The Candidate by Paul Harris Page A

and blowing out plumes of steam with their breath. Day laborers, Mike thought. Desperate for work, hoping someone will have an odd job to give them in exchange for a handful of dollars. He walked over and greeted them in Spanish. No one even looked at him. He repeated his hello.
    “Guys, I am not la migra, ” he said, using the nickname given to the immigration services. “I am with the campaign of Senator Jack Hodges. Have you heard of him?”
    Mike took out his campaign ID, emblazoned with a red, white and blue logo. “Have you heard of the Senator? He wants to help make conditions better for guys like you.”
    One man, nervously looked at his compatriots and broke from the group. He peered at the ID and took it in his hand. He examined it carefully and flipped it over to read the back. He handed it back to Mike.
    “I am not from the government,” Mike insisted.
    The man laughed. “But maybe you’ll be the government one day,” he said in Spanish thickly accented from some Mexican barrio.
    Mike laughed too. “Hopefully. But for now I just need some help. I’m looking for a guy called Ernesto Benitez, or at least that’s the name he used at work. He used to clean rooms over at the Havana Motel. You know him?”
    The man regarded Mike for a moment and then went back to the huddle. The group talked quietly for a while, casting nervous glances over in Mike’s direction. Then the man came back. “Why you want to know?” he asked.
    “Look, this guy could be in real trouble. The hotel he worked at was used by someone who tried to shoot Senator Hodges. He cleaned the room of the shooter. We need to speak to him.”
    There was silence between them. Mike tried again. “I’m not a cop. I’m ahead of the cops. I can help him. Senator Hodges can help him.”
    The man’s face was a mass of contradictions. Mike had seen the expression a thousand times in Florida. These were people who feared any sort of authority, whose entire existence was based on staying below the radar, being anonymous, helping and trusting only each other. But the man clearly knew something else was going on here. Something big that could hurt his friend.
    “He skipped town,” he said at last. “He went to Kansas. Garden City. To the meat packing plants there. They’re hiring at the moment. Tough work but the pay is okay. You can find him there, I think.”
    Mike offered his hand. The man took it, his grip firm. He looked Mike in the eyes. “I read about Jack Hodges,” he said. “If you work with him, you must be a good man. When you vote for him, think of us.”
    Then he released Mike’s grip and wandered back to the group, joining them again, looking up hopefully as a truck turned slowly into the street, offering briefly the prospect of work.
     
    * * *
     
    DEE SURVEYED the scene in the American Legion Building in Newton, a small town about twenty miles from Des Moines. It was only 10:00 a.m., but already the room was packed with an exuberant crowd. Judging by the broad mix of ages, she guessed a good number of the crowd had taken off time from work. That was a hell of a good sign. She leaned on the wall at the back of the room behind the massed ranks of the press. Every so often a reporter or blogger approached her, notebook or tape recorder in hand, looking for a quote.
    “Go on, git!” she said, waving them away like they were stray dogs, half-joking, half serious. “I’m not on the record. I’m on a break.”
    She inwardly relished the attention though and enjoyed sending the reporters away, tails between their hapless legs. It was incredible, she thought, what had happened. The campaign’s latest internal poll numbers, which she devoured in her hotel room that morning, were still rising upwards. Now every day brought four or five campaign stops and each one was packed full. This was what she had dreamed of ever since she got in the game. To be at the heart of something big, something that could change the whole country. She