Authors: Ed Gorman

Tags: #Mystery

Sleeping Dogs (18 page)

BOOK: Sleeping Dogs

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Now
she was the typical political spouse. Protecting her husband from the stupid consultant whose stupid mistakes were about to deprive the nation of one of its finest leaders. I'd made mistakes in my time and had apologized for all of them. But I didn't see this as a mistake. Lake had cleverly shifted the subject from the drink Warren had taken to the general subject of Warren's health. The only tactic we could have used was a dubious accusation.

“Well, I'm not happy about this, Dev. I want you to know that.”

“I'm not happy about it either, Teresa. And believe it or not, I think there's a way to respond to it. All I need is Warren's approval.”

Tears now. “I just hope you know what you're doing. We're a part of Washington now. We have a beautiful home and a lot of important friends.”

And a lot of important friends. When senators are forced from office, many of them stay in D.C. and make enormous amounts of money as lobbyists. But there is no amount of money that can compensate them for the power and prestige they've lost. There are only a handful of United States senators. Except for the president and the vice president, there is no more significant role you can play in our government. Each man or woman is sought out by powerful people from around the world. People who want favors. People who give favors. No lobbyist ever gets that kind of treatment.

“I guess I'd better go,” Teresa said. The tears were flowing openly now. I wasn't angry, I was just disappointed. I'd always felt that she hadn't been seduced by all those dos in Georgetown. All those dinners for visiting potentates. All those evenings at the White House. But I'd been wrong.

“Sorry you had to go through that, Dev,” Laura said.

“Wasn't so bad.”

“That's a side of Teresa I've never seen before,” Kate said.

“She's a limo junkie. She digs the red carpet,” Gabe said.

“She wants her husband to win, Gabe. Nothing wrong with that.”

“C'mon, Dev, they're both addicts and you know it. They dig the red carpet and all that shit.”

“You think Lake would be any different?”

“We're talking about Nichols. Not Lake.”

Nichols, I thought. The guy who kept loaning you money when you needed it for your stupid gambling problem. The guy who could've ended your political career with one phone call. The guy who at least votes the right way ninety percent of the time. I was sick of Warren, but Gabe's attack was hypocritical and annoying.

“You ever think there'll be a day when you help put somebody in office you actually have respect for, Dev?”

“I guess you don't want to let this go, do you, Gabe?”

“It's a fair question.”

“Give it a rest, Gabe,” Laura said.

“It's a stupid question anyway,” Kate said.

“What's so stupid about it? Just because you people don't mind working for whoresâ”

I forced a smile. “And here I thought that
I
was the sanctimonious one, Gabe. We're human. That's what you're not factoring in here. If I ever got to be a senator, I might be the biggest whore who ever hit Washington.”

“That's not true, Dev,” Kate said, “and you know it.”

“No, I don't. We've all seen it happen to people we thought we respected. They start living with all those privileges and perks and having their staffs do everything for themâI don't think you can predict how most people would react.”

“There're a few you can predict,” Laura said.

“Yeah, a few. Just a few. Men and women who don't get their heads turned by all the fuss made over them. But everybody elseâ” I shrugged. “I need to get back to work.”

Over the next half hour I wrote copy for the spot that would respond to the health issue. Then I wrote a statement that Warren would give at his appearance at a luncheon for retired party officials. The press would be expecting a droner. Few pols used an appearance like this to make news. We didn't have much choice. I did all this presuming that Warren would agree with it. One look at Lake's new commercial would convince him that we needed to move quickly. Especially given what oppo research had been able to find out about Lake. All this was predicated on the hope that they weren't holding back any oppo material of their own. The conventional belief being that any major attack coming in the last two weeks of the campaign was virtually impossible to counter. You just didn't have the time to make your case effectively.

Warren came in just after noon. He said, in a tone as harsh as I'd ever heard him use, “Everybody out except Dev. And I mean now.”

When we were alone, Warren said, “Let's nail his balls to the wall.”

“Great,” I said. “But now we have another problem.”

“The bearer of good tidings, eh?” He was ready to be angry.

“We've got another blackmailer in the picture.”

CHAPTER 25

By midafternoon every news source available to us, including all the cable news outlets, was carrying the story of how Senator Warren Nichols, slipping in the polls, had made available online his complete medical records dating back to age sixteen. We'd stored them this way in case we ever needed them. And now we needed them.

That was point one of his attack. Point two was that he was challenging Congressman Jim Lake to do the same in the next twenty-four hours. Everything in his medical history.

