by Joe Klein
Mammoth Falls didn't help. It drifted along in black and white, and I--neither and both--had trouble with the vibes and assumptions as I wandered about. The vibes were quieter, more civil, but, in a way, clearer than those I was accustomed to up north. One night I had a burger at a fern bar in a mall on the white side of town. The cineplex there was the only place in the area you could see a foreign film, inevitably broad French or Italian comedies (it was Cinema Paradiso that night, I think--not bad), never anything heavy or dark or deep or significant. Anyway, the waitress gave me a look and asked, "Are you from around here?" Meaning: You mustn't be, because if you were, you wouldn't be here. Normally, that sort of thing wouldn't bother me. It is barely worth remembering. But I was alone, in a strange--very out of the way--place, a place where I got The Washington Post by fax each day (and the thin, unsatisfying national edition of the Times). I was constantly, acutely aware of my skin, and both ways: the way others saw it and the way it experienced the physical world. I was more conscious of everything. Humidity made me sluggish and mushy. Air conditioning hurt. So I pretty much kept to the campaign, and to myself. I ran every evening, three miles, down one side of the river and back the other. I lived in a sterile apartment very much like that first one we'd rented, and discarded, in Manchester. I read novels, early Doris Lessing (she was, I imagine, very sexy in Africa). I had muffin fantasies.
"Wonder what he's sayin' up there," Richard said, as we trailed the governor and young Ozio in the Bronco.
"Nothing Jimmy can take to the bank."
Richard laughed, "He's a peach. No question."
"You ever had one so good?" I asked.
"Dunno how good he is yet," Richard said. "What's more, he don't know how good he is yet."
"He's got a suspicion."
"She's got a suspicion."
I imagined the governor singing one of his favorites: " 'We cain't go on together, with suspicious mi-finds . . "
Fat Willie's was a trailer with a long plastic awning and picnic tables spread out around it. It reeked of smoke and carcinogens. Fat Willie was . . . as advertised: a big, sweaty black man--former all-state tackle for Mammoth Falls Central High--wrapped in a long white, sauce-daubed apron. He brightened immediately when he saw Stanton. "Hey, Gov! . . . Hey, Amalee, the Gov's here," he said to his wife, who was not insubstantial herself. Stanton, oblivious to the sauce, wrapped Willie in a full frontal, then wheeled to throw an arm over Amalee. He stood there between them, grinning his "aw-shucks, proud to be a country boy" grin; it was pure joy. There was an easy familiarity to this: it happened every time we came. Once, several months earlier, I'd sat--awestruck--as the governor spent an hour sitting at one of the back tables, consoling Willie over the death of his mother. "How's business, Will?" he said now, squeezing the big man. "You got your mojo workin' tonight?"
"Ain't no end to it, Gov," Willie turned his head. "Hey, honey, where's Loretta? Hey, Lo--Gov's here!"
Loretta was their daughter, the sort of girl who was destined for obesity--you could see it coming in her upper arms, her thighs--but, for the moment, deeply, adolescently luscious. She flashed Stanton a look, then tried to hide it. Susan gave her a hug, "Hi, honey, how's it goin'? School okay? We've missed you--but I guess your mom and dad keep you busy here, not much time for sitting."
"Yes'm," Loretta said dully.
The governor--a stone Pavlovian when it came to pork--negotiated the meal with Willie. "Now, I want you to fix all these folks up right, y'hear? And send me a double."
We moved out to a back table, away from the sharp halogens Willie used to illuminate the ordering window. The night was a touch chilly; Willie hadn't put up his winter plastic yet. But he pulled out a space heater and hooked it up next to Susan, creating a viral undulation, electric heat and November breezes. When the food canoe, the governor inhaled his, then looked up shocked--and not undelighted--that the rest of us were still working, which left the possibility that more was to be had. He kept his eye on Susan's plate, then--at the instant she crumpled her last paper napkin--swiped the leftovers. He snagged my Texas toast when he thought no one was looking (he was wrong; Jimmy was). I was, for once, disappointed in him. This wasn't good. Afterward, Jimmy lit a cigarette, a Parliament actually--a brand I thought no longer existed; Susan grimaced (Jimmy caught that, too). The governor had kept up a steady patter throughout, pork and football and Mammoth Falls--nothing remotely close to the business at hand. It was Ozio's hand to play.
