The Sweetman Curve Page 8

  Carl did not reply. His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair.

  ‘They couldn’t understand,’ Henry went on, ‘how you could expect a voting swing of six to seven percent in your favour. You don’t even know what the major voting issues of 1980 are going to be. And you don’t have any kind of an opinion-poll profile on how people might accept you as President.’

  Carl looked at Henry Ullerstam for a long moment, and then he said, ‘What are your accountants trying to tell me, Henry? That the people may not like me?’ Henry raised his hands guardedly. ‘You have to understand that accountants always look on the black side. I mean, they’re professional pessimists. But they point out that you’ve been linked in the past with some pretty – I guess you’d call them discredited postures. And because of that, they’re not entirely convinced that the voters are going to support you.’

  He added, as gently as he could ‘Your home state is one thing, Carl, but the nation is another. George McGovern found that out the hard way.’

  Carl felt a tight-chestedness that was only partly due to physical exhaustion, and at that, a small part. ‘Last night,’ he said, ‘I told you that I guaranteed my success. I didn’t just estimate it, or guess it. I guaranteed it.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Henry, finding a fragment of muffin in his lap and popping it into his mouth. ‘I’d like to know how.’

  ‘I can’t tell you how. Not yet, anyway.’

  ‘Carl,’ Henry said with an edge on his voice, ‘this isn’t just a question of phoning up American Express and checking your credit rating. We’re giving you thirteen million dollars, one way or another, and for thirteen million dollars you have to tell us how. Do you know what risks we’re running, washing that money? We have a trading corporation in Canada, and we have a whole offshore oil-rig project, both specially and specifically set up to launder your campaign funds.’

  Carl was silent for almost a minute, his hands clasped across his belly. He appeared to be thinking deeply, and Henry Ullerstam watched this process with an expression that was both sardonic and cautionary. As he watched, he puffed away at his cigarette.

  Eventually, Carl said, ‘There’s a tide, you know, in politics, and that tide is the will of the people. First they want one kind of life, then they want another. First they want censorship, then they want free speech. First they want welfare, then they want every man-jack to stand up for himself.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Henry, flatly.

  ‘This tide isn’t regular, like the tide of the sea. It doesn’t seem to have any predictable ebb and flow. It may flood in support of the GOP for ten years, and then unexpectedly turn overnight, and dredge up the Democrats.’

  ‘Nicely put,’ said Henry.

  ‘Up until now,’ Carl continued, warming to his subject, ‘candidates have tossed themselves into this tide like a collection of bottles with messages inside them, and hoped that the tide would take enough notice of their messages to wash them safely up on the shore. Getting elected has been a random, haphazard, helpless kind of business, with no real science applied to it at all. A little marketing, yes. But not science.’

  Henry listened to Carl patiently. He had eight houses across America, including two sprawling antebellum mansions in Virginia and North Carolina. He had six private airplanes, fifteen automobiles, two hundred and nine servants, a wife, and three authenticated Van Goghs. He was regarded by most Americans with a sort of suspicious fondness, especially after his practical joke of inviting a prominent Republican statesman and his family to a ‘fancy dress’ ball, where they discovered on their arrival as five leafy cabbages that they were the only ones in costume.

  Henry was witty, pithy, usually charming but unusually astute, especially for a millionaire, and that was why he deemed it a necessary chore to listen to Carl X. Chapman.

  Carl stood up, and went across to the window. The girl in the brown bikini was lying on her back now, and there was a tantalizing cleft in her tight briefs. He reluctantly raised his eyes towards Collins Avenue, and the slow-moving morning traffic between the palm trees. He wished, with intense fervour, that Elspeth didn’t always make him feel so guilty.

  ‘I found out, Henry, about a year-and-a-half ago, that there are ways of predicting how and when popular political opinion will turn in future years.’ Carl said this as if it were an announcement of such importance that Henry should applaud. He did not.

  Henry Ullerstam merely said, without any of the irony he felt, ‘You found out about this, but nobody else did?’

  ‘Nobody else in politics. You see, the trouble with political forecasters and pollsters is that they think in political terms. They forget that their voters are people, not abstract decisions on a voting machine, and because they forget that they’re people, they forget that their voters live, and grow, and change their minds, just like people do.’

