by Stuart Woods
“How long will you need to install the thing?” Hank asked.
“I’ll have it together tonight and ready for painting,” Zeke said, “but I may have to put in some overtime.”
“That’ll be fine,” Hank replied. “How much help do you want?”
“Just one man.”
“Rico!” Hank hollered to a man across the platform. “Get over here and help Harry put this thing together.”
Rico walked over. “Sure thing,” he said.
“Take your orders from Harry,” Hank said, and walked away.
The two men began unloading sheets of custom-built paneling from the forklift. Shortly before noon, as the podium was beginning to take shape, two men in suits arrived.
“Secret Service,” one man said, and they both flashed ID.
Zeke hadn’t been ready for this, and his first impulse was to kick the man in the crotch and run like hell.
“We’re just looking the platform over,” the agent said to Zeke. “What are you two men doing here?”
“We’re assembling and installing the podium,” Zeke replied.
“Let me just make a note of your name,” the agent said. Looking at the laminated ID badge hanging from Zeke’s pocket, he jotted down some information, then did the same with Rico. “How do we get under the platform?” the agent asked Zeke.
“There’s a door at the back, and one at the front,” Zeke replied.
“What are we going to find down there?”
“Nothing, except a closet where all the telephone, electrical, and sound-system wiring is led in.”
“Thanks, carry on,” the agent said, and the two men walked away.
Zeke went back to work, breathing easier.
When the quitting whistle blew, Zeke turned to Rico. “I’ll take it from here,” he said. “There’s not much more to do.”
“Whatever you say,” Rico replied. “See you tomorrow.”
Zeke continued to work on the podium as the rest of the work crew made their way off the Coliseum floor. Finally, he was alone. Using a power saw, he cut a section out of the floor under the podium, then hinged it, creating a trapdoor. He had planned this to give quick access to the wiring closet below. Nobody would think it was anything but a good idea.
He let himself down into the closet, switched on the light, and gazed at the wiring installation. Slowly, he identified each wire and where it led. Each wire was marked with a strip of masking tape, and its destination was written on the tape. He located the wire that would lead to the microphone, on the premise that, once the mike was installed and working, nobody would pay any further attention to it. The wire turned out to be red, which would help him identify it again later. He looked around the closet, which was nothing more than a six-foot-by-eight-foot framework of two-by-fours, clad in quarter-inch plywood. All that this room needed for his purposes, he decided, was a ceiling. He took some measurements, then went behind the platform where materials were stacked, found a piece of scrap plywood that was big enough, trimmed it with his power saw, and went back into the closet.
He cut a number of holes in it for the various bunches of wires to run through, then he reran all the wires and tacked the plywood to the framework. It was hardly noticeable, since it did not impede the work of the electricians, but now he had a gap of four inches between the new closet ceiling and the plywood that made up the floor of the platform. The gap would be there when he needed it, very near the new trapdoor.
He cleaned up after himself, gathered his tools, and went whistling home, content with his day’s work.
44
Will pulled his black bow tie tight and examined it closely. He had once seen Vance Calder perform that task in a movie, and his result had been a lot better than Will’s.
Kate came out of the dressing room, where she had been applying her makeup. “Better let me take a look at that,” she said.
“Wow,” Will breathed. “That is some dress!” It was black, short, and low-cut.
“I thought it would be good for the Hollywood glitterati to know that there are tits back East,” Kate replied coolly.
“How does it come off?” Will asked.
“Later; now let me at that bow tie.”
She did something to it, and when Will checked it in the mirror, it looked almost as good as Vance Calder’s. There was a rap on the bedroom door. “Come in,” Will said.
A Secret Service agent poked his head in.
“No bulletproof vests tonight,” Will said adamantly.
“No problem, Senator,” the agent replied. “We’ve already checked the name, date of birth, and social security number of every guest and every Calder employee, including the caterers. Everybody’s clean. The car is ready when you are.”
Will glanced at his watch: five-forty-five. They were to be there early for an early dinner with the Calders before the other guests arrived. “Are we ready, Kate?”
Kate smoothed the front of the dress. “We’re ready. Where’s Peter?”
The boy appeared from the kitchen, looking surprisingly mature in his dinner jacket.
“The starlets are going to be all over you,” Kate said, straightening his tie.
“That’s my dream in life,” Peter replied, kissing his mother carefully on the cheek, so as not to muss her makeup.
“I understand the Calders have paired you up with someone for dinner,” Will said.
“Oh, great!” Peter grunted. “I’ll have to entertain somebody’s granddaughter, I guess.”
“Every woman is somebody’s granddaughter,” Kate said, steering him toward the door.
For the occasion, the Secret Service had come up with a limousine that Will thought looked very presidential. The three of them piled into the rear with one agent and made themselves comfortable.
Peter pointed to a complicated telephone console with many buttons. “I’ll bet you could start World War III with that,” he said.
“Probably,” Will replied. “Anybody you’re mad at? I’ll order up a cruise missile.”
