The Power Broker

by Stephen Frey

  “Absolutely. You’ve been killing yourself the last few years. Can’t keep doing that.”

  Christian hesitated. He couldn’t ask this of anyone but Quentin because it would show weakness. But Quentin wouldn’t take it that way. He’d take it just for what it was: a friend asking another friend for advice. “Do you think I’m slowing down at all?”

  Quentin didn’t answer right away. “No,” he finally said. “But you seem tense lately. Mmm, maybe impatient is a better way to describe it. Like when you snapped at that associate last week in the meeting. Never seen you do that before.”

  Christian nodded grimly. He had snapped at the kid, bad.

  “I mean, the guy royally screwed up the numbers he was working on for that deal,” Quentin continued. “And what do we pay him? Two hundred grand a year, I think. For two hundred grand a year a guy shouldn’t screw up, even if he’s only twenty-six. It’s just that I’ve never seen you do that before.”

  “Yeah, I know.” Christian wanted to keep talking, but he saw that they were closing in on the address Agee had given.

  A few moments later the driver swung the limousine slowly past a large metal gate, picking his way carefully around trash that was strewn about the potholed lot, then pulled to the right quickly to avoid a truck bearing down on them.

  “What is this place?” Quentin asked.

  “Looks like a transfer station.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s where garbage trucks that go through neighborhoods bring trash.” Christian pointed to a large building off to the right. “They dump it on the floor in there, then a front-end loader puts it into an eighteen-wheeler that takes it to a landfill. It’s not usually efficient for the route trucks to go all the way to the dump.”

  “How do you know all that?”

  “We owned a waste management company a while back at Everest, before you joined the firm.”

  “Oh yeah, a couple of funds ago.”

  “The company we owned had about fifty of these stations in the system. Made some money when we sold it, but I was just glad to be rid of the headaches. The NIMBYS are constantly on your ass.”

  “Nimbys?”

  “Not-in-my-back-yarders. People who live around transfer stations and landfills and don’t want them there.”

  “Uh-huh.” Quentin gestured toward the building. “Still think it was a good idea to come here? It really would be better if we found out who owns this place before we talk to anybody.”

  Christian knew exactly what Quentin was implying. It wasn’t a stretch to think the Mob might be involved in their being steered here. “Look, I’ve already lost a day in this city, and, like I told you, we’ve spent a billion dollars on the Dice Casino so far. It’s got to be ready to go for the team’s home opener. I’m running out of time. I’ve got no choice.”

  The limo driver pulled to a stop in front of what looked like the office. Before Quentin could get out, a young man wearing jeans and a T-shirt emerged from the building and swaggered up to the limo.

  Quentin put his window down.

  “You Christian Gillette?” the young man asked, smacking gum as he leaned down and peered inside.

  “Nope.”

  “He in there?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  The young man smiled smugly. “The guy who left him the envelope at the Gaming Commission. Who the hell are you?”

  “Michael Jordan.”

  “Fuck off, nigger.”

  Quentin reached for the door handle. “You little piece of—”

  Christian grabbed Quentin’s arm. “Easy,” he urged. “He’s scum. He’s not worth it.” Christian leaned forward so the young man could see him. “I’m Christian Gillette and this is Quentin Stiles,” he said, pointing. “I want Mr. Stiles to search you. If you don’t let him, I’m outta here.”

  The young man backed off a step and spread his arms wide. “Hey, why not? Long as you don’t get too personal, boy.”

  Quentin got out and patted him down. “He’s clean, Chris.”

