In the Company of Liars

TWO DAYS EARLIER
FRIDAY, MARCH 26

Allison climbs into Mat’s Mercedes outside the building that houses the law offices of Ronald McGaffrey. Today is the second time she has met with McGaffrey, after her original lawyer, Paul Riley, dropped out of the case.

“Everything go okay?” he asks.

“Yeah. It was fine. Ron’s good. He’s not Paul Riley but he’s good.”

“I’ve always heard that,” Mat agrees.

The sun is setting, casting the commercial district in shadows. Mat maneuvers his vehicle through the heavy rush-hour traffic on the way to the interstate to take Allison home. The windshield is dirty and the water fluid is frozen. The car is filthy from the salt and slush that has splashed up recently. It is that wet, cold season when you’d just rather be inside.

And now she has to drive home with Mat. Mat is one of those drivers who curses at others on the road, has a running commentary on the lane changes, the poor acceleration, the general timidity of other drivers. He is a different person when he gets behind the wheel.

But in fairness, Mat is better about that now, primarily, she assumes, because of everything that’s happened. He has treated Allison gingerly since her arrest, more respectfully than ever before. Say what you will about him, he has tried to make this easier for his ex-wife.

“The case is circumstantial,” Allison says. “They have plenty of bad stuff but none of it can be tied directly to me. That, more than anything, is our defense.”

“But ‘more than anything’ does not mean everything,” Mat says.

She doesn’t respond to that. She knows what Mat’s thinking, and he’s right. Ron McGaffrey immediately focused on the one potential opening. Things were amiss with Sam Dillon. Word trickled out, not long after Allison’s arrest, that federal prosecutors were probing a potential bribery scandal in the state legislature. Opponents of House Bill 1551, placing Flanagan-Maxx’s product Divalpro on the state’s list of prior-approved Medicaid drugs, had cried foul when three senators-Strauss, Almundo, and Blake-suddenly flipped their positions during veto session last November, and the bill quickly made its way to the governor’s desk.

Of course it raised red flags. The local paper, theDaily Watch, ran articles and editorials critical of the hasty, back-room shenanigans. Opponents of the bill, who had felt completely ambushed by the maneuver, began to take a closer look at the fact that one of the proponents of the bill-a very curious one at that, the Midwestern Alliance for Affordable Health Care-had for the first time in its history hired an independent lobbyist, Mateo Pagone, and had paid Pagone a hundred thousand dollars to help get the bill passed out of only one chamber, the Senate. That, combined with everything else, including the sudden changes of heart of three senators, led to a cry for an investigation. No one knows when, precisely, the U.S. attorney’s office began its probe, but the papers reported that federal prosecutors were presenting evidence to a grand jury as early as this past February, only about six weeks ago.

And in the midst of all this, the man principally responsible for the passage of House Bill 1551, lobbyist Samuel Dillon, was found murdered in his lake home just outside the city.

“Ron isn’t going to point at you, Mat.” She says it bluntly, to get it over with.

“I was stupid,” Mat says, perhaps only to himself. “Really stupid.” Mat has a tendency toward self-flagellation when things are rough. He is a tough man but his self-esteem is thin.

“You got away with it.” What he didwas stupid. There is no rationalization, in the end, though Allison has created some. Every politician takes bribes, in some form or another, except they are usually countenanced by the law. No one will ever convince her that a state representative who takes $10,000 in perfectly legal contributions from a company, then supports legislation on that company’s behalf, has not been “bribed” in some sense of the word. There is, in some twisted way, at least some element of forthrightness in simply stuffing the money in a legislator’s pocket. The only difference, in her mind, is disclosure. Legal contributions go on the books, are reported publicly, but who really cares? Who really pays attention to disclosures from the state board of elections?

Which is not to say that what Mat did was okay. But given the murky land of political contributions, and knowing this flawed man for over two decades in a way probably no one else ever has, Allison can at least give some context to what he did. She believes, in her heart, that no good would come from putting Mat in prison for this crime. She can forgive him this transgression. It is not the bribery of three senators that really bothers her, anyway.

It’s the fact that he was too cowardly to do it himself.