The Nominee

by Brian McGrory

  “Ends up, they have the wrong apartment. They’re supposed to be in the one across the hall. The guy who died is a retired Baptist minister. The real drug dealer hears the commotion from his apartment, gets nervous, and tries to make a break for it. Problem is, he runs flat into a cop at the back door. People are screaming. There’s a guy dead upstairs. Nobody’s sure where the drugs are. Somebody takes a shot in the commotion, a cop, and he hits a young detective, shoots him dead, all by mistake. That’s two dead. No arrest. No drugs seized.”

  I nodded. Kelly showed up with our food. In front of Mongillo, she carefully placed an almost comically thick pot roast sandwich on a toasted bulky roll with a heaping order of hand-cut, slightly overcooked French fries, a small ball of coleslaw, and a crisp piece of lettuce nailed by a toothpick to a brilliant red tomato. In front of me, she slapped down a plain hamburger sitting lonely in the middle of an otherwise empty plate.

  Mongillo peered curiously at my lunch for a moment, then at his. He cleared his throat and said, “So anyway, Fitzgerald comes in with a column two days after the bungled raid saying that a young narcotics cop who was heading up the investigation mistakenly provided the wrong apartment number in the pre-raid briefing. Ironically, it was that same narc cop who was killed in the friendly fire. Seems to give them a little bit of cover, no? Fitzgerald doesn’t attribute it. He doesn’t source it in any way. He just states it as fact, Robert Fitzgerald throwing us another little crumb of wisdom from that journalistic mountaintop of his.”

  Mongillo was becoming more animated now, almost angry. I bit at my burger, which even in its celibate state, I have to confess, tasted pretty damned good. The Bristol Lounge at the Four Seasons Hotel doesn’t do it any better at three times the price.

  Mongillo continued, “Then it never comes up again. I waited until the search warrants were released. I wanted to review them, check the facts. But you know what? They disappeared. The court documents simply vanished. The magistrate said he didn’t know where they were, and the cops said they lost their copy. So they paid a huge sum to the reverend’s family and the case was forever closed.”

  I said, “But that doesn’t prove Fitzgerald lied.”

  Mongillo said, “No, but I heard rumblings on the street. I kept hearing that Fitzgerald’s account was flawed, but nothing I could ever nail down.”

  “Maybe he was given bad information,” I replied.

  “Bullshit. Then why didn’t he attribute it. Then why didn’t he revisit it. You know how much I dislike the guy, but I have to say one thing about him: he’s not naïve. He wouldn’t just take a pile of shit and try to put it into the paper. He wouldn’t blindly buy someone’s line. He knew what he was doing.”

  There was silence between us. Well, not quite silence. Mongillo began addressing his heaping pot roast sandwich and making all the commensurate noises that an overly demonstrative Italian would make during the beloved act of eating—sounds considerably louder than a pair of Wasps engaged in an act of sex.

  I said, “What else.”

  He swallowed hard, hesitated, and said, “This is less concrete. But his stories are too neat, his quotes too perfect. He’s got simple people talking much too eloquently. Mailmen are talking like great existentialists. He’s either making up the quotes, or he’s making up the people. Either way, he’s a fraud.”

  I was about half through with my hamburger and losing my appetite fast, not because I was full, but because I felt empty.

  I asked, “Which do you think?”

  “Most of his stuff is political. He’s doing analysis, or he’s talking to some government official, and that’s all fine. But when he does human interest, too often I can’t find the regular Joe or Josephine who he’s quoted by name in print. And when he just quotes someone without a name, I know he’s piping that.”

  “What do you mean you haven’t been able to find them? You’ve tried?”

  Mongillo took another bite of his sandwich, put it down and lovingly, heavily salted his fries.

  Then he looked up at me and nodded, his big eyes meeting mine in some sort of strange look of guilt. I repeated, “You’ve checked?”

  He looked down at his plate. “Look, it’s a disease, I admit it. I love the newspaper. I’m allowed, you know, even though I’m not like another son to the owners. It’s the greatest place I’ve ever worked, and it covers the only city I’ve ever lived in.”

