?”

“Let’s talk about that,” I said.

“Okay,” Sandy agreed, sitting back down. She always liked to talk about money.

“I can come up with the money from Host Committee funds. It’s such a mess, nobody will notice.”

The balcony doors opened and the young woman walked into the room, trailing a towel. She smiled at Sandy, ignoring me completely. “This damn city smells,” she said.

“Yes,” Sandy answered. Her eyes seemed to narrow a bit as she watched the athletic woman walk across the room to the bedroom door.

“God, I do love being rich,” Sandy said, after a pause.

“About money,” I said.

Sandy focused on me, smiling slightly. “Yes, J.D.? What’s wrong? You look squirrelly.”

“Well…,” I started, then stopped.

Sandy laughed. “After all these years we’ve been doing business and I’ve tried to throw some sugar your way, are you now trying to tell me you want to get a little profit-sharing plan going?”

“Not really.” We stared at each other for a moment, then I shrugged. “Well, maybe.”

“Jesus Christ, J.D., just spit it out. You’re the only campaign manager I work with who doesn’t demand a piece of the action. You’ve given me a shitload of business. You deserve a piece.”

There it was. Now all I had to do was say yes. She’d been trying to give me money for years. There was no reason not to take it. It didn’t have to be called a kickback, it could be a finder’s fee. Or a profit-sharing arrangement. She was right. I’d never gone in for it, but this sort of stuff happened all the time in politics.

“Maybe,” I finally said. “But not to me. If we did anything, I might want you to make a contribution to a little organization run by Tobias Green.”

Sandy started laughing, then coughing as her cigarette smoke went in the wrong direction. “Tobias Green?” She coughed some more, and as her face strained and turned red, I thought she looked ten years older. Little lines stood out on the edges of her face that I figured were left over from face-lifts. “That poverty pimp?”

“He’s a great American and civil rights hero.”

“He tried to screw me at the 2000 convention.”

“I’m sure he wasn’t the only one.”

“He comes up to me at some bullshit cocktail party and says in that deep voice of his, ‘My dear, have you ever made love to a black man?’ ”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I’d arranged for a gang bang by a small group of Dallas Cowboys just two weeks earlier for my birthday, thank you very much.”

“Good. Very good.”

“Then I showed him a little Polaroid souvenir I just happened to have in my purse. We still had those things then, Polaroids. Then I told him to go to hell.” Sandy smiled. “I had different tastes then.”

“I see.” I tried to push the image of Sandy and the football players out of my head. She was joking, wasn’t she?

“You’re blushing,” she teased, and it annoyed me because I realized she was right.

“I’m a family-values guy, Sandy. You know that.”

“Right. Just ask that little press aide of yours you’re screwing.”

God, this woman knew everything. That was why she was so good at her job. It was the key to her sales techniques. “Look, Tobias is helping my brother with a little independent expenditure campaign and I might be trying to arrange for some donations.”

“I love your brother,” she said immediately.

“You do?” I had a horrible image of Tyler and Sandy hanging out together at his club.

“What’s wrong? Is this supposed to be some kind of secret? Everybody loves Paul Callahan.”

“Right.” That brother. What a relief she was talking about my convicted felon brother, not the other one. That was the fast slide to nowhere I was riding.

“What’s going on? You embarrassed because he went to the slammer? This is Louisiana, honey, nobody gives a damn. He never bet against LSU. Now that would have been a problem.”

“We sorta been out of touch for a while,” I said, as if that explained it. “He’s running for public service commissioner, and Tobias Green has been so moved to help his candidacy with a little independent expenditure committee since my brother is such a man of the people and champion of lower rates.”

Sandy laughed. She knew all the lines. “Okay. How much cut do you want?”

I didn’t say anything.

“What are you, the last Boy Scout? Jesus, J.D., it’s just business.”

Of course it was. Just business. I thought about all the things I had done over the years that most people would find repugnant: the nasty attack ads, the opposition research teams I’d put onto opponents to find everything possibly incriminating, lives I’d probably ruined. Not once had I ever blinked. But this was one thing I had never done: I’d never stolen, never skimmed, never diverted a dime. I’d always played the money straight down the middle.