Point three was an ominous but vague suggestion that Nichols's drink had been tainted by “forces against my voting record,” which he then listed highlights of. He emphasized how hard he'd fought for both the middle class and the working class. And how he'd managed to improve the lot of the working poor, “folks who Jim Lake once called in one of his more reckless and inhumane moments âdisposable.'”

He concluded with, “I get a physical twice a year at Walter Reed.
I'm healthy in every respect. And I've never suffered from any disease that would embarrass me.”

I'd rewritten that last line five or six times. I'd wanted to soften it. But then I decided the hell with it. Lake had dominated the news since the debate. Now we were going to dominate it; “that would embarrass me” would put the press on him day and night. “What did he mean by that, Congressman Lake?” “Are you going to release your records in the next twenty-four hours?” “You've been in Congress three terms, but you've never released any medical records as yet. Why is that?”

I'd told everybody on the staff to play it coy when reporters called them. Never say it was Lake behind the drink plan, just say, “Anything's possible.” Never say that Jim Lake had been treated for gonorrhea in the tenth year of his family-values marriage, only that we'd heard there was a shocking fact to be found in his medical records.

Even without Teresa pushing me, I'd known when I'd seen Lake's new commercial that I was going to tell Warren that we should go after him. No other choice. I'd overseen this kind of bombast twice. Once it had worked, once it hadn't. In the case of the former, a congressional opponent had managed to cover up a hit-and-run in a small town his father basically owned. In the case of the latter, the oppo people had come up with three counts of spousal abuse on a man who'd also managed to keep these off the official records. I knew this would be risky because he'd gone through AA five years ago and was now, by all accounts, including those of his wife, a very good husband. The electorate chose him over our man, who had a few problems of his own that the oppo folks on the other side had somehow missed.

We had pizza and beer as we watched the Chicago evening news. Three sets going so we didn't miss anything. We were slotted either story number one or story number two on each of them. And the leads all played heavily on the “suggestion” that Lake might have something to hide in his medical records. His press spokesman, a kid usually given to smirks, was somber and somewhat dazed when he faced
the press, assuring them that Lake had nothing to hide and would address this question as soon as he returned to Chicago from Springfield later tonight. The kid, happily, looked miserable.

Only one station picked up on the inference that “anything's possible” might mean that Lake had had something to do with tampering with Warren's drink. “Asked for a clarification, the Nichols camp would say only that no accusations were being made, but that many possibilities were being considered both by them and by local police.”

Beers were hoisted. Big, wet, beery kisses were exchanged. Teresa and Warren got so intense people started flickering the lights on and off to the great amusement of the lovers. For once the psychic rush was positive. We had reclaimed the argument. Somewhere lurked the information that Lake had been treated for gonorrhea while in the tenth year of his marriage. And the press was going to find it. And the press was going to ask him about it in the context of his constant criticism of our “libertine” societyââsingle mothers, gay people, lurid TV shows, and, of course, the centerpiece of his attack, “those who would destroy the basis of our civilization, the sacred institution of marriage.” You shouldn't be saying those things after requiring heavy doses of penicillin.

Somewhere along the line I got drunk and ended up making out with a thirty-seven-year-old nurse who worked as a volunteer. It was pure high school. By the time I thought I was going to get to third base in her nice warm Chevrolet, she had to go to the hospital, where she was on the night shift this week. She'd been drinking ginger ale.

One of the other volunteers gave me a ride to my hotel. I stopped at the desk and asked if anything had been left for me. The clerk, assessing my blood alcohol level, handed me a large manila envelope. In the elevator, I studied the reports that Tully had left for me. I'd spent two grand on nothing. He'd left a note inside saying that he'd actually worked two jobs for Wylie, the second relating to a painting of Wylie's stolen from a gallery he'd loaned it to. Wylie had hired Tully to follow
two prominent fences. Not a damned thing to do with Warren being blackmailed.

I sprawled on the bed, not even bothering to take off my suit. It had been a long time since I'd had a beer drunk and it would have its revenge on me in the morning with a swollen head and dehydration.

Sometime in the process of falling into REM sleep, I realized that tomorrow night I was expected to drop off one million dollars â¦

CHAPTER 26

I took a cab to headquarters, then decided I'd best hit the cafÃ© down the street first. I poured three cups of boiling coffee directly into my eyes. Faster that way. Soon now I'd be able to check off “human” in one of those little boxes where they ask the name of your species. It would be a proud moment for me and the entire clan.

