Storm Front

CHAPTER 12

WASHINGTON, D.C.

This was a town that was all about doing favors. Nearly a quarter century hanging around the halls of power had taught Donny Whitmer at least that much. Big favors. Small favors. You did them if you could, because you never knew when you might need to call one in.

Like, say, when you were thirteen points down in a primary against a Tea Party candidate who apparently had every Christian in the state of Alabama ready to pull the lever for him, and you just didn’t have time to make the two thousand phone calls that would be necessary to raise the five million bucks you needed to ruin the bastard.

You know. Times like that.

In this case, the favor Donny Whitmer had done seemed straightforward enough. About three weeks earlier, his best donor had called him. There was an appropriations bill coming up for a vote, one of those big, messy, fifteen-thousand-word piles of slop that the Senate needed to pass to avoid yet another threatened government shutdown. The donor wanted a rider placed on the bill. Just a little rider.

It was the kind of thing that Donny Whitmer had specialized in throughout his career. He had learned exactly how to slip them in — you always waited until the last minute — and because he was the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, he never had much problem doing it. It was how he had gotten the entire Alabama section of I-20 repaved, even though it didn’t really need it. It was how he’d funded a study of pygmy butterfly larvae at the University of Alabama, which might or might not have found ways to shunt the money to the football team. It was how Donny Whitmer had become Donny Whitmer.

In truth, he didn’t really understand the rider this donor wanted. It was an obscure change to Federal Reserve policy, one that placed restrictions — generous ones, but restrictions nevertheless — on the amount of government bonds the Fed could sell each month.

Why the donor was asking for it or how he would benefit was something of a mystery to Donny. But the guy had been so generous over the years, Donny didn’t pry. He called the clerk of the Senate and told him he had a little bit of language to insert into the appropriations bill. It was perhaps five hundred words long. The clerk added it without comment or question because, hey, it was the chairman of the Appropriations Committee and this was an appropriations bill.

Donny was ready with a story for anyone who asked. He was going to make all kinds of noise about how the Federal Reserve was constantly overstepping its authority and how the entire Federal Reserve system had gotten out of whack. It was a takeoff on a favored rant among hard-core fiscal conservatives, so no one would think too hard about hearing it coming from Senator Whitmer. They would know he was facing a rugged primary challenge and think he was using this to pander to his base.

Instead, no one asked. That was the magic of sneaking a rider in at the last second: No one even read it. Everyone had haggled themselves to death and was just ready to be done with the whole thing. The President, desperate to avert a shutdown that would tarnish his administration, had signed the bill into law at two minutes before midnight.

Whitmer had mostly forgotten it. He had just stored it away in his forever-growing bank of favors done. And now, sooner than he ever thought he would need it, it was time to make a withdrawal.

And hope like hell there was five million bucks in the account. He waited until his staff was gone and he had his spacious office in the Dirksen Senate Office Building to himself before he made the call. He didn’t want to risk anyone hearing what might need to happen.

He picked up his office phone, then put it down. Cell phone. That would feel more personal. He stuck the Bluetooth in his ear. He pulled the phone out of his pocket. He dialed.

“Well, hello yourself, young man,” Donny said, feigning warmth. Damn caller ID. You didn’t even get to say “This is Senator Whitmer” anymore.

“I’m fine, I’m just fine,” Donny said.

“Thank you for asking. How’re you?”

Southern charm. Donny had lots of it.

“Well, that’s just great to hear. And how are the wife and kids?”

The personal touch. You had to give it the personal touch.

“Kindergarten? Is he in kindergarten already? My, my, it seems like just yesterday I was getting that birth announcement. How time flies.”

He was now strolling around his office. Clyde May was calling to him.

“Readin’ already? Smart boy, smart boy. He’s just a chip off the old block, isn’t he?”

Flattery. It gets you everywhere. God, he despised this.

“Well, if that private school of his needs a little something-something, you just give ol’ Donny a call, you hear? Turns out the junior senator in your state owes me a favor.”

Or at least she would if Donny needed her to. Thank God she wasn’t one of those uppity women senators who refused to play ball with the boys.

“That’s mighty nice of you to notice. Sissy put me on one of them low-carb diets. I miss her cornbread something awful, but I lost ten pounds since March.”

Yes, apparently flattery went both ways.

“Wouldn’t that be nice. We’ll have to get the NIH to look into that,” Donny said, laughing a little too hard at a joke that wasn’t even that funny. When you got right down to it, nothing about dieting was funny.

Finally, they were through with the necessary small talk, and Donny heard the donor say the words that could get the conversation rolling: To what do I owe the plea sure of the call, Senator?

“Well, I’m glad you asked,” Donny said, eager to get on with it. “You may have heard, but it looks like I’m going to be facing a little primary challenge come June.”

Little primary challenge. A euphemism if ever there were one. Donny Whitmer was facing a little primary challenge in the same way Sandy was a little rainstorm.

“Mmm hmm, he’s one of those Tea Party assholes. Goes on and on about how he’ll never raise taxes, he’ll cut guv’ment spending, cut this, cut that, won’t compromise, won’t work with no one on nothing. Now, you know I’m a proud conservative, but we still need to be able to reach across the aisle if we want to get anything done in this town. It ain’t enough just to stick your fingers in your ears and say ‘no, no, no’ all the time. But that’s what these fellas want to do.”

