Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (8 page)

Abe Stein was beginning to feel sorry for Georgie Drumgoole. “Did you say the baby was premature, Georgie?”

The light went on. “Yes, that's it,” said Drumgoole. “The little bastard was premature!”

“You owe me one,” said Abe Stein.

“This is just what the GOP needs!” said Vito Fopiano as he bounced little Vitoessa on his knee for the TV cameras. “We are the party of family values!”

George H.W. Bush heard the soundbite on CNN and called Vito. “Like that ‘Family Values' stuff,” the president told him. “Keep it up agin the heathen.” (Even Vito Fopiano wondered why the president of the United States spoke the way he did.)

But it would pay off big. At the 1992 Republican Convention there were Vito, Jackie, and Madonna-Sue before the crowd waving the kid around—the placard for family values. Abe Stein looked up at the TV in Hogan's Moat and said, “I bet Madonna-Sue Fopiano can lactate on cue.”

By 1994, Vito Fopiano and Newt Gingrich were making big plans for New York and their “Contract for America.” They had decided that it was time for Vito to retire from Congress and take his anointed place on the Republican National Committee. (Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, grateful for Vito's benediction, had even named the newest Staten Island ferry after him—the
Congressman Vito Fopiano
. Jimmy Breslin in his column commented that after a bottle of chianti christened the boat, his eyes were strangely drawn to the bridge where he “expected to see Captain Smith on the lookout for the first New York City harbor iceberg.”) Madonna-Sue, naturally, would take his place in Congress. And Vito Fopiano's eyes immediately went to New York's 7th Congressional District where Fat Max Weissberg—Vito referred to him as “The Jowly Jew”—was ill and obviously not up to a strenuous defense of his seat. When Vito told Gingrich about his plan to have
both
his daughter
and
his son-in-law elected to Congress out of the same congressional delegation, Gingrich started babbling about his own august destiny as Speaker of the House: “I am an arouser of those who form civilization,” Gingrich actually said. Vito didn't know what Gingrich was yapping about; he only knew he had lots of work to do.

Smilin' Jackie Swift was a superb candidate. “Just don't talk about abortion, prayer in schools, or rent control, and you're in,” cautioned Vito Fopiano. The 7th C.D., which covered the Upper West Side down to the Battery and part of the East Side, had been in the hands of the Democrats since the days of FDR. In this decidedly left-of-center district, there was only one way for Jackie Swift to win: divide by two.

Fat Max Weissberg was old and sick. People knew he was sick because he was down to only four double chins.The mounting questions about his health had some saying he should retire. One of these “voices of concern” belonged to Thom Lamè, the gay city councilman whose ambition was legend. “Think of your health, Max,” Lamè said in his patterned lisp.

“Fuck that professional homo,” said Weissberg, and Vito Fopiano licked his chops. The Democrats were committing suicide again and he was going to help them by making sure that Thom Lamè ended up with the Liberal Party endorsement.

Divide by two.

Swift won easily.

Newt Gingrich's Republican Revolution had reached into New York and sent to Washington a married congressional couple. It could happen only in America.

And they were off and running until Madonna-Sue found Jackie Swift's diary.

Jackie, like Garry Moore, had a secret. But only Jackie Swift was stupid enough to write his down in a diary. Only he didn't exactly “write” it down. He had used a code. Jackie Swift loved movies and mysteries. His fascination with codes had started back in 1958 when he was a kid. Every Sunday, right after mass, Jackie would rush home to watch old Sherlock Holmes movies on Channel 11. These were the old flicks from the 1930s and '40s starring Basil Rathbone as Holmes and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. One of his favorites was
Sherlock Holmes in Washington
, where Holmes has to figure out the significance of the “Dancing Men,” little figures on a matchbook cover. Each one stood for something important. Jackie Swift had been mesmerized by the movie, and the Dancing Men had stuck in his mind even into adulthood.

Then he made a mistake. He invented his own Dancing Men, his own private code. The code stood for sex. No one, Jackie thought, not even Madonna-Sue, if she ever came across it, would know what it meant.

