Undertow

by Warren Adler

  Even their intelligence reports seemed somehow incomplete, full of holes. If they had their way, we’d wind up like automatons, programmed to surrender to the least common denominator. He wondered if they would, in the end, appreciate him. Would they know how he labored to save them from the bleeding hearts who wanted to take all the incentives out of America, to make it impossible for men like himself to rise to the top level. Over my dead body, he shouted inside his head. If only they had let him use his instincts completely. Only from up here, from this oval office, could one really understand the flawed system. They promoted impotence with all their checks and balances. How was he to act for them, to keep them free, to prevent their self-delusion? He’d shown them how tough he could be. Let those jackals yap at his toes. He’d ignore them. Someday they would come to believe him. History would vindicate his instincts.

  He’d molded together an unbeatable combination of real Americans. All that remained was to make them understand. James, that moral degenerate, had shown the country what he was made of. He knew what America needed. Moral leadership. Trim the fat off our minds. Get down to the nub. He had come from pioneer stock. We hadn’t built this country by shilly-shallying around.

  What could that son-of-a-bitch James do if he ever got to this desk? All that rabble that would crawl in beside him. The blacks. They could barely go to the bathroom by themselves. Labor. All they wanted was more fingers in the pie. Bleeding hearts. Pinkos.

  James and his ilk would destroy America, the real America. They are the real enemies, and they won over the media. But despite it, he would win, as he had always won. This James incident proved it. The moral degenerates would always lose. Someday they could thank him for saving America. James was a threat, a goddamned demagogue. Human garbage.

  He looked out of the window into the rose garden. The forsythias along the edges had just begun to bloom. Soon the rosebuds would pop, and each day they’d put a bouquet on his desk. He liked to smell the roses in his office; the faint perfume seemed to tranquilize the air.

  With all its constrictions, he liked being the president. He had climbed the highest mountain. Not bad for a poor kid from Binghamton, New York, whose father had run a grocery store. Everything seemed so simple then. Not bad. Hey, mom, I really slipped it to them.

  Now with James out of the way, he could admit to himself that he made some bad decisions. But only because he had to bend, to compromise. After his reelection, he would owe no man. He would be free to move ahead, to take a firmer grip. He’d rely on horse sense, the same horse sense that had brought him to the presidency in the first place. He’d use his will, his instincts.

  He’d make them pay.

  XXXV

  Mrs. James lived in a small California-style house with a fine view of the craggy rocks and white surf of the Pacific coastline. In the distance the sea was visible and sparkling. Davis quickly began a non-stop instruction to the director on how to proceed with the speech.

  “I want this to begin with a long shot of the house from the beach. Send the trailer down below and let them shoot a sea shot, near the rocks, then pan upwards until you hit the house, closing in on the picture window. I want you to capture all the anger of the sea and roughness of the landscape.”

  “Do you think the sea might be too reminiscent?” Barnstable asked.

  “Not if it’s what we’re trying to make the villain in the piece,” Davis said. His remarks needed no further explanation. The sea, nature, the mystic force.

  “I’d better hurry,” the director said. He went outside to instruct the people in the videotape trailer. The lighting crew continued to work while three of us—Davis, Barnstable, and myself—huddled around Don as the makeup woman skillfully applied the grease and powder to Don’s face in careful strokes. She stepped back occasionally to survey her work. Outside, the inevitable reporters had arrived to begin their never-ending vigil. A scruffy bunch, they had the same hang-dog look of reporters anywhere. What a forlorn looking lot. A crowd of the curious swelled the ranks outside. Four or five very makeshift placards could be seen. “We support our senator” was the dominant theme. We knew it was Brogan’s handiwork. He was in charge of our San Francisco office and had met us at the airport.

  “We’ve already put the speech on the crawl, Senator,” Davis said. “Watch your eye contact. It’s got to look like it’s spontaneous. Try not to squint. We’re going to do a run-through, maybe two. I’m worried about the sound. I want it as clean as possible.”

  Unflappable as ever, Davis outlined the schedule. Both Jack and I felt totally useless as we stood there listening to the smooth flow of Davis’s instructions. He had thought it out to the last detail.

  I looked about the room for Karen and Mrs. James. They sat side by side in a corner of the room, bewildered by the activity around them; both were silent. Mrs. James was a woman in her late seventies, well preserved, with a face that duplicated her son’s balanced bone structure, even in aging. She wore her white hair parted in the center, which accentuated the similarity of the two sides of her head, like segments of an unblemished oval. Even during our college days, Mrs. James had always been cool, distant, even with her son, as if they both shared some dark secret understanding that needed no articulation. She, like Karen, knew her political role, although to Mrs. James it seemed to flow as the natural course of events.

  She had always felt she married beneath her, and, as far as I knew, had barely spoken to Don’s wastrel father after their divorce. Don had described her many times as a bitch, and he never did quite become free of her tyranny. As for Karen, she hated Mrs. James with vigor. The two women hardly ever spoke, although they knew their public role as political props, a role which they were scheduled to perform today.

