Dev Conrad - 03 - Blindside

by Ed Gorman

  ‘It means I’ll think about it.’

  ‘You’re a real son of a bitch, you know that?’ She was gathering her coat and gloves. ‘I come up here and I’m completely honest with you and look what I get.’

  Her charm and honesty hadn’t worked. She had to be wondering if tearing her clothes off wouldn’t have done the trick instead of her helpless female routine.

  I took her by the elbow and walked her to the door. She tried ripping her arm from my grasp several times. I liked her better this way.

  I’m sure she was going to lacerate me with more insults, but when I opened the door there was a group of hotel guests in the hall. She decided not to give them a show.

  TWENTY-TWO

  You might have mistaken the evening for a movie premiere done on the cheap. True, there was only one spotlight prowling the star-spread night sky and none of the people queuing up in front of the double doors could be said to be glamorous. But the patriotic music over the loudspeakers gave even old ops like me a distinct thrill. And photographers and TV crews were grabbing shots of everybody they could find.

  When you thought of how many people around the world were murdered for even asking for an event like this – cowardly and rote as some of the events were – you had to feel that despite the bankers and the bought-and-paid-for Congress and the haters and the madmen… as yet we still had a country that we could rightly be proud of.

  So the venerable building with the ivy binding much of it was tonight a symbol of many honorable things, even if the two men who would take the stage were slightly less honorable than some of the slaveholders and opportunists who signed our Declaration of Independence. For all that I disliked him, Jeff Ward would still stand up against the worst representatives of both parties.

  Now was the time for a smoke, standing in the clean October air and watching the movie-premiere spotlight play across the sky while the earliest arrivals – who just might be movie stars if you didn’t look too closely – filed into the building. These would be the people who’d gotten advance questions from ops on both sides. Ops wanted their advocates as close to the stage as possible. Political signs were prohibited here as was any kind of campaigning. The people went in quietly and without incident. I imagined they were surprised to find metal detectors were in place. The sponsors didn’t want a tragedy or even a near-tragedy to mar the night.

  Kathy Tomlin came up next to me and said, ‘They’re taking bets at this little bar I go to sometimes. It’s kind of blue-collar. They’re betting that Burkhart pounds Jeff into the ground.’

  ‘That makes sense. Burkhart would pay them ninety-eight cents an hour if he could get away with it. No wonder they like him.’

  ‘I say that to them. If I was a guy they’d punch me. All I usually get is, ‘You’re a crazy broad,’ while they’re staring at my breasts. Which is better than at my father’s country club. I worked as a waitress there one summer and it was like working in a greaser bar. They thought they had a right to keep touching me.’

  ‘Sounds like my kind of place.’

  ‘Would you care to get a drink as soon as this is over? And that’s not a proposition.’

  ‘I’d like that very much, Kathy.’ Then: ‘Ready to go inside?’

  ‘I wish I still believed in God. I’d say prayers for Jeff.’

  Even with an hour to go, the auditorium was filling up quickly. There were two sets of seats, each eight across, with a wide aisle between. Near each wall was a stand-up microphone where the questioners would stand. My guess was that the organizers were afraid that if there was only one shared microphone there might be trouble. Our people were on the right side of the place. We took seats in the fourth row from the front.

  ‘I hate that he won’t let anybody see him,’ Kathy said as we sat down.

  Usually two or three people from the campaign are in the dressing room of the candidate, prepping him and encouraging him until just before he has to go on stage. Ward was different. According to Kathy, he always got to the site early and then barricaded himself in whatever room had been prepared for him. The only person allowed in was the makeup person. And he or she was told to make it quick. Neither Kathy nor Lucy liked this idea, but I understood it. Getting bombarded with last-minute ideas would only increase my nervousness and I assumed that was the case with Ward. Silence allowed you to focus. I knew a candidate who brought ten-pound hand weights to his dressing room. He exercised for an hour. It relaxed him.