But Swift had underestimated his wife. Madonna-Sue, like the British in Bletchley Park reading a German enigma machine, knew immediately what it meant. She kept a diary, too. It was full of her most intimate thoughts—and the mating habits of Mr. and Mrs. Jackie Swift. Like good Catholics they both over-estimated the sex act. They were fascinated about doing “it.” Madonna-Sue's diary even recorded the positions used. It also reported the data on her menstrual cycle. Madonna-Sue suffered from PMS, which made her crampy and cranky. The last thing Madonna-Sue wanted to do when she was suffering from PMS or having her period was to have sex. Any sex. She had informed Jackie Swift in no uncertain terms that during her period her least favorite word was “fuck.” Her second least favorite word was “suck.” Jackie Swift duly noted the situation and went looking for a remedy for one week of every month. It was to be his undoing.

Madonna-Sue had found the diary, had figured out what the little man that looked like the symbol for Leslie Charteris' “The Saint” stood for. It meant that Jackie Swift was cheating. Jackie Swift was dead meat. But Madonna-Sue kept her counsel. If there was one thing she had learned from her father it was never to show your cards. She would wait—but she would also cut Jackie off, and soon they would begin to drift apart.

Jackie Swift had met Peggy Brogan when she worked on Vito Fopiano's staff at the National Republican Committee. Working for the inventor of the GOP's “Family Values” campaign could be trying. Vito was a widower, he was lonely, and he was sixty-six. But he still woke up in the morning with a hard-on. Soon, Brogan found herself in hard escape from the roving hand of Vito Fopiano. He was so quick you could hardly feel or see them. The glancing tip of the buttock was a favorite of Vito's. He also liked to feel for “the good part” of the breast. That's when he would stand on Brogan's right and paternally put his hand around her back and get a piece of the “good part” of the left breast, the area where the breast descended from the armpit. To Vito Fopiano it was a test of means; if the “good part” was good, the rest of the tit was tremendous. Showering one morning, Brogan discovered that her ass and tits were black and blue from the reconnoitering of Vito Fopiano's hands. She wanted out. And Jackie Swift would be her ticket.

With the Republican Party's takeover of Congress for the first time in forty-two years, young staffers were scrambling for the best jobs on Capitol Hill. Swift's chief of staff had left to work on Bob Dole's presidential campaign, and he needed a replacement. He called Vito, and Fopiano, reluctantly, recommended Peggy Brogan. She was smart. She had kept her mouth shut, hadn't ranted and raved about sexual harassment, and had upped her salary to ninety grand a year. It was incestuous, working for Vito's son-in-law, but she didn't care. She was in for the long run, and she knew she was just as tough as Vito Fopiano and his “
capos
,” as she referred to the people who were loyal to Vito.

She was immediately surprised by Jackie Swift. He was not a hood like the rest of them. He was a gentleman. He was funny and as he liked to describe himself, he was, indeed, “as affable as an Irish cop.” As chief of staff she was around him constantly. Preparing him for congressional hearings; basically making sure he didn't make a fool of himself. Brogan soon learned that Jackie was as lazy as he was affable, but he was also lucky.

Soon she was traveling with him back to New York for his “working weekends.” Working weekends soon meant walking through a neighborhood street fair, pressing the flesh, then retreating to Swift's West 10th Street ground-floor garden apartment where Swift would press Brogan's flesh. After the discoveries of the infamous Swift Diaries by Madonna-Sue, the Swifts had surreptitiously separated—they didn't want to damage either of their political careers—and Peggy Brogan had quietly moved in with Jackie. Peggy ran the man, but was still jealous of Madonna-Sue. Jackie and Madonna Sue still appeared together on the Sunday morning network talk shows, eagerly blasting Bill Clinton's morals, hugging each other for the cameras. Jackie had
savoir faire
and Madonna-Sue was perky. Brogan had felt betrayed when Madonna-Sue had become pregnant again at Thanksgiving, 1999. The Swifts, still separated, would be having another baby just in time for the 2000 Republican National Convention.

