The Great Shark Hunt Part 32

Insane, I thought. I've left a trail of speed all the way from the plane to this beetle-browed Customs agent -- who was now handing me the official receipt for my liquor tax. I accepted it with a smile that was already disintegrating into hysteria as I took it out of his hand. He was staring grimly at Bloor, who was out of control now, still laughing at the floor. The Customs man couldn't see what Yail was laughing at because of the conveyor belt between us. . . but I I could: It was another one of those G.o.dd.a.m.n orange b.a.l.l.s, resting on the white-canvas toe of my shoe. I reached down as casually as I could and put the thing in my pocket. The Customs man watched us with a look of total disgust on his face and we hauled our bags through the swinging wooden doors and into the lobby of the San Antonio airport. could: It was another one of those G.o.dd.a.m.n orange b.a.l.l.s, resting on the white-canvas toe of my shoe. I reached down as casually as I could and put the thing in my pocket. The Customs man watched us with a look of total disgust on his face and we hauled our bags through the swinging wooden doors and into the lobby of the San Antonio airport.

"Can you believe that?" Bloor said. "He never even looked inside these d.a.m.n things! For all he knows, we just came across the border with two hundred pounds of pure scag!"

I stopped laughing. It was true. My big suitcase -- the elephantskin Abercrombie & Fitch job with bra.s.s corners -- was still securely locked. Not one of our bags had been opened for even the laziest inspection. We had listed the five quarts of tequila on our declaration forms -- and that was all that seemed to interest him.

"Jesus Christ!" Bloor was saying. "If we'd only known known."

I smiled, but I was still feeling nervous about it. There was something almost eerie about two laughing, staggering dopers checking through one of the heaviest drug check points on the Customs map without even opening their bags. It was almost insulting. The more I thought about it, the angrier I felt. . . because that cold-eyed n.i.g.g.e.r had been absolutely right. right. He had sized us up perfectly with one glance. I could almost hear him thinking: He had sized us up perfectly with one glance. I could almost hear him thinking: "G.o.dd.a.m.n! "G.o.dd.a.m.n! Look at these two s...o...b..ring honkies. Anybody this f.u.c.ked up can't be serious." Look at these two s...o...b..ring honkies. Anybody this f.u.c.ked up can't be serious."

Which was true. The only thing we slipped past him was a single cap of speed, and even that was an accident. So, in truth, he had saved himself a lot of unnecessary work by ignoring our baggage. I would have preferred not to understand this embarra.s.sment so keenly, because it plunged me into a fit of depression -- despite the acid, or maybe because of it.

The rest of that trip was a nightmare of paranoid blunders and the kind of small humiliations that haunt you for many weeks afterward. About halfway between San Antonio and Denver, Bloor reached out into the aisle and grabbed a stewardess by the leg, causing her to drop a tray of 21 winegla.s.ses, which crashed in a heap at her feet and ignited rumblings of bad discontent from the other first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers who had ordered wine with their lunch.

"You stinking, dope-addict b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" I muttered, trying to ignore him in the burst of ugliness that surrounded us.

He grinned stupidly, ignoring the howls of the stewardess and fixing me with a dazed, uncomprehending stare that confirmed, forever, my convictions that n.o.body with even latent inclinations to use use drugs should ever try to smuggle them. We were virtually shoveled off the plane in Denver, laughing and staggering in such a rotten condition that we were barely able to claim our luggage. drugs should ever try to smuggle them. We were virtually shoveled off the plane in Denver, laughing and staggering in such a rotten condition that we were barely able to claim our luggage.

Months later, I received a letter from a friend in Cozumel, asking if I were still interesting in buying an interest in some beach acres on the Caribbean sh.o.r.es. It arrived just as I was preparing to leave for Was.h.i.+ngton to cover "The Impeachment of Richard Nixon," the final act in a drama that began, for me, almost exactly a year earlier when I had bought a News News from a newsboy hustling the porch of the Bal-Hai in Cozumel and read John Dean's original outcry about refusing to be the "scapegoat" from a newsboy hustling the porch of the Bal-Hai in Cozumel and read John Dean's original outcry about refusing to be the "scapegoat"

Well. . . a lot of madness has flowed under our various bridges since then, and we have all presumably learned a lot of things. John Dean is in prison, Richard Nixon has quit and been pardoned by his hand-picked successor, and my feeling for national politics is about the same as my feeling for deep-sea fis.h.i.+ng, buying land in Cozumel or anything else where the losers end up thras.h.i.+ng around in the water on a barbed hook.

Playboy Magazine, December 1974 December 1974 Jimmy Carter and the Great Leap of Faith Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail 76 Third-Rate Romance, Low-Rent Rendezvous The View from Key West: Ninety Miles North of Havana and Nine Hundred Years on the Campaign Trail. . . Farewell to the Boys on the Bus: Or, Johnny, I Never Knew Ye. . . Another Rude and Wistful Tale from the Bowels of the American Dream, With Notes, Nightmares and Other Strange Memories from Manchester, Boston, Miami and Plains, Georgia. . . And 440 Volts from Castrato, the Demon Lover of Coconut Grove A lot of people will tell you that horses get spooked because they're just naturally nervous and jittery, but that ain't right. What you have to remember is that a horse sees things maybe six or seven times bigger than we do.

-- BILLY H HERMAN, a harness-racing trainer at Pompano Park in Miami a harness-racing trainer at Pompano Park in Miami This news just came over the radio, followed by a song about "faster horses, younger women, older whiskey and more money. . ." and then came a news item about a Polish gentleman who was arrested earlier today for throwing "more than two dozen bowling b.a.l.l.s into the sea off a pier in Fort Lauderdale" because, he told arresting officers, "he thought they were n.i.g.g.e.r eggs."

. . . We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out. Which could happen a lot sooner than even Henry Kissinger thinks. . . Because this is, after all, another election year, and almost everybody I talk to seems to feel we are headed for strangeness. . . of one sort or another. And some people say we are already deep in the midst of it. Which may be true. The evidence points both ways. . . But from my perch in this plastic catbird seat out here on the southernmost rim of Key West, the barometer looks to be falling so fast on all fronts that it no longer matters. And now comes this filthy news in the latest Gallup Poll that Hubert Humphrey will be our next president. . . Or, failing that, he will foul the national air for the next six months and drive us all to smack with his poison gibberish.

Jesus, no wonder that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d up in Fort Lauderdale ran amok and decided that all bowling b.a.l.l.s were actually n.i.g.g.e.r eggs that would have to be hurled, at once, into shark-infested waters. He was probably a desperate political activist of some kind trying to send a message to Was.h.i.+ngton.

