The Nominee

by Brian McGrory

  “Did you hear me?” I asked. “I said I work here. Move your car out of my way.”

  That got some of his precious synapses firing.

  He replied, “Hey jerk-off, turn your damned car around and get out of my sight before you end up with cuffs on in the back of this cruiser. This is a crime scene.”

  Finally, some information, even if unwittingly provided. I was in no position to press him further, and even in less of a position to get past him, so I quickly turned around, parked in the small front visitor’s lot and hustled up the three steps into the visitor’s entrance.

  First thing I noticed was several men in trench coats huddled in one corner of the lobby with police radios blabbing and shrieking from their pockets. I asked the security guard, a longtime employee named Edgar, what the hell was going on.

  “You haven’t heard?” he said, a look of panic crossing his gray features. “Jack, it’s Paul Ellis.”

  “What about him?” I asked, the fear in my voice surprising even me.

  Edgar simply shook his head in a mix of uncertainty and anguish. So I bolted around him, through a couple of sets of industrial double-doors and into the pressroom, where the mammoth presses were silently waiting for the next day’s run. I raced through the length of the room, roughly the size of half a football field, dodging some of the pressmen—old friends of my father’s—as they called out my name, and slammed through a metal door that led to the side parking lot.

  Once outside, with the low afternoon sun hitting me square in the eyes, I saw something that spurred a wave of nausea from my stomach to my chest and almost brought me to my knees: a white van with spare blue letters that said, “State Medical Examiner.”

  As I settled myself, my eyes focused on about a dozen or so men and women striding purposefully about, some carrying kits in their hands, others talking on radios and cellular telephones. Two younger men in jumpsuits stood beside an empty, rolling gurney, the purpose of which I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but knew I had to learn. A helicopter swooped low over the nearby highway and hovered above an adjacent neighborhood.

  I jogged toward the van, trying not to attract attention to myself, though I was sweating like a walrus.

  “What do we have,” I asked one of the kids by the gurney, trying to sound casual.

  He nodded absently toward a row ofRecord delivery trucks and replied, “Body’s over there. They’re photographing it now.”

  I was something of a veteran of crime scenes, having spent too much time at them as a young reporter in the heyday of crack cocaine in the late 1980s and early 90s, when kids—I mean, ten-, eleven-, and twelve-year-olds—were routinely shot dead just for playing in the wrong inner-city street at the wrong time, which could have been anytime. The tone of this crime scene already felt decidedly different, more businesslike and urgent, which made me more panicked.

  I began making my way across the parking lot, though headed where, I didn’t know. Didn’t matter. After a few steps, I stopped in my tracks at the sight of the human being I least wanted to see: Luke Travers, a Boston Police homicide lieutenant. Just to put my disdain for this jackass into proper context, I think I’d invite Saddam Hussein out to dinner before I did him.

  He spotted me just when I did him. He veered in my direction and walked hurriedly toward me, then a few feet past me, yelling to a pair of uniformed cops nearby, “I thought we had this locked down. How the hell are civilians getting out here?”

  He walked back toward me and I said through a clenched jaw, “What the hell’s going on here?”

  He stopped a few feet away, his gaze avoiding mine. To be more accurate, he refused to look me in the eye. “Has anyone told you anything?” he asked.

  I shook my head. I wanted to make as little verbal contact with him as possible, but I needed information.

  His tone became slightly softer, but still official, superior. “Paul Ellis, the publisher, is dead. He’s been shot.”

  I couldn’t speak, and even if I could, there was nothing I wanted to say to this asshole.

  Travers continued, “I think you’ll want to know some details. One of the pressroom guys found his briefcase sitting here in the lot an hour or so ago.Record security checked his office, and he wasn’t there, so they called the police. A few uniformed guys did a search of the area and found him on the ground over there”—he pointed to his left—“behind one of the Dumpsters.”

