“It’s Hollice Waters,” he said, pulling away from her and heading for the front exit. She grabbed him by the arm.
“No. Let’s go out the side door. You don’t need this right now,” she urged.
“I gotta talk to him.”
“But he’s here because of you. That can’t be good.”
“You’re right. It’s not good.”
“So let’s go.”
“He had a video camera!”
Mitch blew through the church doors, finding Hollice on the steps and fumbling with the camera.
“Hollice!”
Instinctively Hollice brought the camera up to his eye, ready or not, only to have Mitch slap it to the concrete. The camera bounced and burst into pieces. Mitch followed it down the steps, crushing the ejected tape underfoot like a cockroach.
“Oh, that’s just swell. You gonna buy me a new one?”
“You oughta be ashamed!” spat Mitch. “Where’s the Goddamn story?”
“Candidate grieves over death-row killer,” defended Hollice.
“This hasn’t a thing to do with politics!”
“We’ll see about that.”
“And what’s in it for you? A little vacation. Charlie know he’s paying for this?”
“Haven’t turned in my expenses yet.”
“You know? You used to be a smart guy. You had a future.”
“So’d my old man.”
Mitch was aghast. “Is that what this is about? Because if it is, you’re about three thousand miles in the wrong direction.”
“The view from here’s just dandy.”
“You’re in the gutter, Hollice.”
“That’s the business, Mitch. You’re a public figure now. We own you.”
“And who owns you? McCann? I don’t see you chasing him down any dark alleys.”
“That’s because I don’t have to. But that’s next week’s story. Shakespeare McCann on the record. I’ll send you an advance copy.”
“He’s an evil guy,” warned Mitch, taking a step closer. “And he’s more dangerous than you think.”
“I’m shaking.”
“I’m gonna win this thing. And I’m gonna do it on what’s important,” said Mitch, cautioning Hollice in as emphatic a voice as he could muster without resorting to a shout. “And when I do, you might want me as something less than an enemy. Don’t make me shut you out.”
“It’s only politics, Mitch. Get used to it. You win? One day you’ll need me. It goes both ways.”
“Wallowing in the mud is not the best way of getting clean,” said Mitch, sounding a bit too lofty.
Hollice took a step forward, braving himself for the next shot. “If I wanted to throw mud, I’d have staked out that high-end piece of ass you got working media for you.”
Mitch burned. “You got something you can prove? Don’t be shy.”
“She’s a real hot potato. And from what I hear, you’re not her first candidate—” Hollice stalled. He would’ve gone further, but he stopped short when Connie appeared on the steps behind Mitch.
Organ music sounded from the church. The casket was on its way, and the mourning mob along with it. Hollice thought it wise to take his leave, turning from Mitch and hustling back toward his rental car with the busted camcorder.
Shoop’s five living brothers, plus one uncle, appeared at the top of the steps, the casket raised shoulder-high. Slowly they maneuvered down to the waiting hearse. Connie clutched Mitch’s hand and pulled him clear.
“Was it bad?” she whispered.
“I smashed the tape.”
“So that means it’s okay.”
He didn’t have an answer.
The picture that ran on the front page of Tuesday’s Mirror was in grainy black and white, lifted and enhanced from a low-lit piece of videotape. It depicted a somber Mitch Dutton and his wife observing the open casket of a confessed murderer. And though it wasn’t the main headline, the photo made it above the Daily Mirror’s Sunday crease with a caption that read:
As if to confirm his anti-death-penalty stance, candidate for Congress Mitch Button attends Saturday funeral of a death-row inmate.
The technophobic Hollice Waters had another tape. All his fumbling and bumbling with the Sony Handycam had accidentally paid off. The first tape turned out to be a boring travelogue of the intrepid reporter’s trip to New Orleans. By the time he’d slipped into the back of St. Ann’s, he’d filled ninety percent of the first tape with pictures of the French Quarter and some soft-core porn he’d bootlegged off the motel’s cable system. Hollice taped only ten minutes of the funeral service. When Mitch caught him outside on the steps, he had already pocketed tape number one and had just injected a fresh cassette.
