the Plan (1995) (16 page)

Brenton Spencer stood in center stage, his mouth flapping, gulping air.

In the truck, Ted was screaming at his camera people. "Get loose. He looks like a fucking trout in a bucket." They racked back fast.

"I don't have to take this," Brenton finally said, and he turned and walked off the stage, leaving all of the candidates sitting there, agape. Haze got up and moved to the podium.

"What was that last question again?" he said to a room full of tense laughter.

"Oh yeah," Haze said, "the Teamster strike. Well, if I was in that room in Mr. Skatina's hometown in New York, talking to the participants, I would find a way, some way to forge a compromise because it's time that Americans stop fighting with Americans. The strongest, greatest nation in the world is being trounced--not because we can't compete, but because we can't focus . . . because we can't agree. I want to change that. Last night instead of sleepin g a t the Savoy like the rest of the candidates, I stayed with Bud and Sarah Caulfield on their farm in Grinnell. The Caulfields are about to lose that farm to the bank. Not because they haven't worked or planned. Not because they haven't put their heart and soul into that acreage, but because the federal government has elected to ignore their plight, preferring to invest its time writing bills to improve their own salaries while two people in Grinnell, Iowa, lose their dream. I want more than anything in the world to make this country work again, to make America work for Bud and Sarah Caulfield--to make America work for you.

"P00000NNEEEEEEEEEEY!" A
. J
. shouted in the little dressing room.

Mickey watched the debate in his father's den while Joseph slept upstairs. Everything had worked out just as they had scripted it. Haze had won. He was tempted to call C. Wallace Litman and congratulate him on Brenton Spencer's performance, but he always found conversation with Wallace Litman irritating, so he withstood the urge. He moved to the bar to pour himself a glass of port when he heard somebody set something down on the marble floor in the hall. He moved out to find Lucinda putting on her coat. There was a small overnight bag in the entry hall. She had an airline ticket in her hand.

"Where you going?" he asked.

"Hi. Didn't know you were in there. You see the debate?"

"Where you going?" he repeated, moving to her. H
e t
ook the airline ticket out of her hand and glanced at it. "Iowa?" he said, his voice registering genuine surprise. "Gonna pick some taters," she said, grinning.

"Can't you see what he is, Lu? Can't you look at hi
m a
nd see?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Ryan has his head so far up his ass, four of his five senses aren't working."

"How can you say that?"

" 'Cause it's true. Ever since I've known him, he's been a fucking charity case. I even hadda get him laid when we were kids. I hadda get him this job 'cause nobody would hire him. Look at him, every fucking decision he's made in his life is flawed. And now he's almost forty and he's a joke in Hollywood. How the hell do you become a joke in a town full of butt-wipes, fags, and actors?"

"I thought he was your friend."

"Lucinda, come here. It's time you and I had a talk." He took her hand and led her into his den. He motioned her into a club chair, then sat on the ottoman opposite her. She placed her hands on her knees, waiting.

"We're Alos. All our lives, we've had to wear that name like a prison number. At first, that pissed me off. Now I'm proud of it. It forged us, Lu, made us stronger. Made us different, special. There's no room in this family for weaklings."

"He's just a friend, Mickey. He's ... he's going through a rough time right now. I'm trying to help him."

"I'm your brother. It's important to me that I can count on you."

"This is nuts. You brought Ryan home when he was just fifteen. If you felt that way, why did you invite him?"

Mickey leaned back; then he stood. He moved to the window and looked out. "I brought him home because I liked having him around."

"Why?"

"I liked to watch him fail." He turned around and saw a look of surprise on her face.

"He was what everybody wanted to be . . . good-looking, athletic. He's my poster boy for failed expectations. He was never my friend. Lucinda, people like us can't afford friends. Friends are points of weakness. You have a friend, you run the risk he will betray you."

"You must be very lonely."

"Loneliness, friendship, love, hate . . . are just words. They define nothing. I have to know that I can count o
n y
ou, that you're here for me when I ask. It's the only thing that matters between us."

"Mickey, this is scaring me."

"Pop is going to die soon. It's just gonna be you and me. I'm asking you not to go see this guy. I have very strong reasons. Do I have your word?"

"If you don't want me to, Mickey, then I won't."

He leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. "Good," he said, then turned and walked out of the den.

She heard him go upstairs. She was determined to see Ryan. She would not let Mickey make her choose between them. She ran out, got into her car, and drove to the airport.

Chapter
20.

RYAN AND RELLICA HAD FOUND AN EDIT BAY AT DES Moines University in the journalism school. The monitor flickered as they set to work editing Prairie Fire.

"Look at this asshole," she said as a shot of Haze appeared on her monitor.

"Stop bitching and help me cut this together, will ya? We have to have it by morning." Both knew he had won the debate. Both felt they were on the wrong side, helping a man with no moral convictions. The thought caused the atmosphere in the cluttered room to be thick and cold.

"Doesn't it bother you that this guy is just reading lines A
. J
. stuffs in him?"

"Fuck yes, it bothers me," he snapped. "But I'm a TV producer, not a political scientist."

"Last night I was sleeping in the back of the van and this piece of sour shit jumped on Susan Winter's bones in the barn. There they were grabbing each other's buns, pants down around their knees, huffing and woofing. And I kept saying to myself, 'This guy could be my next President.' " She turned and focused a withering gaze at him. "You know what really pisses me off, Ryan?"

He waited, knowing there was no way to stop her.

"What really pisses me off is I'm helping this asshole." He felt the same way but he was trapped.

