The Capitol Game

17

On December 2 the House of Representatives met to vote on HR 3708, a discretionary appropriations bill to authorize two years of payments for CG’s amazing polymer. It had been sent to Congress off-cycle, which was not unusual in the crush of war. The originating request had come out of the Pentagon. It was a short, direct plea for a fast-track, noncompetitive authorization, another common feature of a chaotic war. The needs and safety of the troops did not adhere to inconvenient schedules.

The floor debate was brief and uneventful. A few lonely voices tried to raise a squawk, but the tally was decisive: 415 in favor, 20 against.

The measure had popped out of the House Armed Services Committee only a few days before, and after Earl rubbed a few elbows in the Speaker’s office, it sped to the larger body for a floor vote.

Representative Drew Teller of Michigan, reeling under intense pressure from General Techtonics, made a spirited attempt at opposition. The committee vote to push back the GT 400 had caught him completely flat-footed, and put him miserably behind in the race to capture all those Pentagon dollars. Obviously it had been an ambush. And just as obviously, it was a creation orchestrated and skillfully executed by Earl Belzer. In the days afterward, the executives of General Techtonics and representatives from the many loudmouthed lobbying firms in its employ flooded Teller’s office with calls and visits to get to the bottom of this.

Money and favors were leaking out of Earl’s office like lava from a volcano, their sources informed them. Big money. The kind of dough that could only mean big corporate backing, but by who? Where was Earl getting the juice from? And why?

The answers to those questions became crystal clear when the legislation authorizing the Capitol Group’s polymer sprinted through Earl’s committee, got greased on a fast track through the Speaker’s office, and in almost record time ended up on the floor for a full vote.

It was a classic rush job: notice of the House vote came with less than twenty-four hours’ warning. Poor Teller did his best to rally the troops. He called in every favor. He made more promises than he could begin to meet. He called and begged and cried to everyone in reach trying to muster opposition. It was Drew’s finest hour. He worked tirelessly throughout the night, working the phones, leaving no stone unturned, fighting this measure like an all-out war. The result was as pathetic as it was predictable.

Drew was no competition for Earl Belzer. He could not begin to match Earl in tenure or legislative acumen; nor, try as he might, in sleaziness. He was a pretty-boy second-termer from a small, insignificant Michigan district that was choking to death on closed factories. His lone claim to fame was his marriage to the daughter of a former governor, a rather homely girl with few prospects. In return for taking the ugly cow off his hands, the governor fixed his election.

On his own, in fact, Teller was only able to collect serious commitments for a paltry two votes against. One was a scoundrel facing a certain indictment for graft, who wanted to go out with his middle finger waving in the air. The other was a boisterous, ponytailed radical from San Francisco who, as a matter of firm liberal principle, opposed any defense spending.

Aside from this pair of notorious oddballs, nobody wanted to be seen voting against a measure to protect the troops, much less one that had been the object of so much favorable press in recent days.

Earl, in a particularly nasty tactic, arranged for the vote to occur at midday, then persuaded his friends in C-SPAN to air it repetitively into the night. He bused in a small army of military wives and parents. They arrived at dawn and stood on the steps of the Capitol building, handing out a slick brochure filled with before-and-after shots of soldiers wounded and killed by IEDs and terrorists’ bombs. The brochure was bluntly titled Let’s See Who Cares About the Troops, and closed with a dire warning that America was watching.

At the last moment, though, Earl had second thoughts. A total shellacking might raise suspicions of a fix, so he ordered seventeen of his friends to vote against. Not an impressive amount of opposition, but a respectable showing. All were either in safe districts or doomed to certain defeat in the upcoming election. Their votes were meaningless and harmless.

Afterward, Teller sent him a short note of thanks for absolving him from a total humiliation.

That same afternoon, members of the House and Senate met in conference and compared bills, the usual procedure when considering a massive splurge of taxpayer money. The meeting was cordial and went smoothly. Oddly enough, their committee bills regarding the polymer were almost identically worded, as if they’d been written by the same hand.

