Balance of Power

TEN

That evening, Frank Fasano came to Chad Palmer's off ice.

It was past eight o'clock. Chad felt tired. Since Kyle's death, his stamina had diminished; he was anxious to get home to Allie. But within moments of Fasano's arrival an adrenaline rush of sheer surprise cut through his fatigue.

"Let me get this straight," Chad said. "Once my committee takes up this tort reform bill, you want me to sneak in language wiping out any lawsuit brought by Lara Kilcannon's sister for the slaughter of their family."

Unfazed, Fasano nodded. "That's the first step. After that I want you to accelerate hearings, fight off any effort to strip that language from the bill, and get your committee to send it to the Senate floor with a positive vote. At warp speed."

"Because the SSA wants me to."

"Yes. Among other reasons."

"Now there's an incentive." Walking to his coffee table, Chad picked up the latest copy of The Defender. "I was flipping through this last night. Sandwiched between all the arguments that the Founding Fathers wanted everyone to own an Uzi are a few encomiums to me.

"As I recall, I'm an enemy of freedom, a friend to 'gun-grabbers,' a running dog of the left-wing media, and an advocate of thought control to muzzle patriotic Americans who defend the Second Amendment." Carelessly, Palmer tossed the magazine in Fasano's lap. "And what's my supposed sin? Trying to get special interest money out of politics, so that groups like the SSA can't bribe our party by giving us millions of dollars in so-called contributions . . ."

" 'Bribery' is nonsense," Fasano snapped. "Money follows ideology, not the other way around."

"Sure it does. We just happen to believe deeply in the Eagle's Claw bullet. If the SSA didn't line our pockets, we might actually vote our common sense now and then."

Fasano folded his arms. "The SSA has every right to back its beliefs with cash. Rosie O'Donnell can go on TV and pitch gun control for free. The only way the SSA can compete is to buy a seat at the table. You may not like it, but they're as entitled to a voice as anyone else."

"Maybe a voice, but not a veto." Pausing, Chad sat across from Fasano. "Our party is going the way of the dodo, Frank. We're far too dependent on gun nuts and mindless fundamentalists."

Fasano smiled. "Citizens, you mean. Who happen to vote."

Chad briefly shook his head. "You think you're using them. The truth is you're a hostage." Chad's blue eyes fixed Fasano with a penetrating gaze. "Wait until you run for President and discover you can't even admit that you believe in the theory of evolution. Which you damned well know you can't.

"When 'Darwin' is a dirty word, we're on the wrong side of history. We're pandering to the folks who brought us the Scopes monkey trial and the Costello murders. It's suicide in slow motion."

Smiling faintly, Fasano inquired, "Can I quote you?"

"Please do." Chad's tone was quiet but urgent. "I know this is heresy to most of our colleagues. But the President's right about background checks. The SSA's position is unconscionable—that's how Lara Kilcannon lost her family. By and large, the folks out there will get that.

"The last election was close, I grant you. But the states Kilcannon won are gaining population, while too many of our states are losing population. If you try to ride this tiger to the Presidency, Kerry Kilcannon will kick your ass from here to Tuesday."

Fasano assumed an expression of strained patience. "Let's stick to the here and now, Chad. On background checks, I mean to offer an alternative bill."

"Which'll be Swiss cheese," Palmer retorted, "drafted by the SSA."

Fasano shrugged. "Then I suppose I won't be asking you to vote for it."

"Why waste the breath? But you are asking me to help the SSA keep its power over the gun industry, while enhancing their power within our party—among other things, to better frustrate the next bill I'm pushing on campaign finance reform." Palmer cocked his head. "I'm honestly curious, Frank. Rather than sneak this dead and very smelly rat into your tort reform bill, why shouldn't I oppose it?"

"For a host of reasons," Fasano said promptly. "At least some of which are principled. To begin, these lawsuits are an abuse—Eagle's Claw or no, you know in your gut that Lexington's not legally responsible for lunatics like Bowden.

"Then there's the trial lawyers. Care to talk about bribery? The Democrats are Bob Lenihan's wholly owned subsidiary . . ."

"Lenihan's pond scum," Chad interjected flatly, "and Kilcannon's too beholden to him. But you overrate the public disgust with trial lawyers.

"The President's too good, Frank. He'll find the votes to block this gun immunity thing, and make it stick."

Calmly, Fasano shook his head. "Not if I keep it in the overall bill. And not if you help me."

"Any why in the world would I do that?"

"Because you'll gain from it," Fasano answered in an even tone. "Your nominees to Republican seats on various commissions. That farm bill . . ."

"Kilcannon can give me that stuff," Chad scoffed. "You're not President yet. There's a limit to what you can offer me, and nothing I'd sell my soul for."

"Nothing?" Fasano responded quietly. "What about something Kilcannon dearly wants to give you, but can't? Unless I let him."

Watching the Majority Leader's expression, a study in opacity, Chad understood that this was where Fasano had been leading. With instinctive caution, he asked, "What might that be?"

"Let me answer you this way, Chad. Suppose you refuse to help me. What happens to your new campaign reform bill—this plan you have for public financing in all federal elections, driving corruption from our politics?"

Fasano's tone and phrasing, Chad knew, were intended to convey far more than irony. Chad kept his own voice matter-of-fact. "You'd rally votes against it. You'd try to keep it from the Senate floor—all you'd need is forty-one votes to sustain a filibuster . . ."

