by Ross Thomas
“One twenty-seven,” Cubbin said. “That’s Wheeling, West-by-God-Virginia. That’s the bunch I saw downstairs. The guy in the lobby I spoke to’s name is—” Cubbin looked up at the ceiling. He prided himself on his memory. “Phil. Philip Emerey. Right?”
“Right,” Mure said.
“What do they want?”
“They got their local to pass a resolution backing you. They want to give it to you along with some money.”
“How much?”
“I don’t know, probably a coupla hundred.”
“Christ, it cost them more’n that to fly up here.”
“They didn’t fly,” Mure said. “They drove all night.”
“No shit?” Cubbin said, surprised and pleased as always that anyone would do anything for him that involved physical discomfort and not much in the way of reward. It wasn’t humility that made Cubbin feel that way. It was a nearly total lack of it. “I’d better spend a little time with them then.”
“You’d also better spend some time with Lloyd Gar-field and his welcoming delegation,” Oscar Imber said. “They want to give you a little money, too. About twenty-five thousand dollars’ worth.”
Cubbin rose and shook his head impatiently. “I’ve already talked to them,” he said. “Hell, I rode in with them from the airport and spending that long with Old Man Garfield is worth twenty-five thousand. Jesus, what an idiot!”
Oscar Imber was lying almost prone on the couch, his drink balanced on his chest, his eyes on the ceiling. “It’s the biggest local contribution we’ve got so far, Don.”
“Well, what am I supposed to do, go down on my god damn knees to him? I never could stand the old prick.” Lloyd Garfield was sixty-three, thirteen months older than Cubbin.
“Spend another five minutes with him,” Imber said. “Give him as much time as you give the Wheeling delegation. That’s five thousand a minute.”
“You’d better, darling,” Sadie Cubbin said, deciding that she’d better say something before Cubbin became petulant. “Oscar and I’ll talk to Garfield while you talk to the people from Wheeling. Then maybe all you’ll have to do is thank Garfield.”
“See if you can get the money from him first, Oscar,” Cubbin said. “I don’t want to have to ask him for it and I don’t want to handle it. Christ, that’s all he talked about on the way in.”
“I’ll place that call to Walter Penry in ten minutes,” Audrey Denn said. “That’ll get you out of your meeting with Garfield.”
“Yeah, that’s good,” Cubbin said and turned to look for Fred Mure. “All right, Fred, let’s go.”
The two men left by the door that opened on to the twelfth-floor corridor. “They’re in C, so we’ll go in through D and make a stop in the john,” Mure said.
Cubbin only nodded and followed him. Inside the bath room that separated rooms D and C of his four-room suite, Cubbin drank from the remainder of the open half-pint of bourbon that Mure handed him. “I can only let you have one more belt before the broadcast,” Mure said.
Cubbin peered critically at himself in the bathroom mirror and patted his silver hair. “Just make sure you’re around when I need you,” he said.
Mure tried to look hurt and almost managed it. “Don’t I always, Don?”
Cubbin stared at him for a moment. “Yeah, I guess you do at that.”
8
Cubbin spent far more time with the delegation that had $200 to give him than he did with Old Man Garfield and his $25,000 committee. The $200 bunch was composed of working stiffs, he thought, who had had to lose a day’s pay to make the trip from Wheeling to Chicago and would now have to show up for work the next morning all worn out from a long night’s drive. Besides, they were a little in awe of Cubbin and called him President Cubbin and told him that they were backing him 100 percent and that he was the best thing that had ever happened to the union.
Old Man Garfield and his Chicago welcoming committee weren’t in the least awed by Cubbin. They called him Don, talked about how lucky he was to have their support, repeatedly mentioned the sacrifices that had gone into raising the $25,000, and toward the end Old Man Garfield had drawn Cubbin over into a corner where he delivered a nice little lecture on temperance.
