The Porkchoppers

26

On the day of the election, October 17, a Tuesday, the two cops came for Marvin Harmes at seven o’clock in the morning. They were from the Chicago detective bureau and one was a lieutenant and the other was a sergeant.

The lieutenant, who identified himself as Clyde Bauer, was bald and having trouble with his weight. His partner, the detective-sergeant, was a thirty-eight-year-old redhead whom everyone called Brick. His real name was Theodore Rostkowski.

Lieutenant Bauer first informed Harmes that he was under arrest and then he told him about his rights and even let him look at the two warrants, one for his arrest and the other for the search of his home.

“What’re you expecting to find?” Harmes said.

Bauer shrugged. “A little pot, maybe even a little heroin.”

“Go ahead and search.”

“We already have,” Bauer said and smiled. “I’m afraid we’re gonna have to take you downtown, Mr. Harmes.”

“Why the rig?”

Bauer smiled again. It was the tired, resigned smile of a man who was weary of his job, perhaps even weary of life. “Just get dressed, Mr. Harmes.”

“Can I make a phone call?”

Bauer looked at Rostkowski who shrugged. “Go ahead.”

Harmes turned to his wife who stood, shivering a little in her robe, although it wasn’t cold. “Don’t worry,” he told her. “Just go upstairs and see to the kids. I’ll fix it.”

He watched her climb the stairs and then crossed to the phone and dialed a number. Harmes wasn’t calling his lawyer; he knew that a lawyer wasn’t going to do him much good. He was calling Indigo Boone.

When Boone muttered a sleepy hello, Harmes wasted no time. “This is Harmes. There’s a couple of cops here who’re gonna bust me on a rigged-up dope charge. Man, this is one day I can’t afford to be busted.”

“Yeah, today is the day, ain’t it?”

“It sure as hell is.”

“Well, it won’t work unless you’re there to do the final switching.”

“I know. That’s why I’m calling.”

“I’m glad you called me. Lawyer ain’t gonna do you no good today.”

“Think you can do something?”

“I’m already doing it,” Indigo Boone said and hung up.

Harmes went upstairs, got dressed, told his wife to call his lawyer, and to tell anyone else who called that she didn’t know where he was. As he walked out to the plain black Ford with the two detectives, Harmes asked Bauer, “This is costing somebody a bundle. You got any idea how much?”

Something that looked like anger flicked over Bauer’s face, but it didn’t last. He smiled his tired smile again. “You may be right, Mr. Harmes, this might have cost somebody a bundle, but I’ll tell you something, if you’re real interested.”

“What?”

“It wasn’t a bundle of money.”

Indigo Boone put down the phone, and moved over to a window, and stared out over the Midway at the gray buildings of the University of Chicago. It was the third call that he had made since talking to Marvin Harmes and he knew there was no use in making any more of them. Whoever rigged this one, he thought, rigged it all the way from the top, the very tip-top, and there ain’t nothing can be done for that boy. He’s just gonna have to sit it out till seven o’clock. They’ll let him go then, after seven. After the polls close.

In Walter Penry’s Washington office the phone rang at eight-thirty and Penry answered it himself on the first ring. After he said hello he nodded across his desk at Peter Majury. Penry listened for a while and then said, “Well, I certainly appreciate your cooperation, Ron. And be sure to tell the boss that I appreciate it, too. And Ron, if you get the chance, tell him I’d like to arrange a little testimonial dinner for him sometime next month, if he’s got a free date. Thanks again. I’ll be talking to you.”

Penry hung up the phone and smiled his rogue smile at Peter Majury. “They picked Harmes up half an hour ago. They’ll hold him until seven tonight.”

“Well,” Majury said, “at least they won’t steal it in Chicago, not without Harmes to coordinate it.”

Penry nodded. “Can you think of any other mischief we should do?”

“No,” Majury said, “I think we’ve done it all.”

Donald Cubbin awakened in the Pittsburgh Hilton the morning of October 15 without a hangover. He even caught himself whistling as he shaved, something that he hadn’t done in months. He had had only two drinks the day before and only three on Sunday. Not even his broken finger bothered him. Maybe I’ll cut it out altogether, he told himself as he patted shaving lotion onto his face. Maybe I don’t need that stuff anymore.