“A hundred and twenty-five thousand.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “You want me to call the home number of every delegate in town?” Sandy finally asked, moving on. “So it gets back to them here at the convention chop-chop, right?”

“And other key members of their influence circles.”

“You want the delegates to hear from people they know, get an echo chamber going.”

“That’s it.”

“I’ll do a zip sort of the delegates and match it with my key opinion leaders list. You’ll get the media types, mayors, Rotary Club chairmen.”

“Perfect.”

“You got a questionnaire?”

I handed her a piece of paper with six questions typed on it. For an instant I worried about fingerprints, but then realized that was silly—if Sandy wanted to screw me, she had plenty of ammunition without fingerprints.

“Short,” she said. “I like that.”

“I want maximum hits. Few hang-ups.”

Sandy Morrison read from the list of questions. “ ‘If you knew that Vice President Hilda Smith had once had an abortion, would it make you more or less likely to support her for president?’ ” Sandy whistled. “Nice. You know my position on abortion,” she said.

“No, Sandy, I can’t say that I do.”

“I believe in the college rule.”

“Yes?”

“Until they go away to college, a parent ought to have a right to reconsider.” She continued to read. “This true?”

“Does it matter?”

“Not as long as my check clears.” She smiled.

“It will.”

—

There was always a long line in front of Galatoire’s, which was just one of the reasons I hated it. The place represented just about everything I’d come to resent about New Orleans: it was old, self-congratulatory to a fault, stuck in its way for no purpose, and celebrated its dullness. This idea that you get great food in New Orleans has always been sort of a fraud concocted by gluttonous locals as an excuse to glorify the fact that they were just like everybody else: they liked to eat and did it too much. But if you hung a nice picture frame of supposed gustatory greatness around the out-of-control hunger, it made it somehow chic and high-minded, not just another bunch of folks who loved to stuff their faces. It was sort of brilliant, like the lazy turning sleeping into a much valued art. Instead of Food & Wine you could have Napping. But there weren’t a half-dozen restaurants in New Orleans that could bump up against the top fifty in LA or New York or even Miami, another overheated hellhole but at least one that had a lot more vitality than New Orleans. Sure, there was better food than, say, in Jackson or Baton Rouge, but “New Orleans as a food heaven” was a lot like the city itself: better if you didn’t look too close.

Jessie Fenestra, the oh-so-famous local columnist, was standing by the door to the side, chatting with the maître d’. Seeing her in person, I recognized her right away, very tall and thin, standing with a cigarette in hand, her head held at a quirky angle, as if she were always on the verge of asking a question. She wore oversized sunglasses, like Jackie O at Hyannis Port.

It was a sight I remembered well from the parking lot of our high school in Metairie. She was always surrounded by a cluster of girls, prettier than she was in a typical way, but she had a flair that clearly made her the leader. To a skinny sophomore like me, obsessed with bikes and guitars, she seemed as distant and unapproachable as a queen in a horse-drawn carriage. There were rumors about her, too, that she was “hot,” a term that seemed oddly inappropriate and thus all the more appealing for this cool creature who was always so composed.

“J.D.,” she said now, dropping her cigarette and grinding it under her heel, “you look like a million goddamn bucks. I knew you’d come.” As if I had a choice after she’d called me and told me how good it was to hear my voice, and how proud she was of me, did you read my column on you, and, by the way, somebody tells me the FBI has been talking to you and maybe there are some problems? Could we talk? The deep, rough voice didn’t match the elegant figure. She leaned down and kissed me on the cheek, roughing my hair slightly. It felt like I was meeting an affectionate aunt, not a reporter who had threatened to tell the world that some wacko at the FBI had me pegged for a cynical bomber.

She pulled me by the arm into the high-ceiling cool of Galatoire’s, past the two dozen or so waiting in line, since Galatoire’s made it part of their charm not to accept any reservations. “They love me here,” she said by way of explanation. We settled in a corner table for four. “What’s the point of being a big deal in New Orleans if you can’t get a good table? I have reached the height of New Orleans ambition. I can eat at Galatoire’s without waiting in line.” She laughed mockingly.

