The Porkchoppers Read online

  “In me?” said Hanks who always had to relate everything to himself as quickly as possible.

  “In the election,” Fleer said. “From what I hear, Cub-bin’s having the same trouble.”

  “We’re going to have to stir them up,” Mickey Della said. “You get a good, nasty fight going and they’ll get interested.”

  “Maybe,” Fleer said, which was as close as he could ever come to dissent.

  “Well, how much money can we count on from all sources?” Hanks said.

  “A little over five hundred thousand,” Fleer said.

  “And that’s it?”

  Fleer nodded. “That is the absolute maximum.”

  Hanks looked at Della. “Is that enough for what you’re going to do?”

  Mickey Della studied the ceiling for a few moments as he puffed on his cigarette. “If that’s all you can raise,” he said, “then that’s all I’ll spend.”

  16

  Truman Goff used a two-wheeled dolly to roll a crate of Golden Bantam corn up to where the vegetables and fruit were displayed along the left-hand wall of the Safeway store, thus making fresh produce the first item to confront customers after they picked up their carts.

  Goff was a conscientious employee, a firm believer in the tenet that if you took a man’s dollar, you by God worked for him because work was not only some vaguely Christian kind of duty, it also was good for you in another equally mysterious way. Goff never really thought about whether he liked his job although he knew he got a kind of a pleasure out of handling the berries and turnips and spinach and lettuce and tomatoes and plums. “There’s variety in it,” he had once told his wife on a rare occasion when they had discussed his job for all of three minutes. “You know, there’s always new stuff coming in and you gotta plan for it and all.”

  Goff took the crate of corn from the dolly and put it on the floor. He shifted the few remaining ears of corn already on display so that he could put them on top of the new batch and then started taking each ear out of the crate. He used a sharp knife to cut an X through each shuck. This was so a customer could easily lift up one of the triangular flaps created by the X and inspect the condition of the kernels underneath. Goff didn’t have to do this. He did it because it was a service he had thought up. It was also one of the reasons that he had been promoted to produce manager.

  After he had arranged the corn, he trundled the dolly over to the wood-and-glass enclosure that served as the store manager’s office. He opened the door and said, “I’m gonna be a little late getting back from lunch, Virgil.”

  Virgil looked up from his desk and said, “How late?”

  “About fifteen minutes.”

  “Okay.”

  “I gotta pick up my ticket to Miami,” Goff said.

  “Some guys have all the luck,” Virgil said and went back to his paper work.

  Goff wheeled the dolly back to the receiving and storage room, took off his white smock, put on his jacket and went out to his Toronado. He drove seven blocks and then circled until he found an empty meter. He parked his car and went into the United Airlines office.

  “You got a one-way ticket to Chicago on Sunday for Harold F. Lawrence?” Goff said to the girl behind the counter.

  “Just a moment, Mr. Lawrence.”

  In a few moments she produced an already made-out ticket. “Will that be cash or credit card, Mr. Lawrence?”

  “Cash,” Goff said.

  “That will be fifty-one dollars,” the girl said.

  Goff handed her a worn hundred-dollar bill and she handed him the ticket along with his change plus a merry enough, “And thank you for flying United.”

  Goff said, “You’re welcome,” and went out to his Toronado. He drove another twelve blocks and started circling again until he found another open metered space. He didn’t like to put his car in parking lots because, first of all, it cost too much, and second, he was convinced that the car jockeys liked to bang up anything over a Ford or a Plymouth.

  After locking his car Goff went into a sporting-goods store and bought a box of .30-.30 caliber Winchester soft-nosed cartridges. Then he went back to his car and unlocked its trunk and put the sack containing the box of cartridges in the trunk along with the airline ticket to Chicago. His wife never looked in the trunk.

  There was a diner across the street so Goff crossed over and had two cheeseburgers and a chocolate malt for lunch. The diner also had an enclosed phone booth and when he was through with his lunch, Goff got some change from the cashier, entered the booth, and dropped a dime in the slot. He dialed O and when the operator came on, Goff said, “I want to call Washington person to person.” Then he told her that he wanted to speak to Mr. Donald Cubbin, but that he didn’t have the number and that Mr. Cubbin was probably at work and that she’d have to get the number of his union.

