Senator

by Richard Bowker

  "No question," he responded quickly. "No question. I don't have any sources in the Boston Police Department—it's not the level at which I generally operate—but I'm sure I'll be able to come up with something. I can find out more than you, at least."

  "Whatever you can do," I said.

  Everson nodded and looked out the window. I don't have much of a view; views come with seniority. "My opinion is that you shouldn't worry about any of this," he said. "Once again, I think Cavanaugh is too smart to touch this case."

  "I wish I could believe that," I said. "But I'm sure that if Cavanaugh can come up with a plausible motive, he'll have me arrested."

  "This tape—" Everson began, then stopped and began again. "The thing to do, I guess, is to make sure you don't have a motive."

  "Yes," I said. "That's correct."

  Everson stood up abruptly. "You only have to ask, Jim," he said. "You know that."

  I stood up, too. He was used to being the one to decide when meetings were over. So was I. "I know that," I agreed.

  "I'll give you a little unsolicited advice, though. If you want to solicit more, that's up to you. My advice is to ignore this murder. Go on the aggressive and stay there. That's the way to beat Finn. Oh, and I'd look into his war record if I were you."

  Finn's war record? Whatever for? I wanted to ask, but I didn't. The fewer favors I received from Everson, the better I would feel. "Thanks, Paul," I said. "I'll do that."

  "Good. I'm on your side, Jim. I want to make sure you understand that."

  He reached out his hand, and I shook it once again. And then he left.

  I felt ill at ease after his departure. The whole conversation had been stilted, painful. I had known that it would be painful for me, but I had expected something different from Everson. Here was his big chance to return the favors he thought he owed me. Why did he seem so unsure of himself?

  Perhaps, I thought, he already knew that the police had the tape, and he wanted to spare me the truth. But then what was the point of advising me to be aggressive in the campaign? If he knew what was on the tape, then he knew there was no campaign.

  I shouldn't have called him, I thought. This was only making things worse.

  My black mood was interrupted by Mrs. Sullivan on the intercom. "Senator Hutchins on oh-one," she informed me.

  I forced myself to think about my job once again. I picked up on 01. "Carl, thanks for getting back to me," I said. "I'd like to discuss my prison aid amendment with you."

  "Yes, yes," he agreed in his sonorous voice. "Meet me at six-thirty. We'll have a drink and talk about jail cells."

  * * *

  Seniority isn't what it used to be in the Senate, but it still has its rewards. A view is one; another is a secret office in the Capitol, a hideaway where you can escape from the bustle and tension of Senate business but still be close enough to the action to avoid missing anything important. There's no set order of precedence for obtaining these offices; I don't even know how many there are or who has them. All I know is that one day the secretary of the Senate calls you aside and hands you a key and you become one of the privileged few.

  Carl Hutchins's hideaway had a crystal chandelier and Oriental rugs and a balcony that looked out onto the reflecting pools of Constitution Mall, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial, just barely visible in the distance. It was a view to take a patriot's breath away.

  At six-thirty he led me down a dim corridor into the office, as he had many times before. I sat on an upholstered sofa and admired the view while he poured us each some whiskey. A lot of whiskey, I noticed. "Here's to the Senate," he said.

  I raised my glass.

  "In a couple of months neither of us may be here," he noted. "You've got your governor, and I've got my congressman with his big smile. The people speak, and all this is taken away from us." He motioned with his glass at the office, the view. Then he drank half his whiskey.

  "It's not a permanent institution," I agreed.

  "Every two years friends disappear," he said. "So after a while you stop making friends. What's the point?"

  He was afraid he was going to lose, I decided. "I'm your friend," I responded. "You can be as crusty a curmudgeon as you want, but you've still got a lot of friends around here."

  "Then I've made a mistake. We should just do our business and forget about the rest. Anyway, the new fellows don't want friends; they want sound bites. They want photo opportunities."

  "Then they're just the kind of people you want to deal with. You can't have it both ways, Carl. Do you want the nice guys or the plastic guys?"

