...He kissed her on the cheek, took a huff of her Chanel No.5 and walked to the garage. Janine took the cars keys from him and drove them both to the Chelsea Tobacco Club.

Danny greeted the retired Marine Gunnery Sergeant who was the proprietor of the establishment. Chelsea was an oasis. A place few trod that did not share a love of tobacco or at least a need to leave modernity at the door and lose themselves in a completely tranquil and antiquated environment.

“Hey Gunny,” said Danny. Janine nodded and smiled.

“Slumming Janine?” said Gunny.

“Picked him up at the bus station.”

“Is he housebroken?”

“We’re going to work on that.” responded Janine.

“Out-standing,” responded Gunnery Sergeant Ray Dallas.

“If you two are through playing verbal footsie,” asked Danny, “I’d like to go down to the lounge and get a drink of port.”

“I’d like a date with Elizabeth Hurley. That ain’t gonna happen either,” said Dallas, following them down with a bottle of port.

Appointed like a Pall Mall club circa 1925, Chelsea was the place certain wives knew to call when they had no idea of their husband’s whereabouts. Danny loved the Heywood Hardy prints on the wall, the oak paneling, the plush seats, the individual reading lights, the soft sonatas that played in the background.

Janine thought the place was tolerable. She could smoke there and the chairs were comfy, didn’t see what all the fuss was over. She thought it weird that hardly anybody spoke to anyone else, merely gave this half smiling nod in response to half-smiling nods. Must be middle-aged guy code, she thought. They seated themselves in a corner, away from the other members.

“What do we do about the Chicago thing?” asked Danny, getting his Algerian briar ready and cleared for action.

“You do what you are told,” responded Janine.

“We both know how good I am at that,” he said as he tapped Peach Blossom tobacco, from Edward’s in Atlanta, into his bowl.

“Would you prefer to be unemployed?”

At that moment Gunny Dallas came over to Danny and Janine. Danny could never get over how much he looked like Samuel Jackson. Natalie, the downstairs waitress, followed behind.

“You guys want anything to drink?” asked young Natalie; clad in the tightest jeans Danny had ever seen.

“The port for me and,” she nodded, “an espresso for the lady.”

“Sure,” said Natalie and scampered off.

Ray Dallas went behind the counter and made the drinks. Natalie brought them out. Her tip, by mutual unsaid understanding, would be around two hundred and fifty percent.

“Here you go Danny,” she cooed.

“Thanks Nat,” he said. Janine looked down at the carpet and slowly shook her head in patent disgust at her boss’s lechery and blatant annoyance that young Natalie was at the moment getting more attention than she was in that department.

Though it had usually been unusually creative lechery.

The most appalling example of such, though secretly attractive to Janine for its calculation, was his POMCUS program.

While serving with NATO, Danny has been impressed with the Prepositioning Of Material from the Continental United States (POMCUS) program of the US Army that supplied reinforcements with equipment already in place in NATO supply depots. Units just pulled up, collected their tanks, etc. and got on with the mission.

Danny, during his hunting period between marriages, formed casual liaisons with girls in cities he wanted to vacation in. Back home in South Florida or in DC, Manhattan, Ocean City or San Francisco, Danny, through initial attraction, occasional visits, long phone conversations and well-timed gifts, was able to see these women for long weekends and be assured of a temporary residence and female companionship without nary a farthing budgeted except travel to and fro.

That’s right- he pomcused girls.

Meeting Prudy had killed such fun and Danny had holstered his six-shooter in resignation to the uncertain joys of marital domesticity.

“If I cave on Chicago it’ll destroy my rep with their corporate types,” said Danny.

“You and I don’t work for them. We work for Geoff Fuqewe,” responded Janine.

“More pity that. What if we didn’t,” and he took a drag on his pipe. The smoke curled into small rings that wafted over Janine and past the dogs on point hunting print Danny’s parvenu taste found interesting.

“Didn’t what?” she said, intrigued.

“Work for Geoff.”

“What’s your alternative?”

“Maybe there are enough dissatisfied people at B&F who would want to leave. Faced with mass mutiny, or at least the specter of it, Geoff might crumble.”

“If it fails you’re out on your ear.”

“That might happen anyway.”

“What?”

