Admit The Horse

by P. G. Abeles

  “Congressman?” their voices were intentionally loud, but low, strained.

  “HELLOOOOO? Anyone home?”

  “Uuuuck. It smells poopy in here.”

  “Did you just say: ‘it smells poopy in here’? Seriously? Like, how old are you?”

  “Whatever. I don’t like to use bad language around the Congressman. Anyway, something’s not right. We should call the police.”

  “Hold up. Let’s just look around, first.” said the other. “We don’t want to do anything to embarrass the Congressman.”

  “Something smells like shit in here.”

  “I thought you didn’t say shit.”

  “Shut up.”

  Past the small entryway, they could see the staircase in the living room beyond. The Congressman’s corpulent body sprawled brokenly on the marble tile, his head pillowed by the bottom stair. His eyes were open, staring.

  The staffers looked at each other, wide-eyed with shock.

  Stepping around the pool of fluid that had collected under the body, the younger staffer pulled out his cell phone and took a picture of the late Congressman Gilchrist before dialing 911. The older staffer finally gave up any pretense of being cool and ran retching toward the door.

  Chapter Four

  October 2007

  New York, New York

  WITHIN FIVE DAYS OF EACH OTHER the CEO’s of the world’s largest brokerage firm, Shirlington Securities, and the world’s largest financial services company, OmniTrust, resigned under pressure from their boards. Only two short weeks before, Shirlington CEO’s announcement that the firm’s estimated write-off from losses in subprime mortgage-backed securities would be in the neighborhood of $5 billion had sent shock waves down Wall Street like an atomic blast. OmniTrust had announced it anticipated similar losses—of $5.9 billion.

  However, by month’s end, as devastating as those losses had seemed at the time, it was apparent that both men had seriously underestimated their company’s risk. Shirlington reported a devastating $2.4 billion loss in the 3rd quarter and a $8.4 billion write-down in asset value. OmniTrust was now advising nervous investors that the firm would experience a 60% decline in 3rd quarter profits and a write-down somewhere between $8 and $11 billion.

  Analysts at the 24- hour cable financial stations, spouted sage maxims about how unforgiving Wall Street could be. Apparently, when your annual compensation is in the $50,000,000 range, you’re not supposed to be off by a few billion.

  Chapter Five

  December 2007

  Chicago, Illinois

  THE DOOR OF THE SOUTH SIDE APARTMENT BUILDING showed its age even more acutely in the grey of the December afternoon—chipping paint, gouges where the wood had been damaged by contact with untold furniture and electronics, and planes sufficiently out of plumb to be consistent with the multiple instances of domestic disturbance to which it had been an unwilling participant. He really should move to a better place. Most of his friends had moved to the more culturally lively North Side for its restaurants and galleries. Maybe he’d check out the apartments in Lakeview and Andersonville this weekend.

  He let himself in, stamping the dirty snow off his boots, noticing that someone had draped some raggedy dime store tinsel over the mail slots. He checked his mail. Nothing. That was curious—the other residents’ slim metallic boxes were overflowing with circulars and pizza promotions. He had been expecting to hear from Sinkowski. After their last telephone call, he’d been pretty creeped out—Sinkowski seemed to believe he was being followed, his telephone tapped, even. But how likely was that, really? O. had asked him to contact Sinkowski; find out what it would take to shut the guy up—maybe dig for a little info on whom the guy had spoken to. O. said he couldn’t ask anyone from his office to do it; he needed to keep the situation at arm’s length. But Sinkowski was just a lonely middle-aged queen with mental health issues. O. had been wrong to ignore him; so much easier to just talk to the guy—he only wanted some attention.

  The drug thing was a non-issue anyway. Sure, O. may have done some lines if someone else was paying, but O. was by nature an ascetic—always tightly under control, sometimes eerily so. Was O. even gay? Who knew? For all his handsome good looks and easy smile, that cat was cold. If someone was offering to blow him—he wouldn’t refuse—it took a lot of stroking to assuage that limitless ego—but it was always the same with him—nothing reciprocal. O. was a taker. He’d learned that himself the hard way.

