the Plan (1995) (30 page)

He had her talking; now he had to get her thinking, get her to interact with him.

"You don't wanna be alone, Nita. Haze isn't here, he's in his room. Okay? It's just me. You know I'd never d
o a
nything to hurt you. You know I've beeny our friend since Swarthmore."

A
. J
. had met her at Swarthmore College at a dance and had brought her back to Harvard where he and Haze were in school. Haze had seen her and that had been it for A . J
., a mating ritual that had replayed itself with various women over the years. Haze was the leading man. A . J
. always ended up with Dennis Day's part.

"Come on, Nita . . . I wanna make sure you're okay."

There was a long pause, and then he heard the door being unbolted. He turned the handle and entered the room.

Anita was looking at him with big, brown eyes that were dulled by vodka and lack of sleep.

"What?" she said, angrily.

"What? 'What' isn't the right word. 'What' is an interrogative construction asking for information. What we need is . . . 'Why' . . . 'Why' is a word that defines cause, purpose, or reason," he said, his mind racing, knowing that she had majored in English and might find this mildly diverting. He watched her for a smile and got the tiniest response.

"Close the door." He turned and closed it behind him, then locked it. "I know what you're trying to do, A
. J
. You're trying to save his bacon, just like you always do."

"I'm only here as your friend, Nita. I am your friend. You believe that, don't you?"

She had always liked A
. J
. From that first day at Swarthmore, when he'd showed up at the mixer in plaid shorts and a T-shirt cruising the place, looking for girls. She suspected now she should never have traded him for Haze.

"Why? Why's the word we've gotta go with," A
. J
. was saying. "Why divorce Haze?"

"I don't want him to be President. You know what he is, A
. J
. You know he shouldn't be in that job. Why are you doing this?"

"He's not going to win, Nita. It won't happen. If that's your reason, you're doing this for nothing. You're gonn
a r
un a divorce on national TV, have paparazzi snapping your picture everywhere you go. You're gonna have to read about it in the tabloids--have Letterman do jokes about it. Right now, Haze is news. Divorce him now, it's gonna be a PR train wreck. But in two weeks, he's gonna be out of it. Nobody'll care."

"I don't believe he's going to be out of it."

"You haven't seen the tracking polls. We're sucking wind south of the Mason-Dixon."

"That isn't what the TV and papers say."

"The press? Come on, Nita. You know better than that. These guys say what we tell them. Fact is, Haze isn't selling down south. Here, look. . . ." He pulled some poll papers out of his pocket that, in reality, showed that Haze was scoring big. But they were confusing unless you knew what you were looking at. He took them over to the desk and turned on the lamp.

"Come here, look at this."

She moved over slowly and looked at the printout. A
. J
. started a breezy misinterpretation.

"Okay, look here, on 'Likability.' " He ran his fingers across to the coefficient number, which was simply the multiplier. It said fifteen. "Only fifteen percent," he lied, ignoring the real percentage number to the right, which said his "Likability" was 62 percent. "On 'Trust in a World Crisis,' look at this. . . . Are you looking at this, Anita?" She looked down at the page. "Seventeen percent," he said, showing her another coefficient. "They don't like him down there, Nita. We're cooked. It's over," he said, hoping she would go for it.

"Does Haze know?"

"I haven't told him. In two or three weeks, we're gonna be outta the bubble and off the national landscape. Then you can do what you want and it won't be on every news-break."

"You promise?" Her voice was now tiny.

"We're gonna get clobbered. The rednecks think Haze is just another fast-talking, New England carpetbagger."

He looked in her vodka-dimmed eyes and watched as she bought it. A
. J
. reached out his arms to her.

`This has been tough on you, hasn't it, Nita?" She nodded and he moved to her and hugged her. He could feel the heat from her body through her clothing. It was cold in the room but, strangely, Anita was sweating. He held her for several minutes.

"Look, I'll stay in touch every day. If anything changes, I'll tell you. You gonna be okay?"

She took a long moment and, finally, nodded again.

Ten minutes later, he got her to lie down on her bed. When her breathing got heavy, A
. J
. retreated. He found Haze standing just inside his bedroom door.

"What happened?"

"I got us some time."

Haze zipped up his garment bag and they hurried out to the limo. A
. J
. filled Haze in on the way to the airport.

"Once we win in the South, she's gonna know you were lying," Haze said.

"I know. We're gonna have to figure something else out." A
. J
. knew that ultimately there was probably only one way to fix Anita's threat of a divorce. But he wasn't sure he'd sunk that low.

Chapter
43.

ON SUPER TUESDAY MORNING, MICKEY MET THE PHONE
technician in the downstairs entry of the big house in Jersey. Mickey showed him the phone, where he wanted the
Pin Tel installed.

The technician started to attach the wires, hooking the small box to the den phone. "My supervisor runs stockroom checks. These little suckers is the latest and we ain't got but a few. They's for government agencies only, and he's got 'em numbered and listed in this here book and he--"

"This one gotta printout?" Mickey interrupted. "Yup. Don't come any better."

It took half the morning to hook the Pin Tel up to all five lines in the house. The tech had his office call to test it.

"Okay," the tech said as he snapped the plastic console cover back on the small box. "Anybody calls in, the number is gonna flash up here on the little screen and it's gonna get recorded down there, in the memory disk." He showed Mickey a button that scrolled the memory of the Pin Tel. When the phone rang, the Pin Tel flashed the number. It was functioning properly.

"Okay, that there's the number this call is coming in from," he said, pointing to the display screen, "and it goes right in yer file memory, like that . . . there, see?" Mickey nodded and escorted the man to the front door.

"You through using this, you call me, 'cause I gotta pick up the unit 'cause, like I was saying, they keep track of them downtown. An' if one's missing, Lou goes orbital."

