by Roger Weston
The waiter walked over. Chuck ordered coffee, a steak sandwich, and a dinner salad. Lawrence chose the crab cake with fries and a martini.
As the waiter walked away, Chuck glanced at the ceiling. He read the words, “If you want a friend in Washington - get a dog.” That was just one of the various writings on the ceiling.
“What did you find out?” he said.
“Don’t you change the subject. A man needs hope.” Lawrence looked around at the other diners, including a few recognizable members of Congress. He lowered his voice. “A man needs something to believe in. A man needs to believe that he can do a quiet investigation and re-shuffle the deck.”
Chuck saw the intensity in his old pal’s eyes.
“I’m looking at hope right now,” Lawrence said. “You’re the one man I believe in. Look around.” He gestured toward photos of politicians on the walls. “There’s no hope there. There’s no action. If Americans put their faith in that, they’re doomed.”
“I’m just one man,” Chuck said, “but I’ll do what I can.”
“No, you ain’t just one man. You’re as subtle as a shadow and twice as quiet. You’re dangerous. That’s what worries me. This is DC. We can’t have the Red Cross follow you around and clean up the mess.”
“I hear you,” Chuck said. “What have you got for me?”
“Just stay cool, Chuck. This is the capital. If I wanted Merrill’s Marauders, I’d have called them. I need results, but I also need this operation to maintain a sense of civility and invisibility.”
“Are you gonna get to the point? I should’ve brought my guitar.”
Lawrence tapped the ground with his cane. “I’ve been running down blind alleys and dead ends. I’ve learned a few things, but there’s a degree of uncertainty.”
“I’m listening.”
“I just wanted to make sure we understand each other.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s a lot, Brandt. This ain’t Mogadishu. Do not create an incident or draw unwanted attention to our operations.”
Chuck leaned forward whispered. “You know I’m deniable.”
“Don’t put me in a position to have to deny anything!” Lawrence gestured with a sweep of his arm, indicating the fine restaurant and the esteemed patrons. “This is the cradle of civilization.”
“The mask of civilization is sometimes used to cover up savage behavior,” Chuck said.
“Of course.” Lawrence leaned forward and said in a hushed tone. “Just make sure you’re not the one to do that.”
“There can be no civilization without justice,” Chuck said.
Lawrence’s face darkened. In a hushed tone he said, “This is no rogue op in Peru. We play by the rules here.”
“You’re lacking in confidence.”
“Confidence? Most people in this town still want you arrested for the disaster in Venezuela. How you dodged that bullet is a miracle. The rest of them want you dead for alleged crimes in the Caribbean. Then there’s—”
“You know that’s not right.”
“What I know isn’t the point. I think a little caution is warranted. Should I go on?”
“I got your point.”
“Okay, then. I can tell you that a cargo ship is definitely involved. Please look one more time, but keep a very low profile.” He leaned in close and lowered his voice. “Do not throw anyone through any windshields. Do not use your gun. This ain’t the Old West.”
“Of course not,” Chuck said.
Lawrence stole a look across the restaurant. “I’ve got a shaky lead,” he said in a hushed tone. “A person engaged in wet work met with the Seattle Lawyer, Martin Hurst. All I have is a person, but no definite connection. Name is Gavin Grimes, but it’s probably a fake name. No luck trying to find any location for him.”
“I’ll look into it. He’s not an Albanian, is he?”
“I don’t know. Why do you ask?”
“Just a hunch. There may be a connection to the Omnibus Spending Bill and Albanian Foreign Aid. I’ll talk to you more later. There’s something I have to do.”
“Gently, Chuck, gently.”
“I’ll keep you posted.”
“What’s your plan?”
“Just relax, will ya? I’ll be in touch. Thanks for lunch.”