  Throughout the process of preparation, the makeup, lighting, testing, the technicians crawling over the little house with their meters and intercoms, Don was totally relaxed. He was uncommonly pliable as he went through the paces, just as a thoroughbred might coolly do his workout the day before the Derby.

  Schwartz and other contributors who had met with him sat at the kitchen table in another part of the house talking quietly. Don had greeted them all warmly on arrival. They savored their roles with relish. This was really inside for them. The press would describe them, perhaps, as close friends, although they did enjoy the political appellation, “fat cats.” There was lots of currency in that.

  When the makeup woman had finished, Don motioned to Davis and myself to follow him into his mother’s bedroom. He started to get undressed, then stopped abruptly and sat on the bed.

  “A number of new possibilities are running through my mind,” he began. “In the first place, I’ve begun to believe that we’ve become victims of a kind of defeatist philosophy. And maybe, just maybe, it’s come about because of my own feelings of guilt. After all, what the hell did I do wrong? I’ve done nothing illegal. Why should I just sit back and wait? We’re programmed and financed to make this fight for the nomination. What the hell can I lose? Besides, four years from now I could be dead. The opportunity is now. The time is now.” He got up and looked into the mirror. “I feel strong. I know I can do it.”

  Davis, who had listened without expression, followed Don’s movements with his ice-blue eyes.

  “A politician can only build from a base of reasonable credibility. Yours is presently shattered.”

  “I’ll make them believe me,” Don said.

  “In the long run I think you will,” Davis continued. “But right now, things are too raw. We’ll have to come up with a series of exercises that will establish your credibility again, bit by bit, like a finely orchestrated piece. You can’t will people to believe you.”

  “I just don’t believe it, Davis,” Don said. “Don’t you understand, I feel I can do it. That’s part of the game. You have to feel it. I know they’ll believe me. You know my speech style. I could have them raid the treasury if I roused them enough. And who can use television like me? Name one other person
in public life who can get on the boob tube and make them believe. Compare that to the president. He can’t make his own mother believe him.

  “What do you think, Lou?” Don asked.

  How was I in a position to judge? Yes, I’d seen him sway large groups of people. I’d seen them shouting from the rafters. I’d seen a statewide poll immediately after a statewide television performance. Don did, indeed, have that precious commodity, charisma.

  “You’ve got balls, Don.” That’s about as far as I had the guts to commit myself.

  “You’re goddamned right.”

  “I calculate the odds as presently against,” Davis said. For the first time I could see him angered, his eyes flashing, his lips pursed in a tight line. “Senator, don’t let self-delusion limit your grasp.”

  Don exploded.

  “Self-delusion! What the hell do you think I am? Some puppet to be programmed, like a wind-up doll. I’m human. I bleed. I feel. Don’t tell me about self-delusion.”

  “Senator, in my opinion, you are presently too vulnerable. Your credibility is suspect. Aside from the strong strain of strict morality in the American people, there are whole states dominated by Christian fundamentalism. There is also the fact that your case is built out of thin strands indeed. You philandered. You panicked. It took you eleven hours to act intelligently. This is the brutal truth.”

  I could see Don begin to seethe with anger. He fought for control, then banged his hand down hard on the dresser. When he spoke, he did not turn around.

  “Who the fuck are you to judge me?”

  Davis looked at me. He was suddenly anguished and a trifle helpless. He knew he had gone too far; the truth hanging out there like that had been overpowering.

  “This is not a judgment,” Davis said quietly. “This is the truth.”

  “The truth,” Don boomed, turning. “What do you know about the truth?”

  “Senator, all I can do is give you options. It’s your job to decide among them. I say you’d be hard pressed to win now. Aside from your own vulnerability, just think how your opponent can use this incident against you now.”

  “That fascist creep.”

  “Name calling won’t beat him.”

  Don looked at Davis.

  “You turd,” he said. “Why am I listening to you. It’s not your career. What the fuck difference does it make to you?”

  Davis ignored the question. We both knew it made one hell of a difference to him. This was his obsession, to be at the epicenter of power in his own way.

  “Why don’t you both get the hell out of here and let me think.”

  When we had closed the door behind us, I shook my head.

  “He’s frustrated. He’ll get over it.”

  “Megalomania,” Davis said.

  “Just frustrated.”

  “Megalomania,” Davis repeated. “It’s probably an absolute requirement of a successful politician.”

  “How do you think he’ll go?”

  “I think he’ll run.”

  “Will he lose?”

  “Badly.”

  “Will he be finished forever?”

  “Nothing in life is forever.” He turned and walked away toward the door.

  “Whom the gods destroy, they first make angry,” Davis said, before closing the door behind him.

  I went into the living room and looked about the little stage set that Davis had created, with its warm homeyness, the view of the rugged cliffs in the background, pictures of Don’s two sons. It was a set filled with the symbols one would expect to find in a loving home. Mrs. James sat stoically in her place with Karen, her eyes glazed and indifferent to everything around her.

