At Risk of Winning (The Max Masterson Series Book 1)

by Mark E Becker

  Andrew had listened too long and was itching to speak. “I get the idea of strategic sound bites, but why don’t you care what the voters think about the issues?”

  Max turned to address his backseat passenger just as Bill navigated the terminal entrance. he made direct eye contact with his young protégé, whose face was just feet from his. “I do care. I just have this abiding belief that people listen to politicians to make up their minds on issues that people disagree about, and polling is just a way of verifying that a politician is good at persuading and getting the message across. If I can get a majority of voters to pay attention to my message and agree with me on basic principles, I win. There’s an old adage: When you’re going to fish, go to where the fish are.”

  Andrew and Bill shook their heads. “It sounds to me that you just beat up on the bully without throwing a punch,” said Bill as he pulled up to the door of Airside C.

  u ChAPTER FORTY-ThREE

  Andrew and Max made it through security at Reagan International Airport without too much trouble. Stripping down to your nonmetallic essence had become a ritual of travel since 9/11. Once they got to the secure area for passengers on outgoing flights, they settled into chairs near the food court and Andrew began his briefing on issues to be addressed in the next sound bites as Max sipped on a pomegranate smoothie. “We’re doing jobs and retirement on this trip,” Andrew began.

  Max had his feet up on a metal chair, sat oblivious to the crowd that was gathering around them. They encroached, the numbers increasing steadily. Finally, a girl, probably seventeen, walked up to Max, and said, “You’re him, aren’t you.”

  “I guess.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Then I guess I’m not.” he smiled, and she screamed. “You are him! I told my Mom and Dad that if they didn’t vote for you, I was going to run away!” The girl was obviously a part of a private school trip, as signified by her uniform and the identical uniforms of her twenty companions, who all screamed in her support. This, in turn, brought a larger crowd of travelers until they were surrounded by a mass of humanity that was quickly becoming very close and very aggressive.

  A man in a business suit pushed to the front perimeter and spoke. “I don’t know about the rest of us, but I have been very interested in what you have to say, and I would appreciate your thoughts about social security.”

  “Who cares?” shouted a thirtyish woman, her blonde hair and low-cut business suit betraying an ample set of obviously enhanced breasts. She had bullied herself to within two feet of Max’s chair by spreading her elbows and launching herself into the crowd, prompting him to stand before she finished her ground assault. “You are the most gorgeous man I have ever seen, and I want to know where you are headed. I’ll go wherever you’re going, Sweetcakes.” She gave him her best “come hither” look, prompting most of the members of the impromptu crowd to blush in unison.

  Max had to respond. “I’m on my way to meet with some people about your future. Over the next two months, I will be bringing you messages from all over the country, and you’ll see a lot of me. This man here is my most trusted advisor, Andrew Fox, and he will take your questions. We listen. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to hit the men’s room before we get on our plane.”

  The crowd moaned and converged on Andrew while Max slid to the back of the crowd. As he did, people touched his clothes, the woman with the ample breasts tried to grab his crotch, and he deftly sidestepped his way toward the men’s room. As he looked back at the crowd, he could see Andrew’s face, pleading for assistance. Getting none, he settled into information gathering as Max

  AT RISK OF WINNING

  searched for refuge in the men’s room. Stragglers followed, including the woman who had just missed sampling his private parts. he began to think about hiring security on this trip and beyond—and stifled the urge to break into a run. Reaching the men’s room, he turned to his now increasing crowd of twenty and addressed them. “I don’t give speeches, but I feel compelled to tell you that I have been going to the bathroom all by myself since I was a big boy, and I don’t need your help in pulling up my pants.” he turned and escaped into the refuge of the brightly lit stalls.

