He did his best to pull himself out his funk. The Winston News needed to print its next edition whatever his mental state. The masthead boasted that the paper had been publishing since 1896 and it would not do to break the string. And he needed to get busy selling for the Old Fashioned River Days special edition which would be distributed at the festival’s opening ceremonies and which carried so many ads it often determined whether the newspaper made or lost money for the entire year. The News literally couldn’t afford to fall short there, not with the prospective new buyers in the midst of due diligence checking every dollar of revenue and dime of expense. If it was usually the difference between profit and loss, this year the section was the difference between selling for a reasonable amount and being forced to unload the News at a fire-sale price.
It hit him that Katie’s diagnosis could change everything. If she did face a year of treatment and rehabilitation, then not being a one-armed paperhanger at the weekly newspaper was a very good thing. On the other hand, a move would mean changing Katie’s doctors mid-treatment. And what about health insurance? His head spun.
Josh found his voice mail light blinking and a note from a carrier and a misprinted copy of the News pinned to his desk chair when he arrived at the office.
Mr. Gibbs, this is what they give me to deliver to my customers. Can you talk with someone about it? This is just terrible to have to deliver this type of paper to my customers. I been with the News for the last ten years off and on and this is the worst I seen.
Josh sighed. Checking voice mail could wait. Too soon to hear from Pepper and any other calls were almost guaranteed to mean another distraction. He assumed the misprint problem wasn’t widespread and he had until Thursday to smooth the feathers of the carrier before the next edition. Sales for the River Days special section, on the other hand, could not wait.
He started with his most likely prospects—the businesses that had advertised in the section the previous year. The bank which held the mortgage on the newspaper building renewed for page three. The Recovery Metals plant reserved its usual full-page ad. A metal recycling facility and foundry, the plant bought plenty of classified employment advertising in the Winston News but since it sold nothing directly to the public, this was the only display ad it ran all year, its purpose simply to generate goodwill by showing support for a very popular local event. The car dealerships quickly fell into place, as did the furniture store. The Cotter Funeral Home, a regular, tried to pull out on the grounds that a funeral wasn’t an impulse buy but Gibbs reminded owner Mark Cotter that the River Days issue was a keepsake in many households, sure to be close at hand year-round.
He ran into unexpected resistance from Woody Conroy, this year’s Chamber of Commerce head whose River City Appliance store had taken the back cover—the most expensive piece of real estate in the section because of its high visibility—for as long as anyone could remember. “Okay,” Conroy said when he finally relented. “But this ad really needs to pay off for us.”
“It worked last time. I bought a refrigerator from you.”
At the end of the day Tuesday, Josh dealt with the nagging voice mail light. It was Allison, asking for an update on Katie. He’d call her tomorrow when, hopefully, there would be news to pass on.
“The Chair recognizes the member from Illinois.”
One of the country’s best-known congressmen rose on the half-empty floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. Nearby, a representative from California scrolled through the Sporting News on an iPad concealed within a copy of Congressional Quarterly. A knot of members huddled near the Speaker’s chair erupted in guffaws at the conclusion of a colleague’s joke. The Illinois representative propped a poster of a half-dozen mug shots on an easel and launched into speech lauding outstanding federal employees, undeterred that no one was listening.
Congressman Harry Dorn yawned. His Illinois colleague really wasn’t that bad a guy. Too bad his political career was about to be cut short, and by scandal at that.
Dorn pushed away from his desk—a real conversation piece since it contained a bullet hole from 1954 when Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the balcony and injured five members—and made his way to his party’s cloakroom, the hallway-like area just off the floor housing easy chairs, a row of dark wood phone booths, portraits of partisan heroes, political cartoons lampooning the opposition and a snack bar, recently outfitted with two flat screen televisions. The two House cloakrooms were the political parties’ clubhouses, havens during official sessions where members like Dorn could suck down a cigarette, take a phone call or engineer a deal away from public view.
Dorn grabbed one of the cloakroom’s official yellow phone message pads. He filled in the Illinois representative’s name. He checked the boxes labeled ‘Returned Your Call’ and ‘Please Call Back’ and wrote down a phone number he had seen in one of DC’s alternative newspapers.
A recess followed the Illinois congressman’s speech. Dorn crowded on to an elevator with his colleagues who were were set upon by a gaggle of reporters as soon as they stepped off at the basement floor. Dorn let the yellow phone message fall from his hand, confident that when the crowd moved on, some enterprising reporter would find it. The number would be called and the Illinois congressman would be linked to the phone number of a gay escort service.
It didn’t matter whether the congressman had ever patronized the service. In fact, Dorn assumed he hadn’t. But the note would raise the question. Actual indiscretions might surface and if not, gossip would take over. It would not play well in the congressman’s conservative downstate district.
Personally, Dorn was not specifically opposed to gays. He understood there were a number of them closeted among his colleagues, even on his side of the aisle. But the representative had crossed him one too many times, most recently voting against Dorn’s energy bill which he had previously promised to support. Outing was the price. Of course, his well-honed leak technique ensured that no one would have any way of connecting the assassination to Harry Dorn.
Four hours later Dorn was boarding a Cessna Citation V for a trip back to the district. His phone rang just as he reached the top of the gangway. He couldn’t believe his ears.
“No black people?” he exploded into the phone. “What the hell do you mean there won’t be any black people?” He put his hand over the mouthpiece and handed the phone to Clendenin. “Fix it.”
Dorn selected one of the plush leather seats and stretched out. He could afford to. Of the eight seats on this particular plane, only three were occupied this Tuesday night—by himself, by Clendenin, now across the aisle, and further to the rear, by another aide. The curtain between the cabin and the cockpit slid open and the co-pilot emerged. “Drink, sir?”
“Scotch.” Dorn nodded to Clendenin who was still on the phone. “One for him, too.” Dorn looked at Joel Richey, the aide in the back. “Nothing for him.”
His cabin mates couldn’t be more different, Dorn thought. Peering at maps and screens of polling data through horned-rimmed glasses while working his calculator and Blackberry, Dan Clendenin looked like the reigning genius of American political strategists. Snoring, with his hair uncombed, his tie askew and his mouth open, Joel Richey looked like what he was—a deadweight slacker who owed his position to his father’s campaign contributions, an irritating daily reminder that money came with strings and could lead to problems—like a TV commercial with no blacks in the crowd shots.
Strategists. Gurus. Aides. Advisers. He could barely keep track of them all. He’d always had a fair-size office staff, dozens of different people if he thought back over the years, bright-eyed young people who came to Washington looking for glamour and believing that they could make a difference. A few stayed—those like Richey who couldn’t