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"Business," he said. "Thought I'd stop by to say hi. Nice little operation you got here. Fifteen people?"

"Twenty-three," I said. "Plus eight volunteers. We got some more in New Hampshire."

"The volunteers--kids or old ladies?"

Smart. "Both," I said. (Mostly old ladies, locals with nothing better to do; the kids hadn't found our campaign sufficiently inspiring to drop out of college yet.)

"The boss around?"

"I'll check," I said. I wasn't going to give him shit. "Back in a minute."

I called the governor over at the statehouse. "How important?" Annie Marie asked.

"Code yellow."

"I'll find him, hold on. He ain't doing anything that important. Out in the Bronc somewhere. Probably working the cash machine. . . ." It took a few minutes. Then the familiar crackle, and the governor: "Whut?"

I knew that whut. I was interrupting something. "Sorry, Governor, but Jimmy Ozio just walked in the office. He'd like to see you." "No shit. Hmmm. What's up, you think?"

"Dunno. Scouting expedition, maybe. If Orlando had anything serious, he'd call, right? He's known for that. So how you want to handle this? Office? Mansion?"

"Dinner, no question. We'll show him around town. Mansion at six. I want you there, too. Tell him, casual. Also, you hear anything from Jerry Rosen lately?"

Rosen was the political writer at Manhattan magazine. He was a friendly--and an important--one. If he liked you, and wrote it, it meant New York money . . . usually. But not this year. He liked th
e g
overnor, and had written it. But the New York money had stayed in New York pockets, because of Ozio. The Wall Street Dems weren't going anywhere until Double 0 made his move.

"I may have a message in the stack," I said.

"You might want to return that call," Stanton said. Rosen was known to be close to Ozio. "Don't tell him Jimmy's down here, but see what he knows."

I made the dinner arrangements with Jimmy, then called Jerry Rosen.

Jerry said he didn't know shit. But he was wrong. "Basic rule with Double 0: All rumors are false," he said. "There is no inside information. Even Jimmy doesn't know what his old man's up to. I talked to Orlando the other day--"

"And?"

"He was off the wall about Stanton. He said, What's he done? That state's last in everything. I said, He knows education. Orlando goes berserk: 'He doesn't know shit about education and he's trying to race-bait on welfare.' "

"He said this on the record?"

"Who ever knows with him? He's on, he's off, he's on and off three times in the same thought," Jerry said. "I'm gonna use it. He'll probably call and scream and call me a superficial fuck, but he'll be happy I used it."

"Why?"

"Keeps him in the game."

"So he's running?"

"Who knows? You figure that he can't go on like this, dicking around--he makes a fool of himself, lives up to his worst stereotype, Oscillating Ozio. But he just can't help himself. His fantasy is a race where he doesn't run and nobody else wins. For what it's worth, I think he's kind of edging toward doing it this time."

"Why?" I asked. "Anything solid?"

Rosen snorted. "Just a feeling. Pride. He's a proud guy. It would be so embarrassing for him to take another run up to it and then back away--start all those Mafia rumors again, give the late-night guys a year's worth of gags.
He
doesn't like being laughed at . . . which is why he always chickens out in the end. But this time, he's flicked either way: The
y l
augh at him if he backs down. And if he rum--well, he's got to study up on things like what's a 4-H Club and how does it relate to the Future Farmers of America. Because if he gets it wrong, he wants to shoot himself. He drives himself nuts, explodes, takes it out on the press. Anyway, you think Stanton would want to respond to what Ozio said about him, the stuff I'm gonna quote? That's what I was calling you about." "I'll see," I said. Right. In a million years, he wants to get into a pissing match with Orlando Ozio.

"Look, even if Orlando's in, I think you beat him," Jerry said, and actually sounded like he meant it. "I was up with Stanton in Derry last week, a high school--awesome."

"You ever see Orlando do a high school?" I asked.

