by Mike Lawson
The room was dark except for a single overhead light, a fake Tiffany-style stained glass lamp. The lamp hung over the card table at which the old man sat. Eddie was standing off to one side, almost invisible in the shadows, his huge, scarred hands just hanging at his sides.
The old man didn’t rise to shake Morelli’s hand as he usually did when they met. He just sat there, his black eyes boring into Morelli’s as Morelli walked toward him. The old man, at that moment, in that lighting, with his seamed face and long, bony nose and his unblinking black eyes, reminded Morelli of some cruel, ancient bird of prey. Ancient, but still capable of ripping flesh from bone. He’d heard stories of how merciless the old man could be but until that moment it had never been so apparent in his features.
Morelli sat down and placed his hands on the table as if waiting for the cards to be dealt. In one night, Morelli had destroyed everything that they had worked for for fifteen years. Or that’s the way the old man would see it. Morelli knew differently. Morelli knew that he’d just suffered a setback, but the game—his game—was far from over. But for him to succeed he needed the old man’s help, and to get his help, he was going to have to tell him more lies. It was appropriate, he thought, that they were sitting at a poker table. Morelli was about to play for the highest stakes imaginable—his future, his life.
“How did it happen?” the old man said. His voice, as always, was low and calm. None of the emotions that he must be feeling showed.
“I’m not sure exactly,” Morelli said. “It was a setup.”
“I know that,” the old man snapped, “but who set you up?
“Sam Murphy and that investigator we were watching for a while.”
“You said the investigator was a nobody.”
“He is, but Murphy helped him.”
“But how did it happen? How did they get you alone with that girl?”
“I met with Murphy at my office the night it happened. He called and said he wanted to talk to me, about how we should both run clean campaigns. Anyway, we had a drink. You know I’m not a drinker, and I only had one drink. But after that drink, I started to feel odd, light-headed, woozy.”
“Murphy spiked your drink?”
“Either him or the girl. She was in the office when Murphy came to see me. She’s the one that poured the drinks for us. Anyway, right after the meeting, I agreed to give the girl a ride home. My mind wasn’t . . . it just wasn’t clear. It was like I was susceptible to suggestion. Anyway, she asked me to give her a ride and like a fool, I agreed. When we got to her place, she asked if I wanted a cup of coffee. Again I agreed. In fact, I thought the coffee might help clear my head.” Morelli stopped and shook his head, as if astounded by how easily he’d been duped.
“Go on,” the old man said.
“She gave me the coffee—or maybe it was tea—I can’t remember. And the next thing I know she’s up against me, her blouse is torn, and she’s tearing at my clothes, at my belt. I tried to push her away, and I either fell or she tripped me. I don’t know which. My mind was mush at this point and I was as weak as a kitten. The next thing I know, I’m on the floor, on top of her, and then this cop’s in the apartment.”
“So you didn’t attack this girl?”
Morelli stared at the old man for a moment, pretending to bristle with resentment. “How long have you known me?” he said. “Have you ever seen me chase women?”
“But there’s a tape of you attacking her.”
“Have you been to a movie lately?”
“A movie?” The old man said, puzzled by the question.
“Yes. Have you seen what they can do these days with special effects? They can make people fly. They can put an animal’s head on a man’s body.”
“So you think somebody doctored the tape?”
“Nobody saw that video for almost eight hours after my arrest, and the cop who arrested me, he didn’t enter it into evidence until almost an hour after we arrived at the station. There was plenty of time to do something with that video.” Before the old man could ask another question, Morelli said, “That tape isn’t a tape of what happened. It’s a tape of what they say happened. But the tape doesn’t really matter.”
“What? Why’s that?”
“It’ll never be admitted as evidence.”
“You’re saying you can beat this thing?”
Morelli shook his head. “No. I can’t beat this. I mean, I’m not going to go to jail, but I won’t get the nomination. That’s not going to happen now.”
The old man sat in silence a moment before he said, “So we’re through. It’s all over.”
“No. This is a setback, but we’re not through. I have a plan. In five years . . .”
Morelli had almost said ten years, but at the last minute he changed his mind.
“. . . in five years, I’ll be running for president. And I’ll get elected.”
“Five years?” the old man said.
Morelli knew what the old man was thinking. He was thinking: Will I live five more years? Will I be alive to see it happen? That’s why Morelli hadn’t said ten years. The old man was in good health—phenomenal health for his age—and he came from a family that lived long lives. In five years he’d be eighty-four. He’d live that long, or at least Morelli bet that that’s what he was thinking.
“What’s your plan?” the old man said.
Morelli told him. The old man didn’t interrupt while he talked. He just listened—and analyzed. The old man was almost as bright as Paul Morelli.
When Morelli finished, the old man said, “It could work. But there’s no way to speed it up?”
“No. Somebody else will be the next president. I’ll have to wait until the next election.”
“Okay,” the old man said. His tone seemed to say: this had always been a long-range plan. What was five more years? “And Murphy and this investigator, what about them?”
“We’ll deal with them eventually,” Morelli said, “but not now. They’re not the immediate problem. And Murphy, he won’t be president either. He’ll never get elected.”