“Jessie,” I asked, “could you take your sunglasses off? I feel like we’re in an old Sopranos episode.”

She smiled but didn’t move to take off the glasses. “It’s part of my local color. It’s important when you are a minor celebrity in a small town like New Orleans to cultivate eccentricity. Believe me, the glasses are the most harmless way I’ve come up with yet.”

“I see,” I said, then asked what I knew she wanted me to. “What were the other ways?”

She shrugged and pulled out a cigarette. It was a moment from a French film, Jean Seberg in Breathless. “The usual.” She thought for a moment. “Wore a see-through gown to the Bacchus ball, dated the Saints’ starting defensive tackle for a while. Black. Three hundred and forty pounds. That was after I divorced Wayne and swore I’d never wake up with another football player. I lied. Was seen all over town with a certain Hollywood actress when she was in town shooting a film. Everyone whispered that we were lovers. They were right.” She took a long pull from her cigarette. “You know, the usual.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“It was. But then you run out of new stuff. You know this place, J.D., it’s a total cul-de-sac for those of us who never got out. We’re doomed to spend our lives trying to shock the same people every day. It gets old.”

Food started arriving, though we had never ordered. Two martinis appeared. My God, I thought, martinis. This is a town where people still drink martinis at five o’clock in the afternoon.

“They know me,” she said, by way of explanation. Then, tiredly, “Everyone knows me. I’m famous.” She sighed. “Just so famous.”

She took a long drink from the martini and seemed to visibly perk up. “Like you, J.D. You saw my column? My yearly wet kiss. You don’t know how lucky you are. I rarely write anything nice about the living. The dead, I like the dead. This is a town that celebrates the dead, and I am the number one celebrant.”

She raised her martini glass in a salute and downed it with a flourish. I had a feeling I wasn’t the first one to see this little act—the martinis, the death spiel—but it still had a certain sparkle.

“Jessie,” I said, looking around the restaurant, wondering how many people there knew who I was, either delegates or New Orleans friends or, worse yet, reporters. What in God’s name would they think of me sitting across from this woman drinking martinis the day before the convention began? I couldn’t even remember the last time I had actually sat down to a meal in a restaurant.

“You know what a tornado and a southern divorce have in common?” she asked suddenly. “Somebody’s gonna lose a trailer.” Another martini had appeared on the table and she took a long sip from it. “That one was the hit of the newsroom this morning. Such wits surround me.”

“Jessie,” I began again. “I have this distinct memory of you on the telephone telling me that you were going to write a column about me and some FBI rumors. I got a few things on my mind, but I do distinctly remember that conversation. Or tell me I made it up. That’s fine. I don’t really care. But let’s not pretend it never happened.”

When I finished, I realized people were staring at me and Jessie had a shocked and bemused look.

“Wow. You’ve changed,” she said. “Do you shout a lot now or was that just a show?”

A few people were taking pictures of us with their phones. I slumped back in my chair. I was so used to shouting at everybody that it seemed normal. I was beginning to act like some barely domesticated animal that easily fell back into its feral ways. Jessie took a long drag of her cigarette and stared through her oversized sunglasses. “I like that. Passion. How’s your brother?”

“My brother?” Which brother? I had been crazy to agree to see her. Of course she would know about Tyler. She lived in New Orleans. She was a reporter. She loved New Orleans characters. Probably used to go out with Tyler, part of his little network of wackos. Oh, this was just great.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “You know he was big pals with my husband. Football heroes together.” She took a drink of her martini and I swear I could see her glow a little. “My ex-husband, that is,” she clarified.

I took a long drink from the martini in front of me. It was icy and delicious. I felt lightheaded almost instantly. It made me want to drink all of it at once.

“Good, huh?” she said, catching my reaction. “It’s what we do best in this town. Make and consume high-quality alcoholic beverages.” She said this as if reading from a chamber of commerce brochure. “Wayne Thibodeaux went into alcohol rehab, you know.”

