The Golden Boy Returns (The New Pioneers Book 5)

by Deborah Nam-Krane

  She still didn't look at him. "And I think if you don't stop using words like 'pumps', people are going to start wondering."

  "Just trying to earn a little metrosexual street cred."

  "And you'd really better not use that word too much," Kasi warned.

  "Come out to the back, I want to show you something." He walked toward the back entrance, and after waiting ten seconds Kasi followed him. When she got out of the Marshall's building he was already standing in front of the hole that used to be Filene's across the street.

  "What are we looking at?" she asked.

  "The future," he said as he put his hand on the strap of his bag. "I'm going to put this bag down right next to your feet and walk as if I'm going into Macy's. You're going to stay here for three minutes before you realize that I left my bag. You're going to be a Good Samaritan, pick it up and follow me into Macy's. You're going to walk around the men's section for two minutes before you give up. Then you're going to go into the Ladies' Lounge and look in my bag for a wallet so you can contact me. And then you're going to stuff my bag into yours and get on your way to wherever you have to be. Got it?"

  "Got it," she said.

  "Nice meeting you, miss," he said loudly, then walked away. Kasi looked at her watch, then looked at the hole. The steel was still rusting, but that's what's going to happen when you leave it exposed for years to Boston's legendary rain and snow.

  She looked at her watch. Three minutes. She looked down at the bag, still next to her feet. "Oh, what a shame," she said out loud, then picked up the bag and walked toward Macy's.

  She walked through the cosmetics and perfume section, then into menswear. She swept from the underwear in the back of the building to the ties near the escalator and made sure it took two minutes to do so. She got on the escalator and rode up to the second floor. She made two right turns and walked into the Ladies' Lounge. She took a seat and put her hands in the bag as if she were rifling around for a wallet. She felt a hard package wrapped in brown paper and tried not to smile. Then she actually did feel a wallet.

  She pulled it out and opened it. It was empty except for a folded piece of paper. She opened it. "Enjoy." She stuffed it back into the wallet, stuffed the wallet into the bag, then stuffed the bag into hers.

  She took out her phone, just as they'd planned, and dialed Vijay's number as she walked out of the Ladies' Lounge. "My lunch date stood me up!" she said after he picked up.

  "Gee, that's too bad," he answered, and she knew he had an audience. "You can have lunch with me, but you'll have to come to Roxbury because I'm buried in work."

  "I thought you'd never ask. I'll grab a train and bus and be there—"

  "No! I mean, Kasi, I think it would be a good idea if you took a cab."

  She looked at the phone. "I don't have that much cash on me, and my credit card is only for campaign usage."

  "I'll pay for it as soon as you get here," he said after a pause. "Richard would hate for something to happen to you on the way here."

  "Mm. Tell Richard I appreciate his concern. Be there in a few."

  "Can't wait! And maybe we can get some of that Korean food you like so much." Vijay hung up. Kasi walked to a cab stand, then texted David.

  I'll be there ASAP, he replied.

  Emily was waiting for Kasi when she got off the elevator. "Come on," she said as she grabbed Kasi's hand and led her to Richard's office. David, Vijay and Richard were already there.

  "Well?" Vijay asked impatiently.

  Kasi reached into her bag, pulled out the brown paper package and grinned. "You mean this little old thing?" David stared at the package. "I think you've been looking for this."

  He took it from her and carefully tore open the paper. He held up the drive to look at it more closely. "If you could only talk," he murmured.

  Richard walked up to him. "Let's see if it can at least whisper."

  David handed it to Richard and sighed. "How long?"

  "I'll start on it tonight," Richard said, tapping the air with the hard drive.

  "And when his time's up it's my turn," Vijay said.

  "And Mitch, Martin and Jessie have already pledged to put up their donation toward work anyone else would need to do," Emily said. "But Jessie said something about wanting a donor meeting."

  Kasi shrugged. "Whatever," she grumbled.