  As he started down the long hallway, he thought he saw his apartment door close. Could it be? Was Kevin back? He hadn’t given up hope Kevin would return to him. He was young, taking time to find himself; so beautiful. Kevin had been in love with O. or maybe just in lust. But there had been too many calls to the office, too many people starting to ask questions, get suspicious; an ambitious young politician on the ‘down low’ with a young family couldn’t have that. Talk to him, said O. Explain to him. Get him to calm down. But Kevin was unheeding, threatening to march over to O.’s house, talk to his wife, talk to the press, expose him.

  “I’ll deal with it,” said The Minister. And he had; he sent Kevin on a vacation, The Minister said. Caribbean, warm sea, soft sand and (he privately suspected) lots of nubile boys happy to get friendly with a well-paying tourist. But even after talking to The Minister, something was nagging at him; something in The Minister’s manner. It seemed weird that Kevin hadn’t called him, especially as he’d always claimed to distrust The Minister. The Minister told him he’d received a postcard from Kevin a few days ago—“Weather is here. Wish you were beautiful”—typical gay humor.

  As he reached his door, he was still hopeful. The key turned easily in the well-worn lock. If he’s here—if he’s come back, I’ll take him away, he pledged to himself. He’d find another church looking for a choral director. After twenty years, he was certain The Minister would give him a reference; somewhere far away from O. He’d made good money, been careful. They could be happy. They would forget everything and start fresh; just as The Minister had advised. And then he opened the door.

  Chapter Six

  New York, New York

  ON THE DRIVE IN FROM THE AIRPORT, Appelbaum had watched as the storm started to build; the sky darkening and the wind rising as if the elements, held in check for a time, were now restless for adventure. It was precisely the kind of weather, he thought, that alerted ordinary people that they might be called on at any time to be very brave, or very quick. But from up here, it was all different. Now he was so high, the building so insulated from the elements, the sheeting rain glimpsed through the broad expanse of tempered glass might as well have been happening on Mars, it was so far removed. In New York, weather was what happened to poor people. Oh, perhaps a stroll down Madison Avenue on a warm spring day to observe the hoi polloi. But mostly, the New York elite’s experience of weather was something that happened on the way to, or from, somewhere else—with a helpful doorman or driver to provide protection and insulation on the twenty steps between building and chauffeured car.

  It was different, of course, in Chicago. Chicago was still new enough, still Midwestern enough, to pride itself on braving the elements. The buildings weren’t uniformly as tall, the inhabitants not quite so pampered, the elite not quite as arrogant. The power center in New York was Wall Street and money. The power center in Chicago was City Hall and influence.

  But, really, in the end, it made no difference. David Appelbaum wasn’t by nature an introspective man and his profession did not encourage second-guessing or regrets. He was here today to pick up money—lots of money—as much as Wall Street had ever given any candidate for president. And they—these eager, arrogant wizards of finance—were there to give it to him.

  Oh, of course, they paid lip service to a lot of crap about a new direction and a change for the future. Of course, they couldn’t get enough of O.; that winner’s circle smile and elegant reserve. But the reverse psychology with the moneymen, and the right-brain emotional appeal of telling everyon
e the candidate’s “story” as The Professor had advocated, had worked exactly as he had predicted. The laughable, staggering, untraceable amounts of money that came pouring into the campaign on the internet (best not to examine the sources too carefully), only made these financial guys want to contribute more.

  That’s what politicians in this city never understood, he thought to himself with a rueful smile. All these piggy financial guys looked down on their politicians because they had no dough. Most of them were so grateful for the measly hundreds or small bill thousand dollar contributions Wall Street secretaries wouldn’t consider acceptable as bonuses. On Wall Street, the barometer of success was making money, and the barometer of intrinsic value was cost. Influence, as it turned out, was cheap.