Mitch had destroyed a blank tape.
For the candidate and his wife, the return trip from New Orleans was long and somber. Most of the drive, Connie played with the stereo, distracting herself and Mitch by surfing radio stations along the Gulf. They played “Name That Tune” games. But the bubble effect under which the trip was concocted had burst with the front-page fax Mitch had received Sunday morning from Fitz.
The weekend was over. The surprise was a sharp instrument named Hollice Waters.
Connie decided that news of the baby would have to wait. When she told him, it would have to be special, she thought. And not to save a botched vacation.
As the newspapers piled up that week, she purposefully kept away from TV news or talk radio, where it seemed every five minutes there was something negative about Mitch.
The baby couldn’t read, but it could hear.
Hollice’s story had set off an avalanche of unwelcome press on the death penalty issue. Like the cycles of the seasons, issues would flower and die based upon the ebbs and flows of the airwaves. For some reason, the media caught hold and seemed determined to rub the subject raw until there was no skin left on the Creole carcass of Shoop de Jarnot.
There were the initial news stories.
Candidate Attends Killer’s Funeral.
Those were followed by the hackneyed tabloid takes on the matter.
The Candidate and the Killer: What Price Friendship?
Then there were radio talk shows and angry callers, asking questions of the on-air ratings-mongers.
Who does this Button think he is? Is he Texan or is he the devil?
And if all that wasn’t enough for the baby’s ears, there was the paid advertising by the opposition camp. Shakespeare McCann flooded the airwaves with attack ads about Dutton and the Death Penalty, leaving no question in the minds of the electorate where the candidates stood on the issue. Shakespeare was for. Dutton was against.
Which candidate for Congress is a friend of murder? Why, Mitch Dutton is. It’s a fact that he thinks first-degree killers should live to see another day. And if they don’t, he’ll even cry at their funerals.
Shakespeare McCann believes in the death penalty the same way he believes in Texas. Vote McCann for Congress and put killers where they belong. Six feet under.
Part Three
ONE
“THAT’S IT,” said Rene, the video color bars on the monitor signaling the end of her presentation.
Mitch and Fitz had just endured the entire oeuvre of Shakespeare McCann’s paid TV advertising. They’d already seen all the commercials in one form or another, catching them here or there. They just hadn’t seen them in chronological order, beginning with spots introducing the public to Shakespeare the Candidate. Progressively, the ads had turned the spotlight away from McCann and onto Mitch Dutton, each one tossing another negative on the electoral fire.
“Roughly, we’re looking at twenty-five percent Shakespeare-on-the-issues, seventy-five percent trashing Mitch,” summed up Rene. “Now, compare that to our own reel, which, to date, runs eighty-five percent Mitch-on-theissues and only fifteen percent anti-McCann. So congratulations.” She poured on a healthy dose of sarcasm. “So far I’d call it a fairly well-scrubbed campaign.”
“We didn’t check behind his ears,” joked Fitz, scratching a swelling mosquito bite on his thick neck.
“Like my daddy always said,” joked Mitch, “if you can’t say something nice about a fellah…”
“Why do I think your daddy never said such any such thing?” Rene said.
Mitch sunk back into the big office chair and threw his feet up on the desk. It was a rare jeans and sneakers day. “Unfair. That’s privileged.”
“It’s not funny, Mitch. McCann’s got the momentum,” she shot back. “And these spots show why. He’s nailing you where it counts. On TV.”
“What about the liberal press? Weren’t they supposed to be on my side?” he offered with mock innocence, knowing well enough how the liberal media had treated him so far.
“I think the leftist media died with Clinton,” said Murray.
“It died of embarrassment,” continued Mitch. The joking only partially eased the anguish of losing his front-runner’s edge. He was determined to keep his wounded pride from leading to further bitterness. He was in the race until the end.
“Wanna hear some numbers?” asked Fitz, unsheathing the latest tracking polls.