Donny listened for a moment. This whole thing had to go at the right speed. He felt like he was making good progress.

“Yep, you know the type. And to make it worse, the sumbitch thumps the Bible every chance he gets. Now, I’m as God-fearin’ as the next man. And if you want to pray in school, I say go right ahead. But this sumbitch, he’s talking like he’s gonna get a cross stuck atop the Washington Monument. I don’t need to tell you, we can’t let these people take over the party. They got this social agenda and—”

The donor interrupted him with enthusiastic agreement. That was good. Donny took over where he’d left off:

“Exactly. A distraction. That’s what I always say, too. It’s a distraction. I mean, I’m not too fond of these queers marrying each other. But we got bigger problems in this country right now than whether a couple a dykes get to say ‘I do.’ ”

More listening. The guy was ranting a bit now, but ol’ Donny was going to let him. Donny strolled over to the putter and golf balls he kept stashed in the corner. He used the head of the putter to position a ball just right, then with a nice smooth stroke rolled it across the carpet toward a coffee table leg. The ball stopped just short of the leg. Damn it. Donny hated short putts.

The guy finally finished, and Donny dove in with “Well, that’s what I’m saying exactly. Guys like this, they just have no understanding of… of… the sensitivity of some of these more complex issues, especially in the financial markets.”

And then, without hesitating, without giving the guy a chance to say anything, Donny started putting the hammer down: “It’s like that rider I was able to get passed for you a few weeks ago. You remember that?”

Yes, the guy remembered that. Of course he did.

“Well, that’s just the kind of thing I’m talking about. You think that Tea Party sumbitch would do that for you?”

Subtle, Donny. Subtle. But at least it redirected the donor into talking about this, ahem, little primary threat.

“Well, it’s nothing to be too concerned about, but you never can be too careful,” Donny said. “I pay my pollster to worry about these things, and he’s doing his job, that’s for sure.”

His job. Right. Thirteen friggin’ points of a job.

“No, no. No one here is panicking. There’s no need to panic. It’s just these things can get unpredictable at the end. There’s an anti-incumbent wave sweeping around, and before you know it, everyone wants to just vote out whoever has been in, never mind that the person who’s in has been serving their interests faithfully for many years.”

Finally, the sweet-sounding sentence poured out of the man’s mouth: Anything I can do to help?

“Well, now, I’m glad you asked. I could use a little something extra for some advertising my people say will help.”

How much?

“My people say five million dollars would do it,” Donny said, and didn’t give the man time to object before continuing: “Obviously, we’d set it up as a super PAC. God bless Citizens United. We could give it one of those vague names like ‘Voters for Alabama,’ or, hell, call it ‘Roll Tide for Senate.’ ”

Actually, that wasn’t a half-bad idea. In Alabama, the only thing that could trump the religious vote might be the Crimson Tide vote. Donny sat heavily at his desk, took out a fresh legal pad, and wrote “ROLL TIDE PAC” in block letters on top.

“Point is, my colleagues who have successfully fought off these Tea Party challenges have all had super PACs behind them. So what do you say. We good?”

Donny held his breath. He was ready for a variety of answers, all the way from “yes,” to “let me think about it,” to an offer to hit up some of his well-heeled buddies on Donny’s behalf. Instead, Donny was shocked by the donor’s reply.

“What do you mean, you don’t have it?” Donny said, hearing himself yelling slightly. “You have it. You always have it.”

Donny shoved the Bluetooth deeper in his ear. He was suddenly having trouble hearing the guy.

“Well, now, I know it’s a lot. But let’s talk about that rider. I mean, how much is that worth to you? To just be able to call up a… a sitting U.S. senator who can put whatever bill you want into law? I’d say that’s worth five million dollars. Hell, I’d say it’s worth a lot more than five million dollars. People pay office buildings full of lobbyists a lot more than that to have not near as much pull.”

The guy wasn’t disagreeing. But he wasn’t offering to come up with the money, either. Donny could tell the guy wasn’t sufficiently motivated. It was time to give him the motivation. Donny hadn’t known why this donor wanted that rider. But if he knew rich guys — and, Lord, he knew rich guys — they never wanted other rich guys to know what they were up to. It was time to use that as leverage.

“Well, now, let me put it to you another way: What’s it worth to you for me to not mention that you were the one who asked me to put the rider in? Is that worth five million? Because, you know, I could just keep on keeping on. Or I could have my press office put out a big ol’ press release, saying that the world has you to thank for this change to Federal Reserve policy. What would you think about that?”

This, as Donny suspected, got the man’s interest. In fact, it changed his whole tone. And his answer.

“Sure, I can give you some time to think about it. But not much time. We’ll talk tomorrow?”

Suddenly, they were back to small talk again.

“Well, thank you. And you give my best to your lovely bride, you hear?… All right, then. You have a nice night now.”

He disconnected the call and let out a long breath. He was shaking slightly. He went over to the Clyde May and took a slug from the bottle.

There were a lot of emotions coursing through him, perhaps none stronger than disbelief. He knew he might try to spin it in his own mind, but he’d only be fooling himself. The fact was he had — for the first time in a long and otherwise distinguished political career — just committed extortion.