Quarry's Vote

by Max Allan Collins

  “Sure. I have all their records.”

  She ignored that; trying to kid her was like kid­ding a nun about the virgin birth.

  She went on with the catechism: “The forces of evil are gathering. Only Preston Freed can lead this country out of the darkness.”

  “We’re talking your basic good versus evil here.”

  “Precisely,” she said. “The future of humanity is at stake.”

  I gestured with the booklet, nodded over at the two tables piled with them. “I see a lot here about what’s wrong about America. And let’s grant that there is a lot wrong. But what does your party in­tend to replace all of that with?”

  “Common sense,” she said, with a smug little smile.

  Yeah, that oughta do it.

  “Well,” I said, smiling back, “you’ve given me a lot of food for thought. Suppose I wanted to make a contribution?”

  Her smile widened, the smugness evaporated. “Why, that would be wonderful . . .”

  “I mean a sizeable contribution. Of a thousand dollars or more.”

  She touched my arm. “You’d immediately be­come a member.”

  “A member?”

  In a hushed, pious voice she intoned: “Of the Democratic Action Policy Committee.”

  “I never dreamed,” I said.

  She just smiled.

  “But I’d like to know how my money would be used,” I said. “Where it would go.”

  She frowned a little, as if that were a concept that had never dawned on her.

  I pressed on. “I’d like to talk to Mr. Freed’s cam­paign manager. If I’m going to make a contribu­tion of this size, I want to go straight to the top.”

  She thought about that.

  “It’s only common sense,” I said.

  She nodded, and went down the aisle between the rows of tables. I followed, but when we reached a closed door at the rear, she turned and raised a forefinger and narrowed her dark blues to tell me not to follow her into the office. She wasn’t in there long, however.

  Smiling, she ushered me in, and shut the door behind her, leaving me in a conference room where the walls were covered by a huge, much marked-up calendar, several arcane charts and various large maps—one of the United States, another of Iowa, another of New Hampshire, another of various Iowa counties and communities. Sticking pins of vari­ous colors in the Davenport map, as if it were a flat voodoo doll that controlled the city, was a man in his late forties in shirtsleeves and loosened tie. He did not wear the glee club apparel of his young staff, however; his pants were gray, and went with the gray suitcoat slung over a chair at the conference table. He had salt-and-pepper hair, longish but receding, and was well-fed but not fat, with a fleshy, intelligent face.

  He put one more color-coded pin into the map, and turned a steel-gray gaze on me, as well as a practiced smile, a sly smile unlike those of the Night of Living Conservatives bunch in the outer room.

  “You’re Mr. Ryan,” he said, and shook my hand. “I’m Frank Neely, campaign manager.”

  “A pleasure, Mr. Neely,” I said. I gave him one of my business cards. “I’m doing some business in the Quad Cities and wanted to stop by. I knew Preston Freed’s national HQ was located here, and I was anxious to get a first-hand look.”

  His smile remained, but his eyes turned wary. “Becky indicated you were a . . . fresh convert to our cause.”

  “Frankly no,” I said, smiling back, taking the lib­erty of sitting at the conference table. “I’ve followed Preston Freed for some time. I only pretended to be a novice, so I could test the mettle of your staff. I can’t say I was much impressed.”

  “Really,” he said with concern, remaining wary and on his feet.

  “Becky, if that’s the name of the young woman who greeted me, is a good-looking kid. But her line of patter is strictly rote. She’s like a damn tour guide.”

  He laughed, and finally sat, crossed his legs, ankle on knee.

  “It’s a problem,” he said. “These kids are very enthusiastic, and very hard workers. They come into the party alert and questioning, but they get so in­doctrinated, after a while, that they become, well, rather single-minded.”

  “They should be able to discuss the issues, not just parrot the party line.”

  “I couldn’t agree more. What’s your interest in the Democratic Action party, Mr. Ryan?”

