Twenty-Six
RAYMOND WATCHED THE QUEEN OF DIAMONDS on top of the squared deck while his mother spoke to him.
“…and Chunjin will give you a two-piece Soviet Army sniper’s rifle with all of its native ballistic markings. It sets nicely into a special bag which you can carry just as though it were a visiting doctor’s bag. You’ll take it with you to the hotel at Newark. We have come to the end of this terrible road at last, Raymond darling. After years and years and so much pain it will all be over so soon now. We have won the power, and now that they have given it to us they can just begin to fear. We may reply now, my dearest, for what they have done to you, to me, and to your lovely Jocie.”
Raymond’s mother had banged a charge into her arm just before this session of briefing Raymond and it most certainly agreed with her. Her magnetic, perfectly spaced blue eyes seemed to sparkle as she talked. Her lithe, solid figure seemed even more superb because of her flawless carriage. She wore a Chinese dressing gown of a shade so light that it complemented the contrasting color of her eyes. Her long and extremely beautiful legs were stretched out before her on the chaise longue, and any man but her son or her husband, seeing what she had and yet knowing that this magnificent forty-nine-year-old body was only a wasted uniform covering blunted neutral energy, might have wept over such a waste. Her voice, usually that of a hard woman on the make for big stakes, had softened perceptibly as she spoke because she was pleading and her voice had new overtones of self-deception. In the years since Raymond had been returned from the Army and shock had been piled upon shock, the sanity-preserving part of her mind, which labored to teach her how to forgive herself, and thus save herself, had been working and scheming against the day when she must explain everything to Raymond and expect to receive his forgiveness.
“I am sure you will never entirely comprehend this, darling, and I know, the way you are right now, this is like trying to have a whispered conversation with someone on a distant star, but for my own peace of mind, such as that is, it must be said. Raymond, you have to believe that I did not know that they would do what they did to you. I served them. I thought for them. I got them the greatest foothold they will ever have in this country and they paid me back by taking your soul away from you. I told them to build me an assassin. I wanted a killer who would obey orders from a stock in a world filled with killers, and they did this to you because they thought it would bind me closer to them. When I walked into that room in that Swardon Sanitarium in New York to meet this perfect assassin and I found that he was my son—my son with a changed and twisted mind and all the bridges burned behind us…But we have come to the end now, and it is our turn to twist tomorrow for them, because just as I am a mother before everything else I am an American second to that, and when I take power they will be pulled down and ground into dirt for what they did to you and for what they did in so contemptuously underestimating me.” She took his hand and kissed it with burning devotion, then she held his face in her hands and stared into it tenderly. “How much you look like Poppa! You have his beautiful hands and you hold your beautiful head in that same proud, proud way. And when you smile! Smile, my darling.”
Raymond smiled, naturally and beautifully, under orders. She caught her breath in a gasp. “When you smile, Raymond dearest, for that instant I am a little girl again and the miracle of love begins all over again. How right that seems to me. Smile for me again, sweetheart. Yes. Yes. Now kiss me. Really, really kiss me.” Her long fingers dug into his shoulders and pulled him to her on the chaise, and as her left hand opened the Chinese robe she remembered Poppa and the sound of rain high in the attic when she had been a little girl, and she found again the ecstatic peace she had lost so long, long before.
Twenty-Seven
THEODORE ROOSEVELT SAID THAT THE RIGHT of popular government is incomplete unless it includes the right of voters not merely to choose between candidates when they have been nominated, but also the right to determine who these candidates shall be.
Three major methods have been used by the parties, in American political history, to name candidates: the caucus, the convention, and the direct primary. The caucus was discarded early because it gave the legislature undue influence over the executive. The convention method for choosing Presidential candidates was first used in 1831 by the Anti-Masonic party, but the basic flaw in any convention system is the method of choice of delegates to the convention. The origin of the direct primary is somewhat obscure but it is generally considered as having been adopted by the Democratic party in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, in 1842; however, not until Robert M. La Follette became governor of Wisconsin, early in 1900, was a political leader successful in pushing through a mandatory, statewide, direct primary system.
Because no public regulation exists to control it, the national convention has developed into one of the most remarkable political institutions in the world. In no other nation on this planet is the selection of national leaders, whose influence is to be felt profoundly throughout the world, and the formulation of ostensibly serious policies placed in the hands of a convention of about three thousand howling, only cursorily consulted delegates and alternates. M. Ostrogorski, a French observer of the American political scene, wrote in 1902 of the convention system: “You realize what a colossal travesty of popular institutions you have just been witnessing. A greedy crowd of officeholders, or of office seekers, disguised as delegates of the people on the pretense of holding the grand council of the party, indulged in, or were victims of, intrigues and maneuvers, the object of which was the chief magistracy of the greatest republic of two hemispheres—the succession to the Washingtons and the Jeffersons. Yet when you carry your thoughts back from the scene which you have just witnessed and review the line of presidents you find that if they have not all been great men—far from it—they were all honorable men; and you cannot help repeating the American saying: “God takes care of drunkards, little children, and of the United States.”
