Jack said, “Hi, Merriwether. What took you so long?”
A cold droplet of silence. Street said, “To do what?”
“Move on Corso.”
A long cold stare from Street. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
Jack said, “The special grand jury. Smart move.”
“I can’t discuss that, Adams. Or didn’t they explain that at Harvard Law School?”
Jack smiled. “I guess I was asleep that day,” he said. “Help me out, Merriwether. What made you decide to get into the game in the fourth quarter?”
Apart from an intensified coldness of manner, Street did not reply.
Jack said, “I thought maybe the car bomb got you excited.”
Street spoke at last. “Why should it?” he said. “Going back to the thirties, there are 167 unsolved bombings in this county.”
Jack, who knew that newspaper editors love a good number even better than a demagogue does, felt that he had struck gold. He said, “No kidding? Is that an actual statistic?”
Street compressed his lips in a parody of a smile and responded with the briefest of nods.
Jack said, “That’s amazing.”
The line had shuffled forward while they spoke, opening a gap between Jack and the man in front of him. “Close it up!” someone shouted. Jack paid no attention; he did not understand the military expression, or so Street thought. Street had served during the Vietnam War as a navy lawyer at the Pentagon while Jack was hiding out from the draft. He knew all about Jack, or thought he did. “Close it up!” the same man shouted again. Street made a shooing gesture with his long fingers and Jack moved up.
Turning around again, Jack said, “By the way, Merriwether, you got away after the Gallagher trial before I could tell you this, but I thought you did a good job.”
“Did you now?” said Street.
Jack said, “Yeah, I did. But I always wondered: Why did you bring charges in the first place?”
“Because,” Street replied, “Gallagher was guilty.”
Jack said, “Oh. If that’s what you think, no wonder you’re pissed off at me.”
“That doesn’t exactly describe my feelings,” Street said. “Your defense was a travesty. A travesty, Adams.”
“Wow,” Jack said, “what a burst of eloquence. Are you always such a good loser?”
On the field below, bugles and drums played a Broadway melody in triple time. The tinny music, distorted and seemingly far away because of the stadium acoustics, wafted to their ears. Street turned his head and gazed at the concrete wall of the men’s room, as if able to see through it and perceive the musical rednecks in their gaudy uniforms and the bare-legged small-town girls waving banners and twirling batons as they dashed up and down the muddy playing field.
“Not to change the subject,” Jack said, “but I hear my partner’s wife is going to be working for you in your campaign.”
Jack had heard no such thing, and as far as the world knew Street was not running for anything. But Cindy Miller, who worked in obscurity for Street, Frew, Street & Merriwether, was a Republican activist, so Jack had taken a wild guess. The look on F. Merriwether Street’s long-jawed narrow face, which ordinarily was about as expressive as a locust’s, told him that he had hit the mark. Two closely held secrets betrayed in a single day! Street’s lips twitched again, and then without answering he left the line.
Watching him go, clumsy and easy to read as he waded through the crowd, grinning broadly and shaking hands with half-drunken members of the Great Unwashed whose fingers he would not have touched except in hopes of a vote, Jack thought, I can beat this guy anytime I want to.
9 A day or two after the game, having done some research of his own, Jack mentioned to his favorite reporter that there had been 167 gangland bombings in and around Columbus, all unsolved.
“How do you know?” the reporter asked.
“Merriwether Street told me,” Jack said. “He counted them up, and I guess it occurred to him that maybe the Mafia had something to do with this mysterious string of explosions. Like, it wasn’t the Luftwaffe after all.”
Jack’s devastating wisecrack and the 167 unsolved gangland bombings dominated the next morning’s stories announcing the special grand jury. Later in the day, F. Merriwether Street’s secretary called Cindy Miller and informed her that she would not be needed in the campaign after all.
