The Friends of Ed King

The experienced observer--and here, dear boy, I must modestly point to myself--can quite easily detect the false note, and I can assure you that there are no false notes here tonight. Everyone is completely convinced that your uncle is going to be re-elected. I can tell you that if there were the slightest doubt of the outcome tonight, this room and the sidewalk outside would not be crawling with people. Oh, the faithful would report, to be sure; they always do. But the scavengers--and they are rather more numerous, dear boy, than you might think--would not. They take no chances, you see. They report en masse only when the sure thing is at hand. They do not begin to circle until the footsteps stagger and the body starts to sink upon the sand. They are rarely wrong, dear boy... --Edwin O'Connor, The Last Hurrah

THE SCAVENGERS were nowhere to be found last Tuesday at Edward J. King's primary night headquarters outside Anthony's Pier Four. Not that there wasn't a goodly share of staggering bodies--between the bar and the sheer crush of it all--but something was definitely missing. The faithful had pitched camp, sweating in their polyester skins and listening to the too-slick band that played "Mack the Knife" too slow and then sprinted through "Stardust". But the scavengers--curious little fish that nose around a campaign for a few months and then, once the blood is spilled, turn around and feed off the winner, tearing off little scraps like state jobs and discreet kickbacks--they weren't there. It must be too long a drive from Dukakis headquarters, you had to figure; and besides, this was a private party.

At least it seemed that way early in the night, before the Worcester returns popped magically out of the six-foot color screen that served as a tote board, whispering to those in the crowd who knew what they were doing that maybe this fellow King wasn'g going to lose after all. Before that happened--before the well-meaning crowd of mourners that had gathered to give their friend a good Irish wake had been so rudely interrupted by the sight of the corpse singing and dancing and leading the cheers--the party at Anthony's had been a pleasant one. No outsiders, no political manipulators, certainly no big-name media types--they were all over at Dukakis's. The reporters who were there, like myself, had come prepared to write a short piece about the loser. And, of course, Eddie's friends were there, too.

So many friends. The usual types huddled around the bandstand: the Boy Scout leader, remembering for anyone who would listen that Eddie hadn't made it all the way to Eagle Scout, but had always been such "an aggressive little kid"; his wife, once Eddie's Sunday school teacher, concurring in the verdict of aggressiveness; the college football buddy, the one who remembered King in his days as a guard for Boston College in the late '40's. This last one held some promise, perhaps a quote that would bolster the ready-mixed comparison between two politicians bred in the offensive line. Just like Gerry Ford, right? The college buddy smiled, advertising a splendid monument of gold bridgework, and then began to chuckle. "Hell, no. Eddie played dirty, pal. He didn't screw around at all."

The middle-aged blue eyes, already a bit too bloodshot for this early in the night, followed my hand as it pulled out the reporter's pad, and then narrowed. "Hey, pal, no quotes, okay? We're all friends here tonight." A simian arm wrapped around my shoulders and pulled me into a fraternal hug; the buddy offered to buy me a drink, accepted my refusal as more sincere than I intended it, and vanished into the crowd. Not quite friends.

Worcester changed that. The tallies flashed onto that big color screen--a neat electronic reminder that this game they call politics isn't so different from all the other games you've watched on a big screen, peering through the cigar smoke and hollering at every score--and then the cheers erupted. But they weren't cheers. Screams would be the better word, or maybe squeals: the sheer delight of a naughty five-year-old who wakes up on Christmas morning to find not the threatened lump of coal, but a shiny toy truck in his stocking. Sweet Mother of God, he's actually winning, the cheers were saying, then tailing off to a manageable uproar. But what the hell are we going to do about that? they seemed to ask, behind the beatific smiles.

GET A DRINK. I concurred in the general consensus and elbowed and gouged my way up to the bar in vintage Ed King, clip-'em-on-the-sweep fashion. The bar-tender, a smallish man unaccustomed to such mass displays of joviality, informed me that Scotch and soda was going for $1.90 that night. Ed King, I realized, would run a frugal administration, having already cut back on essential social services. I settled for ginger ale.

