David Rosenfelt - One Dog Night

He goes on to describe how the people in one of the apartments on the first floor of the incinerated building were his suppliers, and how they had cut off his credit, little as it was, earlier in that week. Though he doesn’t know where, he says he must have gotten the drugs elsewhere, but they were likely of lower quality, and he reacted badly to them.

“I was terribly angry at them for doing that; I had been buying from them for over a year, and they knew how badly I needed it…” He shakes his head at the memory. “There’s no doubt I wanted them dead. I wanted them worse than dead.”

He goes silent for about twenty seconds. Silent time in a prison interview room is interminable, treadmill time zips along by comparison. I obviously need to get him back on track. “You mentioned chemical burns, as if that were significant,” I say.

He nods. “I have a graduate degree in chemical engineering. The mixture that was reported to have caused the fire is something I am very familiar with. Most people aren’t.”

I ask Galloway if he knows what the police uncovered so many years after the fact to lead to his arrest, but he professes to have no idea.

“Whatever it was,” he says, “I feel glad it finally happened. It was long overdue.”

This is the kind of stuff they should include in the orientation.

That’s what Senator Ben Ryan thought about as he sat at the bar, and it brought a smile to his face. The rest of the night, he knew, would bring quite a few more smiles.

Incoming freshman members of Congress are subjected to long, boring meetings about what life in the halls of power is like, and how to successfully navigate this “new world.” The focus is on understanding the rules, whether they be legal, political, financial, or ethical, and dealing with the press and constituents.

That was all fine, and Ben had heard it, internalized it, and used it to his advantage in the eleven years since. But what he never learned back then, and which he felt should be required, was anything about places like Chumley’s.

It was his third time at Chumley’s, a bar in the lobby of the Newcastle Hotel in Amsterdam. Ben wasn’t staying at the Newcastle, he was staying at the much nicer Plaza Victoria, with the rest of the delegation. There was a meeting scheduled for the next morning at ten A.M. and he’d make it, but not by much.

The orientations, Ben felt, should have included long sessions on delegation trips, and the value of them. Not value to the government or the people, since most of them were boondoggles. But rather value to the elected representative, in this case none other than Ben himself. It had taken him a while, but he had learned where the value was, and how to find it.

The key was in getting on the right committee, and he had certainly accomplished that. He was the ranking minority member on the Europe subcommittee in the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs. It was aptly named, though in Ben’s case he thought Committee on Foreign One-Night Stands would have been even more on point.

Ryan was also the ranking minority member on the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, which provided different opportunities. The travel was less, but those energy companies certainly knew how to provide campaign cash.

He’d been looking forward to this night for a while. His two previous times at Chumley’s had more than lived up to expectations, and there was no reason to think this time would be any different. He knew the drill, and the great-looking woman at the other end of the bar, the one who had been staring at him, knew it even better.

It was showtime.

He walked over to her and sat down, then asked if he could buy her a drink.

She smiled and shook her head. “No.”

“No?” This was a turn of events he didn’t expect.

She pointed to her drink, sitting mostly full in front of her. “I’ve already got one, and there are plenty more in the minibar in my room upstairs. Besides, you’ve got better things to do with your money. Much better.”

“Sounds good to me,” he said.

“What’s your name?”

There was obviously no way he would ever use his real name in this situation, and fortunately his face was not even widely recognized back in the U.S. “Harrison Ford.”

She smiled and stood up. “Nice to meet you, Harrison. Let’s go.”

“Why don’t we negotiate the terms first?” he asked.

“How about you get a look at what you’re buying first?”

There was certainly no harm in that, and he went with her up to her room. He had no way of knowing if anyone else had been there with her that night, but he knew for sure that he would be the last one. Once he got going, there was no stopping him.

The woman turned out to be right; showing him the “merchandise” was her best way of negotiating a good deal. As was the custom, that merchandise also included premium-grade cocaine. Ryan eagerly agreed, and as also was the custom, paid her half in advance, with a promise to pay the rest when the “session” had concluded.

It proved to be by far the best time he had ever had on one of these trips, and when it was over he vowed to be back soon. Our European relations, he figured, needed much more hands-on attention from dedicated senators like himself.

He was a country-first kind of guy.

He was dressed by eight o’clock in the morning, giving him just enough time to get back to his hotel, shower, and grab some coffee. He gave the woman the remaining cash, and told her to look for him in a couple of months.

It was obvious to the woman that he was not on the Intelligence Committee, because he had never noticed, or looked for, any of the five tiny hidden video cameras and microphones that had recorded every moment of his stay in the room.

Once he was out the door, the woman picked up her cell phone and dialed a number. When the call was answered, she simply said, “Done.”

“Why did you put Tara in a shelter?” I ask.

I’ve gotten all the information Galloway seems to have about the arson and arrest, and I’m not anxious for the conversation to move into the area of his legal representation, so I might as well satisfy my curiosity.

“Because I loved her,” he says, “and it was the best I could do for her. She was the greatest thing in my life; in some ways she was the only connection I had to the world. But she deserved so much better than me, so I had to give her a chance to get it.”

“She could have been killed.”

“No, I would have prevented that if it came to it.” He doesn’t seem sure about anything else, but his commitment to protecting Tara he is certain about.

I ask him a bunch of questions about Tara as a puppy, and with each question I can hear Hike unsuccessfully try to stifle a moan. I enjoy hearing about it, but it’s the opposite of what I had pictured.

“Where was she born?” I ask.

“I don’t know. I found her lying on the side of a two-lane highway outside of Dayton, Ohio. She had obviously been hit by a car, and her leg was broken. She didn’t have a collar on, and there was no way to tell who she belonged to.”

This qualifies as stunning news to me; the image of Tara lying on the side of the road, badly injured, is one I will have trouble getting out of my mind.

He continues. “I put her in my car and took her to a shelter nearby, but they told me that with her leg like that, she’d never get adopted, and they’d wind up putting her down. So I worked out a deal with a vet, and he did the surgery for less money. Nice guy…”

He continues talking about how, when he descended further into his drug use, Tara had been his crutch. It’s funny, but my hope had always been that Tara had been well taken care of, until some perverse twist of fate had led her to her temporary imprisonment in the shelter. The truth now is that her life nearly ended early, and once she was rescued, it turned out that she had been the caretaker. It was a task she is well suited for.