Last night, on this same radio station, I heard a warning about "a new outbreak of dog mutilations in Coconut Grove." The disc jockey reading the news sounded angry and agitated. "Three more mongrel dogs were found castrated and barely alive tonight," he said, "and investigating officers said there was no doubt that all three animals were victims of the same bloodthirsty psychotic -- a stocky middle-aged Cuban known as 'Castrato' -- who has terrorized dog owners in Coconut Grove for the past three months.

"Today's mutilations, police said, were executed with the same s.a.d.i.s.tic precision as all the others. According to the owner of one victim, a half-breed chow watchdog named Willie, the dog was 'minding his own business, just lying out there in the driveway, when all of a sudden I heard him start yelping and I looked out the front door just in time to see this dirty little spic shoot him again with one of those electric flashlight guns. Then the sonofab.i.t.c.h grabbed Willie by the hind legs and threw him into the back of an old red pickup. I yelled at him, but by the time I got hold of my shotgun and ran out on the porch, he was gone. It all happened so fast that I didn't even get the license number off the truck.' "

The voice on the radio paused for a long moment, then dipped a few octaves and went on with the story: 'Several hours later, police said, Willie and two other dogs -- both mongrels -- were found in a vacant lot near the Dinner Key yacht marina. All three had been expertly castrated. . ."

Another long pause, followed by a moaning sound as the radio voice seemed to crack and stutter momentarily. . . And then it continued, very slowly: "The nature of the wounds, police said, left no room for doubt that today's mutilations were the work of the same fiendish hand responsible for all but two of the 49 previous dog castrations in Coconut Grove this year.

" 'This is definitely the work of Castrato,' said Senior Dog Warden Lionel Olay at a hastily called press conference late this afternoon. 'Look at the razor work on this mongrel chow,' Olay told reporters. 'These cuts are surgically perfect, and so is this cauterization. This man you call "Castrato" is no amateur, gentlemen. This is very artistic surgery -- maybe 50 or 55 seconds from start to finish, a.s.suming he works with a whip-steel straight razor and a 220-volt soldering iron.'

"Olay ended the press conference on a humorous note, urging reporters to 'work like dogs until this case is cracked. And if any of you people own mongrels,' he added, 'either keep them out of Coconut Grove or have them put to sleep.'

"Meanwhile," said the newscaster, "South Miami police have warned all dog owners in the area to be on the lookout for a red pickup truck cruising slowly in residential neighborhoods. The driver, a small but muscular Cuban between 40 and 50 years old, is known to be armed with an extremely dangerous, high-voltage electric weapon called a 'Taser' and is also criminally insane."

Jesus Christ! I'm not sure I can handle this kind of news and frantic stimulus at four o'clock in the morning -- especially with a head full of speed, booze and Percodan. It is extremely difficult to concentrate on the cheap realities of Campaign '76 under these circ.u.mstances. The idea of covering even the early stages of this cynical and increasingly retrograde campaign has already plunged me into a condition bordering on terminal despair, and if I thought I might have to stay with these people all the way to November I would change my name and seek work as a professional alligator poacher in the swamps around Lake Okeechobee. My frame of mind is not right for another long and maddening year of total involvement in a presidential campaign. . . and somewhere in the back of my brain lurks a growing suspicion that this campaign is not right either; but that is not the kind of judgment any journalist should make at this point. At least not in print.

So for the moment I will try to suspend both the despair and the final judgment. Both will be ma.s.sively justified in the next few months, I think -- and until then I can fall back on the firmly held but rarely quoted conviction of most big-time Was.h.i.+ngton pols that n.o.body n.o.body can function at top form on a full-time basis in more than one presidential campaign. This rule of thumb has never been applied to journalists, to my knowledge, but there is ample evidence to suggest it should be. There is no reason to think that even the best and brightest of journalists, as it were, can repeatedly or even more than once crank themselves up to the level of genuinely fanatical energy, commitment and total concentration it takes to live in the speeding vortex of a presidential campaign from start to finish. There is not enough room on that h.e.l.l-bound train for anybody who wants to relax and act human now and then. It is a gig for ambitious zealots and terminal action-junkies. . . and this is especially true of a campaign like this one, which so far lacks any central, overriding issue like the war in Vietnam that brought so many talented and totally dedicated nonpoliticians into the '68 and '72 campaigns. can function at top form on a full-time basis in more than one presidential campaign. This rule of thumb has never been applied to journalists, to my knowledge, but there is ample evidence to suggest it should be. There is no reason to think that even the best and brightest of journalists, as it were, can repeatedly or even more than once crank themselves up to the level of genuinely fanatical energy, commitment and total concentration it takes to live in the speeding vortex of a presidential campaign from start to finish. There is not enough room on that h.e.l.l-bound train for anybody who wants to relax and act human now and then. It is a gig for ambitious zealots and terminal action-junkies. . . and this is especially true of a campaign like this one, which so far lacks any central, overriding issue like the war in Vietnam that brought so many talented and totally dedicated nonpoliticians into the '68 and '72 campaigns.

The issues this time are too varied and far too complex for the instant polarization of a Which Side Are You On? crusade. There will not be many ideologues seriously involved in the '76 campaign; this one is a technicians' trip, run by and for politicians. . . Which is not really a h.e.l.l of a lot different from any other campaign, except that this time it is going to be painfully obvious. This time, on the 200th anniversary of what used to be called "The American Dream," we are going to have our noses rubbed, day after day -- on the tube and in the headlines -- in this mess we have made for ourselves.

Today, wherever in this world I meet a man or woman who fought for Spanish liberty, I meet a kindred soul. In those years we lived our best, and what has come after and what there is to come can never carry us to those heights again.

-- from The Education of a Correspondent The Education of a Correspondent by H by HERBERT M MATTHEWS My problem with this campaign began not quite two years ago, in May of 1974, when I flew down to Georgia with Teddy Kennedy and ran into Jimmy Carter. The meeting was not so much accidental as inevitable: I knew almost nothing about Carter at the time, and that was all I wanted to know. He was the lame duck governor of Georgia who had nominated "Scoop" Jackson at the 1972 Democratic Convention in Miami, and in the course of that year I had written some ugly things about him.

. . .Or at least that's what he told me when I showed up at the governor's mansion for breakfast at eight o'clock in the morning. I had been up all night, in the company of serious degenerates. . . ah, but let's not get into that, at least not quite yet. I just reread that Castrato business, and it strikes me that I am probably just one or two twisted tangents away from terminal fusing of the brain circuits.

