drives a new Cadillac every year, dresses like a movie star. And nobody cares. Or, if they do, they don’t make a lot of noise about it.”
“I don’t think that’s true, Roy. There’s plenty of legit ways for a man who’s mayor to make money. People don’t know Bobby’s got his hand in the till. Not for sure, anyway. If the papers ever got hold of—”
“You know what people actually hate about political corruption?” Beaumont said, slicing the air with his right hand to silence the other man. “They hate that they don’t have it going for them. Who doesn’t wish he could get a parking ticket fixed? Or get his son a good job, just by making a phone call?
“See, the people everyone thinks are running the show, they’re really not. None of them, Lymon. That’s the way it is, everywhere. There’s always men like us. We’re the power. Not because of what we know; because of what we do. What we’re willing to do. Because, no matter how high the hill any of them stand on, it never takes anything more than a good rifle shot to bring them down.”
“Christ, Roy! What did Bobby—?”
“Bobby didn’t do anything,” Beaumont said, sighing. “I’m just trying to explain some things to you, old friend.”
“The . . . crisis?”
“Yeah. Exactly. Bobby was here yesterday. Asking for money.”
“What does he need money for? The election’s not for another year. And who’s going to run against him, anyway?”
“He needs money to get out the vote,” Beaumont said. “Not for him, for the ticket. The national ticket. The governor himself put out the word. Come 1960, this country’s supposed to change hands, Lymon. And what Bobby was told is, he has to deliver double the vote from the last election. And it better all be going to the right place.”
“Okay, but why is that such a big deal for us?”
“Because they didn’t come to us, Lymon. If that greedy little bastard Bobby wasn’t too cheap to spend his own money, like he was supposed to, like they expected him to, we never even would have known.”
“But so what, Roy? What does it mean?”
“It means we’re not sitting at the table,” Beaumont said, his iron eyes darkening to the color of wet slate. “And in this game, if you’re not sitting down at the table, sooner or later, you get to be the meal.”
* * *
1959 October 04 Sunday 12:02
* * *
“Beau, I think—”
“Wait till Luther gets back, honey.”
“Where did he go?”
“He’s just making sure Lymon gets out okay, like he always does.”
“I don’t see how people can be so cruel.”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time you have a meeting, Luther’s in the room. He stands right over there,” she said, pointing to an unlit corner of the office. “But, for all the notice anyone takes of him, he might as well be a stick of furniture.”
“They don’t mean anything by it, girl.”
“Maybe they don’t. But it’s still a rotten thing to do. Remember how the kids always made fun of him when we were in school?”
“I stopped that soon enough, didn’t I?”
“You did,” Cynthia said, a smile suddenly transforming her into the pretty girl she had been in her youth. “You, Sammy, Faron, and . . .”
“That’s right, honey. And Lymon. He was with us back then. With us all the way.”
“Beau, are you really so sure he—?”
“Wait till Luther gets back,” the man in the wheelchair said.
* * *
1959 October 04 Sunday 12:11
* * *
“We can’t have this now,” Salvatore Dioguardi said, an emperor issuing a command. The gangster’s facial features were dominated by thick, fleshy lips and a wide forehead notched by a widow’s peak of tight, raven-black curls, mismatching the chiseled hardness of his carefully cultivated body. His custom-cut suit was the color of ground fog, making his upper body appear even more imposing. He wore a white-on-white shirt with the top two buttons unfastened, and sported a matching silk handkerchief in his breast pocket. On his feet were buttery black slip-ons whose simplicity drew the eye to the craftsmanship of the shoemaker. A diamond pinky ring blazed on his right hand. At his elbow was a saucer covered with multi-colored tablets and capsules. Each time he paused, he put some of the pills into his mouth, and swallowed them with a few gulps from a tall glass of tomato juice.
“We? Who’s ‘we,’ Sal?” the man seated across from him asked, his voice a semi-challenge. He was a decade older than his boss,