Senate Cloakroom Cabal (2 page)

Across the street, a woman looking from a second-floor window witnessed the mugging and immediately called 911. She watched as the assaulter hurriedly rifled the victim's pockets and then dragged the lifeless body off the sidewalk, rolling it down the short flight of stairs that led to an English basement apartment. The mugger picked up a briefcase and ran off, just as the witness's emergency call was answered.

2

T
om Kelly sat patiently in his black leather chair behind an immense, mahogany desk. He stared at the back of a wiry man of medium height dressed in a hand-tailored, silk suit, the cost of which could feed a family of six for three months. The lobbyist was looking out the window that faced the US Capitol.

“I've always admired this view of the Capitol Dome from your vantage point, Tom,” Stanley Horowitz, the top pharmaceutical lobbyist in Washington, said, turning to look at the Senate majority leader. “It's awesomely patriotic and inspiring, especially at night with the lights shining on it.”

Kelly smiled. He always preferred to meet the feisty lobbyist here, in his private senate office, instead of his more public office as majority leader. Kelly had occupied this space for the last twelve of his twenty-two years in the Senate. Black-and-white photos of smiling faces adorned his walls . . . trophies of a gilded past.

He said, “That it is, Stanley. However, I'd trade this view in a heartbeat for the one looking south at the Washington Monument.”

Horowitz smirked. “Can you actually see the Washington Monument from the Oval Office? I can't remember.”

“You can see it clearly from the president's bedroom.”

“Ah, to wake up and see the rising sun reflecting off that white obelisk.”

Kelly laughed. “Don't go poetic on me, Stanley. I can't stomach it.”

“Poetic I'm not, Tom, but a realist I am.”

And so much more,
Kelly thought. The pharmaceutical lobbyist was a hard-nosed bastard. He had no soft edges. Even his smile had down-turned lines.

“And for you to realize your fondest dreams of waking up and catching that view,” Kelly said, sweeping his hand toward the window, “we need to tend to business.”

“Senator Dalton is a member of
your
caucus
not
on board, and for that I blame her overly eager administrative assistant, Michael Horne. He's the one doing the digging.”

“She'll come around,” Kelly half mumbled.

“Aren't there a couple of other wafflers?” Horowitz snapped.

“Gavin Crawford and Jean Witherspoon are cautious senators. Nevertheless, they always follow the caucus when unanimity is required. They were never not on board, Stanley.”

Horowitz moved to the front of Kelly's desk. Leaning in against it, he said emphatically, “It wouldn't look good for a potential presidential nominee to be incapable of roping in his own senators on something so simple.”

“It's a done deal,” Kelly said indifferently, meeting the pharma's gaze. Horowitz thrived on intimidation. Kelly often wondered what the man's life had been like before he had built his high-priced law firm and taken over the pharmaceutical lobby. He was considered to have more power than any non-legislator on the Hill.

Horowitz's eyes were like slits. “Rogers's cancer drug
cannot
be approved. We've done our job on the FDA's administrative committee. They like the tens of thousands of reasons we've given them to see it
our
way, and I don't want—”

“Harley Rogers is a tough old egg, admired.”

“He doesn't have the clout of a two-year-old. His crumbling company proves that,” Horowitz said intensely, some of his spittle landing on Kelly's desk.

“He's a decent, well-respected guy, Stanley.”

“Don't get all wishy-washy on me, Tom,” Horowitz warned. “It doesn't become you. Harley Rogers went back on his promise to reduce the scope of Tutoxtamen to curing only one of the cancers. He tricked us into thinking he was going along. Well, now he'll suffer the consequences. Do you understand what a ninety percent cure rate would do to the economy?” he asked, as he slapped the desk for emphasis.

“Rogers wants to become a damned historical figure, the creator of a miracle cure. The Salk vaccine would look like a cough drop compared to what his drug would do. You damn well better not weaken on me, Tom.”

The majority leader coolly suppressed a desire to stomp the arrogant egomaniac into the rug. “I am not weakening, Stanley. I just wish it didn't have to be Harley.”

