"You know, he might be another Ch'amnari, too."
"What makes you say that?" Chiun said thinly.
"He offered you the treasurer's post. Just like that. Sounds too good to be true."
"I have delivered to him Koreatown, and all the votes that come with it," Chiun said loftily. "This is how empires are built."
"Just watch your step."
"That lesson," Chiun said loftily, "I learned long ago in old Pyongyang." The Master of Sinanju turned and padded toward the roof trap, disappearing down and out of sight.
Remo Williams watched his Master go.
"Great," he muttered. "I'm stuck in the middle of a love triangle between the Wicked Witch of the East and the only person I care about."
And down below the roaring crowd cried, "Esperanza!"
Chapter 16
By the next morning, the name Enrique Espiritu Esperanza was on the lips of every man, woman, and child in California. And beyond.
"We're hot! Oh, we're so hot!" Harmon Cashman said enthusiastically. He had arrayed three rows of Oreo cookies on the breakfast nook table, and was separating them with a butter knife so that the creme centers were exposed, like cataracted whale eyes. "The numbers are starting to move our way! I am so amped!"
"It is time to widen our campaign," Enrique Esperanza decided.
Harmon Cashman began scraping the dry creme filling onto a bread dish, making a gooey little pile.
"We got L.A. County practically sewed up," he agreed. "The white-I mean blanco-campaign offices are reporting a flood of new volunteers and contributions. You got the white people thinking you're California's savior."
"I think we should next take the battle to San Francisco."
"Yeah. Barry Black's home turf. That ought to spook that Frisco flake good."
When he had every Oreo scraped clean, and a nice sweet pile of white creme filling, Harmon Cashman lifted the plate to his mouth and began licking.
He paused only once. To spoon a dab into his black coffee.
When he had licked the plate clean, he drank the coffee in one gulp.
"I hear the stores are having a run on these cookies wherever we've passed them out," Harman said, smacking his lips with relish. "Maybe we can get an endorsement out of the company. We must be buying them by the freight-train load, and I've never seen an invoice."
"They are donations," Esperanza said flatly.
"No kidding? That's better than an endorsement."
"I think so," said Enrique Esperanza, looking out at the San Gabriel Mountains, his voice as far away as their hazy peaks.
Barry Black, Junior had grown up in the California governor's mansion. He had first sat in the corner office, not behind the desk but bouncing on his father's knee.
Barry Black, Senior had been the first Democratic governor of California since the Great Depression. That had been in the 1950s.
It had taken until the 1970s for another California Democrat to occupy the corner office. That had been Barry Black, Junior.
The two terms Barry Black, Junior had served had almost ensured that California would not elect another Democrat to the governorship until the next Great Depression. If even then.
After a string of debacles, ranging from his attempts to protect the Medfly from an eradication program designed to save the state citrus crop to his proposal to put a Californian on Mars by the year 2,000 the man the press had dubbed "Governor Glowworm" had been turned out of office quicker than a shoplifter from a Wal-Mart.
On his last day in office, Barry Black announced that he was going to the mysterious East to study in India and help Mother Teresa.
"You won't have Barry Black to ridicule anymore," he announced, plagiarizing the words of a famous predecessor.
In fact, he hoped to acquire the power to cloud men's minds in India. He knew his only ticket back to the governor's office would be to hypnotize the electorate into forgetting his disastrous terms.
Barry Black, Junior never did pick up that unique skill. Instead, he meditated. A decade of meditating on his future brought only flashbacks on his past.
Deciding that his future lay in his past, and after shaving his thick ascetic beard-his only accomplishment during his decade spent seeking wisdom-Barry Black, Junior returned to sunny California.
The return of Barry Black delighted California Republicans. It petrified the Democrats, who made Barry Black an irresistible offer almost before he had stepped off the jumbo jet.
"We want you to head up the party," a nervous delegation told him. "Please."
"I want to serve my party," Barry Black said, "but I also want to serve the people. Mother Teresa taught me that. "
"The party needs you. We need you."
"I don't know . . . ."
"Mother Teresa said it would be okay," a scared delegate said in desperation.
"She did?"
"Her exact words were, 'Barry should go where he'll do the most good.' "
And so Barry Black, Junior became the Democratic Party Chairman of the state of California and hustled a small fortune in campaign contributions. Inside of six months, he was on his way to becoming the most successful fundraiser the party had ever seen.
"I'm really good at this," he said when the coffers had topped three million dollars. "Mother Teresa was right."
Barry Black, Junior raised so much money he succumbed to a distinctly Democratic impulse. He squandered every cent. On an excessive and unnecessary staff.
His grassroots political efforts collapsed for lack of funds and he was canned, forcing Barry Black to run for senator. He garnered an unimpressive three percent of the popular vote, and narrowly escaped being hanged from a eucalyptus tree. By his own party machinery.
The experience created in Barry Black, Junior a sense of moral outrage, a new sense of moral outrage unlike any sense of moral outrage that had ever possessed him.
"I raised millions for those bastards," he howled from the safety of Oregon.
"And you blew it in two years flat," his most trusted advisor pointed out bitterly. "While you were building a useless political machine, the Republicans were outregistering us four-to-one."
"You know, the problem with this country is incumbency," said Barry Black, stumbling on a new campaign theme.
"You were an incumbent once."
"And if I were back in office, you can be damn sure this country wouldn't be in the mess it's in."
"Barry," said the advisor, his voice cracking like that of a bullfrog. "You're not thinking of doing it again. Are you?"
"What's wrong with . . . it?"
The other began ticking off reasons on fingers. "You washed out in 1980. You washed in 1984. California doesn't want you. What makes you think the rest of the country wants you?"
Barry Black squared his well-tailored shoulders. "They don't want me. That's the message. They need me. Washington is full of fat cats wasting the tax dollars. I only waste campaign contributions. It's an entirely different thing."
"Please, please, don't run for President again. I'm begging you."
But Barry Black was not to be swayed. His chipmunk eyes were already aglow with pure populist ambition.
"It's the White House or nothing," he vowed.
"It's nothing," the other man sobbed. "It's nothing."
Barry Black, Junior didn't even bother with an exploratory committee. He just got out in front of the cameras one day, his thinning hair now graying at the temples, and announced that he was a candidate for President of the United States.
"Again?" asked a reporter.
"This is what-the third time?" another wanted to know.
Barry Black became indignant.
"No, not again. That was a different Barry Black. I'm the new Barry Black, out to unseat the incumbents. I'm determined to reclaim the country, and reinvent the system. And the first thing I'm doing is to absolutely refuse any campaign contribution larger than a hundred dollars."