“Why the hell are gas prices so high in this state? Christ, we’ve got more refineries up and down this highway than the whole damn Gulf coast. Gas should be dirt cheap here, shouldn’t it?”
The countless brilliant white lights of the ConocoPhillips plant reflect like galaxies off the windshield, as the dark grey Suburban rolls up the New Jersey Turnpike, drifts into the right lane, and slows slightly to take Exit 13 into Elizabeth. It’s just passing through dusk and the refinery lights gleam like eternal Christmas in the deepening purple of the Jersey evening, punctuated periodically by the hellish outrage of a gas flare hurling three-story flames into the air. Bill Preston stares out the passenger-side window and says nothing more for the moment. His breathing is labored and audible in the near-silence of the vehicle. Benning, his aide, sits in the back seat, suddenly struck with a bout of panic, unsure whether his candidate has offered a rhetorical observation or is asking a genuine question, the latter of which, if true, means research and a long night, since actual questions from the candidate invariably mean answers by the following morning, and in excruciating detail. Just as Benning has convinced himself that it’s rhetoric and that he might actually manage his first real date in six weeks, Preston exhales loudly and turns his head slightly toward the back seat.
“That’s the sort of thing a gubernatorial candidate ought to have a cogent answer to, don’t you think, Benning?”
The slightest of pauses. “Absolutely, sir,” Benning replies, cursing silently and mentally beginning to draft the call he will now need to make to his future ex-girlfriend as soon as they arrive at campaign headquarters. It isn’t the sort of call he can make now, not within earshot of the candidate, not with the sort of editorializing the conversation will doubtless entail.
They ride in silence for a few minutes before Preston speaks again. “Where do we stand on the Pembroke thing?”
The ‘Pembroke thing’ had begun as a campaign-rocking story on the front page of the May 29th edition of the Star Ledger, and had been discussed at considerable length during a private meeting that evening between the candidate and his campaign manager. Most of the campaign staffers had already bolted to get an early start on the long holiday weekend, but for the candidate and his campaign manager it was just another long night in the endless succession of long nights that comprise every political campaign.
“Pretty disturbing stuff,” Gus Probandt had offered with a wry smile most would have found inappropriate to the gravity of the situation. As campaign manager, one of his many duties was the handling of anything that could be in any way construed as a scandal, and it was an element of his role that he embraced with deadly seriousness. Probandt had a Masters in Public Policy from The Kennedy School, and had written his thesis on campaign corruption, with special emphasis on Louisiana, a state he had lived and managed campaigns in for a decade following graduation. He had been in New Jersey for nearly another decade since and, while no Louisiana, the state ran a healthy second in political scandals.
In the days immediately preceding Preston’s declaration of candidacy and his prompt hiring of Probandt as manager, the candidate had agreed to undergo a rigorous vetting interview, conducted by Probandt and a consultant brought in specially for the occasion. During this no-holds-barred, three-hour discussion, the would-be governor had been asked every conceivable manner of question about his background, regardless of how embarrassing or invasive. It was a process he had ostensibly signed on for without reservation, current political wisdom being that it was better to go into a campaign with everyone’s eyes fully open to any past indiscretion that might otherwise be unearthed by the competition. Were his academic achievements legitimate? Had he engaged in any extramarital activities? Had he made statements—verbal or written—at any time in the past that might prove embarrassing or at odds with positions he now espoused? Was there any pornography or other compromising material on any of his computers that might be discovered by an enterprising hacker? And they had pried with particular verve into his five years as chair of the State Budget and Appropriations Committee, a position of tremendous power and one that afforded access to the state’s coffers, with all the potential temptations attending thereto. It was in some respects regarded as a perfunctory exercise, since his preceding decades in the state senate almost certainly guaranteed that any dirt of significance would have been unearthed long ago. Preston had nevertheless emerged from the session with the distinct feeling of having been violated, but sporting a clean bill of health. Probandt had accepted the role of campaign manager on the strength of that outcome.
William Preston, six-term state senator from Woodbridge, representative of the 19th Legislative District, and Chair of the Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, was running an uphill gubernatorial campaign against the incumbent and popular Republican Sam Rasmussen. The best he had done in the preceding three months of campaigning was to close the gap to within eight percentage points. Rasmussen had more money, more name recognition, and more legislative support, and was expected to walk back into the state house for a second term. When the NJDSC had approached Preston a month before the filing deadline to ask if he was interested in a run, his first reaction had been to laugh. But the laughing had stopped abruptly when the Democratic State Committee rep had committed on the spot to an initial bankroll of twelve million dollars and a guarantee of whatever support was needed to raise the additional twenty million it would likely take to win the governor’s mansion. In addition to the money, the DSC rep said he had one more thing besides money. He had a story.
