It was supposed to be called the California Gubernatorial Debate, but the Barry Black camp had insisted on the new name so that Enrique Espiritu Esperanza couldn't claim the multicultural high ground for himself.
"Done," said Harmon Cashman, through a mouthful of chocolate wafer. "This is easier than I thought!" he chortled, after hanging up on the Black campaign.
Rona Ripper's demand was much simpler.
"My candidate insists that this be a standing debate," said her campaign director.
"You got it," Harmon told the man, who had mysteriously taken the place of the former campaign director, Blaise Perrin. The press was still trying to figure out what had happened to him. He'd simply dropped out of sight, along with Cheeta Ching. Not that anyone missed her.
Harmon took the good news to Enrique Esperanza.
"Both camps have agreed," he said. "Black's people are going to jump on the multicultural bandwagon."
"This is fine. Multiculturalism should not belong to one man."
"And Ripper's people say we gotta stand, because Rona's rear end hasn't healed yet."
Esperanza shook his head. "The poor woman."
"Any demands you want to make before we finalize this?"
"Yes, I wish that Miss Ripper stand between Mr. Black and myself."
"Why?"
Enrique Esperanza shrugged. "It is merely whim. They have demands, so I must make one. We do not wish to show weakness at this late stage."
"I'll run it past the others. But I'm sure they'll go along. Hell, the fact that they're willing to debate you means both camps are running scared."
"My polls are good?"
Harmon grinned. "The numbers are running our way, all right."
"Good. I think this is one time the dark horse will run in the money."
And both men laughed, Enrique Esperanza through his broad grin and Harmon Cashman through a mouthful of black-and-white cookie crumbs.
On the day of the Conference on Multiculturalism, an auditorium at Stanford University-the birthplace of Multiculturalism, according to the press releases issued by all three campaigns-was packed with representatives of the press and an audience of business and civic leaders from all over the state.
An unusual precaution was a long sheet of bulletproof Plexiglas that ran the length of the stage. This was to protect the candidates from any would-be assassin.
The press complained about the reflections their camera lights created, but no one demanded it be taken down.
Bulletproof limousines brought the candidates to the debate hall. Rona Ripper arrived first, and was escorted to a waiting room behind the curtain by state troopers.
Barry Black, Junior arrived in a pastry truck. His staff carted him in concealed in a balsa-wood pyramid covered with almondine frosting, on the theory that no one would shoot a giant cake, especially one they didn't know held the candidate.
Enrique Esperanza was the last to arrive. State troopers were not needed. His entourage consisted of innercity gang members, who waved Oreo cookies at the cameras.
Remo and Chiun were forced to enter through a service door.
"This is an insult," Chiun huffed, as they slipped past the state trooper posted at the door as if he were an insensate statue, which by Sinanju standards he was.
"We are reduced to skulking, when we should be in the lemonlight, as befits our exalted station."
"Limelight," Remo hissed. "And if we show up on TV, Smith'll pull us both off the detail."
Chiun sniffed. "There will be sufficient lemonlight when I am Lord Treasurer of California," he allowed.
They worked their way unchallenged to the reception area, where the state troopers and the former gang members were making faces at one another.
"Have a cookie, Jack," one told a stone-faced trooper. "This stuff's proper."
The invitation was declined.
A trooper moved toward them, but Harmon Cashman, spotting Remo and Chiun, said, "There you are!" The trooper backed off.
"Glad to see you back on the winning team," Harmon told Remo.
"Any team we belong to automatically wins," Remo said.
In one corner, Enrique Esperanza was waving away the makeup man, saying, "I need no such artifices. I am Esperanza. "
This was reported to the press and to the other campaigns. They too decided to go on sans makeup.
"Are you sure this is wise, Ricky?" Harmon asked doubtfully.
"I am sure of it."
And so was Harmon Cashman, when the three candidates stepped out from behind the curtain.
