Mob Rule 50 results

John Armstrong’s page-turner set against the golden era of mob bosses and big Packards, serialized in The Ex-Press

Getting down to brassy tacts

Mob Rule: Part 39 Jack and Lyndon sit back on the campaign trail with a bottle of bourbon and dig at the roots of each other's deep beliefs By John Armstrong We had more than several over the next few hours. There were twin beds in his room and I sat on one with Vanessa beside me and him on the other, facing each other. I took a long drink of bourbon and smoked half a cigarette trying to figure out how to start and then finally just began at the beginning, with Frank and I diving for cover on a New York sidewalk, only a few months ago. Back when the world made sense. If I left anything out it was because I’d forgotten it, not because I was being cagey. I’d had enough of subterfuge and lying to last me a lifetime and I trusted Lyndon implicitly, no matter what side we wound up on in the end. Over the last few weeks and especially during our early stops in the South he’d gone off-script regularly, hitting on poverty and race equality whether he was in front of ...

From the frying pan to the panhandle

Mob Rule: Part 38 Jack learns that brokering political deals in Florida means biting into fat slabs of bad meat By John Armstrong So that’s what we did. When we got to Florida Bobby called Wallace and arranged a conference in Albany, Georgia for the following day, the closest reasonably sized city to both camps. I didn’t go along with them and I confess I didn’t argue hard for the privilege. I’d seen enough of Wallace, Conner, and the "superior white race” and so far as I was concerned, I’d be just as pleased if the next time I saw them it was to identify the bodies. Our two diplomats left with a driver around 10 a.m. and expected to be back for supper. While they were gone I thought I’d take Vanessa to the beach and let the sun bake the stress away. It was already over 80 degrees. I found Sydney drinking coffee and asked if he knew how to get to the beach and he looked at me like I’d already been in the sun too long. I was in my shorts and sandals, a towel ...

Romancing the Swine

Mob Rule: Part 37 Jack and Lyndon come face to face with the devil called politics and those who wear their mother's laundry in the Deep South  By John Armstrong We convened a nervous war council in the station’s coffee shop, with three hours before our train to Tallahassee. The only other departure between then and now would have taken us back through Alabama to Memphis and that didn’t seem like any real improvement over where we were, so we sat tight and waited. I repented of our decision to trim the touring party down for the Deep South campaign. We’d left the bulk of the staff and most of the guns behind us in Texas, the brain trust reasoning a larger party could seem confrontational, particular one with a dozen or so hired gunsels in it. There’s an old theory that in a dangerous situation, you’re sometimes better off to be unarmed, because it makes you tread carefully where you might not with a gun in your hand. That may be so, but I had two guns under my ...

Look away, look away, Dixieland

Mob Rule: Part 36 Jack lands in the heart of Klan land where the air smells of smoke and cordite, and the Civil War apparently never ended By John Armstrong It had been a long, hot muggy ride from Baton Rouge to Montgomery and by the time we arrived I felt like I might as well have swum. I could have wrung my shirt out like a bathing suit. Redcaps at the station loaded us into cabs and I climbed into one with Otis and Vanessa. When I gave the driver the name of our hotel he looked at me with saucer-sized eyes in the rearview mirror and said, “All y’all staying at the Hampton?” “That’s right. Why?” “’Cause your friend going to be the first colored to spend the night there.” “Shit,” Otis said. “I wondered when Jim Crow was going to show up.” He said to the driver, “Thanks for telling us. Where would you suggest as an alternative?” The driver pulled us out into traffic and said, “I favor the Hotel Sapphire. My sister works the desk and ...

Fear and Bloating

Mob Rule: Part 35 Breaking bread on the campaign trail leaves Jack with a stuffed gut and a deeper view of the divide between North and South By John Armstrong We left the ranch early the next morning for San Antonio by car with Lyndon, Vanessa, and myself together in one with Otis so he could coach me and fine-tune the speech for that night. We left so fast we took breakfast with us, coffee in jugs and tortillas and scrambled eggs and sausage in tinfoil packages. The cars had shown up that morning before sunrise and the line of black limousines made for a strange motorcade through the scrubby Texas badlands, like a funeral that had badly misread its directions to the churchyard. It was about a four-hour drive and we made San Antonio well before noon, in time to nap and shower. It was going to be a long, hot day – in fact, it already was. We had a DAR picnic with one group at 2 p.m., a church supper at five and two speeches in different locations that night. I read ...

