Mike Lawson - Dead on Arrival

‘I don’t know his name. I only met him once. I tried to have him followed, but he lost my guy.’

‘Bullshit,’ DeMarco said.

‘I’m telling you the truth,’ Pugh said.

DeMarco rose from his chair. ‘Then I guess it’s adios, Jubal. You’re no fuckin’ good to us.’

‘But I got a picture of him,’ Pugh said. ‘And a computer on my farm loaded with his e-mails.’

DeMarco sat back down. ‘Give me some details.’

* * *

DeMarco ignored Patsy Hall as he left the DEA building. He ignored her pleas, and later her threats, to tell her what was going on. He walked a block, then stopped and sat down at a bus stop. For a couple of minutes he didn’t do anything; he just sat there trying to collect his thoughts, then he pulled out his cell phone and made a call. He talked to Mahoney for approximately ten minutes.

The first thing Mahoney did was let everyone know that the so-called Broderick Act wasn’t going to get voted on in the House that day. This caused the expected uproar, which he ignored, and then he left the Capitol while his brethren were calling their contacts in the media.

His driver dropped him off at the Justice Department. He could have requested the attorney general and the director of the FBI to come to his office, and most likely they would have. But he liked it better this way, because after he met with the two men he was holding a press conference — he’d already given his contacts in the media the time — and he liked the idea of posing in front of the attorney general’s building.

Attorney General Simon Wall and FBI Director Kevin Collier both shook the speaker’s hand when he entered Wall’s office, but neither was particularly effusive in their greeting. They knew Mahoney was being lambasted in the press and that his approval ratings had slipped when he refused to support Broderick’s bill. Wall and Collier, in other words, didn’t feel that they had to be nice to a man who might not be the speaker much longer.

Simon Wall was a lawyer, a political appointee, and close friends with both the president and the chairman of the Democratic Party. He had a seal’s head: wet-looking, slicked-back dark hair and warm, liquid brown eyes magnified by the lenses of his glasses. He looked harmless — but he wasn’t. FBI Director Kevin Collier, the man who looked like Mahoney’s old Boston terrier, was Simon Wall’s puppet.

Mahoney didn’t like either man.

Wall and Collier took seats at a small round table, and Mahoney settled into the third chair and began to speak. ‘Yesterday the DEA arrested a meth dealer in Winchester, Virginia, who is also the head of a white supremacist group. The guy who hijacked the New York shuttle, the cabdriver who tried to blow up the Capitol, and the son of my friend who tried to fly his plane into the White House were all coerced by this drug dealer’s people. In other words, these recent acts of terrorism, which the FBI has pinned on al-Qaeda and three Muslim Americans, were really the work of a bunch of white-power nuts. In other words,’ Mahoney repeated, ‘you two guys, who jumped with all four feet on Bill Broderick’s band wagon, are gonna look like a couple of idiots.’

Wall opened his mouth to say something, but Mahoney continued. ‘Now I’m gonna tell you what really happened.’ And he did. He told them what Jubal Pugh had admitted to DeMarco. When he finished he said, ‘What you’re gonna do is this. The FBI’s gonna take charge of this shithead that the DEA’s arrested, and you’re gonna offer him immunity from prosecution provided he can give you all the people who were involved in this thing. I’ve already told the guy you’re gonna do this.’

‘What?’ Wall said. ‘You don’t have the authority to-’

Mahoney rose to his feet. ‘I gotta take a piss — if it’s okay with you, Simon, I’ll use the can here in your office — but in ten minutes I’m holding a press conference right in front of this building. I’m gonna explain to the media how we were about to pass a horrible goddamn law because of terrorist attacks that were really orchestrated by these racist peckerheads and not by good Muslim American citizens, but, thank God, the diligent agents of the DEA and the FBI have uncovered the truth. This means you guys have about half an hour to figure out a way to put a spin on this that makes you look less stupid than you really are. Now, Simon, where’s your shitter?’

A platoon of lawyers and FBI agents invaded Winchester, Virginia, and took charge of Jubal Pugh, his people, and all the evidence the DEA had gathered. Jubal’s gang was placed in a federal lockup in Washington, D.C. Jubal himself was placed in a cell at Quantico and protected around the clock by the FBI.

The day after Pugh was taken to Quantico, Patsy Hall walked into DeMarco’s office in the Capitol. How she’d located his office, he didn’t know. She threw open the door, and it banged off the wall so hard he was surprised the frosted glass didn’t shatter. DeMarco took one look at her — all hundred and ten pounds of her trembling with rage, eyes blazing so hot they could have started a forest fire — and he was glad they hadn’t allowed her into the building with a weapon.

‘You son of a bitch!’ she screamed. ‘I spent five years trying to nail that bastard, and you’re letting him go. Letting him go!’

‘I’m sorry, Patsy, but it’s for … for the greater good.’

‘Yeah, well you can kiss my ass for the greater good.’ She paused a moment and added, ‘You used me, you prick.’

With that she turned and left, leaving DeMarco feeling like hell.

* * *

The press ripped the late William Broderick asunder and praised Mahoney to the skies.

Those politicians who had resisted Broderick’s efforts stretched their arms and patted themselves publicly on the back for their fortitude. Those who had sided with Broderick blamed the FBI for getting the facts all wrong. Hearings would be held, they promised.

The House voted on the Broderick Act — everybody was happy to call it by that name now — and the bill was defeated by ninety-five votes.

Mahoney was a happy man.

Surprisingly, so was Nick Fine.

The governor of Virginia, who couldn’t run again because of term limits, appointed Fine to fill Broderick’s seat until a special election could be held. The governor acted quickly and without consulting a number of people he should have consulted. The governor extolled Fine’s virtues, spoke of his experi ence, and implied that having two African Americans in the U.S. Senate wasn’t exactly stacking the deck. He said that if Fine had been in charge, Bill Broderick’s vile proposal would never have seen the light of day.

Miranda Bloom, DeMarco’s lobbyist friend, told him later that someone, name unknown, had made a substantial contribution to the University of Virginia. The donation came with a caveat: it was expected that the university would offer the governor of Virginia a position on its staff, the university being close to the governor’s home and a place where he had stated numerous times that he’d like to teach when his days of government service were over.

And then it all fell apart.

The day before he planned to have the boy install the devices, the workers at the refinery went on strike.

He blamed himself for not having known that a strike was pending, but as the facility was more than a hundred miles from Cleveland, the local papers hadn’t discussed the likelihood of a strike, nor was the plant of such significance that an imminent strike had made the national news.

These accursed people. Their greed was without limit. Even the lowest-paid workers at the refinery, the guards and the people who mopped the floors, lived better than people he had seen in Africa and Afghanistan and Palestine. They owned cars, often two or three. They lived with families of four in homes where a dozen people could have dwelt. They squandered their money on alcohol and pornographic DVDs — and they wanted more, always more.