  Henry was silent for a while. Then he said, ‘Is that all? Just tides, and beaches, and bottles with messages, and people?’

  ‘I’m trying to explain it simply,’ said Carl. ‘It’s a little more scientific than that.’

  ‘How much more?’

  Carl turned. Behind him, the sun shone through the salt-misted window to form an aurora, and Henry almost wondered if he was receiving a divine hint to trust in Carl X. Chapman’s political future. But Henry was an oilman, and a financier, and he didn’t believe in divine hints.

  Carl said, ‘You’re not doubting my word, are you? You’re not saying that Bay Oil doesn’t have any confidence in me?’

  Henry shook his head. ‘Carl, we have confidence. We have faith. But you’re asking us to spend thirteen million dollars, and the majority of that is outside the strictest bounds of the law. A sanction for that kind of political investment needs to be supported by evidence. As it stands, we may be better off putting thirteen million dollars on a horse at Santa Anita.’

  Carl was about to say something peppery, but then changed his mind. He gave a small smile that meant, ‘Okay, you win,’ and walked back to his chair.

  ‘Listen, Henry,’ he said as he sat down, ‘every presidential election has its wild, unpredictable factors. Who can ever tell if a candidate’s health is going to stand up to the strain, or if some headcase is going to step out of the crowd and assassinate him? Nobody. But what I’ve been able to do is reduce the number of unpredictable factors involved and in particular I’ve cut out the most unpredictable factor of all – the will of the people.

  ‘I promise you that I can predict within a margin of five million votes how this country is going to respond to its presidential candidates in 1980.’

  ‘That’s presuming that the presidential candidates are Jimmy Carter and you,’ Henry said.

  ‘Well, that’s right. I mean, there’s still a percentage of doubt about the result of the primaries, but when you look at the potential opposition for nomination, it doesn’t really amount to much. There’s Mullins, of course, but he’s already gotten his feet wet in this hydroelectric scandal in Iowa. Then there’s Krolnik. But whoever heard of a President called Krolnik?’

  ‘Don’t be so sure,’ Henry put in. ‘Krolnik’s smart.’

  ‘Smart, sure. But not so smart enough. He’s done well in Colorado, but he’s too young. He’s all Adam’s apple and cloaked socks. The East doesn’t like him, and the South believes he’s a junior Richard Nixon.’

  Henry said, ‘I’m going to have myself a drink. Join me?’ and tinkled a small handbell that stood on the table.

  Carl looked at Henry narrowly, then said, ‘You’re going to have to trust me, Henry, at some-point or another. I’m asking you to trust me now. I’m asking you to go back to your finance people and say, ‘‘Carl X. Chapman is going to be up there in 1980, and that’s all there is to it.”’

  Henry smiled. ‘I wish I could. Unfortunately, you’ve missed a couple of convincing points.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Come on, Carl, you know what they are. Such as, whether this tide of public opinion which you
say you can predict so well is going to turn in your favour or Jimmy Carter’s favour? And such as, what are you doing to do about it if it turns against you?’

  Carl was silent for a while. Then, in a soft voice, he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about that, and working on that, for quite a while. You’re right, of course. The problem isn’t predicting the future so much as controlling the future once you’ve predicted it.’

  ‘And how can you?’ asked Henry, smiling but humourless. ‘We’ll have to know, Carl, before we can pay you the money.’

  Carl looked at Henry Ullerstam wearily but keenly. In the would-be President’s face, Henry saw a lifetime of political experience, years of in-fighting, decades of disappointments, success, ambition, argument. He knew Carl set himself up as a father-figure, but Henry hadn’t been much more than a schoolboy in knee britches when he had first divined the motive forces behind his own father, Albert Ullerstam, and he knew more about the complicated urge for power and wealth than Carl could ever guess.

  Carl said, ‘How far can I trust you, Henry? Can I trust you with my whole life?’

  Henry shrugged. ‘If you’re elected President, I’ll be trusting you with mine.’

