Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone (37 page)

The coolest man in the whole McGovern entourage on Tuesday was George McGovern himself—who had spent all day Monday on airplanes, racing from one critical situation to another. On Monday morning he flew down to San Diego for a major rally; then to New Mexico for another final-hour rally on the eve of the New Mexico primary (which he won the next day—along with New Jersey and South Dakota) . . . and finally on Monday night to Houston for a brief, unscheduled appearance at the National Governors Conference, which was rumored to be brewing up a “stop McGovern” movement.

After defusing the crisis in Houston he got a few hours’ sleep before racing back to Los Angeles to deal with another emergency: his twentytwo
-year-old daughter was having a premature baby and first reports from the hospital hinted at serious complications.

But by noon the crisis had passed and somewhere sometime around one, he arrived with his praetorian guard of eight Secret Service agents at a friend’s house in Bel Air, where he immediately changed into swimming trunks and dove into the pool. The day was gray and cool, no hint of sun and none of the other guests seemed to feel like swimming.

For a variety of tangled reasons—primarily because my wife was one of the guests in the house that weekend—I was there when McGovern arrived. So we talked for a while, mainly about the Mankiewicz situation, and it occurred to me afterward that it was the first time he’d ever seen me without a beer can in my hand or babbling like a loon about Freak Power, election bets, or some other twisted subject . . . but he was kind enough not to mention this.

It was a very relaxed afternoon. The only tense moment occurred when I noticed a sort of narrow-looking man with a distinctly predatory appearance standing off by himself at one end of the pool and glowering down at the white telephone as if he planned to jerk it out by the root if it didn’t ring within ten seconds and tell him everything he wanted to know.

“Who the hell is
that
?” I asked, pointing across the pool at him.

“That’s Miles Rubin,” somebody replied.

“Jesus,” I said. “I guess I should have known.”

Moments later my curiosity got the better of me, and I walked over to Rubin and introduced myself. “I understand they’re going to put you in charge of press relations after Miami,” I said as we shook hands.

He shook his head and said something I didn’t understand, then hurried away. For a moment I was tempted to call him back and ask if I could feel his pulse. But the moment passed, and I jumped into the pool instead.

The rest of that day disintegrated into chaos, drunkenness, and the kind of hysterical fatigue that comes from spending too much time racing from one place to another and being shoved around in crowds. McGovern won the Democratic primary by exactly 5 percent—45–40—and Nixon came from behind in the GOP race to nip [John] Ashbrook by 87–13.

July 20, 1972

The St. Louis Lawyer & the Fixer-Man

On the face of it, McGovern seems to have everything under control now. Less than twenty-four hours after the New York results were final, chief delegate-meister Rick Stearns announced that George was over the hump. The New York blitz was the cincher, pushing him over the 1,350 mark and mashing all but the flimsiest chance that anybody would continue to talk seriously about a “Stop McGovern” movement in Miami. The Humphrey-Muskie axis had been desperately trying to put something together with aging diehards like Wilbur Mills, George Meany, and Mayor Daley—hoping to stop McGovern just short of 1,400—but on the weekend after the NY sweep George picked up another 50 or so from the last of the non-primary state caucuses and by Sunday, June 25, he was only 100 votes away from the 1,509 that would zip it all up on the first ballot.

At that point the number of officially “uncommitted” delegates was still hovering around 450, but there had already been some small-scale defections to McGovern, and the others were getting nervous. The whole purpose of getting yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate is to be able to arrive at the Convention with bargaining power. Ideology has nothing to do with it.

If you’re a lawyer from St. Louis, for instance, and you manage to get yourself elected as an Uncommitted delegate from Missouri, you will hustle down to Miami and start scouting around for somebody to make
a deal with . . . which won’t take long, because every candidate still in the running for anything at all will have dozens of his own personal fixers roaming around the hotel bars and buttonholing Uncommitted delegates to find out what they want.

If your price is a lifetime appointment as a judge on the U.S. Circuit Court, your only hope is to deal with a candidate who is so close to that magic 1,509 figure that he can no longer function in public because of uncontrollable drooling. If he is stuck around 1,400, you will probably not have much luck getting that bench appointment . . . but if he’s already up to 1,499 he won’t hesitate to offer you the first opening on the U.S. Supreme Court . . . and if you catch him peaked at 1,505 or so, you can squeeze him for almost anything you want.

