Dead on Arrival

almost spilling his coffee. Then he saw it was Mahoney, and his lips moved in a silent Oh, shit!

The cop powered down the window. ‘Yes, sir, Mr Speaker,’ he said.

‘Hey,’ Mahoney said, ‘how ’bout givin’ me a lift someplace?’

Now the cop knew he wasn’t supposed to be Mahoney’s chauffeur, and Mahoney knew he wasn’t supposed to ask the cop to drive him — but the cop was afraid to say no and Mahoney wasn’t afraid to impose on anyone.

‘Uh, sure,’ the cop said, and Mahoney got into the front seat of the patrol car.

‘Where to, sir?’ the cop asked, transitioning effortlessly into his new job.

‘Tell you what,’ Mahoney said. ‘How ’bout takin’ a slow spin around the Mall? I just gotta clear my head. Politicians … shit, they make my brain ache some days.’

‘You got it, sir,’ the cop said.

Mahoney lit a cigar, was kind enough to crack a window in deference to the other man’s lungs, and then sat back and reflected on the political phenomenon named William Broderick.

A year ago, it would have been difficult to find a dozen Americans outside the state of Virginia who’d ever heard of the damn guy. And even three months ago, only 23 percent of all Virginians could name their newly elected representative to the U.S. Senate. But in the last two months, since Broderick had introduced his dumb-ass bill on the Senate floor, his name had become known to virtually every American who could read a paper or turn on a television.

It was a fluke that Broderick was even in the Senate. His predecessor had been a flamboyant egomaniac by the name of John Wingate whom Mahoney had sometimes admired but more frequently detested. Wingate had served in the Senate for forty-one years and then died suddenly and unexpectedly six weeks before the last election. At the time of Wingate’s death, Broderick had been running for a seat in the House, and there was considerable doubt that he would have been able to beat the incumbent. But when God created a senate vacancy by way of a well-timed stroke, the Republican bosses put Broderick’s name on the ballot — and he won. As there had been little time for his constituents to get to know him, all Mahoney could figure was that the majority of Virginians preferred a Republican they’d barely heard of to any Democrat running.

Mahoney glanced out the window to his right, at the Federal Court House, and saw two cameras pointed at a guy in a suit. Someone was holding a press conference. He wondered which lawyer, prosecutor or defender, was telling lies today.

Why Broderick had been chosen by his party was not totally clear to Mahoney. He knew Broderick had served briefly as an aide to that gasbag Wingate, he’d spent some time in the Virginia state legislature, and eight years ago he’d been a largely invisible one-term lieutenant governor. But that was about it, as far as Mahoney knew. The man certainly hadn’t cast an impressive shadow on the political landscape.

But Broderick did have money, and quite a bit of it. His granddaddy had owned coal mines at a time when those pesky unions hadn’t been strong enough to insist that miners be paid a living wage for their dangerous labors. When Grandpa died he passed on his loot to his only son, and then Broderick’s father died at an early age and passed it on to Bill and his two brothers.

The car was passing the National Archives. Mahoney was aware that on the other side of the building was a statue of a lady seated in a chair, and chiseled into stone at the base of the statue were the words WHAT IS PAST IS PROLOGUE. The sentiment was Shakespeare’s, from The Tempest. Mahoney had no idea what the words meant in relationship to the play, but they were certainly appropriate to the seat of government.

Broderick had gotten considerable ink the last couple of months, so Mahoney knew something about the man’s family, and he concluded that Bill Broderick had been the runt of the litter. He was the middle brother. Brother number one was a doctor, a neurosurgeon, no less, and brother number three was a real estate baron on the West Coast whose net worth would soon surpass Grandpa’s. Bill, by compari son, was just a minor party hack, a guy trying and largely failing to ascend the political ladder. Until recently, nobody had even noticed that he was on the ladder.