Yes, the point: my feeling for Southern politicians is not especially warm, even now. Ever since the first cannonb.a.l.l.s fell on Fort Sumter in 1861, Southern politics has been dominated by thieves, bigots, warmongers and buffoons. There were governors like Earl Long in Louisiana, "Kissin' Jim" Folsom in Alabama and Orval Faubus in Arkansas. . . and senators like Bilbo and Eastland from Mississippi, Smathers and Gurney from Florida. . . and Lyndon Johnson from Texas.

Toward the end of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s, the governor of Georgia was a white trash dingbat named Lester Maddox -- who is still with us, in one crude form or another -- and when the curtain finally falls on George Wallace, he will probably go down in history as the Greatest Thief of them all. Wallace was the first Southern politician to understand that there are just as many mean, stupid bigots above the Mason-Dixon Line as there are below it, and when he made the shrewd decision to "go national" in 1968, he created an Alabama-based industry that has since made very rich men of himself and a handful of cronies. For more than a decade, George Wallace has bamboozled the national press and terrified the ranking fixers in both major parties. In 1968, he took enough Democratic votes from Hubert Humphrey to elect Richard Nixon, and if he had bothered to understand the delegate selection process in 1972, he could have prevented McGovern's nomination and muscled himself into the number two spot on a Humphrey-Wallace ticket.

McGovern could not have survived a second-ballot short-fall in Miami that year, and anybody who thinks the Happy Warrior would not have made that trade with Wallace is a fool. Hubert Humphrey would have traded anything, anything, with with anybody, anybody, to get the Democratic nomination for himself in 1972. . . and he'll be ready to trade again, this year, if he sees the slightest chance. to get the Democratic nomination for himself in 1972. . . and he'll be ready to trade again, this year, if he sees the slightest chance.

And he does. He saw it on the morning after the New Hamps.h.i.+re primary, when five percent of the vote came in as "uncommitted." That rotten, truthless old freak was on national TV at the crack of dawn, cackling like a hen full of amyls at the "wonderful news" from New Hamps.h.i.+re. After almost four years of relatively statesmanlike restraint and infrequent TV appearances that showed his gray hair and haggard jowls -- four long and frantic years that saw the fall of Richard Nixon, the end of the war in Vietnam and a neo-collapse of the U.S. economy -- after all that time and all those sober denials that he would never run for president, all it took to jerk Hubert out of his closet was the news from New Hamps.h.i.+re that five percent of the Democratic voters, less than 4000 people, in that strange little state had cast their ballots for "uncommitted" delegates.

To Humphrey, who was not even entered in the New Hamps.h.i.+re primary, this meant five percent for him. five percent for him. Never mind that a completely unknown ex-governor of Georgia had Never mind that a completely unknown ex-governor of Georgia had won won the New Hamps.h.i.+re with more than 30% of the vote; or that liberal Congressman Morris Udall had finished a solid but disappointing second with 24%; or that liberal Senator Birch Bayh ran third with 16%. . . None of that mattered to Hubert, because he was privy to various rumors and force-fed press reports that many of the "uncommitted" delegates in New Hamps.h.i.+re were secret Humphrey supporters. There was no way to be sure, of course -- but no reason to doubt it, either; at least not in the mushy mind of the Happy Warrior. the New Hamps.h.i.+re with more than 30% of the vote; or that liberal Congressman Morris Udall had finished a solid but disappointing second with 24%; or that liberal Senator Birch Bayh ran third with 16%. . . None of that mattered to Hubert, because he was privy to various rumors and force-fed press reports that many of the "uncommitted" delegates in New Hamps.h.i.+re were secret Humphrey supporters. There was no way to be sure, of course -- but no reason to doubt it, either; at least not in the mushy mind of the Happy Warrior.

His first TV appearance of the '76 campaign was a nasty shock to me. I had been up all night, tapping the gla.s.s and nursing my bets along (I had bet the quinella, taking Carter and Reagan against Udall and Ford) and when the sun came up on Wednesday I was slumped in front of a TV set in an ancient New England farmhouse on a hilltop near a hamlet called Contoocook. I had won early on Carter, but I had to wait for Hughes Rudd and the Morning News Morning News to learn that Ford had finally overtaken Reagan. The margin at dawn was less than one percent, but it was enough to blow my quinella and put Reagan back on Cheap Street, where he's been ever since. . . and I was brooding on this unexpected loss, sipping my coffee and tapping the gla.s.s once again, when all of a sudden I was smacked right straight in the eyes with the wild-eyed babbling spectacle of Hubert Horatio Humphrey. His hair was bright orange, his cheeks were rouged, his forehead was caked with Mantan, and his mouth was moving so fast that the words poured out in a high-pitched chattering whine. . . "O my goodness, my gracious. . . isn't it wonderful? Yes, yes indeed. . . O yes, it just goes to show. . . I just can't say enough. . ." to learn that Ford had finally overtaken Reagan. The margin at dawn was less than one percent, but it was enough to blow my quinella and put Reagan back on Cheap Street, where he's been ever since. . . and I was brooding on this unexpected loss, sipping my coffee and tapping the gla.s.s once again, when all of a sudden I was smacked right straight in the eyes with the wild-eyed babbling spectacle of Hubert Horatio Humphrey. His hair was bright orange, his cheeks were rouged, his forehead was caked with Mantan, and his mouth was moving so fast that the words poured out in a high-pitched chattering whine. . . "O my goodness, my gracious. . . isn't it wonderful? Yes, yes indeed. . . O yes, it just goes to show. . . I just can't say enough. . ."

No! I thought. This can't be true. Not now! Not so soon! Here was this monster, monster, this shameful electrified corpse -- giggling and raving and flapping his hands at the camera like he'd just been elected president. He looked like three iguanas in a feeding frenzy. I stood up and backed off from the TV set, but the view was no different from the other side of the room. I was seeing The Real Thing, and it stunned me. . . Because I knew, in my heart, that he this shameful electrified corpse -- giggling and raving and flapping his hands at the camera like he'd just been elected president. He looked like three iguanas in a feeding frenzy. I stood up and backed off from the TV set, but the view was no different from the other side of the room. I was seeing The Real Thing, and it stunned me. . . Because I knew, in my heart, that he was was real: that even with a five percent shadow vote in the year's first primary, where his name was not on the ballot, and despite Jimmy Carter's surprising victory and four other nationally known candidates finis.h.i.+ng higher than "uncommitted," that Hubert Humphrey had somehow emerged from the chaos of New Hamps.h.i.+re with yet another new life, and another serious shot at the presidency of the United States. real: that even with a five percent shadow vote in the year's first primary, where his name was not on the ballot, and despite Jimmy Carter's surprising victory and four other nationally known candidates finis.h.i.+ng higher than "uncommitted," that Hubert Humphrey had somehow emerged from the chaos of New Hamps.h.i.+re with yet another new life, and another serious shot at the presidency of the United States.

