The Plan

Chapter 21

The idea woke him up.

"Shit." A. J. struggled to a sitting position. "How could I have been so dumb." He was still half asleep, in his single room at the Des Moines Holiday Inn. He tried to clear his head. Then he swung his feet off the bed and went to the phone. "Alo, Alo," he said out loud, looking for Mickey's private number. He found it on a card stuffed in his wallet.

"Hello?" a voice growled through the receiver. "Need to talk to Mickey Alo."

"He's sleeping."

"Tell him A. J. Teagarden is on the phone."

"Just a minute." And he was on hold.

He used the moments to collect his thoughts. He started tapping his foot, nervous energy burning like battery acid. He had been looking for a defining event, one that would score with the electorate at large. A defining event was any event that instantly told the public who the candidate was. Jesse Jackson bringing the Middle East hostages home or Clinton getting his hair cut on the L. A. runway. Both were defining events. People instantly got it. The debate had set Haze up. He would be in the national ey e i n the morning. While he had the nation's attention, A. J. needed something tangible to show that Haze's message was true. He'd come up with it while sound asleep. After a moment, Mickey came on the line, his voice choked with sleep.

,yeah. ."

"It's Teagarden." "yeah…"

"This Teamster problem, this strike, are you involved with that?" he asked, knowing that the Teamsters and the mob were generally in bed together.

"Not on the phone."

"I need to talk first thing in the morning. You won't regret it."

"Where you staying?"

"Des Moines Holiday Inn, room four seventy-six." And the line went dead. A. J. Teagarden lay back on his bed.

Shit, he thought, it was perfect., At seven A. M., New York Tony knocked on his door. A. J. got up and opened it, looking at the hatchet-faced bodyguard through the chain lock.

"Get dressed. Mickey is in a car downstairs," he ordered.

A. J. threw on his clothes, combed his hair with his fingers, and followed New York Tony down the hall and out into the cold Iowa morning.

New York Tony led A. J. around the side of the hotel and into an overflow parking lot where two large men in black overcoats were standing in front of a white windowless van. Their eyes metronomed the parking lot, like wary tank commanders in a fire zone. The bodyguard swung open the van door and A. J. was suddenly looking at Mickey Alo. Mickey had a box of Winchell's doughnuts on his knees and a cup of coffee in a paper cup.

"Seen this?" Mickey asked as he handed the Des Moines Register-Guard to A. J. The headline was in thirtysix-point sans serif boldface type and screamed: RHODE ISLAND GOVERNOR TURNS PRIMARY RACE HAZEY

Under that, the subhead read:

RICHARDS SCORES DEBATE KO

A. J. already knew this would be the reaction. He'd stayed up for the late newscasts, and all four networks had called it for Haze. All of them had shown Brenton Spencer walking off the stage and Haze's brilliant move to the mike, followed by his take-back-America closing while the other candidates sat behind him like a bunch of back-up singers.

"You were right," Mickey said. "He did great."

"We're on our way. We're going to be the story in Iowa for a few days, but it will fizzle if we don't build on it. We have to keep parlaying, trading up. I've got a great defining event, but you're gonna have to pull it off for me."

"Whatta you need?" Mickey asked.

"Before he walked off the stage, Brenton Spencer challenged Haze to bring management and labor together in the Teamster strike."

"Yeah? So. .?"

"I don't know what the sticking points are in the negotiations, but wouldn't it be nice if tonight or tomorrow the Teamsters could invite Haze to come to New York." The wonk started to grin in nervous excitement. "Haz gets on the train. I want it to be the train because it's the commuter's vehicle, the way the common man gets to work. Then he rides into New York. . like fucking Caesar into Rome. While the world watches on TV, he walks into some room with labor and management, and the doors close. Everybody thinks he can't pull this off. . He's dust. Then-voila! — the door opens and he walks out tw o h ours later with the head of the union-that fat guy, Bud Rennick-on one arm and the head of the Truckers Association on the other."

"Tom Bartel," Mickey said.

"Right. And there's a deal. They've buried the hatchet. Everybody is smiling. The Peterbilts are going to roll; there's joy in Mudville. If we time it right, I can ride that pony right on through New Hampshire, into Super Tuesday two weeks from now."

Mickey looked over at Teagarden.

"There's a lot of money at stake. These guys are locked up over mileage and hourly rates. They're way apart."

"I'm sure there's problems, but you told me you wanted Haze in the White House. You didn't care what it cost. I need this."

Mickey looked at his watch, then studied the wonk. "Okay, lemme make some calls. I'll get back to you."

"You gotta do this. I don't care what you have to promise the Teamsters, we'll take care of them on the other end once we get Haze in the White House. Listen, this is made for us. This defines Haze as a doer. This is Haze making America work again. It's right on the message. Make it happen."

"Anything else you want? How 'bout I arrange for Haze to be elected pope?"

"He won't take a job where he can't fuck the secretaries." The wonk smiled. "But I got another idea."

"Let's hear."

"After we do good in this state, we're gonna start getting sniped at by Skatina. He's gonna look over his shoulder and see Haze coming up in the polls and he's gonna start playing rough. . He'll go after Haze's uninspired legislative record in Rhode Island. He's gonna maybe dig up a woman who had a nice weekend with the gov and now wants to be on the cover of People magazine. We gotta keep that from happening."

"How we gonna do that?"

"We got a guy here named Skatina. That's a wop name. . no offense. . a wop from New York. Might be nice if maybe the world begins to wonder if maybe Leo has some mob ties. That gets Skatina on the defensive for two weeks while the press paws through his garbage looking for ravioli sauce."

"Really?" Mickey said, beginning to have serious respect for the unkempt man sitting beside him.

"Yeah, really, like if maybe somebody you know wants to come clean, make a public confession."

"How 'bout somebody who's already on trial for bribing a public official? Maybe he confesses the Skatina connection from the stand, under oath. .?" Mickey was thinking of an ongoing New York trial where he had good contacts with the defense.

"Sounds promising," A. J. said, grinning.