We're with Nobody (3 page)

Chapter 3
Alan

T
wo plainclothes cops in an unmarked patrol car roll to a stop in front of the Jersey City train station and motion for us to get in. As I open the back door, Michael whispers something that I don't fully understand, other than the words “make it back.” I don't really need to hear the rest because I'm pretty sure I'm thinking the same thing: We're breaking the law just by getting into this car. I hope we make it back uneventfully.

The last time I climbed into the back of a police car, I was in my early twenties. It was during an ice storm, in the middle of the night, and the defroster had gone out on my old Camaro as I drove through a crime-ridden neighborhood in my hometown. Eventually a solid sheet of ice formed on my windshield and I was forced to abandon ship and make my way through the bitterly cold streets of the hood, underdressed and shivering, hoping the criminals were hovering around space heaters inside their lairs. When a police car swooped to a stop beside me, I rushed to open the back door and get in, which seemed to surprise the cops. They turned on the inside light and stared at me.

“It's warm in here!” I said, relieved to be in from the cold. They exchanged a glance. The driver proceeded to report to the dispatcher on his radio, and the other cop told me they'd stopped to pick me up for questioning, because I matched the description of a man who'd just robbed the Green Derby Lounge. They were pretty sure now that it wasn't me, on account of how I was so eager to get in the car. There was a lesson in that, I figured.

I'm not sure what the lesson will be this time around, but I know that unless you're a beat reporter on assignment or a refugee from an ice storm, it's a safe bet that something's wrong any time you find yourself in the backseat of a cop car. If you haven't broken the law, well . . . actually, you probably have broken the law. Cops are supposed to arrest criminals, not squire political operatives around.

The guy who summoned us to Jersey City had said over the phone that someone would meet Michael and me at the PATH station, but I hadn't anticipated this. It's early in the campaign season—March, when we start meeting with the people to whom we propose our oppo projects. There's usually an air of excitement because we're at the front end of a potentially enlightening and important project. Something is almost certainly going to happen, and you have no idea what. The campaigns are nascent. Few of the key positions have been filled.

During the first meeting, which may take place in person or by phone, we listen to someone (typically a recently arrived campaign manager) recite what he knows about the candidate and the opponent, after which we explain what, specifically, we propose looking into, along with our fee. Then we wait for them to decide whether they want to proceed, which can sometimes take months.

We'd expected this meeting to be a familiar brainstorming session, but from the look of things, it's going to go a little differently. We had already noted that there didn't seem to be a campaign manager, and it wasn't clear if there's even a campaign organization. Yet they—whoever they are—were champing at the bit to get started. The guy on the phone had said that they wanted to go after this one elected official, and his reasons for doing so were vague. Now that we're here, I don't really like the idea of being chauffeured by two plainclothes cops to an unknown destination, to meet with someone we don't know and whose agenda is unclear. I'm sure everything will turn out fine, but I can't help feeling a little uncomfortable.

On some level, Michael and I are always kind of waiting for something to go wrong. There's serious stuff beneath the surface of politics, and some of these people, they're not only irascible, they're dangerous. Added to that, our nerves are already on edge after being subjected to three aborted plane landings at the Newark airport in a terrific thunderstorm the night before. Michael says he's feeling a bit dehydrated—a condition he falls prey to more than most—and now we both feel the strange sensation that we've entered a deleted scene from
On the Waterfront
and we aren't sure how it's going to play out.

“Thanks for the lift,” I say, far too cheerily for Michael's taste, judging from the look on his face as we pull away from the curb. “You guys doing OK today?”

The guy riding shotgun mumbles yeah. The driver just glances back at me in the rearview mirror. There are no formal introductions.

We drive silently through dilapidated blocks of closed Jersey City businesses, many of which are marked by rusty signs and tagged with gang graffiti, illustrating the final gasps of what appears to be a long socioeconomic lament. Sprigs of economic life appear here and there, but for the most part it's a wasteland, replete with beggars representing all the nations of the Earth. It's new to us, and interesting in a depressing way, so we peer out the windows and take in the scenery.

The silence seems to be to everyone's liking, particularly Michael's, who is annoyed by what he describes as my penchant for trying to engage everyone we meet. These guys don't really need to know why we're here and likely wouldn't care if they did, and it doesn't seem prudent to ask why or how two cops came to be chauffeuring us around. I'd actually like to know, but everyone seems to agree that the less said the better. It's one of those moments where you realize the oppo could easily be turned on you. I imagine a judge or a reporter asking, “Did you not think there was anything unusual about using a police cruiser for your personal taxicab? Did you consider the illegality of this arrangement you'd entered into?”

“You need anything before we get there?” one of the cops asks.

After ten minutes of driving in silence, during which I'd tried to memorize the turns we were making as we passed through the rundown city, the question catches me off guard. I point to Michael in the rearview mirror and say, “Yeah, actually, my friend could probably use a bottle of water. He's been a little dehydrated since the plane trip yesterday.” Michael responds to this thoughtful request by shooting me one of his “what the hell?” looks. Though he knows it's true, I might as well have said, “My little buddy here is thirsty.”

The driver whips in front of a bodega, double parks, his partner darts inside and then returns with the precious liquid. He won't take Michael's money. We pull away, round a corner and come to a stop at our final destination, a row of warehouses on the waterfront.