I wondered if it was possible to get drunk from only a quarter of a martini.

“My ex. Don’t tell me you don’t remember Wayne Thibodeaux? God, that would kill him. It was what he was always afraid of, that people would forget him.”

“I think I might be drunk,” I said.

“No excuse. Wayne Thibodeaux? The football player? He played with your brother.”

“Sure. I remember.”

“No you don’t.”

“Well, I’m sorry about the rehab thing, anyway.”

“Me too. If he hadn’t quit drinking, we’d still be married. Drinking together was the best thing we had going for us.”

She smiled broadly and took another deep sip of her martini.

“Jessie,” I said evenly, or at least I thought I said it evenly, “what I’m going to do is take another sip of this drink, and then I’m going to get up and leave and go back to my sad little life of trying to get somebody elected president. Okay? But tell me first, off the record, was it Lisa Henderson who told you the FBI had called me in?”

“Lisa Henderson?”

Behind her sunglasses, it was impossible to tell if she was lying.

“A woman who doesn’t like me.” I paused. Was it possible that there was a human alive who didn’t know who Lisa Henderson was? It was a very pleasing idea. “She’s also Hilda Smith’s chief of staff.”

“And she’s trying to screw you over? Great. I love stuff like that. How come she’s after you?” She leaned forward seductively. She was good at this, getting people to tell her secrets. It was how she made her living.

Except this wasn’t a secret.

“Sure. Hilda Smith hired me and fired her as campaign manager after Hilda lost Iowa. Lisa went back to the White House as chief of staff. She hates me.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad. I mean, being in the White House.”

I shrugged. “It was humiliating, I’m sure.”

“A subject you know something about,” Jessie offered.

I stood up. It seemed to me that everybody in the room was watching me. This was nuts, absolutely crazy, to agree to meet this woman in a place like Galatoire’s. I might as well have held a press conference.

“Well, J.D.,” she said, watching me stand, calm as could be, “if you tell me there isn’t a story, I believe you. It was really just an excuse to see you. Come on, I’ll walk with you.”

I pulled out my wallet but she waved it away. “They put it on my account,” she said with gravity. “It is my one remaining perk as a writer in this town. I have an eating expense account.”

When we emerged from Galatoire’s, a man standing in line yelled out, “Hey, J.D., come here for a second.” He stepped out of line and motioned for me. He was handsome and tanned and looked vaguely familiar. But everyone was looking vaguely familiar to me these days.

“Bobby Simmons,” the man said, with some annoyance in his voice, when he realized I didn’t recognize him. “Saw you in the elevator over at the Windsor Court. Talked to you about my daughter, Ricki.”

I nodded. “Of course. Yeah. Great.”

A short, dark-haired girl emerged from the line and held out her hand. “Ricki,” she said, grasping my hand in a terrifically strong grip. “Thanks for your help.” She was pretty, in a sleeveless dress with a small tiger tattoo on her biceps. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to help, but I was glad I had. “Somebody from your shop called and got me that floor pass. I hope I’ll see you on the floor.”

“Ricki is a poli-sci major,” the father chimed in. “Dean’s list, Stanford.” She looked embarrassed but pleased.

“Sure,” I told her. “Have to show you our war room.”

“I’d love that. I can’t believe how you brought Hilda back after she lost Iowa. Your New Hampshire campaign was the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.”

Behind me, I thought I heard Jessie snort. Or maybe she was clearing her throat. “Got to run,” I said. “See you on the floor.”

I nodded and started walking away. Jessie fell in beside me and said, in an overly loud voice, “God, does she want to fuck you.”

“I wish,” I said, without thinking. Was I crazy? She was a reporter. Had I told her we were off the record? Of course we were off the record. We were talking about sex. How can sex be on the record? I had to be drunk.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It was a compliment.” Jessie took my arm. “So why does the FBI think you are up to something?” she asked.

“I don’t think it’s really the FBI. It’s more like just one moron at the FBI.”

“There’s a difference?” She was smiling.

