The Front (9 page)

“I appreciate your taking the time to see me, Howard.”

He muses, “Twenty-three-karat gold gilding the State House dome instead of twenty-four. News to me, but anyway, symbolic, isn't it? Perhaps to remind us that government isn't quite pure.”

But the governor is—a pure conservative Republican. White, early sixties, pleasant beatific face that belies the heartless hypocrite behind it. Balding, portly, avuncular enough so as not to appear overbearing or dishonest, unlike Lamont, who is assumed to be ball-breaking and deceitful because she's beautiful, brilliant, enlightened, exquisitely dressed, strong, and quite vocal about her support and even tolerance of those less fortunate than herself. Simply put, she looks and sounds like a Democrat. And would still be one—in fact, would be governor—were it not for her entrusting her welfare to a direct descendant of that witchcraft hysteric Cotton Mather.

“What should I do?” Lamont begins. “You're the strategist. I admit I'm somewhat of a neophyte when it comes to politics.”

“I've given this YouTube development some thought, and you may be surprised by what I have to say.” He puts down his pen. “I happen to view it not as a liability but a possibility. You see, Monique, the plain-and-simple truth is, I'm afraid your switching to the Republican party hasn't had the desired effect. The public, more now than before, views you as the quintessential liberal, ambitious woman. The sort who doesn't stay home, raise children . . .”

“It's been quite public that I love children, have a sincere and demonstrable concern about their welfare, especially orphans . . .”

“Orphans in places like Lithuania . . .”

“Romania.”

“You should have picked local orphans. Ones right here in America. Maybe a few displaced by Hurricane Katrina, for example.”

“Maybe you should have suggested that before I wrote the check, Howard.”

“Do you get where I'm going with this?”

“Why you've avoided me since you were elected. I suspect that's where you're going.”

“You must recall the talks we had prior to the election.”

“I remember every word of them.”

“And apparently started ignoring every word of them after all was said and done. Which I consider ungrateful and unwise. So now you've come to me in your moment of need.”

“I'll make it up to you, and know exactly how . . .”

“If you're going to be a successful Republican leader,” he talks over her, “you must represent conservative family values. Be a proponent of them, a crusader for them. Antiabortion, anti-gay marriage, anti-global warming, anti-stem cell research . . . Well . . .” Fingertips touching, lightly tapping. “It's not for me to judge, and I don't care what people do in their personal lives.”

“Everybody cares what people do in their personal lives.”

“I'm certainly not naïve when it comes to emotional trauma. As you know, I served in Vietnam.”

This route was not the one she expected, and she begins to bristle.

“After what you went through, it stands to reason you would emerge as someone who has more to prove. Aggressive, angry, driven, perhaps a bit unbalanced. Fearful of intimacy.”

“I didn't realize that's what Vietnam did to you, Howard. It saddens me to realize you might be afraid of intimacy. How's Nora, by the way? I still can't get used to thinking of her as the First Lady.” Dumpy old housewife with the IQ of a clam.

“I wasn't sexually violated in Vietnam,” the governor says matter-of-factly. “But I knew of POWs who were.” He stares off to one side, like the painted Governor Phips. “People have compassion about what happened to you, Monique. Only a monster would be insensitive to that terrible event last year.”

“Event?” Anger flares. “ You call what happened an
event
?”

“But realistically?” He mildly goes on. “People don't give a damn about our problems, our mishaps, our tragedies. We hate weakness. It's human nature. It's animal instinct. We also don't like women who are too much like men. Strength, courage are fine within bounds, as long as they're manifested in a feminine fashion, so to speak. What I'm suggesting is, this YouTube video's a gift. Primping in the mirror. Trying to look alluring in a way men appreciate and women can relate to. Exactly the image you need right now to reverse this strengthening tide of unfortunate speculation that what happened damaged you as a potential leader. Yes, you evoked a lot of public sympathy and admiration at first, but now it's fast moving the other way. You're coming across as distant, too tough, too calculating.”

