by Ed Gorman
Blindside
( Dev Conrad - 3 )
Ed Gorman
Ed Gorman
Blindside
PART ONE
ONE
I always feel right at home when a large number of people at a political rally are carrying guns and assault weapons. I’d been planning on bringing my rocket launcher but in my hurry to get here I’d forgotten it.
And what the weapons hadn’t said as yet the placards certainly made clear:
BALLOTS OR BULLETS
BLACK MAKES ME BLUE
PRESIDENT PIMP
JUST TRY AND TAKE MY GUN. JUST TRY.
On a chilly but colorful fall afternoon in the small city of Atherton, Illinois, somewhere around a thousand people had gathered to hear Rusty Burkhart tell them how he was going to burn and pillage Washington, D.C. when they elected him their congressman.
He was going to start by making every sitting member of Congress sign a loyalty oath and then he was going to subpoena the private e-mails of a target list of House and Senate members he suspected of being ‘anti-American.’ During all this time he was going to permanently shut down the Department of Education and the Environmental Protection Agency and he was going to prove once and for all that the president was a Muslim Manchurian Candidate.
The fact that a congressman couldn’t do any of these things — well, he could, I suppose, burn and pillage, but then he’d be arrested for arson and at a minimum criminal trespassing — did not keep his admirers from shouting encouragement and screaming nasty remarks about the president, who had the unmitigated gall to have been born half black. I was no longer much enamored of our president as a leader but I sure as hell felt sorry for him as a man.
Rusty Burkhart was a sixty-three-year-old multimillionaire. He was CEO and chairman of the Board of Burkhart, Inc., which owned everything from chains of supermarkets to coal mines. A man just like you and me, as he liked to say, never mentioning that he’d gone to Yale and owned a yacht big enough to launch an invasion.
He was also a fixture at local city council meetings. What should have been one-hour meetings frequently stretched to three and even four because of his rants. And he always brought at least a couple dozen people along to help him. They loved to hiss and boo. His main issues were taxes and money allotted for helping people at any time and in any way. He had been quoted as saying that ‘God has a plan for poor people and it’s not right to interfere with that.’
He was six-four and burly with a comic red toupee that needed to be drowned. He was given to Western shirts and jeans with a giant belt buckle of gold that bore a Christian cross. His most famous piece of attire was his red, white, and blue cowboy boots. Another Yale cowpoke who later in life began channeling John Wayne.
‘This is really scary,’ Lucy Cummings said to me as we stood on the edge of the crowd sipping coffee from paper cups with George Washington’s face printed on them. ‘I really hate guns.’
The coffee was surprisingly good and Lucy, whom I’d met an hour ago, managed to forget the firearms long enough to pick up a donut. She was in the thirty range, a slightly overweight woman in a gray pantsuit. She had a youthful and attractive face and smoked a lot, something far too many political operatives on both sides do. She was one of Congressman Jeff Ward’s staffers. Against my better judgment I was working on Ward’s campaign for a couple of days. Lucy and I were checking out the competition, Mr Burkhart.
I’d tuned Burkhart’s barking out and was instead trying to make some sociological sense of all the cars parked to my right. A number of the trucks looked as if they’d done service in the Dust Bowl while the two Jags and large number of beemers appeared to have been driven straight from their country clubs to here.
‘This is the end of civilization, Dev, I swear to God.’
‘Close. But probably not quite the end.’
‘How can these people believe all this crap?’
‘They will themselves to believe it. They’re angry about the economy and they gravitate to people who let them express all their prejudices as well as vent their anger. It just about always works.’
‘Hey, Conrad, where’s your gun?’
And then she was there. Sylvia Fordham. ‘The Boss-Bitch of Political Consultants,’ according to Newsweek in a piece they’d done on her the year she brought down a congressman who’d served four terms. He’d lost both his legs in Nam but she’d found — the rumor was she’d paid them close to two hundred grand to split — four men who claimed they’d been in over there the same time he was. They not only claimed that he was a coward who’d deserted his unit, but also hinted that he was into pot and even heavier drugs the whole time he served. Add to that the fact that he was black and she was able to exploit an impoverished Southern town’s racism into a landslide.
She was a small, slight woman cast in the Audrey Hepburn fashion. If she wasn’t quite as luminous as Hepburn had been, she was skilled at playing the public role of the bright, quick, upper-class woman who issued her lies with quiet charm and big-eyed innocence. Off-camera her thirty-something prettiness contrasted sharply with her bitchiness. But in twelve years of battling each other’s candidates I’d learned she was as ruthless as she was appealing.
‘I’m surprised you’d risk your life by coming here, Dev. If I told some of these patriots who you are, they’d probably open fire.’
‘Any of them able to count to ten?’
‘Always the snob.’ She looked at Lucy. ‘I’ve told you before you’d be pretty if you’d dress better. After November’s election, honey, you’re going to be looking for a job so you’ll have to spruce up your act.’
I smiled at Lucy and nodded in Sylvia’s direction. ‘She used to room with Mother Teresa.’
Lucy laughed nervously. ‘I’ll bet she did.’