  When he emerged, a small group of persistent stragglers stood at a respectful distance. The girl who first spotted him was at the front, pen and notebook in hand. “Will you give me your autograph? My friends will never believe this. Nancy! Take our picture!”

  he posed for pictures for the next fifteen minutes, wondering when the damn announcement for his flight was coming to rescue him. It was a captive feeling, and he didn’t like it one little bit. This aspect of running for president sucked, and he resolved to travel incognito as soon as he could devise a way to do that. Maybe he should just travel by private plane and avoid public transportation altogether.

  Andrew’s crowd had dwindled with Max’s escape, and the rest of the travelers just stared. Andrew glared at him and furiously jotted notes about people’s issues of concern. Most of their comments dealt with the difficulties of living, and he didn’t think that most of what he had written would be of much help. There was one common theme, though. These people were frustrated. They were ready to cast out their elected officials and start fresh, no longer trusting the promises of politicians.

  “Maybe that’s why they are so interested in him,” he pondered. “Max doesn’t promise anything except hope for the future.” Andrew was, if nothing else, a watcher. he had observed Max in an unplanned, unscripted public appearance, and he had excelled at creating and maintaining interest. They needed to capitalize on that talent. Max had no trouble setting himself apart from the rest of the candidates, but they still came up short by the perception that he had no experience.

  Max knew that he had deflected the attention to his young assistant, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time. he had no other idea of how to go to the bathroom in a crowd of tourists. he knew now how rock bands feel when they are being pursued by groupies and screaming fans, and he was uncomfortable in that environment.

  By the time they landed at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Max and Andrew had bought hats and sunglasses in a feeble effort to disguise themselves as tourists. What they didn’t calculate was that each monitor in every public place, each personal data bracelet, could monitor their movements with such precision that crowds had already formed in the terminal as the plane landed. They knew where he was at any moment in time. By the time the doors opened, hundreds of the curious spotted his familiar face behind the sunglasses, and they surged in his direction. They ran for the nearest exit.

  u ChAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  I don’t like politicians.” Andrew’s mother was sitting in the kitchen of the 150-year-old farmhouse, glaring across the kitchen table at her son and Max, cradling her morning cup of coffee. Andrew pushed his chair back, expecting the outburst of honesty that his mother was known for, ready to bolt out the back door if the fur began to fly.

  “I don’t like them much myself.” Max leaned forward in his chair and gazed directly into her grey eyes. “In fact, there isn’t much about politicians to like. They lie all the time and are so full of themselves that they think other people want to hear them talk about how great they are. They are so detached from the rest of us that they have no idea what we want and need nor do they care. I’m glad I’m not a politician.”

  Mom stood up and headed for the coffee pot, a confused grimace on her face. She smoothed her dress nervously, trying to absorb Max’s words, unsure of what to say. Andrew was silent knowing that he was witnessing a meeting that would define his life. This was a first—Mom was speechless. he could tell she was gathering her thoughts as she lingered for minutes at the counter, pouring the sugar, stirring the coffee, the familiar clinking of metal against china adding to the suspense.

  “I thought you were a politician.” She turned suddenly, causing the coffee to slosh onto the floor. In an ordinary situation, she would have pounced on the spill with a washcl
oth, but this time she seemed oblivious.

  “No, Ma’am, I’m just a man running for president.”

  Mom seemed flustered. her cheeks took on a rosy hue, and Andrew found it necessary to rescue her. “Mom, what Max is saying is that there are people who spend their lives running for something, usually rich folks who don’t have much to do with the rest of us, and then there are a few who have ideas to make a change for the better. Visionaries. Max is taking his one shot at president, and if he wins, he’ll change the way they do things in Washington. And I believe he will. Right, Max?” he turned to Max for a sign that what he had volunteered was copasetic with the message Max was trying to convey.

  Mom wasn’t about to let this new source of fascination get the last word. “hold it right there, Mr. Masterson. If my boy believes in you, I’d say you’re at risk of winning.”

  “I knew I picked the right guy to tell people who I am.” he turned to Andrew. he had begun helping himself to Mom’s freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and given his compromising condition caused by stuffing three cookies in his mouth at one time, could not contribute one word to their discourse.

