Cubbin peered critically at himself in the bathroom mirror and patted his silver hair. “Just make sure you’re around when I need you,” he said.
Mure tried to look hurt and almost managed it. “Don’t I always, Don?”
Cubbin stared at him for a moment. “Yeah, I guess you do at that.”
8
Cubbin spent far more time with the delegation that had $200 to give him than he did with Old Man Garfield and his $25,000 committee. The $200 bunch was composed of working stiffs, he thought, who had had to lose a day’s pay to make the trip from Wheeling to Chicago and would now have to show up for work the next morning all worn out from a long night’s drive. Besides, they were a little in awe of Cubbin and called him President Cubbin and told him that they were backing him 100 percent and that he was the best thing that had ever happened to the union.
Old Man Garfield and his Chicago welcoming committee weren’t in the least awed by Cubbin. They called him Don, talked about how lucky he was to have their support, repeatedly mentioned the sacrifices that had gone into raising the $25,000, and toward the end Old Man Garfield had drawn Cubbin over into a corner where he delivered a nice little lecture on temperance.
Cubbin by then had drunk just enough bourbon to make him almost reckless and he was thinking about how fine it would be to tell Old Man Garfield to take his $25,000 and shove it when Audrey Denn came into the room and told him that his call to Washington was ready. Cubbin stuck out his hand to Old Man Garfield and said, “It’s always an experience being with you, Lloyd, and knowing that I can count on you for advice on just about anything.”
“Just you remember that little piece I gave you about you know what,” Garfield said and winked hugely. Cubbin winked back. “You bet,” he said.
“We’ll see her through, Don,” Garfield said. “Just keep the faith, baby, like the nigger congressman used to say.”
Cubbin turned from Garfield, not bothering to disguise his wince, and left the task of talking to Garfield and his committee to Sadie and Oscar Imber and Charles Guyan. Followed closely by Fred Mure, Cubbin headed for room B of the suite. As he entered, Audrey Denn spoke into the phone she was holding. “I have Mr. Cubbin for you now, Mr. Penry.”
Cubbin took the phone and waved a hand of dismissal. Audrey Denn nodded and headed for the door. So did Fred Mure. Cubbin covered the phone and hissed, “Not you, Fred.” Into the phone he said, “How are you, Walter?”
In his Washington office on Seventeenth Street near L, Walter Penry had the desk speaker on. His office had all the trappings that W. & J. Sloane thought that a successful executive’s office should have. There was a sunburst clock on the fabric-covered walls, some tweedy-looking couches and chairs, a kidney-shaped coffee table, some “English style” prints of Washington scenes, and an immense walnut desk that he had purchased secondhand from a cabinet member whose spendthrift notions on how he thought the government should decorate his office had created such a furor in the press that he had finally had to sell off his fancy fixtures and settle for General Service Administration issue. Penry had also bought the cabinet member’s pale gold drapes that were real silk.
Penry was leaning well back in his burnt-orange leather executive chair, his feet cocked up on his desk. Across from him, seated in two tweedy armchairs, were the two principal associates of Walter Penry and Associates, Inc., Peter Majury and Ted Lawson. Majury wore an attentive expression on his thin face. Lawson looked as if he expected to hear something funny, but he usually looked that way.
After Cubbin and Penry exchanged pleasantries about their respective families and the weather, Penry said, “What’s all this I hear about you having a little opposition this time out, Don?”
In the Chicago hotel room, Cubbin beckoned to Fred Mure. “It’s not too bad,” he said into the phone. “I think we’ll be able to handle it all right.”
Fred Mure took a half-pint of the Ancient Age from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and handed the bottle to Cubbin who took two deep swallows. In Washington, the sound of Cubbin’s breathy exhalation came clearly over the speaker and Peter Majury made a careful note about it on a yellow legal pad.
“Well, look, Don, are you going to be in Chicago tomorrow?” Penry said.
“Until Monday or Tuesday.”
“The boys and I would like to get together with you tomorrow, if we could. We’ve been kicking around some ideas and we might even be of some use to you.”
“I’d always like to see you, Walter, you know that,” Cubbin said, “but I’d better tell you right now we’re running a shoestring campaign and I don’t think there’s enough money in it to make it worth your while.”
“Don?” Penry said.
“Yes.”
“Did I mention money? Did I ever hint at it?”
“No, but—”
“Don?”
“Yes.”
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Sure. We’re friends.”
“Well, I just wanted to make sure you thought so because that’s why I called you. Because we’re friends and friends help each other out. Now you’ve helped me out in the past, haven’t you?”
Cubbin didn’t really like to think about that. Helping Walter Penry out had involved doing nothing. It had, in fact, involved not making a decision, so if anything, it had been a negative kind of help. “Well, I don’t know, Walter,” Cubbin said. “I haven’t really done much.”
This was true. One of the largest specialized manufacturing companies in the nation should have been organized by Cubbin’s union years ago. It was a company that was owned 100 percent by an immensely rich, immensely eccentric recluse who was Walter Penry and Associates’ principal client. He would remain their client as long as his company remained unorganized. The company had grown into a major concern during Cubbin’s tenure as union president. Over the years, Cubbin had directed only token efforts toward organizing it. He had sent the union’s malcontents, its failures, and its drunks to do the job and when they reported back that they had been unsuccessful, Cubbin had told them to try again. Some of the union’s failures and malcontents had made a career out of not organizing that particular firm and whenever Cubbin got pressure from his board about it, he would send out some other incompetents. As in every organization, there were always plenty of them around.
The agreement between Cubbin and Penry that the eccentric recluse’s company would not be organized had never been explicit. Penry wasn’t even sure that it was tacit, but he had found that as long as he was pleasant, friendly and helpful to Cubbin, his client’s company stayed unorganized. Being pleasant and friendly was Penry’s stock in trade; being helpful was introducing Cubbin to various New York and Los Angeles actors and actresses who were told that their careers might be enhanced if they were attentive and flattering to the union man. Because Cubbin, at sixty-two, was still stagestruck, this had been an easy, even enjoyable task for most of them and some of them had even become his close acquaintances, if not his good friends.
Penry knew that if Cubbin’s union made even a halfway serious attempt to organize the firm, it could be sewn up in six weeks. He also knew that if Sammy Hanks got elected president, the attempt would not be halfway serious, it would be completely so, and Walter Penry and Associates would lose its most valuable client.
The reelection of Donald Cubbin was the most important current project that Walter Penry and Associates had and Penry didn’t want to think about what would happen should Cubbin lose — although he knew he would have to think about it soon and have a contingency plan ready to go just in case. It was what a realist would do and Penry prided himself on being realistic, which meant, of course, figuring out how to make a dollar from disaster.