‘But I have to say, Dev, that I’m glad to see you here. That means the Ward people are getting desperate. Calling in a hired gun like you means they’ve been reading the same internal polls we have. We’re running five ahead right now.’
‘Three according to our internals,’ Lucy said. She was still intimidated by Fordham’s nastiness. Mostly I was bored with it. Her shtick had grown old long ago.
A huge response of applause and shouts rang out from around the bandstand.
‘The people love him,’ Sylvia said. ‘They know he’s one of them.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet half the people in this crowd inherited ten million when they turned twenty-five. And I bet they went to Yale, too. Just a regular guy. Who, by the way, should stop wearing that shitty rug. With his money can’t he find a better toupee than that?’
‘I’m sure when he gets to Washington he’ll find one that meets with your approval.’ A guy in a suit holding a walkie-talkie waved to her.
‘I’ve got an election to win. I hope I see you later, Dev. Dinner would be fun.’ Then she gave us one of those princess waves that movie stars affect these days. ‘Toodles.’
‘How much time would I get for second degree?’ Lucy said as Sylvia walked away.
My smile matched hers. ‘They’d probably let you off with a parking fine.’
Three Iraq veterans in wheelchairs were being escorted on to the stage. Sylvia was good, paying broke soldiers to praise Burkhart. I didn’t blame them. I’d have taken the money, too. The people at large and Congress had screwed these soldiers every way possible since they’d come back from that war. I just wondered if any of them had heard that Burkhart, who’d never served in the military, had said he was tired of ‘pampering’ veterans with government money.
There were so many large flags on stage people were getting lost in them. Burkhart led the crowd in the national anthem. I guess being off-key meant you were being sincere.
For a few minu
tes I allowed myself to enjoy the afternoon. I watched hawks ride the air currents and smelled the smoky scent of the breeze and saw the surrounding hills melancholy with leaves that were beautiful in their dying. This was the season of Halloween and football Saturdays and long walks to watch the shadows stretch as dusk came early now. To hell with the Burkharts and Sylvias. If they had their way they’d strip-mine and cut down everything that made the landscape godly. They’d also start revising textbooks the way Texas and a few other states already had — you know, the John Wayne mythic America. There was a time in my life when I occasionally voted for men and women of the other side. But that party and those people had no place in the opposition anymore.
I listened to Burkhart start his salutation to the whites-only world he’d grown up in. Talk about your opium for the masses as Marx said of religion. The portrait he painted of Mom and Dad, flag and country, opportunity and riches rang resonantly on the Midwestern plains. The anger at a black president and liberals and immigrants and gays would come a bit later. For now he was letting his supporters feast on this picnic lunch of treacle and bullshit.
Burkhart was a cunning politican. He’d started his political career a few years ago guesting on a local radio hate show called ‘Freedom’s Way,’ hosted by a bilious racist named Paul Revere. This was his actual given name and he never let you forget it. I always pictured his audience as people sitting around in white sheets dousing huge crosses with gasoline in preparation for the night ahead. Burkhart became a legend on that program and, because of that, when the country was confused and enraged over Wall Street billionaires and endless charges of bank fraud, he recognized that this was the time for fanatics. He had a great presence, was a good speaker, and for all his average-guy hoo-hah was a bright, savvy man. In private he was said to frequently quote Ayn Rand. This wouldn’t do when he was addressing the little people whom Rand scorned so much. They might think he was, you know, unmanly.
‘We need to go,’ I said, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’
TWO
I didn’t want to be in Atherton and I particularly didn’t want to be working with Congressman Jeff Ward. But four days earlier, when I’d been fighting my own client’s battles, Tom Ward called me. After serving four terms in the House, my father had gone into the political consulting business. Tom Ward had been his best friend and most trusted employee.
Ward had also saved my father’s life. In a scene out of the movie Duel, an eighteen-wheeler ran them off a narrow road in hilly country. They ended up in a fast, cold river. My father was knocked unconscious. Rather than save only himself, Tom swam my father to safety.
Years later he gave a moving speech at my father’s funeral, one of those personal tributes that are by turns sad and funny and authentic. I’d known him since my teenage years and liked and trusted him as much as my father had.
‘My son’s in some trouble downstate, Dev. He’s up against a man named Burkhart, one of those guys who wants to dismantle the federal government since the White House has been eternally sullied by a man of the colored persuasion. All the usual lies about Obama. As you probably know, Jeff’s served two terms and this one should be a cinch for him, too, but it’s anti-incumbency straight across the board. A very tough election cycle.
‘Now I’m going to say some things about my son that may make it sound as if I don’t love him, but that’s not true. I love him very much. But you know what it’s like growing up with an op for an old man. He’s never home — I was never home — and the kids get raised by their mother. Jeff’s an only child and Helen spoiled him rotten. And it doesn’t help that he got her looks. He’s got a rep as an ass bandit and unfortunately it’s true. He can also be arrogant and nasty when the mood moves him. But he thinks right. Straight down the line he’s for all the things we believe in. I’ll give him that. He stands up when it matters. He’s one of the few liberals who have no apologies to make. You’ve never met him, have you?’