  It was like a war; everyone was waiting around for the big offensive to start. In a corner of the room, I saw Jack Barnstable, tired, disheveled, slumped half-dozing in the chair.

  “He just blew up at Davis,” I said.

  “I’m too tired to think about that just now.”

  “I wish I could be.”

  Don came out of the bedroom. He was neatly groomed, a sprayed gloss on his salt and pepper hair, the beige makeup heavy on his face, giving him an air of unreality, like a body made up for display in a coffin.

  He sat down at his designated seat in the middle of the set, the lights went on, and the adjustments of the lighting began with the director’s voice booming over the speaker, dominating the room.

  Don, like the pro that he was, followed the directions to the letter, glancing occasionally at the black and white monitor near the crawl machine. He looked at his mother and Karen and smiled.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said.

  “When that camera light goes on, Mrs. James,” it was the director’s voice. “Don’t flash a smile. Just keep the slightest hint of a smile fixed on your face so that the camera will not appear to simply turn you on mechanically.”

  Both women nodded.

  “Now let’s do a run.”

  The crawl began. Don spoke quietly into the camera, reading the speech, looking solemn, appropriately stern, the maligned, put-upon man striking back with dignity. While he was reading the speech, Karen got up, found her pocketbook, and reaching into it, pulled out a pill vial. She popped two in her mouth and returned to her place. It had all happened so fast. But the movement had deflected my attention. Then it had dawned on me. Karen’s glazed look was more than that. She had deliberately drugged herself with God knows what. He stared at her. She was pathetic, lost in a subdued fog. I wondered if it would come over on the tube. The black and white monitor revealed little.

  Walking outside to the studio trailer, I went in. The director sat before a bank of small color screens, firing instructions. Davis stood behind him, watching, making suggestions.

  “Don’t start to move in until he says: ‘I believe I owe my constituents,’ ” Davis said. “Also, a little more side light. There’s a slight shadow on his nose.”

  The cameras were not on Karen. I would have to wait for the pan shot. When the camera finally moved, it caught Karen in a blank stare, drugged and out of it.

  “She’s taking some kind of pills,” I whispered to Davis.

  “I noticed that. I’ve cut down on the pan time.” Then he said louder, to the director, “See if you can get her to smile.” The director boomed his instructions. Karen smiled wanly. “It’s good enough.”

  “If it’s really bad, we can edit her out. We’ve got a few minutes time lag before the tapes have to go.”

  I decided to stay in the studio. The director gave the signal to get ready. Then he pressed the start button and the tapes began to roll.

  Don looked cool, refreshed, and handsome. Sincerity beamed out through the screen. Who was that man up there on the little screen? There he was, showing his greatest asset. He spoke quietly, sticking to the letter of the speech. He approached the end.

  “Any implication of immorality on the part of myself or Miss Jackson is utterly false. I have no doubt, though, that there will be those who imply otherwise, whose own sense of cynicism will raise doubts. Against all this innuendo and speculation there is only one defense—the truth. In the end there is only the truth.”

  The words were expressed with directness, with modesty and humility. It was a masterful performance. People had to believe. It had to be effective. Then Don paused, smiled, and looked directly into the camera.

  “He’s not on the crawl anymore,” Davis observed quietly.

  “Here it comes. Keep the camera static. I don’t know what he’s going to say.”

  The director barked out the instructions to his two cameramen. “And keep the cameras off the women. Come in tighter.”

  “There are those,” Don began. His look was calculated to show the audience that this was an obvious departure from the text. One could tell by the eye contact. Don was literally peering through the tube. “—who see my political career damaged beyond repair by the strange tragic events of last weekend. There are those who would write me off as a viable candidat
e for the presidency. By all standard political measures such judgments might be correct. But these are truly, as Thomas Paine once said, ‘the times that try men’s souls.’ For we stand at the abyss. Will humanity win over repression? Will our cities sink into final irreversible decay? Will our blundering and lack of vision lead us to the deep forest of nuclear annihilation? Will the vast majority of people in this country ever have a chance to have a say in creating the kind of world in which their children can grow and prosper? Will there ever be true freedom and justice in this great country of ours as our founding fathers envisioned it? Or shall we abdicate our God-given right to create a society that will root out repression and thwart those men who view power as an end in itself?

  “I say we cannot allow these men to destroy us, to allow our way of life to disintegrate, to allow the cynics and doomsayers to take control. We must not ever again allow our political system to be controlled by men whose compassion and sense of justice is suspect. That is why, whatever the consequences, whatever the weapons that will be used against me, I will not shirk from my responsibility, from the leadership role that my supporters expect of me. I believe in my destiny. I believe in my mission. I know that this will be an uphill battle. But I also know in my heart that the truth is on my side. I therefore offer my candidacy for president of the United States on the Democratic ticket. Many problems lie ahead. I am fully aware of them, but as a matter on conscience, of honor, I have determined to rise above the petty accusations of small minds and follow wherever the truth leads me. Thank you and good night.”