“This is New Jersey,” Preston had replied. “We’ve got a lot of stories.”
“Yeah,” the rep had said, “I’m sure you do. Do any of your stories have sitting governors screwing around with Atlantic City hookers?”
Preston had stories about concrete, trash hauling, highway repair contracts, and plenty of unaccounted-for state funds, but he had to confess that he didn’t have any that involved governors and hookers.
“Well,” said the rep, “perhaps I can add to your repertoire of stories then.”
And so Preston had shaken hands, filled out the filing forms, and launched his campaign. The first poll, taken six days after the announcement, had the incumbent up by twenty-seven points. But that was March, a full eight months before the election. A lot could happen in eight months, and the first big decision the Preston campaign had had to make was when to go public with the DSC guy’s story, one that, as it turned out, included a particularly compelling combination of voicemail recordings, emails, text messages, and—the piece de resistance—a forty-five-second video clip shot during a particularly indiscreet VIP room encounter in one of the less-well-known casinos off Atlantic City’s main drag. Some on the campaign argued for pushing out the story right away, in the belief that the longer the graphic details could fester in voters’ minds, the more pronounced the effects would be. Others felt it would work better as an October surprise. The impatient contingent won the day, and the story hit the Star Ledger’s front page and WWOR’s early evening broadcast on the second Monday in April. The results were predictable in some ways and utterly inexplicable in others.
There was the expected outrage over mud slinging from Rasmussen’s office. The video went viral and reached five million views on YouTube within the first forty-eight hours of being released. There were calls for Rasmussen to not only abandon his reelection campaign but to immediately resign the governorship. There were detailed and salacious interviews with the prostitute (face and voice disguised throughout her several appearances), who took about an hour and a half to locate in a Motel 6 near the south on-ramp to the Ben Franklin Bridge in Camden. And, following the initial seventy-two-hour media feeding frenzy, there came the inevitable press conference by the governor himself. Which is when things got weird.
New Jersey isn’t Alabama or Georgia, and so politicians there, even Republican ones, don’t typically make a big deal out of their religious proclivities. But once the story broke, it quickly became a tantalizing side note that the governor was, in fact, an evangelical Christian, a fact that the Preston campaign was, of course, well aware of and which they felt, to a person, would add another couple of nails to a political coffin that was already well and truly under construction. What they didn’t count on was something the news networks quickly dubbed the Jim Baker factor. When the story first broke that Monday afternoon in April, Rasmussen had been leading Preston by twenty-nine points and was pulling away. Within twenty-four hours of the story breaking, the lead had been slashed to twelve points and was down to seven the day after that. And then Rasmussen did a phenomenal thing, something the Preston campaign never saw coming. He called a press conference that was covered by not only all the New Jersey networks, but CNN as well, and during that press conference he performed the biggest mea culpa to hit New Jersey politics since, well since never, truth be told.
He stood at the podium with his wife by his side and swore that it was all true, exactly as the networks and the newspapers had described it. He was only a man, as vulnerable to temptation as any other, and he had made a terrible mistake, one that he hoped his wife and family, as well as the good people of New Jersey, could forgive him for. He had been entrusted with a sacred obligation when he had been voted governor three years earlier and he had clearly violated that trust. He apologized to the prostitute, to the members of his church, and to God-fearing Christians everywhere. He wept openly and swore that he would abide by the wishes of the people of his state, even if that meant paying for his transgressions by being forced to end his political career. After twenty-six minutes of the greatest political theater to hit Trenton in the state’s history, he stepped away from the podium and into what he felt sure was the final week of his career. And damned if forty-eight hours later his gap in the election poll hadn’t opened back up to nineteen points. The Preston campaign learned two valuable lessons from the experience. The lesson they learned in the immediate aftermath of the press conference was that the people of New Jersey were more forgiving than anyone had any right to expect from them. And the lesson they learned in the somewhat longer term was that they had been played by the governor, and that he himself was one unforgiving son of a bitch.
