I go home.
I leave a message on Jeremy Taylor’s answering machine. I leave a message on Cindy’s answering machine. Grateful for the first time that these devices exist—they spare me from having to converse—I turn off my phone, pour myself some iced tea, and try to think exclusively in clichés. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. You have to break some eggs to make an omelette. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Water under the bridge. The expression that sticks, though, is one I coin myself: a lie a day keeps Clive Sanford away.
15
Cindy agrees to see me first thing in the morning; my request is unsurprising enough for her not even to bother to ask about the subject. We are in her office at Bobby’s campaign headquarters. She is answering the phone, vetting press releases, checking the day’s schedule, listening to the Today show’s version of the news from a small portable television, and with one eye watching her son and daughter eat their breakfast. The effect of watching this blur of activity is like watching a Cubist painting come to life.
“Drink your orange juice,” she says to Ken, who has left some bluish-looking cereal floating in a pool of milk at the bottom of his bowl. Jennifer drinks her juice without coaching, eyeing me coolly over the rim of the glass.
A neighbor arrives to drive Jennifer to school and Ken to day care. Cindy presses a Big Bird lunch box in his hand—her daughter has already brushed the toast crumbs from the front of her dress and has her Lion King lunch bag ready to go—and then hugs and kisses them both before they leave. They boil out the door, and though the television plays on and the phone still rings, there is the momentary illusion of quiet. Cindy rolls her eyes, sighs, offers me a doughnut, a granola bar, coffee, some cereal. I shake my head. She turns down the TV, unplugs the phone, tells the two young men and two young women in the outer office she needs ten minutes, and then shuts the door. The sudden silence and stillness seem by contrast almost preternatural.
“Okay,” she says, sitting behind her desk. “Fire away. You said this was something serious.”
“It is.”
“I’m listening.”
I have had some time to think through what I am going to say, and am not going to say, so I simply launch into it. “I’m going to ask you a huge favor, and an unusual one. Ready?”
“After that intro? Probably not.”
“I’ve just learned that the Wheatley campaign has some audiotapes of some very personal, very private material. Of concern to Bobby. And it’s my belief they are going to try to get one or more of these tapes through to him sometime in the next ten days.”
She shakes her head, disgusted but unsurprised. “What’s on the tapes?”
I take a long breath before I reply. “This is the hard part. You’ll have to forgive me for this, Cindy, but I can’t say. All I can tell you is that it is personal. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the campaign. But if Bobby hears one of these tapes, it could upset him enough to put his ability to debate well in jeopardy.”
“You’re kidding. Bobby? It must be awfully strong stuff. How’d you find out about this?”
“Poking around into the campaign leaks.”
“What about going to the police?”
“I expect we will eventually, but that won’t solve the problem now.”
“Does anyone else know about it?”
“Just you and I. And Laura. She’s going to try and help on this, too.”
She pushes some hair behind her ears. “As if we don’t already have our hands full.”
“I know.”
She angles her head and smiles complicitly. “Can you tell me a teeny bit more? I hate mysteries.”
“I’d like to, but I can’t. Trust me on this, though. It doesn’t touch on the campaign in even the most indirect way. The only way it could possibly affect the campaign would be for the candidate to hear the tapes.”
Her eyes widen. “Does it involve Annie? Jimmy?”
I shake my head. “Cindy, I cannot talk about or hint about or indicate anything about the contents of these tapes. Period. Do you want to help on this…?” I am about to say “or not” when I swallow my words and let the question hang.
Catching my tone, she looks at me sharply and nods. Her voice changes register. “Of course. But I have some obligations to Bobby, professional obligations. What you’re talking about here is not in my job description.”
“But you do want to help?”
“Yes. If I can.”
“Good,” I say. “The mail goes through you, right?” Though I think of her as press secretary, she is in fact communications director, which means she deals with more than just the media.
“Most of it.”