“What if he is?”
“Then we’ll talk again.”
Chapter 57
DeMarco watched the story unfold, learning only as much as the media chose to tell a stunned population. He made no attempt to contact Sam Murphy to get the insider’s view. The month following the arrest, you couldn’t turn on a television, open a newspaper, or walk by a magazine stand without seeing Paul Morelli’s picture. Those who had once supported Morelli ducked the interviewers’ questions; those that had never liked him said I told you so. Comparisons to every politician whose undoing had been a woman—Gary Hart, Ted Kennedy, and of course, Bill Clinton—were rehashed whenever the reporters ran out of things to say about Morelli.
The video of Morelli attacking Brenda was never seen publicly.
It was reported that a detective snuck into the evidence locker and made a copy of the video to sell to a television producer, but the detective was caught before he could leave the police station. DeMarco read that uniformed cops now guarded the evidence locker like it was King Tut’s tomb, and he imagined that half the cops were being paid by Morelli to make sure the tape wasn’t copied again, and the other half by Sam Murphy to make sure it wasn’t destroyed. And although the public never saw the video directly, there were lawyers, judges, and cops who did, and these folks anonymously told the reporters what they’d seen. The end result was that even though very few people saw the actual footage of Morelli’s crime, everyone knew, essentially frame by frame, what the camera had recorded.
Speculation that Paul Morelli had been set up began to spread as more facts became known—and the Morelli machine did the spreading. That Brenda was a former actress suddenly turned secretary was central to the argument. Then there was the fact that Gary Parker not only lived in Brenda’s apartment building but had moved in just two weeks before the incident. And although no one was surprised that Arnie Berg had taken the video, the serendip
ity of Arnie—a guy who normally badgered athletes and entertainers—just happening to be near the Russell Building and being so eagle-eyed as to spot the little blond in Morelli’s car . . . Well, give me a break, the Morelli rooters said.
Gary Parker had his picture taken with various Republicans who gave him awards. When asked about the coincidence of him arriving home just as Brenda was being attacked, Parker shrugged and said: “I was just lucky, I guess. And for that little gal, it’s a damn good thing I was.” Parker played the humble hero much better than DeMarco ever would have guessed.
Arnie, too, bathed in the limelight, a new icon to all his sleazy kind. It was one thing to catch Britney Spears looking fat and tacky on a trip to the grocery store but to bring a presidential contender to his knees—now that was good shooting indeed.
The spotlight focused on Brenda was the brightest—and for an aspiring actress, this was better than anything a Hollywood PR firm could have arranged. If there was a talk show she didn’t appear on it had to be on Telemundo. She told the world that she had tried being an actress, but had never been able to land a decent role, so she had given up on her Hollywood dreams and moved to Washington to start a new life as a simple secretary. She couldn’t believe her good luck when she was hired by Paul Morelli, a man she had always admired. That Morelli had attacked her . . . Well, she said, you can just never tell about people.
Paul Morelli was never tried, much less convicted, of a crime. His lawyers threw out legal roadblocks faster than firemen barricading a burning city block. They quibbled over the chain of custody for Arnie’s camera. The delay in entering the camera into evidence, combined with the fact that a detective had made a copy of the video, led to speculation that the video had been doctored.
The lawyers argued that Morelli had been entrapped by a busty actress and a corrupt cop, as if he’d had no role in his own undoing. And the cup of tea that Brenda had made for Morelli became a huge point of contention. The teacup and its contents were never analyzed, and Morelli’s lawyers claimed that the senator had been drugged and the cops, in their rush to judgment—as if the law was ever in a rush—had disposed of crucial evidence.
The attorneys even jousted over the nature of the charge itself. Per the U.S. Constitution, a sitting senator can only be tried for treason, a felony, or something called “breach of the peace.” Morelli’s lawyers maintained that no felony had been committed. They had the audacity to argue that if Paul Morelli was guilty of anything it was sexual harassment: a ripped blouse, they claimed, was nothing more than an overzealous fondle, no felony at all.
But the primary reason Morelli didn’t stand trial was Sam Murphy’s political acumen. Sam already had everything he wanted and he was afraid that a man as popular as Paul Morelli would never be convicted by a jury. And if Morelli was acquitted . . . well, hell, some people might actually think he was innocent. So Sam—and his money—convinced the judge that a trial would be a waste of time and that Morelli should be disciplined by the Senate, censured or expelled, whatever that august body felt was best. Yes, Murphy liked the situation much better the way it currently was: Paul Morelli had been tried, judged, and hung by the media—so why give the legal system a chance to reverse the decision?
Paul Morelli maintained the lowest possible profile while all the lawyers sparred. He made only one public appearance, giving a statement to the press two days after his arrest, and it was the only time DeMarco had ever seen Morelli give a rambling, unclear speech. He couldn’t decide if Morelli was so inarticulate because he was still shaken by his circumstances or if he was being deliberately confusing.
Something strange happened that night, Morelli said. The authorities were still trying to put the pieces together, and he was still trying to understand what had occurred. The implication was that he wasn’t necessarily the one under investigation, and his words, his tone, his manner all hinted at dark conspiracies.
