Dark Horse Read online

  Then came the syringe. Its needle gleamed when it caught the flashlight’s beam and startled the old man. “Oh, don’t be scared. Just a little something to help you along,” echoed the rider’s words between the drumbeats of Hurricane’s heart. And as if to distract, he spoke in the practiced tone of a nurse with a nervous patient. “So who’d you vote for today? Absentee, I’ll betcha.”

  “Me,” he whispered.

  “Yeah. Me too,” said the little man, gently touching a bloody scrape around the old man’s neck. “What about that guy Mitch Dutton? Know him? He’s gonna get the Democratic nod.”

  Mitch Dutton. That’s the fellah’s name. He’ll surely be the challenger in November. This year’s dark horse. Marshall’s spoken well of him. Too bad he’ll spend the race as designated loser.

  “Now look up this way,” said the little man, raising his left hand for Hurricane to follow. “This shouldn’t hurt at all.”

  With that, the syringe plunged into the old man’s bulging vein, followed by a volley of air that sucked back into the old man’s heart.

  “Betcha wanna know who killed ya,” whispered the rider, picking up the flashlight and shining it into his own eyes. Otherworldly. Cobalt blue.

  The old man’s heart gulped with air, losing the prime as the ventricles grasped for liquid. The hiccup turned into an instant heart attack. He wheezed for some air, his arms flailing.

  The rider withdrew, syringe in hand, and remotely observed the final moments of the great man’s life. The cardiac arrest was instant and killed quickly. Hurricane’s eyeballs glazed and rolled back and his body contorted in one last painful convulsion. Yet all the rider cared to consider was whether or not he’d been seen. If, in that brief moment, the old man had actually gotten a good look at his killer, peered into the eyes and seen the man who’d finally beat him. Or if he’d felt the power of his prolonged incumbency diminish along with life itself.

  Heady stuff, thought the rider.

  TWO

  “IACCEPT your nomination,” muttered the candidate back to the TV. Shallow breath. A classic sign of nerves.

  It was shortly after 9:00 P.M. when Cathedral City’s Channel 9 first reported the news. Mitch Dutton, local attorney and community activist, would be the Democratic nominee for the thirty-first congressional district of Texas. As he sat at the edge of the hotel bed, remote control in hand, watching the returns, Mitch could hardly come to grips with it himself. He’d made the first, all-important stride toward public office.

  Congressional nominee Mitch Dutton.

  Putting the evident jitters in check, he continued to rehearse the all-important crowd pleaser of a line. “I accept your nomination…I accept your…I accept your nomination,” he practiced.

  The room was dark, save for the bathroom light left on from his shower. Once again, with the remote in hand, Mitch started switching channels. All the news programs had their own snazzy sets and special election graphics. And he could see that all the reporters spewed the same kind of newsspeak—a kind of surface-to-air rationale—A Much Ado About the Very Obvious: Mitch Dutton was the nominee. He’d beaten a crowded field of local politicos and hopeful opportunists with a modicum of skill, luck, honesty, and looks, and maybe he’d said a good thing or two in the process that the voters had taken in earnest—something for the people.

  After all, he was their candidate. Every pundit and TV twinkie seemed to say so. As did some of the print media. Mitch Dutton. The People’s Candidate. Ready to do battle with the Republican nominee and House incumbent of twenty-eight years, George “Hurricane” Hammond. The Great Wall of Will. Not a single Democratic challenger had pulled more than forty percent of the popular vote against him since the latter end of the sixties. The challenge would be impossible. Nobody expected Mitch could really win. Except, maybe, for the candidate himself. Hurricane was unbeatable.

  “I’m going to do it my way,” Mitch had persisted in God-knows-how-many interviews. “How will I beat the incumbent? I’m going to define the debate. I’m going to bring new ideas to issues that matter to our community, as well as America.”

  As if the media really cared. All they could see was the matchup, which they would play up as the fight of the decade, sell the commercial time, then toss off Mitch’s expected loss in some matter-of-fact, nobody-really-thought-he-could-beat-old-Hurricane eulogy.