This was more than a visceral feeling, or some painful flash of dread instinct. It was, in fact, a thing I'd predicted myself at least six months earlier. . . It was a summer night in Was.h.i.+ngton and I was having dinner at an outdoor restaurant near the Capitol with what the Wall Street Journal Wall Street Journal later described as "a half-dozen top operatives from the 1972 McGovern campaign." And at that point there were already three certain candidates for '76 -- Jimmy Carter, Mo Udall and Fred Harris. We had just come from a brief and feisty little session with Carter, and on the way to the restaurant we had run into Udall on the street, so the talk at the table was understandably "deep politics." Only one person in the group had even a tentative commitment to a candidate in '76, and after an hour or two of cruel judgments and bitter comment, Alan Baron -- McGovern's press secretary and a prime mover in the "new politics" wing of the Democratic party -- proposed a secret ballot to find out which candidate those of us at the table actually believed would be the party nominee in 1976. "Not who we want, or who we like," Baron stressed, "but who we really think is gonna get it." later described as "a half-dozen top operatives from the 1972 McGovern campaign." And at that point there were already three certain candidates for '76 -- Jimmy Carter, Mo Udall and Fred Harris. We had just come from a brief and feisty little session with Carter, and on the way to the restaurant we had run into Udall on the street, so the talk at the table was understandably "deep politics." Only one person in the group had even a tentative commitment to a candidate in '76, and after an hour or two of cruel judgments and bitter comment, Alan Baron -- McGovern's press secretary and a prime mover in the "new politics" wing of the Democratic party -- proposed a secret ballot to find out which candidate those of us at the table actually believed would be the party nominee in 1976. "Not who we want, or who we like," Baron stressed, "but who we really think is gonna get it."

I tore a page out of my notebook and sliced it up to make ballots. We each took one, wrote a name on it, then folded it up and pa.s.sed the ballots to Baron, a Farouk-like personage with a carnivorous sense of humor and the build of a sumo wrestler.

(Alan and I have not always been friends. He was Muskie's campaign manager for Florida in '72, and he had never entirely recovered from his encounter with the Gin-Crazed Boohoo on Big Ed's "Suns.h.i.+ne Special". . . and even now, after all this time, I will occasionally catch him staring at me with a feral glint in his eyes.) Indeed, and so much for that -- just another bucket of bad blood gone under the bridge, so to speak, and in presidential politics you learn to love the bridges and never look down.

Which gets us back to the vote count, and the leer on Baron's face when he unfolded the first ballot. "I knew it," he said. "That's two already, counting mine. . . yeah, here's another one." He looked up and laughed. "It's a landslide for Hubert."

And it was. The final count was Humphrey 4, Muskie 2 and one vote for Udall from Rick Stearns, who was already involved in the planning and organizing stages of Udall's campaign. n.o.body else at the table was committed to anything except gloom, pessimism and a sort of aggressive neutrality.

So much for the idea of a sequel to Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72. Barring some totally unexpected development, I will leave the dreary task of chronicling this low-rent trip to Teddy White, who is already trapped in a place I don't want to be. Barring some totally unexpected development, I will leave the dreary task of chronicling this low-rent trip to Teddy White, who is already trapped in a place I don't want to be.

But there is no way to escape without wallowing deep in the first few primaries and getting a feel, more or less, for the evidence. . . And in order to properly depress and degrade myself for the ordeal to come, I decided in early January to resurrect the National Affairs Desk and set up, once again, in the place where I spent so much time in 1972 and then again in 1974. These were the boom-and-bust years of Richard Milhous Nixon, who was criminally insane and also president of the United States for five years.

Marching through Georgia with Ted Kennedy. . . Deep, Down and Dirty; on the Darkest Side of Shame. . . The Politics of Mystery and Blood on the Hands of Dean Rusk. . . Jimmy Carter's Law Day Speech, and Why It Was Shrouded in Secrecy by Persons Unknown. . . Derby Day in the Governor's Mansion and the Strangling of the Sloat Diamond If any person shall carnally know in any manner any brute animal, or carnally know any male or female person by the a.n.u.s or by and with the mouth, or voluntarily submit to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a felony and shall be confined in the penitentiary not less than one year nor more than three years.

-- Commonwealth of Virginia Anti-Sodomy Statute, 1792 One of the most difficult problems for a journalist covering a presidential campaign is getting to know the candidates well enough to make confident judgments about them, because it is just about impossible for a journalist to establish a personal relations.h.i.+p with any candidate who has already made the big leap from "long shot" to "serious contender." The problem becomes more and more serious as the stakes get higher, and by the time a candidate has survived enough primaries to convince himself and his staff that they will all be eating their lunches in the White House Mess for the next four years, he is long past the point of having either the time or the inclination to treat any journalist who doesn't already know him personally as anything but just another face in the campaign "press corps."

There are many complex theories about the progressive stages of a presidential campaign, but for the moment let's say there are three: Stage One is the period between the decision to run for president and the morning after the New Hamps.h.i.+re primary when the field is still crowded, the staff organizations are still loose and relaxed, and most candidates are still hungry for all the help they can get -- especially media exposure, so they can get their names in the Gallup Poll; Stage Two is the "winnowing out," the separating of the sheep from the goats, when the two or three survivors of the early primaries begin looking like long-distance runners with a realistic shot at the party nomination; and Stage Three begins whenever the national media, the public opinion polls and Mayor Daley of Chicago decide that a candidate has picked up enough irreversible momentum to begin looking like at least a probable probable nominee, and a nominee, and a possible possible next president. next president.

This three-stage breakdown is not rooted in any special wisdom or scientific a.n.a.lysis, but it fits both the 1972 and 1976 Democratic campaigns well enough to make the point that any journalist who doesn't get a pretty firm personal fix on a candidate while he's still in Stage One might just as well go with his or her instincts all the way to Election Day in November, because once a candidate gets to Stage Two his whole lifestyle changes drastically.

At that point he becomes a public figure, a serious contender, and the demands on his time and energy begin escalating to the level of madness. He wakes up every morning to face a split-second, 18-hour-a-day schedule of meetings, airports, speeches, press conferences, motorcades and handshaking. Instead of rambling, off-the-cuff talks over a drink or two with reporters from small-town newspapers, he is suddenly flying all over the country in his own chartered jet full of syndicated columnists and network TV stars. . . Cameras and microphones follow him everywhere he goes, and instead of pleading long and earnestly for the support of 15 amateur political activists gathered in some English professor's living room in Keene, New Hamps.h.i.+re, he is reading the same cliche-riddled speech -- often three or four times in a single day -- to vast auditoriums full of people who either laugh or applaud at all the wrong times and who may or may not be supporters. . . And all the fat cats, labor leaders and big-time pols who couldn't find the time to return his phone calls when he was desperately looking for help a few months ago are now ringing his phone off the hook within minutes after his arrival in whatever Boston, Miami or Milwaukee hotel his managers have booked him into that night. But they are not calling to offer their help and support, they just want to make sure he understands that they don't plan to help or support anybody else, until they get to know him him a little better. a little better.