  “I just like what Preston Freed stands for. I rep­resent a loose, informal group of businessmen from my community. We want to contribute several thou­sand dollars to the party—perhaps as much as ten.”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  I raised one of mine. “But I want to make sure we wouldn’t be pissing our money away.”

  He gestured around his little war room. “Do you think we’d make this effort if we didn’t think it would amount to something?”

  “Well, frankly, you yourself are probably well paid. Most professional campaign managers are. And your staff is obviously fresh out of college, looking for meaningful work, taking on a low-paying position for the experience and out of be­lief in a cause. Kids right out of college who haven’t figured out, yet, that you can’t deposit a cause in the bank.”

  He nodded, smiled wryly.

  “And I would imagine some of your staff are col­lege kids, drawing on the various campuses in the area . . . Augustana, St. Ambrose, Palmer . . .”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “Most of the area colleges allow political science students to work on cam­paigns for academic credit.”

  “So,” I said, “I see that it’s extremely possible for me to be pissing my and my associates’ money away by donating to your party’s election efforts. We might be better off supporting conservatives within the Republican party. Candidates who actu­ally have a chance of winning.”

  “You’re underestimating us, Mr. Ryan,” he said, shaking his head. “We’ve been at this for a long, long time. This will be our third Presidential race. In our first attempt, we gathered less than 80,000 votes in the national primaries. But last time around, we racked up a quarter of a million. And this year? Anything is possible.”

  “Except victory.”

  “You’re not a fool, Mr. Ryan, nor am I, and cer­tainly Preston Freed is anything but a fool. Victory is a practical impossibility.” He raised a forefinger in a lecturing gesture. “However, we’re undoubtedly going to be putting on the strongest third-party can­didacy since George Wallace in 1968.”

  “You’re anticipating that Preston Freed will be­come a kingmaker, at the Democratic convention.”

  “We do anticipate that. Who can say what victo­ries will come from that? And we can look forward to the next election. If our rate of growth continues, the next time around Preston Freed will be a vi­able candidate, and the Democratic Action party will be a third, vital, major party.”

  “All of this from a storefront in Davenport, Iowa.”

  “Don’t be deceived, Mr. Ryan. This is only the first stop on the primary trail. We’re getting an early start. The Iowa precinct caucuses January twenty-first sound the opening gun of the presidential race. But we’re running now. Our candidate will begin making public appearances next week. Our volun­teers, our staffers, will cover every county in Iowa, door-to-door and by telephone.”

  “And then on to New Hampshire.”

  “On to New Hampshire. And at least a dozen more primaries after that, and we’ll be purchasing radio and TV spots in each of those states. Beyond that, we’ve already purchased four half-hour na­tional television broadcasts.”

  “I’m starting to feel encouraged.”

  “You should feel encouraged. And the presidency is only the most visible aspect of our strategy. I don’t have to tell you that where the Democratic Action party has made strides is in local and state government—we’ll field thousands of candidates in those races, and we’ll win a good share. We’ve done it before.”

  “You sure made a mess out of Illinois state poli­tics not so long ago.”

&
nbsp; That made him grin. “Thank you. I had a certain small hand in that. We’ve had similar successes in California, Texas, Maryland and Oregon.”

  I stood and offered him my hand. “I won’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Neely. I’ll be talking to my fellow business people, back in Milwaukee. My report will be favorable.”

  His grin went ear to ear as he shook my hand. “I’m very glad to hear that. You will not, I assure you, be pissing any money away. All of you gen­tlemen will be welcome members of the Democratic Action Policy Committee.”

  I looked forward to getting the secret decoder ring.

  “I had hoped,” I said, “considering this is the na­tional headquarters and all, to get to meet the can­didate himself. Have a little one-on-one discussion, however briefly.”

  Neely shook his head and his smile turned regret­ful. “I wish that were possible. Mr. Freed doesn’t drop by here often. In fact, not at all. And these headquarters, despite the ‘national’ designation, are strictly for the Iowa effort. We have a suite of offices upstairs, in the hotel, for our executive staff; and the actual command center is at the Freed estate.”