  “I’m here to show that a man with character can win,” he continued, talking back to the TV, as if to see if the words would convince himself, let alone the thousand or so supporters who were waiting downstairs. He continued without his note cards, “I’m here to show that campaign promises are not meant to be broken. But kept as a public trust. And that in the months ahead, instead of lowering the level of discourse, we can rise, each and every one of us, to this occasion with the responsibility of new ideas and embrace a better, more prosperous—”

  “Ten minutes, Mitch,” interrupted the familiar voice from the other side of the door, breaking his train of thought. They were all out there. His whole staff, waiting for him throughout the rest of the suite. At his request, they’d left him alone to gather his thoughts. “Mitch. Still breathing?”

  “Ten minutes,” repeated the candidate, “and I’m breathing just fine.”

  Ten minutes and he’d be making the speech of his life. Live on all local channels, telling the good people of Cathedral why an unknown local lawyer deserved to occupy a seat on Capitol Hill. It would be a rally to arms against the evils of incumbency. He turned back to the TV. Surfing the channels for one last time. Yes sir, no doubt, in ten minutes or so he’d be on every one of those channels, throwing down the gauntlet. The fight would be on.

  “Hey, Mitch!” rang the voice again. “Fitz says you got about twenty hands to shake before you go on.”

  “Be right there,” he assured, still staring at the television. It was then that he noted a trace of sweat running from his temple to his cheek. The fire in his belly was leaking through his calm veneer. He called back, “Is my wife out there?”

  “Gina’s holding her hand in the bathroom.” The voice at the door belonged to Murray Levy, law associate and the Dutton campaign’s resident twenty-something. A buttoned-down boy who was Generation X’s answer to tomorrow’s political mover. Mitch thought he was a good kid with a good heart. Just what his campaign called for.

  “Is she sick?” Mitch asked through the door. “You know, she’s got no stomach for this stuff.” He knew his wife about as well as any husband of more than ten years could. Running for office wasn’t her idea. He knew she’d secretly hoped he’d lose so all this would end. Now she’d have to look forward to five months of more of the same. Possibly even worse, he thought. Campaigns had a tendency to get a little nasty, but George Hammond’s campaigns could get downright dirty. He hoped his wife would survive it.

  “She’s a little shaky,” Murray called back. “Gina gave her a shot of Cuervo, so I figure she’ll be okeydokey by show time.”

  Five minutes. He switched off the TV, slipped back into his shoes, and pulled on his jacket. Facing the mirror, he saw a fit man closing on forty years. Slender. Six feet. Handsome enough. Traces of his father with his thick, blondish hair and brown-sugar eyes. Boyish dimples when he smiled, aptly named Mr. Proctor and Mr. Gamble by a college roommate seeking a career in advertising. Mitch was campaign material, all right. And he knew that in the right circumstances he could sell soap, salvation, or even ice to an Eskimo. A possible liability? He sometimes wondered if the package looked better than the actual product.

  “I’m here to say that a man with character can win,” said Mitch back to the man in the mirror.

  With closer inspection, and only minutes before show time, he found himself examining his two physical defects. One, a broken nose from an errant grounder while playing high school baseball. The other was the scar just under his chin where a boat hook had grazed him at fifteen. Took just that many stitches, too. Fifteen, he recalled. The light surgery took just enough s
kin and hair follicles to make it impossible for the candidate to cover it up with a beard. Hair just wouldn’t grow over the scar. So it remained a character mark. Toughened his look, Connie sometimes said. Made him less of a Ken doll.

  “You look too damn serious,” complained the candidate. “Lighten up. Smile at the cameras.”

  Because you’re not supposed to win, Mitchell.

  “Gotta go, Mitch,” called out Murray from the other side of the door, “before Fitz has a coronary.”

  “Just one minute.”

  Losing. Or losing gracefully. That would be a hard pill for him to swallow. He’d never lost a damn thing in his life. And when losing was a possibility, he simply wouldn’t play. The campaign game, though. That wasn’t about winning or losing. It was about stepping in the ring and throwing a few punches just to get your name on the next fight card. Hammond was a heavyweight and a champion. He would surely whip Dutton’s ass. Everybody said so.