One other reason for Cubbin’s unusual sense of well-being were the preelection reports that had flowed into his campaign headquarters after his television appearance with Sammy Hanks. They had been encouraging and Cubbin, knotting his tie, stopped halfway through because he had just had a peek into himself and was surprised by what he had found. You really wanted it again, didn’t you? he thought. You still wanted it all, the attention, the comfort, the hangers-on, the waiting elevators, all that crap. But there’s something else. There’s that feeling you sometimes get when they’re all sitting there waiting for you to say it, the yes or the no, because you’re the man they’ve chosen to tell them which is right, yes or no. And some of them who’re waiting for you to say it are smarter, and a lot of them are richer, but none of them can say it except you and that’s really what it’s all about. And either you thrive on it or it scares the shit out of you and you try to hide from it in a bottle of booze. Well, Cubbin thought, giving his face a last admiring glance in the mirror, you don’t have to hide anymore.

Cubbin enjoyed his thoughts, but he enjoyed the memory of the previous night even more because he had made love to his wife, more or less successfully, at least for him, for the first time in more than seven months and, by God, he was going to lay off the booze today and try it again tonight. That’s what had done it, he decided, the booze. There wasn’t anything wrong with him. Last night hadn’t been bad at all, not for an old crock of sixty-two. Damn near sixty-three, he corrected himself. You might as well start being halfway honest, at least with yourself.

He came out of the bathroom where he had dressed so as not to disturb Sadie, something that had never concerned him before. She was already awake, but still lying in the bed, smiling at him. “Good morning, lover,” she said.

“How’re you, sweetie?”

“I’m just fine. Just fine. A couple of more nights like last night and I’ll feel so wonderful I won’t be able to stand myself.”

“Well, there’s always tonight,” Cubbin said and winked.

“Is that a promise?”

“It’s a promise.”

“Give us a kiss,” she said and Cubbin bent over the bed and kissed her for a long moment, enjoying it thoroughly.

“Do you have to go?”

“I have to go vote.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

“We’ll have lunch together though.”

“Good. Bye, darling.”

“Bye.”

Cubbin entered the living room of his suite where the four men waited for him. He looked at them and thought, well, I’m not going to have them hanging around anymore either. Maybe Kelly, though. Kelly’s all right. But not Fred Mure. Fred goes tomorrow. As for Imber and Guyan, they’ll just drift off, no matter what happens.

“Now,” Cubbin said, smiling brightly and clapping his hands together lightly, “let’s go vote for a good man.”

“Just wait a couple of minutes, Don,” Fred Mure said, “while I go get the elevator.”

They left the Hilton and drove south and then west through Pittsburgh’s Golden Triangle. Cubbin was in the back between Imber and Guyan. In front was Kelly with Mure at the wheel.

“Right over there where that new building is,” Cubbin said after a few blocks, “that’s where Old Man Pettigrew’s Business School used to be. He’s the one who got me the job with the union. ‘They do a lot of swearing and dirty talking,’” Cubbin said, in a perfect imitation of the long-dead Pettigrew. “That’s why I got the job, because the old man didn’t think a girl should be around all that cussin.”

They rode for another three blocks in silence until Cubbin said, “And right over there, where that parking lot is, that’s where the old Sampson Plant used to be before they tore it down. In the summer of thirty-eight I spent forty-one days in that place and God, it was hot. We lived on hot dogs and beans that they used to send up to us in a bucket that we lowered out of the window with a rope. It was a sit-down and the old man sent me in to sit with them and I never spent a more miserable forty-one days in my life. I remember at first that there were a couple of babes that got in at night and took care of anybody who had a quarter, but after a few days they had to lower their price to fifteen cents. Jesus Christ, they were ugly.”

Cubbin lapsed into silence for a few minutes. Then he said, “God, Pittsburgh’s changed. This used to be one real tough town.”

“We’re going where it’s still tough, Don,” Imber said.

“You mean across the river?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah,” Cubbin said, “it’s still pretty grim over there.”