“Well, it is! His drug can never see the light of day. We need unanimous support from your party, up front, to give backbone to those squeamish FDA prigs. A couple of them are already waffling.”

“Fred Pembroke assures me the FDA will stamp it
not approvable
and send it into the purgatory of your dreams,” Kelly said smoothly. “And don't worry about Dalton either; she'll come around. She may be pure as the driven snow, but her husband was no saint. We can use that if . . . We'll be FDA's firewall, Stanley,” Kelly said assuringly.

And for emphasis, Kelly leaned forward in his chair. “Tutoxtamen will get buried in bureaucracy.”

3

M
y weekday mornings for the past three months had consisted of seeing my husband Jerry off to work and caring for my infant son Tyler. Today, my maternity leave was behind me, but my M concentration on readying myself to go back to work was nonexistent. In all my previous years as a newspaper reporter, I'd never had domestic responsibilities. Now I was beginning the life of a working mother.

In our three-plus years of marriage, Jerry and I either had lived on his Catalina 350 sailboat,
Scalawag
, docked in Washington's southeast marina or in my one bedroom apartment in the Cleveland Park section of the nation's capital. Last fall, with Tyler's birth imminent, we'd purchased a house in suburban Arlington, Virginia, which gave us a short walk to the Clarendon Metrorail station.

We were still furnishing the house, but lived comfortably, and I'd thoroughly enjoyed my first three months of motherhood. Even with all of that, right now I felt like I was in an alien land. Today, I would not be playing with Tyler, taking him for a stroll, doing laundry, giving him baths, or cleaning up after him. No, this was the day I would be turning him over to the care of a nanny.

I went to the top of the stairs and called down to Jerry. “Did you tell Anna to be here at 8:30?”

“Yes, Laura,” my husband answered in a most placating tone. “It's the same time it was the last time you asked.” He answered from the dining room, where I was sure he was playing with Tyler.

“Smart-ass,” I muttered under my breath and returned to our bedroom to finish getting ready.

Jerry insisted he drive me in this morning. It wasn't as if I hadn't made this trip before. In fact, I used Metro when I took Tyler to the paper, just before Christmas, to show off my then one-month-old son. It was an easy commute, which had been one of our geographical criteria when home-shopping, for which we'd paid a healthy real estate premium.

I checked myself over in our floor-length mirror on the inside of our closet door. I had decided for today that I'd wear my navy blue skirt suit. Normally, I dressed casual. After a quick examination, I thought I looked fine, even if I was five pounds heavier than the last time I'd worn it.

I picked up my purse and checked its contents. No cell phone! A spike of adrenaline shot through me as I began a frantic search, then stopped almost as fast. It was in the kitchen sitting in its charger—the same spot I put it every day. I heard Jerry's voice. Anna must have arrived. I checked the clock radio on the nightstand: 8:23. I liked that she was early. I went downstairs and found Jerry with Tyler in his arms, talking slowly to Anna. Jerry was wearing his Tyler apron.

Anna wasn't brand new to me. She had come to the house for short visits over the past two weeks, so she and Tyler could bond and I could get to know her. It was an easy way to acquaint her with where things were and what Tyler liked. I liked Anna. I was just being my normal apprehensive self, scared to death.

I had just turned thirty-seven when Tyler was born, and he could be the only child I bear. In my life before Jerry, I rarely dated and had no interest in marriage. Then Max Walsh, captain of homicide for the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), introduced us.

I know that seems unusual, our relationship with Max—I, a newspaper reporter and Jerry, a defense attorney. Not the type of people cops normally befriended.

I'd gotten to know Max from covering homicides in Washington. When I'd joined the
Washington Daily Star
, I'd already been a beat reporter in other cities for ten years and knew my way around murder investigations. Max and I had soon formed a professional rapport. We would even brown-bag-it occasionally in a park close to the newspaper.

About a year or so later, he introduced me to Jerry. I've never forgiven him for taking so long. I fell head-over-heels in love. It was a sort of destiny thing. Max stood up for us at the wedding and was Tyler's godfather.

“Good morning,” I said cheerily, when I reached the first floor.