CHAPTER 23
Lionell Ratliff’s thick-framed glasses lost their dark tint when he entered his dim house, closing the door behind him with a soft touch. He grabbed an iced-tea from the fridge and went into his office. In his oversized home office, he peeled off his jacket and felt the air conditioning. Two walls were covered with cubby-hole shelves. Each shelf had the name of a congressman or congresswoman. Each shelf held a stack of newspaper articles, printed-out web news stories, and other research. Lionel glanced at Rosa’s shelf as he leaned back in his chair.
Lionel secretly prided himself on the fact that he knew more about members of congress than any other living person. This belief was well founded because over the past two decades, he’d enjoyed unparalleled access to members of congress. More than that, however, was the fact that he was an active observer. He watched and listened, yes, but he also regularly questioned his many employees. He questioned them on everything they’d heard and overheard. What they never realized was that excerpts of their informal little discussions were remembered, documented, and filed away. It was never idle small talk. Lionel could recall conversations from years back. He also skimmed online newspapers. No scandal in any capital city in America got past him if it was written about.
Lionel guessed Rosa was having trouble with the EPA, which was probably tying up his ranches in litigation due to overgrazing, killing wolves, spotted owls, or something.
When Congressman Salvador Rosa had confessed that Speaker Galloway was the front man for the Augean Command secret society and the face of blackmail, Lionel immediately recalled that Galloway was also a notorious influence peddler in New Mexico. He had supported a spending bill that benefitted the solar firm SolMar – a firm that paid his wife millions for lobbying services. During the last three election cycles, he had supported bills that benefitted numerous foreign companies. All of these firms funneled millions of dollars to his wife’s lobbying firm. As far as Ratlif knew, her actual lobbying work was minimal. If she was renowned for anything, it was her shopping vacations in Europe and Hong Kong.
Lionel thought about this. Although he could pat himself on the back for knowing the dirt on Galloway, he had to reluctantly acknowledge to himself that it was common knowledge. Thousands of people in New Mexico probably knew the rumors about Galloway. As for Ian Byrd, Lionel would have to dig deeper.
Eagerly, he walked through his dim house. He shook with excitement for what he was about to do. He felt like a treasure hunter who just found the entrance to King Tut’s tomb. But he had a different kind of treasure.
Built-in shelves covered most of the walls of his home. These weren’t typical shelves, however. They were cubby holes, much like those key cubbies found behind the front desks of old-time hotels. The slots had varied sizes depending upon the room. The rooms were wasp nests of rectangular honeycombs. Each slot was nine-inches wide and thee-inches high to accommodate a stack of 8½ x 11 inch papers. He called them scandal cubbies. There were hundreds and hundreds of cubbies in each room, all crafted, sanded, and stained so that the dark walnut shined. These built-in slot racks rose from floor to ceiling on all four walls. The built-ins covered the windows, giving the rooms the feel of a vaults or storerooms. Still, the rooms bragged a certain dignity given the quality of the shelves—the finely crafted, sanded, and stained walnut. The dark wood, however, was incidental. It was the contents of the cubbies that were Lionell’s obsession. No man alive other than him had any idea what they contained…
His special shelves covered the walls of the bedrooms, the office, the living room, and the family room. Over the years, he had added onto his home over three thousand square feet of rooms. He had covered the walls with built-in
cubby-hole shelves that were identical to those found throughout the house. Only the kitchen had escaped his endless upgrades. His home featured twenty-thousand handcrafted cubby holes divided among twenty rooms. Each room was named after a president. And obviously these holes reflected his compulsive-addictive behavior.
Lionel entered the Johnson Room.
The Johnson room was the nexus of his bees’ nest of nooks and crannies. A large honey-colored oak chest of drawers rested in the center of this room. It wasn’t just any chest of drawers, however. Lionell had long ago purchased this chest of drawers from an auction house that was selling off the shelving of a library that was slated for demolition. This particular piece of furniture had once contained thousands of card files, arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System. This museum piece, this antique, this nicked and scuffed wooden anachronism featured dozens of tiny little drawers, each 5 ½ inches wide and 30 inches deep. Lionel had been cataloguing the mysterious contents of his cubby holes for decades. He’d begun with this primitive filing system and continued with it ever since.
