“Oh God, Bobby, I don’t work like that. I don’t know what the hell I’m going to be doing half an hour from now let alone next week either. Just go ahead and assign your people and we’ll play it by ear. You got any ladies covering the campaign?”
Cindy and Diana Osky, who usually did features, were going out on some candidate swings, but I used my head for once and ignored the question.
“Well, the M.E. suggested we assign one reporter to work directly with you… keeping track of the schedules and the travel and the copy filing and all. We’ve got Morrie Gealber lined up to work with you for the next two weeks. He’s a business page reporter regularly, but a hell of an organizer. He asked me to see if you could give him a little lead time setting things up. That’s why I thought we might do some planning tonight.”
Newton looked like an American Legion conventioneer whose water pistol had just been confiscated.
“No girls, huh? Well, shit, you’re the number one political guy, aren’t you? I thought it was settled in advance you’d come with me. You know the locals and the candidates, don’t you? I can’t remember thes guys’ names after they get elected, let alone when they’re just running for office.”
Christ. Now I knew who was going to be the nurse.
I put my glass down and started to leave, but Knocko grabbed my arm.
“Hey, don’t leave, chief. I’ve got the general’s state coordinator coming up later and I need you to sit in. Want to make sure he doesn’t try to bullshit me.
“Besides, we need to get some use out of this layout. I
checked out of the rat-trap single room your boss reserved for me and moved up here, so I’d have a proper place to do business. I mean, how would it look to ask the top aide of a presidential candidate to come up for an interview and have him sit on the bed? If you want a class product, you put on a class act, no?”
Me, I didn’t argue. Swift was Newton’s problem.
CHAPTER 11
Swift made no waves about Newton’s $275-a-day suite. “He’s used to such,” Swift told me the next morning after I reported on his trained seal’s first night in town. “Besides, we write it all off.”
Sure. I wondered what kind of deal Swift had cut with the Clark manager on this one. Whatever it was, I was willing to bet a week’s pay the paper wasn’t paying full freight.
But Newton did make the most of his luxury digs, running a nonstop bar and summoning pols from both the state party and the candidates’ campaign operations to interviews. He would sit down with each one, chat for five or ten minutes, and then leave them to fend for themselves. Women got more time; he spent forty-five minutes with the senator’s state press coordinator—a good-looking brunette—and she was still there when I ended Saturday night on Sunday morning.
This went on all weekend and, to my observation, Newton never took a note and certaflnly never asked me for any information about the people he was talking to.
Sunday night, Newton shut down the bar and began shooing people out about 1:30 a.m. The crowd had grown as the word passed that free booze and a look at a celebrity were available at the Clark.
“Thirsty bunch you’ve got around here, Bobby. Hate to eighty-six anybody, but you look tired, and I want you in trim for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Sure. Don’t you remember that schedule you gave me? We’re going campaigning tomorrow with the general. He’s flying into the city at 8:00 a.m. and that means we’ve got to be on the road here by 6:30 to get to the airport on time. Pick me up in front of the hotel, OK?”
Inasmuch as Newton hadn’t given me a clue that he intended to pay the least attention to the schedule I had offered, there were just a few small chores for me before I could sack out. I had to wake up Tandee and tell him we were traveling in the morning, at his angry demand go by the paper and get photo equipment and supplies, and book a rental car we could pick up in the morning and leave at the airport the next day when we joined the campaign. I also had to pack for myself, groping in the dresser to avoid turning on a light and waking Liz. I had it all in hand by 3:30 and got a full two hours’ sleep.
No hitches the next morning. Tandee was ready, whining, of course, and Newton was pacing up and down in front of the hotel when we arrived at 6:25. He was wearing the same camouflage combat fatigues, sandals, and pinned-brim Anzac hat I had left him in five hours earlier and carrying a Bloomingdale’s shopping bag packed to the brim. The clothes looked rumpled but Newton looked fresh as a dewy rose. He also looked hopping mad.
“You got a fuckin’ Gestapo for cops in this town. Goddamn squad car pulled up when I came out of the hotel and told me they didn’t allow bums to hang around the hotel. I had to get the desk clerk to vouch for me and keep the assholes from running me in.”
Having delivered himself of that denunciation and nodded at the astonished Whine, Newton sprawled across the back seat and went to sleep. It took us about an hour to get to the airport and by the time we dumped the car, found the general’s advance man at the private aircraft hangar, and got our bags tagged and credentials filled out, the candidate was on the ground.
We headed for the press bus, but Newton, spotting a wire service reporter he seemed to know, climbed into the pool car and gave us a cheery wave as we trudged toward the back of the motorcade lined up on the tarmac.
We did three stops that morning. The first was a grade school where the general told an auditorium full of kids that an active life of exercise and self-discipline was essential for them if they were to survive the coming nuclear holocaust. He led them in ten minutes of aerobics. One of the teachers had to be given CPR, but the general wasn’t breathing hard, and the kids were delighted.
Next was a senior citizens’ center where he announced his administration would form a home guard for men aged sixty and older: “Slackers will lose their social security,” he said with a wolfish smile. He tried to organize more aerobics, but the medical director of the place threatened to call the cops and charge the general with malicious endangerment.
The last stop before we were given thirty minutes to find lunch and to file copy was the Flugbach Brewery, where the general chug-a-lugged a quart like it was lemonade, gave an immense belch to the delight of the workers on the bottling line, and declared he was getting tired of seeing all the Kraut beer being sold in the United States while our people were being laid off.
“If we can require Jap cars sold in this country to have American parts, we can oblige the Huns to use American grain in their beer and bottle it over here,” he bellowed. He was cheered wildly.
Our break was in a recreation room at the brewery, which set up a line of kegs and poured for all comers, including the tr deling press corps. It looked like lunch was going to be liquid barley, malt, and hops. Newton had been given (or had swiped) a huge ornate ceramic mug with a tip-up pewter lid, and he spent the half hour with his nose immersed in it.
I called the paper with some quick dictation, and before I had finished, Swift came on the line.
“This doesn’t look like Naughton Newton’s stuff, Wartovsky. Where is his copy?”
I glanced helplessly at Newton, who was getting a third refill, and told Swift, “He’s writing. You can’t expect him to dictate his kind of material off the cuff. We’ll call from the next stop.”
Newton’s burp when I told him about Swift’s demand matched the general’s. “Jesus, he’s some kind of fever blister, ain’t he? Didn’t you say we’ve got until 6 p.m. to file? Next chance you get, call and tell him I’ll have two columns before the deadline. Three, if he wants it.”
That was going to be a trick, because our next stop was 350 miles north of the city at the far end of the state. We got back into the motorcade, drove to the airport, and piled into the Boeing 727 charter the general was using.