  Finally, after a sip of milk and several gasps, Andrew said, “Let’s go ride horses.”

  Max stood so fast that the kitchen chair skidded across the linoleum. With a quick about-face, he was out the door with Andrew in close pursuit.

  u ChAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The sound bite of the day came from Marshall, Michigan and featured Leila Fox standing in front of her nineteenth-century farmhouse surrounded by flowers blooming profusely in the morning sun. Behind her stood Max, and behind the house was the most glorious sunrise ever. Their timing was perfect. The golden hue reflected off their faces, giving them the appearance of marble statues. As she spoke, the camera zoomed to her face, and the piercing intensity of her light grey eyes was emphasized by the deep wrinkles that surrounded them.

  “This time around, my family is voting for Max Masterson. I know one thing, voting for the same old thing will only get you more of the same old thing. We’re tired of politicians who promise everything and give nothing. We need jobs and the comfort of knowing our pensions will be there when we reach my age. And don’t even get me started on how much it costs to pay to see my doctor. Max is running for president, and my friends and I like what he stands for.”

  The camera panned back to include a group of white-haired old ladies, then quickly zoomed back in to frame Leila standing next to Max, who was dressed in the casual clothes she had picked out for him to wear. Leila had spoken the words that her son had written for her. Now it was time to improvise, and she turned to Max and kissed him on the cheek. he blushed and smiled. The message was complete.

  “Great!” Andrew ran forward and hugged her as the ladies cheered. “Mom, you’re going to be famous. By this afternoon, all your friends are going to see you kissing the president,” he teased.

  It was her turn to blush. “Oh, Andrew, don’t tell your father that I kissed another man. he’s the only one except relatives that I’ve kissed since high school.”

  Andrew had concocted a campaign strategy for Max that relied on basic human values. he figured that voters couldn’t reject ideas that had no opposition. Keep it clean or you will clean up after yourself. Be against crime. Educate your children so they can have a better life than yours. Americans and America come first. The best spokespeople for the American way of life, he surmised, were the moms.

  Little old ladies make the most dedicated supporters of any group a candidate can hope to woo, but they are a tough audience. If they don’t like you, they’ll tell you so. If you can convince them to like you, their loyalty is pure. They have more energy than a person one-third their age, they awaken at a much earlier hour, and they have attained wisdom, Andrew surmised. The new generation of these women passed below the radar of the pollsters and highly compensated consultants hired by major candidates. The old ladies had become a potent political force for the first time since prohibition.

  Max seemed to tap into the mother lode of this new consciousness when he decided to utilize his “match tips,” old ladies with white hair, to be the backdrop for his campaign. The statistical fact that old ladies live longer than old men and control most of the wealth by default was curiously lost on the fund-raisers of most major campaigns. They spent much of their time trolling databases of past campaigns, determining where successful candidates had been most successful in their fund-raising.

  In the past, old ladies weren’t interested and weren’t going to share the wealth with an activity which possessed no appeal to them, and fund-raisers kept plowing the same fields. Until Max came along. “You boys get out there and be yourselves, and you’ll be at risk of winning.”

  “OK, Mom,” they said in unison.

  u ChAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Are you freaking crazy?” Bill Staffman was sitting at the head of the table in Max’s usual seat when Max dragged in from his latest foray into the nation. he wasn’t about to relinquish his seat until Max had answered his mostly rhetorical question.

  “What are you talking about?” Max hadn’t had his morning cup of coffee, but aware that his chief of staff had the hairs up on the back of his neck, he knew he wasn’t going to get that caffeine before he addressed the issue at hand.

  “You go out in the field and enlist a bunch of white-haired old ladies to stand behind you and sing your praises, don’t bother to consult with me, and send it out over the internet without any idea what would happen,” bellowed Staffman.