“Good morning,” Anna said haltingly, with a smile. Her English was so-so, but we'd worked out some short phrases and words for her to use if she needed to call my cell, which would be the way we'd communicate: cell to cell. She wouldn't answer the house phone.

His eyes bright and happy, Tyler squirmed in Jerry's arms as I approached him.
That's right young fella, you just keep remembering I'm
your mama.
I took him carefully, holding him out so that some misdirected food morsel on his bib didn't transfer to my dark jacket. I gave him a big smooch, then handed him over to Anna.

“Don't forget your cell phone, hon.” Jerry knew my mind and knew it was going off in a myriad of directions. In fact, he had sat me down last night for a little “chat.”

“I noticed over the weekend a definite change in you. You're fretting.
Tyler couldn't be in better hands with Anna. You . . . what makes you, you
. . . your diligence and caring . . . your brilliance and flakiness, sometimes
simultaneously, is what separates you from everybody else. I'm in awe
of your talent as a writer and a mother. Editor Lassiter evidenced your
professionalism by nominating you for a Pulitzer. Going to work tomorrow
is not a worrisome situation.”
He had then escorted me upstairs and made love to me. I returned my mind to the present. “Remember, Anna, call me anytime. Okay?”

Anna smiled. “Si, eh, yes.”

With one apprehension taken care of, I shifted my concerns over to what Avery Lassiter, my editor, might have in store for me. She'd told me last week that I wouldn't be getting any beat assignments. I suspected that may have been somebody else's decision because she knew I liked being a beat reporter, and that I'd go back to it in a minute, regardless of any celebrity I'd gained from breaking last year's serial killer case.

Jerry nudged me and handed me my cell phone. “It's time.”

4

T
wo men sat in a parked black SUV with heavily tinted glass inside the FDA's parking garage in Rockville, Maryland. It was well past quitting time. A cell phone rang and the passenger answered it.

“Yeah.” He listened and then punched off. Without saying a word, he nodded to the driver who started the engine and drove up three levels.

“There,” the driver said, “the silver sedan . . . those are the plates we're looking for.”

“Okay. Pull up there,” the passenger said, indicating an empty bay straight ahead at the ninety-degree corner of the ramp. “This'll give us a perfect line of sight to where people come out from the elevator.”

The SUV's darkened windows made it almost impossible to see inside. The driver backed it into the bay, about twenty-five yards from the silver sedan. Within minutes, a woman and two men in business attire emerged from the elevator.

“There's Hank and our mark,” the driver said. “Hope the woman's not with the mark.”

After a few steps, she went to her right and down the ramp. Only the mark and Hank were walking up the ramp. Hank quickly glanced toward the woman to be sure she wouldn't blow his mission. All was clear. He picked up his pace in the direction of his prey. The unsuspecting man pulled out his keys, and the rear lights of his sedan flashed on as his car unlocked. Hank was only a few steps behind him.

As the mark reached his parking slot, the SUV's passenger slid out and moved rapidly toward him. He and Hank were on their man in an instant. The SUV moved behind the sedan.

The driver of the SUV put it in park and moved quickly around the back, opening the right side door as his cohorts shoved the now limp body into the rear seat. The driver then handed Hank a plastic coverall, shoe covers, and gloves to put on before he got in the mark's car.

Hank knew the drill and rapidly stepped into and zipped up the coveralls, affixed the shoe covers, and moved to the kidnapped man's car.

“Hey, Hank, the gloves. If the car don't blow up on impact . . .”

“Yeah, yeah,” Hank mumbled, but did as told, and the SUV driver got back behind the steering wheel. His partner, already in the back, pulled his door closed. Hank, fully covered, got in the car, while the SUV slowly moved away and down the ramp.

Hank backed out onto the ramp as a woman appeared from the elevator lobby, but her attention was in her purse. He pulled forward and followed the SUV out of the garage.

5

T
he Christmas holidays were a distant memory for me. Tyler was nearly fourteen weeks old, and I had been back at work for a whole week. I longed for the balmy days of spring as I walked all bundled up in subfreezing temperatures toward Wilson Boulevard and Clarendon's restaurant row. The blustery winds added to the harsh reality that this was the third Saturday in February.