Primary Colors (15 page)

"I'm HERE," she announced. "Who's talking to me?"

I was. Lucille-who had made herself more of a presence in the campaign now-and Brad Lieberman were joining me.

"Henry Burton," I said.

"Ah-HAH," she said, not introducing herself.

"Brad Lieberman."

"Ah-HAH."

"Hello, Lib," Lucille said.

"Shit for brains!" Libby greeted her. "You learned how to watch your mouth? Remember the geezers? Remember the geezers? I will not let you fuck up this campaign like Florida! I WILL NOT LET IT HAPPEN!"

"That was twenty years ago," said Lucille-a new, diffident Lucille. Olivia Holden had done her first good deed.

"I was thinner then," Libby said, turning to me suddenly, putting her face too close to mine, blue eyes flaming. "I had a waist. Truly, I did. WHERE IS THIS HAPPENING?"

In my office, which seemed too small to contain this . . . whatever. Brad brought in some chairs. Libby didn't use one; she sort of half perched herself on my desk-she couldn't get up all the way-facing out. Which meant her back was to me. Which meant I had to move. And so I did, around to the other side of my desk. The three of us faced her in a semicircle now. It was clear who was running this meeting. "You will give me WHAT resources?"

"What do you need?" I asked.

"WhatdoIneed, whatdolneed, what do I need? NOT HERE. We do this someplace else. I will take a house. I know the house. Nice litde house, north of the capitol. It has the sweetest little rose garden-call Becky Raymond, 6734982-tell her the governor will require the house for his presidential campaign. She'll know what you mean. It's her house. Now, staff: THAT one. The one who looks like Winona Ryder-mmmm, absolutely gorgeous." She pointed to Jennifer, the media muffin, working the phones, dark hair down over her eyes. "Is she smart?"

"She's smart," I said, fearing-briefly-for her safety (then remembering how easily she'd handled Richard during his Winona period). "TOUGH?"

"Eats nails," Brad said.

"NAILS? Hoo-HAH! One other. A quiet little pussy boy. A fetcher, a scanner. Good eyes. Let me look." She walked to the doorway, looked over the various muffins: "THAT ONE." She pointed to Terry Hickman, a soft, scraggly mountain boy who had wandered down from the state university-"Takin' a breather," he had said-and was working on scheduling. He played the guitar and banjo, entertained the troops. I hated to pull him out of the office. He was good for morale.

"If it's okay, I'd like to keep him here."

"NO WAY," Libby said, in my face again. "We do this RIGHT or not at all, yagotme? Don't fuck with me, Henry."

"I'm not fucking with you. We want this to happen, but we've got a lot of other things going on here."

"All right, all right, al
lll
right!" she said. Phew. "Then, THAT one," she said, pointing to a kid in hind-raising I didn't know. I turned to Brad, who knew everyone.

"Peter Goldsmith," he said. "Good choice. Quiet, hardworking." "But can he read smart?" Libby asked.

"In three languages," Brad said.

"Okay, I want them as soon as we're done," Libby said. "Now, Chicago. I need Chicago. What gives?"

"Brad used to work for the mayor," I said. "He's been handling that."

"The MAYOR? THAT FUCKING FOOL? We HATE the mayor-the other one, the real one. His father. That's why we're neck-deep in shit in this country, because of people like that. That's why . . . So? So, where is it?"

"This mayor is working with us," said Brad. "There have been seventeen media requests to check through the arrest records of everyone involved. We've slowed down the process, but we're not going to be able to stop it."

"Why stop it?" Libby said. "YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING, do you?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Jack's right," she said. "It was a mistake. It was YOUR BOYFRIEND," she said, pointing at Lucille.

"Not till later," Lucille said. "I wasn't there."

"But you must know about it, right? Right?" Libby had moved into a snarly whisper now. "After grinding your scrawny little pushyassed body, sweating, juicing, heaving with Mr. Howard Ferguson, you never whispered sweet nothings, past histories, conspiracies? You never talked? No postgame analysis? Never?"

"Libby, you're fucking out of your mind," Lucille said.

"RIGHT! WE KNOW THAT!" Libby said. "What we don't know is what you know about Chicago."

