Grass Roots

by Stuart Woods

  “Okay,” Will laughed, “so I underestimated you right off.”

  “It’s an easy mistake to make.” Black smiled. “In fact, it’s one of my chief weapons. I get quite a lot done by managing not to look like an important person. Who’s coming to this meeting today?”

  “Jack Buchanan, who was chief legislative aide in Carr’s office, and Kitty Conroy, who was deputy press secretary.”

  “I know about them both,” Black said. “Anybody else?”

  “My mother and father, and my Aunt Eloise. They’ve all had a lot of experience in political campaigns, and they want to help.”

  “Good,” Black said. “It’s good to have a lot of family around, especially since you aren’t married. You got a fiancée, maybe, or even just a girl?”

  Will hesitated for a moment. “No, neither,” he said. “Nobody special. My job has taken up most of my time.”

  “Uh-huh,” Black said noncommittally. “How come you buy all your clothes in London?”

  “My mother’s Irish, she and my father met during World War Two, and we still have her father’s house over there, so I’ve spent a lot of time on that side of the water. I’ve been going to my father’s tailor and shirtmaker since I was in law school.”

  “Uh-huh,” Black responded. “Well, your old man has great taste in tailors, but that stuff won’t do for this campaign.”

  “Why not?”

  “Too slick. You’re back in Georgia now, not in Washington. Side vents and bold shirts aren’t going to work. There’s a guy named Ham Stockton in Atlanta who has a men’s store.”

  “I know Ham.”

  “It’s just right. Not as square as Brooks Brothers, but nice, quiet stuff. I want you to go up there and get two each of suits in navy blue, dark blue pinstripes, and gray pinstripes, and two navy blazers, plain buttons. Get yourself a couple dozen white button-down shirts, no short sleeves. In hot weather, I like rolled-up sleeves. Get some regimental-stripe ties, lots of red. No bow ties—we’ll leave that to Paul Simon. Get yourself a couple pair Weejuns—penny loafers—and two pairs of black wingtips.”

  “Wingtips?”

  “I’m not kidding. They’re coming back, anyway. You’re going to be spending a lot of time on your feet, and you need heavy shoes with thick soles. I don’t want you crippled in the middle of the campaign. Get a tan, single-breasted raincoat with a zip-out lining. It’s the only overcoat you’ll need, and it’ll keep you from looking like a banker. The Rolex watch you’re wearing is fine. A Swiss watch is all-American. You wear glasses?”

  “No.”

  “You object to wearing them for appearance’s sake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. But if you find yourself going blind, check with me, and I’ll pick the frames. Very important. You need a haircut. Is your barber here or in Washington?”

  “In Washington.”

  “Call a guy in Atlanta named Ray Brewer, make an appointment, tell him I sent you. He’ll know what I want. After that, get it cut every ten days, without fail. You’re going to be on television a lot. If you can’t get to Atlanta, tell your people to get Ray to you.”

  “Listen, do I really look so wrong the way I am?”

  “Yes. Trust me, I’m giving you good advice, and you’re paying a lot for it.”

  Will sighed. “All right. How much are you going to be around during the campaign?”

  “A lot, but not all the time. I’m running a guy named Heald in New York for Congress and another guy in North Carolina.”

  “I see.”

  “I hope so. If you had me down here full time, it would cost you three times as much as you’re paying. What I’ll do is I’ll look over your operation from the media point of view, and I’ll make suggestions. I expect my suggestions to be taken seriously. You’re not likely to have anybody on this campaign who’s as smart as I am when it comes to running a campaign, and I say that advisedly.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Will said, and meant it.

  “Is that your Wagoneer outside?”

  “Yes.”

  “Get rid of it. Get a Ford or a Chevy. They’ve both got assembly plants in Atlanta. American Motors, who makes the Wagoneer, is in God-knows-where. The guys who build them don’t vote in Georgia. You don’t want any of your people driving foreign cars, especially expensive ones, but not even Hondas or Toyotas.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.”

  “You sure you’re not about to get married?”

