The Innocent Have Nothing to Fear (16 page)

There was a long pause. Ted Jawinski looked down at his cowboy boots. Sue Johnson clutched her hands tightly together in her lap. Bruce Dent looked the vice president right in the eye.

“Bruce?” she asked with that great smile.

“Well, Mrs. Vice President, as I think you can understand, I do need to talk with Armstrong George first.”

The cabinet secretaries stiffened.

“I would think you know where he stands on the major issues. Tell me, Bruce, do you support closing our borders to all non-Europeans? Do you support English not only first, but English only in all our schools? Do you support withdrawing from the UN? Do you support ending NATO?”

It was a sudden, angry burst. The secretary of defense was so shocked his mouth was hanging open. I liked it. If she showed this side more often, we'd be a hell of a lot better off.

The young man reddened. “I just think it would be best if I spoke with him, Mrs. Vice President.”

“Of course, Bruce.” She smiled. “Even Armstrong George hasn't done away with the First Amendment. At least not yet.”

Yes! Ram it right up the little twerp's ass!

A long silence hung in the room. It was not pleasant. Finally, Ted Jawinski spoke. “Could I kind of get back to you on this thing?” he asked.

“Of course. But let me remind you that the next twenty-four hours could determine the future direction of our country, and you can play a critical, positive role. This is no time to play politics with our national interests.”

They all looked down. Playing the shame card at the end was a good move. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was better at this than I thought. It was funny how people changed when they had to. I can't tell you how many candidates I've had who started out promising to stay positive, no attacks, but by the end were begging you to just nuke the other bastard and get it over with. Nuke him, nuke his wife, nuke his damn kids if that's what it takes. Just don't let me lose.

As soon as the three delegates left the room, Lisa Henderson started applauding. Everyone joined in.

“If I may say so,” the secretary of defense said, “I only wish every delegate at this convention could have been in this room.”

“Well, no one committed.” Hilda Smith sighed, but it was clear she was pleased. “J.D. has been telling me we have to up the stakes for this nomination, and I think it's time I took his advice.”

“I thought I suggested kicking them all in the ass,” I said. “I'll be back in a second,” I added, and slipped out the suite door while everyone was laughing. It was a dark laugh, nervous and edgy.

I caught up with Bruce Dent at the elevator. “Bruce,” I said, waving him over. The young man still looked flushed from his encounter with the vice president. I put my arm around his shoulder and walked him down the hall.

“Listen,” I told him in a warm, friendly voice, “you're a Marshall Scholar, right? Smart as hell.”

The intense young man did not attempt to dissuade me from this opinion.

“A quick study,” I continued. “So here's a little lesson in Crime and Punishment.” I smiled and Bruce Dent nodded, focusing on me with his myopic eyes. I felt like grabbing his ears and ripping them off.

“It's really quite simple, you arrogant little shit,” I said in the same warm voice. “Come out for us in the next hour and I make you assistant deputy campaign manager, and when we win, you get a nice, juicy position in the White House.” I smiled.

Bruce Dent turned red and then swallowed, a process that looked painful. “You're offering me a job for my vote. That's illegal.”

I punched him playfully in the shoulder. “That's why we call it Crime. Now here's the Punishment part. If you don't, or if you jerk us around, then I and my entire opposition research operation will spend the rest of our lives digging up the nastiest shit we can find on you and making sure it gets in the right places.”

Bruce Dent's face reddened even more. “That's outrageous.”

“Of course it is. So is the fact that sometimes we just make up this shit and leave it to some poor fuck like you to deny it. Got a little secret or two there, pal? Maybe smoked a little dope over there in England? But hey, the choice is yours.”

I beamed as if I had just offered my favorite nephew a choice job. I took my arm off Dent's shoulder and moved in front of him, gesturing with both hands. “I want to hear a little communication here, Bruce. The problem with the world today, nobody communicates enough. I want to include it in my own personal New Bill of Rights. Humans must communicate more.”