The climate of welcome in which the convention of 1960 opened was like many of those that had preceded it. Hotels were festooned with bunting. Distillers had provided all saloons with printed partisan displays, the backs of which carried the same message in the name of the other party, whose convention would follow in three weeks. The midtown streets were choked with big-hipped broads wearing paper cowboy hats. Witty Legionnaires rode horses into hotel lobbies. Witty Legionnaires squirted friendly streams from water pistols at the more defenseless-looking passers-by. Gay delegates hung twenty-dollar call girls by their heels out of high hotel windows. Ward heelers issued statements on party unity. Elder statesmen were ignored or used depending on the need. The Pickpocket Squad worked like contestants in a newsreel husking bee. One hundred and four men’s suits were misplaced by the dry-cleaning services of thirty-eight hotels. Petitions and documentations were submitted to the Resolutions Committee by farm lobbies, labor unions, women’s organizations, temperance groups, veterans’ blocs, anti-vivisection societies, and national manufacturers’ Turnvereins. Two thousand one hundred and four hand towels over the minimal daily quota would be used, on an average, for each night the convention sat in the city. A delegate was arrested, but not prosecuted, for wrestling with a live crocodile in Duffy Square to call attention to the courage of a Florida candidate for the vice-presidency. The world’s largest campaign button was worn by a bevy of lovely young “apple farmers” from the Pacific Northwest although their candidate came from Missouri (he happened to be in the apple business). At 8 A.M., two hours before the convention opened on Monday morning, Marco conducted a drill of two hundred FBI and Army Intelligence agents and three hundred and ten plain-clothesmen and women of the New York Police Department, assembled in the backstage area of the Garden where they were briefed on the over-all assignment. Marco was so frantic with worry and fear that his hand shook as he used the chalk on the large blackboard, on a high platform. After Marco’s briefing, more and more detailed briefings were conducted down through the units
of command to squad level, until Marco, Amjac, Lehner, and the chief inspector of the New York police were sure that each man knew what he was to do.
The twenty-seventh national convention of the party was opened by Miss Viola Narvilly of the great Indianapolis Opera Company singing the National Anthem. This one, as her manager explained, was a bitch of a song to sing, as any singer, professional or otherwise, would tell you, and, he said hotly, it like to have lifted Miss Narvilly out of her own body by her vocal cords to get up to those unnatural notes which some idiot thought he was doing great when he wrote it. Miss Narvilly’s manager tried to throw a punch at the National Chairman—he had practically begged them to open the convention singing the lousy song, then not one single television shot had been taken of Miss Narvilly from beginning to end, before or after, and they had spent their own loot to come all the way in from a concert in Chicago.
After the National Chairman got some help from two sergeants at arms in shaking Miss Narvilly’s manager loose he called the first session to order. Nearly six hundred of the three thousand delegates settled down to listen to the welcoming speech by the party’s senator from New York. The Chairman made his formal address following this token welcome and the hall filled up just a little more, and the business of permanent organization, credentials, rules and order of business, platform and resolutions got under way and filled the time nicely until the keynote speaker took over in the TV slot that had been bought on all networks for nine to nine-thirty that evening.
Although Senator Iselin and his wife did not attend the first day’s session, an Iselin headquarters had been established on a full floor of the largest West Side hotel near the Garden. Also, the Loyal American Underground had established recruiting booths for Johnny in the lobbies of every “official” convention hotel and had rented a store opposite the Eighth Avenue entrance to the Garden; the store had been an upholstery store before the convention and would be an upholstery store again. One enthusiastic newspaper reported that these recruitment booths had registered four thousand two hundred members (Mrs. Iselin had thought it prudent to register the same one hundred people again and again throughout the days to insure the excitement of action at all booths), but the exact number of new recruits could not be determined accurately.
On the opening Monday, true to his word as an officer and a gentleman, General Francis “Fightin’ Frank” Bollinger headed a parade made up of state and county chairmen of Ten Million Americans Mobilizing for Tomorrow down Eighth Avenue from Columbus Circle to the Garden. They were two hundred and forty-six strong from the forty-nine states, plus an irregular battalion made up of loyal wives and daughters, various uncommitted New Yorkers who enjoyed parading, and a police squad car. They marched the nine short blocks with Fightin’ Frank holding in one gloved hand the front end of a continuous paper petition that stretched out behind him for eight and a half blocks and contained at least four thousand signatures, many of which had been written by the general’s own family to fill out the spaces and add to the fun. Many of the newspaper reports got the figure wrong, reporting as many as 1,064,219 signatures, although at no time did any representatives of any newspaper attempt to make a count. The petition urged the nomination of John Yerkes Iselin to the Presidency of the United States candidacy under the general indivisive slogan of “The Man Who Saves America.”
Mrs. Iselin arrived at Johnny’s campaign headquarters at eight o’clock Monday night. For the next several hours she received the prospective candidates for the Presidency, together with their managers, in separate relays in her suite. At 1:10 A.M. she made the deal she wanted and committed Senator Iselin’s entire delegate support to the candidate of her choice, accepting, on behalf of Senator Iselin, the assurance of nomination for the office of vice-presidency and losing for Fightin’ Frank Bollinger the assurance of portfolio as Secretary of State.
