The Senator and the Priest

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Our security guys were around earlier. I don’t know what happened to them. The state police were supposed to take over today.”

  Joe and Dolly pushed their way into the room.

  “Are these folks your security people, sir?”

  “No, detective, they’re my staff.”

  “What happened to our security?” Joe asked the whole world.

  “They disappeared. Find out what the hell happened to them and to the state cops! This begins to look like a setup.”

  “Sir,” the detective said to Tommy, “with your permission I will summon some Chicago uniformed police to escort you to your car and then escort you home.”

  “Thank you, detective,” I said.

  “It was a brilliant concert, Ms. O’Malley. I’m sorry it had to end this way.”

  Later that evening, the sedated Mary Therese sound asleep and the other two girls on watch at the door to her room, our crowd, including the redoubtable Chucky, were sitting glumly in our “war room” pondering what happened.

  Joe had screamed at the Governor and demanded the head of the state police on a platter.

  “We don’t want them messing around us anywhere,” he shouted. “We were set up.”

  We could hear the Governor promise that he would get to the bottom of it.

  “I don’t care what bottom you find, Governor. We don’t want your idiots around us any more.”

  He slammed the phone down.

  He had already dismissed the private security group whose boss had insisted that his men had left only when they thought the concert was over.

  “Bobby Bill?” I asked.

  “Would he go that far?” Tommy shook his head in dismay.

  “He only had to bribe a couple of people.”

  “He must really be afraid of us.”

  The Mayor of Chicago called to “apologize.” I assured him that Chicago’s finest had saved the day.

  “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Mary Margaret.”

  “It goes pretty deep.”

  It was all on the nine o’clock news, the success of the concert was hardly noticed. There was wonderful footage of the sisters saving Marytre and of myself and Tommy embracing them. The cops had the name and address of the woman. She was from Arkansas and still insisted, as she had on camera, that Jesus had sent her to save “the pretty girl from her terrible family.” Senator Crispjin’s office had issued a statement which said, “The Senator regrets any violence. However, he feels that a candidate who engages in divisive and demagogic rhetoric runs the risk of offending patriotic Americans.”

  Then our Dolly was on the screen.

  “Has American politics deteriorated so badly that terrorism has become an acceptable part of a campaign?”

  She didn’t add “with the approval of one candidate.” That was against our rules.

  “Do you have any idea, Dolly, what happened to the state police detail that was supposed to be protecting the Moran family or the private security group that has been protecting him up to now?”

  “No we don’t. We feel we were set up.”

  “By whom?”

  Dolly simply shrugged.

  “They really want to drive you out of the race, Tommy,” Ric Suarez said softly.

  “I guess we have them scared. What do we do now?”

  Chucky intervened.

  “We sign on Mike Casey’s Reliable Security. It’s all off-duty Chicago cops, the best on the force. We tell the governor that we don’t trust his cops. If he wants them around, that’s fine but we have our own cops and the state police should stay out of their way.”

  “They probably won’t try anything again,” Tommy said without conviction.

  The Governor called to say that he promised a police car in front of our house every day and night.

  Joe told him to keep them out of our way.

  That was not the last of it.

  The next morning Leander Schlenk reported from Washington that some members of Congress thought that Tommy had organized the kidnapping plot to promote his “faltering” campaign.

  In the middle of the following week we were going over to our headquarters to plan for the grand opening. The two Reliables, big linebacker types, joined us at the doorway to escort us towards our van.

  Across the street two state policemen were apparently sleeping in their car.

  Our middle daughter Mary Ann stopped us at the bottom of the stairs.

  “That’s a bad car,” she pointed at our battered old Chevy. “Don’t get into it!”

  “Hush, dear,” I said.

  She’s our psychic one and has moods like that.

  “Run!” she shouted, breaking away from us. “Run!”

  We followed her down the street, running to catch up, even the two Reliables.

  “Hurry! Hurry!”

  Then the blast of the exploding car knocked us to the ground. We were only bruised a bit. The two state police cops across the street were critically injured. A column of flame leaped from the car, closing our house off like the biblical seraphim closed off paradise in the Bible. All the front windows in the house were shattered as were the windows across the street. They were destroying our neighborhood.

  Tommy rolled over and flipped open his cell phone.

  “Tommy here, get out of there through the back door. NOW! There may be an explosion!”

  Then he called the Oak Park Police.

  “I think there may be a bomb in a car in front of it … I don’t want to argue with you … Just do it … A bomb exploded in front of my house a couple of minutes ago … PLEASE DO IT!”

  We heard a second explosion.

  “Forget about it assholes. It just blew up …”

  “Ambulances on the way,” one of the Reliables said. “I think the River Forest Fire and Police are on the way.”

  “Everyone all right?” I asked.

  “We’re OK,” Mary Rose murmured. “Aren’t we lucky Mary Ann is a psychic!”

  “It was a BAD car,” Mary Ann said sadly. “It smelled bad.”

  There were two explanations the next morning for the explosions.

  The Examiner’s headline asked

  DID TOMMY BLOW UP HIS OWN CAR?