Bruce Dent stared at me. “How much does a deputy campaign manager make?”

“Assistant deputy campaign manager, Bruce. Now we're talking.”

I met Sandy Morrison late in the afternoon at her suite at the Royal Orleans on Bourbon Street. It was a sprawling space, with louvered windows and French doors leading out to a balcony overlooking a courtyard. The curtains were drawn and the air conditioning was on so high that I shivered as I stepped inside the room, sweat forming in the small of my back. Somewhere Brazilian jazz was playing. It felt like a nightclub.

Sandy was wearing a tailored red suit that seemed to match her fingernails perfectly. It didn't look accidental. In a high wingback chair, she crossed her legs and steepled her hands.

“Of course I can do it,” she said.

“But will we get caught?” I knew the answer, but I just wanted to hear some reassurance.

Sandy shrugged. “If we use my people, my regular phone banks, maybe. You never know who might talk. Christ, J.D., I have twenty-two hundred people who make phone calls for me in a dozen cities. You think I can nursemaid every one of them? All I can do is strangle them when they fuck up.”

She smiled. It seemed to be a notion that had particular appeal to her.

She stood and walked over to the curtains in front of the French doors leading onto the balcony. Pulling them back, she revealed a stunning Asian woman in a string bikini lying on a chaise longue. She looked to have been doused in oil.

Sandy let the curtain drop. “Nineteen,” she mouthed, almost shivering in delight. She crossed over and picked up a pack of menthol cigarettes off the wet bar and lit one with a gold cigarette lighter. She snapped it closed with a hard click, inhaling half the cigarette in one long gulp.

I'd used Sandy Morrison phone banks for years before we finally met, when I was running a Texas governor's race and found myself in her home base of Dallas. To my astonishment, she insisted on picking me up in a limo and took me on an all-night tour of Dallas's strip clubs, the “best tittie bar circuit in the world,” she'd proudly announced. All the doormen had known her and many of the dancers. I'd never seen anybody have as much fun.

At the final club of the evening, a massive place known as VIP, with what seemed like hundreds of dancers, Sandy had summoned a dozen of the most attractive to a private room known as the Champagne Club and, with obvious delight, told me to take my pick, any or all would be happy to accompany me back to the Mansion on Turtle Creek hotel, where I was staying. More overwhelmed than aroused, I passed.

“You sure, honey?” she'd asked, gently waving a handful of hundred-dollar bills toward the women. Sandy fanned the bills between her fingers, like a Vegas dealer. I wondered where she had learned the trick. “You take that car back, sweetie, 'cause little Sandy is going to have herself some fun. God, I do love being rich.”

When I left, she was surrounded by the dancers, handing out hundred-dollar bills like candy to children. She was smiling and looked supremely pleased to be alive.

“We elect your Hilda, she going to take away my cigarettes?” That was one of the accusations Armstrong George had made, that a President Hilda Smith would push to make tobacco illegal.

“God, I hope so,” I said.

“Fuck you,” Sandy said, lighting up another. She held the smoke for a moment, then blew it in my direction.

“Fuck you, too.” I smiled at her.

“Here's how it ought to work,” she announced. “What we do is get somebody else to make the calls. I hire another outfit, a small firm, and tell them that I was approached by Armstrong George's campaign to make the calls but couldn't do it because I was already working for Hilda Smith. But I thought she was going to lose and wanted to help Armstrong George, so I was setting it up.”

I thought about it for a minute. It was a typically devious and effective Sandy plan. “I like it,” I said.

“Okay. Great. How are you going to pay for it?”

“Let's talk about that,” I said.

“Okay,” Sandy agreed, sitting back down. She always liked to talk about money.

“I can come up with the money from Host Committee funds. It's such a mess, nobody will notice.”

The balcony doors opened and the young woman walked into the room, trailing a towel. She smiled at Sandy, ignoring me completely. “This damn city smells,” she said.

“Yes,” Sandy answered. Her eyes seemed to narrow a bit as she watched the athletic woman walk across the room to the bedroom door.

