Dead on Arrival

‘Is he going to be a problem?’ Broderick asked.

‘No. He’s just somebody’s lackey. I suspect somebody over in the House is grasping at straws, hoping DeMarco will find something to keep your bill from moving forward. So I’ll keep an eye on him, and maybe I’ll make his life hell because I told him I would, but he’s not going to be a problem.’

‘I hope not, Nick,’ Broderick said. ‘Things are starting to come together in the House. I don’t want anything gumming up the works, not at this point.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Fine said.

He hated having to call Broderick sir. He hated that almost as much as having to call him senator.

28

DeMarco may have played in a political arena, but he really didn’t pay all that much attention to the other players. Fortunately, he knew people who did.

There was an alcoholic reporter at The Washington Post named Reggie Harmon who had been around forever. In the Senate, there was a guy he went to law school with, Packy Morris, who was chief of staff to the junior senator from Maryland. Packy breathed gossip instead of air and always seemed to know who was doing what to whom. But when the stakes were really high, and he wanted insight and intuition and not just data and rumors, he went to Miranda Bloom.

Miranda was older than DeMarco but younger than the speaker. Because she’d been blessed with a supermodel’s face, long legs, and a noticeable bosom, in her late teens she’d been a Miss America runner-up. She could have married a golden quarterback from Ol’ Miss, had a couple of gorgeous kids, and spent the rest of her life hosting parties and talking about how close she’d come to being princess for a year. But Miranda Bloom had been blessed with more than a good body and a lovely face. She had a wicked, devious, clever mind, and she put it to good use.

Miranda was a lobbyist and had been one for many years. She was in fact the lobbyist, the one desperate CEOs came to when they wanted legislation twisted unreasonably in their favor. And get it twisted, Miranda did. How she did what she did was something she could never have written down in a how- to book. There was no set formula, no consistent, identifiable set of rules. She operated by some deep inbred political instinct she couldn’t have explained to anyone other than someone just like herself, of which there were none. But most important, from DeMarco’s perspective, she knew every politician in town better than they were known by their lovers and their mothers; she had to know them that well to get them to do whatever she wanted done.

Miranda had been married three times that DeMarco knew of and had had more affairs than probably even she could remember. DeMarco suspected that one of those affairs had been with Mahoney, because once — when Miranda misstepped, when her marvelous instincts momentarily failed her — she did something that at best could have landed her in jail and at worst could have caused her to be disappeared, and the speaker sent DeMarco to help extricate her from the situation.

After being threatened by Nick Fine, DeMarco had decided he needed to talk to Miranda and he arranged to meet her in the bar of the St Regis Hotel located on K Street, close to her office. She was dressed in a white silk Versace blouse and a red St John suit that showed off her legs to their best advantage. A simple strand of pearls graced her long neck, and her earrings matched the pearls. DeMarco knew nothing about women’s fashion, but he would have bet even money that the outfit Miranda had on — clothes, jewels, and shoes — was worth more than he made in a month.

DeMarco loved talking to Miranda. She reminded him of Mrs Robinson in The Graduate, not because she looked like the late Anne Bancroft but because she was delightfully jaded, world-weary, wise, and sexy. With the help of a good surgeon she had aged extremely well, so well you had to wonder how she could have ever been a runner-up to anyone in Atlantic City all those years ago. It was her voice, though, that DeMarco thought was her best feature: a deep southern accent combined with a cigarette-and whiskey-tinged purr filled with the promise of seduction. Her voice alone had probably corrupted more lawmakers than her clients’ money.

‘Tell me about Nick Fine,’ DeMarco said.

‘Oh, that poor boy,’ Miranda said.

‘What’s that mean?’ DeMarco said. He found it hard to imagine anyone feeling any sympathy toward the guy he’d just met.

‘You know of course that he was chief of staff to the late Senator Wingate?’

‘No, I didn’t know that,’ DeMarco said.

‘Well, he was. He worked for Wingate for almost twenty years, started right out of college, but unfortunately for Nick, Wingate just lived forever and ever. It seemed like the man was never gonna die.’

‘What’s this-’

‘Wingate, that glorious old bastard, promised Nick that when he retired — it never occurred to Wingate that he might actually die — the party would back Nick for his seat. He told Nick he was what the Republicans needed: their own brilliant, handsome, articulate black politician, one who might actually get a few African Americans to vote for the Grand Ol’ Party. And twenty percent of Virginia’s residents are black. Wingate, for the last five years, had all but guaranteed Nick his job when he moved on — or up, as it were.’

‘But he didn’t get it,’ DeMarco said.

‘No, he did not. When Wingate joined that great caucus in the sky, the party hacks decided they didn’t like Wingate’s choice of successor, maybe because of his race, but more likely because they thought Bill Broderick was a guy they could push around.’

‘So why didn’t Fine quit when Broderick got the job?’

‘I heard he considered that quite strongly. I know he approached a couple of K Street firms and offered his services, and a lad like Nick would seem to be a real catch as a lobbyist. He’s been on the Hill a long time, knows who’s who, and has the brains to understand what needs to be done. Although I’d never hire him, I heard he got a few good offers, three times his current salary.’

‘Why wouldn’t you hire him?’

‘Because Nick’s one of those people that, if given the choice between battering you into submission and sweet-talking you into doing what he wants, he prefers to batter. Though he hides it most of the time, there’s a deep mean streak in Nick. Maybe he feels, had he not been born black and poor, he wouldn’t have been playing second banana to Wingate all those years. Whatever the reason, I just don’t think he’d fit into our little club. We lobbyists don’t go around armed, darlin’. We rely on our charm as well as our clients’ money, and Nick, handsome and smart as he is, is for the most part devoid of charm.’

She said chawm, and DeMarco couldn’t help but smile.

‘I still don’t get it,’ he said. ‘If he resented Broderick so much, why didn’t he take a job at some think tank or a consulting firm? For that matter, why didn’t he go home and start campaigning against Broderick?’

Miranda didn’t answer immediately. She was making eye contact with a tall gray-haired man at the bar who was about as handsome as Cary Grant. She tipped her martini glass at the gentleman, then said to DeMarco, ‘Well, what I heard was that Nick met with Cal Montgomery …’

Montgomery was the chairman of the Republican National Committee.

‘… and with Rick Walters …’

Walters was the minority leader in the Senate.

‘… and I think those boys gave Nick the ol’ your-time-will-come speech and probably made him some kinda promise. You know, Virginia’s other senator ain’t no spring chicken either. But I’m just guessin’, sugar, since I couldn’t get any details from anyone.’

Which meant Miranda wasn’t sleeping with anyone who’d attended the meeting.

‘This bill of Broderick’s,’ DeMarco said.

‘Now ain’t that somethin’,’ Miranda said.