  There were so many TV people on stage they resembled an ant army. There was some trouble with lighting the four reporters who’d sit on the panel. Crew members sat in the empty chairs while the director and a man on a tall ladder with wheels tried several different angles with the lights. A giant screen had been mounted above stage central so that the audience could be seen in close-up.

  Lucy slipped in next to Kathy. She smiled at us then held up her crossed fingers. She leaned forward so she could see both of us and said, ‘There are some demonstrators outside. Burkhart’s people. One of them shoved one of our people and our guy shoved him back. The police arrested both of them. I just hope the night goes all right.’

  Comedians use the term flop sweat for when they bomb with an audience. I get something similar when my clients have to go on stage for a big event. And mine usually starts about half an hour before that insidious little red light appears on the camera.

  I’d been in situations like this where one group taunted the other group across the aisle. Tonight there was a begrudging civility. Down front people from the opposing parties were even making a show of shaking hands. Best behavior for the TV audience. The stations were grabbing shots even before the debate began. The dust-up outside had already given them the moment of confrontation their news managers would demand. Politics had more and more begun to resemble professional wrestling encouraged by the TV people. Who wanted to watch anything as boring as a serious story where there was no battle or strife?

  Lucy and Kathy talked quietly while I opened my laptop and checked up on our other campaigns. One of our two oppo guys had turned up a twenty-year-old DUI arrest on our opponent. Our guy wanted to know if he should try and get in touch with the arresting officer in case our opponent had given him any kind of trouble. Worth looking into but a twenty-year-old arrest could cut both ways. I could see our opponent ’fessing up on the tube with his family and the required number of American flags behind him as he said, ‘And that was when I learned my lesson about drinking and driving. Something I’ve told my two teenage daughters over and over. Drinking and driving – there’s no excuse for it. And I haven’t done it once since that night twenty years ago.’ We would have just handed him a good-guy moment and managed to look a little sleazy in the process. We might use it anyway but it wasn’t really strong unless he’d decked the arresting officer. Or at least tried to.

  At a quarter before the hour the moderator, a former Chicago anchorman who now fronted infomercials, appeared on stage. He had to ask three times for the audience’s attention. Infomercials do not inspire respect. When they finally started listening he ran down all the rules for the evening. The big two were Don’t Applaud and Don’t Make Any Derogatory Noises when you disagree with something a candidate says. Then he did a mini-testimonial dinner speech about the billionaire funding tonight’s debate, which I would have liked much better if he hadn’t twice said, ‘And even if he agrees with one candidate more than the other – he thinks it’s time for a new start in government – he wants both sides to get an equally fair hearing.’ Gosh, I wonder which candidate he favors?

  Then he got into the subject of asking questions. That segment would run half an hour, the debate itself fifty minutes, with five minutes each for closing arguments. He said that if any question sounded inappropriate the microphone would be killed instantly, and that the questioner would be escorted from the building. He sounded adamant about this and I believed him.

  The cameras picked up the moderator who had now moved to center stage to s
hake the hand of each reporter who walked to the desk. Two men, two women. Two from Chicago, one from a suburb, and one from a farm town.

  The tension and the thrill of the moment was on most faces as I looked around the rows behind me and across from me. Many of the conversations died; eyes were on the stage now.

  ‘This is an honor for me,’ said the moderator, who had walked from the front of the desk to the center of the stage. ‘I spent twenty-three years covering Illinois politics in cities and towns of all sizes. I even managed to survive in Chicago for nine years without being shot or put in jail.’

  Not a bad line; got a good laugh.

  ‘Tonight we have as our guests two men who represent very different views of our federal government. Since we get most of our information from sound bites, I’m hoping that tonight our panel and the candidates themselves can talk about their beliefs in more detail. As many of you probably know, after the candidates give their five-minute opening remarks, some of you will get to ask them questions directly. We can’t accommodate all of you but we will get as many of you to the microphones as we can.