  He chewed on and swallowed a massive bite of pot roast, then said, “It’s always bugged me, or scared me. I always thought he’d end up being an embarrassment to the paper some day.

  “So I do a little private fact-checking from time to time. When he quotes someone by name, I look them up in the phonebook, or on the Internet, and if I can’t find them, I sometimes swing by where they’re supposed to live or work. And you know what, about half the time, these people don’t exist.”

  There was another silence between us. If silence could have weight, this one would resemble an elephant. I knew Mongillo loved theRecord, but I had no idea how much. I knew he disliked Fitzgerald, but I never realized the extreme depths of his disdain, or its basis.

  “Why didn’t you ever tell me any of this?” I asked.

  He ripped away another piece of his sandwich, chewed, swallowed, and said, “I told you I didn’t trust this guy. I told you all the time. You didn’t want to hear any of it. The guy’s important to you. He’s important to the paper. I don’t know. I guess I didn’t think I could get through to you. Or maybe I like you so much I didn’t really want to.”

  I said softly, “So you didn’t do anything about it?”

  He stared straight back at me, his big brown eyes set deep in his enormous olive face. He shook his head. “I did.”

  “What?”

  “I told the publisher. I let Paul Ellis know.

  “And now,” he said softly, slowly, “Paul Ellis is dead.”

  Twenty-Five

  Seven years earlier

  THE LAST LINES OFlight were fading from the early autumn sky as Robert Fitzgerald wheeled his Mercedes through the suburban Chestnut Hill neighborhood of stone fences and sprawling estates and slowly came around a gradual bend on Willow Way. And there in the dusky dark he saw a veritable city of satellite trucks parked happenstance on the side of the road, idling police cars, and television news crews doing stand-ups in the pointed glow of powerful lamps.

  A State Police trooper standing in the middle of the lane waved a flashlight at Fitzgerald’s car and hollered, “Keep it moving.”

  Fitzgerald pulled up to him, rolled down his window, and said, “I’m trying to get inside.”

  “No visitors,” the trooper replied, barely giving Fitzgerald the dignity of a look. “Get your car out of here before I have it towed.”

  Fitzgerald put the Mercedes into park, which caused the trooper, a twenty-five-year veteran, to cast him a long glance. “The family requested my company,” he said.

  It was the governor’s house—Governor Bertram J. Randolph. Randolph had been shot and killed that morning in a blaze of gunfire at a Roxbury School in what the television anchormen were saying was the first assassination of an elected official in the state’s history. The student who shot him also killed his State Police bodyguard before turning the gun on himself.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Robert Fitzgerald of theRecord.”

  The trooper regarded him for a moment in the dimming light and said simply, “Yes, of course. I read you all the time. Stay here a moment.” With that, he walked over to his cruiser, which sat idling at the entrance to the grand, circular drive. A couple of television news producers and reporters inched toward Fitzgerald’s car to get a glimpse of who he was, and whether he might be worth corralling for an interview.

  The trooper returned a moment later with a clipboard in his hand. He scanned down a list, made a checkmark, and said, “Yes, they’re expecting you, Mr. Fitzgerald. I’ll move my car and you can proceed right in.”

  Fitzg
erald drove through the opening in the eight-foot-high privet that sheltered the sprawling Bavarian-style house from the usually quiet street. He pulled past a gurgling fountain complete with a statue of Neptune, the god of the sea. The checkerboard-patterned driveway of red-and-white bricks was lined with freshly planted yellow and burgundy chrysanthemums. He had been here dozens of times before, whether to shoot a game of pool with the governor or for grand parties with Hollywood starlets, and still he was stunned at the graceful opulence that defined the lives of the truly, spectacularly rich.

  A young butler in a navy blazer and khaki pants, no more than forty years old, greeted him solemnly at the door and beckoned him into the front hallway. “The District Attorney has asked me to show you to the study,” he said, clasping his hands together.

