Free The Franchise by Peter Gent Page A

Dudley snickered. “What are they going to do, throw us out? I imagine we’ll be exempted from everything, especially having to swim in the fucking river in the dark.”
    Terry and Taylor stood off to the side and watched that night as the Spur initiates were tormented by the outgoing ten: ritually humiliated, tossed fully clothed into the river, forced-fed onions and generally degraded until the morning sky turned pink.
    It was a wonderful ritual to watch. It had a lot of little nuances that Dudley was always quick to point out. The outgoing ten were particularly cruel to Wendy Chandler’s fiancé, Lem Carleton III, reminding Three that since he was a freshman he had run for some office and lost every year. The insult made Lem cry.
    At Shelter Oaks, by the Union, they made Lem strip, then made fun of his genitals.
    “Gives you a real sense of brotherhood,” Taylor said to Terry Dudley.

THE DEAL
    D ICK C ONLY WAS angry.
    Senator Thompson was keeping Dick waiting purposely. The senator did not want to appear too eager to snatch the twenty-five thousand cash Conly had brought from Texas in the crocodile briefcase. Conly was slightly drunk, but the obvious sham would have irritated Dick Conly drunk or sober. He hadn’t even wanted to bring the money.
    “Goddam, Cyrus, it is such a piss-ant little amount,” Conly had complained to Cyrus Chandler. “Send one of your hard-peckered boys. I was planning to go up in the New Mexico Pecos Mountains.”
    “I want Senator Thompson to think that twenty-five thousand is a lot of money, and I do that by sending someone important—the president and CEO of Chandler industries. He’ll be suitably impressed and it will only cost twenty-five thousand.”
    “Plus my time. Jesus.” Conly was disgusted. “The bastards sell out so fucking cheap. Twenty-five thousand measly dollars.”
    Once, when Amos Chandler was alive, Dick Conly had carried two million dollars in cash to some Arab in the same crocodile attache case. Conly and the Arab got so drunk in New York celebrating the deal, they left the crocodile attache with the two million in a cab. The driver hunted them down at the 21 Club at four A.M. , hours later; they were still oblivious to their loss. The cabbie returned the case and the two million. Conly ended the evening by ordering separate ambulances with nurses and attendants to take him and the Arab back to their hotels and tuck them in bed.
    No, $25,000 wasn’t any money at all, but Dick Conly would let Senator Thompson find that out on his own. That was known as legislative experience. On-the-job training with OPM. OJT/OPM.
    A cruel curve drawn at the right corner of Dick Conly’s mouth gave every expression a sneer; his face was at an angle to the world. Dick Conly knew the world without its fashion. Long ago as a young lawyer in DC, fighting World War Two for Amos Chandler, Dick Conly saw the bear. Hell, he brought the bear to Cyrus’s suite at the Mayflower and drank Nelson Rockefeller and the bear under the table. He won, but now he had a drunk bear on his hands. He figured it was better than having a Rockefeller puking on the carpet. So Dick Conly learned to smile—but first to sneer, and the mark never left his face.
    “What kind of fucking country we have here?” Conly mumbled. “Idiots.” It saddened him that a US senator was so stupid as to think making Dick Conly wait in the expensively paneled outer office made Thompson seem less greedy. All it could do was piss Dick Conly off. Which it did. That was seldom a good idea. He despaired for his country. Sort of.
    “The senator will see you now, Mr. Conly.” The slightly fleshy, attractive, fortyish secretary stood in the open doorway to the senator’s inner office.
    “It’s about goddam time.” Conly lurched out of the chair and snatched up the crocodile briefcase. “Does the son of a bitch want to take a goddam bribe or not? I have important people to corrupt.” Conly brushed past the secretary and