  A moment later the young man climbed into the limousine and shut the door. “I’ll make this quick, Mr. Gillette,” he said after he was sure the intercom to the front seat was shut off. “You pay me a million in cash and you get your casino license. Otherwise the license will be tied up in red tape for years.” He made a face like he was actually feeling physical pain. “I hurt for you, man, I really do because it would be awful if you had to go through that. You know, the endless code violations, things breaking down all the time, dirty money rumors. I’ve seen it happen before, and it just gets worse and worse. I don’t know if you’d ever get the license. You’d probably have to sell the casino to someone else at a big discount if you wanted to get any money back at all.” He pointed at Christian. “But if you pay me a million bucks in cash by next Friday, you’ll have your license on Monday.” He reached for the door handle, then hesitated. “And it’s got to be you giving me the cash. It’s got to be you, and it’s got to be cash. Got it?” He opened the door and got out, then leaned back in. “Have a nice day, Mr. Gillette. And remember, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

  Christian watched the young man go back into the office. He was starting to hate that saying.

  JESSE WOOD glanced up at Clarence Osgood and Stephanie Childress, smiling his trademark photogenic smile—full lips; deep dimples; and a mouthful of straight, white teeth. His dark brown eyes glistened beneath his wide forehead and he clapped his hands once. “These numbers are fantastic,” he said, checking the report on his desk one more time, unable to control his excitement. “Better than I could have hoped for. If the Democratic convention was held today, I’d get sixty-two percent of the vote, Clarence.”

  Osgood nodded. He was chief of staff, had been since Jesse’s successful Senate campaign. Like Jesse and Stephanie, Osgood was African-American, but, unlike them, he was very dark. Short and heavyset, he wore large, thick glasses. Like Jesse, he was a lawyer by training. “I agree, but don’t get too happy about it, Senator.” His smile was almost as wide as Jesse’s. “We don’t want to get cocky. Not now, not so close.”

  “Let Jesse enjoy himself for a few minutes,” Stephanie chided. She was his PR person. Forty-seven, she was still pretty, though not the beauty queen she’d once been. She was statuesque with long arms and legs, straight black hair, and striking facial features. But her jowls were starting to puff, and wrinkles were appearing at the corners of her eyes and mouth. “He deserves it.” She beamed at him. “He’s worked so hard.”

  “Thanks, Steph.” Jesse gazed back at her for a few moments. She’d been with him for a long time, too, longer than Osgood. She was a wonderful woman. They’d had a brief affair near the end of his tennis career, before he’d gotten married. When the young groupies had started ignoring him because he wasn’t winning anymore. “I love you.”

  She folded her arms over her chest and looked away. “You love everyone,” she said, “as long as they vote for you.”

  Jesse winked at Osgood, then looked back at Stephanie. “Don’t be so hard on me, sweetheart.”

  “You better stop calling me sweetheart, or I’ll tell your wife.”

  Jesse shook his head. “No, you won’t.”

  She sighed. “No, I won’t, and that’s my problem. I’m too loyal.”

  Osgood laughed heartily. “I’ll tell your wife.” He paused. “Unless you pay me.”

  “You always were the opportunistic one, Clarence.”

  Osgood grabbed both lapels of his jacket—a habit when he went into sarcastic mode. “That’s me,” he said in a loud voice. “Mr. Opportunity, and a heck of a one this is. Yes, sir, with the salary you pay me, I’ll be a rich man someday. I might be able to retire by the time I’m eighty.”

  “If you get me elected president,” Jesse shot back, “you’ll end up being a very rich man, richer than you ever dreamed.” Stephanie was his cheerleader, the one he turned to when he was down. But Osgood was his money player, the one
he wanted on the foul line for the last shot with the game’s outcome hanging in the balance. Jesse’s expression turned serious. “Will you get me elected, Clarence?”

  Osgood nodded, his expression growing grave, too. “Yes, I will. And you can take that to the bank, Senator.”

  6

  DON ROTH sat in a booth near the back of the Southport Harbor Diner, sipping black coffee and pulling apart a stale bran muffin—not really eating it so much as entertaining himself while he waited. He’d taken the Boston Whaler in from Champagne Island this morning, leaving Patty at the lodge by herself. She didn’t like being alone out there, but she’d be fine. She carried a .357 Magnum on her at all times when he was gone, and she knew how to use it. She’d been a Miami cop for twelve years before coming north with him.