Brogan had worked for Swift for five years and had been his lover for nearly four. Without her Swift's career would be in ashes. She knew it, Vito knew it, and Madonna-Sue especially knew it. Vito and Madonna-Sue had given the two of them space. At this point in their congressional careers, it was paramount to keep this political marriage alive. It wouldn't look good to have two of Clinton's biggest moral critics involved in their own little sordid matrimonial mess. This was the hand Brogan had been dealt. She didn't like it, but that's how it was. But still, Madonna-Sue's pregnancy haunted her, tormented her in a way that made her jealous and vengeful at the same time. She could be a dangerous woman and the Fopianos, father and daughter, knew it.

F
or over twenty years the professional lives of Wolfe Tone O'Rourke and Winthrop Pepoon had been intimately intertwined. It was almost impossible to find two men with such diverse backgrounds and personalities. Where O'Rourke was the Village drinker, the censorious Dublin-born, Greenwich Village-bred Irish Catholic, Pepoon was the eternal preppy, the Ivy Leaguer WASP with a lifestyle and family right out of
The Great Gatsby
. Pepoon's playground was the Hamptons, O'Rourke's the Moat. Where Pepoon wore seventy-five dollar silk ties, O'Rourke—when he remembered to wear one—got his for five bucks at Tie City. O'Rourke was a Democrat, Pepoon a Republican. O'Rourke was abrupt with Pepoon, who was his boss. Pepoon was terrified of O'Rourke, whom he considered
the
brightest mind in the political consulting business. They should have hated each other, but there was a strange bond and respect between the two of them. They had their corporate ups-and-downs, yet when Pepoon took his accounts elsewhere, Wolfe Tone O'Rourke was sure to follow. They were known best throughout the industry for their great American Express fiasco/success.

If there was anything O'Rourke liked better than drinking and talking at the Moat, it was hanging out at the original Palm Restaurant on Second Avenue.The Palm was one of those places without pretenses. What you see is what you get. It was the ultimate cholesterol palace featuring succulent food, drinks strong enough to fell a horse, and efficient, no-nonsense service that tended to be brusque.

It was to the Palm that O'Rourke had gone on his day of infamy. His lunch-mate that day was the CEO of the Ambrosia Winery of Rome. Ambrosia was trying to break into the U.S. market, and O'Rourke was trying to get the account. Their meal went well with lots of spirits and wines flowing around the lobster. At three o'clock, O'Rourke strolled back into the plush Third Avenue offices of his firm and was immediately reminded by his terminally enthusiastic secretary, Bonnie, that there was the big American Express account meeting in thirty minutes. Usually, Winthrop Pepoon made all the presentations, but he had been called away to London on business. It wasn't that Pepoon didn't trust O'Rourke to give presentations which, by the way, were O'Rourke's creations, it was just that Pepoon felt he had a more even temperament than the abrupt O'Rourke and there was less chance of somebody being called an “asshole” around the conference table. But this time fate had intervened and there was no choice. The London business had been an unforeseen emergency and American Express would be put off no longer. They wanted to see how the campaign was progressing and the ball was now in O'Rourke's court. There was only one problem: O'Rourke was totally unprepared. He immediately drank five cups of coffee and decided to fake it. But O'Rourke's whiskey lunch and the absence of Pepoon's smooth tongue would betray him this time.

“Well, Mr. O'Rourke,” said Cyril Hawkesworth, the head of the agency, in his usual pompous manner, “we are anxiously awaiting your suggestions for the new ad campaign.” Hawkesworth and O'Rourke were like oil and water. Hawkesworth bore a remarkable resemblance to John Houseman as he portrayed Professor Kingsfield in
The Paper Chase
. He loved wearing double-breasted suits and droopy dickie bows and often walked around the office with a book clutched to his chest. He was also quick to remind everyone of his family's wealth. Once O'Rourke had stood behind him in a crowded elevator and imitated in the perfect Houseman pitch for the Smith-Barney commercial he had created: “We make money the old-fashioned way—we
inherit
it!” Hawkesworth was not amused.

