The Stochastic Man

8

I was at my office by half past eight the next morning and Haig Mardikian phoned exactly at nine.

“Do you really get fifty an hour?” he asked.

“I try to.”

“I’ve got an interesting job for you, but the party in question can’t go fifty.”

“Who’s the party? What’s the job?”

“Paul Quinn. Needs a data-sampling director and campaign strategist.”

“Quinn’s running for mayor?”

“He figures it’ll be easy to knock off DiLaurenzio in the primary, and the Republicans don’t have anybody, so the moment is right to make his move.”

“It sure is,” I said. “The job is full time?”

“Very part time most of the year, then full time from the fall of ‘96 through to Election Day ‘97. Can you clear your long-range schedule for us?”

“This isn’t just consulting work, Haig. It means going into politics.”

“So?”

“What do I need it for?”

“Nobody needs anything except a little food and water now and then. The rest is preferences.”

“I hate the political thing, Haig, especially local politics. I’ve seen enough of it just doing free-lance projections. You have to eat so much crap. You have to compromise yourself in so many ugly ways. You have to be willing to expose yourself to so much—”

“We’re not asking you to be the candidate, boy. Only to help plan the campaign.”

“Only. You want a year out of my life, and—”

“What makes you think Quinn will settle just for a year?”

“You make this terribly enticing.”

Haig said after a bit, “There are powerful possibilities in it.”

“Maybe.”

“Not maybe. There are.”

“I know what you mean. Still, power’s not everything.”

“Are you available, Lew?”

I let him dangle a moment. Or he let me dangle. Finally I said, “For you the price is forty.”

“Quinn can go twenty-five now, thirty-five once the contributions start rolling in.”

“And then a retroactive thirty-five for me?”

“Twenty-five now, thirty-five when we can afford it,” Mardikian said. “No retroactive.”

“Why should I take a pay cut? Less money for dirtier work?”

“For Quinn. For this goddamned city, Lew. He’s the only man who can—”

“Sure. But am I the only man who can help him do it?”

“You’re the best we can get. No, that sounds wrong. You’re the best, Lew. Period. No con job.”

“What’s the staff going to be like?”

“All control centered in five key figures. You’d be one. I’d be another.”

“As campaign manager?”

“Right. Missakian is coordinator of communications and media relations. Ephrikian is borough liaison.”

“What does that mean?”

“Patronage man. And the finance coordinator is a guy named Bob Lombroso, currently very big on Wall Street, who—”

“Lombroso? Is that Italian? No. Wait. What a stroke of genius! You managed to find a Wall Street Puerto to be your moneyman.”

“He’s a Jew,” said Mardikian with a little dry laugh. “Lombroso is an old Jewish name, he tells me. We have a terrific team — Lombroso, Ephrikian, Missakian, Mardikian, and Nichols. You’re our token WASP.”

“How do you know I’m coming in with you, Haig?”

“I never doubted that you would.”

“How do you know ?”

“You think you’re the only one who can see the future?”