“Well, have a good time.”
“Yeah, thanks. You need any money?”
“No, you already give me plenty.”
“Well, I guess I’ll go on in now.”
“Give your daddy a kiss, honey,” Goff’s wife said to their daughter who leaned forward from the back seat and pecked at her father’s cheek.
“You want me to pick you up when you come back?”
Goff shook his head. “No, I’ll just take an airport bus on in.”
“Well, all right, hon. Have a good time in Miami.”
She leaned over and gave Goff a dry kiss on the cheek.
“You all take care,” he said as he got out of the car and lifted his suitcase from the rear seat. “Bye, now.”
“Bye,” his wife and daughter said.
Goff entered the airport and checked his bag through to Chicago. He had thirty minutes to wait so he went over to the paperback-book stand and studied the titles until he found a Louis L’Amour western that he didn’t remember reading. He glanced at the first few pages and then at the last two, but he still couldn’t remember reading it. It don’t matter, he told himself as he handed the cashier a dollar and waited for his change. Sometimes when you read ’em twice they’re even better the second time.
In Washington on Sixteenth Street, about a mile south of Mickey Della’s apartment, Coin Kensington was pouring coffee for his visitor in the hotel suite that had a view of the White House. Kensington sat on the couch, squashing its cushions with his bulk. In front of him was the coffee service and a large dish that held the contents of a twelve-ounce can of Del Monte cling peaches. After pouring coffee for his guest, Kensington picked up a can of Hershey’s chocolate syrup and poured most of it over the peaches.
“I got sort of a sweet tooth,” he explained, trying to keep the defensive tone out of his voice, but not succeeding too well.
“So it would seem,” his guest said.
Kensington spooned one of the chocolate-drenched peaches into his mouth and smiled at its taste. “Sort of my breakfast dessert, you might say.”
“Yes,” his guest said.
“Well, I must say you sure remind me of your daddy.”
“Thank you,” said the president of Gammage International, A. Richard Gammage III.
“He was sort of a maverick, too, you know.”
“Yes.”
“We did some business together back in the late thirties.”
“Yes, I remember Father describing it to me.”
“He wasn’t too complimentary about me, I guess.”
“No, I can’t say that he was.”
“Well, that’s all over now.”
“Yes.”
“We got other fish to fry now.”
Gammage looked at the fat old man and nodded. Dear dead Daddy warned you about this terrible old man, Richard the Third, which was how Gammage often addressed himself because he thought it was a bit ironic and he was fond of irony because it was such a rare quality nowadays. Daddy warned you that this old man was bad, brilliant, and a bullshitter. He must be, if he took dear old dead Daddy.
“You must be talking about money,” Gammage said.
“Now how did you know that?”
“Because you smiled, Mr. Kensington.”
“Well, now, that’s an interesting point because some people think that money’s nothing to smile at.”
“It has never failed to delight me,” Gammage said.
“Well, it’s been my life study.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what money is, Mr. Gammage?”
“Technically?”
“Philosophically.”
“Power? Security? Greed? Avarice? War? Treason?”
“Well, you’re on the right track except you’re a little negative.”
“Sorry.”
“Money, Mr. Gammage, is love.”
“Oh.”
“Think about it.”
“I shall.”
“Money is love. People who say it ain’t just don’t have enough. But let ’em have to make a choice between principle and a dollar and ninety-nine percent of ’em will go for the dollar. The other one percent are just damn fools.”
“Which, I suppose, brings us to your point.”
“Well, I thought that since you had to come down here from Cleveland today anyhow, we might get together to see how you’re coming.”
“It takes a little time,” Gammage said with a shrug. “But there’s no problem. I think I’ll have at least four hundred thousand by Tuesday and the rest by the end of the week.”
“Well, that’s good because they’re getting a might skittish over there,” Kensington said, jerking his thumb in the general direction of the White House.
“Mr. Kensington, I have not the slightest interest in what anyone over there thinks. I know the man who occupies the White House. Unfortunately I’ve known him for years and I’ve always found him to be a singularly odious man — vulgar in thought, opportunistic in deed, offensive in manner, and frankly terrible in appearance. God, those suits of his!”
“Well, I didn’t vote for him either,” Kensington said.
“The only reason that I’ve agreed to coordinate the fund-raising for Cubbin is because he’s the devil I know and he poses less of a threat to my company than this Hanks person. And quite frankly, Cubbin can be pleasant company, if it weren’t for his tendency to toady. He also drinks too much.” Christ, you sound like a prig, Richard the Third, Gammage thought.
“Well, like I said, money is love and it’s gonna take a lot of love to get him reelected. But it’s also gonna take a little something else.”
“I don’t think I follow you.”
“Well, if you want Cubbin elected, you could help a lot by doing something that’s gonna please him.”
“What?”
“Well, I think you should head up a committee.”
“What committee?”
Kensington smiled. “The Committee for Industrial Stability. Its only business will be to endorse and support the election of Sammy Hanks.”
He’s not stupid, Kensington thought. It’s going to take him about five seconds to make up his mind because that’s all he’ll need to sort out the ramifications. His old man was like that. Smart. But not quite smart enough. Not always.
“The kiss of death, to counterfeit a phrase,” Gammage said.
“Exactly.”
“You were right; it will please Cubbin.”
“You’ll do it then?”
“Of course.”
In a second-floor sample room of a Loop hotel in Chicago, Marvin Harmes watched as the room filled up with thirty-one men, seventeen of them black, the rest white. Harmes nodded at each as he came in. They filled the rear rows first, not sitting next to each other until they were forced to by a shortage of folding chairs.
Harmes waited until they stopped coughing and scuffling their feet. He walked to the center of the room and picked up a paper bag. Behind him was a blackboard on an easel. He looked at the men for several moments and let them look at his cream suede jacket, his black and white checked trousers, his faded blue chambray shirt open at the throat, and his polished black ankle boots that still gleamed like patent leather. He had tried for an elegantly casual effect and he was particularly proud of the faded blue work shirt.
“You all know who I am,” he began. “But in case maybe you’ve forgotten, I’m gonna pass out my calling card.”
Carrying the brown paper bag in his left hand, Harmes moved down the rows of men, stopping before each one and dipping into the bag. Each time his hand came out it held five one-hundred-dollar bills clipped to a four-by-five-inch sheet of paper which bore the date and the Xeroxed message: “Received $500 from Marvin Harmes for services rendered.”