  At first, fresh from Chicago, Appelbaum had expected to be impressed. But as it turned out, despite the accident of their eye-boggling wealth, these Wall Street guys weren’t particularly exceptional. Most weren’t that educated; Appelbaum thought. They weren’t cultured (that’s what wives were acquired at great expense to provide). God knows they weren’t handsome. And let’s face it, Appelbaum thought, most of them weren’t even that smart. But they knew how to make money—not in and of itself such an accomplishment, when you consider that it was really more about taking other people’s money. And, that, after all, was no big deal. Appelbaum knew all about taking other people’s money.

  In the end, the commuter helicopters, and the hurry-scurry, got-to-get-to-the-office lifestyle was kind of a sham, Appelbaum reflected. The guys on Wall Street weren’t producing anything; they weren’t inventing anything. What they were really best at was leveraging (and sometimes liquidating) assets that had belonged to other people—and miraculously, legally, taking them for their own. That’s why they respected O. They could see he was a rainmaker. And they suspected that, like themselves, he was an opportunist—defined by the more cynical

  among them as someone who was concerned more nearly with what was legal than with what was right. O. pulled in the dough—or more precisely, Appelbaum pulled it in for him. In the whacked psychology of Wall Street, the less O. needed them, the less he respected them, the more eager they were to jump on board and show the love. And Appelbaum was there to see O. got plenty of love.

  Even then, O. wouldn’t play the game; wouldn’t pander. O. held himself apart: arrogant, aloof. Unlike the usual political candidates—back slapping, blow-dried sincerity drones who paid their dues at soup kitchens on the weekend and endless weeknight fundraisers (and had to account for every measly penny of contributions and expenditures); O. didn’t work it, and he didn’t account to anybody.

  The media would end up crowing over the clothing expenditures of the Republicans—without bothering to notice that the only reason the press knew what those expenditures were, was because their books (unlike O.’s) were open. The vent-less Canali and Zegna suits, the wife’s expensive designer duds—no one asked questions. The political idealists impotently wrung their hands over O. not accepting public financing as he had promised to do. What they didn’t realize, was that there was never really any choice. With public money came public scrutiny…and public audits.

  What Appelbaum knew that the public did not was that the Federal Elections Commission, tasked with ensuring fair elections, was already sending documents in the hundreds of pages detailing “problem contributors” to Okono campaign headquarters. Donations that the FEC had tagged as suspicious for a variety of reasons: either because the contributor had exceeded the $2,300 personal limit, or the contributions originated from foreign addresses or foreign bank accounts, or the contributors used obviously fictitious names and addresses. The infractions were so extensive and so bald, it would be hard to make the claim the campaign hadn’t been aware of wrong-doing with a straight face. The FEC accountants were paper tigers, of course, nothing would happen until after the election, and even then an audit could only take place if it had bipartisan support. Appelbaum had ways to make sure that wasn’t going to happen.

  No. No audits.

  When they’d come to him fifteen years before and told him to set this guy up, brand him, make him marketable, he’d been astonished. Back then O. was so uncomfortable meeting with constituents, so maladroit, he looked like he was going to crawl out of his own skin. The people in those housing projects looked at O. like he was an alien—so divorced was he from their experience with his thin skin, private school elocution, and tight ass. But the money was there, and at the time Appelbaum had not been quite so picky about his clients. Sell him like a box of Cheerios, they told him. Make us a star. So, he had.

  He controlled the information. No school transcripts would be provided—O. was a bright guy but an indolent student. No test scores—O.’s scores would never have qualified him for the top tier schools to which he’d been admitted. No college pals to interview—some of the groups those guys belonged to might sound a little too radical. Appelbaum shook his head with amazement—some kid, just graduated from Harvard, without a pot to piss in—and no one wondered where all the professional photos from the “early years” came from? He’d hired a photographer to follow O. around; that cost dough. But dough had never been a problem for O.—there was always plenty of dough.

