Lucky Bastard

by Charles McCarry

  Jack said, “Dan, how can you do this to me after all these years? I need you.”

  “Not as much as I need Cindy.”

  “That bitch!” Morgan said when she heard the news. “She needs Danny more than you do. That’s what this is really all about. She cuts his meat, buttons his buttons, polishes his shoes, says his prayers with him, kisses his fucking wounds—”

  Jack was genuinely shocked by this last phrase. He said, “Morgan, for God’s sake—”

  “No wonder she’s turned into a Republican. She’s anti-abortion, for Christ’s sake. You know what she said at a rally of her stupid fat women? She said, ‘These left-wing harpies who are pushing for abortion are the same ones who used to spit on American soldiers and call them baby-killers.’ Now, that’s vile!”

  Morgan’s face was a mask of anger and contempt, as it always was when someone on the other side touched a nerve. Jack himself believed it possible that a comparison of mug shots of Movement chicks spitting on returning soldiers in the seventies and of present-day prochoice militants might turn up some matching faces. This did not seem to be the moment to voice this thought, so he said, with a glint of humor, “I had no idea Cindy was so eloquent.”

  “Eloquent? Dangerous!” Morgan mimed a pompom girl leading a cheer. “‘He is peaches, he is cream, he is the captain of our team. Adolf! Hitler! ‘ray! ‘ray! ‘ray!’ Maybe somebody should fuck Danny’s mind straight for him.”

  Though Jack was used to Morgan’s outbursts, he was staggered by the spitting rage she was in now. He said, “Like who?”

  She batted her eyes in a parody of pompom girl flirtation. “Why do you ask?”

  Jack said, “Morgan, don’t even think about it. I mean that.”

  Morgan said, “Oh really? You’re a good one to talk, Greasy Gus.”

  2 Even without Danny at his side, Jack was elected in November. He ran a colorful, witty campaign that made F. Merriwether Street look even more clumsy and dull than he actually was. Street, who sang bass in his church choir, always led a rousing chorus of “God Bless America” to end his rallies. Morgan retched.

  Jack said, “Forget it. He’s asking them to vote for America, not him.”

  “Then we need a song that tells people to vote for you.”

  Jack laughed. “What about ‘Jack, Jack, Jack, Coo-coo-too-goo-rooga’? It was my high school campaign song. Danny thought it up.”

  Morgan said, “You mean, ‘Gentleman Jack, the hot dog man, he can make love like no one can’?”

  “Get some new words.”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “No. It’s a catchy tune.” He grinned. “And the subliminals are good. Or don’t you remember?”

  “Fuck you.”

  But Morgan asked one of her people, a professor of creative writing, to come up with new words for the lively, salacious old song. Two days later the woman, holding her nose, handed her the new lyrics:

  Jack, Jack, Jack! He’s our candidate!

  Jack, Jack, Jack! Let us demonstrate

  That Jack, Jack, Jack does not hesitate

  To win! Win! Win!

  Let’s hear it for Jack, the man who wins!

  Let’s hear it for Jack as the future begins!

  Let’s do it for Jack, we wish he was twins!

  Ohio needs Jack, and everyone wins!

  Jack, Jack, Jack!

  The song caught on at once. Morgan taught the anthem to Jack’s ever-growing crowds, and in no time everyone could sing the words and dance to them as he strode into a rally. “Jack, Jack, Jack!” became the “Ruffles and Flourishes” of Jack’s political career.

  Jack became the youngest attorney general in the history of the state. Just as he had predicted, the governor and nearly everyone in the party apparatus outside Cleveland forgot that they had ever wanted him to lose. A star had been born. Everyone wanted to be one of the original band of brothers and sisters. Jack welcomed all comers, and especially all wise men bearing gifts.

  “It was the song that did it,” Danny said. “Voters like an alpha male.”

  “What’s an alpha male?” Jack asked.

  “The head chimp who gets to bang all the females while nobody else gets any.”

  “Jeez, is that what they elected me to do?”

  “Not yet,” Danny said. “But when you run for president, all you have to do is change the words a little.”

