Stranglehold Read online

  Manning was one of those guys you shouldn’t like but did despite yourself. He’d known Susan in college. His looks made him popular, something that compensated for his background as the son of an alcoholic mother who’d raised him mostly on welfare. He now worked for Natalie as the head of the Cooper Foundation, the nonprofit that her late husband had established to do many, many good works. From everything we’d been able to learn about Manning, he didn’t have to work very hard. The heavy lifting was done by his staff. He was around to look good, be charming, and represent the foundation around the country. He gave good TV. He was Natalie’s paid boy, so much so that he sided with her as often as he sided with his wife. The relationship between stepmother and daughter had always been combative. Manning’s boyish blandness allowed him to calm them both down when the need arose. But he never forgot who handed him the check twice a month.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Ben said.

  “I shouldn’t have been so flip about it,” Manning said, apparently feeling guilty for making a joke about Natalie. “She just wants to make sure we win, Ben. That’s all.”

  I was trying to concentrate on the conversation, but just then I saw a hawk riding the air and looking magnificent as hell doing it. In my days as an investigator for army intelligence I’d spent some time in the Rockies working on two different cases. I’d started to envy birds, serene and self-possessed.

  I dragged myself back to the conversation. “How’s Susan?”

  Manning shifted position. In terms of interrogation body language I could see that I’d made him uncomfortable. “Just very busy. And just can’t shake that cold of hers.”

  “She has a cold, David? Since when?”

  “Really? You haven’t heard her sniffling, Ben?”

  “Oh, that. I figured she was using cocaine.”

  Manning smiled. “Don’t say that around any reporters. Duffy’s trying to play up her past.”

  “The polling we’ve done, her past doesn’t seem to matter all that much. Less than ten percent say it’s a concern.”

  I said, “We’re having a little trouble with her, David.”

  “Oh? Trouble?” And he shifted position once again.

  “Ben tells me she disappears sometimes without telling anybody where to find her. And she’s lost her edge a few times in debates and interviews.” I tried not to sound confrontational. It wasn’t easy. I’d learned that Manning was good at evading direct questions.

  “She’s had some problems and Natalie’s aware of them. She’ll probably ask you for a little advice about it, in fact.”

  “You’re her husband, David.” This time I sounded angry and meant to.

  “I’d rather let Natalie talk to you about it, Dev. And anyway—” He glanced longingly at his car, the golden chariot that would take him far from us and our questions. “Anyway, I need to get to the foundation. I hope it goes well with Natalie. Wyatt’ll be with her. He’s good at keeping her calm.” Wyatt was her husband.

  He had a nervous smile for each of us and then hurried to his car. We watched him go. He even gave us a wan little wave just before he backed out.

  “I can’t help it,” Ben said. “I feel sorry for him.”

  “Yeah, me too,” I said. “That’s quite the family he married into.”

  “A soap opera that doesn’t need any writers.”

  “Oh, God, I’d forgotten that one.” A conservative columnist had written a piece about Natalie’s various “difficulties” with the campaign consultants she’d used on Susan’s first campaign. She’d gone through three different firms. He’d come up with the soap opera line and it was, unfortunately, a good one and a true one.

  “Well, let’s go inside and I’ll rip up your innards with some coffee I made.”

  I’d had plenty of Ben’s coffee in my time. He wasn’t kidding.

  CHAPTER 3

  Within half an hour the headquarters was open for business. The front part of the building was for the public and was manned by volunteers. In the rear was a long, narrow office for paid staffers. If you’ve ever worked for a newspaper you know what a campaign office is like: phones, faxes, computers; men and women who are the modern-day version of camp followers. Only in this instance they’re following campaigns. They’re political junkies who get paid for their obsessions. Both parties have them; neither party could function without them.