“I can feel we’re taking a lot more chances, cutting a lot more corners. Now, you know I don’t mind a gamble. But are we tempting fate? We’re running two and three times the amount of skullduggery we’ve ever run before. It all could blow up in our face.”

“Losing your nerve?”

“I know the business. I know the risks.”

“If it doesn’t blow up?”

“I get canned and my name is erased from all the obelisks.”

“The subject is moot. You’re not going anywhere.”

“Which means I fold on Chicago and do my master’s bidding.”

“Yes it does.”

“Always nice to have your self-respect intact.”

“How would you know?” she replied.








He told Janine she could be on her way, though she was officially on the clock until COB, made his goodbyes at Chelsea and walked over to the WFFU studios.

WFFU was a twenty thousand watt radio station owned by the Herald Company, where, strangely enough, Danny had a good setup. He was there to produce a radio spot for a sacrificial lamb as a part of his monthly retainer fee from a local PAC.

The lamb was a neophyte kid with a heavy Puerto Rican accent who was running for the State Senate against incumbent Ernest Roame. Roame had tried to throw him off the ballot during petition season. They had survived the court challenge by three signatures. Though this kid was no threat whatsoever, Roame abused him.

Why?

Why not?

Danny was buzzed into the foyer and checked in with the receptionist at the front desk. He viewed her with academic interest. During his younger days he had gone out with a profusion of their receptionists.

Since he saw them regularly during election season, they had provided a welcome physical respite from the pressure. Since they also had such a large turnover rate in receptionists at WFFU, every time he came to the studio, it had been like eyeing presents on Christmas Eve.

His client was waiting for him.

“Chhhhai Danny,” said Francisco Jimenez. A slick Harrisburg player had given this young minority banker the “All This Can Be Yours” speech while taking him on a tour of the Capitol. Put stars in their eyes and send them on their lonely way. That was the drill. Now it was up to Danny to make him at least enough of a threat to Roame that the Senator would have to spend campaign cash.

Given Roame’s pathological paranoia, the move would keep the Senator close to home and out of the hair of Harrisburg’s more viable candidates.

They had handpicked Jiminez because the Party was determined to appear more interested in the “Hispanic” vote. Danny had patiently tried to explain to these white bread simpletons that there was no such thing as the “Hispanic” vote.

There was the Puerto Rican, Mexican, Cuban, Colombian, Dominican, etc. vote. But, his pale pals exclaimed, “you all (he loved the “you all” part) speak Spanish”. Uh huh, Danny would say, as if to a slow child, people from Jamaica and from Ulster both spoke English. Are they cultural, not to mention political, twins?

But, but, they would ask, what about George Bush and his relative success with the “Hispanic” vote in Texas?

With the Mexican vote, you gits. That was because Mexicans were social conservatives. Oh, right, the Party would say, thanks for the info!

Then they would proceed to ignore it.

Of course, nobody in the popular culture reminded any of the assorted “Hispanics” that once their Mother Country had ruled a major slab of the world from The Escorial. The Musico-Statist Complex wanted to keep many of them low-rent clots so they would continue to spend their money on loud car stereos and louder clothes.

To give them any sense of the Old World dignity of their culture, of Goya, Velasquez, Cervantes, of their current King, might one day get them to vote for the people who shared their socially ultra-conservative views.

Couldn’t have that.

That’s why the predominant Anglo opinion of him never ceased to amuse Danny. To them he was an exotic pet to be tolerated to showcase their worldly pretensions.

To Danny most of them were just desiccated and silly.

And gullible.

For kicks, he and the several other coconut Latin (brown on the outside, white on the inside) professional pals in Gering would sit together at civic functions. When an unsuspecting Anglo sat with them they would make up bizarre Hispanic customs and see how far they could push it.

“You know Roger, in Mexico, today is the Festival of the Antlers. All government officials wear them to work to commemorate the Battle of Huevo Ranchero.”

“You know Allan, in Colombia, it’s against the law to marry an ugly woman. Unless she’s rich. Then it’s against the law not to marry her.”

“You know Sally, in Uruguay, children are born with tails.”

He would work for them as long as they kept him in decent champers, good cigars and tailored clothes.

Towards that end and to cover the asses of cheap-suited GOP Babbitts who craved for the party the label of “diverse”, this pathetic animal was standing in front of Danny, looking for the media magic that would get the area’s non-registered, non-turning out downscale Latins to the polls for the GOP...