  “No hope, I’m afraid.”

  “Maybe we can rent you somebody,” Black dead-panned. “A nice blonde who looks like Tipper Gore and works weekends with the homeless.”

  Will laughed.

  “You got a dog?”

  “Yeah, a golden Labrador retriever.”

  “That’ll have to do, I guess.” He got up from his chair. “Come on, let’s get some shots of you out by the lake. We’d better take some with the dog, too.”

  19

  After introductions, they all gathered around the dining room table in the main house, Bill and Patricia at each end of the table, Will in the middle, and the others scattered about. It was too small and intimate a group for opening remarks, so Will got right down to it.

  “What I want to do today is to get everybody assigned to particular areas, and then get everybody’s ideas on everything. Aunt Eloise, how’s your shorthand?”

  “Still pretty good, I guess,” his elderly aunt replied.

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d take notes about what we decide and type it up later.”

  “Glad to.”

  “I’m going to act as my own campaign manager, at least for the time being. We’re going to be shorthanded, at first, anyway, and I don’t want to saddle anybody with overall management.” He turned to Jack Buchanan. “Jack, the first thing I want you to do is to find us some space in Atlanta for a campaign headquarters.”

  Billy Lee raised a hand. “I can probably help with that. I’ll make a few calls.”

  “Good,” Will said. “Kitty, you’re in charge of press relations, of course, and I want you to handle the scheduling of my appearances. There’ll no doubt be a lot of other stuff for you to work on, too. I don’t want anybody to get too attached to a title, just yet.” He turned to Billy. “Dad has agreed to take on fundraising, for the moment. There’s nothing more important than that right now.”

  The meeting droned on through the morning, through a light lunch, and on into the afternoon. The sun was low in the sky when Will took a deep breath and said, “That’s it, unless anybody has anything to add.”

  Patricia stood up. “I’ve rooms prepared for Jack, Kitty, and Tom. Why don’t you all go and have a nap and freshen up, and we’ll meet at seven for drinks and dinner.”

  As they stood and stretched, Henry came into the room to announce a telephone call for Will. He took it in the hall.

  “Will? This is Rob Cutts at the Atlanta Constitution. We’ve just learned that Governor Dean is announcing for Senator Carr’s seat. We’re running the story front page tomorrow. Do you have any comment?”

  “Hang on a minute, Rob,” Will said. He caught Tom Black’s eye and waved him into the hall. “Mack Dean is announcing tomorrow. The Constitution wants a comment.”

  Black shook his head. “Nothing now. Just say you’re not surprised.”

  “I’m not surprised to hear it, but I don’t have any comment at this time,” Will said into the phone.

  “Okay. Miss Emma Carr has given the Governor her blessing. Anything to say about that?”

  Will winced. He didn’t defer to Black this time. “Only that nothing Miss Emmy says is a reflection of the Senator’s views. Can we go off the record here, Rob?”

  “All right, we’re off.”

  “If you’re recording our conversation, please switch it off.”

  “Okay, the recorder’s off.”

  “You met Miss Emmy at the hospital, didn’t you?”

  “I saw her going in and out of the Senato
r’s room and ordering people around.”

  “Well, then, you’ll understand when I tell you that Miss Emmy is not herself. She’s under the constant care of a nurse; her affairs and those of the Senator have been placed in my hands by the court. She’s not responsible for anything she might say.”

  “I understand, Will,” Cutts said. “Anything else to say?”

  “Not at this time.”

  “Are you considering running yourself?”

  “I’ve nothing to say at this time about that.”

  The reporter thanked him and hung up.

  “Don’t worry about Dean,” Black said. “He’s gonna do what he’s gonna do, right now, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Let him blow his hot air for the time being.”

  “I don’t mind Mack spouting off, but Senator Carr’s sister is going to drive me nuts.”

  “The famous Miss Emmy? You did a good job of undercutting her just now. Keep it up, but don’t attack her. By the way, when were you thinking of announcing?”

  “Early next week, I thought.”