It turned out that the governor’s office had access to researchers as well, more, in fact, than Preston’s campaign had, and within ten days of the governor’s press conference they had set about making it their life’s mission to return the favor that Preston had dealt to the governor’s campaign. “That bastard’s been in the state senate for twenty-two years, so there’s something there. Just like Willie Stark said in All the King’s Men, ‘There is always something.’ First one of you to find it gets a bottle of Dom. Find something illegal, you get a case.” It took less than twelve hours of digging to uncover the Pembroke thing.
Renee Pembroke was an eighty-seven-year-old widow who lived alone in a seventeen-thousand-square-foot home on a three hundred acre site in Alpine, one of the wealthiest towns in the state and, indeed, the country, a house that had played host to every New Jersey politician elected in the past forty years, as well as many national ones, including three presidents. Her deceased husband Walter had founded the country’s second largest defense contractor, and had had the good sense to sell it to the first largest defense contractor at the peak of the Reagan buildup for a sum which, while never entirely clear, was unquestionably well into ten figures. By then well past middle age and unwilling to undertake another entrepreneurial venture, Walter had spent the remaining twenty-five years of his life involving himself and his vast wealth in politics. Though nominally hamstrung in his political investments by campaign finance regulations, Walter had made a career of being an out-of-the-box thinker, a skill that served him well as he sought wide-ranging and—for a lifelong defense guy—surprisingly centrist campaigns and causes into which to pour his money.
Because his mother had smoked herself into an early grave, Albert, over the final five years of his life, had almost singlehandedly brought down the entire U.S. tobacco industry. His support was largely responsible for the state’s two current U.S. senators and at least four of its twelve congressmen. As an ardent fan of both the Jets and Giants, he had invested great sums to undermine New York City’s efforts to build its own football stadium. And, in the final year before his death, he had taken a special interest in the doings of the state senate’s newly ordained Budget and Appropriations Committee Chairman, Bill Preston.
Following their first meeting over fettuccini and chianti at Settimo Cielo near the state house in Trenton, they had gotten together with enough regularity for people to notice, particularly when Pembroke started showing up in the state house cafeteria. The state’s third wealthiest man and its new Budget and Appropriations Committee Chairman spending significant time together was never going to go unnoticed. It was unnerving to the Republicans, who just knew that something fishy was taking place, and the fact that the two men made not the slightest effort to conceal their relationship was all the more irritating. Detectives were hired. Spies with cameras trailed the two men surreptitiously. Waiters were interviewed. Had Pembroke bought lunch for Preston? No, the checks were always separate. They even split the tip. There was no evidence of any sudden upticks in Preston’s quality of life, no houses, cars, or travel that couldn’t be explained by his nominal state senate salary and his own private assets. And, on the other side of the coin, no one could unearth evidence of state contracts being siphoned to any of Pembroke’s business interests—interests which were, at any rate, minimal these days what with the sale of the company he had started. He sat on a couple of boards, including that of the defense contractor to whom he had sold his company, and he consulted a bit here and there, nothing that could be construed as remotely full-time. But even these limited interests did not appear to be receiving any special benefits from Pembroke’s friendship with Preston. Nearly a year of this infuriatingly unimpeachable activity took place before the old man eventually became ill and passed away peacefully in the master bedroom of his sprawling Alpine home. Nine days later the will was read and it all went to Renee, all of it except for a cool one hundred million designated for Preston.
At the meeting where Rasmussen had offered up the case of Dom, the meeting where he had invoked the spirit of his favorite fictitious politician, Willie Stark, the governor had made his position as unflinchingly clear as he knew how. “You turn over rocks. You dig up dead bodies. You hire whoever you need to hire. Hide in the backseat of his goddamned car if you have to. NO sitting politician in my state receives a hundred million dollar inheritance check from some son of a bitch billionaire, and expects me to believe he didn’t do something unscrupulous to earn it. I don’t know what it is or where it is, but by Jesus H. Christ we will find it. I’m not going to tell you how to do your jobs, but if it were me wanting that case of Dom, I’d start by driving my ass up to Alpine and getting real friendly with the grieving widow. Whatever went on between the old man and Preston, there’s likely something in that house that’ll lead you to it. And I’d recommend you move your ass; she’s not getting any younger.”
