“Okay,” Flash said.
“We’ll show the old bitch exactly how sensitive I am.”
The governor opened the door to the stateroom. “Come here, Fletch.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Close the door.”
Fletch did so. “Again, I’m sorry about that. I never dreamed the press—”
“I’m not about to chew you out.”
“You’re not?”
“‘Course not. Who was the first one to say ‘If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen’?”
“Uh—Fred Fenton?”
“Who was he?”
“Cooked for Henry the Eighth.” The governor gave him a weird look. “Buried under the chapel at the Tower of London. Forgot to take the poultry lacers out of roast falcons.”
The governor chuckled. “You’re making that up.”
“Sure I am.”
“Got anything for me?”
“Anything …?”
“You’ve been on the press bus most of the morning.”
“Oh. Yeah. Lansing Sayer says Upton’s team is going to hit you with some evidence of welfare fraud in your state. As soon as you climb back over thirty percent in the popularity polls.”
“That so? Good for them. That’s smart. There’s welfare fraud in every state. Also housebreaking and vandalism. I’ll get Barry on that. Have his people put together my record on stopping welfare abuse. Also, let’s see: the amount of welfare fraud in other states. I’ll make an issue of it myself as soon as I get near thirty percent in the polls.”
“Amazing how things become campaign issues.”
“Anything else?”
“Andrew Esty wants an exclusive interview with you.”
“The
“Yeah. He’s trying to develop something. If people are allowed to pray together in federal prisons, why not in public schools?”
“Wow. ‘Take Prayers out of Prisons.’”
“I think he means ‘Put Prayer back in Schools.’”
“No foolin’.”
The bus was going slowly, obviously in traffic. It was stopping and starting, probably at red lights.
“What do we do for him?” Fletch asked.
“Pray for him,” the governor said. “Anything else?”
“Found out more about the woman murdered last night. An intelligent, apparently unattached, lonely woman.”
“How do you know she was intelligent?”
“She was a reader. From her reading.”
“Political reading?”
“No.”
The bus was inching forward. A band could be heard playing.
“Very quickly I’m going to get tired of that topic.” The governor leaned over and looked through the steamy window. Instinctively he waved at the crowd outside with the flat of his hand. Fletch was sure no one outside could see the candidate through the windows. “Someday I’d love to have a Klezmer band playing for me,” the governor said. “I love Klezmer bands.”
The bus stopped.
“Walk out with me.” The governor took Fletch’s arm in his fist. “Stay between me and that congressbitch. Paddle her backward. Got me? Give it to her in the ribs, if you have to.”
“Gotcha.”
“And tell Lansing Sayer he can have an exclusive interview with me anytime he wants it.”
“Yes, sir.”
When Fletch opened the stateroom door, their ears were assaulted by the band’s playing “Camptown Races.”
“‘Jacob, make the horse go faster and faster,’” the candidate said. “‘If it ever stops, we won’t be able to sell it.’”
14
“It’s nice of you all to come out and give me a chance to talk to you, on such a cold, raw day,” The Man Who said. The noontime crowd was crammed into the smallest intersection in Winslow. Advance man Willy Finn had planned the rally for the smallest outdoor space in Winslow deliberately. A small crowd looks bigger in a small space; a larger crowd looks huge. The presidential candidate had attracted a good-sized crowd. “You know, a presidential campaign is just a crusade of amateurs. I can tell you, my friends in Winslow, this campaign to let me serve you the next four years in the White House needs your help.”
Standing in slush at the edge of the crowd, Fletch said to himself, “Wow.”
At his elbow, Freddie Arbuthnot said, “He said something new.”
The mayor, the city council, the chief of police, the superintendent of schools, a judge, the city’s oldest citizen (standing up at ninety-eight, bundled well against the cold), probably two dogcatchers and the fence-viewer were the reception committee awaiting the candidate as he got off the bus. A band was playing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Not moving from the bottom of the bus steps, Governor Wheeler shook hands with each member of the committee, said a few words to each. The mayor then led him through the crowd to the platform set up on the comer of Corn Street and Wicklow Lane, gestured to the band for quiet, and did his Man-Who speech, peppered with many references to his own efforts to gain control of the city budget.
Fletch watched Barry Hines and Flash Grasselli escort the short congressperson in entirely the wrong direction, right into the middle of the crowd, where she got bogged down shaking hands and listening to her constituents’ griefs.
Fletch introduced himself to the local press. He handed out position papers on the crop subsidy programs. He and the local press and only some of the national press stood in a roped-off area to the right of the platform.
Some members of the national press, Roy Filby, Stella Kirchner, Betsy Ginsberg, Bill Dieckmann—who seemed completely recovered —had spotted a bar-cafe half a block up and decided to go there for drinks during The Speech. “Tell us if he gets shot, or hands out money to the crowd or something, Fletch.”
Three television cameras were atop vans and station wagons. News photographers stood near the platform.
Hanging from the second-floor windows of the First National Bank of Winslow at the comer of Corn and Wicklow was a huge American flag. It had forty-eight stars.
Now The Man Who was saying, “The world has changed, my friends. You know it and I know it, but the present incumbent in the White House doesn’t seem to know it. His brilliant advisors don’t seem to know it. None of the other candidates, Republican or Democrat, who want to see themselves in the White House the next four years seem to know it….”
“This isn’t his usual speech,” Freddie said. “This isn’t The Speech.”
“… It used to be that what happened in New York and Washington was important in Paramaribo, in Durban, in Kampuchea. Nothing was more important. Well, things have changed. Now we know that what happens in Santiago, in Tehran, in Peking is terribly important in New York and Washington. Nothing is more important.”
Fletch said: “Wow.”
“… The Third World, as it’s called, is no longer something out there—separate from us, inconsequential to us. Whether we like it or not, the world is becoming more sensitive. The world is becoming covered with a network of fine nerves—an electronic nervous system not unlike that which integrates our own bodies. Our finger hurts, our toe
