by Steven Gore
Landon slipped the end of the cigar into a miniature spring-loaded guillotine and snipped it off.
“Picture this. Early May, late evening, sitting on the porch of the vice president’s mansion. Me, him, and the head of the energy lobby, drinking Scotch and sucking on Cohibas. Male bonding. That’s what my wife calls it. But this wasn’t playing football in the park or catching bass on Lake Okeechobee or guzzling beer over boiled crayfish.”
Landon paused, glanced around his office, and then asked himself aloud, “Where am I going with this?” He ran the cigar under his nose, drawing in the aroma. “Following the money.
“Three little criminals sucking on Cohibas. Federal criminals at that.” He pointed at Gage. “I know what you’re wondering. You’re an investigator. You’re wondering where the vice president got the criminal cigars.” Landon smiled. “From the lobbyist, of course.” He gestured again, not pointing, simply punctuating. “And where did the lobbyist get them? From the president of Hudson Wire and Cable. And where did president of Hudson Wire and Cable get them? At a meeting in Barbados with the managing director of Hudson’s Cayman Island subsidiary that installed the electrical infrastructure for thirty-four hotels that were built on Varadero Beach in Cuba. And where did the managing director get them? From Fidel Castro’s brother’s son’s sister-in-law’s cousin who supervises the entire construction project.
“So there we were sitting on the back porch . . .” Landon paused, then clucked. “In case you’re wondering, the sister-in-law’s father is the leader of the largest anti-Castro group in Florida.”
Landon rose, walked to the window, and gazed over Washington. “Given this introduction, you’re no doubt imagining the lobbyist met with us to push for lifting the embargo. Not at all. And it’s not because he supports it. It’s simply irrelevant. Anti-Castro Cubans in the U.S. are no more than a bloc of votes to be delivered to politicians—on both sides of the aisle—who vote the right way on other matters.
“Hudson Wire and Cable makes tens of millions a year in Cuba, embargo or not. And one of those millions found its way into a political action committee backing me, and part of it has been set aside to get out the anti-Castro Cuban vote in Florida.”
Landon spun toward Gage.
“You think Hudson Wire and Cable ever gave a damn about how many political opponents Castro imprisoned and executed over the years? Or how many innocent Chechens Putin murdered or Egyptian protesters Mubarak shot down in the street? Or Suharto’s genocide in East Timor? Not a bit. As long as Hudson is free to pursue its interests in Cuba and Russia and Indonesia, it doesn’t care. And people like me who took their money didn’t choose to think about it.”
Landon picked at a fingernail.
“But let’s face it. The deaths of innocents are like fertilizer. Take China. Our Internet hardware manufacturers overlook political repression in order to sell them routers. Routers open the Chinese to the Internet. The Internet opens their eyes to freedom of speech and democracy.”
Gage pointed at Landon. “You’re starting to sound like Anston.”
“That’s exactly the problem, except Anston didn’t believe in democracy, only in fertilizer.”
Landon paused, then a half smile appeared on his face.
“There’s a certain irony in all of this I didn’t grasp until now. Brandon used to think of himself as my Machiavelli. What he didn’t realize was that Machiavelli believed the first act of a newly formed republic was sacrificial. It must murder the prince—and I suspect it’s something Anston never doubted.”
Landon’s eyes focused on the bookshelf behind Gage. “You know what St. Augustine says about original sin?” He looked back at Gage, but didn’t wait for an answer. “He calls it an inescapable blindness in human action. We never really know what we’re doing. And by ‘we’ I mean all of us. It’s not just Republicans or Democrats. We’re all coconspirators in our own self-deceptions. We create the most powerful industrial nation on earth, but only by funding oil-producing governments that want to destroy us. And then once in a while we wake up, have a moment of terrifying clarity, then run from it or go back to sleep pretending it was just a nightmare.” He hung his head. “Worst of all, when we most think we’re our own men, we’re really just someone else’s puppets.”
Landon inspected the cigar in his hand as if he’d never seen it before, then threw it into the wastebasket next to his credenza.
“In all these years since you gave me Augustine’s Confessions, it never crossed my mind he was talking about me.”
Landon dropped back into his chair, his arms limp in his lap. His eyes went vacant and inward for a moment, then he squinted as though searching for something far in the past. He finally focused on Gage.
“You always knew how all this would end, didn’t you?”
Gage shook his head, He hadn’t known. He had no way of knowing. And he was certain that in his heart Landon didn’t believe Gage knew. It was just that the floundering man still needed to believe that there was such a thing as perfect knowledge—both insight and foresight—with which he could have armed himself against the tragedy that now enveloped him.
“Maybe not specifically,” Landon continued. ”Maybe you couldn’t have foreseen where I am now, but from that first day on the river, you saw the hazards below the surface”—he lowered his gaze—“and all I really saw was my own reflection.”
Chapter 92
Senator Landon Meyer paused at the threshold of the Senate Radio-Television Gallery, just out of sight of the video cameras focused on the door. He looked over at Gage.
“You know where I am in the New Hampshire polls?” Landon asked.