  The modern political campaign has gone high-tech, of course, but it still serves the old masters. On any given day a campaign manager and his staff deal with a long list of jobs—fund-raising, Web sites, direct mail, grassroots organizing, yard signs, writing speeches, interpreting polling, dealing with the press, endlessly revising the candidate’s schedule, and trying to chase down any persistent rumors about the opposition, most of which turn out to be bullshit. There’s a lot of disinformation coming from both camps, disinformation meant to confuse the other camp and make them waste time trying to make sense of it. Then there are the staff wars. Some groups gather for a particular campaign function smoothly, a real team. Others are warring factions that can seriously damage a campaign or even destroy it.

  In the three hours I sat at my computer in Ben’s office that morning, I saw nothing but professionals going about their jobs efficiently and cordially. This was a testament to Ben’s judgment. He’d chosen his people carefully. I checked on the other campaigns my firm was working on. There didn’t seem to be any serious problems with any of them. The only trouble was here with Susan Cooper’s sudden, mysterious loss of interest in her campaign.

  I spent some time up front, too, meeting the volunteers and getting their assessment of the campaign thus far. During the day the volunteers tended to be retired women and men. A new category had recently been added—the unemployed. With the economic disaster facing the country these people divided their time between looking for work and trying to help the candidate they thought had a genuine interest in helping them improve their situation.

  I was just wrapping up a phone call with one of our people who was spending the day at the state capital when somebody peeked in the office door and said, “She’s here!”

  He made it sound as if we’d just been invaded. And he wasn’t far from wrong.

  CHAPTER 4

  Natalie Dowd McConnell Cooper Byrnes was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on July 4, 1960. Despite the fact that she remarried after the death of her second husband, Senator John Cooper, she continued to use his last name. Her family had been prominent both before and after the Civil War and had moved easily into national politics. Her great-grandfather, her grandfather, and her father had all served as senators. Natalie Dowd was so much of an elegant beauty that a famous portraitist named Ralph Hodges fell in love with her in the course of painting her for the family’s mansion wall. She’d been fifteen at the time, and Hodges forty-six. A rumor still persisted that they’d mated up. Natalie loved the attention. Not every Southern debutante found herself in the pages of People and The National Enquirer. Her father allegedly hired a man to murder Hodges but was dissuaded by his wife. Hadn’t the family reputation suffered enough already?

  Natalie went to New York City, where she performed in several off-Broadway plays. This was where she met and married Randy McConnell, an actor who was plucked from the stage to play a TV action hero in a series that would run for several years. He took Natalie along with him and they were married in Los Angeles. Four years to the day after their wedding vows, McConnell broke the nose of his male costar, accusing him of sleeping with Natalie. Nothing was ever proven, but the incident did bring Natalie back into the public eye and led to many TV acting jobs. She’d worked hard with a vocal coach and lost her accent entirely. With her killer looks and competent acting skills she was able to support herself quite well when McConnell finally sued her for divorce after finding her at a party in a gazebo with another family friend. McConnell didn’t hold up well during all this. He went on three different talk shows pretty much snockered and hinted that his ex-wife was so
mething of a tramp. Natalie’s father immediately sued him for slander.

  Having grown up in a politically conservative family, it was logical that she would gravitate toward conservative functions. She was invited six times to the George H. W. Bush White House, where she used her passable voice to sing Gershwin and Porter songs. One of those times, her series coming to an end, she decided to stay in Washington for a while. She became a regular on the social scene. The men lusted after her body; the women lusted after her throat. She dated liberals and conservatives alike as long as they were powerful and not handsome enough to overshadow her when they were photographed together.

  It was at one of these power parties that she met the recently widowed John Cooper. The local gossip columnists had immortalized this meeting, saying that when they first danced together people stood aside to watch them because they looked so perfect together. They were married soon enough. Though they spent most of their time in Washington, they kept their Aldyne mansion warm and cozy, hoping that his daughter, Susan, and his new wife would become friends. The two despised each other from the start and still do to this day.