It is a very mean game that these high-rolling, coldhearted hustlers play. The president of the United States may no longer be "the most powerful man in the world," but he is still close enough to be sure that n.o.body else in the world is going to cross him by accident. And anybody who starts looking like he might get his hands on that kind of power had better get comfortable, right from the start, with the certain knowledge that he is going to have to lean on some very mean and merciless people just to get himself elected.

The power of the presidency is so vast that it is probably a good thing, in retrospect, that only a very few people in this country understood the gravity of Richard Nixon's mental condition during his last year in the White House. There were moments in that year when even his closest friends and advisers were convinced that the president of the United States was so crazy with rage and booze and suicidal despair that he was only two martinis away from losing his grip entirely and suddenly locking himself in his office long enough to make that single telephone call that would have launched enough missiles and bombers to blow the whole world off its axis or at least kill 100 million people.

The sudden, h.e.l.lish reality of a nuclear war with either Russia or China or both was probably the only thing that could have salvaged Nixon's presidency after the Supreme Court ruled that he had to yield up the incriminating tapes that he knew knew would finish him off. Would the action-starved generals at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters have ignored an emergency order from their Commander-in-chief? And how long would it have taken Pat Buchanan or General Haig to realize that 'The Boss" had finally flipped? Nixon spent so much time alone that n.o.body else in the White House would have given his absence a second thought until he failed to show up for dinner, and by that time he could have made enough phone calls to start wars all over the world. would finish him off. Would the action-starved generals at the Strategic Air Command Headquarters have ignored an emergency order from their Commander-in-chief? And how long would it have taken Pat Buchanan or General Haig to realize that 'The Boss" had finally flipped? Nixon spent so much time alone that n.o.body else in the White House would have given his absence a second thought until he failed to show up for dinner, and by that time he could have made enough phone calls to start wars all over the world.

A four-star general commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps with three wars and 35 years of fanatical devotion to duty, honor and country in his system would hack off his own feet and eat them rather than refuse to obey a direct order from the president of the United States -- even if he thought the president was crazy.

The key to all military thinking is a concept that n.o.body who ever wore a uniform with even one stripe on it will ever forget: "You don't salute the man, you salute the uniform." Once you've learned that, you're a soldier -- and soldiers don't disobey orders from people they have to salute. If Nixon's tortured mind had bent far enough to let him think he could save himself by ordering a full-bore Marine/Airborne invasion in Cuba, he would not have given the Boom-Boom order to some closet-pacifist general who might be inclined to delay the invasion long enough to call Henry Kissinger for official rea.s.surance that the president was not insane.

No West Pointer with four stars on his hat would take that kind of risk anyway. By the time word got back to the White House, or to Kissinger, that Nixon had given the order to invade Cuba, the whole Caribbean would be a sea of fire; Fidel Castro would be in a submarine on his way to Russia, and the sky above the Atlantic would be streaked from one horizon to the other with the vapor trails of a hundred panic-launched missiles.

Right. But it was mainly a matter of luck that Nixon's mental disintegration was so obvious and so crippling that by the time he came face to face with his final option, he was no longer able to even recognize it. When the going got tough, the politician who wors.h.i.+ped toughness above all else turned into a whimpering, gin-soaked vegetable. . . But it is still worth wondering how long it would have taken Haig and Kissinger to convince all those SAC generals out in Omaha to disregard a Doomsday phone call from the president of the United States because a handful of civilians in the White House said he was crazy.

Ah. . . but we are wandering off into wild speculation again, so let's chop it off right here. We were talking about the vast powers of the presidency and all the treacherous currents surrounding it. . . Not to mention all the riptides, ambushes, Judas goats, fools and ruthless, dehumanized thugs that will sooner or later have to be dealt with by any presidential candidate who still feels strong on his feet when he comes to that magic moment for the leap from Stage Two to Stage Three.

But there will be plenty of time for that later on. And plenty of other journalists to write out it. . . But not me. The most active and interesting phase of a presidential campaign is Stage One, which is as totally different from the Sturm und Drang of Stage Three as a guerrilla-style war among six or eight Gypsy nations is totally different from the b.l.o.o.d.y, hunkered down trench warfare that paralyzed and destroyed half of Europe during World War I.

ATHENS, Ala. (AP)-- Iladean Tribble, who had said she would marry entertainer Elvis Presley on Sat.u.r.day, confirmed Sunday that the ceremony did not take place. Mrs. Tribble, a 42-year-old widow with four children, was asked in a telephone interview why the wedding did not take place. She replied: "This is the Sabbath day and I don't talk about things like this on the Lord's day."

Well. . . that's fair enough, I guess. Jimmy Carter had said that he won't talk about his foreign policy until the day he delivers his inaugural address. Everybody has a right to their own quirks and personal convictions -- as long as they don't try to lay them on me -- but just for the pure, meanspirited h.e.l.l of it, I am going to call Iladean Tribble when the sun comes up in about three hours and ask her the same question the AP reporter insulted her faith by asking on the Sabbath.

By Mrs. Tribble's own logic, I should get a perfectly straight answer from her on Tuesday, which according to my calendar is not a religious holiday of any kind. . . So in just a few hours I should have the answer, from Iladean herself, to the question regarding her mysterious nonmarriage to Elvis Presley.

And after I talk to Iladean, I am going to call my old friend Pat Caddell, who is Jimmy Carter's pollster and one of the two or three main wizards in Carter's brain trust, and we will have another one of our daily philosophical chats. . .

When I read Mrs. Tribble's quote to Pat earlier tonight, in the course of a more or less bare-knuckled telephone talk, he said he didn't know any woman named Iladean in Athens, Alabama -- and besides that he didn't see any connection between her and the main topic of our conversation tonight, which was Jimmy Carter -- who is always the main topic when I talk to Caddell, and we've been talking, arguing, plotting, haggling and generally whipping on each other almost constantly, ever since this third-rate, low-rent campaign circus. .h.i.t the public roads about four months ago.