  Jack threw an arm around his friend. “The song is you,” he said. “Don’t forget that. I’ll tell you what really made the difference, and that’s what you did with Fats Corso.”

  “Shhh,” Danny said. “Cindy might be listening.”

  Thanks to Danny’s work behind the scenes, Corso had played a role in Jack’s victory. Not long after Jack won the primary, Fats Corso came to see Danny. F. Merriwether Street’s grand jury was winding up its investigation, and the media had just reported that Jack and Morgan had been called as witnesses in connection with the shotgun attack on their bungalow.

  Soon after dark the doorbell had rung. Cindy went to the door and found Corso on the front step. He was on crutches, but otherwise he was his unmistakable self: silk suit, white shirt, white-on-white tie, white fedora. He was alone. He swept off his fedora and said, “Very sorry to disturb, but I’d like a word with Attorney Miller.”

  “Which one?” Cindy said.

  Corso flushed. “No offense,” he said. “But your husband is the one I want to talk to.”

  “Please come in.”

  Corso seemed surprised by the invitation, but he followed, fedora in hand. In the living room, sitting on the sofa, his damaged leg stretched out before him in its cast, Corso accepted the weak American coffee that Cindy offered. With a last warning look at Danny, she withdrew.

  In his hoarse voice Corso said, “Attorney Miller, from what I understand, you’re not only Jack Adams’s partner but his best friend, maybe his only one.”

  “We go back a long way,” Danny said. “What can I do for you?”

  Corso said, “Give him a message from me. The shotguns? I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t nobody connected to me.”

  “Then who did do it?”

  “If I knew the answer to that question I’d tell you, but I’ve got no clue. I’ve asked all around. It was nobody I know. And I don’t have no enemies who hate me enough to do something like this to me.”

  Fats Corso’s sincerity was transparent. Still, Danny said, “With all due respect, Mr. Corso, I think Jack is going to find this hard to believe.”

  Fats waved a hand, pinky ring flashing. He said, “Listen to me. Nobody I know in this town or any other town where I know people had a thing to do with shooting up Jack Adams’s house. Me and my friends don’t do things like that, violate a man’s home. It’s against the rules. You understand what I’m saying to you? Nobody knows who done it.”

  Danny said, “Mr. Corso, let me be frank. As far as I know, you’re the only enemy Jack has got in the world.”

  “Attorney Miller, I wish I knew how I got to be his enemy, because I didn’t do the other, with the cop and the girl, neither. She’s a crazy kid, a born hooker just like her mother. She just wanted to hump a cop, so she knocked on the window of the first parked cruiser she saw. She told me that herself. It never crossed my mind to set Gallagher up. You think I didn’t know what would happen if I tried? I don’t care how many cops Gallagher—who’s a fucking liar by the way—said was on the pad, the cops would never stand for something like that. And now look. As God is my witness, on the grave of my mother, that’s the truth as I know it.”

  Danny said, “Mr. Corso, thanks for stopping by. I’ll give him the message.”

  Corso slumped in undisguised despair. He said, “Let me explain something to you, counselor. I’m no kingpin. I run a few girls, control the numbers, own the cigarette machines and the jukeboxes, make a few loans, use a little muscle. Years ago you could make a living doing what I do. Not anymore. Nobody needs girls. Every college broad does things for free
that you used to could only do in Tijuana. Now these crazies who marched against the war when you were over there fighting are getting elected to office—no offense, I name no names, but I’m trying to be honest with you—and they’re talking about setting up a state lottery. If they actually do this, which I used to think could never happen in a state like Ohio with all those Protestant churches, there goes the numbers game. So why me? It makes no sense. I can’t figure it out.”

  “I’ll tell Jack what you said,” Danny replied.

  As soon as Corso’s white Cadillac, a replica of his former vehicle minus the remote starter, was out of sight, Danny got into his own car and drove to the downtown hotel where Jack and Morgan were staying.

  Jack was exuberant. “Old Merriwether will never try Corso while the campaign is going on. If we can pressure Fats into copping a plea, admitting he shot up my house, I win.”

  Danny said, “Jack, he says he didn’t do it.”

  “What difference does that make? This is his way out.”

