“How are you doing that?” Bobby asked.
Don knew Hank’s words especially well since he’d written most of them. Word-for-word, Clemens was reciting Al Gore’s concession speech from the 2000 election. Don would never forget those words… or the five seesaw weeks of legal wrangling that had hollowed him out and drooped his stoop by a whole other inch.
As Bobby and his swollen entourage swished out of the suite, Don stayed behind to phone Gregory on his cell; Don could see his peer’s bald head on TV with Clemens—over to the side, of course—and he watched as he took the call. “What the hell was that?” snapped Don.
Gregory knew Don’s voice instantly and, wisely, stepped off camera to speak. He too had recognised Gore’s words. “So, Don,” he said, wiping his brow, “WE trusted HIM to do WHAT? Your ad. That was the, ah, inconvenient truth, wasn’t it?”
Don accepted this as the highest of praise from one professional to another; Gregory’s own concession speech.
43
JUBILANT, FOSTER GRACED the lectern with eight flashes of gleaming teeth behind him: his wife and two children and his running mate, Mitch Taylor and his family. The Democrat crowd was in ecstasy: banners waving, chants of “Fos-ter… Fos-ter,” torrents of confetti, balloons, pumping music, red roses tossed into the air…
From up on the stage, it looked great. It felt great. It was great.
Bobby embraced his wife, Marilyn.
Another cheer.
He managed one “Good evening, my fellow Americans” without interruption. For several heady minutes the cheering wouldn’t let up. The flock of the faithful were in heaven, apart from the fifty people scattered among them who weren’t. To slip past security all they’d had to do was smile, look neat—Democrat neat, not Republican neat—wear “Vote 1 Foster” buttons and carry their folded placards and their bouquets of red roses and plastic buckets full of petals through the airport-style metal detector at the entrance.
The group reached the centre of the vast venue and spread out. The network TV cameras panning the euphoria zoomed in on the red buds they were tossing into the air and the handfuls of rose petals they scattered over the floor. Simultaneously, the scene was beamed up onto the big screens hugging the walls.
At first Bobby lapped it up as yet another rapturous moment and he held the pause, goading the excitement even higher. The ex-trial lawyer knew how to play an audience. If you could do juries, he reminded himself, adoring crowds were a piece of cake.
But when the first unfolded placard shot into the air from the heart of the crowd, and then another, and another, Bobby’s night of glory began its plunge: “Bouquets for Isabel… Wreaths for Bobby.”
“Usurper.”
And “Wail to the Thief.”
Eight different slogans, short and shrill. All with “ImposterFoster.com” slashed in red across the top corner. Ten stunned national TV seconds was how long the placards stayed up before the scuffles wrestled them to the floor amongst the torn roses. For the networks, ten seconds was ample.
Upstairs in the suite, Don was slumped forward more than usual. He was open-mouthed, gaping along with the thirty or forty million others also witnessing this abomination. He lifted his beer to his lips but as the infiltrators began their synchronised chants he set it down again without a sip.
“Im-pos-ter Fos-ter.”
“Bel…Bel…Isa-bel.”
The president-elect scanned the crowd. Where were the damn marshals? Who was behind this? Fuck. And fuck her. He read on, barely in control of himself, and his voice was shaky.
The uproar and scuffles continued.
Three pages into his speech, he paused and pasted a plastic smile on his face.
Don saw it coming. He felt it. His stooped frame shuddered from the base of his curved spine up.
No. Don’t.
Don’s hand moved to his heart and he felt the calm cool of the pack of Marlboros in his shirt pocket. Almost without thinking, his fingers lifted the red and white box out.
The TV camera pulled in on Bobby for a close-up. Don saw the familiar lawyer’s venom flare from his boss’s eyes as he hesitated over the next page.
Don’t.
Don didn’t move. He caged in his breath and though he had no religious bone in his bent body, he prayed that Bobby wouldn’t do it…
Bobby ripped the next page right out of his speech, crushed it in his hand and hurled it to the floor, staring at it as if it were vermin.
Don’s fist slammed into the table, crushing his pack of smokes. “Fuck!”
Foster looked up and raised a hand in silence but this was no longer an audience the ex-lawyer knew how to play. It was out of control and his one chance of calming the mob was gone.
Don shrieked again, this time knocking his Bud over the coffee table, beer slopping all over his copy of the words Bobby’s heel had trampled.