That was before before Pat went to work for Jimmy, but long after I'd been cited in about 33 dozen journals all over the country as one of Carter's earliest and most fervent supporters. Everywhere I went for at least the past year, from Los Angeles to Austin, Nashville, Was.h.i.+ngton, Boston, Chicago and Key West, I've been publicly hammered by friends and strangers alike for saying that "I like Jimmy Carter." I have been jeered by large crowds for saying this; I have been mocked in print by liberal pundits and other Gucci people; I have been called a brain-damaged geek by some of my best and oldest friends; my own wife threw a knife at me on the night of the Wisconsin primary when the midnight radio stunned us both with a news bulletin from a CBS station in Los Angeles, saying that earlier announcements by NBC and ABC regarding Mo Udall's narrow victory over Carter in Wisconsin were not true, and that late returns from the rural districts were running so heavily in Carter's favor that CBS was now calling him the winner. Pat went to work for Jimmy, but long after I'd been cited in about 33 dozen journals all over the country as one of Carter's earliest and most fervent supporters. Everywhere I went for at least the past year, from Los Angeles to Austin, Nashville, Was.h.i.+ngton, Boston, Chicago and Key West, I've been publicly hammered by friends and strangers alike for saying that "I like Jimmy Carter." I have been jeered by large crowds for saying this; I have been mocked in print by liberal pundits and other Gucci people; I have been called a brain-damaged geek by some of my best and oldest friends; my own wife threw a knife at me on the night of the Wisconsin primary when the midnight radio stunned us both with a news bulletin from a CBS station in Los Angeles, saying that earlier announcements by NBC and ABC regarding Mo Udall's narrow victory over Carter in Wisconsin were not true, and that late returns from the rural districts were running so heavily in Carter's favor that CBS was now calling him the winner.

Sandy likes Mo Udall; and so do I, for that matter. . . I also like Jerry Jeff Walker, the Scofflaw King of New Orleans and a lot of other people I don't necessarily believe should be president of the United States. The immense concentration of power in that office is just too G.o.dd.a.m.n heavy for anybody with good sense to turn his back on. Or her her back. Or back. Or its its back. . . At least not as long as whatever lives in the White House has the power to nil vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court; because anybody with that kind of power can use it -- like Nixon did -- to pack-crowd the Court of Final Appeal in this country with the same kind of lame, vindictive yo-yos who recently voted to sustain the commonwealth of Virginia's ahtisodomy statutes. . . And anybody who thinks that 6-3 vote against "sodomy" is some kind of abstract legal gibberish that doesn't really affect back. . . At least not as long as whatever lives in the White House has the power to nil vacancies on the U.S. Supreme Court; because anybody with that kind of power can use it -- like Nixon did -- to pack-crowd the Court of Final Appeal in this country with the same kind of lame, vindictive yo-yos who recently voted to sustain the commonwealth of Virginia's ahtisodomy statutes. . . And anybody who thinks that 6-3 vote against "sodomy" is some kind of abstract legal gibberish that doesn't really affect them them had better hope they never get busted for anything the Bible or any local vice-squad cop calls an "unnatural s.e.x act." Because "unnatural" is denned by the laws of almost every state in the Union as anything but a quick and dutiful hump in the cla.s.sic missionary position, for purposes of procreation only. Anything else is a had better hope they never get busted for anything the Bible or any local vice-squad cop calls an "unnatural s.e.x act." Because "unnatural" is denned by the laws of almost every state in the Union as anything but a quick and dutiful hump in the cla.s.sic missionary position, for purposes of procreation only. Anything else is a felony crime, felony crime, and people who commit felony crimes and people who commit felony crimes go to prison. go to prison.

Which won't make much difference to me. I took that fatal dive off the straight and narrow path so long ago that I can't remember when I first become a felon -- but I have been one ever since, and it's way too late to change now. In the eyes of The Law, my whole life has been one long and sinful felony. I have sinned repeatedly, as often as possible, and just as soon as I can get away from this G.o.dd.a.m.n Calvinist typewriter I am going to get right after it again. . . G.o.d knows, I hate it, but I can't help myself after all these criminal years. Like Waylon Jennings says, "The devil made me do it the first time. The second time, I done it on my own."

Right And the third time, I did it because of brain damage. . . And after that: well, I figured that anybody who was already doomed to a life of crime and sin might as well learn to love it.

Anything worth all that risk and energy almost has to be beyond the reach of any kind of redemption except the power of Pure Love. . . and this flash of twisted wisdom brings us back, strangely enough, to politics, politics, Pat Caddell, and the 1976 presidential campaign. . . And, not incidentally, to the fact that any Journal on any side of Wall Street that ever quoted me as saying "I like Jimmy Carter" was absolutely accurate. I have said it many times, to many people, and I will keep on saying it until Jimmy Carter gives me some good reason to change my mind -- which might happen about two minutes after he finishes reading this article: But I doubt it. Pat Caddell, and the 1976 presidential campaign. . . And, not incidentally, to the fact that any Journal on any side of Wall Street that ever quoted me as saying "I like Jimmy Carter" was absolutely accurate. I have said it many times, to many people, and I will keep on saying it until Jimmy Carter gives me some good reason to change my mind -- which might happen about two minutes after he finishes reading this article: But I doubt it.

I have known Carter for more than two years and I have probably spent more private, human time with him than any other journalist on the '76 campaign trail. The first time I met him -- at about eight o'clock on a Sat.u.r.day morning in 1974 at the back door of the governor's mansion in Atlanta -- I was about two degrees on the safe side of berserk, raving and babbling at Carter and his whole bemused family about some hostile b.a.s.t.a.r.d wearing a Georgia State Police uniform who had tried to prevent me from coming through the gate at the foot of the long, tree-shaded driveway leading up to the mansion.

I had been up all night, in the company of serious degenerates, and when I rolled up to the gatehouse in the back seat of a taxi I'd hailed in downtown Atlanta, the trooper was not amused by the sight and sound of my presence. I was trying to act calm but after about 30 seconds I realized it wasn't working; the look on his face told me I was not getting through to the man. He stared at me, saying nothing, while I explained from my crouch in the back seat of the cab that I was late for breakfast with "the governor and Ted Kennedy". . . Then he suddenly stiffened and began shouting at the cabdriver: "What kind of dumb s.h.i.+t are you trying to pull, pull, buddy? Don't you know where you are?" buddy? Don't you know where you are?"

Before the cabbie could answer, the trooper smacked the flat of his hand down on the hood so hard that the whole cab rattled. "You! Shut this engine!" Then he pointed at me: "You! Out of the cab. Let's see some identification." He reached out for my wallet and motioned for me to follow him into the gatehouse. The cabbie started to follow, but the trooper waved him back. "Stay right where you are, good buddy. I'll get get to you." The look on my driver's face said we were both going to jail and it was my fault. "It wasn't to you." The look on my driver's face said we were both going to jail and it was my fault. "It wasn't my my idea to come out here," he whined. "This guy told me he was invited for breakfast with the governor." idea to come out here," he whined. "This guy told me he was invited for breakfast with the governor."