"So," Jimmy said finally, "Orlando's been watching you move around the country. He's noticed that every time you go to New Hampshire, you make connections through Chicago. You stop there, see the mayor, get to know the city. That's very good, but not so good for us. It's too bad our primary is a month after Illinois. You'll never get to know us that way . . . until it's too late, maybe. You should get to know us a little better. The governor certainly thinks so. He was hoping the next time you pass our way, you'd stop in, spend a little time, get to know us better."
We'd been stopping in New York as often as Chicago, batting our heads against Wall Street, but Stanton didn't say so. He was obeisant; it was nauseating. "Absolutely," he said. "We will absolutely do that. I mean, I've been really wanting to . . . consult with your--with Governor Ozio."
"He knows a lot," Jimmy said.
Richard rolled his eyes. (Jimmy missed that.)
"Henry, you got the book?" the governor asked. The book. The book was in the car. I got the book.
"Next Tuesday we'll be up there," I said.
"Orlando is usually in the city only on Mondays and Thursdays," Jimmy said.
"Albany's on the way to New Hampshire," the governor said. Nice. "Let me check with him," Jimmy said. "Anyone got a phone?" Richard and I both did; so did Susan. We produced them simultaneously, a bit too enthusiastically. Ozio took Susan's and dialed a number; he reached his father immediately. "Yeah ... Right now . . . No, they took me to a restaurant," Jimmy said. "Listen, Governor Stanton's going to be in the city on Tuesday, but he says he's willing to stop in Albany on the way to New Hampshire. . . . Uh-
huh, uh-huh." Jimmy looked over to me: "He wants to know what you're doing in the city on Tuesday."
I glanced at Stanton: Tell them how much? He glanced at me: Some, but not all that much. I gave Jimmy the public stuff. Lunch with the Council ofJewish Organizations. An afternoon speech at the executive council of the Bar Association. A drop-by later at a teachers' union cocktail party. Jimmy relayed these to his father. "He wants to know where the cocktail party is," Jimmy said.
"Sheraton City Center."
"Uh-huh, uh-huh. . . All right, I'll ask him," Jimmy said. "He says he'll be speaking at the teachers' dinner so he'll be at the Sheraton too. We can meet there. Now he wants to speak to you," he said passing the phone to Stanton.
"Yeah. . . . I do. . . . Naw, I guess I'm with the Bulls these days--they got one or two of our boys up playing there. . . . Well, that's hard to say. . . I like 'em both. . . . You've got a fine son here. . . . I will. . . . Look forward to visitin' with you next week. . . . Right. Thanks. 'Bye."
Stanton handed me the phone. "The governor wanted to know," he said, "which I like better: the three-point shot line in college basketball, or the pros."
He was, clearly, thermonuclear pissed. My only hope was that it would wear off on the drive home. I had flicked up. I knew it. I knew, too, a preemptive apology wouldn't work. He had to let it blow. "Fuck all, Henry--fuck all," he began, when we were back at the Mansion, having dropped Richard and Jimmy off at the hotel. "You don't know fuck-all about briefing me . . . You make me look like a flicking amateur, a rube-ass, barefoot, dipshit, third-rate, southern-fried piece of shit alderman. You couldn't tell me? You couldn't look it up in the fucking book before we took the kid out? You didn't know we were playing the same teachers' conference as Ozio? What the fuck kind of operation we got here, Henry? How do we get scheduled for hors d'oeuvres when he gets the main course, anyway? I'm Ozio's flicking warm-up act. And d
on't think he didn't know that. But, somehow, we didn't know that. Henry, there is no way we win this thing--we even compete--if we don't know shit like that. Now we're committed, we go there, we meet--his turf, his show-
and he's top dog. Amateur fucking hour. Jimmy's probably on the phone right now, tellin' him he ain't got anything to worry about down here."
"So what's wrong with that?" Susan asked.
"What's wrong with it is, he gets more time to dick around," Stanton said. "We're putting no pressure on him. He's in no rush. All that money stays tied up. The press keeps sniffing around his governor's mansion. He's the story."
"That would be the case," Susan said, looking over at me, "even if Henry hadn't screwed up." So she was pissed, too.
"Henry, you've got to get on your bicycle, man," Stanton said, the storm passing. "Before I walk into that room next Tuesday, I've got to have a better idea what to expect than I did tonight. Okay?"
I understood, but couldn't do much about it. I called Jerry Rosen the next morning.
