Capable of Honor (69 page)

Chapter 2

“There you are,” Ted said, glancing up with his pleasant smile, strained and tired now after his restless night and all the strategies that had kept it company. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

“How could I refuse,” Cullee asked with an answering smile that held many curious things including irony, tension, and something the Governor sensed was probably contempt. “A candidate for President—the Governor of my state—my leader—”

“Never that, I suspect,” Ted said with a sudden serious sigh, aware of how quiet the room was, although in the corridors and through the streets below there swarmed the jostling, wondering, rumor-ridden members of the reawakening convention. “Never that.…And yet I’d like to hope so. That’s why I invited you here.”

Cullee raised a giant hand and shook his head.

“Maybe. That isn’t why I am here. I’m here to see how a man looks when he’s been responsible for what you’ve been responsible for in the last forty-eight hours. I want to find out how you rationalize it.”

“How does one rationalize anything in politics?” Governor Jason asked with an abrupt sharpness. “In terms of power and in terms of what can be accomplished by what has been done.”

“And what has been accomplished?” Congressman Hamilton inquired. “Crystal Knox has lost her baby and Orrin’s probably been driven out of it. But what else has been accomplished?”

“I have moved within a handful of votes of being the nominee for President of the United States,” Governor Jason said quietly. “That’s what’s been accomplished.”

“It’s great if you can live with it,” Cullee remarked politely. He glanced at the painting that now stood propped atop the television set. “I see Doña Valuela’s here. What have you been doing, praying to her or asking her forgiveness?”

“LeGage Shelby thinks I can persuade you to put me in nomination,” the Governor said quietly. “I told him he was crazy.”

“He is,” Cullee said with the dark annoyance that the name of his ex-roommate could always arouse in him. “He always has been. Why doesn’t he nominate you himself? That would look good, the head of DEFY up there on the platform telling the white folks he hates what to do. DEFY’s the black Ku Klux Klan, isn’t it? You need their support, don’t you? Have your boy LeGage do it.”

“I would rather have Cullee Hamilton, next United States Senator from California, do it,” Ted said calmly. “I would much rather—if you would like me,” he said with a sudden acid, “to put it in the terms you people seem to love to lacerate yourselves with—I would much rather have a respectable Negro do it than a tramp. Clever tramp though he is.”

“Oh, yes, he’s clever,” Cullee agreed. “So clever that I’ll bet you’re not going to know exactly what to do with him, if by any chance you make it. What does he want to be, Secretary of State? He’s about that modest.”

“He hasn’t said and I haven’t asked.”

“The time may be coming when there’s going to be an awful lot of saying and an awful lot of asking. I hope you’re going to be ready for it, if you have the chance.”

“I may not have it,” the Governor conceded quietly, “though I think I will. Tell me: what would it take to get you to nominate me?”

Cullee smiled, a not very pleasant smile.

“You don’t have the price. What it would take for me to nominate you would be for you not to run, and that’s a little contradictory, isn’t it?”

“You feel very confident about California, don’t you?” Ted remarked thoughtfully. An expression almost of distaste crossed his visitor’s handsome face.

“Hell, I don’t feel confident of anything. All I know is that I’ve told them what I believe and they’ve given me the primary—just barely. I’m going to keep on telling them what I believe and they may give me the election in November. But I don’t know.”

“And you don’t need any help.”

The Congressman snorted.

“Of course I need help, who doesn’t? But not from you, Ted. Or anyway, not as much as you need mine.”

“Will I have it if I win the nomination?”

Cullee shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’d have to think it over pretty carefully, wouldn’t I?”

“But you don’t know now.”

“Nope,” Congressman Hamilton said, getting slowly to his feet. “I don’t know now. Where’s Ceil?”

“She’s gone down to the ranch.”

Cullee nodded.

“That figures. Under the circumstances.”

“Who are you going to nominate?” the Governor asked. Cullee grinned down from his great height.

“Whoever makes the best offer.”

“I hope you really know what you’re doing, Cullee,” Ted Jason said softly. “Because the consequences of a mistake could be quite serious for your future.”

“That makes two of us,” Cullee observed. “See you at the Cow Palace.”

“Indubitably,” the Governor said.