Cubbin by then had drunk just enough bourbon to make him almost reckless and he was thinking about how fine it would be to tell Old Man Garfield to take his $25,000 and shove it when Audrey Denn came into the room and told him that his call to Washington was ready. Cubbin stuck out his hand to Old Man Garfield and said, “It’s always an experience being with you, Lloyd, and knowing that I can count on you for advice on just about anything.”
“Just you remember that little piece I gave you about you know what,” Garfield said and winked hugely. Cubbin winked back. “You bet,” he said.
“We’ll see her through, Don,” Garfield said. “Just keep the faith, baby, like the nigger congressman used to say.”
Cubbin turned from Garfield, not bothering to disguise his wince, and left the task of talking to Garfield and his committee to Sadie and Oscar Imber and Charles Guyan. Followed closely by Fred Mure, Cubbin headed for room B of the suite. As he entered, Audrey Denn spoke into the phone she was holding. “I have Mr. Cubbin for you now, Mr. Penry.”
Cubbin took the phone and waved a hand of dismissal. Audrey Denn nodded and headed for the door. So did Fred Mure. Cubbin covered the phone and hissed, “Not you, Fred.” Into the phone he said, “How are you, Walter?”
In his Washington office on Seventeenth Street near L, Walter Penry had the desk speaker on. His office had all the trappings that W. & J. Sloane thought that a successful executive’s office should have. There was a sunburst clock on the fabric-covered walls, some tweedy-looking couches and chairs, a kidney-shaped coffee table, some “English style” prints of Washington scenes, and an immense walnut desk that he had purchased secondhand from a cabinet member whose spendthrift notions on how he thought the government should decorate his office had created such a furor in the press that he had finally had to sell off his fancy fixtures and settle for General Service Administration issue. Penry had also bought the cabinet member’s pale gold drapes that were real silk.
Penry was leaning well back in his burnt-orange leather executive chair, his feet cocked up on his desk. Across from him, seated in two tweedy armchairs, were the two principal associates of Walter Penry and Associates, Inc., Peter Majury and Ted Lawson. Majury wore an attentive expression on his thin face. Lawson looked as if he expected to hear something funny, but he usually looked that way.
After Cubbin and Penry exchanged pleasantries about their respective families and the weather, Penry said, “What’s all this I hear about you having a little opposition this time out, Don?”
In the Chicago hotel room, Cubbin beckoned to Fred Mure. “It’s not too bad,” he said into the phone. “I think we’ll be able to handle it all right.”
Fred Mure took a half-pint of the Ancient Age from his pocket, unscrewed the cap, and handed the bottle to Cubbin who took two deep swallows. In Washington, the sound of Cubbin’s breathy exhalation came clearly over the speaker and Peter Majury made a careful note about it on a yellow legal pad.
“Well, look, Don, are you going to be in Chicago tomorrow?” Penry said.
“Until Monday or Tuesday.”
“The boys and I would like to get together with you tomorrow, if we could. We’ve been kicking around some ideas and we might even be of some use to you.”
“I’d always like to see you, Walter, you know that,” Cubbin said, “but I’d better tell you right now we’re running a shoestring campaign and I don’t think there’s enough money in it to make it worth your while.”
“Don?” Penry said.
“Yes.”
“Did I mention money? Did I ever hint at it?”
“No, but—”
“Don?”
“Yes.”
“We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Sure. We’re friends.”
/> “Well, I just wanted to make sure you thought so because that’s why I called you. Because we’re friends and friends help each other out. Now you’ve helped me out in the past, haven’t you?”
Cubbin didn’t really like to think about that. Helping Walter Penry out had involved doing nothing. It had, in fact, involved not making a decision, so if anything, it had been a negative kind of help. “Well, I don’t know, Walter,” Cubbin said. “I haven’t really done much.”
