D.C. Noir

by George Pelecanos

  He held her and she sobbed. The sun came up and she lay awake on his heart.

  Victory at work that day meant he and Dick brokered a deal to give air polluters a six percent rollback of fines instead of the seventeen percent proposed by his Senator’s opponents. Joel linked a freelance cameraman he’d cajoled into filming the refugee camp to a network news producer who owed Joel. As he and Dick walked their boss to a Roll Call, the Senator told Joel: “Nobody wants your Sudan relief bill. I can’t put my brand on a dead horse.” Joel pleaded: “You can make it work.” Senator Ness looked at Joel, shrugged.

  Later, Dick told Joel: “Least he left you with hope.”

  “Hope isn’t enough on the Hill.”

  “I know. Up here, the bottom line never changes: It’s what you can get done.” Dick added: “Still, working on the Hill is the right thing for guys like us to do. The last best place where we can get paid to fight the good fight.”

  “Yeah,” said Joel, who’d preached that gospel to Dick once upon a time.

  After work Joel found Lena on his couch, her hands wrapped around a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

  “I got a phone call today,” she said. “From your Senator. Didn’t take it.”

  Joel took a swig of bourbon.

  “I stared at my cell phone screen and realized something: I have his number.”

  “Leave him out of this. Leave him alone.”

  “No, he’s in this with us. He’s got my number, but I’ve got his. And the number of the guy who hooked up me and the Senator.”

  “What guy?” said Joel.

  “This guy, this lobbyist. He’s gay, so…No business between us. Don’t know how, but he hooked up with your Senator.”

  “I can’t be with him all the time,” said Joel. “What’s the guy’s name?”

  “Frank Greene.”

  A bulldog who wears Wall Street suits. Joel said: “I didn’t know Frank was gay.”

  “It’s not who he is,” said Lena, “it’s what he offered me.”

  She leaned closer. “Frank told me that if I could get the Senator to tell me who he was going to vote for on a military planes contract—”

  “The F-77 authorization bill.”

  “Yeah. Frank offered me $5,000 if I got your boss to say who he was voting for.”

  Joel took a swig from the bottle.

  “My idea,” she said, “is that if five grand is a fee for just knowing about a deal, what would it be worth to a guy like Frank to be able to broker that deal?”

  Joel’s stomach churned sour acid.

  “You told me all about it!” said Lena. “It’s not like this vote makes any difference. It’s not about America or national defense or fighting evil.”

  “We can’t be about this.”

  “We’re not! We’re about us. This is about getting us free.”

  “It’s for you.”

  “Yeah, it’s for me. And you said you want me. I’ll always be who I was, but this way I have something to show for it. This buys me a getaway. Here.”

  “Not enough,” he whispered. “We’re not worth enough to do this.”

  “What other chance do we have? I’m changing my life for us. What about you?”

  He walked to his window full of night. Stared out at the city he’d chosen to make his home. He searched the darkness outside. Faced what he’d never embraced.

  “Only one way we can do this,” said Joel. “We need to make doing what’s wrong be for more right than just us.”

  After he told her how, she said: “I’ll set it up.”

  “Won’t work,” he said. “Frank won’t believe just you. Buy just you.”

  “I don’t want you touching—”

  He stroked her hair. “Too late.”

  Joel nodded to her cell phone. “Make the call.”

  “What about the Senator?”

  “Nobody needs him,” said Joel.

  But two nights later, Joel sat in his car with the bulldog in a Wall Street suit who said: “Hey, fucko, I need the Senator.”

  Across the street waited Capitol Hill’s neighborhood ball-field-sized Lincoln Park that 198 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence became D.C.’s first public site for any statue honoring a woman or an African-American.

  “It’s not about what you need,” said Joel. “It’s about what I can do.”

  “You don’t get to vote in Committee. Or on the Floor.”

  “Not in the flesh, but I’m the spirit moving the man.”

  “This town’s full of people who died thinking they were somebody else.”

  “You get close to him,” said Joel, “the odds go up that we’ll all get caught.”