  “Well, yeah. You got a problem with that?” Max backed up two steps, keeping the table between them, and grasped the back of one of the overstuffed leather chairs that ringed the room. “It just so happens that old ladies love me for some reason. I never had a mother . . . well, not an official one, and all they want to do is hug me all the time. I like that. I didn’t see what harm there could be for me to include them in my dailies.”

  Staffman realized that he had come on too strong and hadn’t explained himself well. he had never seen this side of Max, vulnerable and alone, craving what mothers provide their sons—a sense of comfort and refuge. he didn’t realize how deep the loss was for a child to lack a parent, for a boy to miss the soft bosom of his mom in full hug. he regretted his hard-ass approach.

  “You don’t understand what I’m trying to tell you.” he paused and walked toward Max, bringing his face within inches They locked eyes. “You may be crazy, and I know you don’t pay any attention to the polls, but you just blundered into the best campaign strategy since . . . since . . . I can’t remember,” Staffman stammered. “I have been on the phone with the networks nonstop for the past day, and they seem to think that Luke and I concocted this whole idea. I’m taking the credit since Luke is trying to stay invisible, and I just want you to know . . . keep doing what you’re doing.”

  Max looked relieved. The worry lines in his face disappeared, and he came back to the present. “You mean, they like my match tips?” he had been rousted from bed by the early morning conference call and was dressed only in the grey gym shorts that had become his standard sleepwear, if he wore anything to bed. his sound bite that day would come from the Florida Panhandle, and he was groggy from the latenight flight from Michigan.

  “Give Andrew all the credit. he cooked it up all by himself. I personally think he wanted to make his mom famous, but he swears he concocted this plan from his extensive repertoire of campaign strategies,” Max said with a smirk. Andrew had just arrived at the door, his hands full of snorkeling gear.

  “Why are you guys looking at me like that? What did I do?” “Oh, nothing,” said Bill and Max in unison.

  “Andrew, I am hiring your mom as a paid political consultant, and

  I want her input on all major strategy decisions. Go call your mother,” Max ordered.

  “I already did,” he replied.

  u ChAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  They sat in the white Adirondack chairs at the end of the
dock, the clear, spring-fed waters of the Wakulla River flowing beneath the weathered boards. On the far shore, a large alligator lay motionless. Sipping their coffee, they absorbed the green of nature while looking for the large grey-white blobs beneath the surface that revealed the presence of manatees. Max and Andrew lined up their snorkeling gear for a quick entry into the water when the rare animals were spotted. Max dove to massage a young manatee behind the flipper as it floated with the current ten feet below the surface. Andrew floated out of the field of view as the ripples settled.

  The cameras focused on the river’s surface. A light-gray blob was visible beneath the shimmering waters, stirring the calm surface with turbulence and moving deceptively fast in the center channel. The camera plunged underneath the surface, creating the perception that the viewer had just dived into the water with eyes wide open. In the bright sunlit water, a baby manatee placidly propelled itself with its broad rear flipper, accompanied by a diver in snorkeling gear.

  The next image was of Max emerging from the water, shirtless and wet, removing his mask. he stood waist deep in the river, looking fit and virile and totally successful in his quest to set himself apart.

  u

  “I’m in Florida to talk to you about our environment and why we need to keep it clean,” said Max, bare from the waist up. “here on the Wakulla River, the manatee and the otter thrive in crystal-clear water that flows from an aquifer bigger than any lake in the world. But we’re ruining it by not protecting it from the waste of man. If a few ruin it for everyone, we all lose. When I’m president, if you dirty it up, you’ll make it cleaner than it was or pay someone else to do it.”

  u ChAPTER FORTY-EIGhT

  If it wasn’t already confusing to the voters, the third-party debate proved to be the circus the political pundits had predicted it would be: a mess of voices projected from dark-suited rich men, all trying to talk over the other, trying their best to use the words that would capture the minds of the voters but failing to connect with America. This time there was no Kennedy in the race, no “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” Instead, the candidate who stood out from the rest was the young man from across the river who said next to nothing.