  Finally, a woman’s voice said, “Mr. Cubbin’s office,” and the operator said, “I have a long-distance call for Mr. Donald Cubbin.”

  “May I ask who’s calling?”

  “Mr. Jack Wilson,” Goff said.

  “Mr. Cubbin is out of town, operator, but if Mr. Wilson will leave his number I’ll have Mr. Cubbin return his call.”

  “It’s important that I talk to him today,” Goff said.

  “Is there another number where Mr. Cubbin may be reached?” the operator said.

  The woman said yes, that Mr. Cubbin was staying at the Sheraton-Blackstone in Chicago and that he could be reached there for the next few days. She then gave the operator the number.

  “Would you like me to try that number?” the operator asked Goff.

  “No,” he said, “I’ll place the call later.”

  Goff waited until he got his dime back and then left the diner and crossed the street to his car. That story he had read in The New York Times had been right, Goff told himself, but it was still a good thing to check because you could never believe what you read in the papers. Now he knew for certain that Donald Cubbin would be in Chicago on Sunday and Monday. He would fly up there Sunday and then Monday afternoon or evening he would buy a ticket and fly on down to Miami. Truman Goff had been to Chicago before but he had never been to Miami and he found himself looking forward to it.

  17

  Donald Cubbin’s hands began to shake a little that Friday as he and Kelly rode the elevator up to Walter Penry’s suite in the Chicago Hilton. Cubbin jammed his hands deep into his coat pockets and when the elevator stopped on the fourteenth floor he said to his son, “Why don’t you wait here? I need to go back down and get a cigar.”

  “Come on, chief,” Kelly said.

  “Look, kid,” Cubbin said as he stepped from the elevator, “I’d really like a cigar.”

  Kelly looked up and down the corridor and then produced a half-pint bottle of Ancient Age and handed it to his father. “Compliments of filthy Fred Mure,” he told him. “He said you’d be needing it.”

  Cubbin took the half-pint, trying to conceal his eagerness, and glanced around. There was no one in sight. He looked at his son. “You know what this is?”

  “It’s whiskey.”

  “It’s goddamned embarrassing, that’s what.” He raised the bottle and drank three large gulps.

  “That’ll put the bloom back in your cheeks,” Kelly said, reaching for the bottle.

  “Now what kind of a father would do that in front of his own son?” Cubbin said.

  “The kind who needs a drink.”

  Walter Penry opened the door to Cubbin’s knock and beamed at both father and son. “How are you, Don?” he said, grasping Cubbin’s right hand in both of his.

  “Fine, Walter. I don’t think you’ve met my son, Kelly.”

  “No, but I’ve sure heard a lot about him—and all of it good.” Kelly and Penry shook hands and sized each other up. The kid looks brighter than his old man, Penry thought, which could mean trouble. I don’t like this slick sonofabitch, Kelly decided as he offered Penry a carefully selected smile, the kind that gave away nothing bu
t a view of his teeth.

  Cubbin shook hands with the boys, as Penry always referred to them, thirty-seven-year-old Peter Majury and forty-five-year-old Ted Lawson. Penry then introduced them to Kelly who decided that he didn’t like them any better than he liked Penry and thought: the old man’s got himself into speedy company. If that sneaky-looking one got a haircut, he could play the mad SS major in some World War Two movie. And that big one, who must wear that smile of his to sleep, could be the gunfighter who can’t get enough of his job. Kelly always cast people whom he met and didn’t like into film roles. For some reason it helped him to remember their faces and names. As for you, he thought as Penry handed him a drink, you look like that dolt on the FBI show who’s always talking over the phone to Junior Zimbalist and telling him that the director’s taking a personal interest in this one, Lewis.

  “I think your dad told me that you’re on the force in Washington,” Penry said.

  “He’s resigned,” Cubbin said quickly before his son could say anything. Kelly let it go.

