Ah, Treachery!

Chapter 31

Harold Finch, the newly elected U.S. Representative from a safe Democratic district in Ohio, railed throughout dinner at the enormous cost of running for public office. Millicent Altford listened, mostly in silence, and ate her crab cakes. When she was done she pushed her plate an inch away, leaned slightly forward and interrupted the Congressman to ask, “Would you really like to know why you’re here in Washington and Joey Sizemore’s not?”

Sensing a trap, the Congressman frowned and said, “I like to think it’s because I ran the better campaign.”

“What d’you two guys really know about Sizemore?”

“He was about the last of the big-band Congressmen,” Will MacArthur said and looked surprised when no one chuckled.

“Yeah, right,” she said. “Hell, Joey’s so old he can remember Herbert Hoover, and the Depression to him is just like day before yesterday. When he first got elected way back in nineteen-fifty-four he’d been director of organization for the CIo’s Packinghouse Workers. Ask your average guy today what CIO stands for and he’ll probably tell you Chief Information Officer.”

“What does it stand for?” MacArthur said. “I forget.”

“Look it up,” she said.

“We’re all well aware of Joey’s glorious record,” the Congressman said. “God knows we heard about it enough. But the truth is he simply got old and out of touch. It happens.”

“He wasn’t out of touch,” she said. “He was out of money. You out-spent him three to one in the primary and coasted through the general. And maybe we’ll get back to that, but first I’m going to tell you about me and Joey Sizemore before he ever went to Congress.”

MacArthur looked at his watch, making no effort to sneak a glance.

Altford grinned at him. “Ever hear of Liberty magazine, Will?”

“Of course.”

“I doubt it. Well, Liberty used to run a little time schedule just above each article. Reading time: three minutes twenty-two seconds — or seven minutes fourteen seconds. The listening time for the story about Joey Sizemore and me’ll take six minutes nineteen seconds, so you might as well stop squirming.”

“I’ve always been interested in political history,” MacArthur said.

“No, you haven’t,” she said. “You got a little interested after you hired on with the Congressman here, but before that you were primarily interested in wills, escrows, insurance, mortgages and estate planning.”

The Congressman grinned. “Did her research, Will.”

“You betcha,” Altford said. “Anyway, in nineteen-fifty-two I was fresh out of college and working at Foote, Cone and Belding in Chicago. I’d decided the country was going straight to hell unless it elected Adlai Stevenson President. So I went down to Stevenson headquarters in Chicago and volunteered my services. I finally got in to see what may’ve been a deputy assistant campaign manager. It was a typical campaign office for the times. One big room. Lots of desks. Typewriters. Ringing phones. Hot as hell. Noisy. And then there was this fifty-year-old slob sitting behind one of the desks.

“Sitting to one side of him was a smooth redheaded guy of about thirty or thirty-one. I tell the slob my name and that I want to help out in the campaign and he tells me they aren’t hiring. I tell him I’m volunteering part-time and he tells me I don’t talk like I’m from around there. I tell him that’s because I’m not, I’m from Dallas, but I work at Foote, Cone.

“Then the slob asks who sent me and I’m about to tell him no one sent me when the redheaded guy says, ‘I sent her.’

“The slob says, ‘Well, if you sent her, you find her a slot.’

“The redhead, of course, is Joey Sizemore and he takes me outside where we catch a cab and head for the old Morrison Hotel that they tore down years ago. We ride up to the eleventh floor and go into a big room that has two desks, two phones on each desk, a secretary called Norma, who’s at least sixty, and nothing else.

“Joey introduces me to Norma, tells me she used to be a senior long-distance telephone operator with Southwestern Bell, uses a key to open a desk drawer and hands me a typewritten list of names with addresses and phone numbers that’s about an inch thick. It was the Fat Cat List. Every Democrat in the country who had an estimated net worth of one hundred thousand or more, which’d be about a million today.”

Altford paused, sipped some water, and went on. “All I had to do was call each name and talk whoever answered into contributing a minimum of one thousand dollars to the Stevenson campaign. Norma had this sexy contralto voice and placed each call person-to-person, working east to west. All operator-assisted then. No Touch-Tone. No direct-dialing. Ancient times.

“I asked Sizemore what to say. He said since I was in the ad business, I’d think up something. There were almost two thousand names on that list and we called every damn one of them. A lot of them twice.”

“What was your batting average?” the Congressman asked.

“Point five ninety-three.”

“Good Lord.”

“That’s when I learned what makes people give money to politicians.”

The Congressman smiled. “Is it a secret?”

She shook her head. “Fear and flattery.”

Still smiling, Congressman Finch said, “What about hope for a better tomorrow?”

“Forget hope,” she said.

There was a silence until MacArthur said, “But Stevenson lost.”

The Congressman sighed long and deeply and after it ended Altford asked, “How much did it cost you to beat Joey Sizemore in the primary — nine hundred thousand, a million?”

“Close.”

“Your money?”

“I don’t have that kind of money,” he said.

“Well, not many congressional candidates do until they get re-elected a few times and build up their war chests. I sent Joey a bundle of one hundred thousand and he spent it smart. If I’d’ve sent him another hundred thousand, he’d’ve whipped your butt.”

The Congressman smiled again. “Why didn’t you?”

“Because I knew he’d be vulnerable in the general election. Joey Sizemore’s not quite Little Rock’s type. The Republicans sensed this and were all set to spend a ton of money, if Joey’d won the primary. But he didn’t, you did and the GOP backed off.”

There was another silence until MacArthur said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Altford, but I’m still not sure I get the point of all this.”

“Then you weren’t listening,” the Congressman said. “The point is that there’s a primary every two years.”

“So?”

The Congressman ignored him and spoke to Millicent Altford instead. “How much could you raise if...” He let the question trail off.

“If I’m still pissed off enough two years from now?”

Finch nodded.

“A million or so, but I’d have to call in every last one of my markers.”

The Congressman put all of his considerable charm into a smile. “We didn’t invite you here to antagonize you, Mrs. Altford. We asked you here to give us advice and counsel on how to reform campaign financing.”

“Simple,” she said. “Outlaw bundling. Do away with soft money. Provide Federal financing. Establish campaign spending limits — proportional ones, of course — so somebody running for the Senate in New York can spend more than somebody running for it in South Dakota. You know all the cures. It’s just that most of you guys don’t want to take them.”

The Congressman nodded thoughtfully, then turned to MacArthur, who was staring at Millicent Altford, his mouth slightly open. “I see no need for Mrs. Altford to appear in person before the subcommittee, do you, Will?”

MacArthur closed his mouth, swallowed, then opened it to say, “Maybe she could just write a letter instead, setting forth her views.”

“Would you be willing to do that — write us a letter? It needn’t be long.”

“Happy to,” she said.

“One last question?” the Congressman said. “Certainly.”

“Would you accept me as a — well, as a client?”

“In a general election? No question.”

The Congressman twinkled at her. “I may get in touch with you later in the year.”

“That’ll be too late,” she said.

“I just got sworn in.”

“And four men and at least two women are already thinking about running against you in the primary.”

Before the Congressman could respond, MacArthur said, “Your bodyguard’s here.”

She looked up, saw Partain approaching, then smiled at MacArthur. “Who says he’s my bodyguard, Willy?”