  "I want people to stop abusing the rules around here. I want more respect for the institution. I want people to vote for things on their merits, not on how the vote will look to the folks back home. I want something we do around here to matter once in a while." He suddenly started laughing. "I want that congressman to wipe that stupid grin off his face."

  I laughed, too, grateful that he wasn't becoming maudlin. "Look, Senator," I said, "I'd like to come back here next January, and you could really help out the cause by voting for my amendment when it comes up. My campaign's going to focus on law and order, and this'll be a good issue for me."

  "People love the idea of prisons," Hutchins said, "but they'd prefer them in someone else's state. Right next to the nuclear waste dump."

  "True, but this amendment doesn't mandate that a prison be located in any particular site. It just helps make the process more palatable, that's all."

  Hutchins got up and poured himself some more whiskey. He held the bottle out toward me, and I shook my head. "You know," he said as he sat down again, "President Kenton is scared of you. Of all the potential Republican candidates, he thinks you'd be the toughest to beat."

  "He's a smart man, for a Democrat," I said.

  "He's a good politician, at any rate. He'll do whatever he can to stop you."

  Did that make the President a suspect in Amanda's death? Kevin Feeney would probably think so. "All the more reason to support me on this amendment," I persisted. "I need to beat this governor of mine before I take on the President. Pushing this amendment through will increase my prestige, make me look like a can-do kind of guy."

  Hutchins scratched his cheek and looked out the window at the twilit Washington Monument. As usual he hadn't shaved very well. "I ran for President once," he said. This wasn't news. "Damn near killed me. Emma wanted me to do it, said, 'You owe it to the nation, Carl.' Said it often enough that I started to believe it. Of course, no one had heard of me, according to all the polls, but money can take care of that. Money can take care of most anything. So I raised some money, from the folks back home mostly, and I went around to all these little living rooms in Iowa and New Hampshire, and I participated in about a thousand debates where the bunch of us said the same things over and over again, till we could have traded places and recited each other's lines. And these were good guys, for the most part, and we agreed on the issues, more or less, but we had to score our points against each other, and after a while we started getting nasty, and I hated it. I was flying all over the country and getting up at dawn to have earnest conversations with millworkers and farmers and auto mechanics, and every one of 'em told me to cut taxes and increase services, and it was always about twelve degrees out and snowing. And when they finally counted the votes, I got beat worse than I ever got beat in my life. The money dried up then and I had to drop out of the race, and I figure that was the best thing that ever happened to me."

  "Carl," I said, "are you trying to imply that you didn't enjoy running for the presidency?"

  Hutchins laughed. "At least I could tell Emma that I'd done my best. It broke her heart, but it sure didn't break mine. Tell you the truth, I wouldn't've made a better President than any of the rest of 'em. Probably worse than some. I can swing a few votes around here, but I couldn't inspire the nation. Nowadays I'm not sure I can even inspire myself."

  "You shouldn't let this congressman get you down,"
I said. "We need you."

  He shook his head. "I leave, and someone else gets this office, and the Senate goes on. A few of you might miss me for a while, but you'll be too busy fighting some new battle to spend time remembering a fellow who fought the old ones with you."

  He fell silent. The hand holding the glass of whiskey was trembling slightly, I noticed. He was trying to get used to the idea of not being here, it seemed to me, and he was finding it hard. I sympathized with him; I was finding it hard, too.

  I thought about bringing up my amendment one more time and trying to get a commitment out of him. But I didn't bother. Hutchins didn't want to think about prisons. He understood my situation; he would do what was right.

  I finished my drink and left him alone in his office as darkness fell. It was time to take home the memos from my staff and prepare for tomorrow's battles.

  Chapter 13

  "I'm Jim O'Connor. You know what I did as attorney general: cleaned up government, protected the consumer, put violent criminals behind bars. I've kept on doing these things as your senator. My investigation of kickbacks and mismanagement at the Pentagon saved taxpayers millions. On the Judiciary Committee I've insisted that judges consider the victim's rights first—not the criminal's. And I've sponsored a bill that will help us build more prisons to keep these criminals off the streets.