"They look awful!" he said gleefully, watching a direct feed on a backstage monitor. "Ricky looks perfect, but the other two look like a bobcat's dragged them in through the back door. The debate's practically won!"
"Don't count your chickens," warned Remo.
But Harmon Cashman wasn't listening. His nose was practically pressed to the video screen as he munched away on a foot-tall stack of Oreo Big Stuf cookies.
"That guy's headed for diabetic shock," Remo said to Chiun, as they went to another monitor to watch.
"You Americans would eat rubber, if it were sweet," Chiun sniffed.
The debate began with a short statement on multiculturalism from each candidate.
Rona Ripper promised that, if elected, she would not only outlaw smoking throughout California, but work diligently to prevent the tobacco companies from exporting their products to less sophisticated third-world markets.
"I will also propose a fifty-percent tax on tobacco products, and repeal the snack tax," she added. "If people can't kick the nicotine monkey on their own, we'll tax it off their backs!"
She was applauded.
Barry Black, Junior pointed out the hitherto-unnoticed fact that most of the actors playing aliens on Star Trek: The Next Generation were people of color. Especially the ones playing Klingons.
"Those of you who watched the original program know that it wasn't like this back in the wonderful sixties," he said with righteous indignation. "I say to you that this is racism, pure and simple. If elected, I will propose emergency legislation to integrate the imaginary Klingon planet once and for all."
This too was applauded.
Then Enrique Espiritu Esperanza took his turn. He was in his habitual white suit, which made him look like a pious adult celebrating his First Communion.
"I represent hope," he said. "Hope for all people. I am a brown man. A brown man running for a white office. All over the world, offices such as I aspire to are held by white men. Even in the countries to the south of us. You need only look at them. The President of Mexico, leader of a nation of brown men. Yet he is quite white. A blanco. In Paraguay, in Chile, it is the same. Why is it that only white men can hold office? I look to a new day, a day in which a brown man can lead a white people. A brown man who stands for white people, as well as brown. I am that man."
The crowd, some five hundred people, took in his words, their eyes rapt, their mouths busy. They had been given minipacks of Oreo cookies as they walked in the door.
"I am that man," Enrique Espiritu Esperanza repeated.
Seated at his monitor, Harmon Cashman had begun to weep bitter tears.
"He blew it! The stupid spick blew it! Now it's a racial campaign!"
And then the crowd began to chant.
"Esperanza! Esperanza! Esperanza!"
Harmon Cashman could not believe it. His candidate was up there committing political suicide, and the crowd was cheering him on, white, black, brown, and yellow alike.
Somehow, some way, they saw his message of hope as relating to them all, regardless of skin color.
"This is incredible," he muttered.
In homes, in bars, in offices all over the state, the reaction was not as unanimous.
In Thousand Oaks, A1 Bruss, a retired schoolteacher, decided he'd had enough. He was tired of the homeless and the illegals, who urinated in the formerly pristine streets and choked the streets as they wandered in search of jobs that o
ften didn't exist even for legal citizens.
In the middle of the debate, he called his real-estate broker and said, "I've had enough. Put this place in your listing. I'm moving to Seattle."
In Santa Ana, in the heart of conservative Orange County, real-estate office phones rang off the hook. It was the same in San Francisco, San Diego, Sacramento, and elsewhere.
Unions, business groups, and activists, who had supported Esperanza before this, suddenly saw the future of California in stark terms. A future that did not include them. And they also saw the alternatives to Enrique Espiritu Esperanza as hopeless fringe candidates. They decided to put their energies into relocation, not voting:
Those who remained for the rest of the debate heard Rona Ripper and Barry Black, Junior give evasive, timid responses to questions about the future of California.
Each time he responded, Enrique Esperanza gave a forthright reply.
"The California past is Aztec," he said. "The California future is Aztec, and Filipino and Japanese. And of course, whites will be welcome to stay. We will find a place for them."
He was applauded after every statement. The cheering was reproduced all over California. A sea change that had been building for decades had taken human form.