“I had no idea.”

“The danger of the Internet is obvious,” he continues. “Everyone can be a journalist, an author, a news commentator, a film producer. The advantage is just as obvious. People like us can do the same thing. Turn the table on these self-appointed . . . If I used the word that comes to mind, I'd be as vulgar as Richard Nixon. You might want to consider making your own video and posting it anonymously. Then, after much public speculation, get some loser geek out there to take credit.”

Which is exactly what Mather does. She figured that one out a long time ago.

“What sort of video?” she inquires.

“I don't know. Go to church with an attractive widower who has several young children. Perhaps address the congregation with deep emotion, talk about your change of heart—a Road to Damascus conversion experience—that's made you passionately pro-life and a proponent of amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. Talk about the plight of people and pets displaced by Hurricane Katrina to deflect attention away from your helping orphans who aren't Americans.”

“People don't post things like that on YouTube. It has to be a candid moment that's embarrassing, controversial, heroic, something funny. Like that bulldog riding a skateboard . . .”

“Well”—impatiently—“fall down the steps when you're leaving the pulpit. Maybe some usher or, better yet, the pastor, rushes to your rescue and accidentally grabs your breast.”

“I don't go to church. Never have. And the scenario is degrading. . . .”

“And examining your cleavage in a bathroom isn't?”

“You just said it wasn't. Said it was alluring. Indicated it was compelling and caused people to remember I'm a desirable woman and not some sort of cold-blooded tyrant.”

“This is not a good time to be stubborn,” he warns. “You don't have three years before the machinery cranks up again. It's already started.”

“Which is why I've asked repeatedly to talk to you about another matter.” She seizes the opportunity. “An initiative that you really need to hear about.”

She opens her briefcase, pulls out a synopsis of the Janie Brolin case. Hands it to him.

He skims it, shakes his head, says, “I don't care if Win what's-his-name solves it. You're talking front-page news for a day, maybe two, and by election time, no one will care or even remember.”

“This isn't about one case. It's about something much bigger. And I must emphasize that this can't be made public yet. It absolutely can't. I'm taking you into my confidence, Howard.”

He folds his hands on top of his desk. “Don't know why I would make it public, since it's of no interest to me. I'm more interested in helping you with your self-destruction.”

A double entendre if ever there was one.

“That's why I've taken the time to advise you,” he says. “To put a stop to it.”

What he wants to put a stop to is her. He despises her, always has, and became her supporter last election only to serve a very simple purpose. The Republicans needed to win every office they possibly could, especially the governorship, and the only way to ensure that was to weaken the Democratic party at the last minute by Lamont's withdrawing from the race. Her doing so for “personal reasons” was a front. Behind it, she and Mather made a deal she now knows he had no intention of keeping. She'll never be a Republican senator or member of congress and, most of all, never serve in his cabinet should he reach his goal of winning the presidency before he's dead. She fell prey to his machinations because, frankly, at the time, she wasn't thinking clearly.

“Now I want you to listen to me,” the governor is saying. “This is a foolish, frivolous endeavor, and you don't need more bad publicity. You've already had enough for a lifetime.”

“You don't know the facts of the case. When you do, you'll have a different opinion.”

“Make your opening statement, then. Change my mind.”

“This isn't about a forty-five-year-old unsolved homicide,” she says. “It's about allying ourselves with Great Britain to solve one of the most infamous crimes in history. The Boston Strangler.”

The governor scowls. “What the hell's Great Britain got to do with some blind girl getting raped and murdered in Watertown? What has Great Britain got to do with the Boston Strangler, for God's sake?”

“Janie Brolin was a British citizen.”

“Who gives a damn unless she was bin Laden's mother!”

“And she very likely was murdered by the Boston Strangler. Scotland Yard is interested. Very, very interested. I've talked to the commissioner. At great length.”

