Jack felt perspiration speckling his scalp. His heart seemed to change rhythms every few seconds. Why the hell, he demanded of himself, was he so nervous? He took a long drag on his Camel.
Hiram kept filling his plate. Jack began to wonder if his wild card had suddenly run to invisibility.
Hiram turned, chewing a cruller as if he wasn't really tasting it, and took a seat opposite Jack. On the Stacked Deck he had used his control of gravity to remove a lot of his weight, something that made him oddly agile. He didn't seem to be doing that now. He looked at Jack out of dull, marble eyes. "Braun," he said. "This meeting wasn't my idea."
"Mine either."
"You were a hero of mine, you know. When I was young." We all have to grow up sometime, Jack thought, but decided against saying it. Let the man have his moment. "I've never made any claims to heroism myself," Hiram spoke on. Jack had the feeling it was a speech he'd been working on for some time. "I'm a fat man who runs a restaurant. I've never been on the cover of Life or starred in a feature film. But whatever else, I'm loyal to my friends." Good for you, chum. This time Jack almost said it. But he thought of Earl Sanderson fluttering to the floor of the Marriott and instead said nothing.
He blinked sweat out of his eyes. Why am I doing this to myself? he thought.
Hiram spoke on, robot-like. "Gregg tells me you did good work in California. He says we might have lost without all the celebrity support and money that ou organized. I'm grateful for that, but gratitude is one thing' and trust is another."
"I wouldn't trust anybody in politics, Worchester," Jack said. And then wondered if that piece of fashionable cynicism was true, because he did trust Gregg Hartmann, knew him for a genuinely good man, and he wanted the man to win more than he had wanted anything in thirty years.
"It's important that Gregg Hartmann win this election, Braun. Leo Barnett is the Nur-al-Allah in American dress. Remember Syria? Remember jokers stoned to death in the streets?" There was a weird gleam in Hiram's eyes. He raised a fist and clenched it, forgetting it contained half a cruller. "That's what's at stake here, Braun. They'll do anything to stop us. They'll bribe, smear, seduce us, resort to violence. And where will you be, Braun?" Loudly. "Where will you be when they really start turning the screws?"
Suddenly Jack's nervousness was gone. A cold anger hummed through him. He'd had quite enough.
"You… weren't… there," Jack said.
Hiram paused, then became aware of pastry dough ballooning out between the fingers of his upraised hand. "You… weren't… fucking
… there." The words grated slowly from a place inside Jack that seemed like a twilight graveyard, a place without warmth, an endless plain of autumn grass marked with gray stones that noted the passing of Earl, of Blythe, of Archibald Holmes, of all the young men he knew in the 5th Division, all those who died at the Rapido crossing, little stick figures scattered like so many handfuls of dust beneath the pounding guns of Cassino…
Jack stood up and threw the cigarette away. "For someone who doesn't claim to be a hero, Worchester, you sure make a great speech. Maybe you should consider a career in politics."
With quick, vicious movements of the napkin, Hiram swabbed dough from his hand. "I told Gregg you can't be trusted. He told me you've changed."
"Could be he's right," Jack said. "Could be he's wrong. The question is, what can you do about it?"
Hiram threw the napkin away and rose massively to his feet, a pale mountain lumbering to battle. "I can do what I have to do!" he said sharply. "It's that important!"
Jack's lips skinned back from his teeth in a wolverine smile. "You don't know that. You haven't been tested. You haven't been there." He gave a stage laugh, Basil Rathbone standing on the parapet and mocking the peasants. "Everyone knows about me, Worchester, but nobody's put the screws to you vet. Nobody's asked you to betray your friends. You haven't been there, and you don't know what you're going to do till it happens." He smiled again. "Take my word for it."
Hiram seemed to wilt before Jack's smile. Then his color drained away, and to Jack's surprise the big man seemed to stagger back and fall. Springs burst in the chair as Hiram collapsed into it. He tugged at his collar as if he were choking, revealing a painful sore on his neck.
Jack stared in amazement. The granite mountain had melted into a marshmallow.
And suddenly Jack was very weary. A faint hangover residue throbbed in his temples. He didn't want to watch Hiram any more.
He headed for the exit.
He paused by the door. "I'm here for Gregg's sake," he said. "I guess it's the same for you. So let's tell Gregg we're the best of friends and do what we have to do. Okay?"
Hiram, still dragging at his collar, nodded.
Jack stepped into the corridor and closed the door of the suite behind him. He felt like the school bully picking on the class fat kid.
From down the corridor came the raucous cry of conventioneers on their first day in town. Jack headed toward it.
10:00 A.M.
Gregg was tired of talking to the delegates Jack had gotten laid the night before. He was tired of sounding enthusiastic. Alex James had been a puppet since the beginning of the campaign. Most of the extra secret service people assigned to Gregg had been uninteresting to Puppetman, too dutiful and without the hidden flaws on which he fed. But Alex… he had slipped through the battery of psychological examinations and background checks. Like that of Billy Ray, Alex's soul was marbled with a delicious streak of sadism, tinted with the jade-green urge to flaunt and abuse his power. Left alone, he might have been only a little overzealous in his duties, a touch harsh when he moved people away, preferring to confront a situation rather than defusing it. No one would have noticed.
But Puppetman knew. Puppetman saw all the cracks in the veneer of a soul and he knew best how to make them gape wide open.
Gregg sat in the living room of his suite. The Zenith bolted to the wall cabinet was on, set to CBS and Dan Rather's coverage of the convention's opening. Cautiously, Gregg let down the bars that held Puppetman. The power surged out, searching for Alex's presence. Gregg had just seen the man in the hall outside, knew that Ray had just sent him to check the stairwells. There were often people on the stairs: lobbyists looking for a way to the candidate's floors, reporters, groupies, or just the curious. The chances were good that Alex would find someone. Puppetman reached out and curled into the familiar recesses of the guard's mind. This time, the power sighed. This time.
Be careful, Gregg warned him. Remember what's been happening lately. Go slowly.
Puppetman snarled in reply. Shut up! It's all right now. Everything's turning our way again. Chrysalis is finally taken care of. Oddity is going to find the jacket and we've sent Mackie after Downs. The convention's started well. I need this one. Cant you feel the hunger? Remember, if I go, you go down with me. I'll make damn sure of it.
With the threat, the power turned away, suddenly rapacious. Through Puppetman, Gregg could feel a surge of anticipation in Alex. He knew what that must mean-the guard had found someone. Gregg could imagine the scene: some nat kid, probably, dressed in stone-wash jeans, a T-shirt studded with oversized "Hartmann in '88" buttons, and a cheap J-town mask over his all-too-normal face. Alex would be staring, his hands a shade too close to the bulge under his sports jacket, barking orders.
Puppetman lanced into Alex's emotional matrix, thrusting aside the heavy blue layers of duty and the leather-brown binding of morality until he uncovered that orange-red core of psychotic brutality. Puppetman nurtured it, fanned it into flame. It flared easily into heat. Now.
(Alex would be shouting by this time, his neck corded, and his cheeks red with blood. He'd reach out, grab a fistful of the T-shirt, as campaign buttons rattled like tin pie plates, and shake the kid like a disobedient puppy. The mask would fall to the floor and crumple under Alex's Florsheims.)