Starting a church of one’s own down South

Mob Rule: Part 34 As the sweat pours down like a late summer thunderstorm, Jack realizes the South makes its own rules that may, or may not, be entirely legal By John Armstrong We got back to the ranchhouse in the early afternoon, already so hot you could feel drops of sweat pop up on your body, run down your skin and evaporate before they got to the bottom. Lyndon had lent us cowboy hats for the ride, and I felt a little silly wearing mine until I learned your brains would literally bake without one. I did try fanning myself with it but it was like trying to cool yourself off with the air from a blast furnace and no real relief at all. I fully understood the idea of the siesta now and all I wanted was to lie somewhere in front of a fan with as little clothing as possible. I didn’t even care if Vanessa joined me or not; the idea of anything more strenuous than a nap seemed preposterous. But it was not to be. Bobby, Sydney, and Otis wanted Lyndon and I for a general ...

Texas hold ’em, then crush ’em

Mob Rule: Part 33 Jack ponders his place in the deck after a long ride on Lyndon B. Johnson's ranch that ends in a rickety shithouse By John Armstrong That night we slept in cool, fresh-ironed sheets while coyotes sang a lullaby through the open windows. I woke up with a smile, ready to eat again and go ride a bull, or perhaps just a horse to start with. I got my wish. After breakfast Lyndon asked if we’d like to ride out with him and see the house he was born in. His wife, whose name really did seem to be ‘Bird” though the hands called her Miz Johnson unfailingly, packed lunches and filled thermoses with water and tea. Vanessa was experienced with horses but I had some difficulty actually getting up onto the mine, a big bay named Baldy. Not that he lacked for hair; Lyndon said horses with a white patch on their face were commonly called bald-faced. I’d never actually seen one in the flesh and it was something else entirely to stand beside one. Do you have any ...

Messin’ with the Texan

Mob Rule: Part 32 Jack drinks in acres of bluebells and the sight of expansive ranch lands as he chows down with Lyndon and Ladybird By John Armstrong The trip from Kansas to meet Lyndon in Texas was a long, dusty one. We’d done Missouri just before and I had to admire the way Sydney’s staff had finessed the speech writing. A Missourian who heard me talk in St. Louis, Independence, or Joplin would have had heart stoppage if he’d been at the fundraiser a few nights later in Kansas. Missouri was a border state during the Civil War, never actually seceding but not quite supporting the federals either, and Missourians fought on both sides of the war or sat it out as best they could, as their consciences dictated. I danced around the state’s complex allegiances as much as the writers could manage, but in Kansas, firmly in the union, we made no bones about glorifying their forefather’s brave stand for truth, liberty, and freedom in the Great Conflict and exalting the ...

Courting the vote

Mob Rule: Part 31 The campaign begins to blur into a never-ending series of speeches, hotel rooms and handshakes until Lyndon B. Johnson offers Jack some Texas-style hospitality By John Armstrong It was just after ten when the phone rang. Personally, I had no plans to get up ever again unless forcibly removed at gunpoint. We were still in bed with a room service breakfast going cold on a tray; somewhere between the coffee and the first slice of toast it had been jettisoned in favor of more pressing activities. I stuck a pillow over it and it stopped for second then began ringing again almost immediately. Ignoring it further would just bring someone to knock on the door, so I kissed her one more time and picked it up and was told my presence was required in Bobby and Sydney’s war room. I begged 10 minutes to shower and then had to drag a naked woman halfway to the bathroom before she let me go. I tell you, that kind of thing does wonders for a man’s self-image. Two floors ...

Mob Rule: Part 30

Stealing from the Best Finding his comfort zone halfway between holy roller and Hollywood hack on the campaign trail, Jack suddenly realizes it's not about who you really are, but who people want you to be. By John Armstrong It was a good thing I made my move when I did. The next morning we left for California. We took off in more of the drizzling rain and grey skies that mean spring in Washington and arrived in the hard glare and 70 degrees-plus heat of early May in Los Angeles. The waiting limos took us down palm-lined streets to the hotel and I got right to work pacing the floor and chain-smoking, waiting for Vanessa to arrive. Bobby and Sydney were in meetings all day in a room reserved for just that purpose and again I was largely unneeded, except when I was briefly trotted out for inspection by men whose names I forgot immediately after Bobby introduced us. I had given up on trying to keep such information in my head. It had become a blur of faces and names and even ...