This was true. One of the largest specialized manufacturing companies in the nation should have been organized by Cubbin’s union years ago. It was a company that was owned 100 percent by an immensely rich, immensely eccentric recluse who was Walter Penry and Associates’ principal client. He would remain their client as long as his company remained unorganized. The company had grown into a major concern during Cubbin’s tenure as union president. Over the years, Cubbin had directed only token efforts toward organizing it. He had sent the union’s malcontents, its failures, and its drunks to do the job and when they reported back that they had been unsuccessful, Cubbin had told them to try again. Some of the union’s failures and malcontents had made a career out of not organizing that particular firm and whenever Cubbin got pressure from his board about it, he would send out some other incompetents. As in every organization, there were always plenty of them around.
The agreement between Cubbin and Penry that the eccentric recluse’s company would not be organized had never been explicit. Penry wasn’t even sure that it was tacit, but he had found that as long as he was pleasant, friendly and helpful to Cubbin, his client’s company stayed unorganized. Being pleasant and friendly was Penry’s stock in trade; being helpful was introducing Cubbin to various New York and Los Angeles actors and actresses who were told that their careers might be enhanced if they were attentive and flattering to the union man. Because Cubbin, at sixty-two, was still stagestruck, this had been an easy, even enjoyable task for most of them and some of them had even become his close acquaintances, if not his good friends.
Penry knew that if Cubbin’s union made even a halfway serious attempt to organize the firm, it could be sewn up in six weeks. He also knew that if Sammy Hanks got elected president, the attempt would not be halfway serious, it would be completely so, and Walter Penry and Associates would lose its most valuable client.
The reelection of Donald Cubbin was the most important current project that Walter Penry and Associates had and Penry didn’t want to think about what would happen should Cubbin lose—although he knew he would have to think about it soon and have a contingency plan ready to go just in case. It was what a realist would do and Penry prided himself on being realistic, which meant, of course, figuring out how to make a dollar from disaster.
“Don,” Penry said, “why don’t you keep tomorrow afternoon free? The boys and I’ll fly up tomorrow morning and then we can have a good talk—at my place.” By my place, Penry meant the Hilton. He almost always stayed at Hilton hotels because he had once done some work for the chain and the management was so grateful for having been extricated from a possibly embarrassing situation that Penry had been presented with a silver card that entitled him to a 30 percent discount. The Hilton chain also had gold cards that entitled the bearer to a 50 percent discount, but its management hadn’t been quite grateful enough to give Penry one of those.
“Well, maybe I could drop around for a little while,” Cubbin said.
“Make it around one and we’ll have some lunch.”
“Okay. Lunch’ll be fine.”
“See you tomorrow then, Don. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Sure. So am I.”
After Penry switched off his desk speaker he looked at Peter Majury who by now had covered one page of his yellow legal pad with scribbled notes.
“Well?” Penry said.
“Interesting, but not startling.”
“What?”
“He’s been nipping, but not too much,” Majury said. “That means that he’s secured a steady supply—probably from that Mure person who shadows him. Ancient Age, as I recall.”
“Just how in the hell do you know it’s Ancient Age?” Ted Lawson said.
“It’s my job to know, Ted. Mure usually keeps four half-pints about his person. This enables Cubbin to have a quick one whenever the need arises and from his careful pronunciation of certain words such as ‘after’ and ‘handle,’ I’d say his intake thus far today has been nearly three-fourths of a pint.”
“How much would you say he’s putting away every day?” Penry said.
“It must be nearly a fifth or a quart, if my research is right.”
“It usually is,” Lawson said, but without any admiration.
“Can he function?” Penry said.
“It depends upon what you mean by that. At a little over a pint he can still move around, but his control has diminished. After a quart he would be completely unconscious. If he follows his usual pattern, he has a quick one or two in the morning to get going, and then tries to do everything that needs any careful attention by noon. After that he can have several large drinks and still perform the duties that require little or no concentration— such as making public appearances, delivering a speech, and so forth. Fortunately, his duties are not too arduous.”
“He hasn’t done a day’s work in the ten years that I’ve known him,” Lawson said.
“It depends on what you mean by that,” Penry said. “I’ve seen him conduct round-the-clock negotiations. I was there at the request of industry, not his, but I’d say that he was damned near masterful.”