Now what to do? Thoughts of Ambrosia and Rome were rattling around in O'Rourke's brain-cell challenged mind. All of a sudden there came a vision. Divine inspiration had struck.

“Well,” said O'Rourke, “I've put a lot of thought into this and I think that American Express needs to spruce up their image a little bit. People are sick and tired of Karl Malden, his hat and nose, and his dire warnings of muggers and thieves. American Express has to think positively. It needs a little glitter.” O'Rourke paused for effect. Looking around the table everybody was nodding soberly. O'Rourke had them in the palm—he loved the pun—of his hand.

“Yes, gentlemen,” O'Rourke continued, “glitter. Some big names. And a format. Well, the first one will be terrific. We'll get ah, ah....” His tongue was now out of control. He couldn't stop himself.

“Gentlemen, we take the pope—you know, Paul VI—and we put him in the Sistine Chapel. The pope is dressed up in his white cassock, satin red cape, and papal stole, white zucchetto”—he knew he must be impressing these five WASPs and one Jew with his Catholic terminology and he was sure glad he had been an altar boy—“and as the camera zooms in on him he says, ‘Do you know me? Here in the Sistine Chapel everybody knows who I am. But when I leave Vatican City sometimes it isn't always that way.'

“Now,” continued O'Rourke, “we have the viewer fascinated.” The gentlemen were beginning to shift uncomfortably in their chairs, but O'Rourke couldn't stop. “So we go into the whole spiel about where the American Express Card is accepted by everybody all over the universe and then we shift back to Pope Paul and the Sistine Chapel. This time he has a blank card in his hand and at this point we print his name, in Latin—
PAULUS PP VI
—on the card with a real zap, zap, zap kind of special effect. Then the Pope ends it with the tag-line: ‘The American Express Card. Don't leave
Rome
without it!'”

Hawkesworth coughed, and Coolville, the chairman of the board of American Express, cleared his throat. The rest of the gentlemen just stared straight ahead with their mouths open. But O'Rourke wouldn't let up.

“And the great thing about this format is that you can get different celebrities to do it. It'll be terrific.”

“Thank you, Mr. O'Rourke,” said Hawkesworth, “that will be all for now.”

Later that afternoon O'Rourke was made—as Hawkesworth succinctly put it—“redundant.”

When Pepoon returned from London the following day, there was hell to pay. When he was told that O'Rourke had been canned, Pepoon—totally out of character—had burst into Hawkesworth's thickly carpeted office with its panoramic view of the East River and shouted at him:“You asshole. Nobody, but nobody, not even the chairman of this goddamn firm, fires one of my people. You can take this job and shove it. I quit.” Pepoon turned on his heel, ignored pleas for calm and reason from Hawkesworth, and headed back to Sag Harbor. He was damned if he was going to take this kind of abuse from some guy who knew nothing about the ad business except that he was supposed to reassure clients by looking grandfatherly.

O'Rourke handled his unemployment in another way—he went out and got shit-faced for two weeks. After that he calmed down and collected his unemployment checks and drank afternoons and evenings at the Moat. One evening about three months later as he was preparing to go out to the Moat for his second drinking shift of the day, he turned the television set on and, as he sat reading his mail, he heard the voice of Benny Goodman utter the familiar words, “Do you know me?” O'Rourke couldn't believe it. By the time Goodman had uttered, “don't leave
home
without it,” his phone was ringing. It was Pepoon.

“Tone, old chum,” he said, “I think we have them now.” With not too subtle threats from Pepoon's lawyers, O'Rourke found himself within the week holding a check for $75,000 for “consultation fees.” Right then, O'Rourke knew that he would never again have trouble finding and holding a job, no matter what a classic fuck-up he was.

Neither Pepoon nor O'Rourke would be unemployed for long. Soon Pepoon bought the long vacant Northern Dispensary building at the corner of Waverly & Waverly in the Village and set up Northern Dispensary Associates, which specialized in ad campaigns, and many of his old accounts came over. Then luck took over in the form of Harris Landsdown, Pepoon's classmate from Harvard, who was running for the Republican nomination for Senator in California.