“I’m starting to feel like a day without numbers is like an airplane ride without those little peanuts,” returned Mitch.
“Fun time’s over, Mitch. We have to move now if we’re going to turn the tide.”
“I’ll hear the numbers if you all remember one thing.” He met every gaze, making sure they were listening. “I wasn’t in this thing in the first place. I was the dark horse.”
“Grow up,” said Rene angrily. “You’re the Goddamn front-runner and it’s about time you start acting that way. And front-runners are supposed to win!”
He twisted to face her. The tone was unlike Rene. The silk in her voice had turned polyester. “What? You don’t think I wanna win this?”
“Sometimes I wonder,” she answered, her eyes falling back to her clipboard.
“Is that all?” he asked.
She took in a deep breath. “Sometimes I think your precious high ground was just a place you didn’t want to give up in exchange for the seat. That’s all.”
“That’s all?” he mocked. “For your information, I lost the high ground a while ago. Her name was Jenny O’Detts, remember?” Mitch spun sideways in his chair. “Now I’ll just settle for being able to look myself in the mirror.”
Fitz rolled on with the numbers. “Let’s go back to July. Just before the O’Detts fuck-up. We were twenty-five points out front with a negative of barely thirty-two. After the fuck-up, we were up twenty-four, but the negative was up into the forty-two, forty-three percent range.”
He gave a little look-see over his bifocals to make sure his candidate was listening. He flipped the page. “Okay. Twelve days back we were nineteen points. Not bad. Our negatives were holding under forty-five, with McCann’s negatives at just thirty. Still manageable. Nothing to get scared about” And as Fitz flipped to the very last page, he took off his glasses. He didn’t need to read these. They were tattooed to his heart.
“As of last night, after just four days of this deathpenalty assault, our negatives pushed past the fifty percent mark. And when that happens—”
“Your numbers go south,” finished Rene.
“It’s a nine-point ball game, Mitch. Overnight, McCann’s pulled ten points out of your rectum.”
“Ask me if I regret going to New Orleans.”
“Hell, no, I won’t! Regret’s something that happens on November third and you just lost by a single digit!”
“Fine. I’ll say it, then. It was my fault!” Mitch held his arms high. Guilty as sin.
“Fuckin’ A. So now we’re even in the fuck-up department!”
“Fitz!” warned Rene. But Mitch cut her off.
“It was just like in the alley,” banged the candidate, standing up and pacing. “Why can’t I hear the footsteps? It’s like he’s been right next to me the whole time. Waiting for me to turn my back for just one second.”
“So hit him back!” said Murray, about three months too late with the remark. Fitz shot him a look that said, Shut the hell up.
“I hit back, he just hits harder,” answered Mitch with shrugged shoulders.
Rene crossed the room and boldly cut into his line of sight. “It’s not all bad news. McCann’s negatives are up ever since we started slapping him with the ‘Who’s Shakespeare?’ ads.”
“He’s over forty percent. If we could push it higher, that would kill his momentum and put us dead even,” challenged Fitz.
“I thought I was nine points ahead with likely voters.”
“We got ten points worth of undecided. That’s what makes it a horse race.”
“So we hit again with negatives,” said Mitch. “But what negatives? He’s got no record. All he does is preach to the choir.”
“We keep hitting with the ‘Who’s Shakespeare?’ stuff. Think of it as feeding a slot machine. Bound to pay off sometime,” said Fitz.
Rene slipped back into her sweetest Mississippi tongue. “Then we go to your strong suit. The issues.”
“That’s what we’ve been doing. And we’re losing, right?”
“Not yet,” said Fitz. “Everything from this point on is about timing.”
“We make your strong suit his negative,” Rene said smiling, “with a series of debates.”
“And if he refuses?” Mitch jumped ahead of them. “If he refuses—this is Texas. He’ll look like a loser. Afraid to fight.”
“And that’s what we’ll put on TV,” said Fitz, relishing the prospect.
“So he can’t refuse the challenge,” mused Mitch. He was liking the idea. “I get him in the ring and take him apart piece by little piece.”