  A creature of Washington now, Natalie decided that she would lose some of her prestige if she was not represented by an elected family member. Her husband had died of a heart attack. Susan was going through her wild-child days. Natalie waited her out. Susan gave up drugs, drinking, and fornicating on car hoods. If this were a religious movie, you’d say she’d had a conversion of some sort. But as Susan insisted, it was just that she was sober enough for the first time in years to see what a spoiled and selfish bitch she’d become. She started working, and working seriously, in Chicago soup kitchens and inner-city hospitals. Though they rarely spoke, Natalie believed that Susan’s work with the poor had made her a formidable candidate in this election cycle. Susan resisted at first but then began to see that maybe she could play a small role in helping the kind of people she’d worked with and truly loved. She agreed to run. A Washington Post reporter noted that “payback” for the money Natalie had put into the campaign was her right to drag the new congresswoman to every important party of the season. Susan even had to pretend that she liked Natalie.

  I’d learned most of this on the Internet.

  I walked up front preparing myself for all the smiley faces I’d have to make. Natalie had flown to Chicago with Susan four different times when we were outlining the reelection campaign. I had a lot to drink after each meeting. She usually brought Susan’s husband, David Manning, as well as her own husband, Wyatt Byrnes. They were easy to get along with. Dealing with Natalie made the idea of keeping a cyanide tablet under your tongue sound appealing.

  She stood now in the glowing autumn light slanting through the tall front windows of the headquarters. She wore a tailored gray suit. The jacket had only one button so that it would emphasize the curves of her breasts and hips. She was as sexual an animal as she’d always been. And her breasts were her own—no store-boughts for her—and if she’d had any facial surgery, it was impossible to detect. The brown eyes gleamed with the same intensity as the dark shoulder-length hair. She was Scarlett O’Hara, but in this version she got to keep the family manse. I remember waking up one morning and realizing that I’d had a fantasy about sleeping with her. A novelty: sleeping with a woman you despise. The mindless perversity of lust.

  “Now, there’s a handsome man,” she said.

  “How are you, Natalie?” I said.

  “I didn’t sleep well last night. Worrying about the campaign. I’m sure I look it this morning.”

  “She just wants a compliment. She knows she’s gorgeous.” On the other side of her, Wyatt Byrnes nodded a silent greeting to me after quick-drawing his compliment about her indisputable gorgeousness. There was something Western about him, the cut of his gray suit, the tanned good looks of a movie cowboy, and the spare manner of speaking and moving. Randolph Scott, maybe. When he watched her, as now, there was usually amusement in the brown eyes, as if he’d married a phenomenon as much as a woman. She seemed to entertain him. He didn’t seem to mind that she was still known as Natalie Cooper.

  Ben walked up next to me. He had told me that Natalie had been particularly tough on him the past week. She phoned him three, sometimes four times a day with “suggestions.” Natalie’s interference was taking its toll on him.

  “Ben, did you set up that editorial meeting I phoned you about?” Her voice was sharp, her gaze even sharper when she addressed him. No amenities.

  “Natalie, we’ve already met with their editorial board.”

  “Yes, and I told you that I listened to the tape and I wasn’t happy with what you had Susan say.”

  I could feel Ben tense up. His hands were fists. Natalie had the money and thus the authority. Ben had the brains and the track record. But money trumped everything else, and he was getting that sad fact rubbed in his face right now.

  “I didn’t have her say anything, Natalie. She told them what she believed.”

  “Well, you’re the campaign manager. You should have told her not to say that she favored decriminalizing marijuana and that she still won’t vote for the death penalty. That radio bastard read her the murder statistics in Chicago and she still came out against it. And the station made that their lead when they endorsed Duffy, how he believed we should start executing people again in this state. All she needed to say was that she was looking at the issue again.” Then, “And where is she, by the way?” Natalie snapped, glancing around as if Ben might be hiding her somewhere.

  I could see she was ready to go at Ben again, so I said, “Why don’t we look at the two new television commercials, Natalie? We have them ready to go in the office back there. I’m pretty sure you’re going to like these.”