)

"Nothing."

"Well, I know."

"What," I asked, "do you know?"

"That Jack went along to stop 01' Firefly from doing something crazy, that's what! 01' Firefly never had the chance to do something crazy-at least I don't think so. The pigs nailed them before"-she turned to Brad-"your fucking ex-employer's father's fucking storm troopers. If you were there, if you were there, you-can-never-forget-what it SOUNDED like."

"But he called Senator Dawson?"

"OF COURSE HE DID! What would you do? He was only trying to save his friend-his ollll' college buddy, ol' Pinky Penis Ferguson-from doing something stupid. He put his future on the line FOR A FRIEND! Would you do that, Henry Burton? Huh? So, of course, he called LaMott Dawson-and, of course, that shitheel Sherman Presley would use that information now to try to take Our Jackie out."

"Sherman Presley?" I said. Of course: how stupid that we hadn't figured it out.

"Boy, are YOU lame!" Libby said. "Anyone with any brains would just assume Sherm the Worm. Susan knew it right away."

But she didn't tell anyone. "Why does Sherman Presley have it in for the governor?" I asked.

"Why does anyone have it in for anyone?" Libby said, almost sanely. "Jealousy. Jackie stole his boy-the good senator. LaMott just simply fell in love with Jack. And then, the whole thing with Beasley Arnold happened. You know about that, right?"

I didn't. "Tell me," I said.

"Life's too short and we've got scum to trash," she said. "Like that shitbird Cashmere McLeod." Libby read my face: "Boy, you really don't know shit, do you?"

"You mean Susan's hairdresser?" Lucille said.

"And Jack's porkpie," Libby said. I felt dizzy. "Oh, for Chrissake, Henry, you never heard Tommy the Trooper saying the governor was goin' out to work the cash machine? What use did Jack Stanton ever have for money?"

The cash machine. I had seen Jack Stanton from Washington down; Libby Holden, clearly, knew him from Mammoth Falls up. It wa
s s
trange, vertiginous-the same Jack Stanton but a different world, a world that I'd not thought about much. I knew some of the Mammoth Falls friends and backers. They seemed the usual boosters-a few like Dwayne Forrest, the Hero Feed king, were national players. The rest were lawyers, squinny-eyed local adepts. I knew that Sherman Presley was a serious lawyer in town, the former head of the local power authority-and, of course, Senator Lamott Dawson's former legislative assistant; I knew he didn't have much use for Jack Stanton. But who cared? That was Mammoth Falls; we were leaving that behind. I hadn't really thought about Mammoth Falls's ability to reach out and pull us back. And Cashmere McLeod: Richard would truly enjoy that one, after all his elaborate war-gaming, after all his scenarios. Susan's hairdresser. I noticed that Lucille Kauffman hadn't said a word. I tried to think about this as Richard would: "So what about Cashmere McLeod? What can she do to us?"

"She can sell her story to the National Flash for a hundred and seventy-five thousand minus the ten percent she's giving to that slime-sucking, down-on-his-luck, shit-on-his-shoes, night-school attorney-attorney, HAH!-Randy Culligan, who's agenting the deal for her," Libby said. She was awesome.

"You know this?" I asked.

"No, I IMAGINED IT IN THE BOOBY HATCH!" Libby said. "How long, how intense?" I asked.

"Let me see," Libby Holden said, suddenly falling to her knees on the floor with a splat-eliciting a gasp from Lucille and, I think, me-and then bending over her leather satchel, rummaging through it. "Lemmesee, lemmesee. 1989, maybe, 1988? Ah-HAH! Here." She pulled out a cheap black vinyl-covered datebook, flipped through the pages: "He drove her home from the Mansion April 12, 1989. He stopped at her house. He stayed for an hour. Hoo-HAH! Ya suppose they were playing CLUE?"

"It's bullshit," Lucille said, finally.

"In your dreams, sweetheart."

"She can't hurt us," Lucille said. "She's selling a story. She has no proof. She has no credibility. It's bullshit."

