For the Cause by James R. Winter

“You're not listening, Matt,” the caller said. “This administration has done important work in the last four years. The city is changing, and that takes a bipartisan effort.”

“That does not change the fact,” said Matt Croy, reaching over to hang up on his caller, “that Jane Merrick has whored herself to the Republican Party by naming you vice-mayor, Mr. Maly. The sad fact is some of Port Ontario's most corrupt mayors and council members were Republicans. Even the two independents we had in the seventies were really puppets for Governor Rhodes. Let's fact it, Maly, you're the same people who fired on students at Kent State, and the city doesn't need you.” He looked down at his display. “Laurie from Robert Custis University, you're on Radio Free Ohio with Matt Croy. Go.”

“Matt,” said a young woman who sounded barely twenty, if that. “I just love your show and the work you're doing here. Keep up the good work.”

“Thanks, Laurie. May I ask what you're studying at Custis?”

“I'm a poli-sci major. My professor hates it when I quote you in class.”

Croy laughed. “Well, I'm not exactly an establishment darling.” He scribbled something on a notepad and held it up for Eddie in the booth. Eddie gave him an “OK” sign. “So what's on your mind today, Laurie? What can I do for you?”

“I'm, like, confused about this Holland Island thing.” She spoke in questions, making it sound like this Holland Island thing? “Freedomville is one of the largest black neighborhoods in the city. And yet they always vote Republican. Doesn't that go against their interests?”

Eddie made a slashing gesture and pointed at his watch.

“Well, Laurie,” said Croy, “I'd love to tell you about that, but we have to take a break first. This is Matt Croy and Radio Free Ohio on WCGS, Port Ontario.” He cued his exit music and waited for the commercial to come up. One look at the booth told him Eddie had Laurie on the line, getting her phone number and telling her Croy's condo address. Please don't let her be a 300-pound cow, he said silently to a God he didn't believe in.

The door to the studio burst open. Jack Goldberg rushed in and stood over Croy, hands on his hips.

“You called the mayor a whore,” said Goldberg. “On fifty thousand watts during afternoon drive.”

“She is a whore, Jack,” said Croy. “She's sleeping with the GOP, maybe even Diebold.”

Goldberg took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Matt, I know you're trying to beat guys like Hannity at their own game...”

“I'm trying to beat them with the truth, Jack. The age of liberals being wimps is over.”

“Fine. Try not to get us sued, fined, or taken off the air.”

“You afraid of the truth, Jack?”

“No. I'm afraid of your version of it.”

“The truth is the truth. Just because you don't like it...”

“I have a station to run.” He turned and headed out the door. “If you need me, I'll be in my office getting ripped a new one by the mayor's chief of staff.”

Croy chuckled and looked up at Eddie, who gave him the thumbs up. Croy decided it didn't matter if Laurie were a three-hundred-pound cow. The young believers were all so willing and so attentive to his needs. He needed only to close his eyes to the less attractive ones and enjoy their various talents. “Anything for the cause,” he said aloud as Eddie counted him down from commercial break. “Time now is twelve minutes before the hour. You're listening to Radio Free Ohio on 1210, WCGS, Port Ontario...”

“I'm telling you, Ronnie, every time that fucker opens his mouth, the mayor's approval rating drops another five points. Ten if he's agreeing with her.”

“Leo, relax,” said Ron Burgoyne, watching a college student job jog through Gotham Square. Her sports bra and bicycle shorts held Burgoyne's gaze, though he listened to every word his visitor said. “Croy's just a crackpot. The next Rush Limbaugh. It's a conservative nation. Naturally, the new generation of pundits are all going to be lefties.”

“He called Jane Merrick a whore, Ron,” said Leo Vicotti, leaning against Burgoyne's desk. “Your liberal Rush Limbaugh called our candidate, an incumbent, if I may add, a whore. And he said it to the vice-mayor on the air.”

Burgoyne laughed. “Yeah, Croy thinks he's invincible, doesn't he.” He watched the girl disappear into the Ebersole Tower across the square and nodded to himself, pleased with what he saw. “So what do you want, Leo? Put him on a leash? What?”

“I want you to fix this guy,” said Viscotti, “before he loses us the election.”

“And you the party chairmanship.” Burgoyne finally turned to face his visitor. “Why else would you be so concerned about a Republican vice-mayor's feelings?”

“Because Jane likes him. And because frankly, he's good for the city, even if I gotta run someone against him four years from now.”