  Everybody but Mitch.

  Tonight, though, he was still a winner. Pristine and untarnished. His record intact. Undefeated: 1 and 0. And tomorrow? Well, anything could happen in a campaign. He might get lucky. The incumbent could stumble. Or even better, Mitch might just surprise everyone and pull out the upset of the decade with a brilliant campaign. Because beyond the good looks and camera-ready posture, Mitch had a plan.

  Candidate Mitch Dutton would take the high ground, riding it all the way to Congress.

  “Mitch, please!” urged Murray, smart enough to stay on his side of that door.

  “Coming,” he answered, hardly moving from the mirror.

  It was the candidate’s opinion that the not-so-honorable George Hammond had long since forgotten what the high ground looked like, let alone the coast of Texas. And though Mitch respected the incumbent, he’d come in recent years to see the congressman take the public trust for granted, preferring to remain ensconced on his Virginia horse farm.

  But the old man was dead.

  Mitch didn’t know. Hell, nobody knew. Or would know for a good while.

  The high ground. That’s all that counted

  With that credo in mind, and resolved to win, he straightened his tie and checked his breast pocket for his note cards. They were all there, neatly stacked and ordered for his speech. It was show time.

  The ballroom at the Cathedral Island Hilton was big enough for most functions. Weddings. Meetings. And the occasional soiree. The windowless hall was jam-packed with political revelers and, as many would later note, a large contingent of that same twenty-something crowd that Murray Levy was a part of. The obvious attraction being Mitch Dutton. To them, their candidate was different. He understood them. At least he played it that way. They were all dressed in the requisite political collage of red, white, and blue. Mitchell Dutton’s name glued to just about every surface. That, too, was Murray’s job. The sniping, an act normally reserved for vandals and graffiti artists. A political snipe tries to plaster the landscape with placards and bumper stickers. In this case, it was wall to wall with MITCHELL DUTTON: A CHANGE IS COMING, there for the cameras, TV, and others. Not a single lens could possibly escape the message.

  It was all money well spent, figured Fitz Kolatch, Mitch’s rotund, bearded campaign manager and resident Master of Spin. As he waited upon the dais, spiked legs performing a balancing act, he glanced at his watch from time to time, poring over the amassing crowd of young folk brandishing all those blessed signs. Money hadn’t been easy in this race. Beg for it, spend it, and beg for it again. But now, with the nomination, the party would be kicking into the kitty. So what’s overdoing it on the sniping going to hurt? It looks good on camera and Mitch’ll sure get a charge when he sees all these cheering folks waving his name in the air.

  “Where the hell is he?” barked Fitz into the walkie-talkie.

  The radio crackled back with Murray’s voice. “Candidate’s en route.”

  “En route from where?” he snapped. “The can?” He’d told the news stations they’d have his candidate for ten o’clock straight up. “And where the hell’s Gina with the missus? Goddamn it if a woman can’t go to the ladies’ room without it turning into major fucking surgery!”

  Foregoing his trademarked Doc Martens for his first wingtips, Murray appeared at Fitz’s side in time to soothe the oncoming tirade to a muffled rant. Fitz had started the campaign loathing Murray, seeing him as a latent boy toy, representing the godless generation of slackers and crack heads. Yet in recent months, he had come to admire the young man’s tireless spirit. Murray was a new kind of political gonzo.

  “Mrs. Dutton’s hooked up with Mitch in the kitchen,” answered Murray, no need for the radio this time. “He’s getting some honey ‘n’ tea for his throat. They should be right out.”

  As if on cue, Fitz spun, snapping his fingers at the riser filled with TV cameras. A blaze of light ignited the dais. A band kicked into a timeworn, patriotic tune as if it were a fresh arrangement, and the young crowd revved itself into a preconcert frenzy.