  Black shook his head. “Too soon. Let’s wait until we’ve got the act together a little bit. Let’s have some announcements to make about fundraising and an Atlanta office and some staff appointments. Let’s look ready when we announce.”

  “Okay,” Will said. “I guess it can’t hurt.”

  Black took his arm. “Come on, I’ll walk you down to the cottage.” The two men left the house and strolled toward the lake.

  “Your dad,” Black said, “how do you think he’ll do on this fundraising thing?”

  “He’s still got a lot of friends from the old days. A lot of them have a lot of money.”

  Black nodded. “That’s good, but remember, none of them can give more than a thousand bucks each for themselves, their wives, and children.”

  “I know.”

  “It won’t take long for your dad to run through his list. After that, we’re going to have to go about it in a more systematic way. I want you to start by making a list of everybody you know who thinks well of you, and I mean everybody. Go right back to your college days. As soon as you announce, I want you to get on the phone and call every one of them; ask for money; ask for contributions in kind; ask them to volunteer and to lend their children to volunteer. Get them to hold fundraisers and invite their friends. You went to the University of Georgia; that means you went to school with somebody from just about every town in this state. We’re going to want a local chairman in every county, and it would be good if those people came from your list of friends.”

  “I’m not sure how many of the people I know I would feel comfortable about asking for money,” Will said, shaking his head.

  “Listen,” Black said, “we’re not talking personal loans here. You’re not asking them to bail you out on a drunk-driving charge. It’s their civic duty to support political candidates, and you’ve got to very quickly acquire enough chutzpah to ask them. All they can say is no. Believe me, a lot of them will be flattered to be asked. Tell them you need a thousand bucks from each of them. If they don’t have that, ask for eight hundred, five hundred, a hundred. Don’t turn up your nose at ten bucks. Keep a list, and later, you’ll go back and ask them for more, for their wives and children and parents and friends to give. The enthusiastic ones, appoint them as official fundraisers on the spot, and mail them a copy of the rules.”

  “Okay,” Will sighed.

  “Another thing: I didn’t want to break in too much during the meeting, but when you get space for your Atlanta headquarters set up, get Buchanan to get a whole bunch of telephones. We’re going to need a hundred lines before we’re done. If the space is expensive, we can put the phones somewhere cheaper, in a warehouse or something. Atlanta has the largest toll-free dialing area in the United States, and you want to take advantage of that. A volunteer talking on the telephone is the cheapest campaign tool you’ve got.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Another thing. On the day you announce, you need to appoint a couple of well-known blacks to your staff. You got any contacts in the Atlanta black community?”

  “Yes, I’ve done a lot of favors there since I’ve been in the Senator’s office. I know half a dozen ministers and a couple of city councilmen. I was thinking of approaching Marty Banks.”

  “The Billy Dee Williams of Atlanta politics? Good. He’ll charm the socks off the ladies.

  “Oh, by the way, did you hear the Constitution has a new editor for their Sunday magazine, a lady from the Washington Post named Ann Heath?”

  “Yeah, I read something about it in the paper. She’s doing over the magazine, isn’t she?”

  “Right. Her first redesigned issue will be out in about a month. You’re going to be on the cover.”

  Will’s eyebrows went up. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, she’ll be down here tomorrow with a photographer. I told her you’d give her lunch.”

  “You’re not wasting any time, are you?”

  “Nope. Let’s go talk about what you’re going to say to her. And what you’re going to wear. You got a beer at the cottage?”

  20

  Chuck Pittman reflected that, since he had been a policeman, most of his cases had been roughly divided into two categories: fairly easy and almost impossible. If you did your work properly, if you followed police methodology, most of them were fairly easy. It was the almost impossible ones that intrigued him, though, the ones that took some imagination and, often, some luck. His luck in the Dirty Bookstore Case, as he thought of it, was the survival of Manny Pearl.