  He paused again to study me, then continued, “He was shot in the head at least three times, maybe more, at very close range, following a struggle. I don’t have the benefit of an autopsy report yet, but he appears to have died instantly from the bullet wounds. The coroner believes he’s been dead at least twenty-four hours. His wife is on vacation in California, which explains why he wasn’t reported missing last night. His secretary said she assumed he went out to morning meetings today that he neglected to tell her about.”

  I turned and walked away from him without another word. The copter still hovered overhead. The small army of investigators still combed through the area. But I felt and saw none of it, as if all my feelings, all my senses, were shrouded in some deep fog of inconsolable gloom. I kept thinking of our conversation the prior morning, of the melancholic look in Paul’s eyes and the heaviness in his voice as he told me that he might lose the newspaper. I kept thinking of him walking away from me, his shoulders uncharacteristically slumped from the gravity of impending defeat.

  I turned back toward Travers, who remained in the same spot. He was, I assumed, the senior detective on the case, and as such, was leading the investigation. “I want to see the scene,” I said.

  “Can’t,” he replied.

  His quick response, his rigid tone, among many other factors, made me want to deck him. I think he sensed this, because he stepped away. He was wearing a perfectly pressed brown suit, a white shirt, and a solid blue necktie. His pale, puffy face was marked by a day’s worth of stubble that glistened in the afternoon sun. Don Johnson he was not, though I would bet that’s exactly the self-image that he had.

  Another detective, a rumpled veteran named Tommy O’Brien, came hustling over, his police windbreaker jostling against his beer gut with every step.

  “I want to see the scene,” I told O’Brien, an old ally of mine from long ago murder stories.

  “Can’t allow it,” Travers repeated, emotionless.

  O’Brien looked at me carefully and said, “Jack, you know we can’t. You’re a reporter, an employee, and a friend. Some defense attorney somewhere would have a field day with any one of those three. And believe me, I know what it looks like, and I’m here to tell you that you don’t want to see it.”

  We were both quiet for a moment, when he added, “I could use you to identify the body, though, before they wheel it out of here. Would you do that?”

  I nodded my head. Then I asked him, “Suspects? Motive? Anyone in custody?” I walked past Travers, ignoring him, as I asked the questions.

  O’Brien shook his head. “No one yet, but we will, we will. At first glance, looks like a robbery. He was apparently chased from the parking lot over behind those trucks, where he caught it in the head.” O’Brien cringed, stopped, and said, “I’m sorry, Jack. Where he was shot in the head. He apparently tried to fight the assailant off, and one of our forensic guys is saying it looks like the victim even hid under one of the trucks. It probably happened yesterday afternoon, so there weren’t a lot of witnesses around on a Sunday. We’ll have the whole scenario in a couple of hours.”

  As I walked toward the medical examiner’s van, Travers called out to me, “We’re going to want to have a longer conversation with you this evening.”

  I turned and looked at him, but didn’t reply.

  As we got close to the van, O’Brien said, “Stay right there for a minute, Jack.”

  I gazed around slowly as if the world was just coming back into focus. There were men and women walking alone and in small groups every which way like fish in an outsized a
quarium. I saw the two guys I had talked to earlier start rolling the gurney toward the Dumpster, which sat behind a row of delivery trucks. I saw several uniformed cops stretching yellow police crime scene tape around the perimeter of the area. A couple of men in trench coats knelt on the pavement measuring tire tracks in the loose gravel. A man and a woman wearing rubber gloves poked around the inside of Paul’s Jeep. In the distance, I could see the surly young cop turning back copy editors and nightside reporters trying to get to work for the evening shift.

  I also noticed something missing from this god-awful scene. Here we were in the shadows of the most powerful newspaper in New England, one of the most respected publications in all of America, and there wasn’t a singleRecord reporter, pen in hand, recording the scene for the next day’s editions. Perhaps I should have been thankful, not worried, because any account of this murder would inevitably lead to questions over the possible sale of the newspaper—a prospect that wasn’t known by anyone but a closely held few at that time. But what I really felt, along with the heartbreak, was panic. We could not be beat by any newspaper or television station on a single fact on the murder of our own publisher.