  A Nordic-looking blonde in a short blue dress and a freshly pressed maid’s apron came into the room and said, ‘You wanted something, Mr Ullerstam?’

  Henry nodded. ‘Bring us a jug of dry martini, Trudy. Martini suit you. Senator?’

  Carl sat back, appraising the maid. ‘I think you’re out to kill me before I make my inaugural speech,’ he joked. ‘Sure, martini’s fine.’

  Henry lit another cigarette and looked at Carl with new seriousness. ‘If we didn’t have some trust between us, Carl, we wouldn’t have gotten this far. Come on, now, I’m already as deeply incriminated as you are. It’s the way that friends have to work. I just need to know how you’re going to predict your 1980 result, and if it isn’t in your favour, how you’re going to make sure that it will be.’

  Carl lowered his eyes. He felt strangely humble in front of Henry, as if Henry were his conscience. He had already gone a long way along the road to convincing himself that everything he was doing to get himself elected in 1980 was justified by the crying need of America for a strong, protective President; but this was the first time he had had to convince someone else.

  ‘Before I tell you, I want you to understand that what we’re talking about is nothing less important than the destiny of America. I want you to understand what I say in that context.’

  ‘Okay,’ replied Henry. ‘I’m ready for you, in that context.’

  Carl looked uneasy. He hesitated for a while, as if he wasn’t sure whether he ought to tell Henry anything or not. But he had worked forty years for this, and his mother had died for this, and his father had wept in a dime store in Minnesota.

  He said, thickly, ‘It’s going to sound shocking, and it’s going to sound outrageous. But it’s the first positive, long-term action that anyone ever took to save this country from itself.’

  Ten

  She came awkwardly down the steps of the thirty-foot cruiser, and peered into the gloom. The Venetian blinds were angled so that only a few bars of sunlight lit the interior, and the man himself was sitting in the far corner, his face clouded in cigarette smoke.

  ‘Mr Radetzky?’

  ‘Come on in. You’re late,’ he said.

  She clattered on her stacked heels down the last few steps, and then walked into the cabin and looked around. She was chewing gum loudly, and she had the incongruous lack of self-confidence that characterizes very pretty girls with very poor educations. After a couple of turns of the cabin, she sat herself down on a bench seat opposite her host, and crossed her long legs with a lack of grace that was almost hilarious.

  ‘I never went on a boat like this before,’ she remarked, chewing gum and grinning.

  The man gave a polite little cough. ‘If you can help me out, you might even get to own a boat like this for yourself. There’s a lot of money in it.’

  She giggled, for no apparent reason. She was a tall girl, with striking red hair, a splash of freckles, and green eyes that sparkled as bright as ‘go’ lights. She had a white cotton bolero top that almost burst its buttons, a bare midriff, and scarlet shorts with a Popeye decal and a white rope belt. As the doorman of the Doral had noted: ‘Sex she’s got, but class – never.’

  The man said, ‘You had a good time with Senator Chapman last night, I believe?’

  The girl frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

  The man waved away the cigarette smoke with his hand. He was young, not much more than twenty-seven or twenty-eight, with an oval, blue-chinned face that looked like an egg that had been dipped in writing ink. His black hair was cut in a college crop, and he wore a shiny blue Nixonite suit, with white collar and necktie. There was a calm, composed, professional air about him, as if he knew exactly what he was doing at all times, and why.

  He said, ‘We don’t have to play hide-and-go-seek. Miss Methven. I know what you did, and I can prove it, and I’m not here to report you for it, or run you in for it, or even snitch to your mother about it.’

  The girl looked a little twitchy. ‘I did it fair and square,’ she said. ‘I just did what I was told. The man paid me, and I just did what I was told.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Mr Radetzky calmly. Behind him, through a row of parallel chinks in the blinds, she could see the water of Biscayne Bay, and the noon traffic moving to and fro along Collins Avenue.

  The girl said, ‘What does “sure” mean? If you’re not going to report me for it, or snitch about it, why did you ask me here? You’re going to give me a medal of commendation or something?’

  Mr Radetzky almost smiled. ‘For your performance, you deserve one. Look at this.’

