Stewart didn't even wait for Russert to ask him anything. He immediately protested. "I did nothing of the sort. Carl Buckman killed his brother and then used his fortune to cover it up! His own family knows the truth about him. They threw him out of the family when he was sixteen, and then had him disinherited and disowned a few years later. Who would know him better than his own parents?"
Off camera I could see Brewster wincing. We knew it was coming, but it still sounded terrible. Nothing to do but brazen it out. "Yes, I killed my brother, a paranoid schizophrenic with a long and documented history of aggression towards me and my family. I covered up nothing, and was thoroughly investigated by both the police and the district attorney." Then I reached into my inside jacket pocket and pulled out a sheathed Bowie knife. I unsheathed it on camera and held it up. "This is the knife that my brother came after my family with. I got it from the Baltimore County Police Department after the investigation was over. He brought this into my home and told me he planned to butcher my wife and baby son, and then he attacked me and I killed him. As for my mother, she has a history of instability, and she is the one who purchased this weapon and provided it to my brother, along with the vehicle he used to carry out his attacks on us. I'm not sure how seriously you should be taking her statements."
"That's the knife?", asked Russert, his eyes wide open.
"I have the evidence tag available, along with photos to verify it.", I replied.
"That's almost a sword!", he exclaimed. I nodded silently, and Russert turned to Stewart, visibly angry at being upstaged. Wild accusations are great, but I had evidence!
"Movie set props aside; Carl Buckman cannot deny his cold blooded killing of his brother!"
"Cold blooded!? Movie set props!?" I was outraged! "Does this look like a prop!" I held up my left hand and drew the blade across my palm. A red bead of blood welled up, and I held my hand up to the camera. "This is what my brother wanted to do to my wife and son. Andy Stewart would have been rooting for him, I'm sure, since at least it wasn't a gun!" Then I stabbed the knife point down into the surface of the mahogany table I was sitting at, to leave it standing vertically.
The screens immediately went blank. Tim Russert knew he had lost complete control of the show and he pulled the plug, going to commercial. I held my hand over the desk, slowly dripping blood, while I fished out my handkerchief. It wasn't a bad cut, nothing I hadn't had happen over the years from any number of things, but I was sure it looked gruesome on camera. A staffer from WMAR ran out and then came back with a first aid kit. Brewster came hustling up to the desk. "Jesus Christ, Carl! What the hell were you thinking there!?"
"He just pissed me off!", I responded.
"Jesus Christ!", he repeated. He took the first aid kit and fished out some gauze and some tape. He kept muttering while he bandaged my hand. Around us people were staring at me.
Finally he sat back and stared at me. I shrugged at him. "I guess I fucked up big this time."
I was surprised when he answered, "I have no idea. I just have no idea what to make of this, or what is going to come of this. I just don't know."
"You staying in?", I asked him.
"Are you?", he replied.
"It's too late to back out now. I'm going to have to see this through, one way or the other. I might be going down in flames."
"Shit! Well, it's too late for me to back out now. Either you lose by the biggest margin since the Civil War and I have the shortest professional career in political history, or you win big and I run the next Presidential campaign."
I laughed at that. I stood up. "Let's get out of here. I need to go home so that Marilyn can yell at me."
As we headed out to my car, Brewster asked, "Just how rich are you? Really rich or ridiculously rich?"
"Beyond that. Ludicrously rich."
"Buy an island rich?"
I laughed. "Sure. Why?"
"Because if we lose, you're going to have to buy an island and move there, and I'm going to have to move next door."
I laughed. "Then we better not lose!"
My reception at home was about what I expected. Marilyn's first words to me as I entered the door were, "ARE YOU CRAZY!? YOUR CHILDREN WERE WATCHING THAT SHOW!" Then she stomped off irately.
My children, on the other hand, took it much better than their mother. All three wanted to see, so I took off the bandage and showed them. Holly and Molly thought it was 'Gross!' and Charlie thought it was 'Cool!' I checked it out. It wasn't actually all that bad, being not a whole lot more than a bad papercut, and a lot more dramatic looking that it really was. I rebandaged it with a giant Band-Aid and went back to the living room. Marilyn was unhappy with me the rest of the day.
It was no surprise when all three networks ran the scene that night on the evening news, along with the mandatory "What you are about to see is graphic and violent, and you may want to turn away." warning. Since they ran it at dinnertime, this just guaranteed a wider audience. Several commentators raised the possibility that I wasn't all that stable. Curiously, though, several also spoke out about the tactics and slanders by my opponent.
Monday morning's Baltimore Sun featured a video capture of me holding the knife up to the camera, along with Brew McRiley's spin, and Stewart's denouncement of my 'detestable' tactics. Still, there was a lengthy piece about the incident in 1983, and how Stewart had gone beyond the limits of spin to outright lies. In 1990 the truth still mattered; it would be another 22 years before the Romney campaign began lying outright and commenting that 'We're not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact checkers.' (Not that Obama was any better, but at least his people were tactful enough not to brag about it.) It got stranger from there. Mid-week, WJZ managed to track down Bill Worley, who had gone through this nonsense during the Democratic primary. He stated on camera, "Andy Stewart would sell his mother for a vote, and then haggle over the price!" So much for party unity!
Brew had a poll run mid-week. We had done these a few times since the primary ended, and I had been consistently trailing Stewart, not by much, but by more than the three percent margin of error. For the first time, we were in a statistical dead heat. I had picked up some among men, but even more among women, who seemed to think it was a good idea to protect my family. Polling ain't cheap, and we wondered whether Andy knew this.
By now the national press was reporting on us. Both Time and U.S. News and World Report called for telephone interviews on Wednesday. The Saturday after the show was the weekend for the annual summer party, and a reporter for Newsweek showed up on Friday, not knowing about it. What the hell! We invited him along with the other political reporters in town. Brewster had made me invite everyone we could think of.
This was going to be our biggest party ever. We had started out back in 1983 with just the people from the office and the business, the Tusks, and a few others who had been involved in the purchase and construction of the land and house. Since then it had grown. Now, along with the core related to the Buckman Group, we had people from Our Lady of Grace, Fifth District Elementary, families of the kids' friends, and this year various political types from around the district. Everybody was warned to bring swimsuits and an appetite. We had a rental company bring in a gigantic red and white striped tent, and plenty of tables and chairs, and we had the bathrooms in the main house as well as the pool house. Marilyn and I had even installed a monstrously large grill station on the deck, the type where it is permanently installed with a fixed gas line going to the main tank behind the house.