  As she threaded a path through the hotel kitchen, Connie Dutton squeezed her husband’s hand. The roar of the crowd echoed even in there, enough, it would seem, to shake the hanging pots and pans. To make things worse, the tequila hadn’t relaxed her; if anything, it had put an uncomfortable buzz in her head. Life as she knew it was changing—even spinning, she might say. At thirty-four, she was five years younger than Mitch, a gulf that sometimes felt like ten—like a child who’d been held back two grades, always trying to catch up and never, ever allowed to sit with the grown-ups.

  “Nervous?” she asked him, hoping for an answer that would ease her own apprehension.

  “What do you think?” he confirmed for her, noticing her hair as if for the first time. Short. Black. Easy. “What did you do to your hair?”

  “I cut it.”

  “Damn right you did.”

  “You like it?”

  “I’m not worried about me.”

  Mitch was running for Congress, and tonight he was halfway there. Congress meant Washington. And Washington meant they would have to leave the small, sunny Texas Island. A thought Connie could hardly bear. With no real, nineties kind of job to hold her in South Texas other than caring for the house and gardens, she would have no excuse but to follow him or separate.

  And now he was worried about the haircut.

  So there she was, playing catch-up once again. Hanging on to his hand for dear life as they eased toward the Hilton ballroom and the deafening crowd. Deathly afraid that her comfortable life was about to be upturned—if elected, Mitch would be taking a pay cut as a House member—and ashamed that such petty thoughts had even come to matter, she was beginning to wonder if they’d be able to afford to keep the Flower Hill manor. The competition of conscience ricocheted about in her head. The alcohol had made her dizzy. Then she nearly tripped on a torn rug seam leading into the ballroom.

  “Are you gonna be okay with this?” He caught her, giving her a moment to catch her breath and balance.

  “I’m fine. Thank you.” She relished the ever-so-brief attention. “Maybe I’m getting too old for heels.”

  “Not this old heel.” He kissed her with that one. It was his cornball one-liners that she’d grown to love. Delivered, she thought, with the slightest hint of insincerity as if to remind her that he still knew from where he came. “A hick with a heart,” he’d say at some of his early stumps. It had worked too, but that was before Fitz had got ahold of him and slicked Connie’s husband into a walking, talking Icon of Change.

  People they’d never met, she would add to her list of friends—contributors, political wannabes. And here they were, patting her on the back, offering sincere congratulations for a campaign she’d had nothing to do with. “You must be so proud!” came one woman’s voice. “You’re married to a star!” whispered another. Connie was just trying to keep on her feet.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the voice boomed over the sound system. “I give you the next congressman fr
om South County…” The roar was so loud, Mitch didn’t even hear his name. Hanging tightly on to each other and blinded by the glare of TV lights and flash units, the couple eased into the swarm of well-wishers and glad-handers. He did his best to shake as many hands as he could while on his way up to the stage, knowing that once he’d spoken, he’d want to make like Elvis and leave the damn building.

  Jesus. Not Elvis.

  The self-imposed reference wasn’t lost on the candidate. He was becoming a celebrity. Celebrity was a good thing. It was power. It could be used for the common good, giving his ideas a voice.

  Waiting with outstretched hands, as Mitch climbed to the dais, were the usual suspects. As in Ike Matsuo of the Asian League with a congratulatory grip and words of encouragement. “Go get ‘em, killer!” Kristel Keener, who organized all the coffee chats and precinct walks. Mark Bingham from the law firm. Candice Guttenberg of the Trial Association, a woman in desperate need of a personality change. There were Mike Menken and Holly Wiseman from the local ACLU. The local Democratic party chair, Elton Burnett, slapping the nominee’s back. To win, he would have to be all things to each of these people. Fine. But he wondered if he’d be able to keep anything for himself, let alone have something left over for his marriage.

  Stepping onto the dais, Mitch and Connie turned to the crowd. And just when they thought the room couldn’t get louder, it turned deafening. Totally. Connie nervously said to Mitch, “I can’t believe this.” But he only saw her lips move. So he answered with a kiss. After which the room got even louder.

  Levitated for all to see and cheer, there was their candidate and his wife. Hands held and raised like prizefighters in victory.

  “Keep it to five,” Fitz whispered in his ear after the roar subsided. “Any longer and the TV’s gonna start talking over with all that commentary crap.”