I went to relieve myself and when I returned, Warren and one of his bodyguards were there. The guard was an ex-Marine. In his blue pinstriped suit and white shirt and tie he looked almost civilized. Now that Warren was big in the news again, he needed protection. The crazies would be coming out for sure now. Hopefully just the harmless crazies.

“Karl,” Warren said politely, “would you mind sitting over there at the counter? I need to talk to Dev here privately.”

“No problem, sir.”

“He's the best of the best,” Warren said as Karl left. “He has laser vision. You wouldn't believe what he sees that I miss every time.”

Warren had a pol's love for celebrating people. It becomes an instinct after a certain number of years and a certain number of rubber-chicken dinners where you have to extol the virtues of a tubby little man who'd contributed X amount of dollars to the party for the past X number of years. Thank God there are such people, but by the time the speechwriter has had at them they sound as if they were a combination of astronaut, scholar, and clairvoyant.

“Guys like him are the reason we win wars, Dev.”

“Yeah, except for the last two.”

The smile was sour. “Never can let it lie, can you, Dev? Always have to spoil the moment.”

“Guess I can only gag down so much bullshit, Warren. Sorry. Now let's talk about tonight.”

This time the smile was coy. “Oh, I don't think we'll need much discussion.”

“You have the money?”

“I have the money. Every penny of it.”

“That's amazing.” And it was. When R. D. Greaves was shaking us down, Warren had had to struggle to raise three hundred thousand. And now he had a million?

“I cashed some pretty heavy-duty bonds.”

“I thought you couldn't do that.”

“My CPA showed me a way to do it without attracting much attention.”

“But I mean you said they were tied up and you couldn't get to them.”

“A little white lie, Dev.”

“Gee, you telling a lie. Who'da thunk it?”

“There you go again. Spoiling the moment.”

I sipped some coffee. “I've never seen anybody this happy to be losing a million bucks.”

“That's the thing. I'm not going to lose a million bucks.”

“You're not?”

“No. And it'll be thanks to you. Because you're going to follow the money. You're going to wait in the shadows and see who makes the drop and then you're going to follow them.”

“Ah.”

“Just make sure you have your Glock. And make sure your car is all ready to go.”

“This is just like TV.”

“You see something wrong with it?”

“I see a lot wrong with it. Mainly that we have no way of verifying what's on the tape we get.”

“We have to trust them.”

“Nobody I trust more than a blackmailer.”

“Then what the fuck is your idea, Dev, you sitting there so smug and everything?”

“I don't have a better idea, Warren.”

Warren looked idiotically triumphant. The Hollywood smile was back in place. He'd kidded himself into believingâat least for a few giddy moments hereâthat everything was just hunky-dunky. “Things are going so well, Dev. Three different newspapers ran editorials this morning saying that Lake should release all his medical records.”

“He respond yet?”

“Not yet. But we've got him boxed in. If he releases all his records, he's dead on the spot. And if he doesn't, we've got a club to beat him over the head with from now till Election Day. I just can't believe how this has turned around.”

He was a kid again and that ten-speed he'd been wanting had just been wheeled up to his front porch and he was experiencing an orgasmic moment here.

It was all coming back to himâthe power, the glamour, the glory of being a United States senator.

“You hit everything just right, Dev. And I really appreciate it.”

“I'm going to spoil the moment again, Warren. We've still got two
weeks to go. We don't know what their oppo people have on us. Fine to be happy but, man, don't take anything for granted.”

His face crimped in distaste. He'd been junkie high and I was forcing him back to drab winter gray. “I'll do my best not to be happy, Dev. You know, I sure wouldn't want to piss you off by feeling better about the campaign.”

“You're being stupid, Warren. All I said wasâ”

“All you said the other day was”âhe leaned inâ“that I was a piece of shit and you'd be glad to be rid of me. You think I've forgotten that, you're fucking crazy.”

He stood up, signaling Karl. To me he said: “You'll have the briefcase about five this afternoon. I'd appreciate a call as to how it goes.”

“Are we breaking up, Warren? You want your ring back?”

“The ladies think you're real cute. I don't. For what it's worth, I'd planned on firing your ass anyway, Dev.”

A pretty good line to leave on.

A
round two that afternoon Jim Lake's press person announced that all of the congressman's medical records would be released in twenty-four hours. That brought a lot of smiles from the staff. Kate seemed particularly amused: “Maybe he'll use the Latin word for gonorrhea. It sounds classier.”

“There's no way he's releasing that,” I said. “He's going to trick it up some way. The press already has a pretty good idea of what he's hiding and if it's not there, they're going to jump all over him.”