He reminded the audience of his years of brilliant public service, then talked about the strain he had been under lately—his wife’s and daughter’s deaths, his near assassination at the hands of Marcus Perry, the death of his close friend, Abe Burrows. He admitted that alcohol had contributed to his circumstance. He’d been drinking that night, something he rarely did, and had it not been for the booze and the stress he would never have allowed himself to be “lured into such a dangerous situation.”
Looking like a man reeling from an awful, unfair beating, he concluded he needed healers, not jailers. He said he was packing himself off to Father Martin’s, the same clinic where he had imprisoned his wife the week before she died.
It was a good performance. Morelli managed somehow to appear vulnerable if not the victim. DeMarco was sure there were many who felt sorry for him and some even gullible enough to believe he was innocent regardless of what had been reported and the credibility of the reporters. But as good as his performance was, DeMarco was sure it was not good enough. Too much damage had been done. Brenda Hathaway would be Paul Morelli’s Chappaquiddick.
DeMarco watched the whole affair with an odd sense of detachment. He felt no remorse for ruining Morelli’s career in an underhanded manner, but there was no sense of victory either, no glowing feeling that justice had prevailed. All he felt was relief: relief that it was over, relief that he was still employed, relief that he was still alive.
He never discussed with Mahoney how he had set up Morelli but on the day following Morelli’s arrest there was a box of Davidoff cigars on the desk in his office.
It really bugged him that Mahoney had a key to his office.
Chapter 58
The chapel at Arlington National Cemetery is not a large structure, but with only three people in it, it seemed cavernous and the words of the navy chaplain echoed throughout the nearly empty room.
Emma couldn’t really explain why she had decided to attend Blake Hanover’s funeral. She hadn’t liked the man. She may have come because he had helped her while he was dying but she knew that wasn’t the main reason. She suspected it was because the image of him dying alone and friendless in his apartment haunted her, and she found the idea of a funeral with no attendees almost as poignant.
But it turned out that there was one other attendee: Charlie Eklund.
The chaplain—a Catholic priest—was uncomfortable. He hadn’t known Hanover and he didn’t know what to say about the man. He read a brief history of Hanover’s life, noting that he had been born and raised in Pennsylvania, served for four years in the marines, then spent another thirty years working for the CIA. “Mr. Hanover,” the chaplain said, “is survived by two sons, David and Michael, who, ah, unfortunately were unable to be here today.”
Now that was heartbreaking, Emma thought.
The chaplain looked at his small audience and said, “I was going to read a short passage from the New Testament but I was wondering if either of you had anything you’d like to say.”
Emma shook her head.
“Yes, I would like to say something,” Eklund said.
He walked slowly up to the front of the chapel. Hanover’s ashes were contained in a simple, unadorned urn, resting on a small folding table. When Eklund spoke, he looked directly at Emma. He would have looked at her if the chapel had been filled with people.
“Blake Hanover was not my friend,” he said, “but he spent his life in the service of his country and he deserves to be recognized for his service, and that’s why I am here today. Blake was proud that he worked for the CIA, as I too am proud. A fickle and ignorant media reports only the failures of America’s greatest intelligence service. The successes are not reported because they cannot be reported. The people who work for the agency are patriots. They love this country and they die if need be to guarantee its freedoms. They are diligent, deeply committed people who should be revered for what they do rather than scorned by a witless public and held in contempt by unappreciative politicians.”
And in all this Emma knew that Charlie Eklund was right. Her experiences
with the CIA had not been positive, but she knew that the agency’s successes far outnumbered its failures and that lunatics like Eklund were the exception, not the norm.
Eklund placed his hand on Hanover’s urn and said, “Thank you, Blake, and may you rest in peace.” Then he sat down next to Emma, his eyes shining with tears.
The chaplain stood silent for a moment, not knowing what to do, then he cleared his throat and said. “I think, ah, if it’s okay with you I’ll skip the reading from the New Testament.”
Emma and Eklund both nodded.
“An honor guard will now accompany Mr. Hanover’s ashes for interment in the Columbarium Wall,” the chaplain said. “I’ll, uh, go outside and tell them we’re ready.” The young priest left the church, his relief evident.
“Thank you for coming today,” Eklund said to Emma. “I’m very disappointed that the people who worked with Blake are not here. I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed.” He paused theatrically then added, “I’m afraid that my own funeral will one day be equally well attended.”
Eklund looking for sympathy was more than Emma could take. “I have to go,” she said and rose from the pew. She didn’t intend to accompany the honor guard to the Columbarium and hear taps being played for Blake Hanover. Taps made her cry. She’d heard them played too often for too many people she’d cared about.
Eklund looked up at her and said, “You won. Paul Morelli will never be president. And you know something, my dear? I don’t care. So I’m not sure how you did it, but I hold no hard feelings against you.”
Emma just shook her head and turned to leave.
Eklund sighed. “I’m thinking of leaving the agency,” he said. “Voluntarily. The world has just become too confusing a place. It’s time for me to go.”
Emma looked down at Eklund. “Charlie, you lying little prick,” she said, “who do you think you’re kidding? You’ll never retire.”