“Well, I don’t guess there’s any law against it.”
“Against what?”
“Against one labor-union president trying to knock off another one.”
“Even if they ain’t in the same union?”
“I don’t know of any law against it.”
“Yeah. Any more coffee?”
“There’s a little bit left. Here.”
“Thanks. Well, it’s warm anyway. What about this guy Hanks?”
“What about him?”
“He any better than Cubbin?”
“Barnett thinks so, I guess, but shit, you get up there and start making forty and fifty thou a year and you don’t give a good goddamn about the members. You just wanna look good. I don’t know anything about this guy Hanks except that he must have some kinda deal with Barnett. They gotta have something fixed up or we wouldn’t be working for Hanks.”
“Well, when they get up that high they all get big-shotitis.”
“That’s for sure.”
“I guess we’d better start on this new batch. You wanna run the machine or stack ’em in the boxes?”
“I’ll run the machine awhile.”
“Okay.”
There was the sound of movement and then the sound of the mimeograph machine and then the tape came to an end. Lawson switched it to rewind as the others in the room turned to look at Cubbin. His face was pale and his lips were tightly compressed. “That son of a bitch,” he said.
“Barnett tried it once before, didn’t he, Don?” Penry said.
“In fifty-five,” Cubbin said.
“That’s a highly edited tape that you heard, Don,” Lawson said. “Most of the rest of the time they were talking about women.”
“You got their names?”
Lawson nodded. “I got their names and I also got a sample of what they were running off on that mimeograph machine. And I’ve got pictures of the interior of the two motel rooms and of them entering and leaving it. You’ve got all the proof you need.”
Cubbin turned to look at his son. “Kelly, get on the phone to Audrey over at the hotel and tell her to call Barnett down in Washington. Tell her that I want an appointment with him Tuesday at eleven A.M. Tell her that I won’t accept any excuses and that she can lean on Bar nett’s secretary or whoever she talks to as hard as she wants. She’ll know how to do it.”
“What if Barnett’s going to be out of town Tuesday?” Kelly said.
“Tell Audrey that I said that he’d better have his ass back in town. Don’t worry, she’ll fix it up.”
When Kelly went over to the phone to make the call, Cubbin turned to Penry. “Have you got some kind of a small portable machine that I can carry in a briefcase and just push the button to play that tape? I’m going to make a little speech to Mr. Howard Barnett on Tuesday and I don’t want to ruin its effect by having to fumble around with a tape.”
Forever the actor, Penry thought, but replied, “We’ll send a small one over to your hotel this afternoon, Don, all threaded and ready to go.”
“What do you plan to say to Barnett?” asked Majury whose craving to know was almost physical.
“Say to him?”
“Yes.”
Cubbin stood up. “Well, I guess I’ll call him a few names first and then I’m going to tell him that if he so much as looks in my direction again I’m going to kick his ass right up to his shoulders.”
Kelly came back from the phone. “Audrey’s making the call now,” he said.
Cubbin nodded and looked at Penry and his associates. “Well, I guess you guys have dealt yourself in. Thanks.”
“We’re looking forward to it, Don,” Penry said.
Cubbin nodded. “I appreciate it. You know while you’re snooping around there’s something else that you might look into for me.”
“What?” Penry said.
“It’s just a feeling I’ve got. A hunch.”
“What?”
“Here in Chicago.”
“What about Chicago?”
“That’s where they’re going to try to steal it. Wouldn’t you if you were Sammy?”
“Yes,” said Walter Penry, nodding slowly, “as a matter of fact, I would.”
18
Sadie Cubbin lay on her side in the rumpled bed in room 918 of the Sheraton and watched Fred Mure as he slept and snored. He’s earned it, she thought. He’s given satisfactory service once, twice and sometimes even three times a day for the past four months now so you can’t object if he snores a little when he sleeps.
She reached for a cigarette and lit it and then turned back to watch Mure. I think the first few times he did it to accommodate Don, not me. He fucked me because he knew that Don couldn’t and so it was part of the service, like arranging for the elevator and putting Don to bed at night and getting him to places on time. Too drunk to fuck your wife, boss? Merely another simple problem in logistics except that Fred wouldn’t use a word like that. So that’s all it was at first, just stud service, but now he’s built it into something more and when Don gets through with this election and things get back to where they were before, Fred is going to be a problem. Poor, ignorant, beautiful, cunning, crafty, sexy Fred Mure’s in love with the boss’s wife and she lets him be in love with her because she has to have it. He thinks it’s going to continue like this when Don gets well again after the election. Don must know. Don’t kid yourself, Sadie, of course he knows. That’s why he wouldn’t let them send Fred away, because he knew his wife had to have her share and she wasn’t going to get it from him and she had to get it from somewhere and somehow Fred is no threat to Don. God, what a mess. It was all right before he started drinking this time. No it wasn’t all right, but you could live with it. You got fucked twice a week, sometimes three. Now you get it twice a day, sometimes three. Well, there’s no use worrying about it now. You can worry afterward, after the election. God, I hope Don loses. Please, God, make him lose.
Fred Mure opened his eyes and looked at Sadie. “I was asleep.”
“I know. I was watching you.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after three.”
“I’d better get going. He should be getting back around three-thirty.”
“What’s the schedule for tonight?”
“He’s got two meetings,” Fred said, “one in Calumet and one in Gary.”
“We’d better get dressed.”
Fred Mure smiled at Sadie, turned, and ran a hand over her body. “We’ve got a little time.”
She trembled and then the tremble turned into a shiver. “We shouldn’t, darling,” she said as she wiggled toward him.
At four o’clock that afternoon Donald Cubbin finished reading the memorandum that Charles Guyan had handed him. He looked up at Oscar Imber and asked, “You read it?”
“I read it.”
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s fine,” Imber said. “It’s just the kind of PR program you need, if you had a million bucks to spend.”
Cubbin turned to Guyan who was half sprawled on the couch in the living room of Cubbin’s suite. “How much fat’s in there?”
“Not much.”
“Come on, I never read one of these things yet that didn’t have some frills that could be cut out.”
“You might be able to get by on eight hundred thousand.”
“We haven’t got eight hundred thousand,” Imber said. “We haven’t got nearly that much.”
“We do now,” Cubbin said.
Imber leaned forward in his chair. “What do you mean, we do now?”
Cubbin smiled. “I raised four hundred thousand this afternoon. I can probably squeeze another two hundred thousand out of them. With what you’ve raised we’ve got enough.”
Imber stood up. “Where did you raise that much?”