Favorite Sons (34 page)

It was odd, I thought, that of the four of us, Pepper, the most outgoing and carefree member of our gang, and Deak, the most introspective and serious, and the two who had almost come to blows in the days after Petey Sanchez's death, were the two who stayed in closest contact. “What did he tell you?”

“That Uncle Jack claims to know what happened up on the hill and he's blackmailing you.”

“True, but it's a little more complicated than that.”

“How so?”

I hated for the words to come out of my mouth. “There's another young boy involved—physically disabled, mentally retarded, unable to speak.”

“A new low for Uncle Jack.” Deak's hands tightened on the steering wheel; he clenched his teeth and exhaled long and slow, producing a rattling whistle like a heating tea kettle. “What's the connection?”

“The boy lives in my jurisdiction. Your uncle is under investigation for assault, but to date there hasn't been enough information to charge him. Vukovich told me that if I pursue the case he's going to give the story to the papers. He's already called the
Beacon Journal
and gave a reporter Petey's name to research.”

“How does this involve us? Oh wait, I bet I know. If he goes to the paper, you want us all to continue the ruse so that it doesn't upset your chances of winning the election?”

“That's kind of a callous remark coming from a man of the cloth.”

He kept his eyes focused on the road. From the moment Jack Vukovich said he had an “issue” with the Portage Township Police Department, there was one person who I most dreaded telling, and now I was sitting in a car with him. I recalled very clearly the comment Deak made decades earlier: Jack Vukovich should be put away so he can never hurt another kid.

I took a breath and exhaled slowly. “How come you never told me that your uncle had molested you?”

He glanced briefly at me, then back to the road. “How do you know he did?”

“I'm a prosecutor, Deak. I don't ask questions that I don't already know the answers to.”

He nodded. “Uncle Jack tell you about that, too?”

“No, I was doing some research today and happened upon Vukovich's prosecution file. The transcript of your interview with Children Services was part of the packet.”

“So, you went ahead and read it?”

“I didn't go looking for it, Deak. It was just there, for Christ's sake. Why didn't you ever say anything about it?”

“You know, it's not exactly a badge of honor for a fifteen-year-old. It's certainly not the kind of thing you want your buddies to know. It was beyond humiliating. It still is.”

“You were a victim, Deak. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Spare me the sermon, Hutch. I've lived with this all my life. Jack Vukovich is a monster. He should never have been let out of prison. I can't believe you're even weighing this in your mind. You'd ignore a molestation to further your political career? That disgusts me. I thought I knew you better than that.”

“I can't charge someone with a crime simply because someone thinks he might have done it. We have a little thing in this country called due process.”

“Due process. What a joke. Do his victims get due process?” His forearms again tightened on the steering wheel. “He used to come over to the house; he always smelled like mold, like a damp basement. He would sit at the kitchen table, talking to my mom, stirring his coffee, maybe working the crossword puzzle. Then he would ask what shift Dad was working in the mill. It didn't seem like anything but casual conversation, but he was planning out his next attack. If I knew when he might come around, I tried not to be there, but sometimes I had to stay and babysit. He would come over and bend me over the sink so he could watch the girls playing in the backyard.” Deak looked at me, his nostrils flaring like he was fighting back tears, and maybe the urge to spit. “It wasn't something I wanted to discuss then and I don't really want to discuss it now. I've forgiven my uncle. I couldn't do my job if I didn't forgive him. ‘For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also
forgive you: But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.' The gospel of Matthew.”

I looked back out the window. “It takes a big man to forgive someone for such an egregious act.”

He shrugged. “Anger does nothing but rot your soul. You have to let go of it. I've moved on with my life. He can't help himself. That's the way he's wired, which is exactly why I didn't want him to ever get out of prison. And now my biggest fear has been realized. He's out of prison and he's molested another child.”

“I can only do what I can do under the constraints of the law.”

