It hadn’t always been that way. In the 1970s, Rena had just learned, only 5 percent of former senators and Congress members became lobbyists. The revolving door from lawmaker to lobbyist, in other words, had increased by 1,000 percent in Rena’s lifetime. No wonder people thought the system was rigged.
“I can only speculate,” Stroud said.
It was a hint, Rena thought, that she would help them, but only to a point.
“I don’t know of any true blood feud,” she said.
Rena watched to see if Burke might stretch her willingness over the next few minutes. Stroud looked at the list of PACs and donors on Robinson’s slide.
The most famous name belonged to the Grantlands, the first billionaires to play this game of trying to reshape politics in their own image on a grand scale. The family owned paper mills, chemical plants, and nearly anything else that involved turning natural resources into money. They were backing Bakke, but maybe, Rena thought, they had a grudge against Upton and had heard through their connections into Bakke’s campaign that he was reaching out to her. Maybe they wanted to put an end to that.
“The Grantland family?” Rena asked. “Wendy sits on Energy.”
“They’re awfully public now about their agenda, even if most of their contributions are hidden,” Stroud said. “It’d be a huge risk.”
“Has she taken them on?”
“There are three Grantlands, and they don’t see eye to eye on everything. The family cares mostly about fighting environmental restrictions and reducing government. But they’re actually a little unpredictable after that. Different members of the family have different agendas. One of the three Grantlands would have to be going rogue, which would antagonize another sibling.”
Stroud drummed her painted fingernails on the table. “And there are newer players who are becoming more aggressive,” she said.
“Who?” said Rena.
“Trotter Cardoff, for one,” she said.
Cardoff, largest owner of casinos in the world, was a major backer of Nevada governor Tony Soto’s campaign, through a PAC called the Fund for American Freedom. But the PAC had contributions from scores of ghost corporations as well as individual donors.
Soto was threatened by Upton, according to McGrath’s theory, because, like Soto himself, she appealed to moderates. But Upton would be a lot less malleable than Soto, which might be a motive for Cardoff to want her kept out.
“I’d watch out for Alliance for Liberty, too,” Stroud said.
Alliance for Liberty was a super PAC set up by the hedge fund and Silicon Valley libertarian Wilson Gerard. It was backing Jeff Scott. So were the packaging company founders out of Illinois, Phil and Gwen Aikens, and another billionaire, Lewis Trice from Arizona.
The list of Jennifer Lee’s backers was even longer. It had the richest of the PACs behind it, the American Future Fund. Her funders included six of the twenty biggest donors in the country, including the diet company magnate David Reynolds and Karl Sabanoff, whose sports stadium and entertainment complex development company was remaking the downtowns of cities across the country, though almost no one in the general public knew his name.
Cosmetics magnate Janice Gaylord had set up her own PAC with her own money, and then gotten friends and ghost corporations to contribute more. Seymour Millstein was among them. Millstein was the founder of d-trade, the online stock trading company.
And it wasn’t just individuals. Scores of other powerful people and corporations were hidden inside the super PACs named on Robinson’s slide. Some of these super PACs had amassed so much money, in one case nearly half a billion dollars, they were more important than the parties. That made some of the people who ran the super PACS powers unto themselves, as powerful as the billionaires. The super PAC behind the Lee family, the American Future Fund, was run by Steve Unruh, the political brains behind Jackson Lee’s presidency. Would Unruh stoop to tactics like threatening Upton?
The billionaire Wilson Gerard had hired Rebecca Schultz to run his political operations. That made her a power, too. And at least one super PAC, the Club for Freedom, bundled several others into one mega PAC to multiply their influence even further.
Who among all these individuals and groups had Upton antagonized—if anyone? She sat on the committees on Judiciary, Finance, Armed Services, and Energy and Natural Resources as well as subcommittees on taxes and on international trade. That meant she influenced the federal bench, defense contracts, tax policy, and environmental regulation. Potentially, she could be in conflict—or, for enough money, in harmony—with almost everyone on Robinson’s slide.
“You’re going about this wrong,” Stroud said. “If someone has a feud with Wendy, I don’t know about it. Look at where she wields the most power.”
“The Finance Committee,” Burke said.
“Right,” said Stroud. “Wendy’s chair of the subcommittee on taxes. A subcommittee chair makes a huge difference. They can single-handedly alter policy.”
“She ever tangle in subcommittee with anyone on this list?” Robinson asked.
The look on Stroud’s face told Robinson his question was silly.
“You know the complexity of a modern tax bill? How many things get put in and taken out? If she made a blood enemy with something in a tax bill, she might not even know. But that’s where I’d look first.”
“Sue, let’s look at this from another standpoint,” Burke said. “Who on that list is aggressive enough to conduct oppo research and to make a threat? If Peter starts there, his team can try to match that person with something in subcommittee Wendy has done.”
A pause, and Stroud turned and stared at Robinson’s slide. She began slowly but started to talk more rapidly as her thoughts deepened. “Everyone talks about the Grantland family. I find them intelligent and reasonable. I’d look at Trotter Cardoff, Wilson Gerard, and Karl Sabanoff. Those three men, frankly, terrify me.”