  I pulled my cell phone out of my suit pocket, got the city editor on the line, and inquired in as nice a voice as I could muster whether any of our reporters might be done with their afternoon tea and scones and could wander out into the parking lot of their own newspaper to cover the murder of our publisher.

  “Jack, we’re trying like hell. The police have every door sealed out of the building. They’re not letting us anywhere near the place.”

  “Pretend there’s a fire—or tell the staff there’s a fire sale at Armani. That will get them out the doors.”

  I hung up as O’Brien made his way back, gently grabbed my elbow and said, “Come with me.”

  I pulled back and replied, “Tommy, unless you allow a couple of our reporters out here, tell Travers that he’s going to be reading everything I know about Paul’s last hours in tomorrow’s paper.”

  He looked at me surprised. “Can’t do, Jack. This is the biggest murder of the year. We’re not risking anyone—anyone—trampling evidence or mucking around the crime scene. I don’t care if it happened right in your own newsroom.”

  I said, “Two reporters, outside the police tape, briefed by you, or we go right over your heads and cooperate only with the State Police.”

  “Wait here,” he said, aggravated but not angry. He hustled toward Travers, consulted for a minute, and came back. “Okay, but they’re under escort the whole time.”

  As he pulled out his radio, he muttered, “You’re some piece of work.”

  He talked to the uniforms on his radio. I called the newsroom on my cell phone.

  “You ready,” O’Brien said when we both got off.

  I nodded. He pulled back the cloth and there was Paul, barely distinguishable as a human being, let alone as my friend and publisher, for the massive holes in his forehead. I felt my stomach heave. I fixed on what was familiar—the perfectly formed nose, the ruddy cheeks, the pursed mouth. I pushed the sheet further down and saw the same blue shirt he had on in the Public Garden the prior morning. As my nerves steadied, I let my gaze remain on his face for a time, on his chin, around his neck, then looked up at O’Brien and nodded slowly, my eyes now closed.

  Before I could even open them again, I heard the van doors yanked open, and the gurney lifted inside. When the doors slammed shut, I walked over to the side of the building, put my palms firmly against the bricks, hunched down and vomited on the ground.

  A truly great man and, beyond that, a great newspaperman was dead. And my life was already changing in ways I couldn’t even begin to imagine—none of them, I already knew, particularly good.

  Seven

  TWO HOURS EARLIER GOVERNORLance Randolph sat in the Cabinet Room of the White House, his chin in his palm, staring out the windows at the technicians and crew of advance men setting up the Rose Garden for his upcoming event. His mind wandered half an hour ahead to the speech he was planning to give.

  He would accept this nomination to be the attorney general of the United States with enormous pride in what he accomplished in Massachusetts, with an unyielding belief that now more than ever he could have an impact on a national stage, and with strong conviction that by crossing the partisan divide, he could play a role in helping the two parties end their festering name-calling and constant bickering and work together toward common, crucial goals.

  He nodded to himself, liking the key phrases, the lines, the message. He brought his gaze around the Cabinet Room, across the polished wood table, at all the leather swivel chairs in a perfect line, at the original paintings that hung on the walls. Someday soon he would be sitting here in a cabinet meeting, listening to the president, providing his own insight, the lone Democrat helping to guide the government of the United States.

  His top aide, Benjamin Bank, paced back and forth at the far end of the room yammering into his cellular telephone. Finally, he hung up and walked back toward Randolph, taking the seat right beside his boss.

  “You’re all set, you know your lines, you’re comfortable?” he asked.

  Randolph looked at him and nodded.

  Bank said, “You should know, I just got word from Leavitt”—Boston Police Commissioner John Leavitt—“thatRecord publisher Paul Ellis has been found dead this afternoon, possibly killed. No further details known.”