“How long ago was that?” Peter Majury said.
“Three years. About this time three years ago.”
“Well, for one thing he was on stage then,” Majury said. “He wasn’t being the president of his union. He was acting the way that he thought the president of his union should act.”
“He did a damned fine job,” Penry said.
“He would have made a most competent actor, perhaps even a great one given proper direction. But you saw him at his best three years ago. I’m afraid his drinking problem has worsened since then.”
“Well, he’s not going to quit the sauce,” Lawson said.
“No, he’s not going to do that,” Penry said.
“Personally,” Majury said, “I think that under the circumstances his people are handling him almost as well as he can be handled. If we enter into his campaign, my only suggestion would be to shield him from as much stress as possible.”
“You mean nursemaid him?” Lawson said, making it clear that he didn’t like the idea.
“No, he’s got a number of those around—all of whose good intentions are subverted by the Mure person who, in effect, is Cubbin’s bootlegger. No, I think we leave Cubbin alone as much as possible.”
“You’re getting to your point, aren’t you?” Penry said.
“Yes. I think I am.”
“Well?”
“Sammy Hanks.”
“Yes,” Penry said, “Sammy is the problem, isn’t he?”
“He has those tantrums, you know.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Have you ever seen one?”
“No.”
Majury looked at his shoes. “I once spent three hours with someone who had. She was a rather good observer. She gave me a graphic description. Most graphic.”
“So?”
“While her description was interesting, she told me something else that was even more so.”
He’s going to tell it in his own time, Penry thought. In his own way. Nothing will hurry him. “What?” he said.
“She told me what it was that could make him—uh—blow. Invariably.”
“Yes, I see,” Penry said.
Lawson was nodding. “Now it’s getting more interesting.”
“She said she discovered it quite by accident,” Majury said. “But that it always worked. She tested it, just to make sure.”
“And what do you th
ink we should do about it?” Penry said.
It took Majury fifteen minutes to describe what he thought should be done about it and when he was through, Lawson said, “When’d you dream all this up?” There was nothing but envious admiration in the question.
“While Walter was talking to Cubbin.”
“Jesus, it’s rotten,” Penry said.
Majury smiled and used his right hand to smooth his long, black hair. “Yes,” he said, “isn’t it.”
9
The television show that Cubbin was scheduled to appear on that night started at twelve in Chicago and was aimed at those insomniacs whose thirst for banality remained un quenched even after an hour and a half of Johnny Carson or Dick Cavett.
The host of the show was an ex-Chicago Tribune police reporter who did his homework, or had it done for him, and who liked to ask his guests depressingly personal questions that had won him the sobriquet of “Mr. Nasty Himself.” At least that’s how he insisted that he be introduced before each program.
The host’s name was Jacob Jobbins and the official title for his program was “Jake’s Night.” It was an hour-and-a-half show and the number of guests varied from one to three. The attraction of the program, of course, lay in Jobbins’ ability to make his guests squirm, which delighted and fascinated his audience at home who couldn’t sleep anyhow and who told themselves, or anybody who was still up and willing to listen, that by God, he’d never get me up there and ask me questions like that, but who really yearned to be up there telling it all.
So the various flacks around the country tried to get their client writers and actors and politicians and flashy criminal lawyers and singers on “Jake’s Night” because Chicago was a big market and it was felt that humiliation paid off at the box office and the bookstores and the record shops.
Jobbins got many of the questions that he asked from the enemies of the people whom he planned to interview. He was always getting scrawled notes that urged him to ask so-and-so things like “why they tossed him in the clink in Santa Monica in April 1961.” And often, after careful checking, Jobbins would ask about it and his guest would either freeze or try some maladroit verbal fencing until Jobbins’ gentle but persistent probing broke through the guest’s defenses and then the entire, often sordid story would tumble out to the delight of those who were lying in bed at home and watching it all through their toes.