After his visitor left he sat for several minutes staring straight ahead, his face devoid of expression. He knew who the next claimant to be his nominator would be, and he did not see exactly how he was going to avoid him, now that the choice he had maneuvered ’Gage Shelby into suggesting had reacted exactly as he had expected. A sudden look of sadness, surprisingly frustrated, surprisingly deep, touched his face for a second. Then he turned back to the television set murmuring softly to itself, the newspapers strewn across the beds. His expression hardened and became secure again. His friends were with him and the battle did not loom so frightening after all. He could not, in fact, have wished for endorsements more effective or encouraging than he had:

JASON BANDWAGON ROLLING TOWARD VICTORY, the
Chronicle
said. CONVENTION BREAKING TO JASON IN ALL DELEGATIONS, WORLD HAILS GOVERNOR AS PEACEMAKER,
The Greatest Publication
reported. JASON, VICTORY IN SIGHT, PONDERS ANTI-WAR ADMINISTRATION, the
Post
eagerly echoes … T.J. CONFIDENT OF VICTORY AS CONVENTION ROARS TO PEAK … GOVERNOR RACING TO VICTORY IN “CONVENTION OF CENTURY” … CONFIDENT JASON MAY TURN TO FELLOW GOVERNOR FOR V.P., cried all the rest.

And there was Walter Dobius’ column that began, just as he had written it last night, “At last America has a leader, washed to the top on a wave of repugnance against both the Hudson-Knox foreign policy and the violence which its supporters have brought to this otherwise decent convention.…”

And all the columns that dutifully followed his lead, and the earnestly agreeing editorials that chorused solemnly, “America’s innate political morality has a great chance to re-establish itself today when the San Francisco convention votes, as we believe it will, to give its presidential nomination to that fighting champion of human decency and world peace. Governor Edward M. Jason of California.…”

And the words of Frankly Unctuous the Anchor Man and all his colleagues of decibel, kilowatt, and little glowing screen, suavely, smoothly, insistently pouring forth to their fellow citizens every fifteen minutes or less from commentary, round table, analysis, and news report: “An apparently almost irresistible tidal wave for Governor Ted Jason of California is sweeping this convention today. The signs of Jason victory are everywhere apparent as the forces of President Harley M. Hudson and Secretary of State Orrin Knox, in obvious disarray, strive desperately to turn back a demand from delegates and country alike that apparently is not to be denied.…”

And everywhere through the hotels, in the rooms, along the corridors, over the constantly jangling telephones, in the coffee shops and dining rooms and the hectic lobbies awash with shouting, excited people, everywhere on the streets outside where the crowds swirled and the bands played, the Jason agents traveled, saying, “You see what the
Chronicle
says? You see this headline out of New York? You hear Frankly Unctuous on television just now? Don’t be a fool, Manny! Get on the bandwagon before it’s too late! We’ll know who’s for us and who’s against us, you know! You think the Governor will forget it if you help hold that delegation against him? You got another think coming, Manny!”

And so the bandwagon grew even as he sat there, and the psychology worked, or seemed to work, and everywhere in the beautiful city emerging finally from the fog to bask in another diamond day the forces of Harley Hudson and Orrin Knox were indeed, or seemed to be, in disarray.

At the Huntington, however, the Speaker and Senator Munson would never have known it to watch the portly, fatherly, apparently entirely unperturbed figure that leaned comfortably back in an armchair and read the papers clamoring his defeat with an occasional “Tut, tut!” or a mild, “My, my!” or even, now and then, a calm, “Is that a fact, now?”

Finally he tossed them aside and gestured toward Frankly Unctuous, who was just explaining for the twentieth time this morning why a Jason victory was inevitable.

“Will you turn that fluff artist off?” he requested mildly. “I’ve heard his requiem for my hopes enough times to get the drift, I think. A little silence would now be very helpful.”

“Right,” the Speaker said, rising and crossing to snap off the machine. “He hasn’t convinced you, then.”

“Bill,” the President said, “on the day I pay serious attention to that biased so-and-so I will cash in my chips.”

“Not everybody,” Senator Munson suggested, “has your ability to perceive his true nature with such startling clarity. I suspect that a great many people believe he’s telling them the truth. A great many people like delegates, for instance.”

The President shrugged.