"Doesn't sound good," he said. "Orlando calls for a meeting only if he wants to fuck with you. The people he likes, he talks to on the phone."
"So what'll he do?"
"Your guess is as good as mine." Rosen said. "He talks to me on the phone."
Thanks, I knew that. I called Howard Ferguson III, who wasn't much better. He laughed a dry little laugh. "Oh, Orlando's just trying to fuck with you," he said. "He's a bully. He wants to see how much he can mess with your mind. just don't let him."
"Easy for you to say."
"You can't handle Orlando," Howard said, "how you gonna handle the Republicans?"
There was no campaign buzz in Orlando Ozio's suite at the Sheraton, no sense of urgency--but a powerful, primordial feeling of turf. Ozio was known for being a one-man show. He wasn't big on entourage, and the living room of the suite was empty, except for a press guy and Armand Chirico, Ozio's old law partner. On our side, it was me and the governor; Uncle Charlie and Tommy the Trooper were waiting downstairs.
Chirico knocked softly on the bedroom door, then opened it a crack and simply nodded; he turned and gestured us in, like a headwaiter. Ozio was in shirtsleeves, in the shadows. The room was dark; he had only the desk lamp on, and the television. He gave the impression of being a nocturnal creature, and he was larger than I expected him to be, with powerful shoulders, neck and hands. He'd been a pretty fair middleweight boxer until his cheek was crushed in his seventh professional bout. He was watching the local news. The sports was on. He went straight for what he thought was Jack Stan-ton's jugular: "You ever play any sports, Jack?"
"Golf," Stanton said, knowing Ozio meant competitive sports. "My father used to say that golf was the most capitalist sport--it used more land for less reason than any other," Ozio said, and laughed gently. "Papa . . . But he came from the old country. He had resentments, along with his dreams. You want some fruit, a sandwich? A Diet Coke?" Stanton refused the food, took the Coke. "Come, sit."
So they sat across from each other, in the darkened bedroom. We, staff, stood at a distance, on the other side of the bed. It was odd, uncomfortable; I felt like a servant. Ozio was into family history now. His father, his mother. The store. Brooklyn. It was impersonal, a recitation. Nothing much was happening, so far as I could see. Then: "How many people you got in your state, ack?" Ozio asked. "We've got two point three million in Brooklyn alone."
"Brooklyn is pretty remarkable--you've got a little bit of everything there," Stanton said, vacantly. Then, hoping to ingratiate, he began to talk about a jobs program we had visited in Bed-Stuy, and how much he admired it.
"You've been there?" Ozio asked, surprised and a little disturbed. "You should tell us when you're planning to come and see these things--we'll arrange it for you."
Stanton nodded, not quite agreeing to have Ozio control his movements in the state, and went off on a little discourse about jobs programs. He talked about one of his proposals--a national computer system, a way of linking everything together, a way to determine which jobs were available, which training programs got results. "We did that already," Ozio said abruptly. "We've got that in this state. Armand, get the governor in touch with Herman Gonzalez--he'll tell you all about how we did it here."
"You've done it statewide?" Stanton asked. "I knew you had that pilot program up in Buffalo."
"That's what I mean," Ozio said. "Buffalo. . ." Then, "So, how do you see this campaign, Jack?"
Stanton was beginning to feel more confident. He talked about the campaign: The president was riding high, but something was happening out there--the people felt neglected, worried. "The world's getting to be a pretty scary place for them," he said.
"You don't want to play to those fears," Ozio said. "Any jackass can knock down a barn."
"But you do have to acknowledge them," Stanton said. "I think we have to understand why we've been losing elections."
"And why is that?" Ozio asked. He could have had Jack Stanton for dinner then, but he didn't wait for an answer. He barged: "I'll tell you why--because we get defensive. We're ashamed of who we are. We try to be like the other guys--and the people know that. They get a choice between a pale copy and the real thing, they'll choose the real thing." It was boilerplate. It went on. Ozio gave a stump speech. He was a powerful big-hall speaker; the histrionics didn't work so well in a small room. Stanton sat through it politely. Finally, Ozio said, "Well. That's it. Gotta go downstairs. Thanks for stopping by. I think you've got somethingjack. A nice quality. People like you. I think you have a big future. I wrote that in my diary the other day, after I saw you on C-SPAN. Talking to kids somewhere. You're smart, you cut a nice figure. I can see you on the ticket--maybe even this year. I want you to keep in touch. I can help you. Sometimes I think I should quit this business and open a consulting shop with Jimmy--most of these consultants are ice-skaters, right? They charge an arm and a leg, and then take thirty percent of production costs on top of that. Can you imagine? Highway robbery."