  Appelbaum had heard rumors of plastic bags filled with money delivered to campaign headquarters. He’d never asked about the rumors for the simple reason that he didn’t want to know. It was certainly true that the community ‘get-out-the-vote’ organizations were always breathing hard for O. Those people didn’t get off their fat asses for less than a hundred grand, he knew. Somebody was paying them, and paying them well.

  Then there were the state and federal tax credits—worth hundreds of millions of dollars—to all the real estate developers on low income housing projects—more than a hundred in O.’s district alone. These developers had received tens of millions in tax credits, low-cost financing on loans and community investment dollars. Those ‘innovative partnerships’ O. had sponsored between the public and private developers were now slums. The absentee landlords just absent. A little bit of a dust-up when a heavy gate rusted off its hinges and fell on a toddler—killing the child—yet these developers remained some of O.’s closest associates and friends. And still, no one asked any questions.

  Thank God for Antoinette—at least she gave the guy a little game. Okono’s wife was the tough one, the brass knuckles. Her family knew Chicago politics; knew what it took to get the deals done. If O. demurred, she’d give the nod—well, to pretty much anything. Of course the proverbial chip on her shoulder, was, in her case, more like a boulder—but her “do-it-to-them-before-they-do-it-to-us” philosophy had made Appelbaum’s job much easier on more than one occasion. When challenged by a local reporter about her $195,000 pay raise within a week of her husband’s election to Congress, Antoinette hissed at the guy like a junkyard cat. The reporter all but ran in his haste to get away. Appelbaum chuckled at the memory. Antoinette was tough, but she wasn’t just tough; she was mean.

  Of course, he’d had to rein her in from time to time when Antoinette got a little too confiding. After all, Appelbaum couldn’t have her telling folks as she did at that speech in Iowa, “See I’m not supposed to be here. As a black girl from the South Side of Chicago, I wasn’t supposed to go to Yale because they said my test scores were too low. They said maybe I couldn’t handle Harvard Business School because I wasn’t ready…” No, none of that. Appelbaum was selling brilliant, and brilliant people don’t have shitty test scores. But Antoinette was right about one thing. She was ready. She’d been born ready.

  Appelbaum was still amazed at the unbelievable ease of it all. He had handed it to O. on a platter, showed him how to get it done. Challenging the nominating petitions in his first race so O. was literally the only candidate left, then engineering the disclosure of the primary challenger’s messy court-sealed divorce. Not one to discard a trick that worked, Appelbaum pulled another rabbit out of the hat in the general election by taking out
O.’s Republican opponent in the same way—as sympathetic journalists again, “miraculously” gained access to court-sealed documents relating to the Republican’s divorce, including made for prime-time revelations of the would-be senator’s inclination toward threesomes and bondage. Very nice.

  Appelbaum wasn’t surprised it had worked; of course it had worked. What he was surprised by, and would always be surprised by, was the fact that no one had asked any questions about O’s “too-good-to-be true” or perhaps just “too-easy-to be accidental” rise to influence and fame. He sure hoped they weren’t going to start any time soon.

  Well, maybe it wasn’t so complicated. People created the myths they wanted to believe. His son was telling him this morning about a report he was doing in class on Benjamin Franklin. His son had a point: if you considered all Franklin’s accomplishments, it was surprising he hadn’t been lionized by the young nation instead of George Washington. Sure, ol’ George had the physical advantage—but, as Appelbaum’s son pointed out, Franklin had everything else. A brilliant scientist and inventor, a successful businessman, the founder of the first hospital, the first fire company, the first library—the list of his achievements went on and on. Franklin was smarter, more socially adroit—and perhaps, more to the point—genuinely involved in the discussions of democracy in a way that Washington never was.

  Washington was a good man, a person of enormous courage and discipline, but he wasn’t much of a tactician or strategist. But to lionize Franklin was to celebrate the role played by the French—without whom Washington’s rag-tag army never stood a chance. To celebrate Washington was to highlight the role played by the Americans. Framed in that way, Appelbaum thought, it made sense—the psychology of the choice was easy to understand.