Now he rifled through his card files. When he found the name he was looking for, he closed the drawer and stood up.
He entered a den he’d added on years ago, a windowless room with cubbies covering all four walls. He called this Staffer Room #3. The center of the room was dominated by a stack of file boxes that was six-feet high, six-feet wide and eight-feet long. A small card table and a chair were situated at the end of the stack. The boxes contained his records on the main staffers over the past three decades who had moved on to other things in life. The cubbies along the walls contained dirt on those staffers who were currently serving on the Hill. Lionel stepped up to the B section and kneeled down by the cubby labeled Byrd.
Smiling, the doorman removed an envelope. He sat at the card table and opened the envelope. He removed his thick glasses and squinted at the secret notes that he’d taken a few years back and forgotten about. It was like he was reading a man’s confession for the first time:
Ian Byrd,
The manipulative staffer of an overly-dependent congressman Ty Henderson
Secret: Byrd did time at Rikers Island Correctional Facility in New York
Rikers Island is New York City’s main jail complex. It consists of ten jails and has close to 12,000 inmates with 8,000 officers monitoring them.
The jail mostly holds local offenders, those who couldn’t post bail, and anyone serving a sentence of one year or less or waiting for a transfer.
Crimes: Assault and battery; assault with a deadly weapon
Lionel gasped. He could believe he’d almost forgotten Byrd’s dirty secret.
Of course, details came flooding back to him now. A few years back, he’d overheard a rumor about Byrd and done a web search on Rikers Island. It was the sort of thing that he did every day. There were so many secrets in the Capitol. After a week, everything was old news. There was nothing at the time to have made Ian Byrd stand out from all the other characters on Capitol Hill. Even Lionel couldn’t remember everything he learned about every dirty staffer. That’s why he had all the cubbies.
Seeing it again now, he made a connection. Henderson had been a criminal defense attorney in the Bronx before he ran for office and was elected to Congress. Lionel recalled that this was how Henderson had known the ex-con. Henderson had gotten the conviction overturned and sprung Byrd out of jail.
Evidently, Representative Henderson had underestimated Byrd when he hired the man as a personal assistant. Lionel chuckled at the irony. Henderson had defended and befriended a ruthless criminal. Now he was himself victimized.
Lionel breathed the thick air in full knowledge that he was surrounded by the records of so many hidden scandals. It was a heavy weight for one man to bear in secret. He carried a heavy load, the secret knowledge of thousands of sins and improprieties. Lionel figured he carried more burden than any dozen priests. However, in some weird way, it was a source of enjoyment and pleasure.
Unfortunately, however, the information that he had at the moment would not give him the kind of leverage he’d been angling for. No. But he was only just getting started.
Lionel tracked down his notes on Speaker Galloway in his scandal cubbies. As the scandals were arranged by years, he had to go back several years before he found the dirt on Galloway.
Lionel smiled. He said, “Rosa, you owe me for this.”
CHAPTER 24
Sitting at the desk in his office, Congressman Rosa grabbed his phone. He put it down. Then he picked it up again and said, “Megan. I’m not taking any calls for the rest of the day…. I know Galloway has called twice. If he calls again, tell him I’m not here… I don’t care if he’s the speaker. Just take care of it, Megan. Tell him you don’t know where I am. Thank you.” He slammed the phone down. He put his head down on his desk in his folded arms. After a few minutes, he sat up and dramatically leaned far back in his chair, letting his arms hang off the sides of his chair and his head tilt as far back as possible, his mouth wide open.
After a minute, he sat forward, leaned forward on his elbows over his desk. He struggled to keep his eyes open, thanks to another sleepless night. He put his head down on his desk, but then the anxiety kicked in as if to torment him and rob him of a few minutes of rest. He sat up straight as a rod and looked around his office. A pile of unopened personal mail was heaped up on the corner of his desk. All official mail was opened by his staff, but letters deemed personal were given to him unopened. He hadn’t opened any of them for days. He pushed the pile away. A few of the letters fell off the edge of his desk. He looked around.