“I could almost feel sorry for him,” Laura said, “if he wasn't such a hater. That's what he's built his career on.” She smiled and snapped her fingers. “There. I'm cured. I don't feel sorry for him at all.” She addressed the rest of us. “Let's get together and tear his throat out.”

We all went out for pizza and beer together. Even dour Gabe was enjoying himself. “I'm going to miss you people.”

“God, if I didn't know better,” Billy said, “I'd say Gabe is getting sentimental.”

“I can't help it. I really like working with you people.”

Kate said, “Well, we're going to miss
you
too, Gabe. We go back a long ways.”

“Yes, and I've been a hail-fellow-well-met through every one of our times together. Always smiling. Always with something positive to say. Always there to make people glad that they're alive.”

At first we all thought Gabe was being serious and had to wonder if he'd had some kind of mental breakdown in front of our eyes. Then he gave us his hippie grin and we all started laughing.

B
ack in the office, everybody drinking coffee to compensate for the two or three beers they'd had, I polled several of our key sites to see how the volunteers were doing getting out the message. You always expect some marginal exaggerationâ“They are as the legions of Rome, Master!”âbut even chopping the enthusiasm down twenty percent, it sounded as if the volunteers were working hard and taking on extra duties the closer the election drew.

Next I called three Chicago reporters I knew to see if they'd heard anything yet from Lake and his people. I didn't tell them the exact nature of what he was trying to hide, but I did say that it would be interesting if he claimed to be presenting his entire medical history. One of the reporters asked if she could “see all his records in case he doesn't come through. I'm assuming here, Dev, that
you
have them.” “What a sordid accusation.” “Yeah, right, babe.”

Near the end of the afternoon Karl the bodyguard showed up with
a stout black leather briefcase. It was padlocked. He handed me the key. “The senator said you'd know what this was.”

“Thanks, Karl. Where's the senator now?”

“He's at the house in Evanston. He has the night off and he wants to relax.”

“I appreciate you bringing this by.”

He nodded as he surveyed the staff. “Nice to see people working this hard for the senator. We've got to make sure he wins.”

Like most pols, Warren was most comfortable when he surrounded himself with true believers. They had their own doubts, of course, but they expressed them rarely if at all. Each entourage usually had one skepticâin this case, me. But when the news got really bad, the rest of them stared at you as if your skepticism had caused nasty things to happen. And right after the campaign managerâalmost always the first to get cannedâyou the consultant were next up. At the very latest you'd be fired the day after the election, win or lose. You had, merely by being honest with everyone, brought the campaign bad luck. You know, voodoo.

One by one people left for the day. All but Kate were headed back to the pizza place for more of the same. Kate said, “I'm going to bake a very special cake for my daughter tonight.”

“Her birthday?”

“No, but I just feel like celebrating. That whole thing with the debateâseeing Warren that way â¦” She shrugged. “Past history.” Then: “Oh, that report from the detective's been over here on the fax all day. I'm surprised nobody gave it to you.”

The phone rang seconds after she left. It was Detective Sayers himself. “You get the report?”

“Haven't had time to look at it.”

“Nothing special from what I can see. Thought you might look at how the crime scene broke down. Stuff we found.”

“I'll bet you want to hear me say that I figured out who stiffed Warren's drink and who murdered Greaves.”

“I thought you might have something. I sure don't.”

A decent enough ployâthe sad, lonely cop who had nary a clueâbut a bit broad to play believably to an old cynic like myself.

“Wish I could help you.”

“I'll bet you do. Well, talk to you later.”

“Thanks for the report.”

“My pleasure.”

Two minutes later the door opened. One of the older volunteers from up front escorted four high school journalists in. They wanted to interview me for their respective newspapers. I'd forgotten about it.

We spent nearly ninety minutes together and a lot of it was fun. They were bright kids for one thing and for another they had a serious interest in politics. I was surprised at the breadth of their knowledge. They knew just about every pol I mentioned in the course of citing various campaigns for this or that reason. And just at the end they focused on Congressman Lake and why he seemed reluctantâeven a bit afraidâof releasing his health records.

“I'm afraid I can't give you the answer. He's the only one who'd know that. What I can tell you is that after the debate where Senator Nichols got so sick, Lake made a big deal of the senator's health. He forced us to respond the way we did. By making our entire medical history available online.”

“Is Congressman Lake in trouble if he
doesn't
release his records?”

“Hard to say. The press and the public will decide that.” I said this having no doubt that the press now stood ready to bring him down.

The volunteer came back and told the students that their time was up. It had been an enjoyable break.

BOOK: Sleeping Dogs

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