by Stuart Woods
“I like free, but how are we going to raise more money?”
“You ever heard of a businessman named Lurton Pitts?”
“The fried-chicken king?”
“One and the same. He’s been on the phone this morning to your dad. He saw the debate and was impressed; he wants you to meet with him and a group of his friends.”
“When?”
“Today. Lunch at the Capital City Club.”
“I’d better go straight there from here, then. Can you have somebody meet me at the airport with a clean shirt and a pressed suit? All that stuff is in my office.”
“Sure. Let me warn you about Pitts, though. He may, after he talks with you, offer to raise some money for you. He and his group have raised a hell of a lot for some others.”
“What’s he going to want?” Will asked.
“I don’t know, but it won’t be small.”
“How do you think I ought to handle him?”
“That’s up to you, Will. I can’t tell you to promise him the earth, or to tell him to go to hell. You’re going to be alone in a room with these guys, and nobody’s going to know what you say except you and them. You’ll be on your own.”
“Well,” Will said, “it won’t hurt to listen, I guess.”
“Be careful, boy,” Tom said. “It could get rough.”
Will hung up. He was back in the race. Now he had to stay there.
19
Will was met by his father in the foyer of the Capital City Club in downtown Atlanta.
“Here’s the way it goes,” Billy said, as they rose in the elevator. “I take you up and introduce you; then I leave. They want you alone. Don’t give them any more than you have to. In fact, you may decide you don’t want to give them anything at all. I won’t blame you if you don’t.” The elevator doors opened, and they walked down a hallway to a set of double doors. “Here we go,” Billy said, opening the door.
A group of a dozen men were standing before a drink-laden table. They turned as the Lees entered.
One of them, a short, middle-aged, stocky man with thick fair hair and a freckled face, detached himself from the group and stuck out his hand. “Hello, Will, I’m Lurton Pitts.”
The leader of this merry little band, Will thought. “How do you do, Mr. Pitts.”
“Call me Lurton, boy; everyone does.” He began making introductions.
Will had met two of the other men, a banker and an architect/developer; he had heard of another half dozen; only three or four were unknown to him. A black man in a white coat stepped up.
“Would you like something to drink, Will?” Lurton Pitts asked.
“I’d like some iced tea, please.”
“Nothing stronger?”
“I think I’d better keep my wits about me today.”
Pitts laughed. “Billy, how about you?”
“Thanks, Lurton,” Billy replied, “but I have to be going.” He waved to the others and left.
There was a brief period of desultory chat, then Pitts herded them toward a large round table, seating Will next to him. Lunch was served and eaten with a minimum of talk, followed by coffee. Will was surprised at how relaxed he felt. They would get to it now, he thought.
“Well, Will,” Lurton Pitts said, “we—all of us—were just wondering if you’d like to be our man in Washington.”
Will paused for effect, something he had seen his father do many times; it gave weight to his answer. “I’d be very pleased to be your next senator,” he said.
Pitts paused, too, to let Will know that his answer was unsatisfactory. “We’re all looking for more than just a senator, Will. We want somebody in the upper house who’s looking after our interests.”
Will looked around the table. “This looks like a pretty diverse group to me. Do you all have exactly the same interests?”
The banker spoke up. “We have a great many interests in common.”
“We’re businesspeople,” a manufacturer said. “How do you feel about business?”
“I think we wouldn’t have much of a country without a successful business community.”
“You think the business of America is business, then?”
“I don’t agree about much of anything with Calvin Coolidge. This country is never again going to have the sort of economy we had in the twenties, and everybody had better get used to it.”
“You believe in a free-market economy?” someone asked.
“Gentlemen, we all know there’s no such thing; there hasn’t been, really, in this century. I believe in a well-regulated capitalism.”
“Regulations!” the manufacturer snorted. “Ronald Reagan got rid of those for us.”
“No,” Will replied, “his administration just ignored a lot of them. That’s going to be expensive, especially in terms of the environment, and your businesses are going to have to help pay for that laxity.”
“You’re sounding like a socialist,” somebody said.
“Nonsense,” Will said. “There isn’t a socialist in the entire Congress. If Ted Kennedy were British, he’d be in the Conservative Party. I’m not an ideologue of any sort; I’m a realist, I think. I don’t think we’ve had enough realism in government during the Reagan years.”
“God knows that’s true,” said the developer.
Will was relieved to hear somebody agree with him on something.
“Your boss, Ben Carr, supported Reagan a lot of the time.”
“Senator Carr supported him when he thought he was right, and, occasionally, when he thought he wasn’t. He’s a politician; he knows how to live in the real world.”
“Do you hold with Senator Carr’s views on defense?”
“I think I’m a little more conservative than the Senator on that subject.”
“More conservative than Ben Carr?”
“By ‘conservative,’ I mean I’m a little more tightfisted than the Senator.”
“Oh, you mean more liberal, then.”
“No. I think the words ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ have lost most of their political meaning. Nowadays, they’re accusations more than anything else. If you insist on applying those labels, then I’m a moderate, generally speaking. But I’m a conservative when it comes to the budget, and that includes the defense budget.”