  "Meanwhile, what has Robert Finn been doing about crime? Murders—up thirty percent. Rapes—up twenty-five percent. Assaults—up thirty-eight percent. Not one new prison cell built, despite a system that's filled way beyond capacity. Not one new initiative in law enforcement, despite a crime problem that's crying out for innovative solutions. It's business as usual in the State House, while people are afraid to leave their homes at night.

  "And now Bobby Finn wants a promotion." Pause. "I think you're smarter than that."

  Fade to the name, white against black: O'Connor. Fade again: Senator.

  End of tape.

  Sam Fisher was standing next to the TV. "The key here is to keep the focus on the senator," he said. "People like the face, like the voice. They like it that he can make his pitch one-on-one. You know: 'Here are my arguments, now make up your mind.' "

  "I think there are too many facts and figures," Marge Terry complained. "People will tune out." Marge liked to criticize Sam's work: as a consultant he made a hell of a lot more than she did, and she resented it. She would undoubtedly end up as a consultant herself someday, however, so no one felt especially sorry for her.

  "I think it's important we stick in a lot of information," Sam countered. "We're gonna run this spot all over the place. We don't want people getting bored with it. Every time they see the thing, they should absorb something else."

  "There's a problem with the rhythm of that sentence about 'business as usual,' " I said. "Are we trying to contrast the State House with people's homes?"

  "Something like that," Sam said warily, not wanting to defend the sentence too strongly if I was going to demolish it.

  "Well, the contrast isn't coming across. It should go like this: 'In the State House it's business as usual; in people's homes it's something something something.' See what I mean?"

  "I suppose we could massage the sentence," Sam offered, "but I think it works pretty well the way it is."

  "All right, let it go," I said. "Just the English major in me."

  Everyone looked at Harold. It was his decision ultimately. In this sort of thing I was just the actor. "Go with it," he said. "We've already got the English majors."

  We all laughed, and Sam took the tape out of the VCR. We'd preview it for the media to get some free mileage out of it and then start running it on stations around the state later in the weekend.

  "On the same subject," Harold said, "I've finally got the Finn campaign to agree to a debate."

  "Excellent," Kevin said. "We'll slaughter him."

  "Don't let reporters hear you say something like that," Sam cautioned. "This is as dangerous for us as it is for Finn. People expect the senator to do well in a debate; he's the lawyer after all. If Finn manages to put two coherent sentences together, the pundits will say he held his own."

  "Still," Marge said, "he's the one more likely to come up with the stupid sound bite."

  "True," Sam agreed. You could crush your opponent in a debate and still end up a loser if you said something inane that was replayed endlessly on the eleven o'clock news. Bobby Finn had a hard time keeping his foot out of his mouth when the camera was on him.

  "What do Steadman's figures look like?" I asked, changing the subject.

  "Holding steady," Harold replied. "Undecideds are high for this point in the race, with two well-known candidates. People are reserving judgment."

  "The mail and the phone calls have been very favorable," Kevin pointed out.

  "And the media have been okay," Sam said, "all things considered."

  "They can't figure out an angle," Marge said. "If they get an angle, that could swing it either way."

  "If the police don't come up with something soon, that's their angle," Sam replied. "We'll make sure of it."

  People were silent for a moment, and I decided that was enough. I stood up. "Thank you all," I said, ending the meeting. Everyone filed out except Marge.

  "I have to talk to you," she said.

  I had figured we'd need a talk sooner or later. "Okay," I said. "Let's go to your office."

  Her office was tiny, but at least it had a door, which couldn't be said for most of the other little cubicles at campaign headquarters. A whiteboard on the wall had a "To Do Immediately" list with about thirty items on it. The lamp on her desk was covered with little yellow Post-Its and pink While-You-Were-Out messages. Names and phone numbers, all with "Urgent!!" scrawled after them. The ashtray between the lamp and the sleek new computer was filled; she was at it again. The only personal item I noticed was a framed photograph of her being interviewed by some famous network correspondent on election night six years ago; she looked awfully young, and so excited that even the jaded correspondent seemed happy for her.

