Service Dress Blues (2 page)

Chapter 3

December 10, 2008

Rep Pennyworth met Gary Carlsen in front of the memorial to Senator McCarthy at the Sylvanus County Courthouse. Yeah,
that
Senator McCarthy. Not Gene; Tailgunner Joe, eponym of an era and an ism.

“Ole always has people wait for me in front of the shrine,” Carlsen said, flashing an
aw-shucks
, heartbreaker smile. “It's his way of saying,
‘This
is what it's like to be a Democrat in Sylvanus County.'”

“I'm duly admonished.”

“The truck is out front.”

Carlsen swept a mop of very light brown hair from in front of eyes with a blue cast that was soft but not pale, a hint of gray adding nuance to a robust tidewater hue. At just under six feet he was almost three inches taller than Rep, and only a hint of paunch sneaking over his belt marred a sleekly muscled, gym-rat build. Rep thought he had to be pushing thirty, only six or seven years younger than Rep himself, but he affected the anxious-to-please earnestness of a college senior angling for a strong grad-school recommendation from a senior professor.

Exiting the courthouse, they walked through brisk cold and brilliant, sting-your-eyes winter sunshine to a metallic green Ford hybrid SUV sporting an “Impeach Bush/Cheney” bumper sticker and a parking ticket. Before climbing behind the wheel, Carlsen shed a bright yellow North Face ski jacket with the stub-end of a lift ticket still tied to the zipper and stowed it in the back seat. This exposed a long-sleeved white dress shirt that he wore open-collared, and an oversized biker's wallet stuck in a rear pocket of his blue jeans and linked by a chain to a belt-loop. Rep clambered into the front passenger seat.

“The chauffeur service wasn't my idea, by the way,” Rep said. “Mr. Lindstrom insisted on having you meet me in Appleburg because he said if I tried to drive my Taurus into Loki I'd end up stranded there with a broken axle.”

“What do you know about Ole?” Carlsen asked as he started the mammoth vehicle and pulled out onto Christiana Avenue.

“He wants a copyright lawyer, he's willing to pay travel time for house calls a hundred miles from Milwaukee, and the check he sent me for the retainer cleared on the first try. The check was drawn on the account of something called the Paper Valley Political Education and Values Fund, so I figure he's involved in politics. What else should I know?”

“‘Involved in politics' is a world-class understatement. He called the presidential vote right in every county in Wisconsin to within one percentage point in last month's election. Look closely at the pictures on the walls when he takes you into the club room. You'll recognize a lot of the faces. But at the moment the main thing you need to know is this.”

Reaching across to Rep's side, Carlsen punched a button on a DVD player mounted next to the glove compartment on the ample dashboard. The tiny screen filled with an array of freshly-scrubbed, bright-eyed teenagers on risers, their faces beaming with earnest, up-with-people expressions. Mostly white but with a handful of black, Hispanic, and Asian faces sprinkled in. A simple, catchy tune began playing on a piano off-screen. Rep recognized a folk melody, Shaker perhaps, that he knew under the title
'Tis a Gift to be Simple
. After eight bars and a brisk arpeggio, the piano stopped briefly. When it resumed, the adolescents started singing in unison, their clear, innocent voices and the upbeat tune clashing with stridently muscular lyrics:

“Okay,” Rep said as the screen went blank.

“Ole wants to talk to you about copyrighting those lyrics. More important, he wants you ready to sail into court on a moment's notice the second someone infringes.”

“Fair enough. I'm not sure the lyrics say ‘platinum' to me, but I'm just the lawyer. You don't need a hit to register a copyright.”

“Selling CDs is the last thing Ole is worried about.”

“What's the first thing?” Rep asked.

“The Attorney General of Wisconsin. He's a Republican.”

“Nobody's perfect.”

“It gets better. He's the
only
Republican in the United States to win a statewide election for a Democrat-held office in 2006. In-the-United-States. Take a second and think about that.”

“Impressive.”

“Impressive cubed,” Carlsen said. “Republicans are hungry for winners these days, so the odds are he'll be running for something else soon. Maybe as early as 2010.”

“Making Attorney General an open office.”

“Right. Now skip to the next track on that DVD.”

Rep obeyed. The screen this time showed a woman at a podium. She looked like she was in her mid- to late thirties. By squinting Rep could make out something about Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations on a banner stretched across the wall behind her. The woman seemed to be finishing up a presentation. After thanking the audience and the organizers on behalf of the Institute for Cultural and Artistic Liberty, she stopped, glanced to her right, and looked back at the audience as an unseen voice invited questions.

‘That was a symposium at NYU four years ago,” Carlsen said. “Before the lady there came to Milwaukee to head up a goo-goo outfit called The Wisconsin Policy Project.”

“‘Goo-goo'?”

“Good Government. It's independently financed and administratively autonomous, but loosely affiliated with the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.”

“That's where my wife, Melissa, teaches,” Rep said.

“I know. That UWM connection is one of the reasons you made the short list for this gig. Now listen carefully. The fun part is just about to start.”

An off-camera male had been asking a question—or, more accurately, making a speech punctuated by occasional upward inflections suggestive of interrogation. He spoke in an urgent tone somehow made even more indignantly earnest by a heavy New York accent. In court the “question” would have been called argumentative and compound. Something about the United States government subsidizing and otherwise coopting Euro-American cultural organizations to use as fronts for undermining progressive parties and unions and otherwise interfering with internal affairs in European democracies and did she deny that the ICAL had taken secret government money and didn't she think this was outrageous and didn't it make her ashamed to be an American? Unfazed, the woman waited three beats before answering.

“Those things happened during the Cold War. The Cold War is over. The good guys won. The bad guys lost. You're welcome. Next question.”

That's where the DVD stopped.