  Randolph exclaimed softly, “Holy shit. We should offer the state cops and the FBI crime lab.”

  Bank nodded. Randolph looked at him absently. His closest aide had a thick mop of constantly unkempt brown hair. Aside from that, he was almost painfully ordinary, neither handsome nor ugly, neither fit nor fat, but always somewhere in between, the type of guy you meet and then forget twenty minutes later.

  He was, though, one hell of a political strategist, and a ruthlessly loyal friend, and for that, Randolph thought, he would offer him the job as his chief of staff at the Justice Department and hope that he was willing to expand his horizons beyond Boston and make the move.

  Bank broke his silent musings and asked, “Tell me about Fitzgerald. The story came out well. We couldn’t have asked for anything better. But did he seem happy for you?”

  “You know the old guy,” Randolph responded. “He’s brooding. He’s always got another question. And even though he’s an old family friend, he always makes you feel like you’re not giving just the right answer.”

  Randolph paused and asked, “Any word from any of our friends on whether Jack Flynn is still nosing around on that bullshit story?”

  At that moment, the door to the room clicked open, and a short, bald presidential aide, recognizable to both men from so many appearances on national television, walked into the room. He shut the door behind him, extended his right hand and said, “Governor, I’m Murray Ferren. A pleasure to meet you.”

  Before Randolph could barely respond, Ferren shook Bank’s hand and said, “I just want to give you the quick lay of the land here. The event will obviously be covered by the entire White House press corps—a notoriously fickle crowd. I’m going to take you in to see the president right after we finish here. You’ll chat with him in the Oval for about ten minutes, then the two of you will walk out his private doors, across the veranda, and into the Rose Garden.

  “The president will speak for approximately six minutes. He’ll discuss your record in Massachusetts, and his hopes for the future. He’ll stress that, by selecting a Democrat, he is opening himself up to further investigation, and by doing that, is hopeful of putting any hint of further scandal behind him.

  “Then he’ll turn the podium over to you. I’ve seen the faxed copy of your remarks, which are quite good. The president would appreciate it if you would linger for a while on the point about crossing party lines. Plan on talking for about four minutes, then we’ll open it up to questions.

  “It may get a little tricky at that point. You’re an unknown to t
he White House press. The story was broken by a Boston paper. They’re not happy about any of this. So you might sense something of an attitude out there. On television, that’s going to play to your favor—the outsider comes to Washington and takes on the establishment. Just stay calm and collected. And also be prepared, they might be asking the president about a change in our Iraq policy. That’s not because you’re not an interesting story, but because this is his only public availability of the day.”

  Ferren, one of President Clayton Hutchins’s closest aides, paused and looked long and hard at Randolph.

  “You were a surprise choice, governor,” Ferren said. “And when I say that, I mean that the choice surprised even me, and I’m not surprised much in this White House. I make it my job not to be.

  “Now because of this, you did not undergo our typical, rigorous vetting process. So I want to ask you this, and this is the only time I’ll have the opportunity to do that. It will also be the last time you have the chance to save the president and yourself from any sort of colossal embarrassment, if there is anything in your record, or in your past, that might prove embarrassing. Now is there?”

  He asked the question as he stared across the shiny table into Randolph’s pale eyes. Ferren thought to himself how young the governor looked, how inexperienced, and he wondered if he was prepared for the onslaught of national publicity to come, some good, some invariably, inevitably bad.

  In a long moment of awkward silence, Randolph stared back, then let his eyes fall to the table. He thought about his father, felled by gunfire, the smoke, the burst of red, the sickening feel of his still flesh. He thought about Fitzgerald’s reaction two nights before. He wondered what Jack Flynn might ask in the next few days.

  Then he thought about his future, his destiny, the speech he was prepared to give in the Rose Garden of the White House to the most seasoned, most famous reporters in the world.

  “Nothing that comes to mind,” Randolph replied at last, his gaze again fixing on Ferren.