He was moving us toward the larger, lighted outer room. He grew smaller in the light; he seemed older. "You come by again, I'll take you to the old neighborhood. We'll go to Gargiulo's in Coney Island. You call in advance, they'll cook a whole baby pig. I understand you enjoy a good meal."
So that was it? Had anything happened?
Apparently so. We found out two days later, on Thursday, in New Hampshire. We were in the Stanton Van, heading from Lebanon toward Hanover--a chill, slate-gray day, dead leaves roiling the highway. I got beeped, the press-urgent line from Mammoth Falls. "Dick Lawrence from the WSJ says you better get in touch right now," Jennifer Rogers said. "They want to go with something in 'Washington Wire' tomorrow."
I called Lawrence. "Hi," I said.
"You meet with Ozio?" He asked.
"Why?"
The call broke up. Before I called back, I told Stanton: "Governor, it's the Journal. They know we met with Ozio . . ."
"So?" he asked, perturbed. He was riding up front, working a stack of paper, singing along with Reba McEntire.
"I don't know." But I knew. I knew it wasn't good. I called back. "Dick. Hi, it's Henry Burton. Sorry. We're in the van."
"You meet with Ozio?"
"Why?"
"We hear you met in a New York hotel room and hit it off so well that Stanton said he'd be willing to accept the two spot if Ozio got in."
"Get out of here."
"That's your response?"
The phone crackled a little, so I took the opportunity to hang up. "Governor, we've got a problem," I said in a way that Stanton immediately took for serious. (It was worse than serious; I was already in a cold sweat.) He turned off the Reba. Turned to face me.
"Okay, Henry," he said.
"Governor, The Wall Street Journal knows we met with Ozio. They think you told Ozio you'd be willing to take the two spot if he got in." "That mother . . . fucker," he said slowly, stunned--awestruck. It was so brazen. "Pull over. Now!"
We pul
led over, skidding a little on the gravel shoulder. "Goddammit, Mitch, don't kill us--just pull the damn thing over," Stanton said, jumping out. I followed him. "How much time we got?" he asked.
"An hour or so. Maybe less."
"Yeah, they'll say we missed their deadline. You think a flat denial is good enough?" he asked, knowing it wasn't. "This had to come directly from Ozio. You can just hear him talking about what a comer Jack Stanton is, what a rising star, how well the meeting had gone. Really, Governor? 'Well, Dick, since you ask.' " This was something new. Stanton was doing both sides of the conversation, including a reasonable--if bilious--Ozio impression. " 'I was explaining to Governor Stanton about the New American Community, my program for giving all Americans the sense of possibility that mom and dad had when they came here. We started trading ideas. There was real affection, mutual respect, a very good--a natural--working relationship, and Governor Stanton says the two of us would make a great team, a great ticket. And you know, it's not such a bad idea. A natural combination-North and South.' You mean, Governor Ozio, you'd take him? 'Well, Richard, if you were in that position, you'd have to think about it very seriously, now, wouldn't you?' "
"You really think so?" I asked.
"He's sucking the oxygen out of this campaign," Stanton said. "He's suffocating me. You know who reads The Wall Street Journal? People who aren't going to take a flyer on some yahoo fucking governor who says he's running for president but spends his off-hours sucking Orlando Ozio's toenails. Call the Journal guy, Henry, and give me the phone."
I did. "Hey, Dick, it's Jack Stanton--howyadoon?" Stanton said. "Yeah, we're stopped, side of the road, make sure we don't get cut off again. About this thing . . . Yeah, I think Governor Ozio may have misinterpreted it some. . . . Yeah, we did meet. We were both speaking at a teachers' thing. So we took the opportunity to visit. It was a real good visit. We talked 'bout what a great chance the party had this year, how there were a number of us who could give the president a hard time--y'know, especially on the economic issue. I mean, when was the last time you heard him say anything about jobs? That's what people up here in New Hampshire want to hear him talk about." Stanton had to attempt the pro forma detour onto his stump speech. Lawrence, a good reporter, didn't let him get very far. "Yeah, well no, it didn't quite happen that way. . . . No, I said it was important for us all to play this thing straight, have a good discussion of the issues--and then unite together behind whoever the nominee was."