By late evening, via a hasty voice vote, the authorization for two years of spending on the polymer was approved by both the House and the Senate.

Jack was seated in Walters’s big office, along with Bellweather, Haggar, and a ragtag gaggle of the boys from the LBO section, waiting for the call to come. They had gathered together at five, after receiving the welcome news about the House vote. Now they were awaiting confirmation by both the House and Senate. Though the outcome was nearly certain at this point, the tension in the room was thick as grease. A few were smoking. The head of LBO couldn’t stop pacing from wall to wall. Bellweather repeatedly mumbled dire warnings about nothing being certain in love or politics; on both counts, he should know. Every five minutes, Walters speed-dialed somebody on the Hill and demanded an update.

Jack leaned against a wall, arms crossed, and said little. Though he had brought them this breakthrough product, he was obviously an outsider, and even more obviously, he was now seen as the guest who had stayed at the party long past his welcome.

The call didn’t come until seven. Though Jack couldn’t hear the voice on the other end, he was sure it was Earl himself calling to take credit.

Walters held the receiver to his ear. Very gradually, acquiring velocity with each word he heard, he broke into a huge grin. “Uh, okay,” he muttered. Another pause, then, “Listen, we can’t thank you enough.”

Another brief pause to listen, then, “No, that doesn’t mean we intend to offer you a bonus.”

He closed his eyes and, without looking, hung up. A table was positioned in the corner of his office. Six ice buckets sat there holding enough chilled bottles of Dom Perignon to inebriate a herd of horses. All eyes were on his face.

Finally, ever so slowly, the eyes cracked open and Walters whispered, “Break out the champagne.”

The loud cheer was followed by a mad dash to the corner table. The sound of corks being popped occupied the next thirty seconds. After fifteen minutes of loudly toasting and congratulating one another, the meeting began to break up. The LBO boys needed to rush back downstairs. Time to get back to their unending hunt for more targets, more takeovers, more ways to increase the ballooning wealth of the behemoth known as the Capitol Group.

Jack and Bellweather ended up alone with Walters. Mitch had his feet up on the desk, guzzling champagne straight from the bottle, like it came out of a firehose. His shirtfront was drenched, he was gulping it down so fast. Walters pulled the bottle away from his lips just long enough to ask Bellweather, “Ever seen a deal come together so beautifully?”

“Never, not once. From concept to legislation in two months. I’m sure it’s a record. How much did Earl say they authorized?” he asked.

“You’re gonna love this.”

“Spill it.”

“We asked for sixteen billion spread over two years.”

“I know. I did the asking.”

“On his own, Earl added another four billion.”

“Twenty billion,” Bellweather said, almost unable to believe it himself. Twenty! CG had produced some sweet deals in its run, but nothing remotely comparable to this.

Jack was still sipping from his first glass of bubbly and he broke up their mutual congratulations, saying in a tone of clear admiration, “I have to admit I never imagined this could happen so fast.”

“You came to the right place,” Walters boasted. “Didn’t we tell you that at the beginning?”

“I never doubted you for a minute. I just thought…” Jack shrugged and let that thought trail off.

Walters was uncorking another bottle with his big hands. “You thought what?”

“I thought there’d be more testing, for one thing.”

“Already done.” The cork popped out and a big gusher flowed over the sides of the bottle into Walters’s lap. “Remember? You gave us the results.”

“Yeah, but those were done by private contractors, not Defense people.”

“So what?” Walters bent forward and splashed champagne into his goblet. Half of it spilled onto his desk. Between the victory and the bubbly he was giddy. “The tests were done in Iraq, in real-life, authentic conditions. We’re in a war and time is a definite consideration. The Pentagon chief of research, development, testing, and evaluation was also at that big demonstration we threw out at Belvoir. He saw the results firsthand.”

“And that was enough?”

“Apparently so.”

“What about production and quality control reviews?”

“What about ’em?”

“Look, I’m no expert in defense contracting,” Jack said, almost apologetically. “I read some of the regulations, though. There are a lot of hoops, multiple stages, a regular maze. An evaluation stage, cost analysis, production control restraints, establishing oversight systems.”

