was nothing direct-all flights had O’Hare connections, with return trips likewise routed through Chicago. That meant anybody coming back from Toronto Monday night could be on one of half a dozen flights offered by a trio of small, shuttle-service airlines. This would make it easy for me to be on hand to welcome George Ridge home.
An airport shuttle bus dropped me at the Blackhawk Hotel, but I didn’t go up to my room. I didn’t even go into the lobby. Instead, I stopped in at the DEMOCRATIC ACTION PARTY NATIONAL CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS, which was located in one of the street-level storefronts that were a part of the hotel’s eleven-story building.
A banner in the window wondered PRESTON FREED-WHY NOT A REAL PRESIDENT? and so did several other smaller red, white and blue posters, without obstructing a view of the bustling activity within the modest boiler room set-up: two rows of half a dozen banquet tables on either side, with staffers manning (though more frequently womaning) the many phones, all of which were red, white or blue. The patriotic color scheme extended to the various posters on the white walls, which pictured Freed himself, a smiling, boyishly handsome man in his vague forties, with rather long stark white hair. On one side wall, where it could be viewed from the street through the front window, a large color portrait of the candidate revealed eyes that were spookily light blue in a well-tanned face. He was wearing a tan suede jacket and a riverboat gambler’s string tie and looked, in the massive color blow-up, like a cross between Big Brother and Bret Maverick.
The busy campaign staffers were mostly young, between twenty and thirty, closer to twenty in most cases. It surprised me, somehow, though it shouldn’t have. Vietnam-era relics like me have trouble believing the stories about a conservative younger generation, but here was the proof, as clean-cut and persistent as those Mormons who periodically show up at your door.
And so many of these zealots were young women. Girls. They weren’t wearing blazers, like Angela at Best Buy and Sally at Ridge Real Estate; but they were color coordinated, like their phones, blouses of red, white or blue, skirts of the same; the designer label on these threads, if there were one, would most likely read Betsy Ross not Betsey Johnson. The men-boys-wore white shirts and red or blue ties and navy slacks.
There was almost constant movement, the living flag of the Freed campaign headquarters seeming to constantly wave as its individual components would gesture animatedly during the phone solicitations, or hop up eagerly from a seat to consult another staffer, often one of those with a computer, one per banquet table. Girls and boys with faces full of no experience, as pretty and handsome as a collection of Barbie and Ken dolls come to life, they were enough to make you wake up screaming from the American dream.
By the front window, in the small, eye-of-the-hurricane reception area, were two tables of Democratic Action party literature, one of which bore a communal coffee urn, styrofoam cups and a plate of cookies. I nibbled a cookie, a Lorna Doone, and thumbed through some of the campaign literature-much of it railing against the “Drug Conspiracy”-and overheard a phone solicitation by a pretty, bright-eyed blonde, of perhaps twenty.
“Your savings will be safer with us,” she was saying, with the utter conviction of the very young. “You mustn’t trust the banks-their collapse is imminent… I understand your concern… yes, unless Preston Freed is elected President, you can rest assured that your Social Security checks will stop within eighteen months. Your contribution is much appreciated, but I must stress that we can protect your savings as well.”
I felt fingers tap my shoulder and I turned. A willowy redhead with a faint trail of freckles across her nose and dark blue eyes and red full lips was extending a hand for me to shake. She was in a red blouse and a blue skirt.
“Becky Shay,” she said. “Volunteer for Democratic Action.”
“Jack Ryan,” I said, shaking her hand. “Holdout for Creative Skepticism.”
Her smile glazed and so did her puppy-dog eager eyes, as she tried to sort that out.
I let go of her hand and said, “I’m just giving you a bit of a hard time. I’ll tell you frankly-I picked up some literature on your party, at O’Hare, and read it on the plane coming here. I’m interested. I want to hear more.”
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.”