  "Let's hope we don't need that," Richard said, but didn't sound convinced.

  David turned to Kasi. "Thank you. You have no idea..."

  Kasi knew she was blushing now. "Don't thank me yet."

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Emily called Kasi that night. "Jessie would really like to meet," she said as soon as Kasi answered.

  Kasi looked at the phone, frazzled from what had happened earlier in the day. "And she can’t make her own phone calls?"

  "She’s very capable of making her own calls and she told me that it was beneath her to ask someone to do her work but she was doing it anyway. She wouldn’t tell me what she really wants, but there’s a check for the maximum with David’s name on it if you’ll indulge her. And then you can tell me what she really wanted."

  These people..."Fine, send me her number and I’ll set it up."

  ~~~

  David looked at the text on his phone five days later. It was Richard. Just one word. Come. "Guys!" he hollered.

  "They've got it?" Kasi asked.

  "About damn time—it's been almost a week," Charlie said.

  "I don't know," David said as he started putting on his jacket. "Let's go find out."

  "I have to stay here," Charlie reminded them. "Powers' people asked to meet me with about the congressional race."

  David froze. "Charlie, I told you; I am not endorsing anyone in that race."

  "I heard you and so did they, but they still want to make their pitch. And just so you know, I think they're going to offer more than lit-dropping."

  "Charlie—"

  "David, let's worry about that afterward," Kasi said as she grabbed her purse.

  "Fine," David muttered. "Don't make any promises, okay?"

  "Get out of here," Charlie said. He pointed to Kasi. "And you'd better keep me posted, got it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  It took twenty minutes to drive to Richard's office. "God damned traffic," David muttered. "The most illogical traffic patterns of any major city."

  "David, if you need to bring that up in public, don't say 'illogical'. It makes you sound like Spock," Kasi chided.

  He scowled. "Shut up."

  Kasi turned her head. "Let me guess: I'm not the first person to tell you that you bear a strong resemblance to the man?"

  "Other than the dark hair, I'm not sure how much I resemble Leonard Nimoy."

  "And the height, and the thinness—"

  "I am not that thin," David said defensively.

  "It's a good thing," Kasi said, but couldn't stop smiling. It was her turn to tease him. "You're young, thin and healthy, versus Cervino who’s old, fat and fighting off one health problem after another."

  "I don't need to hear that I look like a kid next to him one more time," David said firmly.

  "No, David," Kasi said. "You do need to hear it—from me and Charlie—and then you need to figure out how you're going to work with it."

  "Choose between going with Boy Wonder or coming up with ways to counteract it," David said warily. "Yes, I know."

  "No, you don't. It's not either or. We just have to choose what works best for you."

  A hint of smile played on his face. "What works best for you?"

  Kasi thought for a moment. "Boy Wonder is going to get old—literally. And it brings up those sad Bobby Fischer stories—how do you follow it up? I think you should say thank you when people bring it up, but you should work on being seen as an adult." David tried not to smile as he nodded. "What? That's good advice. Do you need to hear it from someone else?"

  "No—I mean, yes. That's good advice."

  "Then what's so funny?"

>   David chuckled. "Nothing. Look, here we are."

  David and Kasi walked into Richard's office five minutes later. "What, no escort this time?" Kasi asked, looking at Emily.

  Emily looked shaken. "Sorry," she murmured.

  Kasi looked at her, then Vijay. "What's going on?"

  David walked up to Richard. "What did you find?"

  "We didn't get to the date ranges around the licensing investigation," Richard began. "Those files...they were more than double-deleted. They were corrupted. There might be some Feds who could get to it, but even then, whoever did that seemed to target exactly that date range."

  "Son of a bitch!" Kasi said. "Why didn't you guys tell us this before?"

  "Because we found other things," Richard said. "And much easier to retrieve."

  David put his hands out. "That said...?"

  Richard scratched his head. "I looked at it because the dates were so close to what you would have wanted for the licensing investigation, just a little off. But I wasn't seeing any of the names you gave me, and I wasn't seeing anything about a bar or a bribe. But I did see one word I recognized: 'primary'."