“We are experts in defense contracting, Jack.”

“I know you are. I’m just asking how it works.”

“They were willing to cut a few corners for us, okay? Why not? We’re a certified contractor with a long record. Besides, we’re leapfrogging this program on our contract for uparmoring Humvees. It’s a long-established program, already in country. The same crews and facilities will be used to apply the polymer.”

“I want to be sure you’re not getting me into any trouble. Tell me you’re not.”

Walters just stared back. After learning about Jack and the dirty games he had played at Primo, the decision had been made to cut him out of the loop as much as possible. For starters, they now had a few serious trust issues; Jack, after all, might be a killer, a swindler, and a blackmailer.

For another, as soon as TFAC came back with the goods, Jack was history. The partnership contract was going into the trash. His ass was going to be out on the street.

At this point, the less he knew, the better.

“Don’t worry about it,” Walters snapped, as though Jack were an ingrate. They’d just turned him into a potential billionaire, after all, and here he was, yapping about the details. “Just be damned glad this happened so fast.”

“I’m so happy I can barely express myself. But as your partner, I thought I had a right to know.” Jack leaned on his desk and looked him in the eye. “I am still your partner, aren’t I?”

“Oh, sure.” Walters and Bellweather locked eyes in a way that Jack wasn’t meant to catch. “We always honor our contracts,” Bellweather said very solemnly.

“Glad to hear it.” Jack put down his champagne flute and backed off.

“You have nothing to worry about,” Walters lied. “We’ll definitely take care of you,” he promised with a rubbery smile.

Andrew Morgan had begun to feel he was chasing ghosts. He easily got his hands on a complete personnel roster for Primo Investments, circa 1998, the year Jack departed the firm for calmer waters.

The CEO that year was one Terrence Kyle II, graduate of Yale and the highly esteemed Wharton School of Business. His CFO was Gordon Sullivan, Harvard undergrad, Harvard Business. They were the two who caught Jack, the same two who tried to enlist him in another scheme, and then, eventually, the two who cooked up the questionable deal to pay him a million bucks to go away.

A quick search through Nexis revealed that Terrence and Gordon died in a tragic plane crash less than a year later. A little more digging revealed the circumstances.

In December of that year, six months after they parted ways with Jack, they rented a small private jet and flew to a glitzy investors’ conference in Vail. After three days of mingling with their fellow financial pirates, of partying and boozing and hitting the slopes, they took off in a snowstorm and promptly flew into a mountainside. The jet was instantly obliterated. All aboard were lost. The bodies were atomized by the collision and/or the ensuing fire. The National Transportation Safety Board conducted the investigation.

The private jet had been leased from a small firm that catered to the rich and famous. That firm had an excellent safety record. The pilot and copilot were both former military-both in good health, both had extensive flying careers, both had flawless records. The controllers in the tower testified that the storm had let up enough to allow a safe takeoff, and in their view weather wasn’t a factor. The cause of the crash was listed as pilot error, a conclusion based on nothing particularly definitive. It was the catchall phrase the NTSB often used when no specific cause could be found.

Nothing strange about this. An aviation expert Morgan tracked down informed him that NTSB investigations involving private aircraft sometimes weren’t all that thorough or extensive. In a typical year, the NTSB investigated several hundred accidents. It was a small agency, overworked, bouncing from one disaster to another. Unless an accident involved a commercial airline, a high-profile celebrity death, an excessive death toll, or there was cause for unusual suspicion, the investigators tended not to probe too deeply.

But factored in with Charles’s tale about Edith Warbinger, Morgan couldn’t avoid feeling that the timely deaths of Kyle and Sullivan were terribly convenient for Jack. A mysterious airplane crash that wiped out the two men who knew the most about Jack and Edith-was it too convenient?