  ‘Right now I’d like to thank Mr Richard Anderson for making this possible tonight. I want to thank all of you in the auditorium and all of you tuning in at home. This is the kind of event that helps keep our democracy strong. And now without further ado—’

  Burkhart came from the right, Ward from the left. Both men got standing ovations from their supporters. And there weren’t even any applause signs to generate the enthusiasm. For once Burkhart wore a suit, banker’s blue with a somber blue necktie. He appeared no less fierce. Ward, by contrast, could have stepped out of an adventure novel involving a fortune in diamonds and nookie. His smile redeemed him. It was just boyish enough to make you forget that he was probably the kind of guy who wouldn’t lend you a hand after he’d accidentally run over you.

  Finally the moderator had to step forward again and raise his arms for silence. Three times, he said, ‘The clock is running, folks. We’ve got to move things along.’

  Burkhart gave the first opening statement. There was nothing new in it – he basically wanted to privatize everything up to and including police forces (today’s police forces had nasty unions) – but whoever was writing for him had cut way back on the invective. He still sounded crazy to me but he was crazy uncle crazy, not psycho crazy. He even managed to work in a joke about a bureaucrat. His side threatened to give him another standing O.

  When it was Ward’s turn I thought of all the videos of his previous speeches I’d skimmed through. He didn’t need any help from me. He was a natural performer with good instincts. No cornball, no preaching. A clean, incisive style coupled with the good looks and a light sense of humor. One thing I’d noticed in going through the speeches was that they’d gotten a lot better lately. And tonight’s opening remarks were the best of all. He talked about our grandfathers and their sacrifice in the big war. And how our grandfathers had gone through college on the GI Bill. And how many good things had come from the government funding so many programs to help get America going again after that tragic war. I imagined even some of Burkhart’s supporters agreed with Ward’s words.

  I leaned over to Kathy and whispered, ‘Jim Waters outdid himself with this one. He wrote a hell of a speech.’

  Before she could respond the moderator said, ‘All right. We’re going to start the questions now. Remember, while we expect them to be pointed we also expect them to be civil. If our director feels that any of them are offensive to the audience here in the auditorium or at home, he’ll cut the microphone. Let’s begin with a question from the challenger’s side. Step up, please.’

  The people had been chosen, the questions written for them. First up was a young man in a Marine uniform. Sylvia was doing her job. Next up would likely be an ageing nun. With a limp.

  ‘This is a question for Congressman Ward. Congressman, you say you support our fighting men and women involved in the war but you constantly talk about how the war is a waste of blood and money. Since you’ve never been in the military yourself, aren’t you undermining all of us who fight over there?’

  Loaded question, fair question. But Ward was prepared. He’d been called a ‘traitor’ by most of the neocons many times so he knew how to handle this one. He noted that most of the neocons who wanted endless war had never served in the military either. ‘Which is worse? Me asking for the lives of our children not to be wasted? Or for the neocons constantly trying to put our children in harm’s way? It’s rarely their children of course. They prefer sending other people’s children.’

  A small ripple of applause played across our side. But the moderator was quick and stern. ‘No applause, please.’

  First up for us was a middle-aged man in a wheelchair. The microphone had to be adjusted for him. I’d asked Kathy for a man with an especially sad case for our lead. She’d found him.

  ‘Mr Burkhart, you’ve said that one of the first things you’ll get rid of when you go to Washington is all the “feel good” programs. You want to privatize Social Security “sometime in the future”, to quote you, and you want to have savings programs instead of Medicare. I’m a thirty-nine-year-old former biology teacher and football coach. Two years ago I was hit with cerebral palsy. I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for the “feel good” program that has helped me and my family just get by. Would you cut off people like me?’

  Burkhart handled this better than I would have predicted. ‘There would be a fund of a billion dollars for special cases. And the fund would be constantly kept at that level. There would be help for those who really needed it but we’d get away from big government giveaways and red tape.’