  The trip into Southport had been rough, right up until he’d reached the mouth of the harbor. It had taken almost two hours to get in, forty-five minutes longer than normal. The late-spring sky was cloudless, but there’d been a stiff northeast breeze. Tall waves had rocked the small boat all the way in, forcing Roth to don a bright yellow slicker to protect himself against the cold salty spray constantly pelting him from over the gunnels. He rose up slightly off the restaurant’s brown vinyl seat to check the boat, which was moored to a dock right outside the window. It seemed fine, swaying gently with the slight chop of the harbor. He was wary about it being tampered with today. He’d never worried about that before.

  Roth had told Patty he needed supplies. Specifically, bulbs for the lighthouse and some plywood and tar paper to fix a leak in the toolshed roof. He needed those things, but he could have waited. There was something else much more important drawing him to Southport today.

  When Roth saw Todd Harrison come through the diner’s revolving door he put down the muffin. Harrison was the stranger who’d tapped him on the shoulder at the hardware store down the block three weeks ago, begging to ask a few questions about the island. Harrison was the reason Roth had come to the mainland today. He watched the young man glance around the restaurant and waved when their eyes met.

  “Thanks for coming, Don,” Harrison said, shaking hands as he eased into the other side of the booth, setting an old backpack down beside him and pulling out a spiral notepad from one of its pockets. “You’re really helping me out.”

  Harrison was in his late twenties, Roth figured. Short and stocky with long, curly hair flowing from beneath his Yankees baseball cap. He had that hungry look all young investigative reporters wore like a badge of honor. Here, Miami, it didn’t matter. “Sure.”

  “Sorry I’m late, but I took the long way getting here. I was worried about being followed.”

  “Why were you worried about that?”

  A dark-haired waitress wearing a checkered apron ambled up to the table before Harrison could answer. She reminded Roth of a spare tire—worn down at the edges.

  “Whatcha want, honey?” she asked, pulling out a pencil from behind her ear.

  “A large fountain Coke,” Harrison said, “with lots of crushed ice.”

  “We only got Pepsi.”

  “Fine. Just make sure you put lots of—”

  “Yeah, yeah, the crushed ice. I got it.”

  As the waitress walked away, Roth noticed a run in her panty hose stretching from the back of her knee to her ankle. She probably knew it was there when she put the stockings on this morning, but she’d worn them anyway. Most folks in Southport eked out a living, and you didn’t throw away a pair of stockings because of one run. “Why were you worried about being followed?” Roth asked again.

  Harrison put his notebook down on the Formica tabletop, then took off his cap and wiped perspiration from his forehead. “What’s the deal with Champagne Island?”

  Roth didn’t appreciate the guy ignoring his question. “What do you mean?”

  “Do you own it?”

  “No. Me and my wife just live there. We’re the caretakers, have been for the last three years.”

  “Who does own it?”

  Roth shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Harrison’s eyes got big. “You wanna know?”

  “Why the hell did you ask me if you knew?”

  “Because the official owner of record isn’t a person, it’s an entity. Something called the Molay Trust. I figured maybe you were the trustee.”

  Roth had been a Dade County police officer until retiring from the force thirty-nine months ago. Words like trustee didn’t mean much to him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Forget it.”

  “No, no, what’s the Molay Trust?” Roth pushed.

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. That’s why I asked you. I want to know who’s behind the trust.”

  “How’d you find the name of it?”

  The waitress returned to the booth carrying Harrison’s Pepsi on a small tray. She put it down, then dropped a long straw encased in a white paper wrapper beside the glass. “There you go.”

  “Thanks.” Harrison peeled back the straw’s wrapper and scrunched it up like an accordion, casing the diner as he stuck the straw down through the crushed ice. He smiled. “I love going to old Maine seacoast towns. It’s like going back into the fifties, like being in a Norman Rockwell painting. You get a fountain soda with crushed ice and a red-striped straw with that kink in it so you can bend it.” He held his index finger over the top end of the straw, creating a vacuum, then pulled it out of the glass and let a drop of Pepsi fall onto the scrunched-up wrapper. His smile grew wider as the moisture worked its way through the paper and the wrapper uncoiled like a caterpillar undulating along a twig. “My grandmother showed me how to do that when I was a little kid.”

