Read the Plan (1995) for Free Online Page B

I've been checking it out, and I found a guy who could help. He's real tight with Governor Richards--all the way back to grade school--helped him win the Rhode Island Governor's mansion. If we pick Haze Richards to be our candidate, this guy could rope him for us."
    "What's his name?"
    "Albert James Teagarden," Mickey said. "They call him A . J ."
    "What kinda leverage you got on Teagarden?" Joseph asked, then exploded into a coughing spasm, cursing as he barked out stale air and phlegm, spitting it into a wastebasket. Mickey turned on the oxygen tank, but Joseph waved it away, his eyes hard and yellow as dry corn.
    "I talked to our people in Rhode Island. They wanted to get a handle on Haze Richards before he was elected governor 'cause of all our racetrack action up there. Tea-garden was running the governor's campaign. Our people threw a party in a hotel mom in Providence. There was pussy and booze, and then in comes some guy with this suitcase and he turns it upside down and spills out two hundred and fifty large all over the bed. It still had racetrack wrapping bands on it. They told Teagarden it was to buy campaign TV ads and to take what he needs. This fuck, A . J ., is stuffing his pockets like some kid at a Halloween party. They also got a video of him with one of the girls. We got the prick by the balls."
    Haze Richards had made his way to the top of their short list. Paul's old campaign manager, Malcolm Rasher, had found him. Ken Venable and Guy Vandergot, the two pollsters they had hired for Paul, had confirmed the choice at a meeting they had with Mickey the day Paul's body was found.
    They'd been in the back booth of one of his father's Mr. A's steak houses in Atlantic City. The dinner crowd was just streaming in from Resorts International next door. They were wedged into a booth in the back, hidden by a partition from most of the crowd. The din was growing as the tables filled. Ken Venable was dissecting the Democratic field along with a turf 'n' surf special, gesturing with a serrated knife blade, pointing the tip at Mickey. Guy Vandergot, fat and slothlike, was eating with his head down, grunting in agreement as Ken rambled on.
    `Thing you gotta understand here, Mickey, is the Democrats are factionalized, always have been. They can't agree on shit. You got liberals in the North and conservatives in the South. You got New Age intellectuals in the West, labor guys in the Midwest, along with farmers and subsidy protectionists. It's a patchwork of ideologies, and Malcolm thinks this gives us a chance . . . and I agree with him."
    "How so?" Mickey said.
    " 'Cause in a four - or five-horse race where nobody is winning, there's a chance with financing to jump in and grab the thing early. . . . While the rest of these guys are fighting over little pieces of the pie, we sweep in and grab the whole deal."
    Ken looked over at Guy Vandergot before continuing.
    "Okay, here's the Democratic field now that Paul's gone. All these guys have announced, and in a week or so, all of 'em are gonna be in Iowa cornfields, sitting on Jap tractors, talking about farm subsidies like they actually give a shit. . . . So we gotta get in this now if we're gonna," Ken said, still pointing with his knife. "Your front-runner is gonna be Leo Skatina, the second-term U . S . senator from New York. He's got name identification, good local organizations, and the media likes him. He's the early poll leader. He's been real vocal about women's issues. I think the Democratic National Committee is getting set to endorse him. The DNC probably thinks he has the strength to win against Vice President Pudge Anderson , who we all know is gonna be the Republican candidate. Then you got the Democratic senator from Florida, Peter Dehaviland. Environmentalist, that's his beachhead issue--offshore drilling, air pollution, nuclear waste. He also has a strong stand against unrestricted immigration. . . . He's gonna fade unless he gets really lucky in Iowa and New