Political campaigns are funny animals in a lot of ways. One of the oddest aspects of campaigning, one that goes largely unseen by the general public, is just how friendly the staffers on the various campaigns can get with each other, their competition notwithstanding. Every campaign has people who do advance work, debate prep, and yard sign placement, and these teams naturally tend to end up in the same places day after day, particularly if a campaign features numerous debates and multi-candidate appearances. It’s not even unheard of for married or dating couples to work on competing campaigns. And it’s also not unheard of for campaigns to place moles in competing campaigns, typically junior staffers who work diligently for candidate A while regularly siphoning information about their campaign’s plans and strategy back to candidate B. Which is how it came to pass that Probandt received a phone call less than ten minutes after Rasmussen’s little pep talk, alerting him to the fact that Rasmussen’s team was now officially digging for dirt on Preston and they were setting their first sights on the Pembroke estate.
Which left the Preston campaign with no real alternative but to get there first and run interference. Following some internal debate, it was decided that while Preston had the closer relationship with Renee, it would draw less attention if the campaign manager made the initial contact, particularly as it was a matter of some potential delicacy, and, depending on how things transpired, a bit of plausible deniability might come in handy for the candidate down the road.
“Gus, how are you? So nice of you to visit,” Renee said. She stood at the top of her expansive front porch, smiling broadly as he exited his car and climbed the steps to take her outstretched hand.
“It’s great to see you again too, Mrs. Pembroke. It’s been too long.”
“You’re just in time for lunch,” she said, turning to lead him into the house.
“Oh, I couldn’t put you out, ma’am. I really won’t be here long.”
“Nonsense, son,” Renee said with a tone that meant the argument was over. “Peter has already got it prepared. The Senator can survive a couple of hours without you around to tell him what to do.”
“I expect he can, ma’am, but don’t you dare tell him I said that,” Probandt replied, smiling as he followed Renee into the front dining room.
So the pair had lunch, reminisced a bit about Preston’s earliest days as an up and coming New Jersey politician, and caught up on the campaign.
“That business with the governor last month was just so … unpleasant,” Renee said, shaking her head ruefully. “It’s a shame that politics has fallen into such a state in this country.”
“I agree, ma’am,” Probandt replied. He was unsure how much detail she knew about the scandal with Rasmussen and the prostitute or, in particular, whether she was aware of the by now commonly known fact that it was the Preston team that had supplied the embarrassing videotape to the press and launched the scandal to begin with. He opted not to push the issue.
“That’s actually kind I what of came here to talk with you about,” he said. “I hate to even burden you with something so unseemly, but we have reason to believe that you may get pulled into this affair before the dust all settles.”
“Goodness,” she said. “How on earth do you mean? I don’t know anything at all about what happened, aside from what I saw in the papers.”
“I understand that, ma’am. So does Senator Preston. We just wanted to give you a heads up that you may be getting a visit from someone on the governor’s campaign looking to dredge up something unpleasant on the senator. They know that the two of you are close and that the senator was especially close with your husband. I’m guessing they believe you can share something with them, perhaps even unknowingly, that they might use to embarrass the senator.”
“Why on earth would they think I would want to do that?” Renee said. “It’s common knowledge that William and I are good friends.”
“Who can say, ma’am? I expect they’re just willing to give anything a try if they think they can gain some leverage. It’s turning into quite a close election. I’m sure they feel like any little thing could tilt public opinion in their favor.”
“So, what do you think I should do if these … these people come calling, Gus?”
“Well, you could just refuse to see them…”
“Except that might look a little incriminating in its own right,” she said.
“It could, yes,” Probandt agreed. “The press is following the campaigns around pretty closely as the election gets closer. If they see the governor’s people visiting, someone from the news is bound to show up asking questions too.”
“Or,” she said, a sly look suddenly appearing on her face, “we could engage them in a little bit of subterfuge.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. How do you mean exactly?”
“What if I fed them something that sounded tantalizing? Oh, you know, just kind of let it slip out, the way a clever person would expect to get over on a feeble old lady. I could conjure up something about William and Walter. You remember how people were always getting so worked up about the two of them having lunch together at the tennis club or down in Trenton. Then when Walter passed, well…” she paused for a moment and Probandt sat politely saying nothing.
“There was all that unpleasantness about the will and the money…”
“I’m guessing that’s where the governor’s people are trying to create some sort of connection,” Probandt said. “They believe they can concoct something out of nothing but a good old fashioned friendship.”
