"You looked great," said Elmo's lackey, Maynard Grymsdyke. "Phones are ringing off the hook already, with the new spot. Answering old Rockhead from the Bible made the difference, like I said. You're winning hearts and minds."
The candidate stopped short and turned to face the shorter, balding Grymsdyke. "Son," he said, "how old are you?"
"How old?" The lackey paused and thought about it, as if searching for the proper and politically correct response.
"Your age, for Christ's sake!" Elmo snapped at him. "It ain't a loaded question."
"Forty-two," Grymsdyke replied, still frowning.
"Forty-two," the white-maned politician echoed, almost wistfully. "So, you was still in diapers when we got our asses kicked by little point-headed folks in Vietnam. That right?"
Grymsdyke delayed responding for another moment. This time he was counting. "Not quite, sir. I was eight years old when Mr. Nixon-"
"Never mind!" Breen snapped. "My point is that you make me nervous sometimes, Maynard."
"Sir?"
"That crap you're shoveling about winning hearts and minds. Our people used to say that all the time in Nam. Went on and on about how the majority of dinks just loved us. Couldn't wait to help us kick the Commies out, they said. 'We're winning hearts and minds.' Thing is, we lost that war, in case you disremember."
"I recall that, sir. In fact-"
"In fact," Breen interrupted him, "I never put much stock in phone calls stirred up by a TV ad. Been my experience in thirty-nine years as a public servant that folks who'll take the time to call and praise you are the ones who would of voted for you anyhow. Same things for polls, most of 'em. Some guy asks a couple dozen people what they think about abortion or campaign finance reform and tries to say he knows what everybody's thinking. That's a pile of bullshit, and you know it well as I do."
"Sir, if you could try to keep your voice down..."
They were moving briskly toward the ninth-floor elevator in the east wing of the Crescent City Hilton, and they had the spacious hallway to themselves, but Grymsdyke nurtured his paranoia like a gift from God. He wasn't happy, Breen had long ago decided, if there did not seem to be at least the risk of spies and eavesdroppers. The threat of being overheard and somehow shafted with the very things he said made Grymsdyke feel important, useful, even vital to the cause. Without that feeling of supreme importance, Elmo Breen had long ago decided, Maynard Grymsdyke would have shriveled up and blown away.
There wasn't much left of him, as it was. Grymsdyke stood five foot two or three, almost completely bald, and weighed perhaps 120, counting shiny wingtips and the two mobile phones that he carried wherever he went. As if it weren't enough to have one with Call Waiting, in case some great thinker was trying to reach him and pour out the secrets of life. He wore one of the phones on his belt, while the other was snug in his left armpit, cradled in some kind of harness that looked like a holster. Breen used to call his flack and campaign manager "Two-Gun," until he saw how Maynard flinched each time and realized that he had hurt the stubby gofer's feelings. It had shamed him for a moment, as if he had been caught teasing a disabled child.
Looks were deceiving when it came to Maynard Grymsdyke, though. Inside that shiny head reposed the knowledge of a Princeton Ph.D. in political science, which meant that he knew everything the books could tell him about nailing down elections. What he didn't know so well, as yet, was people. After all those years in classrooms, seminars and such, he still put too much faith in raw statistics for Breen's taste.
Elmo himself had barely lasted two years in a third-rate junior college, never quite acquired the units necessary for a grand Associate of Arts degree in history, but he knew people inside out. He knew what turned them on and off, the knee-jerk issues that would make a bloc of voters love or hate you once you took a public stand. He knew the rules, of course: blacks "always" voted Democrat; white born-agains were "always" staunch Republicans-this list went on and on. One thing Breen knew that Grymsdyke had not fathomed yet.
A lot of it was bullshit.
There were ways around the rules, he understood, if you appealed to people, touched them where they lived. For most, that meant the pocketbook, religion, family, sex-the basics. A successful politician made a point of finding out what his constituency wanted out of life, and he would promise to fulfill those needs by any means at his disposal. Clearly, most of what he promised was impossible-a leftwing Democratic president could never overhaul the welfare system, for example, if conservative Republicans controlled Congress-but you didn't really have to do that much in public office. It was more important that you seem to try. And if you failed, well, there was always some reactionary, radical or plain old crooked bastard you could point a finger at, make him the scapegoat for your failure. Lay it off on someone else.
Going up against a TV preacher, now, that was a special problem. Ticklish. Any other candidate, Breen could have started slinging mud right off the bat, hoping that some of it would stick, but with a preacher man you needed special mud-a bimbo in the woodpile, for example, or a Cayman Islands bank account where all that "seed faith" money went to hide-but so far Grymsdyke's people hadn't found a thing on the Reverend Mr. Rockwell.
It was time to pull an ace out of his sleeve, and that meant Breen would need some extraspecial help. Before the Feds put Armand Fortier away for life and then some, Elmo would have made a phone call, talked it over with his friend and struck some kind of bargain. Cash or favors in return for pictures of Reverend Rock cavorting with a prostitute, perhaps-or better yet, a little boy. Presumably, Armand's successor had the same kind of connections, held the same strings in his hand, but Elmo didn't really know him as he had known Fortier for years on end.