I tell her I would like her to arrange for all of it to go through her, especially packages, and most especially overnight, registered, express, hand-delivered, or special messenger packages. Laura will look for anything sent home.
She grows hesitant. “Isn’t there some other way? I don’t like going behind Bobby’s back.”
“I wouldn’t involve you in this if there were some other way. I wish I didn’t have to. Believe me, if I could do this on my own, I would.”
She puts her hands on her desk, looks down at them for a moment, and shakes her head. “I don’t like it.”
“You won’t do it?” She looks at me, torn. “Look,” I say. “This is to help Bobby win this election. That is part of your job description, is it not?” She nods, once, almost imperceptibly. “I’m asking you to do this. And let me assure you one more time, this is purely personal and it has nothing whatever to do with the campaign. You can tell Bobby we did this, or I will tell him in your presence if you want, the day after the election.”
She stares down at her hands again, takes a deep breath, and looks at me. “Okay,” she says. “But I still don’t like it. And I want you to know we’re going to have that conversation after the election.”
“Fine. Then we will.” I don’t have long to savor my relief. I have to explain the hard part. “When he’s shaking hands in the crowd, someone may press a tape on him. If it happens, you’ve got to get the tape, tell him you’ll take care of it.” She nods. “He may get a phone call,” I continue, “supposedly from someone he knows. You have to verify it’s actually from that person before letting Bobby answer the phone.”
“Why?”
“If it’s a setup, when Bobby gets on, they can just start playing the tape.”
She holds up her hands, showing her palms. “Oh, man. I don’t know about this, Ben. I mean practically. I don’t go to every stop with him. I’m not always there when he gets phone calls.”
I explain that either Laura or I will be there when she isn’t.
“Laura’s going to be spending more time with us?”
“As much as necessary.” I ask for Cindy’s and Bobby’s schedule up until the debate so we can work out coverage.
Cindy paws through a stack of papers on her desk, can’t find the schedule, and opens her middle drawer. “So. What about going to the bathroom?”
“You’re joking, but I’m not. His going is no problem. You go when he’s not near a phone.”
“It’s that bad?”
“Yes,” I say. “I believe it is. So does Laura. Look. What’s your impression about how Bobby’s handling all the pressure?”
“Pretty well, considering.” I look at her silently. “All right, he’s getting stressed out. Who wouldn’t?”
“And how do you think he’d do with something unforeseen and unpleasant?”
“I get the picture,” she says.
“So we’ll have to try to do the best we can. Better than the best we can.”
“All right,” she says, retrieving the campaign schedule from her desk drawer. “Can I have anyone else help?”
I shake my head. “Not Scott Bayer, not Bobby’s assistan
t. Just you and me and Laura.”
“Let’s do it, then,” she says, her lips pressed together in a tight line.
“Cindy, I really appreciate this. Personally, I mean. I know this isn’t easy.” She nods tightly.
We go over the schedule for the next eleven days. According to the printouts, Bobby has full commitments only for the next few days, and then increasing amounts of time are planned to be devoted to rest, briefings, and rehearsals prior to the final debate. It turns out that many of his evening appearances call for Laura to be there in any case. And though it has called for her in the past and she has not always gone, this scheduling will at least make explaining her continuing presence easier.
Cindy and I write down some notes and rough out a schedule for each of us. If we can get through the next few days unscathed, I have the sense that, whatever else happens, protecting candidate Parrish may yet be possible. I hope.
Laura and I have lunch together at a restaurant near the hospital to work out the details. Since we will no longer see each other privately, we decide there is no reason for us not to see each other in public.
I give her a photocopy of the times she needs to be with Bobby over the next eleven days. Since most of them are in the evening, she expects to have little trouble getting away.
“Karen called me at home last night,” she says in a low voice. “I had to tell her we were expecting an important call and I’d call her back—I didn’t want what she had to say about Hank Spencer to be heard by anyone else. Had to go to our neighbor’s house to borrow the phone.”