  Fitzgerald glanced around, surprised at the quiet and the lack of people. Ahead of him flowed a wide marble hallway. A grand, red-carpeted stairway rose to his right. A set of double doors to the left led to the living room, and beyond that, to the dining room, and then the kitchen. A matching set of double doors to his immediate right led to the formal salon, then to the library. All the lights were off in all the rooms, creating an eerie sense of emptiness fitting for the day.

  Fitzgerald was about to follow the butler up the staircase when a lonely figure appeared at the other end of the hallway. “Robert?” a woman’s voice called out. “Is that you?”

  Fitzgerald strode toward the governor’s wife, and she to him, and they embraced in the silence of the hall.

  “My God, Lillian, I am so incredibly sorry for your loss,” he said, his words formal but his tone comforting, familiar.

  She began sobbing on his shoulder, convulsing in his arms. “He was my entire life, Robert. He’ll always be my entire life.” She pulled back and looked at Fitzgerald with her teary eyes and cried out, “What am I supposed to do now?”

  He held her tighter. After a moment, she pulled away again, still within his grasp, and said, “And Robert, he loved you. He respected you so.”

  Fitzgerald wiped a tear of his own from the edge of each of his eyes and regarded the woman before him. Lillian Randolph was small and slender, probably sixty-five years old, with perfectly coifed gray hair, a well-preserved face that exuded wealth, and a surprisingly plainspoken way about her.

  She said to him, “My Lance is such a hero. God is this going to affect him.”

  At her mention of her son, the butler, who was standing inconspicuously a few feet away, stepped forward and said, “Excuse me, Mrs. Randolph, but the district attorney is waiting for Mr. Fitzgerald in the study.” Fitzgerald embraced Lillian one more time, and was led up the stairs.

  As they walked down the carpeted hallway, Fitzgerald heard the low rumble of muffled conversation in the distance—a sound that became louder with each step. Finally, the young man walking just ahead of him stopped at a closed door, knocked softly, and poked his head inside. A moment later, he moved aside and waved Fitzgerald in.

  Fitzgerald walked into the dimly lit study and looked around at the three men in the room. All of them stood up, took a step toward the distinguished reporter, and shook his hand, exchanging niceties and condolences in the process. A cloud of cigar smoke drifted through the air.

  Straight ahead, a pair of French doors was pulled open to reveal a small balcony outside. From experience, Fitzgerald knew that the balcony, in turn, overlooked a stone swimming pool, a clay tennis court, and beyond that, a lawn that rolled down a gentle hill toward a stable.

  Black-and green-shaded lamps cast hazy light around the room. Two walls were made up of full-length bookcases, complete with rolling ladders that reached the soaring ceilings. The other two walls were paneled by cherry wood.

  “Robert, sit down, please,” said Jeb Forman, pointing the lit end of his cigar at him. Fitzgerald looked at Forman a moment. He appeared out of place in the room, dressed, as he was, in a pair of faded jeans and an old black tee shirt that said, “Bacardi” across the front. His shaggy hair looked like it hadn’t had the benefit of a pair of scissors in what had to have been months. He was young, and his brashness sometimes approached condescension.

  Forman was Bertram Randolph’s lead political strategist, creator of so many of the successful television advertisements that contributed to the governor’s overwhelming popularity.

  Fitzgerald sat in one of the matching wing chairs, such that the four men all formed a perfect square, an ottoman in front of each, a side table separating them. Forman was to Fitzgerald’s left, Benjamin Bank, Randolph’s chief of staff, was to his right, and Lance Randolph sat straight across.

  “We’re devastated, obviously,” Forman said, though he didn’t sound it. He took a long puff on his cigar, allowed the smoke to drift aimlessly from his mouth, and leaned toward Fitzgerald. “We’ve lost a great man. Now it’s a question of what else we’re about to lose.”

  As Forman spoke these last words, his eyes flitted to the other two, who sat silently looking back at him.

  Fitzgerald, still wearing his gray suit jacket, asked in his deep voice, “Meaning?”

  Forman replied, “Meaning politics has become a pretty vicious undertaking in this particular state. Meaning somebody somewhere is going to start spreading sleazy innuendo and false rumors about Lance being the only survivor in today’s rampage.”