  He pressed a button beside him, and with a quiet hum, a white movie screen descended from the bulkhead. Then he pressed another button, and a projector started to whirr, filling the screen first with brilliant white light, then with flickering numbers, then, to the girl’s fascinated horror, with a grainy but explicit film of two naked people on a wide, king-sized bed, a redheaded girl in nothing more than black stockings and black garters, and a heavy-bellied man with grey hair.

  ‘Oh my God,’ she whispered. ‘I’m in the movies.’

  On the screen, the red-headed girl caressed and fondled the elderly man, and straddled him with stretched garters and swinging breasts. Then she kissed him all down his grey hairy belly, and guzzled at him with obvious relish. The grey-haired man kept his eyes tight shut and his face contorted until it was all over, until the girl looked up at him with creamily anointed lips and chin. There was no soundtrack.

  The film faded, and finished. Mr Radetzky switched off the projector, and pressed the button which retracted the screen. Then he looked at the girl with a patient smile.

  ‘Your name is Dolores Methven,’ he said. ‘You are a part-time go-go dancer, part-time hatcheck girl, part-time lady for hire. You live with your widowed mother in El Portal. You were employed last night by men working for Mr Henry Ullerstam of Bayshore Oil. They paid you three hundred dollars to go to Room 1126 at the Doral Hotel and give an unidentified old gentleman the time of his life.’

  Mr Radetzky coughed, and took out a pack of Luckies. He offered them to Lollie Methven, but she shook her head and kept on chewing her gum.

  ‘What neither you nor Mr Ullerstam nor your old gentleman knew was that your old gentleman was under close surveillance by me. Your time of arrival at the hotel was logged, as was your time of departure. Everything you did in Room 1126 was recorded on film.’

  Lollie Methven blinked uncomfortably. She said, ‘I was doing my job. I was doing what they asked me. Would you turn down three hundred dollars for sucking some old guy’s dork? Well, maybe you would.’

  Mr Radetzky raised his hand. ‘I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m not blaming you, I’m not running you in. I’m a private investigator, not a cop. I’m working for Mrs Chapman
on divorce evidence against Senator Chapman, that’s all.’

  ‘Well, isn’t that all the evidence you need? The movie?’

  Mr Radetzky shook his head. He seemed to Lollie like a horribly cold fish, the kind of john you went to bed with, and then discovered he had freezing feet. She could imagine him getting his rocks off by balling a girl when he was dressed up in rubbers and a raincoat, his pockets filled with mackerel.

  ‘What you did last night with Senator Chapman was sufficient evidence for a successful divorce in law,’ said Mr Radetzky. ‘But it wasn’t enough for Mrs Chapman. She wants incontrovertible evidence of adulterous intercourse before she’s going to feel satisfied that the Senator is seeking more than, well, casual relief.’

  Lollie’s gum-chewing slowed down. ‘What do you want me to do about it?’ she asked him. ‘Ball the guy in front of his wife?’

  ‘You don’t have to go that far. All I want you to do is agree to fly to Las Vegas next Wednesday, meet up with Senator Chapman at the Scirocco Hotel, go to bed with him, and make sure that you have intercourse. All the surveillance and collection of evidence you can leave to me.’

  Lollie’s eyes narrowed. ‘This isn’t some kind of setup, is it? I’m a girl doing what she does best, Mr Radetzky, that’s all.’

  Mr Radetzky shook his head again. ‘You don’t have anything to worry about. All you have to do is go when you’re called, do what you’re told, and one thousand dollars, in cash, is all yours.’

  He took out a maroon Cartier billfold, and produced a pair of hundred dollar bills, both freshly minted.

  ‘These,’ he said quietly, ‘are a small expression of our confidence in you.’

  Lollie Methven stared at the money for a long time. Mr Radetzky then placed the money on the cabin table. Beneath their feet, the cruiser gently rose and dipped in the swell of Biscayne Bay.

  ‘You’ll call me?’ Lollie asked uncertainly. ‘And you’ll pay for my fare to Las Vegas?’

  Mr Radetzky nodded.

  ‘Okay, then,’ said Lollie. ‘The guy’s a goddamned bourgeois anyway. I’ll do it.’