Hollywood (51 page)

“Him? W.G.?”

“No. No. Jim Phillips. He knows everything, and it beats me why Carrie keeps coming around like this unless …”

“They want to be paid off?”

Daugherty nodded. “Of course this’d come at a time when we’ve spent just about everything.”

“What about Ned McLean?”

But Daugherty’s active mind had moved on to other subjects. “Jake Hamon’s worth a million to us down in Oklahoma. But his price is a third of the Navy oil lands, and I don’t see how we can promise that.”

Jess had been immensely impressed by the large loud Oklahoma oil man with his showy mistress and extravagant ways. But Jess had seen no reason to trust him; neither did Daugherty. “W.G.’s counting on a deadlock.” Daugherty was thoughtful. “If Wood and Lowden get stuck they’ll stay stuck and there’s no compromise except W.G.”

“Johnson?”

“Never. He’s a red rag to the conservatives. But W.G. figures that maybe a quarter, maybe more, of the delegates will remember him from four years ago when he made that great speech to the convention. Or even from eight years ago when he nominated Taft, and since he’s stayed in touch with a lot of them, they’ll … I wish I was as sure of this as he is.”

Jess was puzzled. “I thought you was the one supposed to be charging him up?”

“That’s the way he wants it to look. He’s going to be all maidenly and blushy and modest with a lot of ‘I’m not worthy,’ while I’m the keen, hard-driving manager who seems to be prodding him, like a bullock home at sundown. ‘Course he’s the ideal middle-of-the-road candidate, which he thinks is what the country wants, and if that’s so …”

“You think he’ll make it?”

Daugherty shrugged. “How? All the money’s with Wood and Lowden, and
the Republican Party’s the money party. Jess, you remember Nan Britton, don’t you?”

Jess nodded. All Marion knew how, even as a very young girl, Dr. Britton’s daughter Nan had developed a crush on the handsome editor of the Marion
Star
. She had never made any secret of the fact that she used to cut out pictures of W.G. from the newspapers for her scrap-book; and she would even moon about the Mount Vernon house, to W.G.’s embarrassment and the Duchess’s rage. After Dr. Britton’s death, Nan had moved to New York City; and Jess assumed that by now she was married and settled down.

“She’s up in Chicago. She’s got a job as a secretary, and she’s living with her sister Elizabeth.”

“Nice-looking girls, both of them. I suppose they’re all married and … and grown up,” Jess added, vaguely. He felt the saliva begin to form in his mouth. He took out his handkerchief, ready to mop rather than spray, a habit that maddened Daugherty.

“Elizabeth is married.” Daugherty withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket. “To a man called Willits. He plays the fiddle or something for the Chicago Opera Company. Nan’s living with them. Here’s their address.”

“Why?”

Daugherty finished his tea and stared, moodily, at the travelling salesman across the smoky tavern. “W.G. has been carrying on with Nan for … I don’t know how long. I found out some time in 1917 when he got her a job as a secretary in New York and used to sneak up there to see her in these different hotels, where in one of them …” Daugherty stopped. “Well, that’s neither here nor there.”

“Carrie
and
Nan?” Jess, unable to be active with his own beloved Roxy, was filled with envy. On the other hand, with the Duchess for a wife, a man deserved some solace elsewhere. “Is she making trouble?” Jess understood blackmail well enough.

“No. Not yet anyway. She’s in love with him …”

“Is he in love with her?”

“What a question!” Daugherty looked at Jess with such disgust that, reflexively, Jess dried his lower lip just to make certain that he himself was not disgusting. “How do I know? What do I care? We’re politicians, for God’s sake. We love the people, the ones who vote, anyway. All I know is W.G.’s still sweet on her. He writes her letters.”

“Letters.” An alarm bell went off in Jess’s head.

“Yes. Letters.”

“Like President Wilson did to Mrs. Peck?”

“These are a bit homier, Jess.” Daugherty was sardonic. “W.G. swears there’s nothing compromising, but hell, any letter to a girl half your age, telling about hotel rooms and times and places, is going to look real bad.”

“You want me to buy the letters?”

Daugherty shook his head. “No. She won’t sell them. I’ve tried. I think she thinks someday the Duchess will die or disappear and she’ll marry W.G. But that’s not the problem.” Daugherty gave Jess an envelope which, from its size and heft, contained currency. “I want you to go to Chicago, and give her this money.”

“So then she
is
blackmailing him.”

“No. Child support. For their daughter, born last October.”

Jess stared at Daugherty, as though he’d just made a complicated joke that Jess was too dense to comprehend. Should he ask for the punch line again? “Does … does W.G. admit that it’s his?”

Daugherty nodded. “He helps out all he can.”

“But the convention’s in Chicago.” Jess was getting panicky.

“Convenient, isn’t it?”

On Sunday, June 6, 1920, Jess found himself for what was now the third time in the small parlor of the Willitses’ four-room apartment—6103 Woodlawn Avenue at the corner of Chicago’s Sixty-first Street. He had memorized the address.

Nan was alone and weeping. “I waited and waited at the Englewood Station, but he never got off.” Even now, with her red eyes and nose, she was an attractive woman. There was no sign of the baby, who was being boarded with a nurse nearby.

“Well, that’s why I’m here. W.G. was very upset. But the Duchess was with him every minute and there was no way he could get off at Englewood. But he sent me on to tell you he’d try tomorrow about this time, which is Sunday, so your sister—”

“Oh. I can get them to go to church or something.” Nan dried her eyes. Then she picked up a bamboo-framed photograph of herself holding a baby. “There’s Elizabeth Ann,” she said, “taken on the day she turned six months. He won’t see her, you know.”