The trooper was looking at the press cards in my wallet. I was already pouring sweat, and just as he looked over at me I realized I was holding a can of beer in my hand. "You always bring your own beer when you have breakfast with the governor?" he asked.

I shrugged and dropped it in a nearby wastebasket.

"You!" he shouted. "What do you think you're doing?"

The scene went on for another 20 minutes. There were many phone calls, a lot of yelling, and finally the trooper reached somebody in the mansion who agreed to locate Senator Kennedy and ask if he knew "some guy name of Thompson, I got him down here, he's all beered up and wants to come up there for breakfast. . ."

Jesus, I though, that's all Kennedy needs to hear. Right in the middle of breakfast with the governor of Georgia, some nervous old darky shuffles in from the kitchen to announce that the trooper down at the gatehouse is holding some drunkard who says he's a friend of Senator Kennedy's and he wants to come in and have breakfast. . .

Which was, in fact, a lie. I had not been invited for breakfast with the governor, and up to that point I had done everything in my power to avoid it. Breakfast is the only meal of the day that I tend to view with the same kind of traditionalized reverence that most people a.s.sociate with Lunch and Dinner.

I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every 24 hours, and mine is breakfast. In Hong Kong, Dallas or at home -- and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed -- breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be ma.s.sive: four b.l.o.o.d.y Marys, two grapefruits, a pot of coffee, Rangoon crepes, a half-pound of either sausage, bacon or corned beef hash with diced chilies, a Spanish omelette or eggs Benedict a quart of milk, a chopped lemon for random seasoning, and something like a slice of key lime pie, two margaritas and six lines of the best cocaine for dessert. . . Right, and there should also be two or three newspapers, all mail and messages, a telephone, a notebook for planning the next 24 hours, and at least one source of good music. . . All of which should be dealt with outside, outside, in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked. in the warmth of a hot sun, and preferably stone naked.

It is not going to be easy for those poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds out in San Francisco who have been waiting all day in a condition of extreme fear and anxiety for my long and finely reasoned a.n.a.lysis of "The Meaning of Jimmy Carter" to come roaring out of my faithful mojo wire and across 2000 miles of telephone line to understand why I am sitting here in a Texas motel full of hookers and writing at length on The Meaning of Breakfast. . . But like almost everything else worth understanding, the explanation for this is deceptively quick and basic.

After more than ten years of trying to deal with politics and politicians in a professional manner, I have finally come to the harsh understanding that there is no way at all -- not even for a doctor of chemotherapy with total access to the whole spectrum of legal and illegal drugs, the physical const.i.tution of a mule shark and a brain as rare and sharp and original as the Sloat diamond -- to function as a political journalist without abandoning the whole concept of a decent breakfast. I have worked like 12 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for more than a decade to be able to have it both ways, but the conflict is too basic and too deeply rooted in the nature of both politics and breakfast to ever be reconciled. It is one of those very few Great Forks in The Road of Life that cannot be avoided: like a Jesuit priest who is also a practicing nudist with a $200-a-day smack habit wanting to be the first Naked Pope (or Pope Naked the First, if we want to use the language of the church). . . Or a vegetarian pacifist with a .44 magnum fetish who wants to run for president without giving up his members.h.i.+p in the National Rifle a.s.sociation or his New York City pistol permit that allows him to wear twin six-guns on Meet the Press, Face the Nation Meet the Press, Face the Nation and all of his press conferences. and all of his press conferences.

There are some combinations that n.o.body n.o.body can handle: shooting bats on the wing with a double-barreled .410 and a head full of jimson weed is one of them, and another is the idea that it is possible for a freelance writer with at least four close friends named Jones to cover a hopelessly scrambled presidential campaign better than any six-man team of career political journalists on can handle: shooting bats on the wing with a double-barreled .410 and a head full of jimson weed is one of them, and another is the idea that it is possible for a freelance writer with at least four close friends named Jones to cover a hopelessly scrambled presidential campaign better than any six-man team of career political journalists on The New York Times The New York Times or the or the Was.h.i.+ngton Post Was.h.i.+ngton Post and still eat a three-hour breakfast in the sun every morning. and still eat a three-hour breakfast in the sun every morning.

But I had not made the final decision on that morning when I rolled up to the gatehouse of the governor's mansion in Atlanta to have breakfast with Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy. My reason for being there at that hour was simply to get my professional schedule back in phase with Kennedy's political obligations for that day. He was scheduled to address a crowd of establishment heavies who would convene at the University of Georgia Law School at 10:30 in the morning to officially witness the unveiling of a huge and prestigious oil portrait of former secretary of state Dean Rusk, and his tentative schedule for Sat.u.r.day called for him to leave the governor's mansion after breakfast and make the 60-mile trip to Athens by means of the governor's official airplane. . . So in order to hook up with Kennedy and make the trip with him, I had no choice but to meet him for breakfast at the mansion, where he had spent the previous night at Carter's invitation.

Oddly enough, I had also been invited to spend Friday night in a bedroom at the governor's mansion. I had come down from Was.h.i.+ngton with Kennedy on Friday afternoon, and since I was the only journalist traveling with him that weekend, Governor Carter had seen fit to include me when he invited "the Kennedy party" to overnight at the mansion instead of a downtown hotel.

But I am rarely in the right frame of mind to spend the night in the house of a politician -- at least not if I can spend it anywhere else, and on the previous night I figured I would be a lot happier in a room at the Regency Hyatt House than I would in the Georgia governor's mansion. Which may or may not have been true, but regardless of all that, I still had to be at the mansion for breakfast if I wanted to get any work done that weekend, and my work was to stay with Ted Kennedy.

The scene at the gate had unhinged me so thoroughly that I couldn't find the door I'd been told to knock on when I finally got out of my cab at the mansion. . . and by the time I finally got inside I was in no shape at all to deal with Jimmy Carter and his whole family. I didn't even recognize Carter when he met me at the door. All I knew was that a middle-aged man wearing Levi's was taking me into the dining room, where I insisted on sitting down for a while, until the tremors pa.s.sed.

One of the first things I noticed about Carter, after I'd calmed down a bit, was the relaxed and confident way he handled himself with Ted Kennedy. The contrast between the two was so stark that I am still surprised whenever I hear somebody talking about the "eerie resemblance" between Carter and John F. Kennedy. I have never noticed it, except every once in a while in some carefully staged photograph -- and if there was ever a time when it seems like any such resemblance should have been impossible to miss, it was that morning in Atlanta when I walked into the dining room and saw Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy sitting about six feet apart at the same table.