Burke nodded.
“I’d like to think about that more,” she said.
Then, to no one in particular, she added:
“When I got to Washington, it was well after the so-called Watergate reforms, after they got rid of the seniority system and the old ways. But there were plenty of people still around from those times, so I heard the stories—about suitcases of money, about the power of the unions and the old lobbies. Back when most business was conducted in closed hearings, a lot of bad things happened. But you could also lie to a lobbyist, tell them you tried to get what they wanted and couldn’t—when in fact you knew what they wanted was horrible and you’d never even try.”
Stroud looked to see if her audience understood the setup. “Now that nearly all hearings are open, you play for the cameras, and every lobbyist and donor is watching to make sure they get what they paid for. And you’re punished for compromising with the other party.”
Stroud shook her head. “Every reform has its unintended consequences.”
They were a quiet for a moment. Stroud went on.
“My first campaign, my average donation was fifty dollars. Now you raise tens of millions. As leader I raised hundreds of millions. And there are twenty lobbyists for every member of Congress.”
“Money flows,” Burke said, as if saying an amen, “to where it can have influence.”
Stroud added: “And you know why it flows now? Because business knows it can make more money by changing the rules of the game in Congress than it can by competing in the marketplace. They can eliminate risk, get tax breaks, or consolidate so they can’t possibly lose. And we’ve let them. Both parties have.”
“What stopped them before?” Burke asked.
Stroud thought for only a moment. “Committee chairs,” she declared. “They were powers unto themselves. And for all some of those old southern boys stopped progress—especially on civil rights—they were also a check against other powerful interests.”
“I’ve heard stories,” Burke said.
Stroud leaned toward him as if she were going to sh
are a secret. “You know, Furman Morgan told me when he first got elected to the Senate in the 1960s, Sullivan Beauchamp, the Budget chair from Louisiana, kept his tombstone in his office, already carved, so everyone would know all he’d done.”
Burke put his hand over his face to cover how hard he was laughing.
“The date of his death was still blank. And there was a little room at the bottom for what he still intended to do. You believe that?”
Burke was wiping tears from his eyes.
“Sitting in his office. He’d show it to you.”
“Remember Sam Wainwright?” Burke asked. “Chairman of Armed Services before me?”
She nodded.
“He kept a plaque on his desk that said, ‘The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away. And I am the Chairman. I am the Lord.’”
“Yes, he did.” Stroud clapped her hands. “I saw it!”
Stroud’s laughter seemed to restore her slightly.
Rena looked back at the half dozen major PACs and the names of the billionaires next to them on Robinson’s slide. It included no committee chairs or elected officials, or even the chairpersons of the two national parties. In a list of the powerful institutions that would decide the presidency, they were now absent entirely.
Seventeen
Tucson, Arizona
Walt Smolonsky parked his rented Hyundai in front of Shiny’s Tavern and Country Store, the bar and small grocery Wendy and Emily Upton had run as teenage proprietors.
Emily Upton still ran it. Smolo hoped he would find her inside.
He’d spent most of the day getting more frustrated. Since seeing Jerry Farmer, the unhelpful money bundler, this morning, he’d talked to the two county party chairs and other supposed friends of Upton’s—always telling them he was vetting Upton for VP. All of them claimed to love Wendy. None of them knew anything bad about her. All of them seemed unnerved when talking about the state of the GOP in Arizona. All of them seemed unhappy. All of them wanted Smolo gone as quickly as possible.
He’d also met with a local private investigator in town named Phil Dixon. Backgrounding firms like Rena, Brooks & Associates usually had relationships with local PIs in different cities. The local talent, generally former law enforcement, could be another pair of investigative hands. They also could work fast. They were either answering questions they already knew answers to or asking old friends for help. Dixon, a former sheriff’s deputy, might also be able pick up a sense of whether there were other investigators in town looking into Upton and maybe what they had looked into. If he were really lucky, Dixon might even pick up who those PIs were working for. But so far Dixon hadn’t picked up traces of much of anything.
Shiny’s looked like a saloon from a western movie. There was a railing outside where you could tie up a horse—if you had one. The exterior was made of tan adobe mud. And the neon sign that spelled out SHINY’S in red letters had a cowboy hat on top.
It was a few blocks past the tony edge of downtown that people now called Snob Hollow. Technically, Shiny’s was closer to the Miracle Mile, the red-light district.
It was a little early for drinking, just after 2 P.M., but five men sat at the bar, and a silent boozy couple held down a booth. The place was mostly dark wood, preserved under years of varnish. And under the varnish, years of initials, names, and cryptic messages carved into the wood.
“Looking for Emily,” Smolo told a bartender who had more visible tattoos than years likely finished in school.
“Who?”
“Emily Upton. The owner.”
“No, pops, who are you?”
Pops? Christ, Smolo, thought. I’m forty-five.
“I’m from Washington, D.C. I work for her sister, the senator.”
The man stopped drying glasses and gave one of the patrons a look, as if Smolo had arrived from some outer galaxy. “Hang right there, Mr. Washington.”
