Access to Power (3 page)

The front door opened. Raymond watched one of the partners cross the lot to a white Lexus carrying a garment bag and a stack of videotapes. He looked rushed, barreling out of the lot without taking in his surroundings. When the car disappeared around the corner, Raymond sat back, sipping coffee from his travel mug and letting his mind wander.

In spite of the bricks lining the bottom, the trunk had floated almost a hundred yards down river before it finally sank in the Potomac.

He had returned to the river the next day for a casual look around. The water appeared deep and murky. No one would miss her for weeks, if at all. No one would find her for years, if ever. It had been a good spot, he’d decided, even though it had been chosen in haste. And he liked the idea that she was still in Washington, within view of the cameras every night on the evening news. Watching TV would be more fun knowing she was there. Still, he’d heard something just as the trunk vanished below the surface. A whistling sound. He remembered checking for a pulse and not finding one. Beneath the blond hair, her face looked battered. From what he could tell, her neck had been snapped. He smiled at the thought of her going into the water alive and promised himself that when the night was over, he would return to the Iwo Jima Motel and call his wife. Better make sure that she and the kids were okay before taking a long hot shower and getting some sleep.

The world could be a scary place. One could never tell.

The cassette in his tape player switched sides. It was an audio book by his favorite author and included the ten key steps he would need to achieve success in his business and personal relationships. Raymond had listened to all six tapes in the series many times before. Side 1 covered defining the problem issues in his life. Side 2 would be addressing his goals and how to reach them.

As the tape started, he studied his hair in the rearview mirror. He’d been gray for ten years, but liked the new cut. A long crew that had a hint of spike to it. He was forty-five now. And his new cut had done just what his stylist suggested it might: change his self-image by making him look ten years younger without a dye job.

He glanced at his teeth, bright and clean, listening to the tape and deciding that he’d better save it for later. Goals were important and he’d become distracted, his mind skipping over all the good parts. Planning a business strategy was the key step. The one losers always glossed over. He returned the tape to its vinyl case and slid it beneath the seat. Then he picked up his file, opened it to a photocopy and had another look.

It was an article dated six months earlier from
The Washington
Post
. A crime story from the Metro Section detailing the burglary and arrest of two teenagers, Sonny Stockwell and Alan Ingrams. Raymond had gone to the library the day before and found it in the newspaper’s archives as he searched for just the right person.

Photos of the two burglars were included. And as Raymond glanced at them, he felt sure that Stockwell was the leader. The kid looked young for his age, even smart, with a huge chip on his shoulder. The article sketched his troubled history in a single paragraph and even mentioned the block number where he lived with his grandmother. Sonny Stockwell would be perfect. And he lived just ten minutes away in a section of Washington that would never wind up on a postcard because only the forgotten lived there. Just like the girl in the river behind all those monuments. No one would ever remember her. No one would ever guess.

Chapter 6

The edit suite was completely digital and cost between two and three hundred thousand to put together. The lights were dimmed, the medium-sized space always kept dark but for the radiance of monitors set into the main wall of the room. Below the monitors, a workbench made of solid oak ran the entire length of the wall providing easy access to the computer used for generating text, the video switcher and digital audio mixer. Behind the editing console stood the client’s table with two telephones and two richly padded leather chairs. Off to the side, a short set of steps led to a couch and coffee table overlooking the rest of the room.

Although the suite was state of the art, Frank paid the five-hundred-dollar-an-hour rate to edit here because of Kip, a twenty-eight-year-old sitting at the switcher in jeans and a T-shirt. Kip performed magic as if it were routine. What he brought to the edit session outweighed the value of the technology. Even today.

Frank stood by the title camera in his underwear, adjusting a small piece of blank copy paper that he’d torn into a rough-edged, three-inch square. He studied the monitor as Kip typed
Lou Kay takes money from special interest groups
onto the screen. When they were done, the words were superimposed over the piece of torn paper and looked exactly like a headline ripped out of a newspaper.

“That’s it,” Frank said. “Bring it in and hold it.”

Making television spots was the point at which everything in a campaign finally came together. Frank had always wondered why most political consultants sat on the couch in the back of the room, talking on the phone and not participating in the process except to say yes or no.

Frank returned to the client’s table, dug into his garment bag and pulled out his tux for the president’s fund-raiser. When he spotted the Thermos pot set beside a bowl of fresh fruit, he realized that he’d forgotten to eat lunch. He poured a cup of coffee and sipped it, but the hot liquid only seemed to draw out his hunger.

They had been at it for an hour. Each line of voice-over copy reduced to key words typed onto the screen over different shape and size variations of that torn piece of blank paper. Once they looked like headlines, they were inserted over different shots. Limousines. Faceless men in dark suits carrying overstuffed briefcases through shadowy halls. Power brokers and big shots and what the people hated most about Washington.

Frank thought it over as he got into his shirt. He’d used this technique with success since the early nineties. Headlines gave his words added credibility whether they were real headlines or not. And if they followed the copy, if what the voter saw on their TV mirrored what he or she heard the announcer say, then the spot moved seamlessly, like a child following cartoon lyrics by keeping his or her eye on the bouncing ball.

Frank developed the technique himself in the eleventh hour of a race for attorney general that had gone totally negative. At the time, the mid-western state had been embroiled in an insurance scandal that seemed to lead from the attorney general to the governor’s office. Following the money trail was complicated even for the professionals overseeing the investigation. The acting attorney general knew that if he could keep the waters muddy, he still might have a chance at reelection. His spot came out on a Friday, ten days before election day, accusing Frank’s client of being involved in the scandal. It was a lie, of course, but the attorney general had succeeded in confusing the voters. By Monday morning Frank’s client was nose diving. They’d lost twenty points in two days and things were out of control.