  Before she could speak, Wyatt Byrnes said, “That sounds like a fine idea, Dev. Let’s have a look at them.”

  His wife didn’t look happy that he had interrupted what was probably another tirade. She frowned at him but then sighed. “These had better be much better than the last ones.”

  I risked a quick smile at Ben.

  Ladies and gentlemen, the one, the only, Natalie Cooper.

  CHAPTER 5

  Give a cable news talking head five minutes to bitch about politics today and he or she will likely mention the process consultants use to bring their wares to market. Focus groups seem to bother them especially. I’ve never understood why. A cross section of twelve people studying commercials and print ads can often point out flaws that the consultants miss. This doesn’t mean that you find every comment useful. Some of them can get pretty dumb. But most focus groups produce at least one or two insights that are worth discussing later on.

  The two thirty-second spots I showed Natalie that morning had been produced, tested, reshot, and then tested again. The first focus group, which leaned toward the moderately conservative, complained that when Susan spoke about helping people, the ads sounded as if she was just another big-spending liberal. In this part of the state conservatives won three out of four elections. We retooled.

  The new spots showed Susan in a factory, on a farm, in an office building, talking to people with jobs. The word “hardworking” could be heard three times per spot. We needed to make it clear that while Susan was pushing for extended unemployment benefits and help for the needy, she had a great respect for average people still working their asses off five or six days a week. Conservatives never seem to understand that people collecting unemployment have usually paid for it from payroll taxes. Or that there really are people who would die without state or federal aid.

  Kristin Daly, Ben’s number two, offered Natalie and Wyatt coffee and seated them in front of a big-screen TV, a black DVD player squatting on top like a parasite that drew power from all the electricity. They both declined the coffee.

  By now Ben was sweating. The fluorescents gave the gleam on his face a ceramic glaze as he inserted the DVD. I don’t sweat much. I grind my teeth instead.

  Just before the commercia
ls ran, a woman of maybe thirty came in with David Manning. Walking in front of several people seemed to be an ordeal for her. She kept her head down and walked in quick, anxious little steps. In her inexpensive beige suit she was thin and prim and out of place here in this room filled with power and anger and harsh competence. She was pretty in a shy, almost sad way. Manning introduced her to Ben, Kristin, and me as his assistant, Doris Kelly. She managed a tiny nervous smile for us. Judging by Natalie’s laser-eyed glare, I was sure she didn’t approve of the Kelly woman. Wyatt Byrnes gave her a little salute. Natalie did not look pleased. Byrnes was so cordial most of the time it was difficult to imagine him in a boardroom of business thieves and pirates.

  Ben, Kristin, and I didn’t watch the commercials. We studied Natalie’s face. Being an actress, she knew how to conceal her feelings. When the second spot ended and the screen went black she sat back in her chair as if giving the new commercials thoughtful consideration. Then she said, tossing it off, “Well, that’s an improvement anyway.”

  Like most slave owners, Natalie had learned that giving real praise only encouraged laziness among the creatures who did your bidding. I had never heard her give anybody in my firm an honest compliment.

  “Much better, I think, Natalie.” Byrnes gave me a nod and a hollow smile.

  Manning said, “I think you folks nailed it this time.”

  Doris Kelly offered no opinion. She was no doubt afraid to.

  If Natalie hadn’t given her reluctant approval of the commercials, Byrnes and Manning would either have said nothing or expressed mild disappointment. They’d been trained to wait for Natalie to tell them what their opinion was.

  She looked at me. “I want another shot at that Gil Hawkins radio show. Ben doesn’t think it’s important, but I do. I want her to go back on there and tell that man’s audience that she’ll at least reconsider reinstituting capital punishment in this state. Obviously she can’t vote in the state legislature, but she needs to make herself clear that she might vote for it if she could. And I’ve been thinking about the marijuana thing. What she should’ve said was that we might be forced to legalize certain small amounts of marijuana because the police are so overworked that they should be concentrating on more serious crimes.”