House Odds (9 page)

The problem, of course, was that other than the New Jersey delegation, very few people in Washington were inclined to give the state a hundred million bucks, so now the project wasn’t moving forward. And that had been Preston Whitman’s job: to get a rider attached to some bill—any fuckin’ bill—that would send a measly hundred million to Jersey, but Whitman hadn’t been able to make it happen.

Which was why Ted had decided to pay Whitman a visit. He needed to get the damn guy moving, and he
needed to get things back under control before McGruder sniffed something out.

* * *

To make sure Whitman understood the possible consequences of failure, he brought Gus Amato with him. Ted had told Gus to wear a suit—and to leave the suit jacket unbuttoned so Whitman could see the gun in the shoulder holster. He’d also told Gus to take the damn earring out of his ear, but the idiot was still wearing his alligator skin cowboy boots. In spite of the boots, Gus had the intended impact: The entire time Ted was talking to Whitman, Gus stood behind Ted, staring dead-eyed at Whitman, and Whitman’s eyes kept straying over to look at the gun.

As Gus stared and Whitman fidgeted, Ted explained the situation with Molly Mahoney. Molly was his ace in the hole; she was the pry bar he needed to get things unstuck. He didn’t tell Whitman everything, but he told him enough.

“Wow,” Whitman said when Ted was finished.

Wow?
And this guy depended on his tongue to make a living. No wonder he hadn’t made any progress.

“So do you think this will work?” Ted said.

“Maybe,” Whitman said. “If we could get Mahoney behind the project, he’d be a huge help. But I have to warn you, Ted, John Mahoney can be very unpredictable.”

“Just set up the meeting,” Ted said. “And do it quick. You gotta be good for something.”

* * *

Preston Whitman sat at his desk for several minutes after Ted Allen left his office, thinking about Ted—and what Ted had told him.

Taking on Ted as a client had been a mistake—a huge mistake. The man just didn’t understand how things worked in D.C. He particularly didn’t understand the
pace
at which things worked. Ted dressed well, he spoke like an educated man, but underneath all that Whitman sensed that Ted had been raised rough and poor. He was a thug with a diploma. And that ape that he’d brought with him to the meeting . . . What the hell was that all about? What was Ted going to do? Break his legs if he didn’t do what Ted wanted?

Unfortunately, the answer to that question was: Maybe.

But all Ted wanted him to do was set up a meeting. He could do that, or at least he thought he could. Like he’d told Ted, John Mahoney was unpredictable. Then it occurred to him that what Ted had told him could benefit several people, people much more important to his business than Ted Allen. The information Ted had given him, if properly exploited, could be used to hurt John Mahoney—and he could think of ten people in ten seconds who would like to hurt John Mahoney. If Ted’s information was shared with too many people, however, it would dilute its value. So it was a matter of deciding the single best person to share it with, a person who would be of use to Preston Whitman not just today but in the future. He let his mind wander through the political landscape for a few minutes and made a selection.

There was a problem, however, and it was significant. If Ted found out that he had shared his information with someone else, Ted would be quite unhappy. But what would Ted do if he found out? Kill him?

Maybe.

* * *

“Preston, I have to leave in about ten minutes, so you’re gonna have to be quick, son.”

“Of course, Congressman,” Whitman said, “and I appreciate you taking the time to see me.” He found Robert Fairchild calling him “son” a little annoying, as he and Fairchild were about the same age.

Big Bob Fairchild was one of the most influential Republicans in the House. He was forty-nine years old, six feet five inches tall, and slim as a whippet. His dark hair gleamed with whatever grease he applied to keep it in place and his eyes were small and black and cold. He would have been a handsome man if he’d had a chin.

Fairchild had never struck Whitman as a person of staggering intellect, but he did have other attributes that made him a good politician: he could be quite charismatic when he made the effort; he was an above-average speaker, particularly if someone else wrote the speech; and he was good at forging alliances. His constituents liked him because his first loyalty was to his home state—versus the country —and thus lots of federal dollars, whether needed or not, ended up in his district.

The most significant thing about Big Bob, however, was that he was popular with Hispanics, more popular than any other white Republican. He couldn’t actually speak Spanish but he could give a short speech in the language if the words were spelled out phonetically on a teleprompter, and a number of people on his staff were Hispanic. The real force behind Fairchild, however, was his wife. She could speak Spanish fluently and devoted considerable energy—and money—to Hispanic causes to increase her husband’s popularity with that demographic. It was a well-established fact that Fairchild had a seat in the House only because of his wife’s money and influence; it was unconfirmed rumor that she totally dictated her husband’s political agenda.

Because of his potential ability to pull in Hispanic voters, and regardless of whether it was due to his wife’s acumen or his own, there was a very good possibility that Robert Fairchild would be his party’s choice for vice president in the next national election—a situation that didn’t bother Preston Whitman as a lobbyist but which did bother him as a private citizen. Whitman had always felt that the man who sat in the Oval Office—and the man who was a heartbeat away from the Oval Office—should be significantly smarter than the folks who had elected them, although history had shown this was often not the case. In fact, it was rarely the case.

“So get to it,” Fairchild said. “You said on the phone you had something that could help my nephew.” Fairchild wasn’t looking at Whitman when he spoke; he was answering e-mails on his BlackBerry, pecking away with two clumsy thumbs.

“Yes, I believe I do, sir,” the lobbyist said, speaking to the top of Fairchild’s oily head. “And as I told you when I called, I believe this information can do more than just help your nephew. I know he’s one of your primary concerns right now, but if this information is, uh, properly handled, I believe it could not only help Little Bob but could also be used to assist you in other legislation you’re working on.” Whitman meant legislation that was important to his paying clients.