  Frank Greene drummed his fingers on Joel’s dashboard. “$100,000.”

  “My price includes more than cash. There’s a relief bill for Sudan that’s come over from the House on a wing and a prayer. You’re going to angel that prayer. Muscle that bill into a workable law.”

  “This is a money town and you want me to save the world? What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. But I get to deliver my guy to lead the charge in the Senate.”

  “One hand cleans the other, huh?”

  Yellow headlights silhouetted them sitting in the car as a cop drove past two more men sharing secrets in D.C.’s dark night.

  “Believe what you gotta believe,” said the bulldog. “But deliver what you sell.”

  “Don’t you trust me?” Joel shook his head at the man’s silence. “Me too. That’s why I have to see motion on your side before I deliver from mine.”

  “What do you mean motion? I call you in a few days, tell you which company, you lock your man down, I deliver the cash through the babe.”

  “Never call her again. If you see her on the street, walk on by. And make me see what I need to see.”

  On the following Wednesday, Mimi dropped a “Dear Colleague” letter on Joel’s desk, a mass mailing to all lawmakers on Capitol Hill from the Congressman who’d authored the Sudan relief measure and was now proud to announce that a caucus of business and labor groups had organized to support the bill.

  Letter in hand, Joel walked to the suite Mimi shared with Press Secretary Ricki.

  Mimi was on the phone. “Good to talk to you, Glenn.” She mouthed the name Parker to Joel. “The Senator will be sorry to have missed your call, but Joel’s standing right here.”

  Joel took the phone. “Glenn, how are you?”

  “How I am is stuck. Not sure we should be talking—legally.”

  “The law says there’s no problem with a citizen calling his Senator’s office—one time, anyway. They let guys like us touch base for free.”

  “Free?” Glenn laughed. “Then FYI, a bunch of the Senator’s friends out here plus some folks back in D.C. just formed an independent educational committee so voters realize who to touch the computer screen for next time.”

  Dead air filled the phone call between the Senator’s D.C. office and the bank president’s phone back home in the capital of the Senator’s state.

  Until Joel said: “That sounds like great news, but you’re right, it’s possibly of a partisan nature, so we can’t talk about it on this publicly funded phone, or from this taxpayer-owned office.”

  Joel gave him a phone number for the town house that the party’s Senatorial Campaign Committee rented across the street from the Senate, told Glenn to call him there in an hour.

  Mimi said: “Is this one of those things I don’t know about?”

  Joel knocked on the brown door to the Senator’s private suite, didn’t wait for a “Come in” before he did, and closed the door behind him.

  Senator Carl Ness sat with suit jacket off, tie loosened, three cell phones and BlackBerry on the massive desk, as he worked his way through a stack of papers.

  “You talk to Glenn Parker recently?” said Joel.

  The Senator shrugged. “Joyce ran into him at that Bay City pancake breakfast for the Girl Scouts.”

 
“And I suppose they chatted about how things are and how they could be better.”

  “God bless the First Amendment. People can talk.” “Did you give Joyce her script?”

  “She’s been at this a long time. She knows what to say.” The Senator smiled. “What are you upset about? None of us left any fingerprints.”

  “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again without first running it by me.”

  “Hey, I am the Senator.” He raised his hand. “Point taken, but this is a done deal.”

  Joel dropped the “Dear Colleague” Sudan letter on his boss’ desk. “If you lead the charge for that bill over here, you’re going to make a lot of important people happy.”

  “Who will I make mad?”

  “Nobody who can hurt you.”

  The Senator leaned back in his chair. “We live in a brutal world. It’s incumbent upon us as Americans and human beings to do all we can to help innocent men and—no: innocen children—who violence, evil, and greed have blah blah blah The Senator raised a warning finger. “Don’t get me in trouble on this.”

  “Me?” said Joel. “Get you in trouble? That’s not the way it’s always been.”

  Later, walking back from the Campaign Committee’s house, Joel detoured to a Union Station pay phone. He called the bulldog, said: “Yes.”

  “You can still back out,” whispered Lena that night in his bed.