Mickey watched as the tech get into his truck, then he took his Mercedes and headed into New York City to meet with Silvio Candrate.

Mickey met the old gunsel in his small flat in Little Italy. Silvio had gone fat with age. Broken veins road-mapped his face, and high blood pressure had cooked his complexion red. In his day, Silvio had been the best. With Silvio, you got two fives for a ten every time. Mickey sat in the small living room, full of pictures of Silvio's family, and they spoke of things that didn't matter, while Silvio's wife brought cakes and coffee. She fussed over Mickey, calling him Don Alo.

After fifteen minutes of polite discussion about Silvio's sons and nephews, they finally decided to take a walk, leaving the stuffy apartment and Silvio's groveling wife behind.

Silvio led Mickey to a gas station that he owned. They moved into the lube rack where one of Silvio's nephews was using a power drill to pull tire lug nuts off a car on a hoist. The drill was screaming loudly in the small concrete garage. Silvio liked to hold business meetings under the lube rack, with the drill playing its horrible music, because he knew that it would be impossible for any bug, no matter how sophisticated, to sift through the wall of noise. Silvio had been holding his negotiations here for twenty years and he'd never yet faced a government recording in court.

"I need your 'Ghost.' I got a problem."

"I'll see if I can find him," Silvio said, pushing his red, chapped lips into Mickey's ear, half shouting over the drill.

"I don't have much time. This is very sensitive. I know what it costs and I got the up-front on me," Mickey yelled back into Silvio's ear.

"Not necessary. You got unlimited credit at the House of Hits. You call back tonight. Ask me if I wanna go to the opera. . . . If I've got a yes, I'll say. 'We should go to the opera.' Gimme a number of a clean phone where I can have him call you."

Mickey wrote down the number of his scrambled line and gave it to the old man. Moments later, they walked out of the lube garage and back up the street to Mickey's car.

Mickey did some business in New York. At six P
. M
., he called the old man from a social club in Little Italy where his father was once a member. "How ya doin', Silvio? I got some tickets to the opera, wanna go?"

"That's great," Silvio said, never mentioning Mickey's name. "We should go to the opera." It was the message Mickey wanted to hear. When Mickey hung up, he looked up at the TV over the bar. It was Super Tuesday and the six o'clock news was on.

Haze Richards was on camera at his hotel room in Memphis. He had just finished his trip through ten states. The polls had closed in the Southeast and network exit poll data was starting to come in.

"It looks like you're ahead in every state," the network field correspondent said, holding the microphone under Haze's smiling face.

"I'm very encouraged . . . and happy. But let's wait and see what happens when the votes are tabulated."

Mickey smiled from his booth in the back and ordered a glass of grappa. The waiter set it down and followed Mickey's gaze to the TV.

"Whatta you think of this guy, Don Alo?" the waiter asked, respectfully.

Mickey smiled. "I think one day soon, he's gonna be my President."

While Mickey was watching the six o'clock news in the social club in Little Italy, Lucinda and Ryan were three time zones to the west on the aft deck of the Linda.

It was three o'clock Pacific standard time, and they had the little portable TV placed on the companionway steps to shield the screen from the slanting light. Ryan was feeling dull from an afternoon of lying outside in the sun. He was watching without expression as the network big feet called state after state for Haze Richards.

"Let's switch now to Leslie Wing at Haze Richards's hotel in Memphis," Dale Hellinger said. Dale was a tall, distinguished black commentator with a voice like James Earl Jones's, who had taken over for Brenton Spencer at UBC. The shot switched to an attractive Asian correspondent standing in a roomful of festive campaigners.

"Thank you, Dale. It's a party here at Richards's Election Central and a foregone conclusion that Haze Richards is going to sweep all of the Super Tuesday states by large margins." She glanced off-camera for a second. "I see Haze's campaign chairman. . . . Let me see if I can get him over." She moved with her cameraman in pursuit; then A . J
.'s bushy head came into the frame of the small TV.

"Mr. Teagarden, Mr. Teagarden. . . . Leslie Wing, UBC. This is quite a night," she said as the wonk turned and grinned into the camera. People whooped it up and danced behind them.

"We seem to be doing something right, Leslie."

"Haze was a political unknown only a month ago, and now it looks as if he's all but sewn up the Democratic nomination."

"The American people are looking for something. There's a feeling of anger out there, Leslie . . . a feeling that, in the current system of government, there is something desperately wrong. Haze stands for what can be right. He'sgonna redefine the process of government. Grab the institutions of power back from the Washington lobbyists. He'sgonna get it running the way the people want it t o r un. It's why I'm with him, and I think it's why America is with him tonight."

"Thank you." And Leslie Wing turned back to the camera. "It's a madhouse here, Dale. People are really enjoying themselves."

"Tell me, Leslie," Dale said from Brenton's old anchor desk. "Is there any word from Governor Richards on when he'll come down and give his victory speech?"

"Let me try and find out, Dale." She tried to follow A
. J
., but he was dancing a polka with a fat campaign contributor . . . arms and feet flying, off across the floor like two dancing hippos. "I'm sorry, Dale, it's just unbelievable here."

Ryan and Lucinda watched without saying a word as the fifty-foot ketch swayed slowly in the wind at the end of its anchor chain.

"What's for dinner?" Ryan finally asked.

"I was thinking I'd go into town and get us a nice two-inch steak. How about barbecued beef, a green salad, and garlic bread, and the best red wine I can find?"

"I'd like that."

Lucinda went below and changed out of Linda's bathing suit, into a pair of Linda's shorts and a cropped top that she'd found in a drawer under the forward bunk. She jumped into the rubber Avon boat, started the five-horse outboard engine, and went to buy dinner. On the way into Avalon, she wondered if the nightmare was over for them, or just beginning. . . .