Over pizza that evening, Jack told Morgan that he had decided to run in the Democratic primary for the office of Ohio attorney general. The post was now held by a Republican who could not run again. If Jack could win the primary, F. Merriwether Street would be his likely opponent in the fall election.
“That’s a big if,” Morgan said.
But she knew in her bones that Jack could win. Her job was to make sure he understood he had done so with a little help from his friends.
10 Three weeks before the Democratic primary, Jack was five points behind the leader, a prosecutor from Cleveland who had the support of the party organization. Jack’s campaign had already spent a hundred thousand dollars of our money (in well-worn small bills). Another thirty thousand dollars or so was raised from bona fide donors, mostly Morgan’s uncombed and unreformed radicals, who otherwise kept themselves out of sight. Nevertheless they were optimistic that one of their own was going to win real power. Jack had fought his way upward in the polls, and the media were saying that he had the momentum.
Then, at a Gruesome affair, the governor took Jack aside for a private word. With an arm around Jack’s shoulders he told him how impressed everyone was with the race he had run.
“You’ve done an amazing job of building your name and building a base, starting from zero,” the governor said. “You’re going to fall a little short this time, Jack. But everybody in the party knows who you are now, and your day will come.”
Jack said, “But I’m going to win, Governor.”
The governor tightened his half-hug. “Not this time, Jack,” he said.
“What are you saying to me?”
“It’s time to step back, Jack.”
“Step back? What’s that supposed to mean?”
The governor gave his shoulders a fatherly squeeze. “Sometimes, Jack,” he said, “you get a better view of the future if you step back a little. You’ve got a brilliant future. Brilliant. But this is now.”
Jack understood. “You want the guy from Cleveland to win.”
“It would disappoint a lot of people if he didn’t, Jack.”
“It would? Why is that?”
“Jack, Jack. He’s Polish. Our party is home to the Polish. You know what they say: Home is where they’ve got to take you in. Pukaszewski’s got a right.”
“What if I win anyway?”
“It would be hard for the party to accept that, I’m afraid. Or forget it.”
“Even if I can’t help it?”
“What do you mean by that, Jack?”
“I don’t see how I can guarantee I won’t win unless I take my name off the ballot. And it’s too late for that.”
The governor dropped his embracing arm. “Jack, Jack, Jack,” he said, sadly shaking his head. “We’ve got to be able to count on you.”
Jack knew what he was expected to say. He said, “I hear what you’re saying.”
Jack’s words were not exactly a promise and the governor knew it. Jack thanked him humbly for his interest and advice and went straight home to Morgan.
“They want me to go into the tank,” he said.
After listening to his story, Morgan said, “If you win, the party will never give you another chance.”
“That’s what they told John F. Kennedy when he tried for the vice presidential nomination at the ’56 convention, and they said the same when he went for the presidency in ’60. But when he won the big one, they forgot they ever said it. They denied they ever said it.”
“So what does that say about you?”
“That I need the same things Kennedy
had: ruthlessness and money,” he said. “Especially money. We need more money.”
“We’ve already spent more than we can explain. It’s risky. And money may not be enough.”
Jack said, “Money is always enough if there’s enough money.”
“What about the ruthlessness?”
Jack said, “You get the money. I’ll take care of the ruthlessness.”
11 When Morgan told me all this at an unscheduled motel rendezvous (arranged by a system of clandestine signals so clever that it would take a page of type to describe them), I said, “I think Jack has just coined his motto.”
“What’s that?”
Laughing, I said, “‘Money is always enough if there’s enough money.’ Maybe he really is a Kennedy.”
I heard no answering laughter. Morgan, a bloodstream Camelot romantic, did not like jokes about the Kennedys, even coming from a Russian. Coldly, she said, “Maybe. What about the money?”
“What is he going to do with it, exactly?”
“Go on television. A blitzkrieg of ads for the final days of the campaign: Jack the giant killer.”
“Won’t that annoy the governor?”