When further research revealed that three board members from those years also were dead, under interesting circumstances, Morgan had a strong sense he was on to something. Were they all part of a cabal to get Edith’s money? He had to consider the possibility that Jack might have been clearing up the loose ends, eliminating any witnesses he left behind. If he could kill an old lady in cold blood, after all, what was the harm in killing a few more? Jack might be much naughtier than they thought.

First up was Paul Nussman, banged by a car as he bicycled through Manhattan. The collision was so violent that Nussman flew sixty feet before he was impaled on a fire hydrant. A hit-and-run, midday, yet no witnesses, no pictures. The killer was never found.

Bernard Kohlman fell off a ladder and broke his neck as he cleaned the gutter of his Greenwich home. He was sixty-two, a severe acrophobe, arthritic, overweight, lazy, with no history as a handyman. His wife told the police she didn’t even know they owned a ladder.

And Phillip Grossman committed suicide; his body was discovered hanging from the balcony in a gay movie theater. He was a closet homosexual, and though his secret was well-known, he went to great lengths to conceal his lifestyle. A public death in such an incriminating manner and place seemed spectacularly out of character.

Apparently those were not healthy years to be a senior executive or a board member at Primo.

The first living survivor of the firm Morgan decided to track down was Marigold Anders, executive assistant to Terrence Kyle II, the now deceased CEO. Assistants were always a fount of inside dirt; they tended to be gabby, too.

Anders, it turned out, lived on Long Island, in the quaint town of Montauk, as far east as you could travel before you dropped into the ocean. He called and identified himself as a federal officer performing a routine background check on Jack. The standard spiel.

Marigold said yes, of course she remembered Jack. When he invited himself out for an interview that afternoon, she said she had nothing better to do, then hung up. He took that as permission to drop by.

After a long, traffic-choked drive on the LIE, Morgan rolled into her dirt driveway at five in the evening. Marigold lived outside the town in a small clapboard house surrounded by flat potato fields and the occasional picturesque winery. It seemed as far from New York City as she could get, physically and spiritually.

He spent a moment taking in the house as he parked. The outside screamed for a thorough painting, there were missing shingles on the roof, the yard was wildly unkempt, and the car in the driveway was a model so old he didn’t recognize it. With a cracked windshield, missing hubcaps, a patchwork of oxidized paint, the heap should’ve been junked ten years ago. After ringing the bell twice-he doubted it worked-he wound his way around the house to the back.

He found Marigold there, hunched over in a rusted green lounge chair, puffing a cigarette and staring into the distance.

He introduced himself and produced the shiny badge O’Neal had issued him.

“Have a seat,” she said, casually pointing at another rusted wreck about five feet away from her chair.

He eased carefully into the chair-one of the four legs was barely holding on by a thin strip of rusted metal-and studied her a moment. Probably a looker in her day, but age and wrinkles of bitterness had taken a steep toll. Late sixties, he guessed, with the leathery skin and deep rasp of a lifelong smoker. It was a cold late December evening, and she wore a ratty blue overcoat that, like her, was well past its prime.

He yanked out a notebook and assumed a professional demeanor. “You said you used to work with Jack Wiley. Mind if I ask a few questions?”

“You the one who called this morning?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You drove all the way out here, didn’t you?”

Oh, great, Morgan thought. Getting anything out of this sour old prune was going to be worse than a Sunday afternoon with his wife’s church group. But he’d made the long drive and was determined to come back with something.

“How well did you know Jack?” he asked.

“Not very. I was the CEO’s executive assistant. He was just a lowly associate.”

Morgan pretended to read from a list of questions in his notebook. “Did you have a good impression of him?”

“Sure, he was cute.” She waved her cigarette in the air and cackled. “Nice ass, too.”

“Do you believe him to be trustworthy, to possess good qualities and character?”

“Well, I wouldn’t know about that, would I?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Wasn’t like I did any work with him. I was a glorified secretary, for godsakes.”

He made a brief entry in his notebook before he launched another official-sounding question. “How long did your time at Primo overlap?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Marigold sucked a deep cloud of smoke into her lungs as she thought about that a moment. “Two… no, I think, more like three years.”