“That's fine, if you can live with the possibility—the certainty, actually—that he will molest other children. I work with abused kids every day, Hutch. Come on over and spend some time in my shoes and then make your decision.”

“I'm a prosecuting attorney, Deak. I've seen plenty of abused children.”

“Then you should have plenty of empathy.” We pulled into the hotel parking lot and got out. “I'll walk you to your room. The pain meds must be kicking in. Your eyes are looking a little glassy.”

The sound of racing fire trucks echoed in the background. We walked around the back of the Stoney Hollow Motel, which was built on a bluff where the hillside had been sheared away to create the road years earlier. I liked staying on the back side of hotels because it afforded me privacy. Unfortunately, it afforded privacy to others, too. When I opened the door, the room had been torn apart, but in an odd way. The contents of my suitcase had been emptied on the floor and were strewn around the room and my hanging clothes, two suits and three shirts, had been ripped from the closets. But the drawers from the dresser and nightstand were neatly stacked atop one another, and the mattress and box springs had been taken off the bed and stacked against the wall, as though with great care. Deak stepped into the room behind me. “You've had visitors. What's with the neatly stacked drawers?”

“They were trying to be quiet.”

“What were they looking for?”

“I imagine the same thing the guys who thumped me were looking for.”

“Which was . . . ?”

“I don't know.” That was a lie. I knew exactly what they wanted. “Are you going to call the police?”

“No. I didn't want a police record of getting thumped. I don't need one of my room getting ransacked. My laptop and money were in the car. It doesn't look like they took anything in here, either.”

“I'm not sure I would want your life,” Deak said. An emergency vehicle flew by the motel, siren blaring, its red and blue lights flashing off the chiseled hillside. “I wonder what's going on?” We walked around the corner of the hotel to see a plume of gray smoke billowing out of the downtown, reminiscent of the days when the steel mills blazed. The reflection of orange and red flares danced off the old Fort Steuben Hotel. “Want to take a ride?”

“Why not?” I said.

Downtown Steubenville was awash with flashing lights, the central two blocks of the city blocked off by police cars. We parked on North Commercial Street and walked down an alley that ran behind the courthouse. I knew what building was burning before we were close enough to see. The three-story, brick warehouse that was the repository for the county's records looked like a giant chimney, the flames and smoke pouring out its roof. It had been an inferno for quite a while before someone noticed the blaze and called the fire department. Fire fighters manning the hoses sent heavy streams of water arcing over the rim of the building, but to little avail.

“Heck of a fire,” Deak said. “I wonder what the building's used for?”

“To store old county records.”

“How do you know that?”

“I was in there looking around earlier today.”

“Is that where you saw the file on Petey Sanchez?” I nodded. “Don't you think it's strange that it would burn the same day you were there?”

“It might not be as strange as you would imagine.”

Cutting across the parking lot to the north of the courthouse was Alfred Botticelli Junior, and his goon of a deputy, who was now dressed in jeans and a golf shirt. “Evening, Reverend.”

“Hello, Mr. Botticelli.”

“A tragic loss for the county,” Botticelli said, turning to me. “All those records destroyed. Of course, we'll launch an investigation into the cause. Mr. Van Buren, I understand that you were given a key to the building earlier in the day?”

“You know I was. I put it squarely in your hand.”

He shook his head. “I don't know what you're talking about. You didn't give me a key.” He turned to the goon. “Deputy, you were there. Did you see Mr. Van Buren give me a key to the warehouse?”

“I have no recollection of that.”

“Tsk, tsk,” Botticelli said, grinning. “I guess we'll be talking again soon.”

T
he knocking on the door began at 7:15 a.m. The painkilling drugs had knocked me out and it took a few moments to come to my senses. There were dried bloodstains on my pillow; my mouth throbbed; my nose felt as though it stretched from ear to ear. The sun was filtering through the windows. The knocking continued. “Coming,” I groaned. It was too early to be housekeeping. This was the deliberate knock of someone demanding attention. I staggered to the door and opened it as far as the safety chain would allow.