The game will get heavy sometimes. You don’t want to go around putting the squeeze on people unless you’re absolutely clean. No skeletons in the closet; no secret vices . . . because if your vote is important and your price is high, the Fixer-Man will have already checked you out by the time he offers to buy you a drink. If you bribed a traffic court clerk two years ago to bury a drunk driving charge, the Fixer might suddenly confront you with a photostat of the citation you thought had been burned.

When that happens, you’re fucked. Your price just went down to zero, and you are no longer an Uncommitted delegate.

There are several other versions of the Reverse-Squeeze: the fake hit-and-run; glassine bags found in your hotel room by a maid; grabbed off the street by phoney cops for statutory rape of a teenage girl you never saw before . . .

Every once in a while you might hit on something with real style, like this one: on Monday afternoon, the first day of the convention, you—the ambitious young lawyer from St. Louis with no skeletons in the closet and no secret vices worth worrying about—are spending the afternoon by the pool at the Playboy Plaza, soaking up sun and gin/tonics, when you hear somebody calling your name. You look up and see a smiling, rotund chap about thirty-five years old coming at you, ready to shake hands.

“Hi there, Virgil,” he says. “My name’s J. D. Squane. I work for Senator Bilbo and we’d sure like to count on your vote. How about it?”

You smile, but say nothing—waiting for Squane to continue. He will want to know your price.

But Squane is staring out to sea, squinting at something on the horizon . . . then he suddenly turns back to you and starts talking very fast about how he always wanted to be a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi, but politics got in the way . . . “And now, goddamn it, we must get these last few votes . . .”

You smile again, itching to get serious. But Squane suddenly yells at somebody across the pool, then turns back to you and says: “Jesus, Virgil, I’m really sorry about this, but I have to run. That guy over there is delivering my new Jensen Interceptor.” He grins and extends his hand again. Then: “Say, maybe we can talk later on, eh? What room are you in?”

“1909.”

He nods. “How about seven, for dinner? Are you free?”

“Sure.”

“Wonderful,” he replies. “We can take my new Jensen for a run up to Palm Beach . . . It’s one of my favorite towns.”

“Mine too,” you say. “I’ve heard a lot about it.”

He nods. “I spent some time there last February . . . but we had a bad act, dropped about twenty-five grand.”

Jesus! Jensen Interceptor; twenty-five grand . . . Squane is definitely big-time.

“See you at seven,” he says, moving away.

The knock comes at 7:02—but instead of Squane it’s a beautiful silver-haired young girl who says J. D. sent her to pick you up. “He’s having a business dinner with the senator and he’ll join us later at the Crab House.”

“Wonderful, wonderful—shall we have a drink?”

She nods. “Sure, but not here. We’ll drive over to North Miami and pick up my girlfriend . . . but let’s smoke this before we go.”

“Jesus! That looks like a cigar!”

“It is!” she laughs. “And it’ll make us both crazy.”

Many hours later. 4:30 AM. Soaking wet, falling into the lobby, begging for help: no wallet, no money, no ID. Blood on both hands and one shoe missing, dragged up to the room by two bellboys . . .

Breakfast at noon the next day, half sick in the coffee shop—waiting for a Western Union money order from the wife in St. Louis. Very spotty memories from last night.

“Hi there, Virgil.”

J. D. Squane, still grinning. “Where were you last night, Virgil? I came by right on the dot, but you weren’t in.”

“I got mugged—by your girlfriend.”

“Oh? Too bad. I wanted to nail down that ugly little vote of yours.”

“Ugly? Wait a minute . . . That girl you sent; we went someplace to meet you.”

“Bullshit! You double-crossed me, Virgil! If we weren’t on the same team I might be tempted to lean on you.”

Rising anger now, painful throbbing in the head. “Fuck you, Squane! I’m on
nobody’s
team! If you want my vote you know damn well how to get it—and that goddamn dope-addict girlfriend of yours didn’t help any.”

Squane smiles heavily. “Tell me, Virgil—what was it you wanted for that vote of yours? A seat on the federal bench?”

“You’re goddamn fuckin’-A right! You got me in bad trouble last night, J. D. When I got back here, my wallet was gone and there was blood on my hands.”

“I know. You beat the shit out of her.”

“What?”

“Look at these photographs, Virgil. It’s some of the most disgusting stuff I’ve ever seen.”

“Photographs?”

Squane hands them across the table.

“Oh my God!”

“Yeah, that’s what
I
said, Virgil.”

“No! This can’t be me! I never saw that girl! Christ, she’s only a child!”

“That’s why the pictures are so disgusting, Virgil. You’re lucky we didn’t take them straight to the cops and have you locked up.” Pounding the table with his fist. “That’s
rape
, Virgil! That’s
sodomy
! With a child!”