At the tinted glass door that leads inside we're met by a guy dressed in an actual pinstripe suit. With bushy eyebrows and a prominent mole on his cheek, he looks like he's come straight from wardrobe. He introduces himself and ushers us down a long hallway and into an actual smoke-filled room where several other men sit around a small conference table. To my relief, they do not look particularly menacing. On the contrary, they look like they've all just been rejected at a casting call for
The Sopranos
and aren't at all happy about it. The fellow who brought us in, whom Michael and I later secretly nickname Mo on account of the mole, tells them we're the guys who are going to find out what they want to know. They appear unimpressed.

The scene in the meeting room is stereotypical of how many people envision the backrooms of politics, but it's actually a departure, even for us. Our work is routinely strange, and takes us places we'd otherwise never go. Whether it's in a smoke-filled room on the Jersey waterfront or someone's cozy den in rural Kansas, we approach each situation the same way: We listen to what the campaign people have to say, and we look for signs of trouble. Still, we like to start with a genial parlay, something that apparently is going to be denied us in this case. It feels like we're being hired to take someone out, literally, and the bosses have no interest in knowing any more than they have to about us.

In a sense we
are
being hired to take someone out, which is something we'd be cool with, oppo-wise, were it not for the suspicious and slightly condescending attitudes of whoever these people are. There still have been no introductions, and certainly no informative backchat about their individual roles, which is usually one of the first pieces of information we get. There's also the nagging feeling that this group may be amenable to breaking the law. They have agreed to our fee, though, so our only concern is that we not break any laws ourselves or benefit from their being broken by others.

Opposition research can be expensive—tens of thousands for a congressional campaign or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a presidential campaign—which is why it's most often used in big-ticket races. But if the money is there, oppo may be done for statewide and even smaller races. Well-funded organizations, including some in New Jersey, have been known to spend whatever it takes to prevent any opponent from taking office, down to the local school board level. The fee may be paid by a national party, an individual campaign, a third-party group, a party caucus or, as is the case in Jersey City, a private donor. Non-campaign sources are sometimes used to avoid public revelation of the expenditure by the campaign itself, because there are still people out there who are shocked to hear that a candidate hired “an investigator,” as they put it, to “smear” their opponent. So much for our belief in political transparency.

The problem in Jersey City is that they—whoever “they” are—are secretly going up against a powerhouse who, once he finds out, will not respond with a petulant news conference about their disgusting, un-American smear campaign. He'll turn loose the hounds.

As they sit impassively around the table, I explain that the core of our work involves examining the candidate's documentary record: newsclips, lawsuits, criminal record, his education, personal affairs, finances. “That, and anything else you might think it prudent for us to look into,” I add. Their response is to stare at me blankly, as if to say, “Are you done talking?” This is something of a relief; who knows what else these guys might think it prudent for us to look into?

Before they can add anything, I start to elaborate on our usual MO. Some things I expect will be of little interest to these guys, but they matter just the same, such as votes cast by incumbent lawmakers and whether they, themselves, take the time and interest to vote in public elections. We also look at campaign contributions and at government contracts that may have been awarded as a result (I expect this to pique their interest, but their expressions don't change). We review what's been reported in the media about them, and at what they say as opposed to what they do. In short, we take every piece of documentation of a candidate's adult life, tie the most politically significant parts together and put it all into context for the campaign to use to sway a voter.

Even as I explain this to the guys, I'm imagining that the process of piecing the guy's record together will result in some awkward encounters; for that matter, just getting to this point required us to pass through several disquieting portals, beginning at the Newark airport. As passengers screamed and we were thrown against our seat backs again and again, I managed to retreat to a sort of Zen state, which Michael very much resented because he was about to explode.

As I talk, I glance over at Michael, who's clutching his bottle of water like a talisman and staring at Mo. He's only too happy to let me do the talking. Throughout the rest of our trip, he will find it difficult to fully recover from the aeronautic and meteorological shock to his system delivered on the way to the Newark airport. As he will remember it, New Jersey was an affront before we even touched the ground, which—we being contrarians at heart—will be useful, in its way.

I can already envision how this will go. Each morning at breakfast Michael will catalog the difficulties we face and reiterate his abiding desire for a smooth, uneventful flight home. The die has been cast. This is good, I tell myself. An anxious, dissatisfied Michael is a dogged oppo-researching Michael. Being in a foul humor for four days will spur him on.

After I turn the floor over to Mo and his cohorts, and they tell us about the candidate they want researched, I see the look on Michael's face and realize we're both thinking the same thing, again: The trouble here may actually be right in this room. It seems a fight has erupted over who holds the absolute power in their little political fiefdom and these guys have decided that they do, despite the fact that as far as we know they don't even have a candidate. They've just got a political vendetta. To make matters worse, it soon becomes apparent, based on what they tell us, that the target of their anger could squash them like the skittering cockroach that Mo suddenly and vengefully flattens with a loud smack of his shoe on the conference room floor, causing everyone to jump.

As they finish telling us about everyone the big guy has corrupted and/or destroyed during his political career, Michael and I realize the cards are stacking up against them.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” I feel obliged to ask.

From the response I get, it's obvious that circumspection is not a strong suit with these guys. They stare at me, not even bothering to ask what I mean. I begin to explain my concerns, but one of them quickly cuts me off. They are well aware of what's at stake. End of discussion.

They then lay out a fairly half-baked strategy, telling us to pay particular attention to the officeholder's voting record, which actually comes as something of a surprise because it sounds legit. I'd have been less surprised if they'd said they wanted us to stake out his car-crushing business down by the river. They don't really know what they're looking for, or even how they intend to use it. They just know they want to know what there is to know. Mo tells us they need a quick turnaround (none of our clients ever wants a leisurely turnaround) and, without further ado—no one even rises from his chair, much less offers to shake our hands—sends us on our way, back outside to our waiting police car.