Whitman was hoping Fairchild would ask him to be more specific about how the information should be handled, but Fairchild didn’t. Instead he snapped, “Don’t call him Little Bob. He goes by Evans now. You know that.”

“Sorry,” Whitman muttered.

Big Bob Fairchild represented Arizona’s 7th congressional district. His nephew, Robert Evans Fairchild, was the congressman from the adjoining 8th district, and was known as Little Bob although he was almost as tall as his uncle. The reason for this was that Big Bob actually represented
two
congressional districts because Little Bob did whatever his uncle told him to do. The last couple of years, Little Bob, in an attempt to distinguish himself from his uncle, had taken to calling himself R. Evans Fairchild instead of Bob or Robert—but nobody called him Evans
.
That just sounded too stupid.

The other thing about Little Bob was that he was currently up to his neck in shit with a certain special prosecutor.

Whitman told Fairchild what he’d learned from Ted Allen. He also told him of Ted’s desire to get federal funding for a new convention center in Atlantic City.

“And you think this Allen person has connections to organized crime?” Fairchild said.

“I think so, but I don’t know for sure.”

“And does the SEC or Justice know about any of this? Allen, his ties to Molly Mahoney, any of it?”

“Again I don’t know, but if they do, it shouldn’t be too hard to find out.”

“No, it won’t be,” Fairchild said. “But I would assume they don’t know. That sort of information would have been leaked by now.”

“That would be my guess, too, sir,” Whitman said. He was being so obsequious he was almost disgusted with himself. Almost.

Fairchild licked his lips. Maybe it was because of Fairchild’s southwestern roots, but Whitman instantly thought of a gila monster—those orange and black toads with a poisonous bite. So when Fairchild moistened his upper lip, Whitman imagined a reptile’s tongue flicking out, tasting the air for prey.

“I want you to know I appreciate you telling me this, Preston.” Fairchild said. He paused a beat, then added, “You may consider that I owe you one.”

For a lobbyist, having a man who might become the next vice president of the United States “owe you one” was a good day’s work.

* * *

Fairchild pushed a button on his phone. “Call my wife and tell her I’m going to be a few minutes late for the party.”

His secretary hesitated, then said, “If you leave right now, Congressman, I think you can be there on time.”

“Damn it all, Dolores, just make the call.”

It really pissed him off that his own staff thought he was intimidated by his spouse. He also knew that when he saw her, he’d have to endure his wife’s sarcastic comments about his tardiness, but right now he didn’t care. He needed to be alone, he needed to think. Information was like a hot cup of coffee—it cooled off quickly—and he had to figure out the best way to use the information that Whitman had given him.

A few years ago a lobbyist named Jack Abramoff had taken a ton of money from a tribe of Native Americans. He spent a large portion of the Indians’ money on himself and then took another large portion and flung it at various congressmen to influence their votes on things unrelated to what the Indians wanted. Abramoff was eventually caught and a few congressmen and their aides were jailed or forced to resign. Those politicians not indicted made speeches about corruption in government, and then tweaked a few laws to limit how brazenly a lobbyist could bribe a legislator.

And then life went back to normal.

Six months ago, it appeared as if Abramoff’s soul had left Jack’s body and magically inserted itself into the corpus of another lobbyist, named Lucas Mayfield. Mayfield, thus possessed, then repeated Abramoff’s transgressions as if he were making a sequel to Jack’s shoddy life. And, as had been the case with Abramoff, a special prosecutor had been assigned to hunt down the stupid and avaricious, and one of the people currently being investigated—one of the stupid—was Little Bob.

Fairchild could have strangled his nephew for having become involved with a man like Mayfield, but the person he really blamed for Little Bob’s problems was John Mahoney. When it became apparent that most of the congressmen that Mayfield had bribed were Republicans, and right after it became known that Little Bob was one of those Republicans, Mahoney had pressured the president, via the press, to assign a special prosecutor. Had a bunch of Democrats been involved, Mahoney would never have done this, but since it was Republicans, and since one of those Republicans was Fairchild’s nephew, Mahoney made speeches about the need to sweep
his
House clean. The damn hypocrite.

Big Bob Fairchild had always envisioned a political dynasty, like the Bushes or the Kennedys, but unfortunately his wife gave him only one child, a daughter, and then had her tubes tied to make sure that her fugure would not be ruined by subsequent offspring. And his daughter, also unfortunately, had neither the inclination nor the temperament for politics, so all Fairchild had was his nephew. By now he knew that Little Bob would always be
Little
Bob, and that the Fairchild dynasty would never be, but his nephew was kin and he’d be damned if he’d let a conniving bastard like Mahoney destroy him.

12

Mahoney was thinking that this had to be the dumbest system of government ever invented.

The Democrats wanted to raise taxes on poultry products to make sure chickens didn’t have some kind of bug that was killing people all over China, and a congresswoman from Mississippi had been going on for almost ten minutes about how she was outraged—
outraged!
—by the proposal. According to her, the tax was going to put poor Mississippi chicken farmers out of business, and she said this knowing, as did everyone else in the chamber, that a giant conglomerate based in Delaware reared almost all the chickens in America.

Mahoney at this point, however, didn’t care who the chickens killed or who would be affected by the tax. His right knee had been lacerated by a grenade in Vietnam and it ached when he sat too long. His back ached as well, but the cause of that pain was less glamorous than a combat injury: his back hurt because of the stress placed on it by the weight of his gut. He just wanted this woman to shut up so he could vote, then go back to his office, take a leak, have a drink, and put an ice pack on his knee.

The congresswoman also knew—as did every other member present —that no matter what she said, folks were going to vote the way they’d already decided to vote—and straight down party lines. God forbid that anyone on either side of the aisle should be bold enough to stray from the herd. So the politicians made speeches, not because they expected to change anyone’s mind, but so the folks back home might see a clip of them on the local news battling for home state pork.