“Yes. Jack doesn’t care. The moment has come, I think, to save Jack from himself. But when?” Morgan said. “It has to be soon.”
“Today is Tuesday. Friday.”
“No. Saturday is a lousy news day. Sunday night. The story will open the week and just keep going.”
“Very well. You know what to do? There can be no rehearsals.”
“I know what to do,” Morgan said.
“Just don’t warn Jack. His fear has to be real or the camera will see he’s faking.”
“No need to worry about that,” Morgan said. “Jack will win the Emmy for most convincing coward.”
Naturally, I had brought some money with me—the eleventh-hour cry for help had been anticipated. This time I gave it to Morgan in a picnic cooler under a bed of congealed ice cubes. She kissed me. Oh, Daddy!
Actually, I felt quite paternal, as I so often did where Morgan was concerned. Like a father, I wanted her to be happy. Like many a handler before me, including Judas Iscariot, I was beginning to love the agent more than I loved the operation, a bad sign that I did not recognize at the time, or until long afterward.
12 On Sunday night—actually at three o’clock Monday morning—Jack woke up, gasping for breath, to find Morgan in bed with him. He always went to bed first, and he knew he had been asleep for some time. He was naked between the sheets, as was his habit. He started to speak, a delighted “Hey!” Morgan had awakened him by pinching his nostrils shut, and now she placed a hand over his mouth. With her other hand she showed him, in the feeble streetlight falling through his bedroom window, a bundle of clothes.
“Pajamas,” she said. “Get up. Put them on, quick. Then get back in bed.”
“Put them on?”
Morgan nodded emphatically, showing him a finger on her own lips before removing her hand from his. He did as he was told. Back in bed, Morgan, her long body also encased in pajamas, lay on her back beside him and took his hand. He tried to guide it. Morgan resisted, shaking her head.
“Cut it out,” she whispered. “There’s somebody in the house.”
Jack sat bolt upright. “‘Somebody in the house’?” he whispered.
“Jack, shut up. Lie down. It’s okay.”
“It’s okay?”
He could hear the intruders now, moving about in the darkness, opening and closing doors. “Call the cops!” He fumbled with the telephone on his bedside table, dropping the receiver. When he recovered it there was no dial tone. “Oh my God!” he groaned. “They’ve cut the lines!”
Having been reminded so recently of the horseshoe of lilies—Jack’s friends in the media had referred to the famous death threat in the Sunday paper—he was even more conscious of danger than usual. Somewhere inside the house someone worked the action of a pump shotgun, a bloodcurdling sound. Jack leaped in fright.
Morgan hissed, “Lie still.”
They heard a different mechanical sound, at first unidentifiable. Jack listened intently and said, “They’re pulling down the window shades. We’ve got to—”
Morgan clapped her hand over his mouth. Suddenly (but how could this be possible?) all the lights in the house went on, even the ones in the bedroom. A gunshot rang out in the living room, and then, in the space of a breath, another. Other guns joined in, dozens of startling explosions, which created an ear-shattering counterpoint of breaking glass, falling objects, pots and pans dancing and colliding. With a sob, Jack leaped out of bed and clawed at the window. Morgan leaped from the bed and tripped him. They fell together. Jack tried to get to his feet.
“Lie still, Jack!” Morgan said, shouting now. “It’s your only chance.”
Morgan got on top of him and tried to get his head in a scissors grip. He stared up at her with wild eyes. Strong as Morgan was, well trained in the martial arts as she was, she was still a woman and Jack was much stronger than she was even when he wasn’t out of his mind with fear. Screaming with primal fright, he lifted her from his body and threw her against the wall. She struck her head and fell in a heap, momentarily stunned.
At this moment a man in a dark suit and fedora burst through the bedroom door, a twelve-gauge pump shotgun in his hands.
The intruder shouted, “Jack, don’t fucking move!”