A minute later an attractive but tired-looking woman appeared from the back. She had dark hair and a wary expression. She wore a short skirt, cowboy boots, and a dark blue Mexican blouse. She stayed behind the bar and said she was Emily Upton.
Smolonsky introduced himself and added, “I like your music.” Emily was a local singer and guitar player. Smolo had found videos on YouTube.
“Came all the way from Washington for my sister and looked me up online so you could say something nice?” she said. “Who are you really?”
With a sheepish smile that wasn’t working, he went through it all again, including a business card. “My company does background and investigative work. Your sister hired us.” He leaned toward her and whispered. “And she’s in trouble. Is there someplace we can talk?”
After a few seconds to think it over, she nodded toward an empty booth and came out from around the bar to join him.
She was forty-seven, he knew from the file, six years younger than her half sister, but she looked older. Up close she had a more innocent cast to her face than Wendy. But she did things, like the dark eyeliner around the eyes, to make herself look tough.
“Your sister has been threatened. And I’ve come to Tucson to try to figure out what it’s about.”
Emily didn’t look surprised, but Smolo couldn’t tell if that suggested she knew something or that nothing much surprised her.
“And you think I can help?”
“You’re her sister.”
“Half.”
“You aren’t close? You don’t talk?”
“Talk? Every Sunday, same time. She’s like a clock, my sister. She’s nothing,” she paused, “if not scheduled.”
“Who’d want to hurt her? Maybe someone here in Tucson. From long ago.”
To avoid answering, Emily Upton called out to the bartender: “Brett, a club soda.” She looked at Smolonsky. “You want anything?”
“Club soda sounds great.”
“Two,” she called.
“Tell me who might want to hurt her,” Smolo pressed.
Emily gave him a long look. “She’s a stubborn girl, my sister. Always gets her way. I’d start with the people she beat in life. From the government in town to the people she ran against. Look at the losers in Wendy’s life.”
Why, Smolonsky wondered, did no one want to help Wendy Upton? Even her sister?
Two club sodas appeared, but they didn’t come from Brett the bartender. A girl, about eight, with a mop head of brown curls, carried the two glasses perched on a black circular bar tray. Her eyes poked out over the tray at about the height of the booth table.
“Hey, thank you,” Smolo said to the two eyes. “Who are you?”
There was no answer for a second, and then the eyes blinked and a voice from underneath the tray said, “Harry. Short for Harriet. And these are on the house, because you’re with the proprietor.”
“Oh, am I?”
Emily watched the girl who called herself Harry. “That okay, Mom?” the girl said. “Or you want this gentleman to pay?”
Emily looked seriously at the girl before a smile began to appear. Smolo liked the smile, and began to like Emily a little more.
“I think that is okay,” she said to the girl. “This is my daughter, Harriet. Harriet, this man works for Aunt Wendy.”
“How do you do?”
“I do okay,” Smolo said. “How about you?”
“I do okay, too,” said Harriet.
Smolo laughed. “I bet better than okay most of the time.”
The girl put the two club sodas on the table and scurried back to behind the bar.
“You grow up in a bar, you learn to talk to grown-ups. You get good at banter. You can talk to anybody.”
“That true of you and Wendy?”
“In different ways,” she said. She was softening a little.
“So talk to me, Emily. Help me. Someone is threatening your sister, and I feel like no one here back home wants to help.”
Emily Upton looked at Smolonsky longer this time and seemed to nod her head slightly.
“Mr. Smol
enzky?”
“Smolonsky. Walt. Or just Smolo.”
“Okay, Mr. Walt Smolo. If you work for my sister and do investigative background work in Washington, then you already know about her political enemies. What do you really want? You have five minutes.”
So Smolo finally asked the question he had come to ask.
“Has Wendy ever done anything in her life that someone could use to hurt her with? She ever crossed a line? Maybe way back.”
Emily seemed to harden again. “My sister and I are very different. But I wouldn’t hurt her. We’re the only family either of us has.”
Surprised, Smolonsky said, “I didn’t mean you were threatening her. Is that what you thought?”
She stared back at him, wavering, Smolo sensed, about how much to help versus not getting involved. He wondered why.
“Has someone else been here?” he asked. “Trying to find things out about your sister?”
She shook her head. “No. No one has been here.” And with a sigh she said, “Look, Wendy and I have different lives. I just want to stay out of hers.”
“I need your help,” he tried one last time. “No one claims to know anything. And I don’t have a lot of time.”
Emily held his gaze but didn’t offer much more. “My sister was a child hero around here. She took on the government and won, raised her orphan sister, put herself through college and law school, and then slew dragons in the army. Everyone in Tucson loves her. Even Democrats.”
“Not everyone,” Smolo said.
“Well, I can’t help you. And your time’s up.”
Upton finished her soda water with one long gulp, slid out of the booth, and headed toward the bar without a look back.
AS HE SAT IN HIS RENTED HYUNDAI, the day swam around in Smolo’s mind—Emily, the finance guy Farmer, and the others he had seen—an old law school classmate, the county Democratic and Republican Party chairs, and a college friend. He made another call to the local PI, Dixon, who didn’t answer.
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