Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

As he was leaving, he encountered Senator Broderick himself. Broderick had his butt planted on the blond receptionist’s desk, apparently just chatting with her. When he saw DeMarco, he stood up, smiled broadly, and stuck out his hand.

‘Hi, Bill Broderick,’ he said. ‘And are you one of my fine constituents, sir?’

After all he’d heard about the man, DeMarco couldn’t help but be surprised by Broderick’s boyish good looks, his seemingly genuine friendliness, his average-guy demeanor. But his overwhelming initial impression was: lightweight .

In response to Broderick’s question, DeMarco said, ‘No, sir. I live in the District.’ Then, and he didn’t know why he did it, he raised his right fist in the air and said, ‘No taxation without representation.’

The southern belle twittered; Broderick just looked puzzled.

Unlike the fifty states, the District of Columbia has no senators or congressmen representing it in Congress. So even though D.C. has a mayor and a city government, it is, for all intents and purposes, a federal fiefdom and Congress has extraordinary control, fiscal and otherwise, over what happens within its borders. This being the case, a frequently seen D.C. bumper sticker was NO TAXATION WITHOUTREPRESENTATION — but Bill Broderick was apparently unaware of this popular sentiment.

‘Just kidding, Senator,’ DeMarco said. ‘I’m Joe DeMarco. I work over in the House. Pleased to meet you.’ Before Broderick could say anything else, DeMarco winked at the secretary and left.

Broderick opened the door to Nick Fine’s office without knocking, something that annoyed Fine no end.

‘So what did he have to say?’ Broderick asked.

‘Nothing. He gave me some bullshit about a congressman being curious about some things related to the attacks, but he wouldn’t tell me who or why.’

‘Is he going to be a problem?’ Broderick asked.

‘No. He’s just somebody’s lackey. I suspect somebody over in the House is grasping at straws, hoping DeMarco will find something to keep your bill from moving forward. So I’ll keep an eye on him, and maybe I’ll make his life hell because I told him I would, but he’s not going to be a problem.’

‘I hope not, Nick,’ Broderick said. ‘Things are starting to come together in the House. I don’t want anything gumming up the works, not at this point.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Fine said.

He hated having to call Broderick sir . He hated that almost as much as having to call him senator .

DeMarco may have played in a political arena, but he really didn’t pay all that much attention to the other players. Fortunately, he knew people who did.

There was an alcoholic reporter at The Washington Post named Reggie Harmon who had been around forever. In the Senate, there was a guy he went to law school with, Packy Morris, who was chief of staff to the junior senator from Maryland. Packy breathed gossip instead of air and always seemed to know who was doing what to whom. But when the stakes were really high, and he wanted insight and intuition and not just data and rumors, he went to Miranda Bloom.

Miranda was older than DeMarco but younger than the speaker. Because she’d been blessed with a supermodel’s face, long legs, and a noticeable bosom, in her late teens she’d been a Miss America runner-up. She could have married a golden quarterback from Ol’ Miss, had a couple of gorgeous kids, and spent the rest of her life hosting parties and talking about how close she’d come to being princess for a year. But Miranda Bloom had been blessed with more than a good body and a lovely face. She had a wicked, devious, clever mind, and she put it to good use.

Miranda was a lobbyist and had been one for many years. She was in fact the lobbyist, the one desperate CEOs came to when they wanted legislation twisted unreasonably in their favor. And get it twisted, Miranda did. How she did what she did was something she could never have written down in a how-to book. There was no set formula, no consistent, identifiable set of rules. She operated by some deep inbred political instinct she couldn’t have explained to anyone other than someone just like herself, of which there were none. But most important, from DeMarco’s perspective, she knew every politician in town better than they were known by their lovers and their mothers; she had to know them that well to get them to do whatever she wanted done.

Miranda had been married three times that DeMarco knew of and had had more affairs than probably even she could remember. DeMarco suspected that one of those affairs had been with Mahoney, because once — when Miranda misstepped, when her marvelous instincts momentarily failed her — she did something that at best could have landed her in jail and at worst could have caused her to be disappeared, and the speaker sent DeMarco to help extricate her from the situation.

After being threatened by Nick Fine, DeMarco had decided he needed to talk to Miranda and he arranged to meet her in the bar of the St Regis Hotel located on K Street, close to her office. She was dressed in a white silk Versace blouse and a red St John suit that showed off her legs to their best advantage. A simple strand of pearls graced her long neck, and her earrings matched the pearls. DeMarco knew nothing about women’s fashion, but he would have bet even money that the outfit Miranda had on — clothes, jewels, and shoes — was worth more than he made in a month.

DeMarco loved talking to Miranda. She reminded him of Mrs Robinson in The Graduate , not because she looked like the late Anne Bancroft but because she was delightfully jaded, world-weary, wise, and sexy. With the help of a good surgeon she had aged extremely well, so well you had to wonder how she could have ever been a runner-up to anyone in Atlantic City all those years ago. It was her voice, though, that DeMarco thought was her best feature: a deep southern accent combined with a cigarette-and whiskey-tinged purr filled with the promise of seduction. Her voice alone had probably corrupted more lawmakers than her clients’ money.

‘Tell me about Nick Fine,’ DeMarco said.

‘Oh, that poor boy,’ Miranda said.

‘What’s that mean?’ DeMarco said. He found it hard to imagine anyone feeling any sympathy toward the guy he’d just met.

‘You know of course that he was chief of staff to the late Senator Wingate?’

‘No, I didn’t know that,’ DeMarco said.

‘Well, he was. He worked for Wingate for almost twenty years, started right out of college, but unfortunately for Nick, Wingate just lived forever and ever. It seemed like the man was never gonna die.’

‘What’s this-’

‘Wingate, that glorious old bastard, promised Nick that when he retired — it never occurred to Wingate that he might actually die — the party would back Nick for his seat. He told Nick he was what the Republicans needed: their own brilliant, handsome, articulate black politician, one who might actually get a few African Americans to vote for the Grand Ol’ Party. And twenty percent of Virginia’s residents are black. Wingate, for the last five years, had all but guaranteed Nick his job when he moved on — or up, as it were.’

‘But he didn’t get it,’ DeMarco said.

‘No, he did not. When Wingate joined that great caucus in the sky, the party hacks decided they didn’t like Wingate’s choice of successor, maybe because of his race, but more likely because they thought Bill Broderick was a guy they could push around.’

‘So why didn’t Fine quit when Broderick got the job?’

‘I heard he considered that quite strongly. I know he approached a couple of K Street firms and offered his services, and a lad like Nick would seem to be a real catch as a lobbyist. He’s been on the Hill a long time, knows who’s who, and has the brains to understand what needs to be done. Although I’d never hire him, I heard he got a few good offers, three times his current salary.’