Still, this was war, and he couldn't afford to let some grinning Holy Roller beat him to the statehouse. Quoting scripture on TV was one thing, but he would feel better, closer to the finish line, if he nailed down the Devil's vote, as well.
"Maynard," he said at last, his mind made up, "get me a private meeting with Merle Bettencourt."
"I DON'T BELIEVE he has the everlasting nerve to throw back scripture in my face. Do you believe it, Jerry?"
Jeremiah Smeal displayed the same sour face he wore around the clock. "Sin's what it is," he said, his high-pitched voice unsuited to a man who measured six foot one and topped the scales around 350 pounds. "A shameless mockery."
"Still, it could hurt us," Reverend Marvin Rockwell said in answer to his aide.
"The faithful-"
"Screw the faithful!" Rockwell cut him off. "This ain't some kind of weekend show or camp revival meeting, Jerry. This one is for all the marbles, son. If I'm elected governor of this great state, think of the grand work I can do for Christ our Lord!"
"Yes, sir."
And all the perks, thought Rockwell, keeping that one to himself. What he came out with in its place was: "We must not allow him to preempt us, Jerry. I'm God's candidate, and everybody knows it! Spirit-filled at nine years old, I was, speaking in tongues before my whole damn class in Bastrop. I've healed the sick and lame from Dallas all the way to Pascagoula. I heal people on TV, for Christ's sake! What more do they want?"
Smeal shrugged. "'Even the Devil can cite scripture for his purpose'," he replied.
"That's perfect!" Rockwell said. "What verse is that?"
"It's Shakespeare, sir. Merchant of Venice."
"Shit! I can't go literary on these yokels. Give me something I can use!"
The fat man, suddenly disconsolate, was trying to stare holes in his black loafers. Rockwell could almost hear the cog wheels grinding in his head, trying to conjure a rebuttal for their adversary's latest TV spot.
"There's Jeremiah 7:4," he said at last.
"'Trust ye not in lying words,'" the televangelist recited, knowing it by heart. "Could work. Keep thinking, though."
"Yes, sir."
The trouble went beyond quotations from the Bible, Rockwell understood. That peckerhead in Houston, Pastor Benny Bobbit, hadn't helped the cause when Sixty Minutes caught him skimming money from his ministry to keep an eighteen-year-old strumpet in the mood for steamy fun and games. It had been bad enough that Bobbit was a preacher in the first place, but he also paid for thirty minutes twice a week on Rockwell's Jesus Broadcast Network. Reverend Rockwell had been a guest on Benny's show, for God's sake. They had stood together in the spotlight, grinning, shaking hands. Now Rockwell had to cut the bastard loose and pray that not too many of the faithful started drawing close comparisons.
"Get thee behind me, Satan!"
"Sir?"
Rockwell didn't realize that he had spoken until Jerry Smeal's shrill voice intruded on his gloomy thoughts. Now he was talking to himself, goddamn it, and in front of witnesses.
"Just praying, Jerry. Never mind."
"Yes, sir."
It was a tough job, trying to escape the stereotype of a money-grubbing TV preacher, all the more so when he fit the mold so perfectly. Rockwell had hopes that politics would save him, launch him from the Christian junior varsity into the Lord's own Super Bowl contingent. Then and only then would he be recognized by millions for the man he truly was.
Or, rather, for the man he wanted them to think he was.
The yellow press had made a run or two at him already, looking into his credentials, sniffing after the diploma mill that had declared Rockwell a doctor of theology in 1986. That piece of paper cost him fifteen hundred dollars, but at least he never had to crack a textbook other than the Bible, and the Ph.D. had granted him a measure of respect among survivors of the TV holy wars. A year's apprenticeship on Christian Airwaves International, and he had launched off on his own, building the Jesus Broadcast Network from a single run-down station in Metairie to a web of thirty-seven stations scattered through the hard-core Bible Belt. Come Easter, he would crack the Southern California market, and with all the nuts out west, he hoped the money would be flowing soon, to justify his effort. In the meantime, though...
The first time Rockwell had thought of running for the statehouse, it had been hilarious. A joke. Then Jerry Smeal had talked to him about it for a while, pointing out some of the advantages-state matching funds, to start with-and had told him there was actually a chance that he could win. Of course, he had to edge by Elmo Breen to win the primary, and that was no small challenge in itself. Elmo had been around forever, held most every office in the state except for governor at one time or another, and his easygoing style appealed to voters in Louisiana, where the choice between a raving Klansman and a proved thief had been too close to call, a few years back. That was the kind of atmosphere where Rockwell could let his hair down, use his gift for hellfire oratory to the utmost, and perhaps-just maybe-make a slim majority of the benighted yokels buy his vote-for-Jesus rap.
The free publicity was working to his benefit already. Three new stations were asking if they couldn't please become a part of Reverend Rockwell's great network for salvation, and you had to love a country where that kind of thing was possible.