Warren Murphy: Kill Or Cure

‘He’s the city leader. I always support the city leader,’ Bazzani said. His voice was still loud and blustery, but there was a new note in it now. One of fear.

‘So did Meola and Lt. Grabnick,’ Remo said. ‘But they saw the light. They’re supporting Polaney now.’

‘But I can’t,’ Bazzani whined. ‘My membership…’

‘But you must,’ Remo said. ‘And forget your membership. Are you their leader or not?’

‘Yeah, but…’

‘No buts,’ Remo said. ‘Look, I’ll make it clear for you. Support Polaney and you get $5,000 and you keep breathing. Tell me no, and your head’s going to look like Robert E. Lee’s there.’

Bazzani looked down at the pile of dust again, then sputtered, ‘I never heard of such a thing. Politics isn’t done this way.’

‘Politics is always done this way. I’ve just eliminated the middle step of beating around the bush. Well? What’s the answer? You want to be with Polaney, or you want to have your skull caved in?’

Bazzani, for the first tune, searched Remo’s eyes and found nothing in there but truth. It was hard to believe that this was happening to him, but for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out anything to do. He looked past Remo down at the floor, where Rocco and Albert lay still.

‘They’re not dead,’ Remo said, ‘but they could just as easily have been. All right, time’s up.’ He took a step toward the desk.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Bazzani said, with a sigh.

Before Rocco and Albert regained consciousness, Remo had Bazzani’s signature on an endorsement and Bazzani had Remo’s five thousand dollars in his pocket.

‘A fair trade,’ Remo said, ‘is a bargain for everyone. One last thing.’

Bazzani looked up.

‘How’d you know Polaney’s commercial was going to be on?’

‘We got a list of all the times they’re running.’

‘From who?’

‘Cartwright’s headquarters.’

‘Okay,’ Remo said, with a small smile. ‘Now don’t cross me. Mr. Polaney’s happy to have you aboard.’

He turned, stepped over Rocco and Alfred and led Chiun out, through the front clubrooms and out into the street.

He was worried, but happy. Bazzani had had the list of commercials and they had come from Cartwright. That meant that Cartwright had a pipeline into Polaney’s campaign organization, and that was cause for worry. But it also made Remo happy, because it meant that the Cartwright people were moving. Slowly—true, but they were moving… toward Remo.

His concentration was broken by Chiun’s voice. He turned. Chiun was singing softly under his breath:

‘Sunshine is nicer.

‘Flowers are sweeter.’

CHAPTER TWENTY

‘Did you see those commercials?’

Willard Farger seemed pained. He sat at his desk in the main room of their campaign led headquarters suite, watching his three Playboy bunnies who seemed to be watching their fingernails grow.

‘Yeah,’ said Remo. ‘What’d you think?’

‘I thought they were terrible,’ Farger said. ‘Who’s going to vote for a guy with his head in a sunflower?’

‘History is full of elections where people voted for guys with their heads in their ass,’ Remo said. ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s all been carefully calculated and computed on Madison Avenue. And would they lie to us?’

Both he and Farger knew the answer to that question so it was not necessary to answer it. Instead, Remo said, ‘By the way, I don’t mean to tell you your business, but shouldn’t there be more people in headquarters than you and your harem? I mean, aren’t there supposed to be real live voters around here who would die or cheat or rob or kill for our candidate?’

Farger shrugged his shoulders. ‘Sure there are. Where do I get them?’

‘I thought they came after we got the endorsements from Meola and Grabnick and Nick Bazzani,’ Remo said.

‘Not enough,’ Farger said. ‘We get people when we prove we got a candidate who can win. It’s like farming. You got to have seeds before you have plants. Well, the seeds are the first people. And you’ve got to have them to get in the other people who really work for you.’

‘The plants?’

‘Right,’ Farger said.

‘Well, how do you get those first people? The seeds?’

‘You get them usually from the candidate himself. His friends, his family. They’re the start of his organization. Our guy doesn’t even have that. What’s he going to do: staff headquarters with catfish?’

‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ Remo said. ‘We can’t win unless we have people. And we can’t get people, unless we prove we can win. Where does it start or end for that matter? What about the commercials? Will they help?’

Farger shook his head. ‘Not those commercials.’

‘The newspaper stories and ads?’

‘Maybe a little. But we don’t have time to build an organization by dribs and drabs.’

‘All right,’ Remo said. ‘It’s decided.’’

‘What is?’ Farger asked.

‘People. We need ’em. We’re going to hire ’em.’

‘Hire them? Where are you going to hire people for a campaign?’

‘I don’t know. We’ve got to think about it. But that’s the answer. Hire ’em.’

‘Hmmm,’ Farger said, musing. Then finally, ‘It might work. It just might.’ He paused as Teri Walker stepped out of her office, saw Remo, and smiled her way to him at Farger’s desk.

‘Did you see the commercials?’ she asked.

‘Sure did.’

‘And?’

‘The one I saw was so effective a Cartwright ward leader switched over on the spot. Never saw a commercial I with more pulling power than that one.’

‘You mark my words,’ Teri said. ‘The whole town will know Mac Polaney in the next forty-eight hours.’

‘What does your mother think?’ Remo asked.

‘I’d love to take the credit, but she’s the one who gave me the idea. For the sunflower setting.’

‘And the song?’

‘That came right from the candidate. He wrote it himself. He’s sweet. He really believes it.’

‘So do I,’ Remo said. ‘Sunshine is nicer. We’ve just been talking about our manpower problems. We’re thinking of hiring campaign workers.’

‘Sounds like a good idea,’ she said.

Farger said, ‘Our biggest problem is going to be election day at the polls. If we don’t man every polling place, Cartwright’s people will kill us. They’ll steal our votes.’

Remo nodded sagely although he had no idea how one would go about stealing a vote in this day and age of voting machines.

‘How many people would you need?’ he asked.

‘At least two hundred.’

‘Two hundred people at $300 for the week. Sixty thousand,’ Remo said.

‘Yeah. A lot of scratch.’

‘We’ve got it,’ Remo said. ‘Don’t worry about it. All we’ve got to do is figure out where to get two hundred people in a hurry.’

He left that problem with Farger and joined Teri Walker in her office where she showed him the layouts for the newspaper ads which would start running the next day. They showed Mac Polaney’s head inside a sunflower, and the simple legend:

‘Sunshine is Nicer.

‘Vote for Polaney.’

‘What about issues?’ Remo asked. ‘Taxes, air pollution, crime?’

She shook her head, tossing her long blonde hair lightly around her bare shoulders. ‘It won’t work.’

‘Why?’

‘Have you heard his positions? Take parking, for example. I asked him about parking. He said the whole thing was very simple. Cut down the parking meters and attach springs to their bases, then give them out to the public for use as pogo sticks. This, you see, would stop the theft of money from the meters, the vandalism of the meters themselves, and ease the traffic problem by getting people out of their cars and onto their pogo sticks. And then, there is air pollution. You know what his solution is to air pollution?’