  He got bounced, you mean, and I’ll bet I know why, Penry thought, but said, “Well, Don, I guess that makes you the only one in the room who’s not an ex-cop of some kind. I spent eleven years with the FBI and the only thing I took with me when I left was a handshake from Mr. Hoover and a spotless record. Peter here did something or other for the CIA for above five years and Ted was with the Treasury. Seven years wasn’t it, Ted?”

  “Eight,” Lawson said.

  “How’d you like being a cop, Kelly?” Penry said.

  “I liked it fine.”

  “And you resigned to give your dad a hand, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, from what I hear, Don, you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

  Cubbin bristled. “I don’t know where you get your information, but it sounds like you’re getting it from Sammy.”

  “Come on, Don. You know we didn’t fly all the way up here just to kid around with each other. I understand Sammy’s put himself together a pretty good campaign.”

  “That television program last night,” Peter Majury said and clucked his tongue a couple of times. “That was most unfortunate.”

  “One TV program doesn’t make a campaign,” Cubbin said.

  “Well, that’s what we wanted to talk to you about,” Penry said. “Your campaign and how we can help. But let’s have some lunch first.”

  They had lunch in the room, but not before Kelly made sure that his father was fortified with another drink, this time a double bourbon that Cubbin sipped as he nibbled at his steak and salad. While they ate, Walter Penry delivered himself of a number of opinions concerning the state of the nation and the world which, Kelly decided, would have had Attila the Hun nodding agreement. Kelly was thinking of needling Penry, of pricking that bloated self-assurance to see what would ooze out, when Penry said to Cubbin, “Now you and I, Don, we’ve always thought alike and—”

  “What?” Cubbin said, looking up from his drink that was now about three-fourths gone.

  “I said we’ve always thought alike.”

  “Walter, you’re a nice guy but you’re also full of shit.”

  Penry decided to retreat. “Of course, everyone has differences, but usually we wind up on the same side.”

  Cubbin was staring at Penry now. You don’t owe him anything, he told himself. He owes you. You don’t have to put up with any crap from him. “You know what I’ve been doing for the last fifteen minutes, Walter, I’ve been half listening to that line of bull you’ve been handing out and wondering how a grown-up man like you can bring himself to say such damn foolishness, let alone believe it.”

  “Well, Don, we don’t have to agree on everything to be friends,” Penry said.

  “Who said anything about friendship? Some of my best friends are damn fools.”

  “Which of Walter’s points do you especially disagree with, Don?” Majury asked, always eager for details, especially when they promised conflict.

  “All of ’em,” Cubbin said. “Now nobody’s ever accused me of being a liberal, not since fifty-two anyhow after I came out for Eisenhower instead of Stevenson. I doubt if I’d do it today, but I did it then because I thought Ike wanted to be President. It wasn’t my fault that he didn’t take to the job. Well, that didn’t make me popular. And I didn’t get any more invitations to the White House after sixty-four when I first started yelling about Vietnam. Now let me tell you why I did that. I’m no foreign-affairs or military expert, but I used to be a pretty fair bookkeeper. So I just looked at the books. Well, I’ve got a sort of simple philosophy that’s probably old hat nowadays. I believe everyone in this country should have enough to eat, plenty to wear, a good home to live in, an education, and a doctor to go to when they’re sick. Now this they deserve just like the air they breathe. That’s not too hard to understand, is it?”

  “You’re doing fine, chief,” Kelly said.

  “Yeah, well, like I said, I took a look at the books just like any bookkeeper would and I decided that we could either have ourselves a war over in Southeast Asia or we could have a fairly decent country, but we couldn’t have both. We just didn’t have the money. Well, I decided I’d rather have a decent country and I said so and kept saying so and George Meany got so mad he wouldn’t even speak to me for six months until he had to because he wanted something. So there I was for about two years all by myself except for the kooks and the nuts until it finally got respectable to be anti-Vietnam. But let me tell you something, Walter, it wasn’t any fun suddenly being the fifty-five-year-old darling of every left-wing, long-haired hippie in the country, but by God that’s what I was. Christ, I even got a letter from Norman Mailer.”

