“Although I didn’t agree with you at the time, Don,” Penry said, “I believe I told you that it was a courageous stand.”
Cubbin grinned. “You told me I was making a damn-fool mistake.”
“Well, we’re all on the same side now,” Penry said. “At least about Vietnam.”
“Perhaps we had better talk about our own battle,” Majury said.
But Cubbin wasn’t through. “You know what Sammy Hanks is saying now? He’s saying that he was the one who talked me into coming out against Vietnam. Why in 1965 that dumb son of a bitch didn’t even know where it was. You know what I did when Old Man Phelps died? I reached way down in the bottom of the bag and picked out the most insignificant, obscure regional director we had and made him secretary-treasurer because I believed all of his talk about loyalty and dedication. Hell, I was the one who took Sammy out of that Schenectady plant and gave him his first union job as an organizer. Just twelve years ago Sammy Hanks was running a set press and making two seventy-six an hour and happy to get it because it was more’n he’d ever made in his life. He barely had a high school education and some kind of college night course and if it hadn’t been for me, he’d still be in that plant. I taught that ugly little prick everything he knows and gave him everything he’s got and now he wants my job and goes around telling everybody that’ve I lost touch with the rank and file.”
Kelly decided to interrupt before whiskey and anger drowned his father in a pool of self-pity. “You forgot to teach Sammy one thing, chief.”
“What?”
“Gratitude.”
You’re talking too much, Cubbin told himself. Let them talk awhile. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “That’s one thing he never learned. Gratitude.”
“Well, perhaps you can teach him another equally important lesson, Don,” Majury said in his usual hoarse whisper.
“What?”
“How to be graceful in defeat.”
Cubbin smiled. “I’d like to do that. Yeah, I’d like that very much.”
“I think we can be of some help to you, Don,” Penry said.
“It’s like I told you, Walter, we don’t have any money.”
“You let us worry about the money. In fact, I think we might be able to raise some for you.”
“Who from?”
“You’ve got a lot of friends, Don, who you wouldn’t want to go to but who’d be more than willing to help out if somebody’d just ask them. Well, that’s one of my jobs — asking them.”
“Who?” Cubbin said, because it was one of those days when his hangover was still so bad that he knew he didn’t have a friend in the world.
“Well, let’s just say they’re friends who want to keep on being friends. They don’t want you to know that you’re in their debt.”
“Just how much in debt do you think I could be to them?”
“Maybe three or four hundred thousand,” Penry said, thinking: at least that’s what you’ll get. The rest I’ll spend in my own way on your behalf.
“Jesus!” Cubbin said. “You sure it’s that much?”
“Positive.”
“Is it clean money?”
“It’s clean. But it’s anonymous.”
“What do I have to do? I don’t believe that shit you gave me about friends for one minute, Walter.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, because they are your friends. And they don’t want you to do anything — other than what you’d indently do.”
“No strings at all?”
“No.”
“What’s your angle, Walter? I’ve never known you to be without one.”
“Your friends will pay me for my services which will be placed entirely at your disposal. We’re in for the duration, Don, if you’ll have us.”
“I’ve already got a campaign manager and a PR director.”
“We know that,” Majury said. “We don’t want to involve ourselves at that level of your campaign.”
“What level are you gentlemen interested in?” Kelly said.
“Play the tape, Ted,” Majury told Lawson.
The big man nodded and rose, walking over to a tape-recording machine. “Now?” he said.
“In just a moment,” Penry said. “Kelly, you asked at what level we plan to involve ourselves and that’s really quite a good question. We’re not interested in the execution of the campaign’s general strategy. Don’s got competent people to do that. What we will do is to provide certain issues that can be exploited. We’ll also anticipate the opposition and try to make them commit tactical errors. This is going to be a brief, but dirty campaign. Our job is simply to make sure that our tricks are dirtier than theirs. Now you can play it, Ted.”
Ted Lawson pushed a button and for several moments there was only the sound of some kind of a mechanical noise.
“Recognize it?” Penry said.
Cubbin shook his head.
“You should, you’ve heard it often enough. That’s a mimeograph machine. When we first considered taking part in your campaign a few days ago, I told the boys to go out and see if they could dig up anything that would be both useful and, I might as well admit it, impressive. Peter used his talents and discovered that something interesting was going on in a couple of motel rooms just outside of Washington. Then Ted used his talents and managed to record these happenings on tape. I think you’re going to find it informative.”
For a while there was nothing on the tape but the sound of the mimeograph machine. Then it stopped and a man’s voice said, “Well, that’s the last thousand.”
Another man’s voice said, “How many’s that make now?”
“Fifty thousand on this batch.”
“God, I’d like to see old Don’s face when he reads this one.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty good one, all right. You got any of that coffee left?”
“Yeah, I think there’s some left.”
“Well, I think I’ll have another cup before I run any more.”
“Yeah, I think it’s still hot.”
“You know what I can’t figure out?”
“What?”
“Why Barnett has such a hard on for Cubbin.”
“I hear it goes back a long ways. I hear that he tried it once before back in fifty-five or ’six.”
“Barnett?”
“Yeah. He tried to dump Cubbin once before.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t around then. But he must not have made it because Cubbin’s still president.”
“That Cubbin’s a funny guy. You ever meet him?”
“Yeah, I met him. He’s always about half in the bag.”
“He looks good though. On television I mean.”
“He wears a wig.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, I hear he paid a thousand bucks for it out in Hollywood. He got his the same place all those movie stars get theirs.”
“Well, Barnett’s sure got it in for him. He’s spending money too. He’s got me and you here and Hepple and Karpinski out in L.A. and Joe James and Murray Fletcher in Chicago and what’s his name in Cleveland... uh—”
“Fields. Stan Fields.”
“Yeah. Fields. Is he Jewish?”
“How should I know?”
“Well, what is that, seven guys living like we’re living? Hell, it must be costing a thousand bucks a day.”
“More.”
“Yeah, more. More like two thousand when we start traveling.”