“God, I do love being rich,” Sandy said, after a pause.

“About money,” I said.

Sandy focused on me, smiling slightly. “Yes, J.D.? What's wrong? You look squirrelly.”

“Well…,” I started, then stopped.

Sandy laughed. “After all these years we've been doing business and I've tried to throw some sugar your way, are you now trying to tell me you want to get a little profit-sharing plan going?”

“Not really.” We stared at each other for a moment, then I shrugged. “Well, maybe.”

“Jesus Christ, J.D., just spit it out. You're the only campaign manager I work with who doesn't demand a piece of the action. You've given me a shitload of business. You deserve a piece.”

There it was. Now all I had to do was say yes. She'd been trying to give me money for years. There was no reason not to take it. It didn't have to be called a kickback, it could be a finder's fee. Or a profit-sharing arrangement. She was right. I'd never gone in for it, but this sort of stuff happened all the time in politics.

“Maybe,” I finally said. “But not to me. If we did anything, I might want you to make a contribution to a little organization run by Tobias Green.”

Sandy started laughing, then coughing as her cigarette smoke went in the wrong direction. “Tobias Green?” She coughed some more, and as her face strained and turned red, I thought she looked ten years older. Little lines stood out on the edges of her face that I figured were left over from face-lifts. “That poverty pimp?”

“He's a great American and civil rights hero.”

“He tried to screw me at the 2000 convention.”

“I'm sure he wasn't the only one.”

“He comes up to me at some bullshit cocktail party and says in that deep voice of his, ‘My dear, have you ever made love to a black man?' ”

“What did you say?”

“I told him I'd arranged for a gang bang by a small group of Dallas Cowboys just two weeks earlier for my birthday, thank you very much.”

“Good. Very good.”

“Then I showed him a little Polaroid souvenir I just happened to have in my purse. We still had those things then, Polaroids. Then I told him to go to hell.” Sandy smiled. “I had different tastes then.”

“I see.” I tried to push the image of Sandy and the football players out of my head. She was joking, wasn't she?

“You're blushing,” she teased, and it annoyed me because I realized she was right.

“I'm a family-values guy, Sandy. You know that.”

“Right. Just ask that little press aide of yours you're screwing.”

God, this woman knew everything. That was why she was so good at her job. It was the key to her sales techniques. “Look, Tobias is helping my brother with a little independent expenditure campaign and I might be trying to arrange for some donations.”

“I love your brother,” she said immediately.

“You do?” I had a horrible image of Tyler and Sandy hanging out together at his club.

“What's wrong? Is this supposed to be some kind of secret? Everybody loves Paul Callahan.”

“Right.” That brother. What a relief she was talking about my convicted felon brother, not the other one. That was the fast slide to nowhere I was riding.

“What's going on? You embarrassed because he went to the slammer? This is Louisiana, honey, nobody gives a damn. He never bet against LSU. Now that would have been a problem.”

“We sorta been out of touch for a while,” I said, as if that explained it. “He's running for public service commissioner, and Tobias Green has been so moved to help his candidacy with a little independent expenditure committee since my brother is such a man of the people and champion of lower rates.”

Sandy laughed. She knew all the lines. “Okay. How much cut do you want?”

I didn't say anything.

“What are you, the last Boy Scout? Jesus, J.D., it's just business.”

Of course it was. Just business. I thought about all the things I had done over the years that most people would find repugnant: the nasty attack ads, the opposition research teams I'd put onto opponents to find everything possibly incriminating, lives I'd probably ruined. Not once had I ever blinked. But this was one thing I had never done: I'd never stolen, never skimmed, never diverted a dime. I'd always played the money straight down the middle.

“A hundred and twenty-five thousand.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “You want me to call the home number of every delegate in town?” Sandy finally asked, moving on. “So it gets back to them here at the convention chop-chop, right?”

“And other key members of their influence circles.”

“You want the delegates to hear from people they know, get an echo chamber going.”

“That's it.”