Her advisors considered the result was much more likely to be known after the second or even the third ballot, by which time Senator Bradley would have released his 189 delegates.
During the previous week, she had drawn up a short list of four people whom she thought worthy of consideration to join her on the ticket as Vice President. Bill Bradley still led the field and Florentyna felt he was her natural successor to the White House, but she was also considering Sam Nunn, Gary Hart and David Pryor.
Florentyna’s thoughts were interrupted when the plane landed and she looked out of the windows to see a large, excited crowd awaiting her. She couldn’t help wondering how many of them would also be there tomorrow when Pete Parkin arrived. She checked her hair in her compact mirror; a few white strands were showing in the dark hair, but she made no attempt to disguise them, and she smiled at the thought that Pete Parkin’s hair had remained the same implausible color for the past thirty years. Florentyna wore a simple linen suit and her only piece of jewelry was a diamond studded donkey.
Florentyna unbuckled her seat belt, rose and ducked her head under the overhead compartment. She stepped into the aisle and as she turned to leave, everyone in the plane began applauding. She suddenly realized that if she lost the nomination, this would be the last time she would see them all together. Florentyna shook hands with all the members of the press corps, some of whom had been on the trail with her for five months. A crew member opened the cabin door and Florentyna stepped out onto the staircase, squinting into the July sun. The crowd let up a yell of ‘There she is,’ and Florentyna walked down the steps and straight toward the waving banners because she always found that direct contact with the voters recharged her. As she touched the tarmac, she was once again surrounded by the Secret Service, who dreaded crowds they could never control. She might sometimes think of being assassinated when she was alone, but never when she was in a crowd. Florentyna clasped outstretched hands and greeted as many people as possible before Edward guided her away to the waiting motorcade.
A line of ten small new Fords reminded her that Detroit had finally come to terms with the energy crisis. If Pete Parkin were to make the mistake of being driven in a Mercedes in this city, she would be the Democratic choice before Alabama cast its first vote. Secret Service men filled the first two cars while Florentyna was in the third, with Edward in front by the driver. Florentyna’s personal doctor rode in the fourth and her staff filled the remaining six ‘Mighty Midgets,’ as the new small Ford had been dubbed. A press corps bus followed at the rear with police outriders dotted up and down the motorcade.
The front car moved off at a snail’s pace so that Florentyna could wave to the crowds, but as soon as they reached the highway the cars traveled into Detroit at a steady fifty miles an hour.
For twenty minutes Florentyna relaxed in the back seat during the drive into the midtown New Center area, where the motorcade exited at Woodward Avenue, turned south toward the river and slowed to about five miles an hour as the crowds filled the streets to catch a glimpse of Senator Kane. Florentyna’s organizing committee had distributed 100,000 handbills showing the exact route she would take when she arrived in the city, and her supporters cheered her all the way to the Baron Hotel. The Secret Service had begged her to change the route, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
Dozens of photographers and television crews were poised awaiting her arrival as Florentyna stepped out of her car and climbed the steps of the Detroit Baron, the whole area lit up by flashbulbs and arc lights. Once she was inside the hotel lobby, the Secret Service men whisked her away to the twenty-fourth floor, which had been reserved for her personal use. She quickly checked over the George Novak Suite to see that everything she required was there, because she knew that this was going to be her prison for the next four days. The only reason she would leave that room would be either to accept the nomination as the Democratic Party candidate or to declare her support for Pete Parkin.
A bank of telephones had been installed so that Florentyna could keep in touch with the 412 wavering delegates. She spoke to thirty-eight of them before dinner that night and then sat up until two o’clock the next morning, going over the names and backgrounds of those who her team genuinely felt had not made up their minds.
Next day, the Detroit Free Press was filled with pictures of her arrival in Detroit, but in truth she knew Pete Parkin would receive the same enthusiastic coverage tomorrow. At least she was relieved that the President had decided to remain on the sidelines when it came to supporting either candidate. The press had already treated that as a moral victory for Florentyna.
She put the newspaper down and began to watch the closed circuit television to see what was going on in the convention hall during the first morning. She also kept an eye on all three channels at lunchtime in case any one network came up with some exclusive piece of news that the other two had missed and to which the press would demand her instant reaction.
During the day, thirty-one of the wavering delegates were brought to meet her on the twenty-fourth floor. As the hour progressed, they were served coffee, iced tea, hot tea and cocktails. Florentyna stuck to Perrier water.
She watched in silence as Pete Parkin arrived in Air Force Two at the Detroit airport. One staffer told her that his crowd was smaller than the one that had turned out for her yesterday, while another said it was larger. She made a mental note of the staffer who said that Parkin’s crowd was larger today and decided to listen to his opinions more carefully in the future.
Pete Parkin made a short speech at a specially set-up podium on the tarmac, his Vice Presidential seal of office glistening in the sun. He said how delighted he was to be in the city that could rightly describe itself as the car capital of the world. ‘I should know,’ he added, ‘I’ve owned Fords all my life.’ Florentyna smiled.
By the end of two days under ‘house arrest,’ Florentyna had complained so much about being cooped up that on Wednesday morning the Secret Service took her down in a freight elevator so that she could stroll along the river front, enjoying the fresh air and the skyline view of Windsor, Ontario, on the opposite bank. She had gone only a few paces before she was surrounded by well-wishers who wanted to touch her hand.
When she returned, Edward had some good news: five uncommitted delegates had decided to vote for her on the first ballot. He estimated that they needed only another seventy-three to claim the magic 1,666. On the monitor she followed the program on the floor of the convention hall. A black school superintendent from Delaware expounded Florentyna’s virtues, and when she mentioned Florentyna’s name the blue placards filled the hall with ‘Kane for President.’ During the speech that followed, there was an equivalent sea of red placards demanding ‘Parkin for President.’ She paced around the suite until one-thirty, by which time she had seen forty-three more delegates and spoken on the phone to another fifty-eight.
The second day of the convention was devoted to the major platform speeches on policy, finance, welfare, defense and the keynote speech by Senator Pryor. Time and time again, delegates would declare that whichever of the two great candidates was selected, they would go on to beat the Republicans in November; but most of the delegates on the floor kept up a steady hum of conversation, all but oblivious to the men and women on the platform who might well make up a Democratic cabinet.
Florentyna broke away from the welfare debate to have a drink with two delegates from Nevada who were still undecided. She realized their next stop would probably be Parkin, who would also promise them their new highway, hospital, university or whatever excuse they came up with to visit both candidates. At least tomorrow night they would have to come out finally in someone’s favor. She told Edward she wanted a fence put up in the middle of her room, so that wavering delegates had somewhere to sit when they came to meet her.