“What did Karen say?”
“She said he admitted it all. He claimed he just passed a couple of things along to Wheatley during a private luncheon—just trying to make conversation—but he insists he meant no harm by it. He never dreamt Wheatley would use it in the campaign.”
“Oh, man.”
“Karen asked him what he thought when he saw Wheatley did use it. He said he thought it was Jeremy Taylor who broke the story about Bobby’s seeing the psychiatrist.”
“She set him straight?”
“Yes. On that and on the other story.” She avoids saying the word drugs. “She also asked him why he n-never told her about knowing Wheatley. Particularly given that he knew she and I were such close friends.”
“I imagine he had some trouble with that one.”
“He said he was afraid Karen would think less of him. It just seemed safer not to mention it.”
“Sounds pretty lame.”
“That’s what Karen said. And then she told him whatever his reasons, through him she had violated a friendship as well as doctor-patient confidentiality, that she couldn’t trust him anymore, that he had to leave. He said he didn’t know I was her patient, and that what he passed along was not about me but was about Bobby, but still he could see now how wrong he was. He apologized, begged for forgiveness, p-promised it would never happen again. Karen made him leave anyway. In one day, not so much as a toothbrush left behind.”
Though I know Karen only slightly, I feel bad for her. I had my own contribution to make to her pain. I sandbagged her lover. “But what did Spencer say about the capital police association endorsement?”
“He had an answer for that one, too. He had to meet with Wheatley to sign papers closing the sale, and he offered it up as more harmless gossip. In his briefcase, he even had a copy of the contract with yesterday’s date and Wheatley’s signature. He said Wheatley just about went through the roof when he told him about the police thing. He couldn’t get to a phone fast enough.”
“You suppose there’s a chance he’s telling the truth?”
“Karen thinks there is. Who knows? The damage to them is done either way.” Laura gazes out the restaurant window. “It reminds me of something my aunt used to say. ‘Innocence can be just as dangerous as malice.’”
We’ve got a swirling of these things at the moment, each so close to the other I cannot separate them. The old slogan from our college days, “The personal is political,” comes back to me again. Wheatley’s campaign has turned it around: the political is personal.
I look at my watch. “I’ve got to be in Oshiola at one forty-five.”
“Bobby’s still doing the five-mile fun run?”
“Yes. He can show pride in his hometown, remind people of his ties to the family farm, and demonstrate youthful vigor all at the same time. And Cindy’s got to go to her daughter’s afternoon dance recital.”
We walk back to the hospital parking lot.
At my car, she puts her hand over mine, stands on her toes, and kisses me on the cheek. “You’re a good friend,” she says. This makes my face flush, and it reminds me of a story I have read or a movie I have seen. But I cannot remember what story or what movie, nor can I remember for the life of me what happens to all the people in the end.
✳
With surprising ease, we get Bobby through the next three days. As far as Cindy, Laura, and I can tell, there is not even an attempt to get a tape through. Bobby, preoccupied with all the demands of campaigning, doesn’t notice he is being monitored. He is so preoccupied, he doesn’t even ask why I’m spending so much time with the campaign. The crowds are good and responsive, the weather is pleasant. Bobby gets no chance to relax, however. Wheatley is turning the heat up on all fronts.
Twice, just out of earshot of reporters, I see Bobby fly into a red-faced rage at a low-level campaign worker over some small screwup. The episodes are nasty, profane, and short.