Morgan decided to edge gently into this. “Did you ever know Jack to get into any trouble with the authorities?”

“You mean cops?”

“Them, or any other legal authorities.”

“If he did, I sure as hell didn’t know about it.”

“Did Jack have any problems at the firm? You worked for the CEO. Anything that came to his attention?”

Marigold frowned at him. “That sort of stuff was always treated real confidential. You know, kept behind closed doors.”

“But did you ever hear about anything? A stray comment from your boss? Watercooler rumor, that sort of thing?”

“Why? He in trouble or something?”

“Not at all, no. Just a background check.” Morgan worked up his most reassuring grin. The old hag was a nosy pain in the ass. “Sorry if I’m wasting your time, ma’am. I’m required to ask these questions.”

“Well, I don’t know nothin’ about any of that.”

“The name Edith Warbinger mean anything to you?”

“Nope. Should it?”

“Jack handled her investments back then. A large account, a mountain of money.”

“I told you, I never heard of her.”

“Okay, you’re doing fine. Can you tell me what happened to your boss?”

“Why?”

“We’re trying to track him down. Can’t seem to locate him anywhere.”

“Are you Feds always this incompetent?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, ain’t like he moved anywhere in a decade,” she said with a dismissive smile. “Check Flushing Cemetery.”

“He’s dead?”

“No, he bought a condo there. ’Course he’s dead, you idiot. Bastard bought it back in ’98.” There was a slight slur to her diction. Morgan was sure she’d been drinking.

“No kidding,” Morgan said, acting surprised. “Heart attack, stroke, what?”

“Plane crash. Too bad, too.”

“Yes, it’s always sad. So young, such a promising life cut short.”

“No, you fool, I was always hoping he’d die slow and agonizing. Maybe catch some exotic disease, some particularly nasty, lingering kind of cancer. Guess he got lucky.”

“You didn’t like him?”

“He was a lousy, rotten crook. Real bastard to work for.” She crushed out a butt on the ground and immediately fired up another.

Morgan pretended to make another small notation in his notebook, casually mentioning, “I’m surprised we missed it. A plane wreck, huh?”

“Yeah, him and that so-called CFO. Another real creep. They got stir-fried together against a mountainside.”

“Accident?”

“Why? You thinkin’ I did it?” She stopped and cackled, then it quickly developed into a nasty smoker’s hack.

He waited till the wracking noise stopped, then said, “Just, you know, it’s a little weird. We’ve tried to track down several of Primo’s board members from those years. Three of them-Nussman, Kohlman, Grossman-they’re all dead.”

“Are they?”

“Very.”

“Too bad.” Didn’t sound that way, though.

“Unhealthy place to work, huh?”

“Are you through?” she asked, stirring in her chair.

So far he had nothing. She was wearing her affection for Jack on her sleeve. Nothing interesting was going to come from the old hag unless he played it a little smarter. He gave her a hard, menacing stare as if he already knew the truth. “Thing is, a few sources told us there were serious tensions between Jack and your boss.”

“What sources?”

“I’m afraid I can’t divulge that.”

“You need to talk to better people, bud. As I remember, Jack was too canny to get caught in Kyle’s crosshairs. Real smart boy, that one.” She stood and brushed a few ashes off her coat.

“Then maybe you can help me here. Do you remember any of Jack’s close friends in the firm?”

A quick shrug. “He was an associate, I was the boss’s assistant. Wasn’t like we went out for drinks every night. I was too old for him anyways.” She finished off her cigarette and lazily tossed it into a clump of wild bushes.

“Please, this could be helpful. A few people dumped on Jack. Personally, I like him. I’d just like to balance the ledger a bit.”

Marigold thought about it a moment. She obviously didn’t trust him, but wanted to do Jack as much good as she could. “This is all I’ll tell ya. Talk to his assistant.”

“You have a name?”

“Yeah. Su Young… something. Chinese, maybe Korean.”

“How about an address?”

By now she had her back turned and was walking back to the house. “Lazy government bastards,” she remarked over her shoulder. “Go find her yourself.”