“Don’t be such a chauvinist pig, Hank,” Whine was saying. “The camera can’t tell whether its button is being pushed by a guy or a gal, and this one is a natural photographer. I’m getting tired of spending three nights a week watching a bunch of pimply freaks bounce a ball around, and I know damn well Liz will do a good job.”
Liz also was spending more and more time at my place. She kept her clothes at the apartment she shared with her girlfriend, but more nights than not she bedded down at my place. A little bit at a time, we talked about me—the failed marriage, the fun and games that followed, and the casual and occasional relationships that gradually became the rule after the first flush of freedom.
“Do you want to get married again?” she asked.
“God, no. Once bitten and all that…”
“Well, you may change your mind. I better tell you, I’m definitely not planning to get married at least until I’m thirty. I’m happy now and I hope we can continue to enjoy each other, but if my staying here nights and all is going to complicate things, we better bag the arrangement. You’re the best thing that’s come along for me yet, but I’m not even thinking about anything permanent.”
I guess I sulked a bit after that until I realized I was involved in a role reversal. I was the girl whose fellow wanted to sleep with her but not “get serious.” So I just relaxed and enjoyed.
On the night of the governor’s visit, we were having a few late ones at the Next Door and talking about Shiu and the helicopter.
Grace, who like everyone else at the paper had heard about the helicopter and “had no more idea than anyone else what its purpose was, said the city desk had received three angry phone calls from an old lady who lived near the paper’s circulation garage. She complained that a noisy flying machine had been landing and taking off for an hour, and if it didn’t stop there was going to be trouble.
Said she’d take a shotgun to it if it kept scaring her cats,” Grace said. “I switched the call up to Shiu’s office.”
Liz and I phoned Frank that night with a progress report, but it turned out he had more news for us.
“This is beginning to form a picture. The Center had some people do some checkin’ around the city and over at Chicago, and they picked up rumors that somebody apparently is planning to move into those big bedroom suburbs with a new daily paper. They couldn’t find out who, cept that there seemed to be some big money behind them. Conglomerate money one report says. I think Swift and Shiu are connected, but I’ve gotta do some more snooping. What I need are some documents that pin this down.
“Oh, and a guy I know in Washington did some checking on your flying publisher. It may boggle the mind, but it turns out that this Shigetsu Shiu was one of the legendary soldiers of fortune of Indochina. He flew light planes and helicopters, probably for the CIA, in Laos, Cambodia, and ’Nam. Came to the states when the show folded over there. Some talk about him flying in the north-south drug trade. No arrests, but they were watchin’ him ’till he came out here.
“He also has quite a personal background. His mother was the secretary of a Japanese military governor in China; his father was a Chinese janitor at the headquarters in Shanghai. When it got impossible for them to disguise the fact that they had been engaging in some verboten Sino-Japanese fraternization, they took off for the hills and finally settled in Saigon. The kid took to hanging around the airport, got a job as a mechanic’s helper, and somebody taught him to fly. Turned out he had a real flair for it, but because he was so small he never could get a regular airline job. Wound up flyin’ for whoever would pay, and before the Americans arrived was managing a charter service.
“My guy says Shiu also fancies himself as a premier lady’s man. Had a string of gals all over Asia, but favored tall, blonde, English-type ladies. He had to leave Hong Kong in a hurry when he took a shine to the wife of an attache at the British embassy and made the mistake of tryin’ to crawl in her bedroom window one night. Her hubby collared him and told the cops he thought he had captured a large monkey until he got the lights on.”
The following Tuesday was the Pennsylvania primary, and Swift called me at the statehouse to announce that Newton would report for duty the following Thursday.
“Hell be putting up at the Clark. I would appreciate it if you’d go over there Thursday night and give him dinner and bring him up to speed on our campaign coverage,” Swift said.
“Dinner on expenses?”
“Of course, old boy,” Swift said jovially. “Were going first cabin on this project.”
Sure we were. I knew for a fact that the Capital Register & Press housed people at the Clark at half the going room rates. We also failed to mention the name of the hotel whenever one of the legislators who stayed there busted up the bar after a few too many or set fire to a mattress in his room. We might run a story, but the “where” in the story never was more precise than “a local hotel.”
I called Newton from the Clark lobby at 6:00 p.m. Thursday.
“Come on up, chief,” Newton boomed. “We’re having a party.”
He was in the governor’s suite on the top floor, complete with two bedrooms, a kitchen and living room, and a balcony overlooking Capitol Circle. A lot of space for one person, but Newton had managed to kill the echo in a hurry. There were at least twenty people in the suite, including the state chairman of one political party, a former state House Speaker of the other, a gaggle of lobbyists, and a giggle of the flossy party girls who usually could be found at all major freeloads m town.
A fully stocked bar was getting heavy play and a finger food table already had been well worked over.
Naughton Newton, about forty, tall, skinny, and egg-bald, was presiding over the festivities in the center of the living room. He was wearing high-top tennis shoes, once-white painter’s bib overalls and no shirt. I knew from the stories that I had heard in past campaigns that this was one of his more conservative outfits. The jacket photo on his book showed him in a flak jacket and running shorts.
I slipped into the crowd around Newton and introduced myself.
“Glad to have you aboard, Bobby. Have a drink and a girl.”
I got a drink, smiled at several girls, and settled back to watch. Newton was telling stories—probably within a mile or two of the truth—about the sexual preferences of the presidential candidates.
“…and when he talks about his concern for the youth of the nation, it’s a good idea to round up all the young boys in town and lock them in their rooms. But don’t get me wrong, the senator will cheerfully corrupt a young girl if there’s no boys available.”
“Oh yes, the governor is well known for his opposition to capital punishment. But he’s downright enthusiastic about corporal punishment. I understand he favors spanking, but has no objections to a little light whipping. Nothing to leave marks, though.”
“Don’t worry about the general. You won’t catch him with his pants down. Fellow I know said he served on the old boy’s staff in Korea, and the man was famous all over the peninsula as the fastest gun south of the Yalu—zipper down, gun on target, pow! The girls in Seoul called him the jet pilot.”
Along about ten o’clock, the party seemed to be winding down. I decided to try to talk some business with Newton. He had been drinking ale and was still bright-eyed.
“Ah, Naughton,” I said.
“Knocko, chief. I’d have changed it long ago, but I have this rich uncle with the same name and if I dump Naughton, it’s out of the old will I go. Knocko, please.”
“Well, Knocko, I brought the tentative schedules we have for the candidates next week, and thought we might work out a travel schedule for you. Then we can assign the rest of our people around your plans.”