Primary Colors (47 page)

Stanton turned around and pounded his fist on my knee. "Henry," he said, "there may be some life in this thing yet."

Chapter
VIII

Not all that much life, it appeared. We were trounced in New York, two to one. It was definitive, crushing, a paralytic wipeout. Picker thanked New York on behalf of Martha Harris, and announced he was going home for a few days, to rest and "think about what's important, what's best for our country." We went home, too. Our campaign seemed over. Stanton didn't withdraw from the race immediately, but he returned to Mammoth Falls and the pmsaic rimals of home-state governance. There was no travel schedule. There were no staff meetings. People began to leave.

I stayed. I called Daisy several times and left messages, but there was no answer. I ran along my old three-mile route, down the river and back again. I read Middlemarch. I went each day to the headquarters and cleared files; a few stray muffins remained, a few older women-local volunteers-continued to answer the phones when they rang, which wasn't often. I didn't dare ask the governor or Susan about what came next; for two days after New York, I didn't speak to them at all. We just needed a break from each other, I guess. There was no real rush. The primary schedule thinned out at that point; it would be three weeks before the next big one-Pennsylvania-if we remained in business that long. I tried to think about what I was going to do with my life, but couldn't.

I was staring off into space, not even pretending to be busy, when Libby walked into the office that Thursday. And that was the first thing I noticed: she walked, she didn't barge or boons. "Hey, kid," she said, scarily subdued, holding her outback hat against her chest with both hands. "I got the tests. You're a part of this. You want to come up with me and tell the gov?"

It was a perfect spring day. We walked up the hill to the capitol, which was girded by a lush apron of coral, fuchsia and white azaleas. (Jack and Susan Stanton would preside over the Mammoth Azalea Festival that weekend; I remembered Donny O'Brien's line about going back to ribbon cuttings and highway contracts--I'm sure Stanton did, too.) There was a quietly efficient, back-tonormal air in the governor's office; phones were ringing, which distinguished it from the mausoleum our campaign headquarters had become.

Annie Marie ushered us in. Stanton sat behind his desk. I realized I had never seen him there before. In fact, it had been months since I'd been in that office--New Year's Eve, the day I met Daisy. She was the last person I'd seen sitting there. She'd been smoking a cigarette, flipping through Leon's New Hampshire cross-tabs. She pushed her glasses up on her forehead. She looked at me--

"Well, Jack, you're in the clear," Libby said dully. This was all dreamlike and very strange. "You're not the father." He stared at his hands and exhaled. "Hell," Libby said, reviving a bit. "Uncle Charlie's not even the father."

Stanton glanced at her sharply. "Does Willie know?" he asked. "Doc Wilkinson will call them," Libby said.

"We should call them, too," Stanton said. "He's gonna be feeling awful, thinking he brought this thing down. Hell, we should all go over there for dinner tonight."

He swiveled, stared out the window, down the hill toward the few scraggly, undistinguished modern skyscrapers downtown. "Henry," he said, turning back, "any press calls on this, there's no comment. And Sunday evening, we'll pull everyone together at the Mansion, figure out where we take this thing from here--okay?"

The meeting was over. Sort of. Libby wasn't getting up from her chair. Actually, she seemed to be trying to get up but was unable t
o p
ut the full force of her will behind it. I had never seen her indecisive before.

"Libby?" Stanton asked. "What on earth is the matter with you?" "Well . ."

"Libby?"

"Oh shit," she sighed. "You know, I've been kind of . . . interested in the Picker thing," she said softly, almost mumbling. "So I made some calls-one of them to Judy Lipinsky, an old friend of mine, used to be a scorp-police reporter and a good one, a very tough chick. She's got an advertising sheet in Fort Lauderdale now. And she made some calls. And she, ah, found this state senator who claims that Picker . . . well, that Picker gave him some money to vote for this project-a development, south of Naples."

"When he was governor?" Stanton asked.