  Marge shut the door after us. I deposited myself in a molded plastic chair, and she sat behind her desk. She immediately picked up a pencil and started twirling it nervously between her fingers. "Oh, for God's sake, smoke," I said. "It's a free country. You're allowed to poison whoever you want."

  She shook her head. "It's okay," she said. Marge isn't pretty, but she has what I'd call professional good looks: her hair cut fashionably, her figure kept as thin as smoking and intermittent starvation could force it to be, her face a tribute to discreet makeup that highlights her best feature (her big green eyes) and downplays her worst (a mouth that doesn't sit quite straight on her face). But she never looks quite comfortable in her makeup and her designer clothes; she is a ponytail, jeans, and sweatshirt woman stuck in a job that requires her to be something else entirely.

  Marge kept rolling the pencil. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, I noticed. All the manicures in the world couldn't cure her of that habit.

  "How's Alan?" I asked. Alan was her latest boyfriend. He managed an academic bookstore in Cambridge. He had a beard and wore tweed jackets with elbow patches. He looked down on us Republican political types; the couple of times I had met him there always seemed to be a sneer lurking just behind his polite phrases. I thought he was a jerk. But, then, I thought that about all her boyfriends; she doesn't have very good luck with men.

  "We split up," she said.

  "I'm sorry to hear that."

  "He's a jerk."

  "Of course he is. And I'm actually glad to hear you split up."

  Marge waved the subject of her love life away. "I can't take this anymore," she said. "I quit."

  "Marge," I said.

  "Don't give me that," she responded. Give her what? "I know what you're going to say. 'You can't do this to me, Marge. We're at the most critical point in the campaign, Marge. Think of how bad it'll look in the papers. You and me, we go back a long way. We
mean something to each other. You're not going to throw all that away, are you, Marge?' "

  I thought for a moment before responding. "I'd say, 'You and I, we go back a long way.' Not 'You and me.' "

  "Yeah? Well, it's 'poison whomever you want,' not 'whoever you want,' so up yours, Senator English major O'Connor." She reached into a drawer and took out a pack of Chesterfields. She grabbed a cigarette from the pack, lit it with a Bic lighter on the third try, and started puffing on it fiercely.

  "Do you want to talk about it?" I asked.

  "No," she said. "I just want to quit. I want to forget all about spots and media buys and tracking polls and all about you. I want to move to New Mexico and throw pots. I want to become a nun."

  She puffed some more. "Why did you have to fuck that bitch, Jim?"

  "Why do you think she was a bitch?" I responded. "I'm not being argumentative, Marge. I genuinely want to know."

  "Oh, for God's sake, you men are so stupid. A person just had to take one look at her to know she was dying to get her claws into you. The handsome, roguish senator, on the outs with his wife—what a catch."

  "Marge," I said softly, "that's not exactly grounds—"

  "Oh, shut up, Jim. Don't make it worse."

  I sat back in the uncomfortable plastic chair. Harold marched to some drummer that only he could hear; Kevin marched to whatever drummer I chose. But Marge and I—Marge and I always seemed to be in step, even without a drummer. I never had to explain myself to Marge; Marge could do the explaining for me. That made her perfect as a press secretary or media coordinator or whatever fancy title we wanted to give to what she did, which was to tell the world what Jim O'Connor thought. There was no need to worry that she'd misrepresent my position or misunderstand my strategy. But it made her more than that as well.

  She worked in Washington for me before the reelection campaign brought her back to Massachusetts. After Liz left Washington, I started accepting invitations to Marge's apartment. As later happened with Amanda, it was all business at first: take out Thai food while we worked on a speech or pizza while we plotted a media event. But we knew each other too well not to realize that more was going on: that I was lonely and Marge was the obvious choice to ease that loneliness. She was so obvious that it seemed predestined. No need to rush; it was just a matter of time.