  “Not far from here,” I said.

  “Not far from here,” he said, “but I’m afraid Mr. Freed doesn’t meet with individuals often . . . al­though once we know the exact size of your con­tribution, well. But do keep in mind, Preston Freed is a political genius, and like all geniuses, he has his eccentricities. He’s a bit of a recluse.”

  “Isn’t that unusual for a political candidate?”

  “Frankly, it is, and I’ve had to work on Preston to get him to come out and ‘press the flesh’ in these primary campaigns. You must understand that there are many people who would like to see Preston Freed dead.”

  “Such as?”

  “The Soviets.”

  I managed not to laugh, and merely nodded with concern. “I can see that.”

  “And of course, the Mafia.”

  “The Mafia?”

  “Certainly. You’ve read the Freed position paper on the Drug Conspiracy?”

  “Oh yes. The alliance between the banking com­munity and the crime syndicate.”

  He shook his head somberly. “It’s all around us. Infiltrated like a spreading cancer. Did you see the papers today?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “A local businessman was murdered just last night—by a syndicate assassin, it’s thought.”

  “That’s shocking.”

  “I know it is. Apparently this man—who I thought was a respectable member of the community, hell, we belonged to the same country club!—had a long history of ‘mob ties,’ as the QC Times put it.”

  “Disgraceful.”

  “Well, then you can understand why a man with the strong views and the bitter enemies of a Preston Freed would choose to fight from within a fortress, so to speak. In the last campaign, Preston made no public appearances, restricting himself to radio and TV speeches.” Disgust twisted his mouth. “The Reagan administration ruled that we do not qualify for Secret Service protection, which shows you that our enemies are not restricted to Russians and Sicilians.”

  “But now Freed plans to get out among the voters.”

  Neely nodded. “Yes—at the insistence of myself and his top advisors. If we’re to make our move into the political mainstream, to become the viable third party that we are already starting to become, to leave the stigma of the so-called ‘lunatic fringe’ be­hind, Preston Freed must emerge from his fortress and do battle in the corrupt outside world.”

  Arch as that sounded, Neely was right: there was no place in the scheme of things for an armchair politician. And, of course, as I well knew, the threat to Freed’s life was a real one, even if it didn’t have anything to do with the Soviet Union, even if the mob connection was only tangential.

  “Does Freed have any enemies in the business community?”

  “Certainly,” Neely said.

  “Anyone specifically?”

  He paused. Then, rather reluctantly, he said, “One does come to mind. You have to understand that the Democratic Action party’s policies rep­resent neither the left nor the right, as conven­tionally defined. Some of what we stand for is thought of as conservative, and yet Preston Freed was first thought of as a leftist, and in fact led a splinter group out of the old SDS, during the ’60s.”

  “Meaning?”

  “One of Preston’s best friends, closest advisors, who’d been with him since those early days, became . . . frankly . . . disenchanted with some of the party policies, as we have become more aligned with what are seen as ‘right-wing’ ideologies.” His voice seemed weary. “It’s a loss to us all, that one of the movers and shakers of our party should go over to the other side.”

  “The other side?”

  He nodded. “The Democrats. Of course, it would be no better if it were the Republicans. But in George’s case, it was the Democrats . . . he’s made sizable donations, been active in fund-raising and so on.”

  “You don’t mean George Ridge, the real-estate guy?”

  “Well, yes I do . . . let’s say nothing more about it. All great causes suffer setbacks. But with Preston going high profile for this primary push, we can overcome anything.”

  He walked me to the door. Put a hand on my shoulder. “The thing of it is, Jack—if I may call you Jack—Preston is a charismatic public speaker. His personal magnetism is, frankly, our secret weapon. It’s worked before.”

  “Germany, for example,” I said, pleasantly.

  And I smiled and patted him on the shoulder, and moved through noisy, bustling Zombie Central and out into the cold but real world.