Burgoyne shook his head. “I'll never understand Port Ontario politics.” He looked at an expensively manicured nail. “All right, Leo. I'll take care of Croy. By any means necessary, I assume?”

“What's it gonna cost me?”

“A lot if he cooperates.”

“And if he doesn't?”

“He needs to worry about that more than you.”

Croy jumped at the knock on his door. He didn't expect the college girl for another hour yet. And why, he wondered, didn't the guard in the lobby call him first? No matter, he thought as he went to open the door.

“Well, hello,” he said. “I told you seven o'clock, but...” No girl of twenty faced him. “Mr. Burgoyne?”

“Hello, Matt. May I come in?” said Burgoyne, pushing past without waiting for an answer.

Croy saw him stop and stare at the candles and table settings. “I'm... um... expecting company.”

“Another naïve kid steeped in Marx and Lennon?” asked Burgoyne.

“Lenin was a communist. I'm not.”

“I meant John Lennon. God, Croy, don't you listen to music?”

“Did you come here to play twenty questions? Because I don't have the time.” He moved over to the dining room table and blew out the candles. “I suppose you're here about me calling Jane Merrick a whore on the air.”

“Drink?” said Burgoyne, making himself comfortable in an easy chair.

“No thanks. I had one on the way home.”

“I could use one.” He got up and went over to Croy's liquor cabinet. Out came a bottle of Chivas Regal and a glass. “You know, Matt, for someone who rails daily on the evils of capitalism, you sure do enjoy the finer things in life.” He poured himself a drink and put the bottle back. “One might say you're betraying your own cause.”

“I'm a liberal, not a socialist,” said Croy. “The two are not one and the same.”

Burgoyne swallowed. “Whatever. The fact is we have a problem, Croy. We have a problem with you.”

Laurie still couldn't believe it. Dinner with Matt Croy? At his place in Galway Village? It was too good to be true.

Maybe it was too good to be true. What kind of man, after all, asked a complete stranger on the phone to his house for dinner? She held no illusions about the world. Croy wanted more than dinner.

Laurie realized this as she walked home from class. She told herself this was an arrogant radio personality looking to use her for a cheap piece of ass. It was Matt Croy, though, so she put on the short black skirt with matching top.

Looking herself over in the mirror, she stopped preening. What was she doing, spreading for a complete stranger? She only knew Croy's voice. Oh, his words she memorized, but she didn't know if he meant them. He could, after all, be acting.

Croy's words, however, propelled her to the subway station on University Boulevard.

On the train, men eyed her. Would Croy eye her like that? As the train emerged into the Shawnee River Valley and wound towards downtown, she wondered what her mother would think. What would her roommate think? If Laurie simply ran at the drop of a hat when a celebrity came calling, what would her boyfriend think?

As the train reentered the tunnel, she remembered who Matt Croy was and smiled. This would be no ordinary night. This would be a once-in-a-lifetime chance, for herself, for Matt. “For the cause,” she said out loud to no one in particular. Only the homeless guy in the corner of the car looked at her strangely.

“I don't believe this,” said Croy. “You want me to 'toe the line' to keep Jane Merrick in office? Are you out of your mind?”

“Matt, no one appreciates more than I what you're trying to accomplish,” said Burgoyne. “But politics is a business of compromise. It's all well and good to have a stand and an ideology, but in the real world, we have to make sacrifices to achieve our goals. You, of all people, should know that. Look how you got your job.”

Croy clenched and unclenched his fists at his sides. “What are you trying to say, Burgoyne? Be a good boy, and I'll have everything I want? Because what I want is an end to all the corruption. God, politics is rife with sellouts like you who find the truth inconvenient.”

Burgoyne smiled as he watched Croy pace back and forth. “You like that word 'truth' a lot. Don't you, Matt?”

“What's wrong with the truth? Isn't the truth what everyone should be about?”

“And when did you become the arbiter of truth?”

“Oh, come off it, Burgoyne! You can see what the fat cats are doing to this city. He marched out to the balcony. “Come here. I want you to look at this.”

Burgoyne joined him on the balcony. Croy pointed at the two suspension bridges stretching out into Lake Erie to Holland Island.

“Look at that bridge,” said Croy. “The new one. All those cranes and barges out there to build the George Voinovich Bridge? They're naming the Port Ontario's most important public works project after a corrupt Republican governor? After all that he did to the poor in this city? And the schools?”