“How about the biology department at Choate?” Peter said. “Biology was never my best subject.”
It was only a short drive to the Calders’ Bel Air residence. A uniformed guard stood at the gate, along with a Secret Service agent, and a crowd of press had already gathered outside the gate. A galaxy of strobes went off at their approach, and Will waved through the window. “Kitty has only allowed a couple of pool cameras onto the grounds,” he said, “and a couple of print reporters.”
“It’s like a Hollywood opening,” Peter said.
They drove up to the house, which was a low, sprawling Spanish-style residence with a tiled roof. Vance Calder and his wife, Arrington, were waiting at the front door. Next to them stood Lou Regenstein, and Charlene Joiner was on his arm, in an Academy Award–class dress, with cascades of newly styled blond hair spilling over her shoulders.
“Well, here we go,” Kate said, eyeing Charlene.
“Don’t bite,” Will replied as they got out of the car.
There were handshakes and cheek pecks all around; then, as they went into the house, Will spotted what he thought must be the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. He recognized her immediately as the teenage star of a new television series that had gotten a ton of publicity lately.
“And here’s Peter’s date,” Vance Calder said. “Peter, this is Astrid Bergson; Astrid, this is Peter Rule.”
For just a moment, Peter had the expression of a felled ox, then he recovered himself and shook the girl’s hand.
Vance leaned over, and whispered to Kate, “Don’t worry, she’s only sixteen, too, and very sweet.”
They had entered a broad hallway that ran all the way through the house to the gardens beyond, and Vance steered them into the adjacent living room, where a butler was waiting with flutes of champagne on a silver tray.
Everyone chatted like old friends.
Peter and Astrid, Cokes in hand, stood near the fireplace. “I’ve seen you
r TV show,” he said. “I think it’s terrific.”
“Thank you,” the girl replied. “I hear you’re at Choate.”
“That’s right. How can you manage both school and the show?”
“Oh, there’s a law about that. I’m tutored every day, and my grades are very good. How are you enjoying L.A.?”
Well, mostly, I’ve limited myself to the pool at the Bel Air Hotel.”
“You should see some of the city while you’re here.”
“I’d love to do that,” he replied.
“How about I show you around some this weekend?”
“Fantastic!”
“I’m coming east in a couple of years,” she said. “My deal with the show is that I can leave when college starts. I’m planning to go to the Yale Drama School.”
“Yale sounds great,” Peter said. “I think I’ll go there, too.” He gave her his best smile. “I was thinking of Harvard, but what the hell?”
She laughed a wonderful, tinkling laugh, through gorgeous teeth.
Peter sighed.
They sat at a round table, talking animatedly, while four courses of extremely pretty Californian cooking were served, with accompanying wines. Will silently thanked Arrington Calder for having had the presence of mind to seat Kate and Charlene on opposite sides of the table. It occurred to him, with a start, that Peter was probably the only male at the table who had not slept with Charlene Joiner.
45
By the time they were on dessert, the noise level in the hallway outside the dining room had risen to a dull roar. The paying guests were arriving and, if the volume of their laughter was any indication, were already beginning to get their thousand dollars’ worth.
Arrington Calder set down her coffee cup. “I think it’s time for us to go and mingle with our guests. Will, we’ve a microphone set up on the terrace; perhaps you’d say a few words to them first?”
“Of course,” Will said.
Arrington took his arm and led him out of the dining room, through the hallway, and out onto a terrace, which was elevated over the broad rear lawn and gardens. Everybody followed. As they stepped onto the terrace, applause broke out.
Vance stepped up to the microphone. “Good evening, and thank you all for coming,” he said. “I think it’s time you all met the reason we’re here. Ladies and gentlemen, the next president of the United States, Senator Will Lee!”
The crowd roared its approval as Will stepped to the microphone. Finally the applause died. “Good evening to you all. First of all, I want to thank our hosts, Vance and Arrington Calder, for being so kind as to allow us all to invade their home this evening.”
Much applause.
“Second, I want to thank them, as well as Charlene Joiner and Lou Regenstein of Centurion Studios, for organizing this event, and for extorting so much money from all of you. It’s important for you to know that, although there is a limit of one thousand dollars per person that can be contributed to a candidate, there is still no limit on what an individual can contribute to the Democratic Party, which can use the funds in the general election. Lou Regenstein and his board of directors have been so wildly generous as to promise a million dollars to the party, and I hope each of you will consider following their example.”
Much laughter and applause.
“I’ve promised Lou that I’ll do everything in my power to see that that money is spent on my campaign, and not George Kiel’s!”
More laughter and applause.
“Now I’d like to introduce you to my family: This is my wife, Kate, and our son, Peter.” He put an arm around each of them and pulled them forward as more applause broke out. “Kate is here so that she could meet Vance Calder again, and Peter is here so that he could meet Astrid Bergson.”
Much laughter.