  10

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  THE EMBERS RESTAURANT was in Moline, just off 52nd Avenue, near South Park Shopping Center and not far from the airport. A two-story, brown-shingled, rambling affair in the midst of its own little park, the Embers was perched along the Rock River like just another rustic, if oversize, cottage. I left the black, “like-new” Sunbird in a nearly empty lot (it was late afternoon—before the supper hour) and briefly wandered the pine-scattered grounds, not­ing a teepee and a totem pole, a white pagoda bird bath, a statue or two of a Catholic saint, stone benches, wooden picnic tables, and a bright red sleigh awaiting snow. Along the gray river, with a well-travelled overpass bridge looming at left, was a cluster of gazebos with red-canvas roofs; there was even a band shell. Here and there plaster animals, deer mostly, were poised in plaster per­fection, to make you feel close to nature.

  This was just the sort of oddball, cobbled-together joint that went over well with tourists and locals alike. As the former owner of the Welcome Inn, I felt at home.

  An awning covered the lengthy astro-turfed walk­way up to the entrance, which was the back door of the place really, and a narrow wood-paneled hallway, decorated with ducks-in-flight prints and var­ious signs (“Casual dress required,” “Home of Aqua Ski Theater”), led to an unattended hat check area where I left my overcoat, with stairs to the right and a bar to the left.

  I went into the bar, which opened out onto a din­ing room with a river view. The Embers interior was just as studiedly rustic and quaint as the grounds. The ceiling was low and open-beamed with slowly churning fans, and there were plants and ferns here and there, though a Yuppie joint this was not. The barroom walls were populated with stuffed ani­mals—small ones, birds and fish mostly. If the Bates Motel had had a restaurant, this would have been it.

  A youngish blond guy with glasses and a white shirt was working behind the bar. “We’ll be serv­ing dinner in about half an hour,” he said.

  “Fine. I’ll wait.”

  “You can sit at the bar, or the hostess will be here in a moment and seat you.”

  “Fine,” I said, noncommittally.

  A couple of businessmen were sitting at the bar having drinks, munching peanuts. I noted several ashtrays c
radling Embers matchbooks like those I’d found in the dark blue Buick.

  I sat at a small round table near the big brick fireplace; a fire was going, and the warmth was all right with me. The afternoon had grown colder.

  On the hearth was an aquarium, about two feet tall and four-and-a-half feet wide. In the tank swam a fish, silver, and a foot and a half long. He had a very sour expression. He would glide slowly to one end of his tank, make a swishing turn and glide to the other end of the tank, make a swishing turn and you get the idea. I supposed his life was no more meaningless than anybody else’s.

  “He’s from the Amazon River,” somebody said.

  I looked up. It was the blond bartender; he’d come over out of boredom or to take my order or something. He was perhaps twenty-five years old. The fish tank’s lights reflected in his glasses.

  “Amazon River, huh,” I said.

  “Notice the little goldfish down toward the bot­tom of the tank? They’re his supper.”

  This fish tank sort of summed up everything any­body needed to know about life.

  “I guess that makes him King Shit,” I said.

  “Guess so,” the bartender said. “Till we come in some morning and he’s belly up. Can I get you any­thing?”

  “Well, it won’t be fish.”

  “I mean, from the bar. We aren’t serving din­ner . . .”

  “Till five, right. Just a Coke. Diet, with a twist of lemon.”

  He nodded and went briskly back behind the bar. I got up and went and took the glass of Coke from him, to save him another trip. I sat two stools down from the businessmen and sipped my soda and said to the bartender, “This place been here a while?”

  “Thirty-five years,” he said. “Original owners are still associated with the place.”

  “Associated with it? You mean they don’t own it anymore?”

  “No. They just manage it. Some flood damage a few years ago hit ’em hard, and a local business­man bought ’em out.” He made a clicking sound in his cheek and shook his head.

  “Something wrong?”

  “Well, I don’t know what’s going to happen now.”