Kennedy, whose presence usually dominates any room he walks into, was sitting there looking stiff and vaguely uncomfortable in his dark blue suit and black shoes. He glanced up as I entered and smiled faintly, then went back to staring at a portrait on the wall on the other side of the room. Paul Kirk, his executive wizard, was sitting next to him, wearing the same blue suit and black shoes -- and Jimmy King, his executive advance man, was off in a distant corner yelling into a telephone. There were about 15 other people in the room, most of them laughing and talking, and it took me a while to notice that n.o.body was talking to Kennedy -- which is a very rare thing to see, particularly in any situation involving other politicians or even politically conscious people.

Kennedy was obviously not in a very gregarious mood that morning, and I didn't learn why until an hour or so later when I found myself in one of the Secret Service cars with King, Kirk and Kennedy, running at top speed on the highway to Athens. The mood in the car was ugly. Kennedy was yelling at the SS driver for missing a turnoff that meant we'd be late for the unveiling. When we finally got there and I had a chance to talk privately with Jimmy King, he said Carter had waited until the last minute -- just before I got to the mansion -- to advise Kennedy that a sudden change in his own plans made it impossible for him to lend Teddy his plane for the trip to Athens. That was the reason for the tension I half-noticed when I got to the mansion. King had been forced to get on the phone immediately and locate the Secret Service detail and get two cars out to the mansion immediately. By the time they arrived it was obvious that we would not get to Athens in time for the unveiling of Rusk's portrait -- which was fine with me, but Kennedy was scheduled to speak and he was very unhappy.

I refused to partic.i.p.ate in any ceremony honoring a warmonger like Rusk, so I told King I would look around on the edge of the campus for a bar, and then meet them for lunch at the cafeteria for the Law Day luncheon. . . He was happy enough to see me go, because in the s.p.a.ce of three or four minutes I had insulted a half-dozen people. There was a beer parlor about ten minutes away, and I stayed there in relative peace until it was time for the luncheon.

There was no way to miss the campus cafeteria. There was a curious crowd of about 200 students waiting to catch a glimpse of Ted Kennedy, who was signing autographs and moving slowly up the concrete steps toward the door as I approached. Jimmy King saw me coming and waited by the door. "Well, you missed the unveiling," he said with a smile. "You feel better?"

"Not much," I replied. "They should have run the bloodthirsty b.a.s.t.a.r.d up a flagpole by his heels."

King started to smile again, but his mouth suddenly froze and I looked to my right just in time to see Dean Rusk's swollen face about 18 inches away from my own. King reached out to shake his hand. "Congratulations, sir," he said. "We're all very proud of you."

"b.a.l.l.s," I muttered.

After Rusk had gone inside, King stared at me and shook his head sadly. "Why can't you give the old man some peace?" he said. "He's harmless now. Jesus, you'll get us in trouble yet."

"Don't worry," I said. "He's deaf as a rock."

"Maybe so," King replied. "But some of those people with him can hear okay. One of the women over there at the ceremony asked me who you were and I said you were an undercover agent, but she was still p.i.s.sed off about what you said. 'You should have Senator Kennedy teach him some manners,' she told me. 'Not even a government agent should be allowed to talk like that in public.' "

"Like what?" I said. "That stuff about the blood on his hands?"

King laughed. "Yeah, that really jolted her. Jesus, Hunter, you gotta remember, these are genteel people." He nodded solemnly. "And this is their turf. Dean Rusk is a G.o.dd.a.m.n national hero down here. What are his friends supposed to think when the senator comes down from Was.h.i.+ngton to deliver the eulogy at the unveiling of Rusk's portrait, and he brings some guy with him who starts asking people why the artist didn't paint any blood on the hands?"

"Don't worry," I said. "Just tell 'em it's part of my deep cover. h.e.l.l, n.o.body connects me with Kennedy anyway. I've been careful to stay a safe distance away from you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. You think I want to be seen at a ceremony honoring Dean Rusk?"

"Don't kid yourself," he said as we walked inside. "They know you're with us. You wouldn't be here if they didn't. This is a very exclusive gathering, my boy. We're the only ones on the guest list without some kind of very very serious t.i.tle: they're all either judges or state senators or the Right Honorable that. . ." serious t.i.tle: they're all either judges or state senators or the Right Honorable that. . ."

I looked around the room, and indeed there was no mistaking the nature of the crowd. This was not just a bunch of good ol' boys who all happened to be alumni of the University of Georgia Law School; these were the honored honored alumni, the ranking 150 or so who had earned, stolen or inherited enough distinction to be culled from the lists and invited to the unveiling of Rusk's portrait, followed by a luncheon with Senator Kennedy, Governor Carter, Judge Crater and numerous other hyper-distinguished guests whose names I forget. . . And Jimmy King was right: this was not a natural habitat for anybody wearing dirty white basketball shoes, no tie and nothing except alumni, the ranking 150 or so who had earned, stolen or inherited enough distinction to be culled from the lists and invited to the unveiling of Rusk's portrait, followed by a luncheon with Senator Kennedy, Governor Carter, Judge Crater and numerous other hyper-distinguished guests whose names I forget. . . And Jimmy King was right: this was not a natural habitat for anybody wearing dirty white basketball shoes, no tie and nothing except R ROLLING S STONE to follow his name on the guest list in that s.p.a.ce reserved for t.i.tles. If it had been a gathering of distinguished alumni from the University of Georgia Medical School, the t.i.tle s.p.a.ce on the guest list would have been in front of the names, and I would have fit right in. h.e.l.l, I could even have joined a few conversations and n.o.body would have given a second thought to any talk about "blood on the hands." to follow his name on the guest list in that s.p.a.ce reserved for t.i.tles. If it had been a gathering of distinguished alumni from the University of Georgia Medical School, the t.i.tle s.p.a.ce on the guest list would have been in front of the names, and I would have fit right in. h.e.l.l, I could even have joined a few conversations and n.o.body would have given a second thought to any talk about "blood on the hands."

Right. But this was law day in Georgia, and I was the only Doctor in the room. . . So I had to be pa.s.sed off as some kind of undercover agent, traveling for unknown reasons with Senator Kennedy. Not even the Secret Service agents understand my role in the entourage. All they knew was that I had walked off the plane from Was.h.i.+ngton with Teddy, and I had been with them ever since. n.o.body gets introduced to a Secret Service agent; they are expected to know know who everybody is -- and if they don't know, they act like they do and hope for the best. who everybody is -- and if they don't know, they act like they do and hope for the best.