“This is one of Kate’s few campaign appearances since I announced, last January. As you may have heard, the national security depends on her being at her desk in Langley, Virginia, nearly all the time, and there’s a pretty good argument to be made that she is more important to her country there than on the campaign trail.”
More laughter.
“This is Peter’s first campaign appearance since he was twelve years old. He has been, of course, occupied with school, although it’s going to be very hard to get him to go back, after having met Astrid.”
More laughter.
“Tonight, I want to thank you for more than your financial contribution: I want to thank you for your personal contribution to the political life of your country. People from that far-reaching community we all think of as Hollywood have always taken an interest in national affairs, just as the nation has always taken an interest in them. So many of your faces are so well known to the American people that they have come to think of you as their neighbors out west, and they want to know where you stand when it’s time to choose the nation’s leaders. I am very proud and very grateful that so many of you are standing with me.”
Much applause.
“The Democratic convention opens tomorrow, and tonight, all across this city, there are other parties like this taking place, though perhaps not quite so well attended as this one. I don’t want you to think of your colleagues who are supporting other candidates as your opponents. By this time next week, our party will have chosen its candidates, and we will all be working together to see that they are elected. There will be parties, too, for candidates of the Republican party, and though you may rightly think of them as opponents, after the first Tuesday in November, we are all—Democrats and Republicans—going to have to work together to make this country all that it can be.
It is at the center—not the left or the right—where the work gets done, and that New Center is where we are all going to have to meet each other and our obligations to our country. We are all in this together, and together we will take this country into the new millennium!”
Will stepped back from the microphone to huge applause. He pulled Kate and Peter forward, and they all waved at the crowd.
When the applause had finally died, Vance Calder came to the microphone again. “Now that you’ve gotten your money’s worth, dinner is being served. We’ve felled a large number of oxen, and for those of you who are California vegetarians, we have denuded the San Joaquin Valley for your dining pleasure.”
Will, Kate, and Peter walked down the steps and onto the huge lawn where the guests were gathered.
Peter whispered into Will’s ear. “Now can I break off and talk to my date?”
“Sure,” Will whispered back, “but don’t do anything you wouldn’t want to see on the front page of the Los Angeles Times tomorrow.”
Peter fell back and took Astrid Bergson’s hand.
Will did his level best to shake every hand at the party. He and Kate wandered through the crowd, talking with the guests, laughing at jokes, and thanking everyone. Outside of Washington or Georgia, Will had never been to a party where there were so many familiar faces, faces that he had watched hundreds of times at the movies and on television. He posed for pictures with most of them.
Then there was a tug at his elbow, and Charlene was there. Kate had fallen back into the crowd.
“We need to talk alone,” Charlene said.
“Not even if you have a gun,” Will said, sotto voce, through a smile. “Not here, not with everyone taking pictures. I hope you understand.” He turned and grabbed an actor’s outstretched hand, thrilled to be saved from a tabloid fate.
46
If Will had felt busy before, the tempo of his existence increased markedly with the beginning of the convention. The delegates gathered and caucused, the platform committee met and argued, while Will’s representatives fought for his positions; deals were being made at every opportunity; and promises were made that would never be kept.
Will’s parents arrived. Billy and Patricia Lee were housed in a suite adjoining Will’s, and both began working the telephones, calling delegates in their hotel rooms and on their cell phones, extracting
assurances where they could. On the evening of the first ballot, Billy called a meeting in Will’s suite. He looked grim.
“All right, listen up,” he said, and the two dozen people in the suite grew quiet. “We’re not going to win the nomination tonight,” he said, and there was a collective gasp. “I’ve counted and re-counted, and we just don’t have the delegates. The good news is, George Kiel doesn’t have them either.” The room burst into babble again.
Will stood up. “Everybody shut up and listen to Dad,” he said.
Billy looked around, then continued. “I make it that Kiel is twelve to fourteen delegates short, and we’re about thirty-five short. What we have to do this evening is to make sure we don’t lose even a single delegate on the first ballot. If we can do that, then we’ll have a better shot on the second ballot, I think. It’s important that, after the first ballot, we pick up some delegates, even if it’s only half a dozen. I want instructions to go out to our people on the floor to tell our delegates to hold fast, and not expect to walk away with this thing. If we can get through two ballots tonight without losing, and maybe pick up a few votes, then we’ll have a real shot at winning tomorrow night. Now you’ve all got your lists of people to call. Will and I will be calling the delegation chairmen on the floor, shoring them up, and I want each of you to make sure that every one of our delegates with a personal phone gets at least one phone call on the floor. It’ll make ’em feel good. Now go to it!”
Most of the campaign workers left for a meeting room in the hotel where a phone bank had been set up. Each of them had a list of names and numbers to contact.
“Will,” Billy said, “what worries me most is California. They’ll hold on the first ballot, because they’ll have to, but on the second ballot, we’re going to lose some people.”
“Because of the Castle Point naval base?”
“That’s right. I’ve heard from some friends that Kiel’s people have been promising some of the California delegates that, if he’s elected, he won’t close the base.”