Across the Monongahela, Fred Mure drove the green Oldsmobile through gray, tired-looking streets. At a red light, a woman of about fifty, dressed in a shapeless brown coat and clutching a six-pack of beer, looked casually into the back seat, and then looked again, a smile brightening her already seamed face. She waved at Cubbin and called, “Hi yah, Don.”

Cubbin grinned, rolled the window down, leaned over Imber, and called back, “Hi yah, pal.”

“I’m votin for you today.”

“Good for you, I’ll need it.”

“Ah, you’ll win all right.”

“Let’s hope so.”

The light changed to green and Mure drove on. “Who was that?” Imber asked.

Cubbin grinned happily. “I haven’t got the vaguest idea.”

Local Number One’s hall was on a side street, across from a row of two-story buildings that had shops on the ground floor and apartments above. The union hall, built of red brick, was two stories high, and looked as if as little as possible had been spent on its design.

Outside the hall on the sidewalk, television crews from the three networks were already set up. The elected officials of Local Number One waited on the steps for Cubbin as a fairly steady stream of union members filed in and out from the polling booths. The stream was steady because it was in their contract that they got three hours off with pay to vote in their union’s biennial elections.

The cameras followed Cubbin as he left the car and walked up the steps to shake hands with the local union officials. As he turned from them, an old man of about seventy wearing day before yesterday’s whiskers and a worn gray topcoat stepped up to Cubbin, threw his arms around him, kissed him wetly on the cheek, and in a choked voice said, “God bless you, Don Cubbin, because you’re a good man.”

Cubbin couldn’t help the tears that came to his eyes. He brushed them away with his left hand and used his right one to shake the old man’s hand. “Thanks, pal,” he said. “Thanks very much.”

“How much did he cost you, Charlie?” the NBC news man asked Guyan.

“Fifty bucks,” Guyan said.

“That’s all right, we’ll still use it.”

Kelly Cubbin and Fred Mure waited outside together for Cubbin while he voted. Oscar Imber and Charles Guyan chatted with the TV newsmen who had decided that they would get some more film of Cubbin as he came back down the steps.

“Can I ask you something, Kelly?” Fred Mure said.

“Sure.”

“Is your dad mad at me?”

“Not that I know of. Why?”

“He’s been acting sort of funny the past couple of days.”

“How funny?”

“Well, he’s hardly drinking anything at all.”

“Don’t you think that’s an improvement?”

“Yeah, I guess so, but he don’t seem his old self for some reason.”

“I haven’t noticed.”

“Maybe I’m just oversensitive.”

Kelly grinned. “Yeah, Fred, maybe you are.”

Inside, Cubbin voted without hesitation for himself and his slate, shook some more hands, signed one autograph, and then headed back for the entrance. He paused at the top step to wave at the cameras and then started down them slowly.

The first bullet hit him in the shoulder and a moment later the second went into his stomach, ricocheted off something, and lodged finally in his right lung. He started to fall, but caught himself, and managed to stagger down another step, thinking only: This can’t be happening. Not to you.

And then because he knew he had to fall, he thought: Do it right. Do it like Cagney used to do it. Then the pain hit again and he went down, folding up first, then unfolding, then turning, and finally sprawling face-up on the sidewalk, eyes open and staring right up into the turning cameras.

Kelly was the first one to reach him. Cubbin looked up into his son’s strained face and he knew that he had to say something, something that the kid could keep, but the only thing that he could think of to say was something that represented nearly forty years of regret, but it was all that he could think of, except for a mild curiosity about how he would look on television that night. So he said it, the two words that made up the name that symbolized the might-have-been world of Donald Cubbin.

“Bernie... Ling,” Cubbin said and then he died.

There was shouting now, and a little panic, and some shoving, and even a few screams, but Kelly ignored it all as he knelt by his father, weeping, until Oscar Imber took him by the arm and helped him up.

“Is he dead, Kelly?”

“He’s dead.”

“Did he say something there — right at the last?”

They had the microphones stuck in front of Kelly’s face now as the cameras objectively recorded the grief that was his face. “What did your father say — was it a name?” one of the TV newsmen asked, hating himself for doing it.

Kelly nodded. “It was a name.”

“Can you tell us what it was?”

“Sure,” Kelly said as he tried to choke back the tears. “Rosebud.”