The party’s platform was presented to the convention on Tuesday morning and afternoon, together with many statesmanlike speeches. Professor Hugh Bone, when writing of party platforms as delivered at conventions said: “If the voter expects to find specific issues and clearly defined party policy in the platform he will be sorely disappointed. As a guide to the program to be carried out by the victorious party the platform is also of little value.” The British political scholar Lord Bryce observed that the purpose of the American party platform appears to be “neither to define nor to convince, but rather to attract and confuse.” The 1960 platform of the party committed itself as follows: for free enterprise, farm prosperity, preservation of small business, reduction in taxes, and rigid economy in government. The latter plank had been axiomatic for both major parties since 1840. Due to the insistence of Senator Iselin the platform also demanded “the eradication of Communists and Communist thought without mercy wherever and whenever Our Flag flies.”
The roll call for the nomination got under way on Tuesday afternoon, July 12. Alabama yielded. The nominating speech, the demonstration following that, the seconding speech, and the demonstration following that, gave the convention the first aspirant in nomination at six twenty-one. The identical ritual for the second favorite son took up the attention of the convention to ten thirty-five. The third candidate proposed was nominated on the first ballot by unanimous vote of the convention, as had been ten candidates of the party since 1900, at twelve forty-one on July 12, 1960, when the convention was adjourned until noon the following day when it would meet to deliberate over its choice of candidate for the office of vice-president, then await the historic acceptance speeches by both leaders the following night.
Twenty-Eight
RAYMOND LEFT THE HOTEL IN NEWARK, WHERE he had been told to rest, at 4 P.M. Wednesday. He carried a nondescript black satchel. He took the tubes under the river, then the subway to Times Square. For a while he wandered aimlessly along West Forty-second Street. After a while he found himself at Forty-fourth and Broadway. He went into a large drugstore. He got change for a quarter at the cigarette counter and shuffled to one of the empty telephone booths in the rear. He dialed Marco’s office number. The agent on duty answered. He was alone in the large house in Turtle Bay.
“Colonel Marco, please.”
“Who is calling, please?”
“Raymond Shaw. It’s a personal call.”
The agent inhaled very slowly. Then he exhaled slowly. “Hello? Hello?” Raymond said, thinking the connection had been broken.
“Right here, Mr. Shaw,” the agent said briskly. “It looks as though Colonel Marco has stepped away from his desk for a moment, but he’ll be back practically instantly, Mr. Shaw, and he left word that if you called he wanted to be sure that he could call you right back, wherever you were. If you’ll give me your telephone number, Mr. Shaw—”
“Well—”
“He’ll be right back.”
“Maybe I’d better call him back. I’m in a drugstore here and—”
“I have my orders, Mr. Shaw. If you’ll give me that number, please.”
“The number in the booth here is Circle eight, nine-six-three-seven. I’ll hang around for ten minutes or so, I guess, and have a cup of coffee.” He hung up the phone and the newspaper fell from his pocket and flattened out on the floor showing the headline: MURDERS OF SENATOR AND DAUGHTER ENIGMA. Raymond picked the paper up slowly and returned it to his jacket pocket. He climbed on a stool at the soda fountain and waited for someone to come and take his order.
The agent on duty dialed a number rapidly. He got a busy signal. He waited painfully with his eyes closed, then he opened them and dialed again. He got a busy signal. He pulled his sleeve back from his wrist watch, stared at it for thirty seconds, then dialed again. The connection bubbled a through signal.
“Garden.”
“This is Turtle Bay. Get me Marco. Red signal.”
“Hold, please.”
The booming voice of the platform speaker inside the arena was cut off from every amplifier throughout the Garden. The packed hall seemed, for an instant, like
a silent waxworks packed with three thousand effigies. An urgent, new voice came pounding out the horns. It contrasted so much with the ribbon of pure silence that had preceded it, after two days of amplified fustian, that every delegate felt threatened by its urgency.
“Colonel Marco! Colonel Marco! Red signal! Red signal! Colonel Marco! Red signal!”
The voice cut itself off and another electronic flow of silence came through the system. Newspapermen immediately began to pressure the wrong officials about the significance of the interruption and the term red signal, and beginning with the first editions of the morning papers the term was printed again and again until it finally found itself on television variety shows as comedians’ warning cries.
Marco sat backstage with an unleashed phone in his hand, within a semicircle of agents and police. Amjac was between earphones at one telephone monitor and Lehner was at the other. The recording machines were turning. Five minutes, eight seconds, had elapsed since Raymond had made his call. Marco dialed. He was sweating peanut butter.
The telephone rang in an empty booth. It rang again. Then again. A figure slumped into the seat to answer it. It was Raymond.
“Ben?” No other opening.
“Yes, kid.”
“You read what happened?”
“Yes. I know. I know.”
“How could anyone? How could it happen? Jocie—how could anyone—”
“Where are you, Raymond?” The men ringed around Marco seemed to lean forward.