"Uh-huh," Libby said. "The vote was state matching money for the county to build a connecting road, and also the approval of a federal water and sewer grant. And the thing is, the project-Tidewater Estates-was being developed by Sunshine Brothers, which is a subsidiary of Sunshine Savings and Loan, which is owned by Edgardo Reyes Cardinale. And Edgardo Reyes Cardinale is the brother of Antonia Reyes Cardinale, who is-"

"Picker's former wife," Stanton said and whistled. "Jeez. Who else knows about this? What else do we know? Who's the senator? Will he talk?"

Libby just sat there. She didn't say anything.

"Libby, what the fuck is the matter with you?"

"I've been trying to decide . . ." she said, her voice trailing off. "Decide what?"

"Whether I want to DO THIS for you, you stupid SHIT;" she said, Libby once more. "I bust dust. I protect you. I don't do oppo . . ." "Libby, what the fuck is the difference?"

"All the difference in the world," she said. "All the moral difference in the world. I'm not too interested in tearing Freddy Picker down." "And if he's bent?" Stanton said. "If he's a crook?"

"It'll out," she said.

"Yeah, but when?" Stanton said. "Say he wins the nomination-and then it comes out. If it's there, the Republicans'll find it, that's fo
r s
ure. They may already have it. Libby, we should at least know what they know. We should at least know what's there. Think of it as dust-busting for the Democratic Party, for all of us."

"Don't patronize me, Jack. We've known each other too fucking long. . . . He cleaned your clock."

"But you'll do it," Stanton said.

"Oh, fuck you."

"I knew you would. Henry, how would you like a nice Florida vacation?" he asked. "Nothin's happening around here till Sunday. And"--he was smiling now, playing with us--"you guys worked so well together on the phony tapes."

If the handshake is the threshold act of politics, what can one say of oppo? It is the primal impulse, the headwaters of all tactics and strategy, the oldest and most dishonorable exercise linked to the Will to Power. The Greeks did oppo; they learned it from the gods. Cassius did oppo. Even our sainted FDR used the Internal Revenue Service to scope out his opponents. It is a foundation of the trade, the darkest tool, the inevitable destination; it is where the story always ends. It can be done elegantly or not--mostly not, in the late twentieth century. It can be done reluctantly or with relish, but it will always be done. And we would do it for Jack Stanton, Libby and I. We would do it as a ceremonial act, a genuflection to the origins of our craft, and as a release--our final service to the Stantons. We would do it almost ironically, standing at a distance from ourselves, curious about where we were going, how far we'd be willing to go. Without Libby, I wouldn't have gone--it was clear that her impulse was the same as mine, that she was propelled by the desire for symmetry, the need to tie up all the loose ends, to see it through.

"We are in limbo now, Henri--in every sense of the word," she said as Jennifer Rogers drove us to the airport in Libby's red Jeep Cherokee. She was sitting up front, her left hand massaging Jenny's neck. I sat in the back. "We are . . . outside the (nainstream. We are . . . in purgatory. We are . . . lost. We are . . . testing our limits. You remember the stupid song, 'Limbo Rock'? You remember the words? 'How /000000wwwwww can you g00000000? That's us, Henri. We are mora
l s
ubmariners. We dive down into the shit, hoping for a shit-balm, hoping for a cure."

"Libby, let me ask you," I said. "How did you know Jack wasn't the father of that child?"

"He was the father of the mother's ignorance," Libby said, deep into cryptic limbo mode.

"In English, Libby?"

"He gave in to the bandies on sex education," Libby said. "He wouldn't fight that fight. So the girl didn't know her vagina from the mailbox. Her folks sure as hell didn't tell her much. I had to run a goddamn sex seminar for the poor kid. She actually thought the first guy who got to you after menstruation planted the seed. In this case, the happy farmer turned out to be the second guy who got to her that particular month--Jarone Dixon, who sat next to her in sixth period, social studies. HOO-HAH! Seventh period was a study hall. Jarone Dixon and Loretta McCollister studied biology in a broom closet two days after she ovulated. Jarone, I can assure you, will make an entirely incompetent father."

"And the first guy who got to her that month was Jack Stanton?" I asked.

"We'll never know for sure, will we?" Libby said. "But your suspicion is as good as mine."

