So there was no way, just no goddamn way, that he was thirteen points down — in a primary no less — to some Bible-thumpin’ Tea Party asshole.
“But that’s… What in the hee-haw hell is going on down in that state of mine?”
Porter lifted a thick white binder off his lap and turned the pages in chunks until he arrived at the section he needed. “These are your numbers among nondenominational Christians. You’re green. He’s red.”
Porter held up a page in which the red bar stretched conspicuously farther than the green bar.
“Holy Mother of God,” Whitmer said.
“Here are the Baptists,” Porter said, turning one sheet over to reveal a page that looked identical to the last.
“Oh, sweet Jesus.”
“The Methodists look like this,” Porter said. The bars were slightly closer in length, but red still easily outdistanced green.
“And here are the Episcopalians,” Porter finished, holding up another page that was nothing but bad news for the senator.
“Since when the hell do Episcopalians give a crap about religion?” Whitmer demanded. “Oh, Jesus Christ, what about the atheists?”
“Ah… they’re all Democrats, sir.”
“Okay, okay, I’m sick of talking about the damn Jesus freaks,” Whitmer said. “They’re going with that Tea Party sumbitch. I get it. Let’s talk geography. There’s got to be somewhere in the state I’m doing well. Maybe we can build on that.”
Porter nodded, turning chunks of pages in his binder until he reached the right place.
“Okay, we’ve done some county-level work. If you want us to go finer than that, we can, but that’s going to add to that estimate I gave you,” Porter said.
“County is fine,” Whitmer said.
“Okay. You’re doing better in the southern part of the state. Mobile and Baldwin Counties still remember all you did after the BP spill.”
“Damn right,” Whitmer boomed. “And well they should. There’s two hundred thousand people in Mobile. Maybe we just got to make sure they get out and vote.”
“Well, I said you were doing better there. I didn’t say you were winning it. It’s pretty much a dead heat.”
“Oh,” Whitmer said.
“I’d still recommend a strong get-out-the-vote effort there,” Porter said.
“Of course.”
“Now, those are areas of relative strength. Areas of weakness are, well, here. You can see for yourself. Again, you’re the green shades. He’s the red shades. Statistical ties are gray.”
Porter held up a page with a map of Alabama. There was a green patch in Marengo, the senator’s home county. There was some gray along the southern coast. Otherwise, the whole map was awash in varying shades of red. The more rural, the more red. Some areas were practically magenta.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Whitmer said again. He reached in his drawer and pulled out a flask of vodka. He had a luncheon to attend and didn’t want to smell like bourbon.
“Well, it’s interesting you should put it that way, because I have to tell you, some of those Christian voters we polled mentioned your tendency toward blaspheming. You might want to curtail…”
“Goddamnit, don’t tell me how to talk, boy,” Whitmer said. “Just tell me what to do about those thirteen goddamned points.”
“A scandal would do nicely, sir,” Porter said, evenly. “Set him up with a whore, leak pictures to the press.”
Whitmer was already shaking his head. “We tried that before we even knew he was this big a threat. Didn’t work. The sumbitch has too much Jesus in him. He chastised the woman for trying to seduce a married man, lectured her about the sanctity of marriage, then actually got her to pray with him. Last I heard, she was volunteering in his campaign office and going to his damn church.”
Porter absorbed this for a moment. “Well, then there’s only one thing that’s going to do the trick: money. It’s getting late in the game, but it’s not too late. If you were to launch a major advertising blitz — from Huntsville to Birmingham to Mobile to every small town in between — you’ll be able to take the guy’s legs out from under him. But you’ll have to go negative, real hard and real fast.”
“Yeah,” Whitmer said. “Yeah, you know, I like the sound of that. Tell people he’s Jewish. Airbrush a yarmulke on him. Better yet, Muslim. Or gay. How much do I need?”
“How much do you have in your war chest?”
“A million two.”
“Not enough,” Porter said. “You’re talking about a double-digit disadvantage. You’ll need at least five million to move the needle.”
“Jesus,” Whitmer said.
Forget vodka. Whitmer went over to the highball glasses he kept in the bookcase along the far wall. He opened up a cabinet, pulled out a bottle of Clyde May’s Conecuh Ridge Alabama Style Whiskey, poured himself three fingers, and downed it in one gulp.
“Want some?” he asked.
“No, thank you, Senator.”
“You got any good news to tell me?”
“No, Senator.”
“Then you best be moving on.”
As Porter departed, Whitmer paced around his office, unable to believe this turn of events. It was six weeks to go until the primary. Whitmer hadn’t even bothered paying for polling before this, because there seemed to be no point — surely, no one was taking this Tea Party asshole seriously.
And now it looked like Whitmer’s political life was at stake. Was his constituency really turning on him like this? Was he really going to have to pack up his life in Washington and head back to Alabama in shame and defeat, a four-term senator whipped in a primary by a some small-town deacon? Was he really going to be another in a long line of victims of this Tea Party nonsense?
No. Not Donny Whitmer.
He gripped the Clyde May, practically ripped off the cap, and didn’t bother with the formality of a glass this time. He poured a long swallow down his throat.
He just had to think of a way to come up with five million dollars.
His mind soon struck not on an idea but a man. He was a man who owed him a favor. A big favor. A five-million-dollar favor, perhaps.
Whitmer was so excited, he sat down and wrote the man’s name down on a legal pad. Lately, he had been getting more forgetful — particularly when he was agitated — and he found that writing things on his legal pad, in neat block letters, helped him keep his thoughts straight, especially when he came back to them later.
He looked down at the name and smiled.
CHAPTER 9
PARIS, France
he reporter could only be described as ruggedly handsome, with dark hair and eyes, a square jaw, and muscles toned in a way that no working journalist’s ever had been. He was just hoping no one would notice that part.
In keeping with his cover, his outfit consisted of a well-worn tweed blazer, khaki pants that just barely missed matching, a white shirt with faint stains from a lost battle with a long-ago chili dog, and scuffed oxfords. He kept a spiral-bound reporter’s pad in his left pocket and two pens in his right: a primary pen and a backup in case the first one failed. A reporter could never be too careful.
If he bore a striking resemblance to a man who had once been a Venetian gondolier — to say nothing of scores of identities that might or might not have come before it — it was surely a coincidence. From the moment Derrick Storm landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport, his passport and press credentials identified him as Cleveland Detroit of Soy Trader Weekly.