Miranda's War

by Foster, Howard;

  Ted’s advice always skewed toward Archer’s interests, to minimize conflict and potential embarrassment. When he came to their home, he would hand Miranda a tasteful gift, a bottle of her favorite Bordeaux or a box of truffles, and would then proceed to stab her, gracefully, in the back. Archer considered him and his trophy wife, Elsa, twenty years his junior, good friends. Ted was one of the few people who actually instilled fear in her.

  She arrived in the New England Properties reception area, which opened onto a breathtaking view of the harbor.Rows of framed photos of commercial developments covered every inch of the wall space. When she told the receptionist she had an appointment with Mr. Zenni, she was immediately taken to a waiting area deeper into the suite. Presently, a door opened and Zenni stared directly into her eyes.

  “And you must be Miranda Dalton from Lincoln,” he said with a smile. She immediately noticed his too-perfectly-white teeth and lean physique. He was in superb shape for a fifty-five-year-old, and she figured he worked out three times a week with a trainer and had a mistress.

  “Mr. Zenni,” she said while standing up, “I’m honored you fit me in on such short notice.”

  “Carla Ainsley tells me you don’t waste time. So I’m assuming you have something I should listen to.”

  Carla was on the Tennis Committee of Longwood, and had been variously a friend and an obstacle to Miranda over the last fifteen years. Zenni had done his homework, and Miranda had to assume he could get Carla on the phone, or just about anyone else he wanted to talk to in the state. He escorted her into his spacious office with even more expansive views of the harbor and an entire section of a wall that alternated digital images of two teenagers, presumably his, with images of estates she recognized from Edgartown and Chilmark, two of her favorite summer spots. There was no wife.

  “This is most inviting.”

  “Please take a seat,” he said and pointed toward the couch at the opposite end of the office from his desk.

  When they were seated and he had taken the measure of her face, he asked what it was she had on her mind.

  “Well, I’m on the Conservation Commission, which you presumably know, and I just don’t believe Lincoln needs two museums.”

  “I didn’t realize it had a second one, other than the DeCordova.”

  “We do. The Pierce family left us their eleven-acre estate on the condition we preserve it. I’m all for preservation but it’s a drain on our conservation budget. I think the property would make an extraordinary venue for high-end weddings and corporate events. I looked at your properties very carefully, and your firm doesn’t own anything like that. Consider the possibilities that Lincoln can offer.”

  He leaned back and stared up at the ceiling momentarily and then back at her like a laser.

  “What’s your price?”

  “I’m speaking only for myself at the moment. The full Commission has not vetted this. But I would be quite pleased to enthusiastically back a proposal to sell the estate for $14 million with a covenant that its overall character will be preserved.”

  She widened her eyes and leaned toward him.

  “Off the record, there are a lot of ways you could build small structures like a gazebo and tasteful fountains to enhance the overall aesthetic. I know one of the best landscape architects in the world. He works for the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland. And there’s no way in hell we’re going to reject anything he proposes. I have this vision for the place.”

  She spoke for five minutes about how it could look at sunrise on a summer day with the right shades of azure and ecru, and how his videographer could make a breathtaking promotional tour of the estate as an introduction to a “sub-brand” of “exurban” properties.

  Zenni nodded and scribbled notes on a pad. Then he pulled his smartphone from his suit pocket and punched in some numbers.

  “Do you think the town would allow summer concerts?”

  “Classical or jazz, yes.”

  He picked up the phone on the table and touched a button.

  I’d like to order in lunch for Mrs. Dalton and myself. We’ll have lobster salads from Legal Sea Foods.”

  He glanced over at Miranda. She nodded.

  “Wine?” he asked her.

  “Certainly.”

  “And a split of that Pouilly-Fuissé I enjoyed, the 2008, remember?”

  “Oh God no!”

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve never had a white wine that didn’t remind me of Champagne. And I’ve never had a Champagne that didn’t remind me of aging vinegar and rubbing alcohol.”

  “What would you prefer?”

  “A rosé from the Umbria region, before 2004.”

  “Done,” he said and repeated her request. “And if they don’t have it, then a bottle of the best Italian sparkling water.”

  She knew he’d go for it. He was a climber, like her, who’d spent his career buying properties in all the toniest places to gain entrée, which came at a heavy price. He’d been turned down for membership at Longwood in the late ’80s but persisted. When he’d made his fourth fortune in South End brownstones, his application was accepted. He chose not to join. Feelings at the Club were still raw. Longwood memberships, like dinner invitations at Buckingham Palace, were not declined. And when someone like Helen Mirren did just that, they had long attained what they had sought. Zenni was basically there at the pinnacle of his profession. He’d made his fortune several times over and could pursue those avenues that interested him even if they were not the most lucrative. Lincoln had prestige but didn’t have the quick upside of waterfront property. Yet he wanted it. He was still looking to climb. Miranda gradually turned the conversation to schools. His son was at Andover.

  “Can he get into Harvard?”

  “Probably not. Do you know the odds for a white male from the Boston area?”

  “I know. But you did it.”