  Spoken with measured and friendly tone; a seemingly reasonable man with a sensible approach. Here and at home his supporters would be nodding their heads. We knew our man would show this pretty-boy lefty hack how the government should be run.

  Presumably, someone in the press would, tonight or tomorrow, point out how laughably insignificant a billion dollars was when you were trying to bring help and justice to the medical problems of a nation of three hundred million strong.

  Burkhart’s next questioner didn’t need to wear a hard hat for us to know he was a hard hat. The one problem I had – and I hoped others had – was that he pushed the stereotype too hard. ‘When me ’n’ the boys at the construction company talk about all the filth that’s bein’ taught in our schools, we wonder where it’s goin’ to end. You’re for sex education startin’ in high school. And that means all this gay stuff. One of the boys said that should be for the parents to tell the kids, not the teachers. What about dat?’

  Dat? Really? I knew a good number of construction workers from working with different unions over the years. I had never met any who said ‘dat’ for ‘that.’ In fact, I had never met any who sounded like Rocky Balboa here. I was surprised he wasn’t scratching (or scratchin’) his balls and pickin’ his nose by now. This guy had to be a local actor of some kind; real local. And a plant.

  Our second questioner was a prim, pretty middle-aged woman in a blue skirt and a modest white blouse. She had the kind of earnest bright sweetness that made right-wing talking heads chortle and point fingers. Some dumb middle-class white broad who didn’t know shit about keeping America safe.

  To Mr Burkhart, she said, ‘I’m a librarian and I have to say I find your idea of privatizing libraries deeply offensive, Mr Burkhart. Libraries hold a very special place in our country’s history. There’s probably not a man or woman in this auditorium tonight who hasn’t spent many, many hours in their local libraries. And your idea of hiring people who’ve never been trained as librarians just to save money – I’m not worried about my job. I’ll get by no matter what happens. But I’m worried about all the fine librarians I’ve met who’ll be put out of their jobs – and all the communities that will suffer because of your idea. Would you please speak to that? Thank you.’

  I was certain that Sylvia had a list of crazy ideas
he’d have to defend. His supporters wanted blood and thunder and she had likely schooled him on wrapping everything in big government wasted spending. But when he started responding to the librarian his voice was softer than usual and he spent a full minute backtracking on his pledge to privatize libraries. ‘I always used that as an example. I didn’t ever actually say that I was thinking of privatizing libraries per se, only that I’m pretty sure some of these librarians who’ve been there a long time are probably kind of coasting and not earning their money.’

  Burkhart had just stepped into three inches of horse shit. While his supporters heard their man get harsh the way a real man gets, there would be a minimum of ten newspaper columnists and numerous TV editorialists who would nail his ass for attacking librarians. He seemed to understand this. He looked unhappy when our next questioner stepped up to the mike.

  The man’s slightly stooped back and long, mussed gray hair suggested he was at least in his sixties. Kathy’s whisper to Lucy was loud enough that I could hear it. ‘I don’t remember him from the rehearsal.’

  ‘Neither do I.’

  The man was tentative. He might have been afraid of the microphone because he kept his head angled away from it when he spoke. He cleared his throat before speaking. His words cracked when he spoke. ‘This is a question for both of you gentlemen.’ He doddered when he walked; he doddered when he spoke. There was something wrong here. Somehow the voice was practiced, not real. I stared more carefully at the man. The dark overcoat was so big for him it was cape-like. The hair was, I realized, a wig. Who the hell was he?

  ‘Proceed, sir. We don’t want to run out of time for questions.’ The moderator allowed himself a hint of irritation. I wondered if he’d also concluded that this guy was a ringer of some kind.

  After two more clearings of throat and one more dramatic leaning away from microphone, the would-be old man said, ‘There was a case in New York not long ago where a famous politician was forced to resign because he was found to be a regular visitor to a house of prostitution. If both of you were found to be guilty of the same crime, would you resign?’