“The trick to this would be subtlety, I think,” Renee said. “I’ll need to point them toward something positively scandalous, maybe … maybe even illegal … but with no actual evidence to support it, mind you, just a little innuendo. They’ll naturally want to make a big story about it.”
“And then, later on,” Probandt added, “after there’s been a big furor about it, in the papers and on TV, it will turn out to just be a bogus, unsubstantiated story.”
“It will look like the governor is out to slander William.”
“Ma’am, you have a positively devious mind. I can see why the senator so enjoys your company. But what exactly would you point the governor’s people toward?”
“Oh, I think I have just the thing, Gus … Just the thing.”
“Not even a hint, ma’am?”
“Oh, come on, Gus. Don’t you like surprises? You just keep your eye on the paper over the next day or two. I think you and William will find it absolutely riveting.”
And with that remark, Renee rose awkwardly but peremptorily from her chair, leading Probandt to do likewise.
“I don’t need to tell you this,” Renee said as they made their way to the front door, “but this state will so much better a place once that awful Rasmussen is gone and William is in the governor’s mansion.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, ma’am,” Probandt replied. “It was excellent seeing you again, Mrs. Pembroke, and thanks so much for a wonderful lunch.”
They exchanged farewells at the front door and Probandt drove away down the long driveway, wondering just what sort of mischief he had set in motion.
Renee stood watching him depart and then turned to walk back into the house. She returned to the dining room, humming quietly to herself. She spent a moment standing contemplatively at one end of the long dining room table, then squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and pushed open the double doors that led from the dining room into the library adjacent. Governor Sam Rasmussen sat before the fireplace, quietly sipping a glass of cabernet.
“Did I do well, Sam?” she asked stepping to the side of his chair.
“Oh, you were wonderful, Mrs. Pembroke. Positively wonderful.”
Probandt sat his desk two days later, smiling broadly. It was already dark outside, and the evening edition of the Star Ledger lay open before him. Renee Pembroke had been as good as her word.
__________________
Democratic gubernatorial candidate implicated in defense procurement scandal
May 29, 2014
Trenton (AP) – Governor Sam Rasmussen’s reelection campaign has released a statement implicating Democratic gubernatorial rival William Preston in an elaborate scheme to direct a New Jersey Air National Guard procurement contract to Lockheed Martin. The NJ-ANG is in the midst of bidding for twenty new fighter aircraft to replace its aging fleet of F-16s, and the competition had come down to the F-35A, Lockheed Martin’s newest stealthy fighter aircraft, and Boeing’s F-18F Super Hornet, an updated version of an older aircraft, but, at $61 Mn versus $110 Mn for the F-35A, a significantly less expensive option.
In October of 2009, well prior to what was expected to be the official decision date, the NJ-ANG procurement office made the sudden announcement that they had selected the Lockheed Martin fighter, and that they will take first delivery of the new aircraft as soon as the second quarter of 2015. Boeing immediately filed an official protest, and a detailed investigation into the procurement process ensued. It was during this investigation that possible links between Lockheed Martin board member Walter Pembroke and State Senator and Budget and Appropriations Committee Chairman William Preston came to light. The two men had been well-known associates for several years prior to the contract decision, and, in fact, first met while Pembroke was still Chairman and CEO of Pembroke Aerospace, a large privately held defense contractor that was subsequently acquired by Lockheed Martin. Pembroke died in May 2010, just seven months after the awarding of the contract to Lockheed Martin. Shortly after Pembroke’s death, it became known that Senator Preston had been named in the billionaire’s will and had inherited a significant but undisclosed amount of money, though the sum was thought to be at least in the tens of millions of dollars.
“There are simply too many connections here,” said Governor Rasmussen’s Chief of Staff Ronald Eberhard. “It strains credulity to believe that there is no relationship between the friendship, the timing of the contract award, Pembroke’s passing, and Senator Preston’s inheritance. My father taught me at a young age never to believe in coincidences, and there are far too many of them here.”
The investigation is ongoing, but has yet to reveal anything that could be regarded as a smoking gun. Preston Campaign Manager Gus Probandt responded, “These are baseless and almost certainly libelous allegations, perpetuated by an ineffective governor in the midst of a desperate campaign. The charges are so absurd they scarcely deserve a response.”
Governor Rasmussen has called for a formal investigation from the State Attorney General’s Office, but there has as yet been no official response from their office.
__________________
Probandt was halfway through a third read of the piece when there came a brief knock on his office door and Preston walked in carrying another copy of the paper.