“Does it make a difference?” Gage asked.
Landon shook his head. “Turns out it never did.”
He then stepped through the doorway into the floodlights. In three strong steps he stood behind the podium. He scanned the familiar faces before him, the sources of thousands of questions over nearly two decades. While they were always dis-satisfied with his politically polished answers, he was always forgiven because of his charming delivery.
He glanced toward his wife standing behind him, thinking that she would have made a wonderful first lady. But he knew the voters would never forgive him for Brandon, and for his own blindness. She smiled at him as though they were alone in the kitchen reading newspaper cartoons over coffee or at the dinner table after he said grace.
As Landon’s eyes turned back to the crowd, he caught sight of an NBC producer, eyes pleading for action, as if to say the networks weren’t giving up advertising revenue only so the public could watch a senator gaze at his wife.
Landon glanced back at her again, then faced the cameras and removed his notes from his suit breast pocket.
“I have served as a United States senator for the last fourteen years and have sought to represent the people and the interests of the State of California.”
He paused and scanned the standing-room-only crowd.
“What does that mean? To represent. To act for others.”
He paused again.
“Who are the people? And what is in their interest?
“Does representation mean casting my vote to reflect the polls? Or does it mean voting my conscience that tells me what’s right, what’s wrong, and what’s in the true interest of the country, regardless of what the polls might say? It means all of this and, as it turns out, a great deal more.
“I say these things as a preface to a story I need to tell not only to the people of California, but to the people of the United States, for I serve in the United States Senate, not the California state legislature. This story recounts how I became elected to that body, how it happened that I continued to serve in that body, and finally became a candidate for president.”
Landon looked toward the rear of the packed room where producers and camera operators lined the wall.
“Cognizant as I am of deadlines, news cycles, and the short attention span of the press, I shall begi
n with a sound bite that can be quickly digested.”
Landon stared at the NBC camera.
“Unbeknownst to me, I have been the beneficiary of both corruption at an unimaginable level and disgraceful political maneuvering that destroyed not only lives, but the reputations and careers of each of my senatorial opponents in turn.”
The crowd condensed into a stunned mass. Not a gasp. Not a stir. Not a word.
“It began twenty years ago . . .”
Fifteen minutes later, the press had answers to questions none of them would have ever thought to ask, but not the one Landon posed when he began.
Landon thought about the president watching in the White House, knowing Duncan was as shaken as he was.
“Now,” Landon said, “let’s return to where we began. With the matter of how I’m to represent the people of the State of California, people who were deprived of the senators they would’ve chosen had the political process not been corrupted, but in whose interests I must act.
“I return, therefore, to one of my initial questions. What is that interest? Is it a matter of polls or conscience? Is it a particular interest relating to these nominees for the Supreme Court or a general one relating to how we are to be governed? It seems to me it is all of these.”
Landon gripped the podium, shoulders square.
“The bottom line is this. I believe these two nominees are highly qualified to serve as justices of the Supreme Court of the United States. I recognize they hold views considered by many to be extreme. The fact is that in good conscience I share many of those views, and do not at all think they are extreme.
“Given the tragic death of Senator Lightfoot, and given that ninety-eight other senators have already announced their intentions, it would appear the confirmation of these nominees rests in my hands.”
Landon paused, staring at his notes, then folded them and returned them to his pocket.
“But that’s not true. In fact, these confirmations were never in my hands. They were in the hands of the people of California. Even before the nominations were made by the president, before the Senate Judiciary Committee held its hearings and sent them on to the full Senate. Indeed, even before the tragic events of last night. In truth, these nominations were in the hands of the people of California when they walked into their polling booths, when they marked their ballots or touched the computer screens.
“I firmly believe that had it not been for corruption and deceit, I wouldn’t be in a position to decide whether these nominees become justices of the Supreme Court.”
Landon took in a long breath and exhaled. It was as if he was the only one in the room who breathed at all.
“An argument could be made, and I’ve made it to myself, that the appropriate course of action is to abstain from voting. The matter would then go forward as if I was not present, and the vice president would break the forty-nine to forty-nine tie.”
Landon imagined the president leaning forward in his chair, praying that Landon had devised a way to salvage the nominations.
“But that would leave the people of the State of California unrepresented, with no one to stand in their place and act for them, in the most important confirmations in our nation’s history. It is for that reason I will vote against . . .”
President Duncan pressed the mute button on the remote and stared at length at the screen, at the now-vacant podium in front of which a CNN reporter stood.
“Mr. President?” Stuart Sheridan asked.
“It’s all down the tubes. Every bit of it.”
“But we can nominate—”
Duncan shook his head. “Landon took us all down. The Democrats are going to own the nominating process.”
“But . . .”
“We did everything right. Everything. How the hell were we supposed to know?”
Chapter 93
Are you going to be there?” John Porzolkiewski asked Gage in the visiting room at the San Francisco jail.
Gage shook his head. “There’s no reason. But are you sure you don’t want a lawyer?”
“You know what you told me when I first got arrested? You told me not to waste the money.”
“That was a different situation.”