  He was flattered, and she knew all too well that affirmative action, like any number of developments of the last generation, had shattered their world.

  “I couldn’t get in today.”

  “But Harvard isn’t what it used to be. It’s for the world now. It’s not a Boston place.”

  “I agree,” he said. “And Boston isn’t Boston anymore. If it were, we’d be sitting in the old Custom Tower.”

  She leaned over toward him and stared into his green eyes wondering what he was like on a tennis court. Probably a wicked first serve and a deceptive second with top spin.

  “And neither of us wants to be in that ugly old building. But we want it preserved so we can gaze out this window and say this is a unique city.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Julia and Karl were in his study, a comfortable wood-paneled room with books and papers piled on his desk and the coffee table. He had a few framed photos of himself with legal luminaries Elliot Richardson, Derek Bok and Elena Kagan. Otherwise, there was nothing to relieve the oppressively serious feeling Julia always had when she met him there. He didn’t know her except as a colleague and had no desire to. She’d asked him to meet her at her home a few times, and he’d declined. It was always here or at Town Hall.

  She had explained Miranda’s proposal to sell the Pierce estate.

  “And what would New England Properties do with it?”

  “It would make it an elegant hall for corporate events. They even want to have classical music concerts in the summer.”

  “We already have a summer concert series at the DeCordova.”

  “Alright, so we’ll have two. Maybe we can alternate between classical and jazz.”

  “And New England Properties is a big developer, just what Miranda has told us to avoid.”

  “They build high-end tasteful residences on Beacon Hill and the waterfront and Nantucket.”

  “That’s right, she’s the discerning visionary. She wants development, just the right type.”

  “I think it’s not a bad idea, Karl. Why can’t we kick it around at the next meeting?”
>
  “Tell me why we need to sell that beautiful mansion? It’s not like Lincoln needs the cash.”

  “We do.”

  “To do what with?” he asked and slammed his pipe down into a big ashtray.

  “To buy up more land. Isn’t that our mission?”

  “Our mission is to conserve, not sell.”

  “I’m just saying I see some merit in the idea. Fourteen million is three times our annual budget. How about an objective cost-benefit analysis?”

  “The charter says we hold the Pierce in trust. There is no cost-benefit analysis.”

  “I don’t think selling it with the strict conditions on use is inconsistent with that.”

  “I cannot pursue this conversation graciously.”

  He got up and just left the room most ungraciously. After a few minutes she just saw herself out. And that was as close to using profanity as Karl would come. Julia sensed she was a pawn in someone else’s game.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Stephen made it to the campaign office by 6:00 a.m., before anyone else. It was still dark, giving the place a feel of lifelessness and inertia. The polls hadn’t budged. He was fourteen to seventeen points behind Cronin-Reynolds in everyone’s view, including his own pollster. The money wasn’t coming in, and he had to put in another $100,000 of his own to make it to the primary three weeks away. Every piece of advice had been wrong. All of the memos he’d received about the “atmospherics” of the Third Congressional District were consultant-driven drivel to give him the impression his candidacy could catch on. He didn’t like campaigning, and what unempathetic person would? Investment managers could choose their clients and render cold, hard judgments based on the numbers. Candidates could not. He had to talk to and care about everyone who approached him: the single mothers who weren’t making it, the Obama haters, the Bush haters, the hard-core left, the overweight and hard-core unemployed. Ninety percent of them had nothing original to say, yet he was required to lend an attentive ear and ask for their support. His father had enjoyed the crowds, the attention, the thrill of election night. Stephen now believed him to have been suffering from some sort of personality disorder.

  His largest contributor in the last month was someone named Hamilton Greeley from Wellesley Hills, seventy-four years old and retired. He’d given the $2,500 limit for the primary. His wife, Pamela, had given $1,500 a week earlier. Stephen went on Google Maps and found their stately brick house with awnings hanging over the windows and well-tended flowerbeds around the lawns. It had a market value of $2 million. And that was the Rokeby constituency in this primary: people with $2 million-plus houses. Whether he spoke about green jobs or China or Obamacare, the people who were sending in the trickle of contributions that paid for half the campaign were people like himself. He had failed to reach anyone else.

  An hour later Diane showed up and stopped outside his office.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Take a seat, Diane,” he said and swiveled his chair away from the computer toward her.

  “Are you dropping out?”

  “No, but I’m changing my strategy. I’m going to win this, or not get my butt kicked without a fight.”

  “Then you can find a new manager.”

  She left his office. He heard the pounding of her shoes on the floor and then her office door slamming.

  He called Alicia and hung up before she answered. He thought of calling his father. He thought of calling his consultant. But then he rummaged around his desk for Miranda’s number and called her.

  “OK, Miranda, I just fired my campaign manager. I’m nineteen days from the primary, I don’t have a message, I’m down in every poll and I’m calling you. I want to work with you.”

  Miranda was at the campaign office two hours later sifting through the campaign’s strategy memos in Diane’s office.

  “This would be more productive if these memos were saved on a network so I can use my laptop. What kind of enterprise doesn’t have a 4G network?”