  That was it, though; there hadn’t been any other luck, and, so far, his imagination had failed him. He was reduced to relying on the imagination of the victim. Often, when he was stuck on a case, he would devote his time to another, and while he worked on that, an idea, an inspiration would come to him about the first case. This time, however, he and Keane had been pulled off everything else to work on the Dirty Bookstore Case.

  He sat on the sun porch and watched the rain beat against the glass. He had been divorced two years before, and his wife had remarried almost immediately. Another cop. It wasn’t his weekend with his two little girls, and he was lonely. Next weekend, he’d take them out to Stone Mountain, if the weather was good. He thought he might go out for a drink, a singles bar he knew, but it was too early; it wasn’t even dark yet.

  He went into the living room and switched on the six-o’clock news. Central America, he was tired of that. There was a bill in the Georgia legislature to prevent alcoholic beverages from being sold in clubs that featured nude dancing. He laughed. Manny Pearl would love that! Now Pittman began paying attention. Three people had been murdered at a pornographic movie house in Charlotte, North Carolina. He picked up the phone and dialed his boss’s home number.

  “Captain, this is Pittman. There’s been some killings in Charlotte, sounds like our Dirty Bookstore Case. I’d like to go up there.”

  “Come on, Chuck, you’re just bored. What are you going to do, go up there and solve it for them? You haven’t gotten anywhere on your own case yet. Besides, I haven’t got the budget for junkets. Use the telephone, for Christ’s sake. They’ll give you what they’ve got.” He hung up.

  Pittman started calling. Ten minutes later, he had the right unit in the Charlotte Police Department. The detective in charge of the case had gone home. Pittman asked that he be contacted and asked to call him in Atlanta.

  Nearly an hour passed before the call came in. The Charlotte detective’s name was Miller.

  “I just saw your case on TV,” Pittman said. “It sounds like one I’ve got here. Can you give me some details?”

  “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” Miller said.

  “Okay. Four men in camouflage fatigues hit a dirty bookstore, executed the manager and two employees, shot the owner twice in the head, but he lived. They were carrying three Mac Tens and a Beretta nine-millimeter automatic. We got some tire tracks—Goodyears that are used on
GM and Chrysler vans and pickups. The store owner has described the leader as forty-five to fifty, six feet or better, thin, big ears, big nose. He couldn’t give us much on the others, just that they were young. Now, let’s see yours.”

  “I got some nine-millimeter slugs and a lot of double-aught buckshot. That’s it. No descriptions, no nothing. No robbery, either. It was an execution.”

  “Any notes? We had something about death to queers.”

  “No.”

  “I’d appreciate it if you’d fax me the ballistics reports on the nine-millimeter metal. I’d like to compare.”

  “Sure. You got anything you can give me?”

  “I’m working on a make of the leader by the bookstore owner. We’re waiting for pictures from the army. When I get something, I’ll send it to you.” Pittman thanked the man and hung up. He had hoped for more, some little thing that would help.

  It was dark now. Pittman got into a coat and looked for his car keys. He’d get a bite to eat; then he’d have a few drinks. Tonight, he wanted to talk with somebody about something besides murder.

  21

  Ann Heath, the new editor of the Atlanta Constitution’s Sunday magazine, turned out to be quite pretty. She was in her mid-thirties, tall, fashionably dressed, and wore her dark hair long and loose around her shoulders. She made Will immediately nervous, because he was attracted to her. “She can be charmed,” Tom Black had said of her, by way of advice. She could be more than charmed, Will thought, and in a different time and place, he might have wanted it. All he knew about her was that on the Washington Post she had covered fashion and had written features. She had not been a political reporter.

  Will greeted her and her male photographer on the front porch of the cottage and asked them into the kitchen, where he was preparing lunch. The weather had turned chilly after the rain the night before, and he had built a fire in the stone fireplace in the living room. He settled her on a stool at the little bar that closed off the kitchen from the living room and asked her if they’d like some refreshment.

  “I’d love a glass of wine,” she said.

  Will had not expected booze to be a part of the interview, but he dug a bottle of California Chardonnay out of the fridge. “How about you?” he asked the photographer.