The glaze melted away. “Where shall I start?”
“Anywhere you like.”
She gestured toward the table of literature. “I’d suggest you pick up some of Mr. Freed’s position papers. They are far more eloquent than I. And no contribution is necessary-though it is appreciated.”
“What’s the ‘Drug Conspiracy’?”
“A complex alliance between the banks, certain governments and the crime syndicate.”
“Oh. What are they conspiring to do, exactly?”
“To fatten themselves off the masses.”
Everything this kid said sounded prerecorded; it was like hearing the robot Lincoln at Disneyland give the Gettysburg address: patriotic and hollow.
I leafed through a booklet. “This wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with ‘international Zionists,’ by any chance?”
“Certainly. You’ve heard of the Illuminati?”
“Sure. I have all their records.”
She ignored that; trying to kid her was like kidding a nun about the virgin birth.
She went on with the catechism: “The forces of evil are gathering. Only Preston Freed can lead this country out of the darkness.”
“We’re talking your basic good versus evil here.”
“Precisely,” she said. “The future of humanity is at stake.”
I gestured with the booklet, nodded over at the two tables piled with them. “I see a lot here about what’s wrong about America. And let’s grant that there is a lot wrong. But what does your party intend to replace all of that with?”
“Common sense,” she said, with a smug little smile.
Yeah, that oughta do it.
“Well,” I said, smiling back, “you’ve given me a lot of food for thought. Suppose I wanted to make a contribution?”
Her smile widened, the smugness evaporated. “Why, that would be wonderful…”
“I mean a sizeable contribution. Of a thousand dollars or more.”
She touched my arm. “You’d immediately become a member.”
“A member?”
In a hushed, pious voice she intoned: “Of the Democratic Action Policy Committee.”
“I never dreamed,” I said.
She just smiled.
“But I’d like to know how my money would be used,” I said. “Where it would go.”
She frowned a little, as if that were a concept that had never dawned on her.
I pressed on. “I’d like to talk to Mr. Freed’s campaign manager. If I’m going to make a contribution of this size, I want to go straight to the top.”
She thought about that.
“It’s only common sense,” I said.
She nodded, and went down the aisle between the rows of tables. I followed, but when we reached a closed door at the rear, she turned and raised a forefinger and narrowed her dark blues to tell me not to follow her into the office. She wasn’t in there long, however.
Smiling, she ushered me in, and shut the door behind her, leaving me in a conference room where the walls were covered by a huge, much marked-up calendar, several arcane charts and various large maps-one of the United States, another of Iowa, another of New Hampshire, another of various Iowa counties and communities. Sticking pins of various colors in the Davenport map, as if it were a flat voodoo doll that controlled the city, was a man in his late forties in shirtsleeves and loosened tie. He did not wear the glee club apparel of his young staff, however; his pants were gray, and went with the gray suitcoat slung over a chair at the conference table. He had salt-and-pepper hair, longish but receding, and was well-fed but not fat, with a fleshy, intelligent face.
He put one more color-coded pin into the map, and turned a steel-gray gaze on me, as well as a practiced smile, a sly smile unlike those of the Night of Living Conservatives bunch in the outer room.
“You’re Mr. Ryan,” he said, and shook my hand. “I’m Frank Neely, campaign manager.”
“A pleasure, Mr. Neely,” I said. I gave him one of my business cards. “I’m doing some business in the Quad Cities and wanted to stop by. I knew Preston Freed’s national HQ was located here, and I was anxious to get a first-hand look.”
His smile remained, but his eyes turned wary. “Becky indicated you were a… fresh convert to our cause.”
“Frankly no,” I said, smiling back, taking the liberty of sitting at the conference table. “I’ve followed Preston Freed for some time. I only pretended to be a novice, so I could test the mettle of your staff. I can’t say I was much impressed.”
“Really,” he said with concern, remaining wary and on his feet.
“Becky, if that’s the name of the young woman who greeted me, is a good-looking kid. But her line of patter is strictly rote. She’s like a damn tour guide.”
He laughed, and finally sat, crossed his legs, ankle on knee.
“It’s a problem,” he said. “These kids are very enthusiastic, and very hard workers. They come into the party alert and questioning, but they get so indoctrinated, after a while, that they become, well, rather single-minded.”
“They should be able to discuss the issues, not just parrot the party line.”
“I couldn’t agree more. What’s your interest in the Democratic Action party, Mr. Ryan?”
“I just like what Preston Freed stands for. I represent a loose, informal group of businessmen from my community. We want to contribute several thousand dollars to the party-perhaps as much as ten.”
He raised his eyebrows.
I raised one of mine. “But I want to make sure we wouldn’t be pissing our money away.”
He gestured around his little war room. “Do you think we’d make this effort if we didn’t think it would amount to something?”
“Well, frankly, you yourself are probably well paid. Most professional campaign managers are. And your staff is obviously fresh out of college, looking for meaningful work, taking on a low-paying position for the experience and out of belief in a cause. Kids right out of college who haven’t figured out, yet, that you can’t deposit a cause in the bank.”
He nodded, smiled wryly.
“And I would imagine some of your staff are college kids, drawing on the various campuses in the area… Augustana, St. Ambrose, Palmer…”
“Yes,” he admitted. “Most of the area colleges allow political science students to work on campaigns for academic credit.”
“So,” I said, “I see that it’s extremely possible for me to be pissing my and my associates’ money away by donating to your party’s election efforts. We might be better off supporting conservatives within the Republican party. Candidates who actually have a chance of winning.”
“You’re underestimating us, Mr. Ryan,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve been at this for a long, long time. This will be our third Presidential race. In our first attempt, we gathered less than 80,000 votes in the national primaries. But last time around, we racked up a quarter of a million. And this year? Anything is possible.”
“Except victory.”
“You’re not a fool, Mr. Ryan, nor am I, and certainly Preston Freed is anything but a fool. Victory is a practical impossibility.” He raised a forefinger in a lecturing gesture. “However, we’re undoubtedly going to be putting on the strongest third-party candidacy since George Wallace in 1968.”
“You’re anticipating that Preston Freed will become a kingmaker, at the Democratic convention.”
“We do anticipate that. Who can say what victories will come from that? And we can look forward to the next election. If our rate of growth continues, the next time around Preston Freed will be a viable candidate, and the Democratic Action party will be a third, vital, major party.”
“All of this from a storefront in Davenport, Iowa.”
“Don’t be deceived, Mr. Ryan. This is only the first stop on the primary trail. We’re getting an early start. The Iowa precinct caucuses January twenty-first sound the opening gun of the presidential race. But we’re running now. Our candidate will begin making public appearances next week. Our volunteers, our staffers, will cover every county in Iowa, door-to-door and by telephone.”