  “This isn’t an enterprise, Miranda. It was dysfunctional from the start. Nobody was in charge.”

  “Listen to this drivel,” she said, reading from a memo from his campaign consultant: “The electorate of the district is disillusioned by partisan rancor and would identify with a non-doctrinal Republican who promised to work with both sides.”

  “That’s exactly what I did for three months, and the electorate didn’t give a rat’s ass.”

  “Of course not. Rule one is solidify your base.”

  She walked the memo over to the shredder and slid it through.

  He laughed.

  “And this one written by Diane. She came from the academic world. Notice all the citations to scholarly journals.”

  Miranda read a few pages.

  “Hollow pomp draped with footnotes,” she said and motioned for the shredder.

  “I paid $84,000 for that analysis.”

  “All of it useless. Look, this is basically a one-party progressive-liberal state. I don’t care what district you’re in. If you want to run against it you need an issue that picks off a big chunk of the liberals. You’ve got the zoning issue, which we can expand to interest people in a group of towns. That’s enough to win the primary. And that’s all we can focus on. How you win the general is not our concern at this point.”

  “How much is this going to cost?”

  “Nothing. I’ll create the conflagration, the crisis, whatever you want to call it. And when it’s over, your name ID is 95% among likely voters.”

  “Now I can see why Karl Anderson and you can’t work together.”

  She was thrown off balance and wondered just what he knew.

  “Do you know him?”

  “I’m running for Congress. It’s my business to know the opinion leaders of the district.”

  “Karl and Diane would see the dynamics of this race the same way.”

  “And she’s gone. Go to work, Miranda. Let me see the conflagration.”

  “What’s that ball for?”

  “That was Diane’s therapeutic chair. She had a bad back.”

  Miranda opened her handbag, pulled out a red Swiss Army knife and opened a blade. She sliced the ball in one intense thrust, and it quickly collapsed.

  He looked at her with a mix of revulsion and admiration.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because it needed to be done. You are too timid for this business. You and Karl need to be kicked out of your cocoons and dropped into the boiling vat of oil that awaits. There is no alternative. Think of me as Douglas MacArthur.”

  “I’ve never heard a woman quote him.”

  “Neither have I. And I’ve studied military history since high school.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Within twenty-four hours of getting word from Julia that she was onboard for selling the Pierce House, they met Nathan Griswold, one of their three colleagues on the Commission, the one most likely to side with Julia on anything. He refused to speak confidentially. Anything they told him was fair game for his next conversation, which would be with Karl and Henry Gerstenzang, the fifth member.

  “I want you ladies to make your best case for this,” he told them as he filled his pipe in the study of his old rambling farmhouse. “I know Miranda has some fresh ideas.”

  He, like Karl, exuded fairness and probity. He’d been on the Commission for only two years and never pursued his own course. He tended to vote with Karl but had opposed him a few times on spending issues, and when he did, he did so because of lobbying by Julia. So they presented this as a fiscal measure. Why not sell the damn Pierce Estate for $14 million? Their fiscal problems would be solved for three years. It was purely about the bottom line. Miranda assured him over and over that every aspect of the sale would be subject to their scrutiny, that the Commission’s lawyer could revise the contract as much as he wanted to protect their interests, and if no deal could be struck, then no deal would get done.

  “All we’re
doing with this vote is moving the process to the next step,” she said in her most amiable tone. “We can’t just put on an agenda item to approve the sale of the Pierce House Museum.”

  “What are we going to do with the money?”

  Miranda rose from her chair and pretended to be interested in Nathan’s Mount Washington paintings. To her they were stiflingly dull, like a still life of a bowl of fruit.

  “I really like this one, Nate. It seems to be as much about light as the mountain. It feels like five minutes after dawn.”

  “I didn’t know you were into paintings.”

  “Oh my God, Nate, I’ve got two Sargents, a Degas, a Homer and ten more from up-and-coming artists Archer and I are betting on. I need to have you over for an evening so we can trade insights.”

  “I’d enjoy that.”

  She turned around and looked back at him.

  “Now, in answering your question about the money, we need to keep in mind the idea of keeping a healthy reserve. Our charter doesn’t require us to spend every dime we’ve got. I’m not saying we should sell just to have a healthy reserve, but there will be rainy days ahead. Our job is getting more difficult, not easier.”

  He nodded.

  “So why not just hold off until we need the cash?”

  “I’ve thought of that too. But I’ve been reading a lot lately about roots of inertia. There was a piece in The New Yorker; did you see it?”

  He confessed, quite sheepishly, that he had not.

  “Well the point was that once a person decides to defer an act, he constructs justifications for inaction—a sort of confirmation bias sets in. So when anything happens that indicates the deferral was correct, say someone praises the decision not to act, he begins to change his thinking. Eventually, he will change his mind completely, because confirmation bias comes from a multitude of sources.”

  “I can see where that might happen, but this is a huge decision. Nobody is going to be pushed into making it by confirmation bias.”

  “I know that, but we need to at least move the process ahead so we don’t get caught in a negative mindset. Inertia must be avoided.”