"Oh sure, he's terrific. But that's not his problem," Rosen said. "We are. He can scream at me. I'm from Brooklyn. I know from screaming. Wait till Orlando has to deal with Americans-of-the-press. Wait till the guy from the Concord Monitor gets his first six A
. M
. screaming phone call, 'You're an assassin, a flicking assassin!' I would say he blows his stack in the first seventy-two hours. His polls peak the first day of the campaign. He begins to slide. He can't handle adversity. It could be very ugly"

"We'll see," I said.

"Or we won't see."

I was at the Mansion about ten minutes early, just in case the governor needed anything. Susan called down from the top of the stairs: "Henry? You're going to want to see the Human Torch. He's in the study" Richard Jemmons was curled up on the couch, hands pressed between his legs, as if they'd been sucked into his thighs, watching The Honeymooners on the big screen. I clicked it off and said, "To the moon, Alice."

"On."

"No."

"Fuck you."

"Fuck me? You stupid redneck sonofabitch. What goes on in that fucked-up head of yours? You never heard of Anita Hill? Man, you are so lucky she's cool."

"I wouldna done it if she wasn't cool," he sneered.

"Richard, you will not do that again." It was Susan, in the doorway. "You will not even wink at a muffin. You will not call any person who works for us Winona, even if her name is Winona. If you do, the best you can hope for is that we'll can your butt. A more likely scenario is that I'll conic after your scrawny little ding-a-ling with a pair of garden shears."

The governor came in. He didn't say anything; he just let Susan handle it. He was wearing a short-sleeved knit shirt--colors of the nineties, purple and teal--jeans and cowboy boots. Both Stantons, in fact, were wearing jeans. The effect was not overwhelming, in either case. In fact, their studied informality seemed particularly lame when Jimmy Ozio came in--still in his black suit, white shirt, gray tie. "Hey," Jack Stanton said. It was Southern for hi, but with some yelp mixed in, I thought, as Ozio crunched his hand. A campaigning pol's hands are, inevitably, pretty tender from overwork. Jimmy nodded around, once again casing the joint. He saw Richard on the couch. "You're Dick Jemmons?" He said.

"Richard," Richard said, pulling a hand out from between his legs, but still stuck in fetal on the couch. "Yeah."

"Nice work in Jersey last year," Jimmy said. "Orlando thinks you're almost as smart as he is."

Very nice: a light touch, making fun of the old man. Jimmy was a pro. This wasn't going to be easy.

"So, you like barbecue?" the governor asked.

"Hamburgers and hot dogs?" Jimmy's game was elegant: You play Southern, I'll play Northern. We'll see who cuts the shit first. "We're gonna have to take you out to a real, old-fashioned Southern pit barbecue," the governor said. "What you say, Richard? Wet or dry?"

"The boy takes off that tie, we can take him to Fat Willie's," Richard said. "Ozio, you ever eat pig with your hands?"

"Raw or cooked?"

it magnificent. He and Susan had Jimmy in the Bronco; I trailed with Richard in my old Honda. "So y'all livin' down here?" he asked. I wasn't living much of anywhere. I'd spent the first few months with the governor, often just the two of us, traveling the country. It was an apprenticeship. I learned how he worked, and thought. We had entered the race officially in September, but it didn't change the routine much. We did the money thing, mostly--but he didn't get all googly around rich people, the way most pols do; nor did he carp about them behind their backs. Money had no magic for him; the folks did. He was lovely with the people, dispensing his meaningful handshakes, listening to their stories; he had a knack--no, it was more than a knack; it was something deeper, more profound and respectful--for making it clear that he had listened to them and understood, and cared. He never left a room--it was small rooms, mostly, those first few months--without knowing everyone's name, and he would remember them. Even in New Hampshire, a state that seemed to have a magnetic attraction for chilly, pale, pinched skeptics. Not his crowd, you'd figure. But we moved from living room to living room, coffee to coffee. The governor tilled and mulched slowly, carefully, lovingly; he allowed them their skepticism, encouraged it, joked about it: "I don't want y'all to make up your minds too soon, now," he'd say. "Take a look at the field, think about it. You still have a hundred and twenty-three days"--or whatever it was (he always knew)--"before you determine the fate of the republic."