  “Although I didn’t agree with you at the time, Don,” Penry said, “I believe I told you that it was a courageous stand.”

  Cubbin grinned. “You told me I was making a damn-fool mistake.”

  “Well, we’re all on the same side now,” Penry said. “At least about Vietnam.”

  “Perhaps we had better talk about our own battle,” Majury said.

  But Cubbin wasn’t through. “You know what Sammy Hanks is saying now? He’s saying that he was the one who talked me into coming out against Vietnam. Why in 1965 that dumb son of a bitch didn’t even know where it was. You know what I did when Old Man Phelps died? I reached way down in the bottom of the bag and picked out the most insignificant, obscure regional director we had and made him secretary-treasurer because I believed all of his talk about loyalty and dedication. Hell, I was the one who took Sammy out of that Schenectady plant and gave him his first union job as an organizer. Just twelve years ago Sammy Hanks was running a set press and making two seventy-six an hour and happy to get it because it was more’n he’d ever made in his life. He barely had a high school education and some kind of college night course and if it hadn’t been for me, he’d still be in that plant. I taught that ugly little prick everything he knows and gave him everything he’s got and now he wants my job and goes around telling everybody that’ve I lost touch with the rank and file.”

  Kelly decided to interrupt before whiskey and anger drowned his father in a pool of self-pity. “You forgot to teach Sammy one thing, chief.”

  “What?”

  “Gratitude.”

  You’re talking too much, Cubbin told himself. Let them talk awhile. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said. “That’s one thing he never learned. Gratitude.”

  “Well, perhaps you can teach him another equally important lesson, Don,” Majury said in his usual hoarse whisper.

  “What?”

  “How to be graceful in defeat.”

  Cubbin smiled. “I’d like to do that. Yeah, I’d like that very much.”

  “I think we can be of some help to you, Don,” Penry said.

  “It’s like I told you, Walter, we don’t have any money.”

  “You let us worry about the money. In fact, I think we might be able to raise some for you.”
>
  “Who from?”

  “You’ve got a lot of friends, Don, who you wouldn’t want to go to but who’d be more than willing to help out if somebody’d just ask them. Well, that’s one of my jobs— asking them.”

  “Who?” Cubbin said, because it was one of those days when his hangover was still so bad that he knew he didn’t have a friend in the world.

  “Well, let’s just say they’re friends who want to keep on being friends. They don’t want you to know that you’re in their debt.”

  “Just how much in debt do you think I could be to them?”

  “Maybe three or four hundred thousand,” Penry said, thinking: at least that’s what you’ll get. The rest I’ll spend in my own way on your behalf.

  “Jesus!” Cubbin said. “You sure it’s that much?”

  “Positive.”

  “Is it clean money?”

  “It’s clean. But it’s anonymous.”

  “What do I have to do? I don’t believe that shit you gave me about friends for one minute, Walter.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, because they are your friends. And they don’t want you to do anything—other than what you’d indently do.”

  “No strings at all?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your angle, Walter? I’ve never known you to be without one.”

  “Your friends will pay me for my services which will be placed entirely at your disposal. We’re in for the duration, Don, if you’ll have us.”

  “I’ve already got a campaign manager and a PR director.”

  “We know that,” Majury said. “We don’t want to involve ourselves at that level of your campaign.”

  “What level are you gentlemen interested in?” Kelly said.

  “Play the tape, Ted,” Majury told Lawson.

  The big man nodded and rose, walking over to a tape-recording machine. “Now?” he said.

  “In just a moment,” Penry said. “Kelly, you asked at what level we plan to involve ourselves and that’s really quite a good question. We’re not interested in the execution of the campaign’s general strategy. Don’s got competent people to do that. What we will do is to provide certain issues that can be exploited. We’ll also anticipate the opposition and try to make them commit tactical errors. This is going to be a brief, but dirty campaign. Our job is simply to make sure that our tricks are dirtier than theirs. Now you can play it, Ted.”