  Kasi and David looked at each other. "Primary?" David repeated. "Around the time Roy James was setting up a sting for the Feds? That would have been—"

  "The first time you got elected to the City Council," Emily said, not looking at him.

  "What the Hell is going on?" Kasi asked as she turned and looked at everyone. "What did Cervino do?"

  "Cervino made sure he got the result he wanted," Richard said reluctantly.

  "Are you kidding me?" David asked incredulously. "His opponent was Meg Bryan; she was unelectable outside of Southie and a couple of places in Dorchester."

  "It didn't seem weird to you that someone that connected did so badly?" Vijay asked skeptically. "That someone who had been in politics that long thought she was going to win on just those two sections of Boston?"

  Kasi was taken aback. "Vijay, when did you start paying attention to politics?"

  "Do you think I lived with you this long and ignored everything?"

  "She had deals in place with other candidates in other districts, and she had reached out to a number of community organizations. Even Mattapan and Roxbury," Richard said. "We know this because there were emails in which Cervino's aide got just about everyone to back off—except in Dorchester and Southie."

  "Where she was expected to win," Kasi said slowly.

  "But that's just the primary," David said, confused. "She placed well enough to make it to the next round, and she could have recovered."

  "Not everyone is you," Emily reminded him. "The other candidates were so weak I could have beaten them. She came in second, but a very distant second. Don't you remember the coverage? The Globe felt sorry for her. She had no momentum."

  "So that's when you get out and show your face," David insisted. "You shake every hand you can find at every community meeting in the city and show up at every T-station you can get to, every morning if you have to. She could have recovered."

  "She wouldn't have wanted to go to places where she'd been screwed," Kasi said, "and she wouldn't want to go somewhere she had a reputation for being a racist—especially if someone hadn't paved the way for her."

  David opened his mouth, closed it, then said, "Okay, Cervino played dirty, but that isn't illegal. He asked people to break deals, but—"

  Kasi shook her head. "And they did so just because he asked?"

  David turned to Richard. "What were they offering?"

  "No, David," Emily interjected. "That's not the good part."

  "You'd have to go back and trace it, but the first thing I thought of was all the development going on in Dudley," Richard said as he gestured around him.

  "But that's been years in the making," David spluttered.

  "And it only took off in the last few," Emily said.

  David froze. "Are you sure?"

  "I'm sure that's something you should check," Richard said. "But Emily's right, that's not the good part. Not everyone agreed to back out of their deal with Bryan. You can read in the emails that they were very concerned about what was going to happen in Brighton and the Fenway."

  Kasi blinked. "Brighton and the Fenway? The student areas?"

  "It wasn’t just students," Richard said. "There are still some families and senior citizens there. That area was ignored because they don't usually come out and vote, but as the primary approached the emails got much more urgent."

  "What did they say?" Kasi asked.

  "That it was very important that Cervino show well in those areas," Emily said. "But there's no indication in the emails or in the reporting at that time that he spent more time campaigning there."

  David suddenly laughed. "Of course not. Because even if she had won that area she would only have come in second. And whatever boost she'd have gotten wouldn't have been enough to win. It only would have been enough to make him seem like he wasn't inevitable." He looked up at Richard. "Are you sure?"

  "The night of the primary, there is an email that went out at eight thirty, which Emily verified was right after the results had been called for Fenway and Brighton. Two words: 'thank you'."

  "Who did it go to?" David asked calmly.

  "The person in charge of counting votes in Brighton."

  "We have to go to Powers," David said immediately. "This is evidence of vote tampering."

  "What good would it do now?" Kasi asked. "Cervino is on his way out, and that would call into question everyone's results—including yours."