There were only two prominent features in the office. The glass book shelves featured political books on the top shelves, ranching biographies on the two middle shelves. The bottom three shelves were hidden behind oak cabinet doors. He picked up the phone.
“Megan, cancel all my appointments…. What about Carver? Tell her I’m busy. Just figure it out, Megan.” He hung up. He opened his door and got out the aspirin. He washed a couple of tablets down with cold coffee. As he put the plastic bottle back in his drawer, he was looking down at a photo of his ex-wife. He turned the photo over and slammed the drawer.
He leaned back in his chair and looked over at his trophy case. The glass cabinets featured dozens of ribbons from the Amarillo Tri-State rodeo and fair. His prize bulls had dominated the top prizes for years. The top shelf featured ribbons from his younger days in the rodeo. He had survived in the rodeo circuit for three years before a nearly fatal accident left him unemployed. Then he decided to run for office. The ribbons and trophies were always good conversation pieces, but today, he had no appointments—and too many of the memories included his ex-wife.
He put his head down on his desk. He hadn’t cried for years. He wished he could cry. But he knew it was impossible.
The phone rang, and Rosa jerked in his chair, as if a rattle snake had just snapped at him. He snatched up the phone. “Megan, I thought I said no calls.”
“I’m sorry, but the man says it’s an emergency.”
“Who is it?”
“He says his name is Adams. He said it involves your ex-wife.”
Rosa cursed. “Alright, put him through.” He waited a moment then said, “This is Congressman Rosa.”
“What’s with all the interference, Rosa? Don’t you treat your constituents better than that?”
“You’re not my constituent. Do you have the rent money?”
“Well, there’s a little problem with that.”
“Look, you been stringing me along for six months. I’m sick of the excuses.”
“I don’t like it anymore than you do, Rosa, but I need more time.”
“I gave you more time.”
“Have a little heart, Rosa. Don’t forget that I know all about your—”
“Don’t mention it, all right! Not now!”
“Calm down, Rosa. Did you read the letter or not?”
“What letter?”
<
br /> “The one I sent you five days ago. Read it.”
“Fine, but I’ve leaving for the rest of the day, so don’t call back.” He slammed the phone down.
He glared at the pile of unopened mail. Finally, put his arms around the pile and pulled it over in front of him. He rifled through the pile until he found the letter from Adams. He ripped it open and read.
Congressman Rosa’s wife recently left him and had a restraining order served on him, but now Adams, his tenant in a luxury apartment that Rosa and his wife used to live in, had sent him a letter saying that Rosa’s wife didn’t love him, but she loved Adams.
Rosa ripped the letter into four pieces and threw it on the floor. He stewed over it for a minute then picked up the pieces and taped them back together. He continued reading.
According to Adams, he and Rosa’s ex-wife had been in love for years, so “stay away from her. Also, since you’re two years behind on alimony payments, the rent won’t be paid. Don’t like it? Tough, Rosa. Credit the rent with missed alimony payments. Take care of it today because I’m going to Mexico on Monday.”
“Liar,” Rosa said. “Stinking liar.” He was not behind on his alimony. The rest of the story he didn’t doubt.
Congressman Rosa tried to call wife, but the message said that she “won a trip to Mexico.”
“That’s great,” Rosa said bitterly. “Just fantastic. She’s not even available to verify or deny any of these claims.”
Rosa read the next paragraph of the letter.
The flaky tenant wrote, “Furthermore, I’ve decided that my rent won’t be paid for six months until past rent equals missed alimony payments. By the way, don’t call the cops, either. Your wife told me about your illegal dealings. Disgusting. I figure I’ll keep them to myself, though. Look forward to quiet enjoyment of my condo.”
Rosa crumpled up the letter and threw it on the floor. He was now sorry he hadn’t taken Ratlif more seriously when he’d mentioned a fixer who played hardball with dirtbags.