The Gold Coast Time-and-Tides was a narrow storefront in a seedy strip mall on one of Fort Lauderdale's long, flat east--west boulevards. We arrived after hours, but it didn't appear to be the sort of place where much business was transacted at any time. There was a classified-ad counter up front, then a single row of three desks; there were maps of Fort Lauderdale and vicinity on the walls above the inevitable, battered buff-colored file cabinets. Judy Lipinsky sat at the rear desk, smoking a very long cigarette. She was wearing what appeared to be a Little Orphan Annie fright wig. (It was, however, her own, actual, hyperpermed hair.)

"Hey, Lips," Libby called out.

"Hey, tongue," Judy replied, in what appeared to be a ritual greeting. "Who's the mascot?"

"Henry Burton, deputy manager of the very nearly defunct Jack Stanton for President campaign."

"Meetya," said Judy Lipinsky, standing now to shake hands. She was short, stacked, butchy--a feminine version of David Adler, it seemed--all shoulders and breasts and bravado. She was wearing a black-and-white polka-dot sheath, white Minnie Mouse shoes and lots of very red lipstick.

"How's Ralphie?" Libby asked.

"Gettin' on," Judy replied.

"Ralph is Judy's husband, a former statie," Libby explained. "She left me for him. She never told me if it was his gun or his badge." "Or the fact that he ran the North Miami barracks and gave good copy," Judy said, to me. "Libby never did dig my ecumenicism. She didn't believe me when I told her my motto was 'Different strokes for the same folks.' "

"She didn't believe me when I told her that penetration is violation," Libby replied. "So, Lips, what've we got here?"

"State Senator Orestes 'Rusty' Figueroa," Judy said. "He used to work out of Miami, but he retired and settled in up here."

"Dem or GOP?"

"Cuban," Judy said. "GOP, of course."

"That means old Jackie's right," Libby explained to me. "Whatever this is, the Republicans probably already have it. That's also why it probably hasn't hit the papers yet."

"Well, there may be another reason," Judy said. "Rusty isn't what might be called an unimpeachable witness. He had a 'For Sale' sign on his door and got caught eventually--his retirement included a suspended sentence."

"So why should we believe him?" I asked.

"Because he was a crook, not necessarily a liar," Judy said. "Anyway, Lib, your instructions were anything on Picker, right?"

Rusty Figueroa lived in a fine, sprawling ranch on one of the manmade islands in the Inland Waterway. He had silver hair and mustache but was still slim--no paunch distended his pale yellow guayabera. He welcomed us into his living room, which was elegant, subdued--
a f
irst-class hotel lobby: pleasant but undistinguished watercolors of tropical scenes sparsely rationed on stark white walls, Persian rugs and a beige sectional couch, curving around a low, oval teak coffee table, facing a large flagstone fireplace.

"You ever use that thing?" Judy asked.

"Occasionally--when I have to burn documents," Rusty said. He enjoyed being a rogue. A young woman servant brought a tray with iced tea, lemonade, Coke, Perrier and a lone bottle of Bacardi. "I assumed you wouldn't be interested in alcohol," he said. "The world has become a much less interesting place over time. Even journalists and politicians eat well and exercise--a pity. But if any of you would like to join me in something stronger? Rum and Coca? No? Oh well." We sat down on the couch, Libby and Figueroa facing each other catercornered, Judy and I farther down. Libby was controlled, businesslike--very Sam Spade. She conducted the interrogation. "So, Freddy Picker offered you a bribe to vote for this project?" she asked. "Not a bribe," Figueroa said. "I never said bribe. I said contribution." "How much?" Libby asked.

"A thousand," he said. "That was the going rate in those days." "The going rate?"

"Well, there were a lot of projects going up, a lot of roads and sewers being built. Progress, you might say, was my most important profit." He was enjoying this.

"Do you have any record of it, any way to prove it?" Libby asked. "Well"--he laughed--"I didn't keep a little black book, but if you go back into my campaign committee records, you'll see contributions there from the Sunshine folks."

"That's his brother-in-law's company," Libby said.

"His brother-in-law's company." Figueroa laughed. "And his wife's a director. And his brother, Andy, is the executive vice president. So whose company is this really, right?"