“You’d vote to cut the defense budget?” Pitts asked.
“I think we ought to get more of our money’s worth. I think we can have just as effective a national defense on less money. Too much of it is being stolen from us.”
A man across the table leaned forward. “I’m a defense contractor,” he said, “in a small way. Do you think I’m stealing from my country?”
Will smiled. “You don’t look like a thief to me, sir.” He leaned forward and looked the man in the eye. “But if you are, then I think you ought to be in jail, and the money ought to be either put to better use in another program or put back in the taxpayer’s pocket.”
There was an uncomfortable silence; then the man said, “Fair enough.”
“Will,” Pitts said, “we’re in a position to raise a lot of money for you, if we believe it’s to our advantage. If we do, just what sort of cooperation can we expect from you?”
Will leaned back. “Mr. Pitts, the people who support my candidacy are always going to have my ear. When I’m in office, I’ll return your phone calls; I’ll listen to your problems; and if I think you’re right, I’ll support your positions. You may not always be happy with the way I vote, but you will have had an opportunity to express your opinion before I cast that vote.”
“You’ll listen to us personally?” somebody asked.
“Whenever I can. But, as soon as I’m elected, I’m going to find somebody like me and put him to work doing for me what I’ve been doing for Senator Carr these past years. He’ll be the kind of man you’ll like talking to when I can’t talk to you myself.”
A man who had not spoken before, one of the ones Will did not know, leaned forward. “Young fellow, I think you’d better un
derstand right now what we’re talking about, what we want from you; if you expect to get our money, then we’re going to have to know that you’re ours when we need you.”
“Mr. Williams,” Will said, dredging up the man’s name, “it sounds to me like you want to buy yourself a politician. Well, if that’s what you want, buy Mack Dean; he’s for sale.”
It got very quiet in the room.
Will broke the silence. “But Mack Dean is not going to be your next senator. Come September, Mack’s going to be back in the farm-implement business, whence he came. Come September, I’m going to be the Democratic nominee. And come November, I’m going to be the senator-elect.”
Lurton Pitts pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket. “I’ve got some poll results that say if the election were held tomorrow, Mack would beat you, say you’re eleven points behind.”
“Fortunately,” Will said, “the election is not going to be held tomorrow, and I suspect you’ve also got some post-debate figures on that sheet of paper that tell a different story. No, Mack Dean is on his way out. He’s been a do-nothing governor who got elected only because a couple of other people shot themselves in the foot. And suppose he did get elected to the Senate? He’d be the invisible man. I think it’s in your best interests—in the state’s best interests—to have a man up there who understands how the Senate works, who, in time, can gain some real influence that he can exercise for the benefit of his constituents.”
“What about the Republican candidate?” Williams asked. “How do you know you can beat him?”
“I hear,” Pitts said, “that the Republican state convention is going to have to choose between Jim Winslow and the Reverend Don Beverly Calhoun, and I hear the choice is likely to be Jim Winslow.”
“Mr. Pitts,” Will said, “I don’t think Jim Winslow could beat Mack Dean.”
That got a good laugh from the whole table at a moment when Will thought a laugh was needed.
“I think you’re right,” Pitts chuckled. “Oddly enough, I think old Calhoun would be a hell of a lot harder to beat than Winslow, but he embarrasses a lot of Republicans.”
“I think you might be right on both counts,” Will said.
“You going to vote to raise taxes?” Williams asked, cutting across the laughter. “Democrats love to raise taxes.”
“That’s a myth, I think,” Will replied. “I don’t know any politician who likes to raise taxes, and I’m no exception. I’ll vote to raise taxes only when we can’t raise the revenues we need any other way, and if it comes to that, then I’ll vote to raise taxes. But I think we can do a lot of trimming and realigning in the budget to help get this god-awful deficit down and to fund the right programs.”
“You talking about social programs?”
“We need some social programs,” Will said. “Private enterprise, as important as it is, just can’t handle all our problems in a fair way. There are always going to be people who need help, and our government is always going to have to help them. Maybe not to the extent it did in the sixties and seventies, but we can’t let people starve to death in this country. It’s in the interests of all of us to help the poor become self-supporting, to learn something about the work ethic, and to get them on the tax rolls.”
“ ‘The poor ye will always have with you,’ ” somebody quoted.
“Maybe so, but I’m not willing to let them starve to prove the point. I think this country has the capacity to do something for all its people. I know it’s been a long time since anybody in this room missed a meal, but I expect there are some of you who can remember how it felt.”
Lurton Pitts looked at his watch. “Will, I promised to have everybody out of here by two o’clock, and it’s ten past.” He stood up and stuck out his hand. “Thank you for meeting with us, and if you’ll excuse us, we have some business to discuss before we adjourn.”
Will got up. “Thank you for your time, gentlemen,” he said. He turned and left the room.
Outside, as he waited for his car to be brought, he tried to remember the atmosphere in the room, judge it, but he could not. Some of the men had been silent; one or two had been hostile; nobody had really seemed sympathetic, only polite. There were men in that room, maybe most of them, who would be more comfortable with Mack Dean or Jim Winslow, maybe even some who would be more comfortable with the Reverend Don Beverly Calhoun.