“That's Veronica Gephardt,” Carlsen said. “She was general counsel for the US branch of ICAL when that tape was made. She moved to The Wisconsin Policy Project three years ago. WPP's theme this year is the End of Domestic Violence.”

“She'll fit right in at UWM.”

“UWM provides office space and infrastructure as long as WPP raises its own money. What UWM gets out of the deal is some national visibility and attractive intern slots for a few graduate students every year. Now: Guess how Ole got his hands on that tape.”

“No idea.”

“He started discreetly floating the idea of Gephardt as a dark horse Democratic candidate for attorney general. Nothing public. Low-key hints to political insiders and a whisper here and there to political reporters in Madison and Milwaukee. Within a month one of our party's standard-issue suicide bombers started circulating the tape to discredit Gephardt.”

“
Discredit
her?” Rep asked in genuine surprise. “Maybe it's just me, but I'm kind of glad we won the Cold War.”

“That's because you live here on planet Earth and function in the real world—like most voters. Ole wants Democratic candidates who appeal to people like you instead of to hard-left ideologues who'd rather sit on the sidelines polishing their halos than win elections.”

“That doesn't sound like it should really be a controversial position.”

“You're not a Democrat, are you?”

“As I said, noboby's perfect.”

“The true believers think they have a vested right to run the Wisconsin Democratic Party. Ole begs to differ. He thinks Gephardt is perfect for an end-run around the party's institutional apparatus.”

“Even though she's never held public office?”

“
Because
she's never held public office. She has the closest thing to a feel-good career that any lawyer can claim. She's a progressive who goes to church now and then. As you saw on that tape she gives good sound bite. And she's an outsider.”

“An outsider who's not afraid to wave the flag a little,” Rep said.

“Gold star for Rep! Ole is very big on the flag. He remembers when Democrats used to own the flag, and he thinks we should take it back. He seriously believes that he can make Veronica Gephardt the first woman attorney general in Wisconsin history.”

“Which is where the song comes in?” Rep guessed.

“Bingo. The idea is to make her not just a candidate but a movement. A breath of fresh air. A generational change. A paradigm shift. The rising star in a transformative election. That's the theme. The song is the hook. An attention-getting device, an instant brand.”

“You make her sound like a new line of soap that you've market-tested with a brace of focus groups.”

“Ole Lindstrom doesn't do focus groups. Hillary Clinton had focus groups. Ole has a golden gut—and no candidate who listened to him ever lost a twenty-five point lead in the polls in six months.”

“Does Gephardt know about Lindstrom's plans for her?”

“She has nibbled at the bait, but I can't say we've reeled her in.” A phone resting in one of the console cup-holders next to Carlsen erupted in eight digitized bars of
Solidarity Forever
and he picked it up to glance at its screen. “Sorry, I'd better take this. Gotta pay the rent.”

Rep turned to look out his window at deeply banked snow and naked birch trees lining the east side of the highway as Carlsen shifted to a suggestive, piano-bar purr. Even so, Carlsen's half of the conversation came through loud and clear.

“Hey, Laurel, what's up, doll?…Look, girl, tell you why I called. Listened to the tape on my way up and
no one
lays down tracks like you do, babe. No one.…Uh huh.…But there's one thing. Toward the end there you were doing that ‘shawn' thing again. You know what I mean? Like, usually when you say ‘action' or ‘satisfaction' you say the ‘tion' part the way most people do: ‘shun.' But when you cop that sultry temptress attitude you start going all ‘
ack-
SHAWN
' and ‘satis-
fac
-
SHAWN
. Like you're auditioning for some saloon-singer job on North Thirteenth Street.…I know, baby. You're right. I'm a bad, bad boy…Yeah, I wouldn't blame you if you did…No sweat, though. I'll stop by tonight and we can overdub right from your place, right over the phone.…Okay, babe. Peace out.”

Shaking his head, Carlsen clicked the phone off and put it back in the cupholder.

“That girl can be a royal pain in the butt, but she is
worth
it.”

“Friend?” Rep asked.

“Colleague.
Professional
colleague. Like I said, she can lay down tracks. Despite what Lena insists on thinking, I've never slept with her. It's my one claim to distinction.”

“More information than I really need.”

“Oh, I'm not saying she's a hooker or anything like that. Hookers get paid. Laurel just likes it. I mean
really
likes it. If Laurel ever goes to Austria her first weekend will be called ‘the Congress of Vienna.' She's a power-tripper. She is absolutely convinced that someday I will get her in the sack with a President of the United States. And I'll tell you what: I might just bring it off before I'm through.”

“Okay,” Rep said.

“By the way—do you know any lawyers who do criminal work?”

“I sublease my office from Walt Kuchinski, who I think is the best criminal lawyer in the state. Why?”

“Well, there was a little complication with Ole and Lena, over the weekend. Long story short, someone conked Ole with a skillet hard enough to put him in the hospital for three days. The cops think Lena did it. They've charged her with attempted murder.”

“What does Ole think?”

“He got hit from behind and he didn't see who did it, but he says it wasn't Lena.”

“What does Lena say?” Rep asked.

“She blames an intruder, identity unknown. She and Ole had some harsh words during their weekly Saturday night at the Northwest Ordinance Bar. He got up to walk out, she grabbed him, and he either slapped her or pushed her back into her seat, depending on whether you believe Ole and Lena or the other twelve people in the bar. Anyway, he hoofed it home and she sat and drank for awhile. When she finally made it back to chez Lindstrom herself, she says she came through the back door into the kitchen, heard a strange noise from the club room at the other end of the house, and hurried off to see what was going on. As soon as she reached the living room she found Ole on the carpet. I drove up just in time to hear Lena screaming like Brünhilde having her first orgasm. Lena says the scream came when she stumbled over Ole's body.”