Burgoyne stepped up to Croy and stood behind him. “That's what's bugging you? We named a bridge after a former governor? Has it occurred to you he helped get the funding for that bridge through the Senate? Or that we have a Republican governor who, for all his faults, can either screw us or save us?”

“Yes! Jane Merrick is selling this city off to the fat cats piece by piece. What's next? Renaming the airport George W. Bush International?”

“I think Houston's beat us to that.”

“This city could be great again if it weren't for the small minds running it.”

Burgoyne put his hand on Croy's back. “Matt, would you do anything to save your city?”

“Hell, yes.”

“Would you die for it?”

Croy laughed. “Would I die for it? I suppose I would.”

“So Port Ontario is your cause, then?”

“Yes. It is.”

“That's all I wanted to hear.” Burgoyne grabbed the back of Croy's pants as he shoved the man forward.

Come around to the back, the guy named Eddie told her. Tell the guard you're there to see Matthew Croy.

It seemed a bit...slutty? Yes, that was the word Laurie was looking for. Slutty. Then again, slutty appealed to her. It meant rebellion. It meant taking bold risks. It meant climbing into the arms of her hero. As she rounded the corner of the condo tower, she stopped.

“Oh, wow.” Matt Croy lived on the eighteenth floor of this building. The parking lot alone had a spectacular view of downtown, the harbor, and Midtown. Even the industrial wasteland of The Foundry district and the decayed slums of Prussian Meadow looked gorgeous from there. Across the river valley she could see Vodrey Heights on the opposite bluff. From Croy's apartment, she bet she could see all the way to the south side of the city.

Behind her, a man screamed. Something slammed into the roof of a car and set off its alarm. Laurie jumped and turned. Matt Croy stared at her from the caved-in roof of a BMW. She screamed herself, louder and higher than Croy.

Looking up, she saw a man standing at the edge of a balcony. She recognized the face. She thought the man's eyes met hers, but from eighteen stories up, that was impossible. Composing herself, she looked from Croy up to the balcony and back down again.

“You're listening to Radio Free Ohio with Terry Rhoades,” said the announcer on WCGS. “For those of you just tuning in, Matt Croy, the voice of Radio Free Ohio, died last night in a fall from his balcony...”

Burgoyne turned off the radio. No mention of Croy jumping. Yet. A whisper in the safety director's ear would put the bug in the police chief's, and by tomorrow morning, Croy's tragic accident would become a suicide.

When the knock at the door came, Burgoyne knew who it was already. “Come on in, Leo.”

Leo Vicotti slipped in and only took two steps into the office. “You okay, man? I mean Croy killing himself like that while you were there.”

“I'd already left his condo,” said Burgoyne, “when Matt decided to swan dive into a Beamer. There's a very good chance I may have beat him to the ground.”

“Uh-huh. Any witnesses to that? Besides the lobby guard?”

Burgoyne smiled. “Matt Croy was clearly distraught when he learned he had alienated the Democratic leadership in Port Ontario. When he learned he'd be frozen out of the mayor's inner circle, he became deeply disturbed. I assumed he would be fine alone, but obviously, he had been drinking a lot by the time I got there.”

Vicotti nodded slowly. “That's the Star Herald article this morning almost verbatim.”

“Leo, your problem is solved. I talked to WCGS this morning. They're going to run Air America in Croy's old slot.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning a national show in afternoon drive is going to take a lot of heat off the mayor. Happy?”

“I'd be happier if I knew Croy jumped.”

“He kissed on a Beamer on his way to the asphalt. What more do you want?”

“Whatever, Ron. Thanks for talking to him, anyway.”

As Vicotti left, Burgoyne's phone rang. “I thought I said hold all calls.”

“You did, sir,” said Sharon, his secretary. “But there's a woman on the line who says it's vital she talk to you about last night.”

“Last night, I was giving my life story to the police and every damn reporter between here and Cleveland.”

“She says she saw you last night.”

Burgoyne's entire body turned cold.

Laurie waited patiently as she listened to a Muzak version of “Anarchy in the UK.” Some people had no respect. Standing at the phone booth outside the AT&T Building on Gotham Square, she could see the office up in the Bixby Tower. She wondered if she should wave when he picked up.

She'd used a card to make the call, but she'd held for so long she wondered if she'd run out of minutes before the guy picked up. After eight or nine minutes, he did.

“Ronald Burgoyne,” he said.

“Mr. Burgoyne?” said Laurie. “You don't know me, but I know you. In fact, after last night, I've gotten to know you very well.”

© James R. Winter 2007 All Rights Reserved