*
Will reported back to his father and to Tom. By the end of the day, they had heard nothing from Lurton Pitts and his group. By the end of the week, they had still heard nothing. Mack Dean’s campaign manager held a press conference, canceling the remainder of the debates; he said that his candidate would be too busy traveling the state. There was a rumor, though, that the Governor had suddenly found some new money for television commercials.
20
Harold Perkerson drove slowly down the alley, looking up at the backs of the buildings on both sides. There were few windows; that was good. His car was an anonymous-looking Ford, stolen half an hour before from a parking lot at a MARTA station a couple of stops up the line.
He came to a garage door with the correct number; he stopped, retrieved a small remote-control device from his briefcase, and pointed it at the door; it slid creakily upward. He pulled forward, reversed the car into the garage, and signaled the door to close itself. He got out of the car, taking the briefcase with him. He found himself in a loading bay, wide enough, perhaps, for three trucks to occupy. Following a roughly sketched map, he climbed onto the loading platform, walked through an unlocked door, and came to a large freight elevator. He pressed the button for the third floor and, after a moment’s wait, emerged into a wide hallway. He followed that until it turned into a large carpeted room, dimly lit by what sunlight was able to get past the draperies drawn across the wide windows at the front of the building. The room was empty, except for half a dozen telephones resting on the carpet; until recently, this had been a furniture showroom for a manufacturer who was now out of business.
Perkerson walked to the right-hand end of the wide draperies and, with the back of his hand, lifted the curtain away from the wall. The sunlight hurt his eyes for a moment, but as he became used to the brightness, he could look down at the street to where the crowd was. The first thing he saw was a large sign, carried by a fat woman, which read MURDERERS OF CHILDREN, GOD IS WATCHING.
The fat woman was sitting on the pavement outside a low building set back from the street; she was surrounded by, perhaps, thirty other people, most of them carrying placards with messages similar to her own. A sign in front of the building read MILTON PRE-NATAL CLINIC. The word “Clinic” had been crossed out with spray paint and the words “Horror Chamber” substituted.
A dozen uniformed policemen stood about, keeping close watch on the group. Perkerson noted that the walk leading from the curb to the clinic door had been kept free of demonstrators. He looked at his watch: a quarter to nine.
Perkerson shucked off his raincoat, removed a small folding stool from one of the inside pockets, and set it up at the corner of the curtain. Then he opened the briefcase and began assembling the rifle, fixing the large telescopic sight to it, and, finally, screwing a long suppressor into the barrel. He laid the rifle on the carpet, took a lightweight photographer’s tripod from the other raincoat pocket, and set it up, adjusting the height carefully. He checked his watch again. Not long, now.
Perkerson reached behind the curtain and pushed open a small window, hinged at the top, propping it open wide. The sound of singing reached him from the demonstrators. It was a hymn he had sung many times as a boy in church. He pulled the curtain away from the wall and draped it over his knee, holding it away from the window. He shoved a full clip into the rifle, screwed the tripod fitting into the stock, and checked the distance. About four hundred feet, he reckoned. He saw a column of steam coming from a manhole and noted that it rose straight into the air. No wind; excellent. He worked the action of the rifle.
He adjusted for distance, then s
ighted through the scope. A policeman’s black face leapt at him, magnified by a factor of ten. Perkerson panned from the curb to the front door. With the rifle set back from the window and not protruding, he could still pan through three-quarters of the distance. But it should not be a moving shot; Milton and the woman were supposed to stop. He panned again anyway, for practice, just in case. Five minutes to nine. A red van pulled up in front of the clinic and stopped.
They were early! Good! He’d be more relaxed, not having to wait. A man he immediately recognized as Milton got out, then turned and helped a woman in a white nurse’s uniform from the van. They hurried toward the clinic door as the voices of the demonstrators rose in a cacophony of shouted slogans.
Perkerson leaned into the rifle and made a conscious effort to relax. He had not had time to position himself perfectly; he’d have to shoot quickly.
As Milton was about to reach for the door, a demonstrator flung himself onto the walkway in front of the doctor, stopping his progress. Milton turned to one of the policemen and raised his hands with a shrug. What are you going to do about this? he seemed to be asking.
The turn was perfect for Perkerson. He moved the crosshairs to the center of the doctor’s chest, took a breath, let half of it out, and squeezed. The doctor flew backward as the bullet struck home. At the end of his vision, Perkerson could see a policeman diving for the woman. The rifleman panned left two feet and squeezed off a second shot. The nurse’s head seemed to explode.
The noise coming from the demonstrators changed character immediately. The chanting turned to screaming as people ran or flung themselves onto the ground.
Perkerson did not wait to see what happened next. He left the window open and moved his knee, letting the curtain fall against the wall. Quickly, but calmly, he disassembled the rifle, packed it into the briefcase, folded the tripod and the stool, put them into the raincoat’s inner pockets, draped the coat over his arm, and stood up. He looked around him to be sure he had left nothing behind, then walked with long strides toward the elevator. When he walked out onto the loading platform downstairs, his pulse and breathing were up, but not much.