Landsdown was in trouble. He was terrible on the stump and all he had was money. But Cranston, the Democrat incumbent, was thought unbeatable, so there were few who wanted the Republican nomination. In any election, Landsdown thought, there was always that chance of winning. And he wanted that chance. There was only one thing between Landsdown and the nomination—Charlton Heston, who was also looking for the Republican endorsement.

Landsdown turned to Winthrop Pepoon for some media advice. Pepoon wasn't quite sure what should be done. He called in O'Rourke. After being introduced and told the situation O'Rourke was blunt. “I don't work for Republicans,” he said. “Sorry.”

“For Christsakes, Tone,” said Pepoon, “Harris here isn't a bad guy. Look at Heston. He's a lackey for the goddamn NRA.”

“Okay,” conceded O'Rourke. “I'll help you this time, but only against Heston. I'm for Cranston in the general election.”

“That's fine,” said Landsdown. “I can live with that.”

“But you have to do what I say,” said O'Rourke. “Okay?”

“I'm in,” said Harris Landsdown. Winthrop Pepoon began to feel uncomfortable.

O'Rourke sent a researcher to find pictures of Charlton Heston in
Planet of the Apes
. When the researcher returned, O'Rourke flipped through them, selected one, and went to the typewriter. He typed less than thirty seconds before pulling the paper out of the machine and showing it to Landsdown. In it was Charlton Heston in a G-string, his back to the camera. He handed the paper to Landsdown. It read: “Isn't it time we put Charlton Heston
behind
us? Vote Landsdown on primary day.”

Landsdown started laughing. “What do you want me to do with this?”

“I want you to put this up on a billboard on Sunset Boulevard, as big as possible. You won't have to worry about Chuck Heston any more,” assured O'Rourke.

“I can't do that,” said Landsdown.

“You can't beat this guy one-on-one. He's got the recognition factor, he's smooth, a professional actor, for Christsakes. He'll kill you. You have to shame these guys. You can't believe the egos on them. This will work.”

“What do you think, Winthrop?” asked Landsdown.

“Let's face it, Harris. It's worth a try. You'll be spending your money for nothing if this guy builds up momentum.”

Harris Landsdown did as he was told and Charlton Heston decided that he had to go to Australia for the summer to make a made-for-TV movie. O'Rourke had literally laughed him out of the country. Harris Landsdown won the nomination for the U.S. Senate and was beaten by Alan Cranston in the general election. And Northern Dispensary Associates got a reputation.

“I killed Moses,” bragged O'Rourke.

As the word spread about O'Rourke's campaign, other politicians came looking to O'Rourke for salvation. Pepoon, always the astute businessman, split the business in two: half ad agency and half political consulting, which was under O'Rourke's wing. O'Rourke only did Democrats and referred Republicans back to Pepoon. They began to make money hand over fist.

The reputation of the firm continued to grow when they saved the Dannemora Brewing Company from bankruptcy. Charles Hodding's family had owned Dannemora Brewing for nearly 100 years. Pepoon had been their account executive going back to the 1960s. He had come up with the immortal tagline that was heard on radios all over upstate New York:“Things Go Better with Dannemora,” sung to the tune “How Are Things in Glockamora?” from
Finian's Rainbow.
When O'Rourke heard it for the first time he told Pepoon, “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“I thought it was rather good,” said Pepoon.

“You would,” replied O'Rourke.

Now the Brewery was in sad shape. It was being squeezed by Anheuser-Busch and also by several Canadian breweries to the north. Their market was dwindling. Fifteen hundred jobs were at stake.

“I don't want to sell out,” Hodding told Pepoon. “If I sell out to Budweiser, they'll shut the brewery down. I'm the biggest employer in Dannemora, along with the prison. I have to do something.” Pepoon called O'Rourke in.

“What's the problem?” said O'Rourke.