The Running Mate (A Jack Houston St. Clair Thriller)

by Andrew Delaplaine

  Dumaine smiled and waved in one fluid, practiced motion as they walked through the lobby and made their way into a waiting elevator manned by additional security personnel.

  They zipped up to the twenty-third floor where security followed them as they walked down the corridor to their suite.

  Another security guy held open the door to Bill’s suite. He’d been there since they left for their jog.

  “Agent Rodriguez is waiting for you,” said the guard at the door.

  They went into the sitting room and Agent Rodriguez, who had been sitting in a chair, jumped up and nodded.

  “Senator Dumaine.”

  “Agent Rodriguez, how are you?”

  “Very good, sir.” He nodded at Tim. “Mr. Harcourt.”

  “Hello there, Agent Rodriguez.” He glanced at Bill. “I’m jumping in the shower.”

  “Right,” said Bill. “Me, too.”

  Tim smiled and went from the sitting room into “his” bedroom and closed the door.

  “Something you need me for, Agent Rodriguez?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Rodriguez, reaching for a report on the table next to him. “I brought the preliminary paperwork about the Secret Service unit we’ll be assigning your campaign. Thought you might want to review it before we send it in to headquarters.”

  “Can’t Phil do this?”

  “Yes, sir, but we like for the candidates to review the protocols we’ll be initiating once we move in.”

  “Right. Just leave it there and I’ll look at it after I shower.”

  “Yes, sir. Goodbye.”

  Agent Rodriguez made for the door.

  “Oh, Agent Rodriguez?”

  Rodriguez turned.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thanks for everything you’ve done.”

  “No problem, sir. It’s my job.”

  “Let me ask: will you be the unit chief of my detail?”

  “That’s right, sir. But you can request someone else if you, uh, if you…”

  Dumaine smiled.

  “If I find some kind of personality conflict, you mean?”

  “Something like that. Yes, sir.”

  Dumaine held out his hand to shake.

  “Then welcome aboard our little choo-choo train. Hopefully, you’ll follow me right into the White House.”

  Rodriguez smiled.

  “I wish you luck, Senator.”

  He turned and left the room while Dumaine headed for the shower on the other side of the suite, in “his” room.

  * * *

  Tim, alone in his room, went to the bed, which he’d messed up before they went for their run, but, looking at it more closely, decided it wasn’t “messed up” enough. He pulled the top sheet completely off the bed and crumpled it up in his hands till it looked well used. Then he took off his running shorts and jock strap and laid down on the bed naked, letting the other sheet absorb some of the sweat still streaming down his back. He rolled over and let the sweat from his crotch soak into the sheet. Then he got up and put the top sheet back in place. It looked good enough.

  Then he went into the shower and got ready for the day ahead and Bill’s speech to the United Auto Workers. Internal polls said the executive committee of the UAW was evenly divided between Dumaine and the Democratic frontrunner, Governor Douglas Mowbray of Pennsylvania, so Dumaine’s speech today took on added importance as he sought to clinch the support of this important union.

  * * *

  Agent Rodriguez headed down the corridor after leaving Dumaine in his suite and took the elevator down to the lobby and made a beeline for the coffee shop.

  He’d been with the Dumaine campaign for several weeks and every day had been an eye-opener.

  He couldn’t believe that the secret he revealed to his friend Jack Houston St. Clair just a week ago when he was in Miami was now trumped by another secret: Dumaine’s wife, Bianca, was sleeping with the campaign manager, Phil Thuris. And had been for quite a while. But Dumaine himself had no idea. And Bianca didn’t know Dumaine was sleeping with Harcourt.

  Rodriguez struggled with revealing this new twist to St. Clair, who as the President’s son would immediately take the information to his father for use in the upcoming campaign.

  But, thought Rodriguez, he owed it to the St. Clairs for all they’d done for him and his family. He never thought he’d ever have anything to do with potentially swinging an election based on anything he observed.

  But, he was wrong. What he knew was dynamite.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 2

  “—and it is my pledge to you, as your next President, that I will fill the factories of Detroit with workers again—”

  The audience of autoworkers roared their approval as Bill Dumaine spoke. If there’d been confetti dropping from the ceiling, this might have looked like his acceptance speech at the convention, but Dumaine was running second behind Mowbray.

  “—that I will negotiate with the Japanese in no uncertain terms to insure import quotas of their products—”

  The crowd erupted again.

  “—that I won’t take NO for an answer the way the current administration has done, that I will put American workers FIRST, and not LAST! And—get our economy back on top where it belongs!”

  There was no question about it, thought Bill’s wife Bianca as she watched the crowd react to Bill’s natural charisma from her chair on the edge of the platform. Her husband was the perfect candidate, from his manly good looks to his well-sculpted body to his flashing smile and easygoing manner—he was what every Presidential candidate ought to be.

  How could he lose?