  "I don't care," David said, which made Emily smile. "I know you think this is one elaborate bait and switch, but we have rules. And if we don't follow them, what's the point?"

  "You can't go to Powers with this," Richard said.

  David's eyes flashed. "Excuse me?"

  "You can't go to him because Bryan already did."

  "What?!" Kasi asked breathlessly.

  "That's where the emails got really exciting," Vijay said. "They started talking about 'the Powers situation' and they looked like they were freaking out. Then all of a sudden someone sends an email about Fitzgerald's bad health, and everyone calms down."

  "It's even in an email. 'All set with Powers'," Emily said, shaking her head.

  Kasi felt her hair stand on end. "But Senator Fitzgerald didn't die for another few years."

  "But everyone knew he was going to die soon," David said, looking into space. "And that would give Powers time to build his organization—and support."

  "Let me get this straight," Kasi said. "Cervino fixed a primary election to make his opponent look weak—even though he knew he was already going to win—and then he bribed the attorney general to look the other way in exchange for support in a race for a Senate seat in a few years, after Fitzgerald died?"

  Vijay’s face tightened. "Yes."

  David could not believe what he was hearing. "We have to go to the FBI."

  Kasi stood up. "Are you kidding me? In a world that follows those rules you're so excited about, should I be able to get this hard drive so much more easily than the Federal Bureau of Investigation? You know better than anyone else that they know this drive exists, and it's just like Richard said: they could get to those corrupted files and then get to those corrupt public officials. Do you think it's a coincidence that they haven't?"

  "Hunting Whitey takes a lot of manpower," Vijay deadpanned.

  "Especially when you warned him to leave," Emily replied.

  "Come on!" Richard exclaimed. "That was a long time ago."

  "Yes, I'm sure everyone's squeaky clean now," Emily shot back. "I think Kasi's right; going to the FBI could cause more trouble than it will fix."

  "That son of a bitch has to pay for what he did," David seethed. "I don't care if I have to go to the U.S. attorney general himself."

  "What if there's an easier way to make him pay?" Emily said suddenly.

  Richard sighed. "Emily, if you're thinking what I think you're t
hinking, that's called blackmail—and I thought we agreed you weren't going to do that anymore."

  Kasi frowned. "Huh?"

  "Never mind," Emily said as she scowled at Richard. "This is out of my league—but maybe it's not out of Michael's."

  "No one is blackmailing anyone!" David thundered. "Have all of you lost your minds? This is against the law."

  "Do you want to win or not?" Kasi exploded. "When are you going to stop pretending you're a Boy Scout? You are trying to be mayor of a major US city! This is a game and there are rules—and it's time you stopped pretending you're above them."

  "That's pretty funny coming from someone who thinks she's above the law!" David shouted back.

  Emily stood up. "Neither of you are doing anything," she said calmly. "Thank you so much for coming in."

  David narrowed his eyes. "I am starting to form a theory about why Joe Welles left town. I'd better be wrong."

  Richard's jaw tightened. Emily’s face betrayed nothing. "Don't give me too much credit; Cervino's already on his way out."

  Kasi lightly touched David’s arm. "This is a good idea," Kasi said. "And we don't have to know anything."

  David looked at everyone in the room. "I can't stop you from doing anything you're not going to tell me about, but maybe I can get a little justice of my own."

  Kasi frowned. "Oh, really?"

  "Yes," David said, then got up before anyone could ask more.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Kasi tried her best to hide her annoyance when she finally met with Jessie at her apartment, but she wasn’t doing a very good job. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary.

  "Late night?" Jessie asked after she poured Kasi’s coffee. "Here, try these cookies," Jessie said before she could answer. "The sugar and the caffeine should wake you up."

  "Alert but fat—my favorite combination," Kasi said, reaching for a cookie anyway.

  Jessie reached for her second cookie. "Worrying about your weight is overrated."

  "Must be nice not to have to worry about being judged," Kasi said as she sipped her coffee.

  "I am judged all the time," Jessie said. "I just tell people to screw off a lot. It’s a bonus side effect of not caring what people think."