Silken Prey

morning, go ahead and do it. But right now we’ve got more important stuff on the table.”
    “He thinks we killed somebody,” Taryn shouted at her. “He thinks—”
    “You know you didn’t, so he’s got no proof. You gotta keep your eye on the ball,” Schiffer shouted back, the two women face-to-face. “We’ve got one more day of campaigning. We can still lose it.”
    Taryn looked at her over the glass, then asked, “Where are we?”
    The media woman, whose name was Mary Booth, stepped up: “While you were up north, we’re seeing a new Smalls ad. It ran prime time, Channel Three at seven o’clock, it’s been on ’CCO and KSTP. We’d bought out the KARE slots so it wasn’t there.”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah, what is it?” Taryn asked.
    “Well, all that neutrality thing is done with. He knows there’s no time left, so he dropped the bomb—he says you planted the porn on him,” Booth said. “He doesn’t come right out and say the words, but he talks about the Democrats and opposition dirty tricks, and he gets angry. I’d say it’s quite effective.”
    “Let’s see it,” Schiffer said.
    They gathered around the living room TV and the media woman plugged a thumb drive into the digital port and brought the advertisement up: Smalls was dressed in a gray pin-striped suit, bankerish, but with a pale blue shirt open at the collar. He was in his Minnesota Senate office, with a hint of the American flag to his right, a couple of red and white stripes—not enough of a flag display to invite sarcasm, but it was there.
    He faced the camera head-on and apparently had been whipped into a bit of a frenzy before they started rolling, because it was right there on his face: “. . . spent my entire life without committing an offense any worse than speeding, and now the Democrats and the opposition plant this dreadful, disgusting pornography on me, and yes, my fellow Minnesotans, they
still
think they’re going to get away with it. They’re still pretending to think that I might have collected this . . . crap, even though they know the name of the man who did it, a longtime Democrat dirty trickster named Bob Tubbs. They’re laughing up their sleeves at all of us! Don’t let them get away with it! This is not the way we do these things in Minnesota.”
    When he finished, Schiffer said, “Not bad.”
    Taryn was on her second drink: “What do we do?”
    “We bought a lot of time tomorrow afternoon and evening. We can pretty much blanket the state. Mary, Sandy, and Carl will write a new advertisement overnight in which you are warm and understanding—but also a little angry. Maybe we’ll say something about how we have to be rational and careful . . . hint that he’s a little nuts. I’ll call you in the morning about wardrobe. I’m thinking maybe something cowgirl, maybe . . . what’s the name of that stables you ride at?”
    “Birchmont,” Taryn said.
    “Get you out there in jeans and a barn coat, the one you wore out to Windom, and a jean jacket, cowboy boots . . . let your hair frizz out a little . . . and we do something along the lines of, ‘We don’t know where the porn came from, and if we find out, no matter who put it out there, we will support any prosecution. In the meantime, let’s turn back to the serious issues in this campaign. . . . ’”
    As she was talking, outlining a possible quick advertising shoot, Booth’s phone rang and she pulled it out and looked at it, while still listening to Schiffer. She saw who was calling and declined the call, but then a second later, a message came in, and she looked at it, and interrupted Schiffer to say, “I gotta take this,” and stepped away.
    Taryn was saying . . . “You don’t think they’ll mock me for the cowboy outfit?”
    “They won’t have time to, and it’ll look really down-home and honest,” Schiffer was replying . . .
    . . . When Booth came back and said, “Oh my God, the
Pioneer Press
is on the street with a front-page story that says this dead woman, the woman that got murdered, had a long affair with Smalls and that the police are investigating a possible domestic motive for her murder.”
    They were all struck silent for a moment, then Taryn said, “Davenport said they had a personal conflict. He didn’t say they had an affair.”
    Schiffer said, “Whatever, this could do it for us. It’ll play right through Election Day. I still think the horse thing will work for us. Maybe we’re