  In Washington Senator Crispjin told a bank of microphones that he deplored the violence in quiet Chicago suburbs and called for an end to it. “I ask my opponent to moderate his rhetoric which I’m sure has enflamed this election.”

  “What rhetoric?” demanded a reporter.

  “He said that illegal immigrants had the same rights as good American citizens.”

  “He only quoted the Declaration of Independence that all men have certain inalienable rights. Since when, Senator, is that inflammatory?”

  The Senator backtracked.

  “At least he ought to know that immigration is an inflammatory issue in this country.”

  “So he shouldn’t talk about it?’

  “He should be careful what he says.”

  “Are you going to drop out of the race, Mr. Moran?” The national news reporter asked as we watched the installation of new windows.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to stop talking about immigration as your opponent suggested?”

  “No.”

  “Have your neighbors complained?”

  “Yes, some of them. They want us to move out of the neighborhood.”

  “Will you?”

  “No.”

  “Are you worried about the safety of your family?”

  “Yes … There is no legitimate appeal in this country from the ballot to the bullet. We’re not the ones making that appeal.”

  Those two dialogues looked good on Chicago television. The next poll in the Daily News reported that his lead had shrunk from forty-eight percent to thirty-eight percent. The Examiner and the Senator dropped the issue. The negative ads disappeared for a while.

  “Is it right for us to put our children through these risks?” Tommy asked me one nigh
t in bed. Neither of us were able to sleep. Nor were we in the mood for making love.

  “They say they’re not in any danger as long as Mary Ann’s psychic thing is working.”

  “They live in a fairy-tale world. They see us as actors in a movie or a TV series. The good guys always win. We’re wearing the white hats.”

  “The larger question, Tommy love, is whether we should be in it. Is it right to risk our lives and the kids’ future in a joust with windmills?”

  “What are we trying to prove anyway?”

  “Exactly.”

  We were both silent for a while.

  “Maybe,” he said, “we could withdraw from active campaigning. Tell the world that the risk to our children is too great. We might get a lot of sympathy votes if we did that.”

  “Whoever wants you out of the race would not be satisfied with that.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “Tommy, do we have the right to quit so our kids are safe?”

  “I’ve thought of that too. Would we be letting them down if we cut and run?”

  I snuggled close to him, now wanting love.

  “They are who they are and who we made them. They’re adventurers. It may be in their genes. They liked Mexico. They like the campaign. If we pull out now because this adventure is dangerous, what will it do to them?”

  His fingers found my breast.

  “We betray them no matter what we do?”

  I groaned as his lips touched my nipple.

  “We trust God.”

  “Who makes no guarantees?”

  God talk really turns me on.

  “Don’t stop, Tommy!”

  “I wasn’t planning on it.”

  “God’s guarantees are valid only in the long run,” I managed to say.

  “In the long run we will all be dead anyway.”

  Death talk always turns me on too.

  So we defied death.

  The two cops survived. We repaired the house and the headquarters on Chicago Avenue. A second delegation of neighbors called upon us to urge us not to move. The bombers were never caught. The kids bounced back quickly. Tommy and I did not sleep very well. We heard from someone who would know that Rodgers Crispjin had told Bobby Bill to call off his troops. I also heard that someone has told the Senator that if this kept up his own life would be in danger. Everyone relaxed a little and we went forth en famille to Rockford to begin our summerlong campaign.

  But the violence was not over yet.

  CHAPTER 12

  WE REALIZED in July that the summer campaign was a waste. We still lagged seven or eight percentage points behind in the polls. Senator Crispjin remained in Washington on the Senate’s business. Some of his colleagues, men in difficult races, found time to return to their constituencies. The Senator allegedly did not think that was necessary because he was so far ahead. “You don’t use a tank to swat a fly,” was his attitude according to the indefatigable Leander Schlenk. September and October were the only months that really mattered in a campaign.

  “Next time, Tommy,” Joe McDermott sighed one afternoon as we waited in the airport for our plane to arrive, “we campaign only in September and October.”

  “If there is a next time,” I said.

  I was in a mean, nasty, irritable, mood. So was Tommy, though his moods are more low-key than mine. We had been squabbling for days. We had dumped the kids at the Michigan City Airport to be picked up by their Aunt April. They needed a time out on the beach with their cousins. They had been griping and complaining all week, bickering with us and one another. When we told them we were giving them a free weekend, they had turned sullen and sulked silently on the flight from Midway to Michigan City. They hated their cousins, they had informed us when the plane landed. They were BORING!

  “Brats!” I had said.

  “They’ll have a great time,” Tommy had predicted, probably accurately.

  “Adventurers indeed!” I had grumbled.

  Tina had taken her brood to Green Lake. Ellie McDermott supported the campaign, as she had said, by not burdening us with her presence. I didn’t argue.

  I don’t remember what cities we were visiting on our downstate trek, LaSalle-Peru, maybe, and Bloomington. Most downstate cities, it seemed to my urban cynicism, were interchangeable one with another—nineteenth-century river towns in the prairies surrounded by vast fields of tall corn. Scenes from State Fair, two-and-a-half-hours’ drive and a century away from Chicago.