Jack froze. The gunman began shooting. He shot the mirror. He shot the lamp. He shot out the window. He shot the framed pictures on the wall—Jack’s mother in her naval uniform, Jack’s Harvard pictures. Reloading, he shot everything else in the room that was breakable. He shot the telephone, which broke into hundreds of black acetate shards, one or two of which embedded themselves like shrapnel in Jack’s back. Jack saw blood, his own blood, but he did not feel pain. Finally the gunman, pumping one last live shell into the shotgun, pointed it straight at Jack. Two other men in dark suits and fedoras came into the bedroom. They, too, were armed with shotguns.
The original gunman’s finger tightened on the trigger. He said, “Watch the birdie, Jack.”
The gunman smiled: odd crooked teeth, flashes of aluminum instead of gold. His friends smiled over his shoulders at Jack, big taunting wiseguy smiles, like schoolyard bullies. At the last possible instant the gunman swung the muzzle of the shotgun upward and shot out the overhead light. Shards of glass rained down on Jack. Then the gunmen left. A deep silence followed, so deep that Jack wondered if he had been killed and his brain had not yet quite died, so that he could see and remember but all his other senses were going. Then he smelled the stink of cordite that filled the house and heard sirens, and knew that he was alive.
By now Morgan had revived. She sprang to her feet and said, “Get up. Get on your feet, Jack. It’s over.”
He did as she said. Morgan jumped up on the bed with something in her hand and, grabbing Jack’s pajama coat, pulled him closer. After a moment he realized that she was brushing his hair. In the dark.
When the police arrived minutes later, only seconds ahead of a squadron of television and radio vans and newspaper photographers, they found a bloodied but well-combed Jack Adams supporting his half-conscious wife in the wreckage of their bedroom. Every object in the modest little house had been destroyed by blasts of double-ought buckshot fired at point-blank range. Glass littered the floors, pictures had been blasted off the wall. Pots and pans, clothes, books, everything was riddled by shot. Every lamp and lightbulb in the house had been shot away, so all this was revealed in the shadow-free blue-white glare of klieg lights. As cameras whirred.
The police found more than one hundred empty shotgun shells in the house.
Thirteen days later, Jack won the election by two percentage points.
Three
1 On the day after the primary, Jack and Danny lunched on pizza in the conference room of Miller & Adams, which had been converted to Jack’s campaign headquarters.
Glowing with happiness,
Jack said, “Okay, let’s talk about the general election.”
Danny did not reply.
Jack said, “Onward and upward to final victory, just like in high school. Dan, what would I do without you?”
Danny said, “You’re about to find out. I’m going to have to withdraw as campaign manager.”
Jack had just taken a bite of pizza. He spat it into his hand and said, “What?”
“Cindy,” Danny said. “She says she’ll walk if I’m part of making you attorney general.”
“What does she think you’ve been doing for the last six months?”
“She thought you were going to lose. I guess she didn’t count on the Mafia pushing you over the top with a skeet-shooting contest.”
Jack said, “Mafia, my ass. You did it, just like in high school.”
“That was then. This is now, and you don’t need anybody,” Danny said. “You’re going to wipe up the floor with F. Merriwether Street. And that’s the problem. Cindy was supposed to run the women’s side of Merriwether’s campaign. But thanks to you, he dumped her.”
“What does that have to do with me? Or you?”
“Come on, Jack. You’re responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened in her life, so why shouldn’t you be responsible for this?”
“Okay, she’s been dumped by that asshole. Why does that mean you have to dump me?”
“Because Cindy says she’ll leave me if I choose you over her one more time. She means it. I can’t live without her. End of story.”
“Is this permanent?”
“No, just this once,” Danny said. “She works for Street’s father, for Christ’s sake. She’s the apple of old Street’s eye. I can’t do it to her.”
“Danny, this is a blow. What am I going to do?”
“Win. Run against anybody but Merriwether Street and I’ll be right beside you. But I can’t help you this time.”
Lucky Bastard Page 24