‘Just briefly.’
‘Well, he’s got a spy somewhere in his campaign and he won’t admit it or deal with it. He keeps telling me that he’d know if he had a spy. He has a friend in the CIA so now he thinks he knows all about spying. But I know better. And I have to ask you if you’ll go down there and check out his staff yourself. Just for a couple of days.’
‘Tom, I’m facing my own problems here in Madison. We should be running eight, nine points ahead. I just saw some new internals this morning. We’re four points ahead at best.’
‘I know, Dev. But he’s my kid.’
After my years with army intelligence, I started my own political consulting agency using many of the same methods my father had developed during his long tenure in the same business. Now I had a home office in Chicago with several employees and I still felt that the most useful things I’d learned were from my old man.
I thought of how moved my family was by Tom’s words the morning of my father’s funeral. I thought of how he and my dad used to laugh after work in the conference room with a six-pack of cold beer on the table between them. ‘Two days max and I’m out.’ I thought of how he’d saved my father’s life.
‘I’d do this myself, Dev, but when I offered he got really pissed. In fact, I have to warn you. He might even give you a little shit. Just tell him to buzz off. He resents any kind of outside help. He’s got this little group around him and that’s all he wants. I’m going to call him now and tell him you’re coming. I’m also going to remind him that I brought him his biggest contributor. That’ll shut him up for a while.’
After we hung up I thought through everything I’d heard about Jeff Ward. Bright, arrogant, combative, and rumored to have slept with a good share of Washington’s finest available ladies — some married, some not. Somehow I’d never heard a word about a divorce. Maybe he had his wife bound and gagged in the basement.
I’m in no position to make moral judgments but I am in a position to avoid vortexes. You start to work for a client who has numerous sexual secrets, straight or gay doesn’t matter, and you find yourself spending as much time suppressing the secrets as working on the election. Bill Clinton had a small army dealing with his past transgressions. That’s work for other consulting firms, not mine.
I spent an hour on my Mac laptop reading up on Jeff Ward’s political history and the people around him. He was working with a company out of San Diego that most consultants had given up on a few years back. I wanted my own opposition people.
I called the Silberman-Penski agency in Chicago and asked for Matt Boyle. The agency was a five-star international investigative firm that had wisely created an Internet department eight years ago, long before most of its competitors realized how to use the new development. They not only had the right equipment, they had the right young men and women. My firm used them exclusively. If you farted in church in 1971, they would present you with witness testimony in less than ten hours.
‘Hey, Mr Conrad.’
‘I think we’re up to ninety bucks by now.’
‘Oh, right. I forgot. Hey, Dev, how’s it going?’
Matt and his wife Amy had both graduated at the top of their class at MIT. They were both deep-sea divers and mountain climbers. They loved adventure. And that included the adventure of being online detectives. If that involved hacking, I didn’t know. I didn’t want to know.
When I called and gave them a name, they knew what I was after. The kind of detail that can make a man think twice about staying in the race.
‘The name is Rusty Burkhart. I checked. There’s a fairly long story about him on Wikipedia. Can you start right away?’
‘If I can’t, Amy can.’
‘Great. You’ve got my cell number.’
‘You got it, Dev. Let’s hope he’s a serial killer.’
Jeff Ward was campaigning in the western section of his voting district when I’d flown into town last night so I’d yet to see him. His headquarters was one of those big, empty buildings that had housed a giant audio store before
the economy committed suicide. Now it was the realm of phones, faxes, computers, stacks of campaign literature and posters of a handsome Irish man of thirty-six who liked to be depicted as a runner, a scrub basketball player, a swimmer and a man right at home in his district’s only slum. The young black kids didn’t look quite as taken with him as he might have hoped.
The private offices were on the second floor. Lucy found me a tiny room that had a phone and a small table for my laptop. I spent most of the first hour after seeing Burkhart checking with my people in Madison then with the people in Chicago. This cycle we had four clients up for re-election, including Ward.
I did more work on my Mac. I could see why Tom was convinced there was a spy in Ward’s campaign. Ward and his four most important staffers would have a meeting to decide which theme to push in their next TV and radio campaign. Before they could get their advertising agency to get on the air with it, Burkhart would trump them with his own spot about the same theme. His own angle on it, of course. This always made it appear as if the Ward spots were responses to the Burkhart commercials. In other words, Ward always looked to be on the defensive. Once could be a coincidence. Even twice. But this had happened four times in a month. One of the staffers was on the Burkhart payroll.
I read the backgrounds Tom had sent me on the staffers. Nothing jumped out at me. These days we’re a nation of narrow specialists and the political industry is no different. Each staffer had gone to a good state school; each had graduated with a BA in political science with minors in communications or sociology. Two had gone on to get graduate degrees. Each had started young with our party, spending high school time ringing doorbells and handing out literature and working as volunteers during their college years. They loved politics. It can be heartbreaking but it can also be exhilarating. And it’s a job that matters. Congress is filled with people who shouldn’t be there and I include a good number on our side. Vigilance is the key.