America was on the threshold of having a Third World state within its borders.
At the end, the three candidates came forward and stood side-by-side in multicultural solidarity, taking in the thunderous applause that each thought in his heart of hearts was meant for him or her, but which in fact was still reverberating from Enrique Esperanza's last statement.
The audience came to their feet.
And it was during this cannonade of a standing ovation that it happened.
Every camera recorded it.
Positioned between the two male candidates, Rona Ripper suddenly jumped in place. She stiffened, her eyes going hot. And without any other warning, she turned and slapped an unprepared Barry Black, Junior in the face, screaming, "How dare you pinch me there, you flake!"
A great gasp broke the applause. Stunned silence followed. Barry Black, Junior turned a flustered crimson and seemed not to know what to do with his hands.
With his mouth he said, "I support your right to do that, even though I disagree with the doing of it." Then he added, "Ouch!"
Backstage, Remo said, "Did you see that? He goosed her. In front of the camera."
Harmon Cashman snorted. "Everybody knows Black is a complete flake."
"It wasn't Black. It was Esperanza," Remo said flatly.
"Remo!" Chiun flared. "Do not speak nonsense."
"I saw it," Remo insisted. "Black never moved. But Esperanza's shoulder bunched up just before Rona jumped. He reached across from behind and goosed her on the opposite cheek, so she'd think Black did it."
"Ricky wouldn't do that," Harmon insisted. He paused, adding, "But if he did, it was a masterstroke. And probably just won him the election. Black looks like a dip, and Rona Ripper just showed that she's a temperamental bitch. Ricky's in like Flynn!"
The overnight polls the very next day showed Esperanza nearly twenty points ahead of the other campaigns.
"But we're showing softness in the usual white voter blocs," Harmon Cashman confided to his candidate over a working lunch that very afternoon.
"I am not worried about the blancos. They are the past. I am the future."
"If this keeps up, they'll be deserting in droves by election day."
"It is their right. It is a free country."
The white people, in fact, didn't run from Enrique Espiritu Esperanza. They ran from California. Houses went up for sale. White voter registration fell off. Support for the Ripper and Black campaigns already had fallen sharply among white middle-class voters. Their campaign staffs were in ruins, owing to the repeated political arsons and assassination attempts.
The only alternative candidate, the interim governor, had dropped out for lack of funding.
And all over California, the homeless and illegal aliens and other disenfranchised potential voters saw the future in the dark-horse candidate named Esperanza.
And they saw hope.
Harmon Cashman saw more than hope. He saw certainty. Three days later, holed up in a Hollywood hotel, basking in the afterglow of a star-studded fund-raiser, he shouted it to the ornate chandelier.
"We're gonna win! We're gonna win! We're gonna win!"
"I believe this too," Esperanza said calmly. "This is why I am not going to campaign any further."
Harmon stopped dancing. "What?"
Esperanza shrugged. "There is no need. My opponents are reduced to making accusations and counteraccusations against one another. I, they cannot criticize. I am the multicultural candidate and they have come out in favor of multiculturalism. What is there to criticize? Oreo cookies and hope?"
"Pretty slick. Say, Ricky. You didn't really goose Rona up there, did you?"
"In politics, as in war, a little rear-guard action at the optimum moment can alter one's destiny," Esperanza said.
"For a guy who was growing grapes until a month ago," Harmon said admiringly, "you sure know the ropes of this business."
"I am Esperanza. I know a great many things. For instance, I know that we are now a shoo-in."
"That's what I've been saying."
"Once in the governor's chair, I will control the largest economy in this hemisphere, one greater than most other nations'. And its people will be my people. People of color. They will trust me. They will do anything I ask."
"Anything?"
Esperanza nodded. "Even, if I suggest it, secede from the union."
Harmon Cashman blinked. "Secede?"
"Who is to stop me?"
"Well, the Federal government, for one thing."