  He stopped to take another drag on his fat cigar, blew the smoke into the middle of the square, and added, “You’re an old family friend, Robert. You knew the old man before he was the old man. I think it might be in Lance’s best interests to describe to you what happened today and you might see fit to make a story of it.”

  Fitzgerald shot a glance across to Randolph, who stared at the floor in front of his chair. The reporter had to admit to himself that the questions had already entered his mind: How did Lance survive? What did he do to help his old man? Did he flee?

  Bank, a nervous little man with a thin voice, cleared his throat and said, “And the bottom line, Robert, is that you’re read, and you’re believed. If you explain what happened in a bylined story, then it will never be an issue again.”

  Fitzgerald leaned back in his chair and said, “Well, I’d be interested in hearing what did happen out there today.” He looked from one to the other to the other. Only Forman met his gaze.

  Forman said, “Lance, go ahead, tell Mr. Fitzgerald.” He spoke to him in that kind of weary tone that an impatient older sister might use to her little brother.

  Lance Randolph shifted in his chair, stared at his hands clasped on top of his right thigh, and said in a low voice, “It was awful.”

  He looked up at Fitzgerald with his big, deep-set eyes. He was wearing an open-collared blue shirt, a pair of khakis and loafers without socks. Half his face was side-lit by the dull lamp, the other half lost in the gauzy shadows of the room. He had watched his father die at the hand of a gunman that very morning, and now he sat before the city’s preeminent political reporter, hoping to salvage his reputation, to tamp down any questions before they ignited into political flames.

  Randolph was thirty-six years old, and to Fitzgerald, he looked every day that young, with his stylish blond hair, the perfect lines just beginning to groove his pleasant face, and the constantly optimistic tone of his voice—tonight aside. Behind him, Fitzgerald saw a nearly full moon suspended in the opening of the French doors.

  Fitzgerald reached into the breast pocket of his suit and pulled out a small reporter’s notebook, paged it open, and looked back at Randolph.

  Randolph said, “He did the school event, no hitches. Just your basic speech, in and out, everyone cheering, music playing, the whole thing. Outside, we met the construction workers. My dad worked the line, shaking everyone’s hand, joking. You know his drill.”

  He stopped for a moment, hung his head, and laughed a shallow laugh. “He said to the last guy, ‘I want you to meet my son, the future governor.’ He had just started introducing me around that way, even though I warned him to cu
t the bullshit.”

  Forman, waving his cigar in the air, impatiently cut in. “The point, Lance. The point.”

  Randolph shot him a cold look, then returned an easier gaze to Fitzgerald.

  “So we come to the end of the line and there’s this dirt area between us and the street, marked off by a couple of construction trailers. They just hadn’t cleaned it up yet. I said to my dad, ‘Let’s go back through the building.’ But he’s still in political mode, and he says to me, ‘You afraid of getting your wingtips dirty?’

  “So we walked around the trailer and onto the hard-packed dirt. It was maybe twenty yards to the street, probably less. Trooper Gowan, dad’s bodyguard, walked ahead of us to open the car door. My father was telling me about a fundraising trip he was planning to California. More and more, he was thinking of running for the Senate—”

  “The point, Lance,” Forman interjected, his words soaked with frustration. “Robert is waiting for the point.”

  Fitzgerald said coolly, “Take your time, Lance.”

  Randolph cleared his throat. Someone knocked softly on the door. Before anyone could respond, the young butler came in carrying a tray with a decanter of port and four crystal glasses. He set them quietly down on a sideboard and walked out of the room. Bank immediately lifted himself up, ambled over to the table and began filling the glasses, delivering them in pairs to the rest of the group. By now, Fitzgerald noticed, the moon had risen out of view.

  Randolph said, his voice becoming almost trancelike, “And as we’re walking I see this kid in a flowing white coat, like a lab coat, come walking around the far corner of the building. He calls out to my father. He says, ‘Hey, governor.’ And what does my old man do? He’s a politician. He loves people. So of course, he starts heading right over to him. I’m standing in the middle of the dirt patch. Gowan’s over by the car, the kid is standing near the building, and my old man is approaching him.”