So maybe it was his money that caused the Republican czars to place Broderick in the Senate, but the cynics on the Hill, Mahoney included, didn’t think that was the whole story. The cynics thought Broderick had been chosen because of his malleability, meaning that the Republican pooh-bahs would be able to make young Bill dance to whatever tune they felt like playing. Well, it looked like they’d all been wrong about that.

The cop had almost reached the end of the Mall and was about to make the turn to pass behind the Lincoln Memorial. Just before he did, Mahoney saw the Einstein statue on the grounds of the National Academy of Sciences. The statue is bronze and twelve feet tall, and Einstein is seated on a bench in rumpled suit. Children like to climb the statue and sit on Albert’s lap. In the statue, and every picture of Einstein that Mahoney had ever seen, the genius always looked relaxed, like a man who had all the answers — and maybe he did. Mahoney wished he could say the same about himself.

Radical Muslims — al-Qaeda and its spawn — scared the hell out of people. Governments didn’t seem to be able to stop them. They were always blowing up something, and, when they did, old ladies and little kids were killed. Broderick’s bill, flawed as it was, appealed to a lot of folks because it sounded as if it might make them somewhat safer. And he’d timed it perfectly, coming out with it right after those two pea brains tried to blow up the tunnel.

The reaction to the bill had been as predictable as old men dying. Hard-core right-wingers thought the man was making good sense. Radical Muslims were indeed a threat, they were the enemy, and they, the non-Muslims, were sick and tired of the government dancing around the issue. At the other extreme were the liberals. The ACLU rose up en masse against Broderick, as if its entire roster had been goosed with a four-foot cattle prod. Broderick, for them, was the most energizing thing to come along since caffeine had been discovered.

The reaction of Broderick’s fellow politicians was equally predictable. Mahoney and the Democrats denounced him for the devil he was; comparisons to Hitler, McCarthy, and lesser-known demagogues were frequent and loud. Broderick’s own party had to walk a finer line. They couldn’t just scream that the man was a friggin’ nut! They said instead that he had a good point — action was indeed needed, not mere rhetoric — but maybe young Bill, in the heat of the moment, had gone just a little too far. All these politicians, both Republican and Democrat, were surprised when they returned to their offices to find hundreds of e- mails from their constituents telling them to quit being such wimps and get on board Bill Broderick’s train.

Because his bill was so controversial, Broderick had become a frequent guest on radio and tele vision. Mahoney had noticed that the senator preferred shows where he just got to talk and didn’t have to defend his position, but the producers liked it better when they could pair him up with a liberal opponent. Watching Broderick and a liberal go at it was a lot better than watching two fat girls fighting over an ugly boyfriend on the Maury Povich show.

One of Broderick’s opponents, on two different telecasts, had been Reza Zarif, a prominent Muslim attorney and now the most famous terrorist in America.

But still, Mahoney thought, Broderick’s friggin’ bill would have eventually died a quiet death in a Senate committee. People would have calmed down and come to their senses, realizing that the thing was not only horribly xenophobic but fraught with a number of practical problems. Broderick wasn’t just proposing to kick out visiting foreign Muslims. He was also proposing to do background checks on Muslim Americans but had yet to address exactly how one defined such a person. What about ex-Muslims who no longer practiced their faith? What about people married to Muslims? And what about Christians who’d converted to Islam, a category that included a number of high-profile African Americans like the boxer Muhammad Ali, to name one. Not only hadn’t Broderick addressed these small points, he also hadn’t explained to anyone’s satisfaction how his proposal would be paid for or the economic impact on universities and tourism or the likelihood of retaliation from countries who sold us oil. None of these issues had been adequately addressed. But these were just details, Broderick said, and to a degree Mahoney had to admit the man was right. Once Broderick’s proposal had been accepted in concept, the details were small matters for lawyers and accountants and other nitpickers to resolve.

They were on Independence Avenue now, headed back toward the Capitol, and on the right was the Tidal Basin. Mahoney could never look at the lagoon in front of Jefferson’s memorial without thinking of Ohio Congressman Wilbur Mills, who, in 1974, got drunk one fine night and went frolicking in the Tidal Basin with a