  “No we can’t,” said Joel.

  The U.S. mail brought a package to his home the next day—a disposable cell phone that buzzed in his pocket three days later. Joel put the cell phone to his ear.

  A bulldog said: “Is this who it should be?”

  “Probably,” said Joel.

  “Z-Systems. I repeat, Z-Systems.”

  After work that night Joel arranged to go out for a beer with Dick and their Committee staffer Trudy. They went to one of only four bars that survived the deluge of ferns-and-cloth-napkins gentrification that laundered Capitol Hill in the 1990s, a booths-and-stools joint with Hank Williams wannabe’s in the jukebox. A stuffed owl spread its wings above the bar mirror. Congressional aides loved the bar: It reminded them of a blue-collar real world they imagined they could still claim as their roots.

  “Is it just me,” said Trudy, “or are we the oldest Hill staffers in here?”

  “Congress runs on the blood of twenty-five-year-olds,” said Joel. “Guys two jumps up like us are usually thinking about getting out, back to the real world and on to big bucks.”

  Trudy asked: “How many people on your staff are from D.C.?”

  “One,” said Joel.

  “We aren’t like ordinary factory towns,” said Dick.

  “We aren’t like any town anywhere,” said Joel.

  They drank cold beer. Joel let Trudy think it was her idea to meet with the Senator. Those four playmakers huddled the next morning.

  Senator Ness said: “Give me your recommends.”

  “The companies’ planes are essentially equal,” said Trudy. “But the future looks best with United Tech. United’s bird is more bucks per copy, but Z-Systems’ bid is a low estimate that they’ll recoup in cost-overruns. Plus, Z-Systems has that GAO probe.”

  Dick said: “Are you telling us that United Tech is more honest than Z-Systems?”

  Even Trudy laughed.

  “I say that the GAO investigation of Z-Systems means they’re the best choice,” said Dick. “They won’t be so inclined to try a rip while the watchdogs are in their shop. Plus, Z-Systems is the cheaper right now and we pay for our pick with right now dollars.”

  The Senator said. “Joel?”

  “Read the headline,” said Joel. “‘Senator Ness Votes Against Low Bidder on Jillion-Dollar Contract.’ It’s hard to explain to the voters why it looks like you chose to overspend their tax dollars. I say it comes down to good politics married to good government. If you add up everything, your best choice is Z-Systems.”

  “Makes sense,” said the Senator.

  “Okay,” said Dick. “Z-Systems it is. How about I draft a letter of commitment to the Committee Chairman?”

  Trudy said: “Great idea.”

  “Yeah, Dick,” said the Senator, “except I’m voting for United Tech.”

  Dick blurted: “You said Z-Systems made sense.”

  “But,” said the Senator as Joel fought terror, “it makes more sense and better government to build for the future. The political stuff’s gotta take a backseat.”

  Dick said: “So do I draft the letter?”

  Buy time. Joel said: “Let’s think that play through, hold off until tomorrow.”

  Joel walked the Senator to a vote, then hurried through the tunnels honeycombing the Hill beneath the Capitol to use the Campaign Committee phone and call back-home banker Glenn Parker.

  “Glenn, our friends in your new group,” said Joel. “Are they a bunch of guys from United Tech?”

  Glenn said: “No. Are we expecting any?”

  “Beats me,” said Joel. “It’s a free country.”

  That night, he sat on his living room couch with Lena. Streetlamps filtering through his dirty windows cut across them with light and shadows.

  “After the Senator bucked me for United, knowing that committee had just formed out in the state, I thought maybe I’d catch him having done his own side deal. He’s played cagey like that before.”

  Joel shook his head. “But now he’s choosing what’s best for the country, the hell with reelection. That’s why I went to work for him. He may be a personal jerk, but he stands up for what he believes. The damn son of a bitch.”

  “What if you can’t get the Senator to change his mind?” asked Lena.

  “Then we’re fucked.”

  “You could make it up to Frank Greene on some other vote some other time.”