  It had been a hot summer, the sun, grimly implacable in cloudless skies and thick curtains of humidity, making every step an intolerable exertion. I made all of us, even the Reliables, put on sun-block cream. “No suits for cancer later on.” The stress and the strain, the heat and the humidity, the dour faces and the weariness of the crowds had all taken their toll on poor Tommy. He still smiled magically, laughed at himself, joked about the kids hating us for forcing them to take a weekend off. He still gave his standard talks with his usual verve, still worked the crowd like a Chicago ward committeeman. Yet there was no light in his eyes when the show was over or when we drove from the next airport to the next rally.

  “You go south of 1-80,” Chucky had warned us, “and you’re not quite in the South, but you’re not in the North either. Marymarg, jeans and T-shirts for you, and only moderately classy. Tommy, you can wear a tie and a jacket but you take them off when you begin to speak.”

  We did as we were told. I also wore a sombrero. When there were enough Hispanics in the crowd to respond to Tommy’s brief greetings in Spanish, he might ask me to sing a song or two and apologize for not having the whole band. One of the Reliables would give me my guitar.

  None of us could tell how they were reacting. They applauded enthusiastically and laughed quietly at Tommy’s jokes. Even the anglos loved my songs. (I always said that my voice was not as good as Rosie’s. Everyone else in the family, herself included, insisted that, as a torch singer, I was a little bit better.) They shook hands eagerly with Tommy and the women shook hands with me. They were Democrats of course or they wouldn’t have been there.

  After the rally, there would be the usual press conference with the usual questions and Tommy’s usual smile and effective answers. Often we’d take a brief ride to the local television station for a longer interview. The only tough question would be

  MEDIA: Why should people here vote for you, Mr. Moran, instead of Senator Crispjin?

  CANDIDATE: Well, because I’m a Democrat and am more likely to be on the side of poor and ordinary folks than a Republican would be. It’s time for a change in Washington, to give the workers and the farmers and the middle class their rightful say.

  MEDIA: You never criticize the Senator, do you?

  CANDIDATE: I don’t think you should win elections by vilifying your opponents.

  MEDIA: You’ve experienced a lot of negative ads this summer and a couple of attacks on you and your family. How do you explain that?

  CANDIDATE: I don’t. I can’t. They haven’t frightened us off.

  MEDIA: Do you think there are people who don’t want you to win?

  CANDIDATE: I hope not.

  Nothing very exciting, but a chance for a lot more people to see and hear Tommy and to realize, we hoped, that he was an intelligent young man and not the wimp or the inexperienced demagogue that the attack ads, growing more relentless as the summer went on, claimed.

  There were a lot more questions about the violence than we would have expected. Clearly that concerned a lot of people. Nor did they seem to accept the argument that we had brought it on ourselves.

  Anyway as we waited in that tiny airport with inadequate air conditioning, drenched in perspiration, and with cleansing showers a long way off, we discussed the folly of a summer campaign.

  “In England,” Joe said, “they only permit four weeks of campaigning for a general election. Makes a lot of sense to me.”

  “Senator Crispjin, as always, has made the right decision,” Tommy said wearily. “H
e campaigns effectively by remaining in the Beltway and tending to his senatorial responsibilities while his ads beat up on me. An unknown candidate has to travel all over the state so people can see him on the television news on Saturday or Sunday night. We have no choice. This a holding action. We haven’t gained on him, but we haven’t lost either. September and October will be the critical months.”

  “What will we do then?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure … I think the race will be won in the Chicago area. We’ll do well in Chicago, though we will have to do the Black churches as often as we can. Victory is in the suburbs and the collar counties, especially suburban Cook and DuPage. So we concentrate there. Lots of challenges to the Senator to debate. Some stations will schedule debates. Of course he won’t come, but we’ll show up every time.”

  Joe nodded.

  “I think you’ve learned the game pretty well this summer, Tommy. What do you think, Ric?”

  “You’ve created a lot of enthusiasm among my people, Tommy. They think you’re really on their side. You have to keep pounding on that. This time we will get out the votes, I promise.”

  I wondered if that would really happen. Latinos had yet to be mobilized in American politics, except in a couple of California districts.

  “Mary Margaret?”

  “There are an awful lot of soccer moms out in the suburbs. Don’t forget them.”

  “Soccer moms and Hispanics,” Tommy worked up enough energy to laugh. “Well, that’s where the research shows the new Democratic majority is supposed to be … What’s Crispjin going to do, Joe?”

  “He’ll go for his downstate base, especially the Evangelical churches. And he’ll fight us tooth and nail in DuPage county.”

  “So that’s where the battle will be, fair enough! There’s a lot of people out there who should be Democrats … Does the St. Luke’s women’s soccer team have any games in September, Mary Margaret?”

  “You bet and your daughter is the star.”

  “Whom do we play?”

  “Our arch enemies—St. Vincent!”

  “Just so long as we don’t have to defeat a team from DuPage county.”

  “I’ll do my best to look like a soccer mom … How do we cope with the violence question?”