“So, what do you think, boss?” Probandt said as Preston took a seat. “Pretty disturbing stuff, eh?” He smiled and rapped his knuckles on the open newspaper a couple of times for emphasis.
“Looks like Renee really delivered, eh?” Preston replied.
“And now all we do is sit back and watch Rasmussen beat himself and his campaign staff senseless trying to actually prove something.”
“Which they will fail miserably at because…”
“Because it’s all bullshit,” Probandt said.
“Bullshit,” Preston repeated, with an ever so slight lack of conviction that did not go unnoticed by Probandt, but which he attributed to the initial shock of seeing something so dangerous actually appear in print, however false it might be.
“So here’s a strategy question,” Probandt said. “Do we simply maintain our indignant denials and wait for Rasmussen to turn up nothing, or do we press Renee for some definitively exculpatory evidence a few days down the road, something that will put the governor squarely on his ass?”
“Truth be told, I can’t say for certain that Renee is actually in possession of any such exculpatory material,” Preston said. “For that matter, it might look a bit odd for the wife of one the scandal’s principals to be the person offering up such evidence. Better it comes from a more objective source, wouldn’t you say?”
“True, true,” Probandt replied, “though that’s not to say Renee might not at least help to point us in the right direction.”
“Assuming she even can,” Preston said. “You know what they say: it’s always a tricky thing proving a negative.”
“Yes, assuming she can,” Probandt agreed. He was noticing a distinct sense of distraction, or perhaps avoidance, on the part of his candidate. “You’re not getting cold feet about the whole affair, are you? The horse is quite far out of the barn at this point.”
“No, no … nothing like that,” Preston said. “Been a hectic day is all. Just make sure the PR guys have their story straight. There’ll likely be way too many queries on this thing for Molly to handle on her own, so make sure anybody she delegates press responses to knows exactly what they’re saying. Denial, all nonsense, a desperate attempt … you know the drill.”
“You got it, boss,” Probandt said. “By the way, no offense, but you look like hell. Maybe you ought to go home and spend some quality time with the family, eh? I hear it’s a holiday weekend.”
Preston pursed his lips briefly, rose from his seat with a nod, and departed the office. But he did not go home, despite the late hour. He returned to his own office, closed the door, and fell into the chair behind his desk, emitting a disconsolate sigh as he did so. More than one wise man in the past had suggested that, having dug oneself into a hole, the soundest advice was to stop digging. But as Preston glanced again at the headline on the front page of the paper, he couldn’t help but think he had instead swapped his spade for a mechanical shovel and that the digging was only just getting going in earnest.
Contrary to widespread belief, he had never been particularly close with Renee Pembroke, not nearly as much so as he had with Walter. They had met plenty of times surely—dinners and charity events. Their brief conversations had been amiable enough. But they had never once discussed the bequest. And Preston had never seriously questioned the windfall. It had been a business payment, plain and simple. Preston had been in a position to provide a service that Walter required, and he had done so. Though he had no way of knowing for sure, it had not been Preston’s impression that Walter was given to sharing the details of his business affairs with his wife. He also had no way of knowing which details of the will Walter would have discussed with Renee prior to his passing. Preston had not been present at the reading and so had no way of gauging Renee’s reaction to the bequest. He had simply received a phone call from his attorney, sharing with him the consummation of an arrangement more than a year in the making.
Was it corruption? Truly? It was payment for a political favor, one that was without question in the best interest of the people of the state that he served. And didn’t politicians the world over make such behind-the-scenes decisions every day? Without his intervention, the procurement decision would have dragged on for another year and a half, following which the legislature might well have opted for the less expensive, less capable aircraft. Even if he had bent the rules a little, the state had ended up the better for it.
And Renee had chosen to pull this one out from beneath the rug, meaning, of course, that she knew of the arrangement. But could she prove anything? Preston and Pembroke had been extremely discreet in their conversations, and had taken enormous pains to leave behind no paper trail. If the worst happened—and Renee’s handing this story to Rasmussen meant that it very well might—would her word stand up as evidence of an under-the-table deal? All of which raised, not for the first time in political history, that immortal question—What now?
Preston finds a pen, lifts a blank sheet of paper from the printer, and ponders his options. If there is one certainty in all of this, it is that he will make no rash move. Regardless of whether the situation eventually goes south or not, he’s got plenty of time to think it through rationally. He starts to write, but the pen is dead. He curses, throws it in the trash can, finds another.