Esperanza smiled beneficently. "Not if I have the President under my thumb."
Harmon's face acquired a stung look. "How would you get him under your thumb?"
"By informing him that I have knowledge of his employment of a professional assassin, the greatest assassin in human history, on his payroll."
Harmon Cashman blinked. "The little Korean?"
"No. Our little Korean."
"You really mean it? You want to make California a separate country?"
"If the people will have it. And I believe they will."
Harmon Cashman went bone-white. He felt a chill coursing up and down his spine. Woodenly, he stood up. "Excuse me, Ricky. If we're going to be in Sacramento soon, there's something I gotta do."
Enrique Esperanza looked up. "And what is this?"
"Work on my tan," said Harmon Cashman, leaving the room on leaden feet.
Chapter 29
The next morning, Harmon Cashman awoke to find that an envelope had been slipped under his hotel-room door. He opened it and read the hand-written note.
Harmon: I have returned to my home in the Napa Valley, to rest. I suggest that you do the same. For we shall need all our strength after the election.
Ricky
P.S. Help yourself to cookies.
Harmon found a package, neatly wrapped, standing out in the hallway. It looked big. Whistling his disappointment away, he carried the box back into the room.
The box was a literal smorgasbord of chocolate-and-white creme-filled treasures. There were mini-Oreos, regular packs, the Double Stuf kind with extra filling, and Harmon's current favorite, Big Stuf.
Putting a pot of coffee on the hot plate, he settled down to breakfast.
By noon, Harmon Cashman was feeling pretty good. So good, he ignored the knock on his door.
"Harmon. You in there?"
"Go 'way."
"It's Remo. Chiun and I are looking for Esperanza."
"He's gone to Napa Valley. Doesn't want to be disturbed. Doesn't need us. The election's in the bag."
"You sound drunk," Remo said suspiciously.
"I feel great," Harmon shot back.
After a minute they went away, and Harmon returned to building a cone of
white creme filling on the breakfast nook table. He wondered if he should save some to sweeten his coffee. Regular sugar just didn't have the kick it used to.
After some thought, he decided to add a splash of coffee to the pile of creme filling. Coffee had lost its luster, too.
By three o'clock Harmon was feeling so confident of his prospects, he decided to share it with a certain someone. He put in a long distance call to Washington, D.C.
The President of the United States, after some thought, decided to take the call from his old campaign aide.
"Harmon, my boy! How're you doing?"
"Great, jus' great," Harmon Cashman said slurringly.
"Are you all right?"
"I am great. Jus' great. And after next week I'm gonna be greater. Gonna be on top of the world."
"Happy to hear it," said the President. "After that little chief of staff flap, we kinda fell off one another's Christmas card list. I was afraid you had hard feelings."
"Well, I do. And I'm gonna pay you back. As soon as we're in office."
"Harmon, do you know what you're saying, fella?"
"I'm saying I know your dirty lil' secret."
There was silence on the line to Washington.
Harmon began shouting, "I know about the lil' Korean! Well, he's our Korean now! That's right, Mr. Commander-in-Chief! The greatest assassin that ever was doesn't work for you anymore! He works for us!"
The President's voice became chilly. "Us?"
"Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, alias Ricky the Spic."
The President cleared his throat. In a tight voice he said, "I'm afraid I don't know what you are talking about. I'm sorry to hear that you're in such an agitated state, Harmon. I must go. Staff meeting. You understand. Good-bye."
"It's adios, now!" Harmon Cashman shouted into the dead line. "Better work on your tan, White Bread! Multicultural Fever is just starting in California, but it's gonna roll east real soon! Real soon!"
After Harmon Cashman had slammed down the phone, he stood up. He was full of coffee and Oreos. He felt it necessary to release some biological ballast.
Harmon never made it to the bathroom. His overburdened stomach rebelled, and he vomited an unholy blackish bile all over his shoes, his clothes, and the floor.
And most importantly, all over his last box of cookies.
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