Frank wasn’t sure how to respond. It was the first time that he’d been confronted with an outright lie. And his client, a challenger new to politics with a soft base, was having trouble raising money. Frank knew that he would only get one shot at it, but he couldn’t think of anything strong enough to cut through all the bullshit. He needed something he could count on, something that would carry the weight of
fact
. All he had when he went into the edit suite was a 3x5 photo of the attorney general clipped from the man’s own campaign brochure.

The clock was ticking with Frank sweating it out at the client’s table, his eyes locked on the photo wrapped in a small piece of plain white paper. And then it hit him. Headlines. Fake headlines. As big and bold as he could make them. Kip came up with the idea of tearing the edges, making them look authentic. Within two hours, the spot was cut, dubbed and ready for overnight shipping to every television station in the state. And it worked. Frank’s client made up the twenty points and added fifteen more. They won the election and the sitting attorney general and governor were convicted and sentenced to ten years behind bars.

The door opened. Frank turned to the sudden shock of light from the hall and saw Linda entering. She seemed worried, cradling files and videotapes in her arms as she sat down in the chair next to his at the client’s table. Frank got into his pants and tucked in his shirt.

“We’re almost done,” he said.

Kip turned to her and smiled. “We’re making another spot?”

“Just a fix,” she said. “Colorado.”

As Kip got back to work, she picked up Frank’s script. Frank sat beside her, pulling on his shoes. The light scent of her perfume set his mind rolling, and he hoped that she would finish her edit in time to make the president’s fund-raiser.

She lowered the script, thinking it over. “You know you could say this about anyone who holds office anywhere, right?”

Frank smiled. “Attitude’s everything. You know that. Let’s take a look.”

Kip rewound the spot and sat back to watch as Lou Kay’s negative ad hit the monitor with shots of Virginia and all those game show sound effects. But within a few seconds, the visuals were smashed with the words IT’S A LIE. Then the screen split in two. On the left, old footage of Lou Kay speaking at a podium faded up with the speed slowed down and the color bleached out to a gritty black-and-white. On the right, the fake headlines Frank and Kip had designed were cutting in one after the other over shots of limousines and power brokers wearing expensive suits and carrying those big briefcases through those marble halls. Lou Kay was fifty, with graying hair and a strong face. If his picture were removed from Frank’s spot, he would look bright, forceful, most would say senatorial. Instead, he looked like an overfed Washington hack.

VOICE-OVER ANNOUNCER:

It’s a lie. What Lou Kay is saying in TV ads like these are absolute lies. The truth is that Lou Kay is running a negative campaign. Why? Because Lou Kay and his big Washington consultants are hiding something. What Lou Kay doesn’t want you to know is that he’s taken big contributions from lobbyists, even special interest groups. What Virginia really needs is a senator who isn’t in the pocket of the big shots. Mel Merdock hasn’t taken one dime from lobbyists or special interest groups. On election day, you can make the difference. Say NO to Washington big shots. Say NO to Lou Kay.

The spot wasn’t subtle, just devastating, and everyone in the room started laughing.

Frank got into his jacket and zipped up his garment bag. When he turned to Linda, he knew that she understood. Mel Merdock didn’t need to take money from lobbyists or special interest groups. He didn’t need to take a dime from anyone. His father had been a millionaire. When he died, Mel and Jake had inherited his entire fortune. On the other hand, Lou Kay had done nothing wrong. His campaign was being funded by contributors from every level of society like any other campaign. But what Frank had said was true. Attitude tilted all the scales. Lou Kay was a bad guy because Frank had made him look like a bad guy and the voice-over announcer said he was.

Linda turned to Frank and smiled. “How to make nothing seem like everything, by Frank Miles.”

“Is this country great or what?” he said.

Chapter 7

“I’m worried about you, Frank.”

Frank noticed the long look on Senator Helen Pryor’s face as she leaned into the table. They were sitting at a booth in the bar at the Mayflower before the president’s fund-raiser.

“One negative campaign after the next,” she was saying. “People are tired of it, Frank. They hate it. And I hate it, too.”

Helen had won the first Virginia seat two years ago and would not face reelection for another four years. She was a young sixty. Her eyes were bright and brown, her hair a mix of blond and gray. She was a handsome woman, Frank had always thought, her tanned face distinctively lined by a life of hard work.

The waiter finally arrived with their drinks.

“The whisky’s the senator’s,” Frank said. “Thanks.”

When the waiter left, they clicked glasses. Frank watched Helen savoring the whisky, then sipped his vodka and lowered the glass.

“What I did to Ozzie Olson got you elected, Helen. We went with what we had at the time. When we learned it was false, we pulled the spot. It got ugly. I admit that. But you don’t need to feel guilty about what happened to Ozzie Olson. You’ve proven yourself ten times over on the Hill. The best candidate won.”

“I don’t feel guilty about it.”

He read her face and laughed. “Yes, you do. I can see you do.”

Her eyes moved to the door and her smile faded. Frank turned and saw Stewart Brown entering, his beady eyes darting between them. Brown was forty-five and heavy, with slicked back hair. His tuxedo looked two sizes too small and he appeared to be sweating. Every time Frank had ever seen him, he appeared to be sweating.

Brown said hello with an awkward smile as he passed their table. Frank nodded back, keeping his eyes on the overstuffed man until he finally reached the bar.