  “You believe him?”

  “Of course not. I just want to get some benefit from the situation. Plus screw Merriwether.” Jack’s mind was racing. He said, “Okay. Call Fats. Tell him to pick a felony, any felony, and plead guilty. He can’t possibly be sentenced until after the election. I’ll see that he doesn’t get too much time and doesn’t go to a bad place. He can make his own living arrangements inside. I won’t oppose parole. And I’ll never bother him again. All he has to do is admit before the world he tried to intimidate me and failed.”

  “He may be reluctant to do that, Jack.”

  “Talk to him. Tell him I know he did it, and I’ll have to tell the grand jury that.”

  Later that week Morgan, then Jack, appeared before the grandjury and identified three of Corso’s most trusted musclemen as the thugs who had blown the Adamses’ simple little young-marrieds’ house to smithereens. Their testimony was immediately leaked to the media. The newspapers ran a story identifying one of the accused underlings as Frank “Bang-Bang” Russo, so called because his weapon of choice was a pump-action shotgun loaded with double-ought buckshot.

  Indictments were returned, and a short time afterward F. Merriwether Street announced that he had accepted a plea bargain from Fats Corso. Jack kept his part of the deal. Corso was given ten to twenty years in prison. Although no one in the media made a point of this—even at this early stage in his career, Jack was far too valuable a source ever to be embarrassed—Corso had every prospect of parole within three years.

  “Justice has been done,” Jack told the media. “The important thing is, Fats Corso’s empire of crime has been smashed. Now we’ll move on and make sure he has a lot of old friends to keep him company in prison.”

  One of the unexpected consequences of the Corso affair was the humanization of Morgan Adams. She won the admiration of all, and perhaps even some votes for her husband, for the way in which she handled the night of terror through which she and Jack had lived together. During the campaign she went everywhere with Jack. Although she was still something of a frump by middle-class standards, she seemed softer, more feminine, less shrewish than before. Nicer to Jack. Always beside him on the hustings, she gazed at him with adoration as he spoke; they held hands in public, even hugged. Everyone noticed it.

  On an interview show in Cleveland, Morgan was asked by the host, a locally famous, elderly spinster journalist from another era, if she and Jack were planning a family.

  “Oh my goodness, Dorothy, we don’t have time to plan,” Morgan answered. “But I hope every single night that it will just happen.”

  “Did you say, ‘every single night’?” the old lady asked.

  Morgan clapped a hand over her mouth in the closest thing she could manage to girlish confusion. “Oh dear!” she cried. “What have I said?”

  “Don’t worry, Morgan,” said the old lady. “Believe me, you’ve done your husband no harm with the voters.”

  3 As attorney general, Jack traveled to every corner of Ohio, speaking at bar association meetings, police conventions, Kiwanis and Rotary and Knights of Columbus luncheons, union conventions, high school assemblies, college audiences—any platform would do, as long as it gave him exposure to an audience, a chance to charm civic leaders, and a cameo appearance on the local news. At first his public affairs assistant, a hefty and very plain middle-aged woman handpicked by Morgan (as was all the rest of his female staff), spent nearly every minute of every day offering his services as a public speaker. But soon his reputation as a spellbinding performer and charming dinner guest spread throughout the state, and he began to receive more invitations than he could accept. A Columbus station offered him a weekly call-in show, then a novelty in broadcasting. Jack loved to talk to strangers, loved to give advice, and his delight in being on the air was obvious to all. The bizarre personal lives of the callers soon attracted a large audience, and the show’s time slot was switched to late afternoon so that commuters could listen to it on their way home from work. Jack’s program was soon syndicated all over Ohio, and later in much of the Midwest.

  Meanwhile, as he had promised, Jack pounded on his signature issue: organized crime. Soon his remorseless pursuit of mafiosi encompassed the entire state. A coordinated police raid in fifteen cities, organized by Jack, swooped down on mobsters. Arrests were made, indictments were brought, a few more minor Mafia soldiers, and even a capo or two, were imprisoned.