At the national level, Wheatley’s party has decided to make taking this seat one of their highest priorities. Since the retiring incumbent is a member of Bobby’s party, a turnover will have big implications for the balance of power in the Senate. Money is suddenly infused into Wheatley’s campaign in huge quantities, giving him the immediate ability to raise the thermal threshold to withering levels. There is a wave of glossy new negative television ads, and they are being run in blocks, saturating all three networks at the same hour, most often before and after local and national news broadcasts; they are framed by the occasional positive ad run in prime time. His campaign bus disappears and, taking a leaf out of LBJ’s Texas-campaign book, he travels everywhere by helicopter. Wheatley hats, signs, and We’re For Richard buttons begin to be plentiful, evidence of an abundance of cash, as well as an attempt to give the image of running an old-fashioned, homespun, low-tech, 1950s-style campaign, all while using state-of-the-art polling techniques and the slickest Madison Avenue production values. Famous political figures from his party begin to make personal appearances in the state on his behalf, arriving at enormous telegenic balloon-filled airport rallies to praise Wheatley as a statesman and a shaper of national renewal and a wonderful representative of our great state. Many of them, in a particularly sharp twist of the knife, also attack Bobby by name for running an unscrupulous, dirty, negative campaign.
This, of course, is all politics as usual. Other activities Wheatley promotes are less customary.
The whispering campaign to the press corps covering Bobby continues. He’s waiting until after the election to start the chemotherapy for his recurrence of thyroid cancer; he snorted cocaine at several parties just before the primary; Cindy and he have called a temporary halt to their affair; he says he won’t accept political action groups’ money, but secretly he has, and he’s using the money to pay for a new psychiatrist he’s secretly seeing, and so on. The newest one is that Laura performed abortions for extra money during her internship and residency. As no doubt intended, some of these rumors reach Bobby. Everyone expects him to be outraged and disgusted. Instead, he gets a group of journalists together at a campaign stop and says he’d like to address these stories.
Tie raised flush to his collar, his face perfectly straight, he says, “I’m only snorting cocaine to combat the nausea from the chemotherapy. I’m stopping the extramarital affairs under psychiatric adv
ice. And the PAC money is not being used for medical bills. It’s to keep my son’s crack business afloat.” Their look of shock subsides and some half-smiles creep tentatively onto the journalists’ faces, their slowness to catch on itself depressing evidence of how poisonous the atmosphere has become. “And all of these stories are being spread to distract you from the real story,” he says. “Which is that Richard Wheatley has tertiary syphilis.”
Finally, they laugh.
It is troubling to me to see Bobby’s humor be so acerbic. There’s no question he is scraping the bottom of his emotional reserves.
Scott Bayer has told Cindy, and Bobby, that this last debate is for all the marbles. All of his polling indicates that the race remains more or less deadlocked, with about 20 percent of the voters remaining undecided. The way these voters break in the final days will determine who wins the election. And as many as 90 percent of the undecided voters say they intend to watch the last debate to help them make up their mind. Bobby is given all this news in a fax he passes along to me. He looks more nervous than I am used to seeing him.
The ground rules for the debate—journalists asking questions—really makes it more a joint news conference than a true debate, but since every two-and-a-half-minute answer gets a one-and-a-half-minute reply, there will be some opportunity for them to lob grenades at each other.
Scott Bayer, who between visits is off running two campaigns in other states, checks in by phone several times a day. Cindy or Laura or I always make it a point to get there first and schmooze him up to make sure it is really he who is calling. He plans to show up personally to superintend the coaching only for the final day and a half before the debate.
I do not relax my guard. I cannot imagine that someone who has chosen to go so far as to tap the candidate’s wife’s phone at work is not also going to find a way to try to use the fruits of it. This thought, never far from my mind, keeps me vigilant. And, by being vigilant, I begin to learn what an extraordinarily complicated and expensive process running for office has become. Even in our state, with its two million voters, the majority of whom live in half a dozen cities and towns, television and radio are the real targets of all public appearances. But since people are used to having the chance to see, touch, and hear the candidates from elections gone by, Bobby and Wheatley have to spend their time traveling to virtually every part of the state, though in addition to stepping into every shopping mall and town square, they drop in to every talk show and noontime television news. So each day there are bursts of colorful activity and action punctuated by long and medium stretches of boredom.
Sounding the Waters Page 28