He enjoyed this, and them. And more: He loved what it was about. He loved governance--especially executive governance. (Legislators were a different, somewhat less interesting species.) In two months I'd learned more from him about the public sector--the people's business--than I had in five years with Larkin. We always hit the statehouse, wherever we went--and he never had to ask for directions. He always knew where the governor's office was--sometimes other officials as well. He was ecumenical. He liked them all. It didn't matter if they were Democrats or Republicans. He could tell you what every last governor had done, what their strengths and weaknesses were. The amount of information was staggering--but even more impressive was the energy, and interest, he put into it. A bureaucrat somewhere--in Lansing, in Austin--might tell him a new way to work

Clean Air money, and he'd put the big ears on, and he'd stay and stay, we'd fall hours behind, it didn't matter. He wouldn't leave there until he'd drained the guy.

It would pay off, too. He was a human clearinghouse; he cross-pollinated. One time we were in Montgomery, wandering through the state capitol--a building that had deep, fearful resonances for me, the cradle of the Confederacy, George Wallace's joint--and he said, "Henry, you're freaked, I can feel it. I'm gonna make you feel all shiny and good."

He dragged me down a hallway, to the attorney general's office. "Now, Jim Bob Simmons, he's the boss here--and not a bad fella," he explained, "but I'm gonna show you the real brains of the operation. Hey, Betty," he said to the receptionist, a drab white woman with great butterfly eyeglasses, for whom the blush of youth had faded much too soon. "Your momma back on her feet again?"

"You bet, Governor," she said, matter-of-fact, as if governors were always stopping by to ask about her mother. "But the chemotherapy was a bitch."

Stanton stopped, squatted down next to the woman, took her hand. "But she's clear now?"

"So they say."

"Ain't that the truth," he said, snagging a couple of Fig Newtons from her half-opened top drawer. "You never know. She a churchgoin' woman?"

"Every Sunday."

"You go with her?"

Betty hesitated. Stanton took her hand. "Look, honey, you might think about that--goin' with her. Specially now You can ask your husband to take the kids-- Ray, right?"

She nodded, and now began to tear up. "He's got so much, Governor--long-haulin'. He comes in Saturday night, he's just dead." "Yeah, I guess," Stanton said, pulling her closer and giving a gentle peck on the side of her forehead. "But you think about it. Mean a lot to your momma. Maybe you take the kids, put them in Sunday school, or with a friend, or somethin'. . . . So where's my man? He's gotta be here, right? He ain't off dove-huntin' or anything?"

"I just buzzed him," Betty said, and a tall, thin black man came through the door. Stanton stood up, brightened, and threw his arms around him.

"You coulda called," the black man said.

"Coulda, shoulda, woulda--just passin' through, Billy," he said. "This is Henry Burton, my new drone. Henry, this is William J. Johnson, deputy attorney general of the state of Alabama, a great American but a semiretard when it came to Torts."

"Pleased to meet you," Johnson said, his enormous hand swallowing mine. "What the governor neglected to tell you was that my notes got him through Contracts the year he decided to manage a hippie runnin' for Senate down here, 'stead of hangin' out and being a student like a normal person."

"He wasn't a hippie," Stanton said. "Just antiwar."

"Last I heard, Jack, he was livin' on a farm in northern California, makin' goddamn furniture."

"You seen the stuff?" Stanton said. "It is awesome great. We're sleepin' under his headboard, at the Mansion."

"C'mon back, you fool," Johnson said, throwing an arm over Stan-ton's shoulder.

It was a small office, piled with reports and lawbooks, diplomas on the wall, pictures of Bill Johnson elegant in midair, driving the lane against Michigan in the NCAAs--and another picture ofJohnson, in an enormous Afro, with Jack Stanton, his face camouflaged by what appeared to be a costume mustache, sitting side by side on a couch, deep in what seemed a very serious conversation. It was a surprisingly intimate photograph for a politician's wall--usually, you don't want to risk much beyond your children's orthodontia and handshakes with people more famous than you--and it moved me. "Law school," Johnson explained, noticing my interest. "What were we arguing aboutjack? Sending the North Vietnamese guns or bandages?" "Naww, you were pined off at me for asking your sister out," Stanton said.