  For all his passion to stamp out crime and evil, Jack almost never mentioned illegal drugs, even though these were available to almost every schoolchild in the state. In part this was because illegal drugs were the eucharist of his core constituency, the radical left, which regarded any attack on mind-altering substances as a fascist attack on their constitutional rights of privacy and free expression. Mostly, however, Jack left drugs alone because Peter had given strict and specific orders that Jack was to stay away from this issue.

  Morgan asked for Peter’s rationale. I told her, accurately as far as it went, that our chief believed that the traffic in drugs was an important weapon against capitalism—perhaps even the decisive weapon. Drugs weakened the workforce, undermined the moral order, demonstrated the inefficiency and corruptibility of the police apparatus, and drained money out of the economy. These funds—stolen, in effect, from the U.S. Treasury—went straight back to the suffering masses of the Third World, in many cases in the form of arms and ammunition for wars of liberation and terrorism. Money spent for drugs by Americans should be regarded as taxes voluntarily paid to the world revolution.

  Needless to say, all this made perfect sense to Morgan, as it did to most of her friends when she passed it on as revealed truth. And in fact, the issue of “taxation” was, as we know, Peter’s chief reason for wishing to leave the drug runners in peace. It gave him a way to pay for operations without necessarily letting the Moscow bureaucracy know what those operations were all about. Or what his own true purposes were. As we will see, he also had other reasons that only his own exquisite mind could have conceived. These reasons, imaginative and farseeing even by Peter’s standards, he did not confide to me, even when they directly affected the operations with which he entrusted me.

  Jack followed orders and laid off drugs without demur and, when questioned about the omission, nimbly defended it in his most sincere altar-boy manner. “Drugs are part of a pattern of crime that includes every other kind of vice and viciousness,” he would say to skeptics who pointed out his silence on an issue that was becoming more serious by the day. “Our objective must be to attack and defeat crime as a whole—cut the head off the snake and kill it, not chop off little chunks of the tail until we get to the head. Because if we do that we’ll never get there. It can grow a new tail faster than we can snip it off.”

  Audiences, especially young ones and progressive ones, applauded this vivid metaphor, although—or maybe because—it was, like all metaphors, a way of describing something by calling it something that it was not.

&nb
sp; If Jack was careful about coming out too openly for the issues closest to the interests and collective emotions of his most loyal friends, the radicals—well, they understood that he could not reveal his true opinions in a bourgeois democracy and hope to be elected to the higher offices where he would really be able to do them some good. So they bided their time.

  By the end of his first term Jack was so popular a public figure, and had been so effective in cutting the state’s revenues without resorting to such irksome democratic procedures as legislative debate and decision, that he had begun to frighten friends of the governor—contributors to the party, pillars of the establishment who were made nervous by an activist as the chief law enforcement officer of the state. The governor drew him aside and asked whether he might be available, at the end of his term, for the relatively powerless and harmless post of lieutenant governor.

  “You’re asking me to step back again?” Jack said.

  “No,” said the governor, who had learned his lesson on that one. “I’m inviting you to move up. Succeed me. Be the next governor of this state.”

  Jack saw through this clumsy ploy. But on the other hand, the governorship was exactly the launching platform he needed for his run for the presidency. He said yes to the governor without even consulting us. For once, Morgan approved of his impetuosity. She thought that the attorney generalship was dangerous. Jack was exposing himself too recklessly, making too many enemies, inviting too much curiosity. The lieutenant governorship was a good place to hide in plain sight, and that was the essence of the plan for Jack. Besides, approving of Jack’s faits accomplis was becoming routine.

  4 Morgan had decided that it was time for her and Jack to have a child. Jack himself believed this to be a good idea, and he and Peter had agreed at the outset that fatherhood must someday be arranged for him. American politicians were expected to have children, to be photographed with their little ones, to speak of the future in terms of the safety and well-being and happiness of their own flesh and blood. If Jack was going to move on the governorship, then he must have children too. “One touch of snot makes the whole world kin,” said Morgan, who was in an antic mood. Briefly, looking into her slightly flushed features, which at moments of extreme cunning swelled in a subtle, almost coital way, I wondered if she was not merely suggesting a plausible reason to resume with Jack the active sex life that I believed she strongly missed.