‘All right. Then you’re the campaign manager. Now who is our candidate? Besides Cartwright.’
‘But… I’ll lose my job.’
‘There are worse things to lose.’
‘And my pension rights.’
‘You have to live to spend it.’
‘And my family. How will they live?’
‘How much do you make a year?’ Remo asked.
‘Ten-five.’ Farger said.
Remo reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out two sheaves of bills. He tossed them on the coffee table. ‘There’s two years pay. Now who do we support?’
Farger looked at the money, at Remo, then at the money again, as his brain made calculations behind his narrowed eyes. ‘You can’t support Cartwright?’
‘No,’ Remo said. ‘Anyone who’d lie about the federal government the way he did… who’d deceive an honest, decent man like you into lying, can’t be returned to office. Who else is running?’
‘That’s the problem,’ Farger said. ‘Nobody’s running.’
‘Come on,’ Remo said. ‘What is Cartwright, a king or something? Of course, someone else is running.’
‘Well, there are some people,’ said Farger, with an inflection of distaste that, if recorded, would have ended forever his dreams of the presidency.
‘Who are?’
‘One is Mrs. Ertle McBargle. She’s head of "Abortion Now". Then there’s Gladys Tweedy. She’s with the SPCA and wants to turn the town into an animal compound.’
‘Forget them,’ Remo interrupted. ‘No women.’
Farger shrugged and sighed. ‘And then there’s Mac Polaney.’
‘Yeah?’
‘This is the 47th time he’s run for public office. The last time he ran for President. When he didn’t win, he said the country wasn’t ready for him. He’s not wrapped too tight.’
‘What does he do?’
‘A disabled veteran. Lives on a pension. He lives on a houseboat down along the bay.’
‘How old?’
Farger shrugged. ‘Fiftyish?’
‘Honest?’
‘So honest he makes people sick. When he came back from service, everybody was trying to do something for veterans, so somebody got the bright idea to give him a job with the county. Fanfare, newspaper publicity and all.’
‘What happened?’
‘He quit the job three weeks later. He said that nobody gave him any work to do. If I remember right, he said that wasn’t unusual because no one seemed to know anything about work, most of all their own. And in like vein.’
‘Sounds like our man,’ Remo said. ‘An honest, decorated war hero with vast political experience.’
‘A poetry-spouting ninny who won’t get a thousand votes.’
‘How many will vote next week?’
‘Forty thousand or so.’
‘Then all we got to do is get 20,000 more for… what’s his name?’
‘Mac Polaney.’
‘Yeah. Mac Polaney, Mayor Polaney. Mayor Mac Polaney. The people’s choice.’
‘The world’s choice… nitwit.’
‘That’s no way for his campaign manager to talk,’ Remo reminded Farger. ‘Now what are his special issues? What horses are we going to ride to victory at the polls?’ He had heard a campaign manager once who sounded just like that.
Farger allowed himself a sneak’s smile. ‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘See for yourself. I’ve got it right here.’ He handed Remo a copy of the Miami Beach Journal, already turned to an inside page.
Remo took it and read:
CANDIDATE CALLS FOR BLACKOUT OF POLITICAL CAMPAIGN ACTIVITY
It was a little headline, accompanied by a little story which read:
Mac Polaney, making his 48th try for public office in next week’s mayoral race, today called upon all the other mayoral candidates to join him in halting all campaign activity.
‘The weather has turned nice,’ Polaney said, in what he said would be his campaign’s only press release, ‘and it’s a great time to go fishing. So I’d like to invite the other candidates to join me on my houseboat for a fishing trip through the bay. That way, without politicians yakking around the city, people can enjoy the nice weather. (The lady candidates can bring chaperones; Mayor Gartwright can bring his keeper.)
‘Sunshine is nicer than politicians anyway and fishing is great for the soul. So what do you say, man and ladies, let’s cast our lines into God’s great blue waters.’
The other candidates declined to comment.
Remo put the newspaper back onto the table. ‘The perfect man for us,’ he said. ‘The first politician I ever heard who had his finger on the people’s pulse.’
‘Now wait,’ Farger said. ‘That’s not all. Last week, he called for the abolition of the police department. He said that if everybody would just promise not to commit any more crimes, we wouldn’t need police. And then we could cut taxes.’
‘Good idea,’ Remo said.
‘And before that,’ Farger said in growing desperation, ‘he said we ought to abolish the street-cleaning department. If he was elected mayor, he said, he would assign a different city councilman each day to duty picking up candy wrappers.’
‘Obviously an activist,’ Remo said. ‘Willing to dig in and face up honestly to the problems confronting us.’
‘No,’ Farger shouted, startling himself by his loudness. Softly, he said, ‘No, no, no, no, no. If I get involved with him, my political career is dead.’
‘And if you don’t, Willard, you’re dead. Now make up your mind.’
There was a millisecond pause in the living room before Farger said:
‘We’ll need a campaign headquarters.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mac Polaney’s houseboat was tied up to an old tire, nailed to a rickety dock on a small rivulet that muddied its way inland from the bay.
The next mayor of Miami Beach was wearing green flowered shorts, a red mesh undershirt, black sneakers with no socks and a chartreuse baseball cap. He sat on a folding lawn chair on the deck of the houseboat, stringing gut leader onto fishhooks, when Remo drove up, got out of his car and walked to the boat.
‘Mr. Polaney?’ Remo said.
‘Won’t do you no good, son,’ Polaney said without looking up. He was, Remo gauged, in his early fifties, but he had the strong, melodic voice of a younger man.
‘What won’t do me any good?’
‘I won’t name you secretary of defence. No how, no how. I don’t even think Miami Beach needs a secretary of defence. Maybe Los Angeles. I mean, anybody who knows Los Angeles knows that they could start a war. But not Miami Beach. Nope. So you ain’t got a chance, son. Might just as well move along.’
As if to accentuate the point, his shoulders hunched forward and he bent to his work of hook-rigging with increased fervour.
‘But how are we going to deal with the Cuban missile threat?’ Remo said. ‘Only ninety miles away, aimed right down our gullets.’
‘See. That’s what I mean,’ Polaney said, standing up and looking at Remo for the first time. He was a tall lean man, tanned to a nut brown, with laugh wrinkles around the eyes that threatened to squeeze them shut. ‘You militarists are all alike. One bomb, two bombs, four bombs, eight bombs… where does it end?’
‘Sixteen bombs?’ Remo suggested.
‘Sixteen bombs, thirty-two bombs, sixty-four bombs, one hundred and twenty-eight bombs, two hundred and fifty-six bombs, five hundred and twelve bombs… what’s after five hundred and twelve?’
‘Five hundred and thirteen?’
Polaney chuckled. His eyes did shut. Then he snapped them open wide. ‘Pretty good,’ he said. ‘How would you like to be city treasurer?’
‘Well, I had my heart set on being secretary of defence. But I’ll take it. As long as I don’t have to do anything dishonest.’
‘I'd never ask you to,’ Polaney said. ‘Just vote for me. And smile once in a while. Mark my words bub, the Cuban missile threat will take care of itself if we just give it a chance. Most threats and crises do. The only thing you can really do to screw them up is to try to solve them. If you just let things alone, they’ll work out.’