  “There is no other time,” said Joel. “If I fuck him on this, he’ll need to fuck me. Plus more. To keep his pride, his clout. Keep himself safe.”

  “What are you talking about?” she said.

  “This is a tough town.”

  Joel woke up under a cloudy sky. He let Mimi play out the morning office rituals. Then told the Senator: “Change your mind. Go for Z-Systems.”

  “Let’s get Dick in on this,” said the Senator, pushing the intercom button.

  After Dick joined them, the Senator said: “Joel wants me to change my mind and go with Z-Systems.”

  Dick asked Joel: “Why?”

  “United Tech is the future, but today is tomorrow.” Dick shrugged. “Whatever that means, we agree.”

  Senator Ness sighed. “Okay, I’ll vote for Z-Systems. Let’s get on to stuff we can give a shit about.”

  “I think I can get TV showing you rescuing starving kids,” said Joel. He wanted to shout for joy. He wanted to cry for shame. He did his job, called the TV producer with “news” that prompted the producer to ask for a “deadline” chance that Joel granted.

  Joel, Dick, Press Secretary Ricki, and the Senator huddled in his office.

  “Just because they film our guy doesn’t mean they’ll use it,” said Ricki.

  “Great visuals have a better chance of making the news menu,” said Joel. “Plus, if it bleeds, it leads, but—I’ve got it! The white sack. The burial bag for kids from the refugee camp!”

  “Perfect!” said Ricki.

  “Picture it, Senator,” said Joel. “You do the usual interview sit-down they want to film this afternoon, wait for the right moment…then pull the white sack out of your suit jacket pocket. That gives them action and the illusion of a gotchya—news film is all about gotchyas. You’ll be anointed a caring, crusading hero on network TV.”

  Ricki said: “So where’s this sack?”

  The three aides looked at the Senator. Who said: “Ahh…”

  Joel snapped: “Don’t tell me you lost it.”

  The Senator said: “Thing creeped me—wait! It’s on the pile to get auctioned off at a fundraiser or shipped to the state university’s archives. The sack’s at my
house.”

  Joel said: “The interview’s in three hours. You’ve got Agriculture mark-up in twenty-five minutes. You can cut out early. Dick, do that commitment letter now. Get him out of the Committee meeting with plenty of time for you two to get to his place, get the sack, come back. I like the idea of you two walking: You’ll roughen up for the camera.”

  Seventeen minutes later, Dick showed Joel the commitment letter.

  “Z-Systems it is,” said Joel. “Make him sign it, run copies, and bring it all to me.”

  As soon as he was alone, Joel dialed the disposable cell phone.

  “Yeah?” said the bulldog who answered Joel’s call.

  “Yeah,” said Joel. “Now what about the rest of your end?”

  “Ninety minutes. Your house.” He hung up before Joel could say no.

  Joel punched in a second phone number. When Lena answered her cell, he asked: “Where are you?”

  “Your place. Where else.”

  “Get out of there. The bulldog is on his way.”

  Knock, on Joel’s office door, and Dick came in: “Our boss signed on the line.”

  “I’ll walk you two over.” Joel put the signed letter and copies in his suit pocket.

  Dick’s frown said he thought that was peculiar, but hey: they were on the move.

  Joel made sure they entered the right hearing room, then hurried outside.

  An ocean of gray clouds rolled over the Capitol dome. Wind flapped Joel’s suit jacket as he walked past Hill cops, past tourists who were realizing that visiting this site was like hiking to a kabuki play but not understanding Japanese. An orange public school bus crammed with inner-city D.C. kids passed him on the way to their classroom that had a hole in its ceiling the size of a coffin.

  He found Lena in his living room.

  “I won’t let you do this alone,” she said. “Why is he coming here?”

  “To show me he knows where I live.”

  “Can we get away?”

  “Sure,” he said. “Anywhere you want to go.”

  “Here,” she said, nuzzling his chest. “I want to go right here.”

  “After this, it can be just us.”

  He felt her nod. “I can be somebody else. I can dye my hair.”

  The doorbell rang.

  Rain drops spit at Joel when he let the bulldog in his house.