“Well …” was the best that Jess could do.

“She is the spitting image of him, isn’t she? I just pray he’ll go over and
see her or maybe I’ll take her out in the park like I usually do and he can sort of stroll by in a casual way and say hello. What’s happening at the convention?”

“It don’t start till Tuesday and they won’t be voting till Friday. Nobody’s locked it up yet. I suspect the thing will be decided in smoke-filled rooms.” Jess, like most of the country, quite fancied the phrase, attributed widely by the press to Daugherty, who had given an interview to the effect that if the convention was deadlocked early, the Senate magnates would then decide, in a smoke-filled room, who was to get the nomination.

As of today, the
Literary Digest
poll showed Harding seeded sixth place in the hearts of his fellow Republicans, while according to the number of pledged delegates at the convention, Harding was fourth, with Wood, Lowden and Johnson each far ahead of him. It was a very long shot on which Jess had made only very small bets. Daugherty was busy but pessimistic. W.G. was oddly relaxed, as if he knew something others did not, while the Duchess was convinced that the stars had already made their choice. The previous week, Madame Marcia had been emphatic, and the Duchess kept repeating: “Trine aspect to the moon in the sign of Aries.”

“I’ve been reading how he’s stopped smoking and drinking entirely.”

“Well, that’s the Duchess. She doesn’t want any photographs of him with a cigar or, worse, a cigarette, which is what lounge-lizards smoke, so he just chews tobacco when no one’s looking. Chewing don’t show in a picture.” But Nan wasn’t listening. She was at a tall sideboard, where, among the dishes, there were stacks of newspaper cuttings of W.G. … “I think he’s put on a little too much weight here. But
here
, in the
Delineator
, he looks wonderful. That was taken when he was on Chautauqua, and I was staying down the road at a hotel where …”

“Dearie?” The voice was low; and entirely familiar to both of them. Jess jumped to his feet while Nan ran to open the door. There stood Senator Harding, who, when he saw Jess, stepped quickly into the room before Nan could embrace him. “I happened to be in the neighborhood,” said W.G. in a voice so matter-of-fact that Jess, if he had not known better, might have thought that an Ohio senator was simply paying a proper visit to a constituent’s daughter, currently domiciled out-of-state. “So I thought I’d drop in and see you and Elizabeth. At Judge Scofield’s specific request, back in Marion.”

“Elizabeth’s gone out. For the day.”

“Well, then I’d better be—”

“No. No. Do sit down. She’ll be back any minute. I mean, she …”

Jess was overwhelmed. Not even Roxy had ever done so much acting on his behalf as Nan and W.G. himself were doing. As Jess crossed to the door, W.G. said, “I think they’re all over at the Congress Hotel, at our headquarters. In the Florentine Room. Same room,” he turned politely to Nan, “as Theodore Roosevelt used back in 1912.”

Jess said good-by to the lovers, who ignored him.

The Florentine Room was a marvel of dark carved wood and gold-embossed leather and heavy metal chandeliers. Portraits of Harding hung on every wall, while refectory tables were covered with literature, buttons, straw hats. A dozen volunteers supervised the display, while Daugherty and the Duchess stood to one side of the main door, as if to protect themselves from a sudden horde of fans.

“Where’s Warren?” was the Duchess’s first question.

“I think he’s in your suite at the La Salle. I’ve been over to the Coliseum.” Jess had indeed visited the hall where the convention would take place, and he was much impressed by the latest acoustical sounding-boards at the back. “I also saw the suite you took in the Auditorium Hotel.” He turned to Daugherty, anything to avoid the Duchess’s hard blue stare. “Everything’s set up there. What about here?”

“We’ve got forty rooms here,” said the Duchess, “that’s seven hundred and fifty dollars a day for ten days. Daugherty’s spending money like it was water …”

“What else is it for now? We spend, and we elect …”

They were joined by George Christian, a hometown boy whom Harding had taken for a secretary. He was a dark intense capable young man of an old Marion family. “Well, we’ve got our people in every hotel where there’s a delegation. All information on every delegate is kept up to date here at headquarters. We’ve got five hundred full-time organizers, and by next Friday we expect to have close to two thousand. We’re just being real low-key, and cheery, and we sure hope you’ll remember the Senator if there’s a problem …”

At this moment the sound of male voices singing in unison drifted in from the lobby.

“My God,” said the Duchess, “what’s that?”

“You’re tone-deaf, Duchess,” said Daugherty. “That’s the Republican Glee Club of Columbus. Every day this time they’re going to sing their
hearts out here on the mezzanine, all seventy-five of them. Now they’re greeting …” Daugherty listened a moment and they all heard the mournfully sung phrase “Wabash far away.” “… the Indiana delegation. Then, in the evenings, they’re going around to all the hotels, where they’ll serenade all the other candidates, building up good will.”

“Trine of the moon,” muttered the Duchess to herself. Then she said, aloud, “They say the price for Southern delegates is now five thousand dollars a head.”

“That’s for the ones on sale,” Daugherty confirmed. “The committed come higher.”

The chairman of the Republican National Committee entered the Florentine Room, followed by various members of the press. Will Hays was very young and, to Jess’s critical eye, very ugly, with ears that stuck out, a pointed nose, no chin, and a somewhat mouse-like squeaking voice with a strong Indiana accent. He was supposedly neutral but everyone knew that he inclined to himself as the dark horse: he was a pet of the Senate cabal. “Somebody said the Senator was here.” When Hays saw the Duchess, he gave her a rodentine smile and shook her hand. “Mrs. Harding, you tell the Senator anything we can do we’ll do. The Credentials Committee is here in the hotel, in the annex, and if there’s any hitch, we’re rarin’ to go.”