“The first one we sell as just a debate. The second one as the rematch,” said Rene. “By the time we get to number three, won’t be a local station that won’t wanna carry us. Prime time.”
Who’s Shakespeare McCann?
That was the fish Hollice wanted to land. The question was hanging on the lips of locals. Even those who liked McCann’s politics were starting to wonder.
The timing was excellent. When the funeral story hit the newspaper, Hollice wanted to call in his chit. After three days of unreturned calls, the reporter’s patience wore so thin that he dialed up a call-in show on Cathedral’s TALK 101 where the candidate was guesting. The call screener put the reporter on hold and keystroked his name into the computer.
In the studio, local drive-time talk meister Barry Jarret acknowledged the engineer with a nod when Hollice’s name showed up on the monitor. But Hollice would have to wait in line. McCann fans were lit up on all lines.
Answering a caller’s question about the ever-dominating influence of foreign cars on the local highways, Shakespeare answered with one of his pat isolationist homilies. “You know? I don’t get it. When I was just a little boy, I’d get something made in America in my Christmas stocking. That’s one way I knew my momma loved me. But if I got something made in Korea, I wasn’t so sure. Whaddayou think?”
While Hollice waited his turn in line, they piped the radio show in through his telephone handset. The next caller called himself true, blue, and Texan. A Democrat on the proverbial fence when it came to who he was going to vote for. “Dutton says some good things. He talks like a winner. And isn’t that what we need in Washington? A winner?”
“He’s still ahead in the polls, yessir,” said Shakespeare. “But after this last week, you gotta know that the light he’s been seein’ at the end of the tunnel is an oncomin’ train called Shakespeare McCann.”
The caller on line nine was a Hurricane Hammond supporter from way back who couldn’t imagine voting for anybody else. Shakespeare asked him, “You a football fan?”
“I am,” said the caller.
“Cowboys or Oilers?”
“I like ‘em both.”
“No harm in that. So do I. But listen to what I’m sayin’,” said the candid
ate. “We understand sports in this country, but we don’t understand politics. Now, when we got a losin’ football team, we fire the coach, get a new offense, a new quarterback. Follow me?”
“So far.”
“Clean it up. Fix the machine. That’s what we gotta do in politics. The problem with government today is that it scratches where there’s no itch. I aim to change that. This country should be about tomorrow. And we can do it if you send your honorable vote my way.”
Hollice listened, impressed to hear a different mixture in the usual McCann brew. The homespun wisdom was still the ever-present factor in Shakespeare’s politics, but there were some new riffs he’d clearly copped from his opponent, Mitch Dutton. The bold look to the future. The concept of change. The words spun from McCann’s mouth as if they were his own.
“Shakespeare McCann?” launched the reporter when his turn came. Forty minutes, he’d waited. He wasn’t going to waste his breath. “This is Hollice Waters of the Cathedral Daily Mirror. Remember me?”
“Remember you?” laughed Shakespeare. “You’re the reason I’m in this horse race. Folks? For my money, this is the only decent political reporter in the entire state. Lemme tell y’all somethin’ about this guy. Can I, Hollice? You mind if I toot your horn for a piece?”
In front of tens of thousands of potential listeners, what could Hollice do but agree? “Sure. Be my guest.”
“Just days before the news from New Orleans, my campaign office was hipped to my opponent’s plans. As y’all know by now, Mitch Dutton cried over the grave of a first-degree killer, who, I might add, he was trying to get released from a Texas prison,” fudged Shakespeare over the air. Then he outright lied.
“Now, because of how Shakespeare McCann feels about this death penalty issue, I must’ve informed just about every reporter worth a plug nickel of what was gonna happen down in New Orleans. Yet Hollice Waters of the Daily Mirror was the only writer who thought enough of the public’s right to know to pull up stakes and get on down to Louisiana and bring back the story. May I say publicly, Mr. Waters, Shakespeare McCann thanks you. My trusted campaign staff thanks you. And I especially think the voters thank you.”
Dark Horse Page 28