Standing tall, trim, smiling, was the dapper chairman of the United States House of Representatives's Ways and Means Committee, Alfred Botticelli Senior. “Are you sleeping away the day?” he asked.

I squinted. There was another man standing behind him, hands folded over his crotch, wearing sunglasses, as erect and nattily attired as the congressman. I said, “I had a bit of a tough night.”

“You know who I am?” he asked.

“Of course.”

He nodded. “Good. I'd like to talk to you.”

I was standing behind the door in nothing but my briefs, and I was not about to allow a U.S. congressman in the room. “Give me fifteen minutes. I'll meet you in the restaurant.”

He continued to smile, but his tone was stern. “I'm a busy man, Mr. Van Buren. Make it ten minutes.”

Alfred Botticelli was one of the most powerful members of the United States Congress, where he had reigned for twenty-six years. After two terms as the Jefferson County prosecuting attorney, he won the congressional seat in the largely Democratic stronghold of Eastern Ohio. He had been unopposed in Democratic primaries since his first term, and his Republican challengers were little more than sacrificial lambs. He had been the target of numerous ethics investigations, most for questionable financial dealings, but not one of the probes had produced a shred of tangible evidence that he had done anything illegal. He called the investigations “witch hunts” being conducted by his political enemies. The media had dubbed him “Teflon Al” for the way the allegations slid off him.

Despite his challenges within the halls of Congress, he was much beloved in his district. Named in his honor in Jefferson County alone there were no fewer than two baseball fields, three streets, the wing of a hospital, an elementary school, a senior citizens center, a bridge, a heliport, a portion of a highway, and at least three male offspring of loyal Democrats.

His power had been accrued by his longevity and, in part, his ability to collect information on friend and foe. Botticelli had an affable, disarming manner and called those he encountered, particularly freshman congressmen, “my old friend” or “padnah.” He would drape an arm around their shoulders and make them feel as though they were the most important person in the world. Ultimately, they would fall prey to his charm, let their guard down, and take him into their confidence. This was their downfall.

In the world of Machiavellian, cutthroat politics, he was an undisputed master. In public, he would smile and joke and pat his fellow representatives on the back. In the confines of his congressional office, he would continue to smile while twisting the balls of anyone who dared oppose him. When one such opponent called him a son of a bitch, Botticelli smiled and said, “I didn't come here to make friends, padnah.”

Botticelli charted with amazing accuracy the weaknesses of congressmen, senators, lobbyists, even presidents. And being a member of the Democratic Party did not exempt you from his data base. Botticelli innately understood the fickleness of Washington,
D.C., and national politics. A man who is your ally today could very well be your enemy tomorrow. In his office safe he hid a journal that contained decades of indiscretions by his colleagues. He collected information on their infidelities and with whom, who took bribes, who were tax cheats, and any other scrap of information that he could someday use to his advantage. Once it was known that he craved such information, he became a clearinghouse for the misdeeds of anyone tied to the Washington power scene. Snitches sent him anonymous snippets of information, photographs of congressmen leaving hotel rooms late at night, photocopies of bank receipts from the Cayman Islands. It made him one of the most powerful, feared, and despised men in Washington.

By the time I cleaned up and arrived at the hotel restaurant thirteen minutes later, Botticelli was seated in a corner booth, a newspaper on the corner of his table, a cup of coffee wrapped in his right fingers. The aide was seated at a table in the middle of the room, his eyes drilling me the moment I walked into the room. I slipped into the vinyl bench across from Botticelli. He began speaking, but kept his eyes focused on his newspaper. “I didn't realize we were dealing with a big celebrity,” he said. “You're going to be the next attorney general of the state of Ohio.”

Botticelli's lips were thin and did a poor job of hiding a mouth full of large teeth that clicked together as he spoke. When he smiled the lips all but disappeared and his mouth took on the perpetual death-grin appearance of a sun-dried corpse. His hair was white and not a strand out of place.