  Well, she had to make sure he didn’t.

  Bill waved his arms in a gesture to settle the crowd.

  “You know, you have to have belief in the potential of your country, your community and yourself. The potential of our country, our community and ourselves. The simple, easy path is to cynicism and apathy. But the path that I shall follow—that we all shall follow when I am elected your next President—is the path that will lead us to our common goals! Goals that make you and me, me and every single one of you, inseparable, now and forever! On to the convention!”

  The crowd rose as one for a rousing standing ovation.

  Bianca got up and applauded along with the crowd. She kept clapping her hands together, not as hard and ferociously as everybody else (she had to pace herself—she did this five or six times every day), and moved toward Bill at the center of the platform in the huge arena.

  She knew she looked “plain” next to her dashing husband. Her hair was naturally plain, that dishwatery color somewhere between brown and blonde. She had colored it darker for years. She had a plain face. She had bags under her eyes. She looked tired, had a wan smile. At least she was good in bed, she thought. Not that Bill had availed himself of her womanly charms in quite some time. That part of their relationship bothered her, of course, but she had moved on emotionally to greener pastures with Phil Thuris.

  And she was tough. That’s what Bill Dumaine needed right now. A tough partner.

  From the other side of the platform, and down on the arena floor, Tim also applauded, beaming as he watched Bill luxuriate in the warmth of all the like-minded union workers.

  Bill kissed Bianca and took her hand, raising it in a victory salute to the autoworkers, who roared their fanatic approval.

  Bill kissed Bianca again and then looked over to search out Tim in the crowd below and behind the platform. He gave him a wink. He knew everybody could see him wink. But in the entire crowd, no one would know who the wink was meant for.

  But Tim would.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 3

  The Chevrolet Suburban bounced along the access ramp to the Interstate, preceded by two other SUVs and followed by three more, along with police escorts on motorcycles.

  “I think we made some headway here today with the autoworkers. This’ll give us an odds-on chance of denting Mowbray’s lead in the Michigan primary
,” said Phil Thuris, Bill Dumaine’s slightly balding fifty-two year old campaign manager from the passenger side of the front seat, tilting his head toward the back seat to get a reaction from Dumaine and Bianca.

  Bianca had her arms folded across her chest in a stern, angry posture, though there was nothing abnormal in this: she was always a little more tense in private than she acted in public.

  ”We’ve got to beat Doug Mowbray here in Michigan, just got to!” she said with a sudden passion.

  “We will,” Dumaine said a little wearily, reaching over to pat Bianca on the thigh. She shook her head, acknowledging that she was getting too worked up.

  “Save it, Bianca,” said Thuris with a twinkle in his eye. “You’re gonna need all that intensity later in the campaign.”

  Phil had a badly trimmed salt and pepper mustache and a paunch that grew a little every week with each donut consumed as the campaign lengthened.

  “Where next?” asked Bill.

  Thuris reached into his inside coat pocket to consult his schedule, even though he already knew it by heart and started speaking before he glanced at it.

  “A fifteen minute airport quickie in Hartford to shore up support in Connecticut and then to New York where you appear at least by four-thirty so we have something definite for the networks tonight. CNN’s been really good, MSNBC as well, but Fox has been predictably shitty and CBS could be a lot better.”

  “We might even luck out,” said Bianca, “get two segments, one on the speech here, and then the one in New York after Hartford.”

  “Yeah,” said Bill.

  “I really like that part you put in about your vision for the future, Bill—I think that really worked,” she added.

  Thuris craned his neck to look into the back seat.

  “Wasn’t in your prepared speech, though.”

  Bill seemed to perk up a bit.

  “Yeah, you liked it? I got that from Tim Harcourt. He’s got some good ideas, that kid. He’s going places.”

  Thuris and Bianca exchanged mildly curious glances as Bill turned to look out the side window.

  “He’s your Body Man, fer Christ’s sake, Bill. Just because he spends so much time so close to you doesn’t mean he oughta be giving you input on policy speeches. You’ve got a team of experts in every field for that kind of shit.”

  Thuris could see in his peripheral vision that their driver, a trusted campaign operative named Alberto, was impassive as ever, as if he might be deaf.

  “Tim’s the one who jogs every day, Phil,” said Bianca, “not you and your teams of experts. Bill needs to get his juices flowing every morning.”

  “Yeah, I need that mile or two in the morning. It makes the day for me. Cleanses the mind.”

  “Like a mental douche,” Phil said with a chuckle.

  Bianca reached up and slapped Phil playfully on the shoulder.

  “Shut up, Phil, you asshole,” she laughed.

  “You’re outta line anyway, Phil. I asked him for his opinion. It was me, not him. He didn’t offer anything till I asked him.”

  “It was a good idea, period,” said Bianca. “We’ll take all the good ones we can get.”

