Jacky said: “My, that’s telling them.”

The convention hall went quiet. The television director cut to a shot of Mayor Daley. He looked like a giant frog, with bulging eyes, a jowly face, and a neck that was all rolls of fat. For a moment he forgot he was on television—just like his cops—and yelled vituperatively at Ribicoff.

The microphones did not pick up his words. “I wonder what he said,” George mused.

“I can tell you,” said Jacky. “I can lip-read.”

“I never knew that.”

“When I was nine years old I went deaf. Took them a long time to figure out what was wrong. Eventually I had an operation that restored my hearing. But I never forgot how to lip-read.”

“Okay, Mom, prove it. What did Mayor Daley say to Abe Ribicoff?”

“He said: ‘Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch,’ that’s what he said.”

• • •

Walli and Beep were staying in the Chicago Hilton, on the fifteenth floor, where the McCarthy campaign had its headquarters. They were tired and dispirited when they went to their room at midnight on the last day of the convention, Thursday. They had lost: Hubert Humphrey, Johnson’s vice president, had been chosen as the Democratic candidate. The presidential election would be fought between two men who supported the Vietnam War.

They did not even have any dope to smoke. They had given that up, temporarily, for fear of giving the press a chance to smear McCarthy. They watched TV for a while, then went to bed, too miserable to make love.

Beep said: “Shit, I’ll be back in class in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if I can face it.”

“I guess I’ll make a record,” Walli said. “I’ve got some new songs.”

Beep was dubious. “You think you can patch things up with Dave?”

“No. I’d like to, but he won’t. When he called me to tell me he had seen my folks in East Berlin, he was real cold, even though he was doing a nice thing.”

“Oh, God, we really hurt him,” Beep said sadly.

“Besides, he’s doing fine on his own, with his TV show and everything.”

“So how will you make an album?”

“I’ll go to London. I know Lew will drum for me, and Buzz will play bass: they’re both pissed at Dave for breaking up the group. I’ll lay down the basic tracks with them, then record the vocals on my own, and spend some time adding overdubs, guitar licks, and vocal harmonies and maybe even strings and horns.”

“Wow, you’ve really thought about this.”

“I’ve had time. I haven’t been inside a studio for half a year.”

There was a bang and a crash and the room was flooded with light from the hall. Walli realized with incredulity and terror that someone had beaten the door in. He threw back the sheets and jumped out of bed, yelling: “What the fuck?”

The room lights came on and he saw two uniformed Chicago policemen entering through the wreckage of the door. He said: “What the hell is going on?”