Ten feet away from the lectern, Nimrod T. ("Tip") McLane was sitting with his hands folded in his lap, trying to resist the temptation to order another hot dog. He knew exactly where this was going and he had to keep his wits about him.
The Reverend Doctor Sweigel was an Odessa. He did things out of pure, dumb principle, and for that reason he was about to go upside Tip McLane's head with a little bit of JEEE-zuss, as he had been doing for about the last couple of weeks - ever since William A. Cozzano had begun to make television appearances.
The media had given Sweigel a free ride all the way through Super Tuesday. They liked having a goofball in the campaign; it put variety in their tedious, ink-stained lives. When he had done well on Super Tuesday, they had turned on him in Illinois.
McLane had turned on him too. As part of their Illinois campaigns, all of the candidates had made ritual visits to the bedside of William A. Cozzano, who was still hospitalized at that point. McLane, like the others, had been shocked to see how bad Cozzano looked.
Billy Joe Sweigel had become a wealthy and powerful TV evangelist by claiming to heal people through the power of faith.
He would heal anyone of any disease in return for a ten-dollar contribution. So the question had naturally arisen: as long as he'd been in the room, why hadn't he just healed William A. Cozzano? It seemed like a fair enough question to Tip McLane and he had repeatedly raised the issue in public, and during debates. It seemed safe as anything, like asking Sweigel to heal the craters on the moon.
Then Cozzano had put on a miraculous recovery.
Sweigel continued, "So what our lord JEEE-zuss was saying was that in order to move mountains, one need not have a great deal of faith - one need not be some kind of a paragon - but a teeny little bit of faith won't do it either. We have to have a reasonable amount of faith. A sort of in-between amount of faith.
"Now, some people have more faith than others. I don't think that it's unfair to say that. And I can remember a night a couple of months ago, in an auditorium in Illinois, when one of my opponents didn't seem to have very much faith at all."
A stir ran through the crowd. In the corner of his eye, McLane could see long lenses swinging in his direction, zeroing in on his face for reaction shots.
"And a certain candidate who shall go unnamed expressed skepticism that I could, through the divine power of JEEE-zuss, heal the terrible affliction that had descended upon a certain prominent Illinoisan. And I will admit that on the night of that debate, my faith was much smaller than a mustard seed. I went back to my hotel room and asked, as JEEE-zuss did on the cross, 'God, why hast thou forsaken me.' But it came to me that it was not God who had forsaken me, but the other way around. Gradually my faith returned and waxed until it was the size, not just of a mustard seed, but of a sunflower seed, or maybe even a Brazil nut. And just a few short weeks later I was astonished to turn on my television set and see this prominent Illinoisan suddenly looking the very picture of health. Praise the Lord!"
About three people in the audience, widely spaced, shouted, "Praise the Lord!" Everyone else just looked embarrassed.
"Truly doth the Lord work in mysterious ways," Sweigel said.
That's for sure, McLane said to himself, thinking of Goofy.
Norman Fowler, Jr., the Goofmeister himself, the reincarnation of Marvis, had not been invited to this little get-together, in the football-field-sized backyard of the Markham estate in Bel Air. The Southern California Rightist Coalition was not the kind of outfit that would let a moderate like Fowler anywhere near their campaign events, or their coffers. Tip McLane was a shoo-in, and the group had a large enough evangelical Christian wing that Sweigel had gotten an invite too.
After the debacle in Illinois, followed by severe drubbings in the northeastern states where television evangelists had a bit of an image problem, Sweigel had stayed in the race anyway, as a broker for the evangelical vote. He was a political vampire. His broadcasting network in the Bible Belt served as an inexhaustible source of funds, and in every city he had a hard core of supporters who could be relied on to sustain his campaign.
The incredible recovery of William A. Cozzano had caused a sudden surge in Sweigel's popularity. Because of the number of people who believed that Sweigel had cured Cozzano, his numbers were now climbing up into double digits, and he was starting to become a major annoyance to McLane.
But nothing more than an annoyance. Sweigel was frightening enough that he served as his own worst enemy, his own personal Goofy. Whenever he rose in the polls, he started to get more television coverage, people started having bad dreams about him, and he sank again.
The hot dogs said everything about this luncheon. Hollywood people would not have served hot dogs. They would have served caviar, fine wines, California cuisine and all that, to show how rich and tasteful they were. But this luncheon was full of people who had come to California and staked claims to real estate prior to the invention of the movie camera, which was to say that they tended to be very old and endowed with a level of wealth that far transcended the petty plane of movie stars. Much of this wealth was not in liquid assets; all together, the territory owned by the people at this luncheon probably composed an area larger than many north-eastern states. But however you looked at it, they were loaded, and this was one invitation you did not turn down.
The man who had invited McLane to speak was none other than Karl Fort himself. Fort was now in his nineties. He had long since cashed in his agricultural holdings. Those original investments had made him a rich man, but they only produced steady dividends as long as Fort was right there on the ground, personally dispatching thugs with ax handles. This kind of micromanagement had grown wearisome, and so Fort had moved into less earthy forms of investment.
This had left him with a great deal of free time, only some of which could be taken up on the golf course. Karl Fort had begun dabbling in politics during the sixties, supporting the likes of Caleb Roosevelt Marshall, Goldwater, and Wallace. He had been a major player in the California conservative movement of the seventies and eighties. He had given lots of money to the conservative think tanks that had provided Tip McLane with his first few jobs.
And when the Markhams had begun making plans to host this luncheon, Karl Fort had called Tip McLane personally and actually reminisced about the good old days back in the Depression, and Tip McLane had actually called him "sir."
Sweigel eventually concluded his sermon with a prayer. A few people clenched their hands and bowed their heads fervently. Everyone else just looked restless or embarrassed. And then it was Tip McLane's turn to speak.
They applauded generously. The nervous silence that had reigned during Sweigel's performance was finally broken. McLane got up from his seat at the high table in the front and waved and nodded to the crowd: a hundred and fifty of the richest people in the West, seated at a few long tables with their paper plates and plastic wineglasses. To one side, the press corps was corralled behind a red plastic ribbon, like wild animals.
This was going to be a piece of cake. These people loved him; he could do no wrong here. "Thank you very much. And thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Markham for making the backyard of their magnificent home available for this event. In a few months I hope to return the invitation - though I'm afraid that you'll have to fly all the way to Washington, D.C."
A few men in the crowd barked out laughter and there was a smattering of applause.