  “Hey,” Phil shrugged, “I like the kid. I’m the one who reassigned him to be your Body Man, right? I’m just trying to make you aware that when you slip things into your prepared remarks and drop a bomb we don’t know’s comin’, the shit can hit the fan and we won’t be prepared to spin it, that’s all. Then we look like dumb fucks.”

  “Ah! You’re right, Phil, it pays to be careful.”

  “Here are your remarks for Hartford,” Thuris said, passing back a few sheets for Dumaine to review, the words printed in very large type so he could glance at the words and pick them up on the tarmac in Hartford.

  “Well,” Bianca leaned back and looked at the monotonous traffic passing in the other direction as a motorcycle cop with blue lights flashing sped by her window to the front of the motorcade, “someday you’ll have the Secret Service running with you and you won’t need Tim.”

  Dumaine shuffled through the papers, pulling out a pen from his shirt pocket to make a couple of changes in the text, thinking back to the dark room he’d shared with Tim earlier that morning.

  “Oh, I’m sure we’ll find room for Tim.”

  That’s what he said.

  In his mind he was thinking something a little different: There’ll always be room for Tim.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 4

  At the same time in Sarasota, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, Governor Douglas Mowbray, was firing up the statewide convention of the Florida teachers’ union.

  “—and there’s no question that there is only ONE Democrat strong enough, with the experience enough, to lead the party to victory in November—and that candidate is ME! Senator Dumaine is ‘one o’ them’—one o’ them insiders, a Washingtonian posing as a fisherman or an oyster shucker or whatever he says he was growing up in Wellfleet. What this country needs in this election is ‘one o’ you’—an American who hasn’t been tainted by the lavish overspending inside the Beltway. My job is to go in there and kick their butts!”

  About three-quarters of the teachers went crazy for the older candidate. The others were obviously waiting for their man to speak the following day: Senator Dumaine.

  “And with your help, I’ll get the job done!” Mowbray called out.

  Parts of the crowd picked up the chant:

  “Mow-bray! Mow-bray!”

  At the edge of the room, a TV reporter was broadcasting his report:

  “While the polls clearly show there’s no question Governor Douglas Mowbray is still in the lead for the Democratic nomination, many political observers and talking heads still see Senator William Dumaine, a younger and more vigorous candidate, to be the dark horse stalking the Governor. And in a field of eight candidates for the Democratic nomination, all the insiders are betting on a two-way race between Mowbray and Dumaine at the Democratic convention.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER 5

  High over North Carolina on his way to Sarasota to address the Florida State Teachers’ Union in a G-5 borrowed from a twenty-six year old who went public with his tech start-up and became a billionaire, Bill Dumaine was strategizing with his aides.

  “Most of the candidates are expected to be in New York for the publishers’ convention, so we’ll have more press than the usual tag-alongs,” one aide was saying.

  “Mowbray will be there, as well as all the others,” Phil added.

  “I’m not too worried about the others. It’s Mowbray of the sovereign state of Pennsylvania. He’s the one to beat,” said Bill.

  “We know, Bill, we agree with you. Now, boys, let’s get to it,” said Phil.

  A second aide began:

  “The recent massacre in Guatemala will bring questions on our policy toward all of Central America.”

  “We support the bi-partisan effort of the current Government there, always have. The problem with the border between Mexico and Guatemala is the drug cartels are crossing the river there every day. We have thirty thousand border patrol agents on our border with Mexico, and we’re strained to the max. Mexico has a little more than a thousand to cover the Guatemalan border. It’s dangerous. My position has been the same in the Senate for years. No change.”

  “Good,” said Phil.

  “There’s a consensus growing that you’re weakening in the Western states against Mowbray,” said a third aide, “and that this may result in neither candidate getting enough delegates to take the convention on the first ballot. Comment?”

  “It’s been a long time since a Democratic candidate didn’t get the nomination on the first ballot, and we intend to go into the convention with enough delegates to win on the first ballot. Period.”

  “Good, good,” Phil nodded, looking over some notes.

  “How does your weakness in the Western states change your feelings about your campaign against President St. Clai
r in the fall?” asked Cornelia Strate, a pretty young female aide.

  Bill noticed that she crossed her legs provocatively, just as he looked to her for her question. No one else noticed, but Bill did. She’d been flirting with him ever since she joined the campaign. Bill smiled to himself inwardly.

  If only she knew...

  “The President is very strong in the West, we know that—he’s a Republican—but we’re very strong in the East. I’m from Massachusetts. But in any case, we’re not conceding any state, east or west of the Rockies.”

  The questions went on and on. Foreign affairs, the multiple and growing threats emanating from the Middle East, the dire straits of the economy, education, the military appropriations bill (he was on that committee), environmental issues, etc., etc.

  Bill answered all the questions with the robotic knowledge he had stored in his brain, trying at the same time not to sound or look robotic as he spewed out the answers like a ball pitching machine at batting practice.