  “Look, Harrison, I don’t have time to—”

  “I’m not a local,” Harrison interrupted. “I’m not even from Maine.”

  “Where are you from?” Roth asked, assuming this information was somehow important.

  “New York. Only been in this area since Christmas.”

  “So?”

  Harrison gazed out the window across the harbor. “So one night a few months ago, I’m at this hole-in-the-wall restaurant up the coast in Rockland chasing down a story about a lobster boat that’s missing. Everybody thinks drugs are involved. Anyway, it’s around ten and I’m sitting at the bar eating fried clams and drinking a beer wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life when this old guy sits down on the stool next to me and starts belting down straight Scotch. After he’s polished off a couple of drinks, he goes into this story about something called Champagne Island. He must have been seventy, maybe older, I don’t know, and I didn’t pay much attention to him at first. Figured he was just the bar’s crazy old fishing captain who didn’t have anyone else to talk to. Seems like every bar up here’s got one of those guys and he was dressed like it, too—ratty jeans, red-checked wool jacket, and a shitty orange rain hat. I’m only halfway listening, just being polite, you know?

  “But then the story gets interesting. He tells me how his grandfather and three pals had this secret club a long time ago, when they were teenagers. You know, like a lot of teenage boys do. How they had meetings on this island way offshore. How they paddled all the way out there in canoes to get to it. This was way back in the late eighteen hundreds and the island wasn’t named Champagne then. It was called Albany Rock. Nobody from town ever went out to Albany Rock because people swore it was haunted, but the old man at the bar says his grandfather and his buddies never saw anything weird out there. That is, until one summer day when they got chased off by two guys carrying shotguns who told them if they ever came back, they wouldn’t leave alive.”

  Harrison took a sip of soda.

  “That old man got me thinking. So for the next few days I drove up and down the coast, checking for records of the island. Finally, in a dusty file room of a courthouse in this tiny town called Blue Hill Falls, I find something.”

  “What?”

  “A property identification form nam
ing the owner of Champagne Island as the Molay Trust. I don’t think it’s really even a deed. The form was filed in 1899 but not the following year. In fact, I couldn’t find any other records about Champagne anywhere, old or current.”

  “Huh.”

  “Guess what year the boys were chased off the island.”

  Roth didn’t hesitate. “1899.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wow,” Roth said, trying to act interested. “You’re right. Quite a story.”

  “Yeah, it is.” Harrison looked around the restaurant again. “So, who comes out there to Champagne Island? Who do you take care of it for?”

  “Just a group of guys, older business executives. As far as I can tell, they use it as a vacation place, as a fishing club. They fish a lot while they’re on the island.”

  “How often do they come out there?”

  Roth pushed out his lower lip, thinking. “Once or twice a month.”

  “Even in the winter?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Can’t be real good fishing out there in the winter. Even if it is, it wouldn’t be very much fun. God, it’d be cold as hell. Seems like people would rather be fishing in Florida during the winter, older men especially.”

  Roth shrugged. “I don’t ask, they don’t say.”

  “Who hired you?”

  “One of the men in the club.”

  “Do they come with their wives? Do they come together? Separately? What’s the deal?” Harrison asked the questions rapid fire, jotting down notes in his pad as he talked.

  “Never really thought about it. But, now that you ask, it seems like they always come as a group, never by themselves. I mean, they fly in separately on choppers, but they all come at the same time. Never one or two. As far as I know, they’ve never brought wives, although I think I remember seeing wedding bands on their fingers. In fact, my impression is they’re actually trying to get away from their wives.” He straightened up in his chair. “Why are you so interested?”

  Harrison took a deep breath. “Remember I told you I wasn’t from around here?”

  “Yeah.”