“Yeah, there’s a difference. This was just some idiot—”

“Joey Francis,” she said.

I looked at her. A woman like this—a reporter who was good—was incredibly dangerous. You never understood what she knew and didn’t know, so you never knew when to lie or tell the truth. This was a disaster for somebody like me, who always skated between truth, almost truth, might be true, and downright lie. She was playing with me. She had been playing with me for days, since she wrote that article about me. That was the set-up. Draw me in. Now what did she want?

“A renowned moron.” She giggled. “He’s been trying to get the Kennedy assassination reopened. The Garrison connection.”

“You know this guy?” No good could come from this. None.

“I know everybody connected to the dead. That’s what I do. I drink, I meet people, I write about murders. Let me tell you, this Joey Francis moron must be the happiest guy in the world. We’ve got murders, carjackings, drive-bys, we’ve got gambling, a little mob, but hardly ever a real-life bomber. He’s thrilled. I promise you.”

“You write about murders?”

She stopped and looked at me, pushing up her sunglasses for the first time. Her eyes were large and piercingly blue.

“You haven’t read anything I’ve written, have you.”

“I read your column yesterday,” I told her.

“But that’s it.” She sighed. “It’s the New Orleans curse. I’m the Dickens of Death in this town. I write about murders. They love me. But nobody beyond the Causeway has ever heard of me. You’re lucky, J.D., you escaped. How’d you do it, huh, J.D.? How’d you slip away?”

“Went to the airport.” She was following me down the street. I needed to get away from her, focus on my other problems. It had been a mistake to meet her.

“And you don’t miss what everybody else in this town can’t live without? That New Orleans lifestyle thing. The parties. The food. The way nobody really works and that’s okay?”

“I love to work. It’s all I do. I don’t really drink. I think the restaurants are overrated. I hate parties. It was easy.” God, if only she knew. I would have ridden my bike all the way to Washington, if that’s what it took to get away from the little house of horrors that was my family.

“Is that how the skinny kid into bikes and guitars took famous?”

“You think I’m famous? We lose this nomination and if I’m lucky nobody will remember me. I’m a domestique, that’s all.”

“You lost me.”

“It’s what they call a bike rider who will never be a star but rides his goddamn heart out so that the team star can win. That’s me. I set the pace, I block, I’ll crash the other guys if that helps. But that’s it. At the end of the day, I’m not the one who’s up there on the podium.” I didn’t really believe this, but it was a line I had used before with a reporter and it seemed to work. It was just offbeat enough to seem genuine, self-deprecating but believable, since it was a subtle reference to something most reporters didn’t remotely understand—bike racing.

“You know why you escaped?” she said. “Because this town never knew what to do with you. Not like your brother. They loved your brother because he made Tiger Stadium rock. And they loved me, because I was the pretty girl who married the football star and gave great parties. But you—”

“I was the skinny guy on a bike. Yeah, I know. And you know what? I just don’t care anymore. I really just don’t give a shit.” She was annoying me now. I wanted to be somewhere else.

“Maybe,” she said, looking so hard at me I had to turn away. “Maybe. I’m not sure.” She leaned toward me. “So did you get somebody to plant the bomb?”

“Jesus Christ.” I turned and stared at her. “You don’t get it. This hurts us. It helps Armstrong George. Bombs are anarchy and he’s the answer to anarchy. You guys never get the real story line.”

“You guys?”

“Reporters.” I sighed. This was stupid. Never tell reporters how little they know, even when it’s mostly true. It never pays off. Because after you tell them…they are still reporters.

She reached out and touched my face. I pulled back. “You’re pretty,” she said. “I never realized it but you’re pretty.”

“I think you’re a little drunk.”

She smiled. “You’re onstage now, J.D. This is your moment. Take it. Don’t be like those girls who never realized they were actually good-looking until it was too late. You’re the man now. Take the spotlight and enjoy it.”

Then she walked away, leaving me standing on Bourbon Street wondering what she would look like without any clothes on and annoyed at how much the notion intrigued me. Jesus, I was as bad as my old man, just with more predictable tastes.