“So I got a call,” said Ray. “Old pal. Another alter kocker like me. Street-word is Hal hired Coral Glotten to design an ad campaign.”
“Saying what?”
“Probably saying you murdered his sister. And it’s not like you’re running unopposed. Murchison and Dixon will figure out how to use this. They all will.”
“Let’s see the ads,” said Paul.
Crully again dropped the pencil.
“Great,” he said. “How much time and money do you want to spend trying to un-ring that bell? You have no choice. This is an election. Elections are about myths, about making them think you’re a god, not a mortal. You know that as well as I do.”
“Can Hal just do that?” Paul asked. “Spend a zillion dollars on ads?”
“Probably,” said Raymond. “It’s not a coordinated expenditure. Not so far as we know. He’s an individual exercising his First Amendment rights. At least as long as there are five clowns on the Supreme Court who think that spending money is a form of unrestricted free speech.”
“Besides,” said Crully. “Suppose it is illegal. You want to go to court? Or the Election Commission? Then Hal won’t need to pay for ads. He’ll just hold news conferences every day about how you’re trying to muzzle him. Reporters don’t like muzzlers. They always figure they’re next. But that’s the point: You’re going to court. The only question is when. So do you go now, when an innocent person could be expected to express his outrage? Or in three weeks when you’re just whining about how much money Hal’s spending calling you names? This isn’t a close call,” said Crully. He lowered his chin so that Paul could see the flat look in his fair eyes.
Mario Cuomo said you campaign in poetry and govern in prose, but as far as Paul could tell they were both trips to the abattoir, just different entrances. Governing and running were both brutal, with plenty of bloodshed, veins you opened yourself and spears in the sides from your opponents. Politics was always going to be the war of all against all-which included the people who were supposed to be with you. Crully, for example, wanted Paul to win. But only so Mark could run even bigger campaigns. He didn’t really care about Paul’s family or the complex accommodations they had made for decades to live with the terrible fact of Dita’s murder. The truth was Crully had taken this job so he could sit out the catfight between Obama and Hillary. By May, when the runoff election for mayor was scheduled to take place, there’d be a clear winner in the presidential contest and Mark could jump onto that campaign, probably to run a swing state.
“Fine, Mark,” said Paul. “I hear you, but Hal’s going to use this to drag every stray dog and cat into the courtroom. I mean, am I going to be giving depositions two weeks before the election?”
“You’re not giving shit,” Crully said. “You sue Kronon, and then the lawyers delay everything. He’ll file a motion to dismiss because you’re violating his right to free speech and we take weeks to answer and then there’s an election.” Crully threw the back of his hand at Ray, dismissive of the law and all its routine monkeyshines and its predictable inefficiency.
Ray generally found Crully amusing, perhaps because Ray had been on the team that found him. But Horgan looked nettled. He stood up to hang his suit coat on the back of his chair. Like Paul, he preferred just to ignore Mark at times.
“Are there risks, if we sue? Sure,” said Ray, as he rolled up his cuffs. “But Hal’s got you pretty well cornered here. He’s going to keep saying you murdered his sister to anybody who will listen. If you sue him, maybe a few more people pay attention. But there’s also a chance he shuts up. Maybe the judge makes him shut up. Net-net, I think you have to do it, Paulie. Otherwise, you’re gonna ride out the campaign wearing the collar for Dita’s murder. That’s a lot of weight to be trying to tote over the finish line. You need to say, ‘I didn’t do it.’”
“How about if I say I didn’t do it.”
“You need to back it up. You sue him, you have skin in the game.”
Paul closed his eyes to think. Even at moments like this, he loved this life. Or most of it. The money part was horrible and getting worse. Close to unbearable. You didn’t get really big dollars from anybody who didn’t have an agenda and a ring to be kissed. But the rest he still relished. He knew enough about himself to admit that he liked the heat of the spotlight-Lidia had taught all her children that they deserved attention. But he still found a thrill in the magnitude of the problems, and figuring out how to get them solved. The county had been playing a shell game for a decade-there wasn’t the money to run the schools or pay pensions, not if you’d passed fourth grade arithmetic. But he, Paulie Gianis, he would be the one working it out. There was no other job with this kind of impact, where the effect of your brief time on earth was magnified so far beyond your own circle. You could invent the semiconductor or make a movie and change lives, too, if people happened to bump up against those things. But in politics the effect was universal. Every person you passed on the street had a stake in what you did and usually an opinion about it. The world was what it was, full of love and cruelty and indifference. But it could get better, with less need, less violence, more opportunities. In his lifetime, black people had gone from the back of the bus to maybe, considering the results in Iowa last week, the White House. And if you put up with all the hard stuff, you could be laid to rest knowing you had helped make that kind of change happen.
“To be frank,” said Raymond, “the only thing that gives me second thoughts is that he’s basically daring you to sue.”
“That’s Hal,” said Paul. “The guy’s like a windup toy who turns his own key. If I win twenty million dollars in this lawsuit, he appeals for five years and doesn’t even notice when he writes the check. Besides, he thinks all Democrats are socialists who want to destroy the free enterprise system that made America great. He’s always been crazy-right. I remember when I was six years old, Hal had all these campaign banners for Barry Goldwater in his bedroom. This is 1964. There weren’t R’s in Kewahnee in those days. Even Zeus, his dad, only became a Republican when they moved to the suburbs and he fell in love with Reagan. The hard-right stuff was Hal’s defense against being a nerd. It was his way of saying he was the only guy who knew the truth.”
“OK,” said Ray. “But he can’t really believe that any Republican is going to win in this county. If he knocks you out and the D’s splinter and Flanagan gets into the runoff, he gets crushed. So if Hal’s rational-”
“He’s not.”
“OK,” said Ray, “but let’s pretend. Common sense says that to go public with this kind of accusation, he has to have something to back it up. So you tell us, Paulie. Does he?”
“Not that I know of,” Paul answered. Horgan, who’d done criminal defense work for decades, had asked the question so casually that Paul had responded with equal nonchalance. But Ray was still a sly cat. Only now that his steel blues stayed put on Paul did he realize that Ray had been asking the same thing for ten minutes, in hopes of an unequivocal response.
But Crully wouldn’t let him answer. Mark stood up, all five-six of him, but still looking, from the hard set of his face, like somebody you wouldn’t want to mess with. He was done wasting time.
“You have to sue. Period. Personally, Ray, I’m not spinning my wheels asking what Hal’s got. Because if he’s got anything real, Paul’s not gonna be mayor anyway.” Crully turned toward his candidate. “So, Paul, either quit now or sue.”
Crully flipped his pencil in the air and let it bounce on the table and left the room.
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