“I think this convention has reached the point where it’s utterly impossible to count noses. I don’t think anybody can accurately say at this moment how it’s going to go. Do you. Bill?”

“N—o,” the Speaker said, “except as the propaganda is carrying some weight with some delegates, like Bob says. Could be Ted’s people don’t have to persuade very many.”

“How many are we persuading?” the President inquired. “I assume you haven’t stopped your efforts.”

“Hardly,” Bob Munson said. “Everybody’s busy. But I must admit all this—” he gestured at the triumphant headlines, the columns and editorials somebody had marked with a black grease-pencil, the silent television screen momentarily robbed of its many pompous, authoritative presences—“is having its effect. We need—” he paused.

“We need an effect ourselves,” the President said. “All right, I’ve got one. In due course it will appear. In the meantime, keep calm and don’t panic. I’m not.”

“No,” the Majority Leader said dryly. “I can see that. What is this—effect?”

“Oh, you’ll be there,” the President said, somewhat archly. Then he grinned. “Aren’t these pixyish people annoying, though, in the midst of serious business? Part of the effect is Orrin. Who will be here,” he added pointedly, “in another ten minutes.”

“You don’t want us to stay around and help,” the Speaker suggested. The President became serious but shook his head.

“No. I don’t need any help or any witnesses. What I have to say to Orrin I have to say to him alone. How’s Crystal doing?”

“Hal says she’s coming along very well,” Senator Munson said.

“You’ve seen Hal.”

“Yes, he showed up at the room a few minutes ago. Dolly ordered breakfast sent up and made him eat some, after which he said he’d like to keep busy, so I sent him off to the California delegation with Lafe.”

“Good for him,” the President said. “Good assignment, too.”

“I thought his presence around Ted’s own delegation might be salutary in making a few people think about the implications of what happened last night,” Senator Munson said grimly. “I want him out on the floor when the session starts, too. I don’t want the convention to forget it, even if”—and again he made his comprehensive, contemptuous gesture toward Walter’s world—“everybody else has apparently agreed to bury it as far out of sight as possible.”

“We’ve got a new rule today,” the Speaker said dryly. “Law and order’s the ticket now. National Guardsmen all over the place and nary a storm trooper in sight. It’s touching.”

“And the only place where it all continues,” the President said softly, “although he may perhaps think it’s not so, is in the mind and heart of the man who let it begin, and in the unforgiving and unrelenting minds and hearts of those who did his errands. Because now they have him in thrall in a way he won’t entirely realize until he looks back and sees how far he’s gone from the point of integrity where he first accepted their help.” He sighed. “Poor Ted.”

“Poor Ted,” Bob Munson said shortly, “may very well take the Presidency of the United States away from you, you know. I don’t think I’d waste so many tears on Poor Ted.”

“No, he won’t,” the President said calmly. “And if he does, it’s still poor Ted, because he’s gone now. He’s made his bargain with the devil and the devil won’t quit. Which poor Ted, like all men too smart to be humble, doesn’t believe. Which is why, poor Ted.…Be sure and have Anna Bigelow preside again this afternoon, will you, Bill?”

The Speaker looked surprised.

“Why? The poor girl was a nervous wreck this morning after it was all over.”

The President chuckled.

“Because I want to see her face when I make my little effect.”

“Shame on you,” Senator Munson said with a smile. “I don’t think you’re taking this seriously at all, Mr. President.”

“Oh, yes, I am,” the President said, suddenly sober. “Now, get out, both of you, please. Go out and get votes. I’ll see you at the hall shortly after three.”

“Good luck with our friend,” Bob Munson said.

“Good luck with everything,” said the Speaker.

The President nodded.

“I’ve had pretty good luck with things up to now in this office. I aim to keep it that way if I can.”

He could see that his visitors, though they put a good face on as they left, were deeply worried and thinking: poor Harley, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But poor Harley did, he told himself as he put in a call to the St. Francis and requested the support of the troubled party at the other end.

“I think it would be most helpful,” he said.

“But, Mr. President—” and there was a heavy sigh, lonely and forlorn, which he had never expected to hear from that source. One smart man was humbled, he could tell that.

“You’re about to take one step,” he suggested. “Aren’t you? I have you badly figured if you aren’t, I’ll say that.”