“Well, now, that's hard to believe. Why would he even get on the phone with some DA from Massachusetts?”

“Perhaps because he's sincere about what he does, is very secure in who he is,” she subtly retaliates. “And keeping in mind it's very much to the advantage of Great Britain and the U.S. to forge a new partnership now that there's a new Prime Minister, and hopefully, soon enough, a new president who isn't . . .” She remembers she's now a Republican, and should watch what she says.

“Partnership in what to do about Iraq, terrorists, yes,” Mather retorts. “But the Boston Strangler?”

“I assure you, Scotland Yard is enthusiastic, fully engaged. I wouldn't be pushing ahead if that part hadn't fallen into place.”

“I still find it hard to believe. . . .”

“Listen, Howard. The investigation's under way. It's already happening. The most extraordinary criminal justice coalition in history. The UK and U.S. fighting together to right a terrible wrong committed against a defenseless blind woman—a nobody in a nothing place called Watertown.”

“Well, the whole thing's preposterous.” But he's interested.

“If my plan succeeds—and it will—you'll be directly credited, which not only shows you're a crusader for justice and have a heart but pushes you into the international arena. You'll be
Time
magazine's man of the year.”

It will be a cold day in hell before she gives him the credit. And if anyone's going to be man of the year, it will be her.

“As intriguing as it might be to think this blind British girl was murdered by the Boston Strangler,” the governor says, “I don't see how the hell you're going to prove it.”

“It can't be disproved. That's what ensures success.”

“ You'd better be right about this,” he warns. “If it's an embarrassment, I'll make sure it's yours. Not mine.”

“That's why we must keep this out of the press right now,” Lamont reiterates.

He'll leak it immediately.

“We go public only if it's successful,” she says.

He won't wait.

“Which, as I've said, I'm confident it will be,” she adds.

Of course, he reads between the lines. She can see his thoughts in his beady eyes. Shallow, cowardly dolt that he is. He'll want the media to be all over this now, because in his limited way of thinking, if her initiative fails, it will be the last straw for her and she probably won't recover. If it succeeds, he'll step forward after the fact and take the credit—which (and this is what he fails to see) will simply serve to make him look like the dishonest, cynical politician he is. The only winner at the end of the day is going to be her, by God.

“ You're right,” the governor says. “Let's keep it quiet for now, wait until it's a fait accompli.”

 

 

 

Revere Beach Parkway, speeding past Richie's Slush with its candy-cane striped roof, heading to Chelsea.

“Not to be confused with the Chelsea in London,” Stump says.

“That another fancy literary allusion of yours?” Win says.

“No. Just a beautiful, really hip part of London.”

“Never been to London.”

The Massachusetts Chelsea, two miles from Boston, is one of the poorest cities in the commonwealth, has one of the state's largest populations of undocumented immigrants, and the highest crime rate. Multilingual, multicultural, crowded and run-down, people don't get along, and their differences often land them in jail or leave them dead. Gangs are a scourge that robs, rapes, and kills simply because it can.

“An example of what happens when people don't understand each other,” Stump says. “I read somewhere there are thirty-nine languages spoken around here. People can't communicate, at least a third of them are illiterate. They misinterpret, and next thing you know, someone gets beaten up, stabbed, shot down in the street. You speak Spanish?”

“A few key phrases, such as
no.
Which is Spanish for
no,
” he says.

The landscape continues to deteriorate, one block after another of run-down houses with bars on the windows, lots of check-cashing joints, car washes, as Stump drives deeper into the city's dark, depressing heart while the GPS dangling from the rearview mirror tells her to turn this way and that. They enter an industrial area that in the heyday of the Mob was the ideal drop-off for dead bodies, a squalid, scary square mile of rusting sheds, storage facilities, landfills. Some businesses are legitimate, Stump tells him. Many of them are fronts for drugs, fencing stolen goods, and other shady activities such as “disappearing” cars, trucks, motorcycles, small aircraft.