“Just as long as you understand that we’re through.”
“Okay. Okay. I understand. But what if Don divorced you, what if he found out about us and divorced you, would you marry me then?”
“You’re not threatening me, are you, Fred?”
“No. I’m just asking you a question. Would you marry me if Don divorced you?”
Sadie shrugged. “Maybe, but he won’t.”
“How do you know? If he finds out, he might.”
Sadie moved over to Fred and touched his cheek. “Fred, you’re really not very bright, are you?”
“I’m not so dumb.”
“No, if you were bright, you’d understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Don’s never going to divorce me.”
“If he found out about us he would.”
Sadie shook her head slowly. “No, darling not even then.”
“Why?”
“Because he already knows about us.”
24
It was the last week of the campaign, the week of October 8, and the shifts changed at seven o’clock in the morning and by six forty-five they had Donald Cubbin stationed at gate number five and the cameras of three television networks were aimed at him as he steadily pumped the hands of the plant workers who streamed in and out.
Clustered around Cubbin were Charles Guyan, the public relations man; Oscar Imber, the campaign manager; Fred Mure, the general factotum, and Kelly Cubbin, son, who stood about twenty feet away, safely out of camera range.
Officials of the local union were scattered about, hustling the members to “step over and shake hands with President Cubbin.” They said it over and over, until they found the phrase meaningless, but they still said it because they felt they had to participate somehow.
Everyone but the television crews seemed faintly embarrassed. The union members were embarrassed to see their international president out soliciting their votes at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning. Cubbin was embarrassed because he felt that the members thought him a fool. Oscar Imber was embarrassed because he kept overhearing the members say, “Who the fuck was that?” after they shook hands with Cubbin. Charles Guyan was embarrassed because the scene was too static to make a good television segment. Kelly Cubbin was embarrassed because his father was making an ass of himself at a manufactured event. And Fred Mure was embarrassed because he couldn’t figure out why everyone else was and he didn’t want to ask.
Cubbin’s line was, “Hi yah, pal, good to see you.” He was too good an actor to say it mechanically and each time it came out as a completely personal greeting.
“You gonna vote for him?” Melvin Gomes, a dip stage assembler who earned $10,357 the previous year, asked his car-pool driver, Victor Wurl, molder, who last year earned $12,391.
“Who?”
“What’s-his-face, Cubbin.”
“I don’t know, maybe.”
“I think I might vote for that other guy, Hanks?”
“Yeah. Hanks.”
“I might vote for him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Why’re you gonna vote for Cubbin?”
“I don’t know. I guess it don’t make a damn who we vote for. It’s still gonna be the same old shit.”
“Well, at least that’s something we can count on.”
At ten minutes past seven the television crews began packing up their equipment. Cubbin turned to Oscar Imber and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here; I’m freezing.”
“We’re on our way,” Imber said.
“What else this morning?” Cubbin asked Charles Guyan.
“You’ve got that radio program at eleven.”
“What radio program?”
“‘Here’s Phyllis.’”
“Jesus, who listens to that?”
Guyan shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the guys who’re sick.”
A little over two thousand miles away in Washington, D.C., it was ten o’clock in the morning as Mickey Della walked into Sammy Hanks’s campaign office and slammed an 8½″ x 11″ leaflet down on his desk.
“Now where in the hell did they get that?” Della snapped.
Hanks picked up the leaflet. “Jesus Christ,” he said.
Most of the leaflet was taken up by a large picture of Sammy Hanks, nattily attired in tennis whites, a racket in his hand, a foolish smile on his face, as he stood by a sun umbrella. In the background were tennis courts and a large, rambling structure that looked like exactly what it was, a country club. The headline on the leaflet read:
The text embroidered the theme that while Sammy Hanks tried to tag his political opponent with practicing country-club unionism, the union members just might be interested in what posh clubs Hanks hung out at. The copy was pithy, not quite cute, and in Mickey Della’s opinion, deadly.
“Where’d they get that picture?” he said.
“My wife took it. It was about five years ago when she was trying to teach me tennis.”
“At a country club?”
“That’s right, damn it, at a country club. It’s up in Connecticut.”
“Where’s the picture now?”
“In her scrapbook.”
“Is she home?”
“She’s home.”
“Call her. Ask her if it’s still there.”
“Look, you’re not trying to say that my wife gave it to those bastards?”
“I just want to see if it’s still there.”
Hanks held the phone while his wife went to look for the scrapbook. When she came back and told him what she had found, he said, “Thanks, honey, I’ll call you later,” and hung up the phone. “It’s still there,” he told Della.
“They copied it then,” Della said, not bothering to keep the admiration out of his voice. “They broke into your house, swiped the picture, copied it, and broke in again to put it back. Slick. Very slick.”
Hanks felt the anger building in him and fought it back. “You mean I got burgled?”
“You did indeed.”
“And they’re getting this thing around?” he asked, touching the leaflet gingerly.
“I imagine they’ve printed a million of them. I know I would.”
“Well, what’re you going to do?”
Mickey Della smiled slyly. “Don’t worry, Sammy. I’ve still got a couple of tricks left.”
“What kind?”
Della smiled again. “Dirty ones, of course. Are there any other kind?”
It had been a dirty, mean campaign and now that it was in its final week it promised to get even dirtier. A syndicated editorial service that operated just outside Washington in Virginia had supplied its normally conservative clients, who were often too lazy or too ignorant to write their own editorials, with a stinging attack on Sammy Hanks for having introduced gutter politics into a trade-union campaign. The editorial was dutifully printed in twenty-nine newspapers and all it had cost Ted Lawson of Walter Penry and Associates was $5,000. The man who owned the editorial service had once been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his writing ability. He now wrote for the highest bidder whenever he could and if Sammy Hanks had been first in line with $5,000, the man would have cheerfully written an editorial slamming Donald Cubbin.
Except for reports and appearances on TV news programs, it had been a print campaign with Mickey Della setting the tone in his first leaflet that had used a photograph of Cubbin as he followed through with a two wood on some unidentified golf course. The leaflet had a black border around it, another Della trademark, and a caption that read:
The text, written in Della’s florid, but extremely readable style, described Cubbin’s efforts to get into the exclusive Federalists Club and then went on to warn darkly that Cubbin might sell out his members to satisfy his social ambitions.