"Or," Fasano amended, "I'd tack it on as an amendment to the alternative gun bill you've just derided, and force Kilcannon to veto it."

No one had raised his voice, Chad reflected. But suddenly the space between them felt taut, almost stifling. Softly, Palmer said, "Forget it. I'd torpedo that abortion before it ever gets to Kerry."

Fasano shrugged. "You understand my point. I have a thousand ways of killing what you want. Turn me down, and that becomes a matter of principle. Or our caucus will think that you can roll me."

Chad stood, hands in his pockets. For a reason he did not fully grasp, he walked to an end table near his couch, and reangled his photograph of Kyle. For a time, he found himself studying his daughter's face.

"What is it you're offering, Frank?"

"A straight up-and-down vote on your signature bill. I'll oppose it,

of course. But all you need for passage is fifty-one votes." Gazing up at him, Fasano finished, "You're pretty close, Chad. I've counted the votes."

"So have I. Maybe I get to fifty-one, but no way I get to sixty. Every right-wing group in the party opposes my bill—the Christian Commitment, the right-to-lifers, and especially the SSA." Pausing, Chad spoke more quietly. "Your offer's meaningless. Somebody like Harshman will mount a filibuster, and those same groups will find forty senators to support it. My bill will never come to a vote."

"I promise you it will. Just keep Chuck Hampton on board, and peel off our moderates. I'll keep Harshman and the SSA in line." Pausing, Fasano smiled. "If you help me out with barring suits against gun companies, I'll have the capital to do that."

Palmer sat again. "You've already talked to the SSA, haven't you? And Harshman."

Fasano shrugged. "You think you can 'clean up' American politics. Personally, I think your solution is misguided. But this is the only chance you've got."

For a time, Chad stared at him in silence. "The path you've taken here," he said at length, "is truly mind-bending. You've married the business lobby to the gun nuts. You've gotten the opponents of my reform bill to promise not to filibuster. You've told the SSA you're going to cut a deal with me.

"It's a riverboat gamble by way of Machiavelli. Pull it off, and you'll be the unquestioned leader of our party. Unless, of course, the House passes my bill." Now Chad summoned a smile of his own. "By the way," he finished casually, "I hope you told Tom Jencks that shafting me in the House won't be quite as easy as he thinks."

Sitting back, Fasano laughed with what seemed to Chad a quite genuine amusement. "I'm glad to see," Chad remarked affably, "that your spirit of adventure remains intact. Because if Jencks screws up, the rightwing vultures will be dining on your corpse." Pausing, Chad spoke with sudden softness. "Why does this remind me of a dinner I once had with Kerry Kilcannon, where we made a deal on Caroline Masters? The time when one of us was too clever by half."

At once, Fasano became deeply sober. "About Kilcannon," he said at length. "No warnings. No cooperation. No notes thrown over the fence. The precondition of my deal is that you cut our President off." Fasano's gaze intensified. "Sell us out to Kilcannon, you'll be beyond my help. In our party, pariahs always are."

Palmer gazed at him, his tone remaining soft. "How many times, I wonder, did Mac Gage try to scare me. I've lost count. Just like I stopped counting all the other hacks who tried it before Gage.

"They looked at me, and saw themselves. They never understood that a pack of Arabs taught me an involuntary lesson: that there are far worse things in life than any politician can inflict." Pausing, he turned to Kyle's picture, and then back to Fasano. "At least now. Can you get your arms around that one, Frank?"

Fasano's eyes were somber. "Of course."

"Good. Because here's my precondition." Leaning forward, Chad's eyes locked Fasano's. "I'll put your language in the bill, and I'll support it. And then we'll tell the world exactly what we're doing. No tricks."

Fasano considered him, and then shrugged with apparent resignation. "All right, Chad. Have it your way."

At that moment, the last piece of the puzzle became clear to Chad. Fasano had never intended to proceed by stealth—that was too fraught with risk. Chad had responded as Fasano had intended: Fasano could now inform the SSA that their enemy, Chad Palmer, had forced him to abandon a tactic he had never intended to pursue beyond Chad's committee. All Fasano wanted was a head start on Kilcannon.

"No," Chad corrected him. "It'll be your way, all along. At least until the end."

* * *

The following afternoon, with the floor of the Senate virtually empty, Majority Whip Dave Ruckles caused the filing of the "Civil Justice Reform Act."

Neither Ruckles nor Fasano was present, nor anyone else of note. In theory, Senator Ruckles should have stood up during morning business and announced his intention to introduce another sterling piece of legislation. Or, during some other hour when the Senate was in session, the senator might have asked unanimous consent to introduce a bill, a courtesy routinely granted.

From Ruckles's perspective, the problem with these standard processes was that they provided immediate public notice of a bill. For this bill no one spoke. Instead, Ruckles instructed the secretary for the majority, a veteran of such shortcuts, to hand the bill to the parliamentarian with the word "live" written on the upper-right-hand corner—code that the bill should be filed as if by a senator speaking.

Seated at his marble desk beneath that of the presiding officer, the parliamentarian received the bill with a figurative wink. It now became his job to refer the bill to the appropriate committee. But just to make sure, Ruckles's emissary had already arranged for the parliamentarian to dispatch the bill at once to the Commerce Committee, chaired by Senator Palmer.