"It's a leading indicator," Libby said, still on her knees on the floor. "Our Jackie has done some pretty stupid things in his life. He's poke
d h
is pecker in some sorry trash bins. We gotta stop them before they stop us. We gotta CRUSH'EM, then sweep 'em up. From now on, you can call me--THE DUSTBUSTER!" She smiled, wickedly, crazily, then leaned over and took my chin in her hands and stared me very close in the face. "You know, honeychile, I'm stronger than dirt." Yeah, no kidding. But I was numb. The shape, texture, dimensions of the campaign had suddenly changed. It was a different landscape now, though still familiar, which made it sort of creepy. The Chicago story sounded about right--and so did Cashmere McLeod (I had to admit). I wanted to set up Libby in a nice quiet room--padded, perhaps--with a pile of her favorite food (ribs with wet sauce, I later learned) and have her tell me the whole story, from the beginning. Slowly, comfortably, coherently. Richard had said it, again and again: we were flying blind. But I'd never quite believed it. I figured I knew Jack Stanton, at least the important things about him. I knew what sort of man he was. I knew his weaknesses. I'd known the shape--if not the extent--of his problems from the first day I'd met him. I'd placed that information in my own, desperately hopeful, context: he wasn't perfect, but he was the most talented natural politician I'd ever seen--and his heart was in the right place. Signing on had been a risk but not a very difficult decision. The strengths so clearly outweighed the weaknesses. I couldn't not.

So Libby was, oddly, reassuring. She had come to a similar conclusion, with much better information than mine. She knew the stories; she was the Stanton family griot, but, I soon learned, that was the extent of it. She brought no analysis to the table. She wouldn't be able to tell me why. (We would all have to come to our own conclusions about that.) She had affixed herself to the Stantons early on, out of a primal sort of attraction. There had been no calculation involved. It reminded me of what Hector Alvarado, a back-bencher from Los Angeles used to say, back in my nose-counting days, about Louis Parsons, a mortal yellow-dog redneck from Mississippi. The two had nothing in common but had become very tight, constant phone pals. "The animal in me," Hector would say, "gets off on the animal in him." Wasn't that how all of us made up our minds about these strange public people? Wasn't the staffer's passion, ultimately, visceral rather tha
n i
deological? Libby's insanity was an extrapolation, I realized, of my own propensities. That realization did not please me, but-for the moment-I could live with it.

I conferenced Richard and Daisy at about midnight that night. I was at home-it was sort of home now; more than New Hampshire was, at least-lying back on the bed, watching CNN with the sound off. "Richard, I met your dream woman," I said.

"The fuckee? Who is it?"

"Oh, I found out about that too," I said. "But I was referring to-

the Dustbuster!"

I told them about Libby. I told them the campaign had acquired a manic, six-foot, 250-pound lesbian who knew where all the bodies were buried and could shut up Lucille.

"So Lucille and Howard?" Daisy said. "Wow. It's like birds fucking. You just can't picture-"

"But it all fits: Howard as the radjack going along to the protest, trying to pull him back," I said.

"Who cares about twenty years ago? Who's the fucking fuckee?" Richar
d s
aid.

"Her name is-Cashmere McLeod. She's Susan's hairdresser."

I could hear Daisy laughing. Richard wasn't: "What she look like? She a piece of ass? She plausible?"

"Don't know," I said. In truth, as soon as I'd heard the name, I'd imagined the rest of the package so immediately and so totally that I wasn't even curious.

"Farrah Fawcett in Charlie's Angels," said Daisy. "I'd stake my life on it. Farrah Fawcett-with a blanker look and maybe twenty, thirty pounds more beef on her."

"No shit: Susan's hairdresser?" Richard said. "And she's coming out?"

"For one hundred seventy-five thousand dollars-to one of the supermarket sheets," I said.

"We can't bid any higher than that?" Richard asked.

"Do we want to?"

"We don't have to," Daisy said. "This is a joke. We're all laughing." "We ain't gonna be laughing when the rest of the world--all the fuckees all over the globe, the talented ten thousand, discover there's money to be made off Jack Stanton," Richard said. "So when is this happening?"

"Dunno," I said. "Soon, I guess. The deal's done."

"The Stantons know?"

"Dunno."

"Who's gonna spring it on them," Richard said. "Shall we take this one to Susan, Daisy?"