The crowd had calmed down a bit, not quite knowing what to do with its growing triumph, nursing the drinks to prolong a decision on what to do next. Over in one corner a trio of priests huddled together, discussing topics ecclesiastical and otherwise; in the eye of this growing storm, it seemed the logical place to head.

"Bless me father, for I have sinned..." I triumphed over the impulse, and opened the conversation in non-confessional fashion. Father Bernard McLaughlin, pastor of the Catholic chapel at Logan Airport, smiled and instantly became a helpful fellow. Most of the people at the rally, he confided, were airport people, friends of King from the days when he was director of the Massachusetts Port Authority and a familiar face at Logan. It was a good night for all of them, he concluded, showing a good deal more assurance in the outcome, and a lot less amazement at its denouement, than most of the people there. "It's the middle-class issues, you know--tax reform, abortion, the death penalty--that's why we're winning this," he announced. I thanked him for his wisdom, and strolled off in search of other feeding fish.

Marty Burke, King's press secretary, bobbed through the crowd, a bemused smile splitting the salt-and-pepper beard as he struggled to be heard by the tall people in the crowd, which to him was everyone. Burke, who had come dressed for an execution, looked out of place at a coronation, but he made the best of it. "He'll be down to make a statement as soon as Michael concedes," Burke called out to no one in particular. "Eddie feels it's proper protocol for Michael to concede first before he says anything." All those first names, the concern with protocol--this was hardly the lockerroom talk you'd expect from the staff of a football player with a reputation for late hits. But then, neither was all that stuff about Dukakis conceding, especially at 10:30 on a primary evening. The press trailer was obviously the place to be.

MOST OF the other reporters thought so too, which made for a crowd. Second-stringers on a hot streak they were eagerly trying to convince their editors and producers that they could do the tough reporting, could cover the winners; none of that soft feature garbage, and so next election maybe they wouldn't be sent to the death-house of a loser's headquarters. Newton, Somerville, Southie: The votes mounted, the grins of the King people grew wider and the reporters--most of whom privately expressed dislike for the candidate who had become their meal ticket--chortled at their personal triumphs. Then the procession began.

The cheering started up in the tent a quarter of an hour before King made his entrance. "Dump the Duke," they chanted, although the just-announced concession speech made that sentiment a bit dated. Then a touch of originality: "The Duke is dead, long live the King," on and on for a solid seven minutes--good, lusty, raw-throated cheering. Then the man struggled into the tent and the blood frenzy began, an animal roar on the verge of losing control, the disbelief and delight and confusion all muddled together, losing all sense. The band switched from its 14th rendering of "Stardust," all of them bad, into a very passable rendition of the B.C. fight song. Reporters aside, everyone there knew all the words.

King stood up on a platform, looking more than a bit confused, a man who obviously began the night with a concession speech in his pocket and hadn't found the time to waste on something as frivolous as a victory speech. He started in on a litany of campaign promises, culled from the posters that encircled the room, but the roaring of the crowd stayed about the same. Not until he mentioned Dukakis was there a shift in emotion, of depth of feeling; then the boos and catcalls reached Fenway-bleacher intensity, genuine danger level. Ed King, hardly a man to let concrete issues stand in the way of a genuine outpouring of emotion, let the boos run their course, shouted a few more platitudes about the people's voice being heard, and marched off triumphant to another chorus of the B.C. fight song.

The party over, I headed for the phones, not quite sure of what had happened. Maybe Father McLaughlin had a point with his theory about "middle-class issues," but it seemed that the boos for Dukakis were just a little bit louder than the cheers for Proposition 13 and the death penalty (cheering for the death penalty is, I decided, a uniquely American political pastime) and abortion funding cut-offs. Maybe--but it didn't matter that night, as I headed across the street, passing a happy soul weaving under the influence of dollar-ninety Scotch. A soft breeze carried with it a few more strains of the B.C. fight song, but I decided right then that I didn't want to learn the words.