They looked at each other in the very small room on the second floor of the J. Building. A winter wind was blowing outside and the bare branches of a deciduous tree tapped softly on the window, disrupting the heavy silence between them.

She shut off the editing machine.

"I'm outta here," she said softly. "You don't have to pay me because I didn't finish the job. Matter of fact, I don't want to be paid. I wouldn't be able to spend the money with a clear conscience." She picked up her purse. "Lemme ask you a question. . . . If Haze Richards doesn't do his own thinking, doesn't have any courage, and is morally corrupt, how can you make this documentary, how can you get up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror?"

He had no answer for her.

"You're a good guy, Ryan, but if you stay on his campaign, you're going to regret it," she said, giving words to his exact thoughts. Then she walked out of the edit bay.

Ryan stood there thinking about what she said.

He had gone through his life with emotional blinders on. He had been a golden boy to whom everything had come easy athletic fame, career success. He had never looked directly at any hard reality, choosing instead to avoid the conflict. And now, at age thirty-five, with his son dead, his marriage and career shattered, it was all bubbling up, the molten residue of all of the ugliness in his life that he'd refused to deal with. He felt surrounded by his life's mistakes, picking up and examining each charred piece. What was this? Oh, yes, Christmas Eve. I realized I didn't love my wife but never dealt with it for five years. What was this? Oh, yes, that was my boyhood pal, Terry, floating at the bottom of the pool. And this . . . Mau was taken from me because I didn't deserve him. And this . . . this piece of emotional poison . . . Ryan Bolt is not about anything.

Ryan Bolt is not about anything. Ryan Bolt is about what other people think. And Mickey Alo, my old friend from prep school, is probably a Mafia hood. Ryan had always suspected it . . . He had even read an article in Newsweek on organized crime in which Joseph Alo had been mentioned. He'd brought it up to Mickey, when they were just out of college. Mickey had flown into a rage.

"My father owns restaurants. His family is from Sicily. Sometimes, mob guys eat in his places. That's not a crime. He's never been indicted. It's bullshit."

Ryan had let it drop. It was easier not to push it. What did it matter to him? But now he couldn't avoid it. Mickey got him this job. A
. J
. had been on the phone in Mickey's den talking about money from the Bahamas. Offshore cash. It didn't take a genius to figure out where it came from or where it was going. If organized crime was behind Haze Richards, if he was their handpicked puppet, then the implications could be devastating.

He sat down on the edit bay desk and listened to the gusting wind outside that brushed the tree limb against the window. Tap-tap-tap. He glanced out at the empty branches swaying in the wind and wondered if he could face these old emotional grenades--wondered if he could deal with his new suspicions--wondered if he was strong enough to try.

The bony-finger twig at the end of the branch hit the window, trying to get his attention. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-taptap.

Chapter
21.

THE IDEA WOKE HIM UP.

"Shit." A
. J
. struggled to a sitting position. "How could I have been so dumb." He was still half asleep, in his single room at the Des Moines Holiday Inn. He tried to clear his head. Then he swung his feet off the bed and went to the phone. "Alo, Alo," he said out loud, looking for Mickey's private number. He found it on a card stuffed in his wallet.

"Hello?" a voice growled through the receiver. "Need to talk to Mickey Alo."

"He's sleeping."

"Tell him A. J. Teagarden is on the phone."

"Just a minute." And he was on hold.

He used the moments to collect his thoughts. He started tapping his foot, nervous energy burning like battery acid. He had been looking for a defining event, one that would score with the electorate at large. A defining event was any event that instantly told the public who the candidate was. Jesse Jackson bringing the Middle East hostages home or Clinton getting his hair cut on the L
. A . runway. Both were defining events. People instantly got it. The debate had set Haze up. He would be in the national ey e i n the morning. While he had the nation's attention, A . J
. needed something tangible to show that Haze's message was true. He'd come up with it while sound asleep. After a moment, Mickey came on the line, his voice choked with sleep.

,,yeah . . ."

"It's Teagarden." "yeah..."

"This Teamster problem, this strike, are you involved with that?" he asked, knowing that the Teamsters and the mob were generally in bed together.

"Not on the phone."

"I need to talk first thing in the morning. You won't regret it."

"Where you staying?"

"Des Moines Holiday Inn, room four seventy-six." And the line went dead. A. J. Teagarden lay back on his bed.

Shit, he thought, it was perfect.
,
At seven A
. M
., New York Tony knocked on his door. A
. J
. got up and opened it, looking at the hatchet-faced bodyguard through the chain lock.

"Get dressed. Mickey is in a car downstairs," he ordered.

A
. J
. threw on his clothes, combed his hair with his fingers, and followed New York Tony down the hall and out into the cold Iowa morning.

New York Tony led A
. J
. around the side of the hotel and into an overflow parking lot where two large men in black overcoats were standing in front of a white windowless van. Their eyes metronomed the parking lot, like wary tank commanders in a fire zone. The bodyguard swung open the van door and A . J
. was suddenly looking at Mickey Alo. Mickey had a box of Winchell's doughnuts on his knees and a cup of coffee in a paper cup.

"Seen this?" Mickey asked as he handed the Des
Moines Register-Guard to A
. J
. The headline was in thirtysix-point sans serif boldface type and screamed: RHODE ISLAND GOVERNOR

Under that, the subhead read:

A
. J
. already knew this would be the reaction. He'd stayed up for the late newscasts, and all four networks had called it for Haze. All of them had shown Brenton Spencer walking off the stage and Haze's brilliant move to the mike, followed by his take-back-America closing while the other candidates sat behind him like a bunch of back-up singers.