“It was worse than different.” Porzolkiewski smiled. “You were the one who got me arrested, then told me to trust you to figure out what happened even though you didn’t believe me when I said I didn’t do it.”
Gage smiled back. “It makes you look like an idiot when you put it that way.”
“Thanks. That’s a confidence builder an hour before court.” Porzolkiewski glanced at the new indictment lying on the table. “Isn’t it ironic? I got charged with going after the same guy twice. Two different ways at two different times. I wonder if it’s ever happened before.”
“That’s all the more reason to let Skeeter Hall help you. It was his and his associates’ research that helped us figure everything out and he’d like to do more.” Gage tilted his head toward the waiting room beyond the two sets of security doors. “He’s sitting out there with one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the city.”
“I appreciate the offer, but I’ve got to do this alone.”
“Except it’s pretty complicated. Legally. Medically. The DA could still bring in an expert to testify that Palmer wouldn’t have died from the poisoned prescription if he hadn’t already been weakened by you shooting him. That would make you guilty of the homicide.”
Porzolkiewski shook his head. “I’ll cross that bridge if I come to it.” He then hunched forward and stared down at the metal table. “You know, I’m not so different from the people who killed my son.”
“You’re a lot different.”
Porzolkiewski rotated his head and looked up at Gage. “It’s just a matter of degree.” He dropped his head again. “I’d almost convinced myself I shot Palmer in self-defense. Right after it happened I wanted to believe he charged me after I wrestled the gun away. I imagined him bearing down on me and me turning my head and firing. But that’s not true. He hit his head against the lamppost and was dazed. I could’ve just walked away.”
Porzolkiewski pursed his lips.
“Then I told myself the gun went off by accident. That my hand was shaking so much I squeezed the trigger. I even acted it out in my cell, imagining myself in front of a jury.”
“But the difference is that you never lied to anybody about what happened.”
Porzolkiewski straightened up.
“Yes, I did. I lied to myself, and not telling the truth was a way of lying to Palmer’s wife. She had a right to know. Every time I think of her tied up . . . and Palmer. If I hadn’t gone to see Palmer, they never would’ve killed him.”
“Don’t even think it. There’s no way you could’ve known what was really going on. In any case, not everything in the world is your responsibility.”
Porzolkiewski drew back and said, “Seems like a strange comment coming from you. What exactly did you owe me in this thing? Nothing. You owed me nothing.”
“I owed you the truth,” Gage said, “the same thing you owed me.”
Porzolkiewski laid his palm on his chest in an act of contrition. “I understand that now.”
He reached to his left for an oversized envelope, then pulled out a stack of papers and slid them toward Gage. On top was a letter from FourStar Media in Hollywood.
“Five hundred thousand dollars,” Porzolkiewski said. “That’s what they want to pay me for my story.” He pointed at the papers. “There’s a contract underneath. All it needs is my signature.”
Gage slid them back. “Why not? You’re a hero to every parent who lost a child because of corporate greed. Your picture is everywhere on the Internet, and on every television station and in every newspaper in the world.”
Porzolkiewski shook his head and slid the papers back into the envelope.
“I think I’ll pass. This wasn’t about me.”
He propped his elbows on the table, then smiled and arched
his eyebrows.
“I’ve been wondering about the condom. Did you happen to ask Brandon Meyer who his girlfriend was?”
“He claims there was no girlfriend. He said he found it on another judge’s bathroom floor a couple of hours before he ran into you. Brandon had to pick it up, otherwise the judge would know he’d seen it.”
“Because the other judge was the one with the girlfriend?”
“That’s his story.”
“Sounds a little lame to me. Did you believe him?”
“Is it important anymore?”
“I guess not.” Porzolkiewski paused, then exhaled like a man standing hands-on-hips gazing down toward a valley trailhead after climbing to a mountaintop. He peered at Gage. “I never thought to ask how you got involved in all this in the first place.”
“A call from Charlie.”
“What did he say?”
“He didn’t have a chance to say anything.”
“You know what he wanted?”
Gage thought back to Charlie’s last day, his last words, his desperate, pleading voice. For the first time Gage understood the burden he’d carried since those final moments.
“More than anything,” Gage said. “I think he wanted me to finish out his life.”
“The way he would’ve done it himself?”
Gage shrugged. “We’ll never know, but this is how it had to be.”
I understand there’s a disposition in this matter,” Judge Louisa Havstad said, peering down at John Porzolkiewski, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit and standing next to the deputy district attorney. The judge fixed her eyes on the prosecutor.
“Ms. Kennedy, do the People have any objection to Mr. Porzolkiewski representing himself?”
Kennedy shook her head. “No, Your Honor. I met with him yesterday and then again a few minutes ago, and I’m satisfied he’s making a knowing waiver of his right to counsel.”
Judge Havstad then surveyed the courtroom, the reporters packed into the front rows and the broadcast and cable video cameras in the jury box bearing down on Porzolkiewski. Her pale skin and tense stare, combined with the sense of expectation in the courtroom, gave the impression of someone fearing a dam was about to break.