Facts
- I am one hundred percent guilty of doing what the story says I did.
- No definitive proof has yet been produced to corroborate my involvement.
- If such proof does emerge, not only is my governor’s race over, so is my senatorial career, and there is some likelihood I will end up in prison.
- The press will stay on this likes ticks on a wild dog.
- Renee Pembroke is not my ally. Likely never was.
Suppositions
- Renee knows the truth about Walter and I and our agreement.
- Probandt believes the account to be false.
- Renee Pembroke was never as comfortable with Walter’s bequest as I thought she was.
- Rasmussen believes the allegations, not because he has proof of anything, but because it suits his political purpose to believe it and because he believes Renee is on his side.
Options
- Own up to everything. Drop out of the race. Hope for the best.
- Deny everything. Hope no proof emerges.
- Meet with Renee. Find out what she knows.
- Confide in Probandt, but no one else. Enlist his support.
Preston sits back and stares at the paper—enough here on this single page for a first-year law student to convict him. Holding the page before him, he starts at the sudden knock on his door. Probandt sticks his head inside.
“Election’s not for five more months, boss. Remember—quality time.” He smiles and pulls the door closed. Preston is alone in the campaign office.
Option one is no option at all. It means humiliation, conviction. Maybe if there was another party to roll on, he could do a deal, but there is no one. It was he and Walter. Period. Lockheed Martin is guilty of nothing except offering Walter Pembroke a seat on the board when they bought his company; happens every day. Preston alone will take the fall.
Option four, as attractive as it sounds, is almost certainly also a non-starter. Probandt was hard to get onto the campaign in the first place. When they conducted their initial vetting session and Preston had come away clean, Probandt had taken him alone into an office and closed the door.
“I will say this one time and one time only, Senator. I believe in you. I believe in your campaign. And I will work my ass off to get you elected this fall. But if I ever learn that you have lied about anything—anything—that endangers the campaign or impugns my reputation, I will walk so fast your head will spin. Just so we understand one another.”
Preston had agreed. He’d had no choice really. There weren’t many campaign managers out there with the chops to overthrow a popular sitting governor. But even as he had agreed to Probandt’s terms, he had wondered if a day like this one might someday come.
And talking with Renee? What good could come of that? If she knew enough to hand Rasmussen the story, and harbored enough animosity to do so, where was the upside in going to her? It would look like begging. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.
Which left denial and hoping, imperfect but the best from a selection of bad options (“Yes, sir, This is our very best bad idea,” he recalled someone once saying in a movie.). Besides, getting caught out later on was in no material way worse than doing so now. Worst case was that it all went to hell close to the election, leaving the DSC with no time to find an alternative candidate. But if he was going down in flames, what did he give a damn about the DSC’s problems? No, he would smile and wave and deny, deny, deny. And so long as Probandt believed his story, Probandt would smile right along with him.
As Preston leans over the front seat of the SUV to address Benning, he feels the faint crinkle of the folded single page in his breast pocket, the page he has carried with him every day since arriving at his decision five weeks earlier. He takes it out and reads it again several times each day, whenever he finds a few precious seconds by himself, not infrequently in the men’s room. It’s the first time in his life that he feels the need to repeatedly convince himself of a decision he has made.
“Any new developments at all on the Pembroke thing?” Preston asks again.
“No, sir,” Benning replies. “Same as ever. No news is good news.”
“Excellent, excellent,” Preston replies. He is by now so familiar with his position on the matter that the feigned indignation and vehement denial had become, through sheer force of repetition, second nature. He will be asked about it during the interview tonight, and he will smile and talk again about the increasing desperation of the governor and the pathetic need to resort to—
“Hold on,” Preston says as the SUV pulls into the broadcast studio parking lot. “Turn that up a second. A familiar voice has come on the faintly tuned radio. Their driver turns the knob and the unmistakable voice of eighty-two-year-old heiress Renee Pembroke comes over the vehicle’s speakers. Yes, she is prepared to swear to a grand jury that her husband engaged in corrupt business practices with State Senator William Preston. Yes, her late husband was a diligent diary writer and kept extremely concise records of all his business dealings. Yes, she will make all of these documents available to the grand jury and to the State Attorney General. And yes, it was somewhat disappointing to learn that her late husband engaged in such practices, but wouldn’t it be a far worse thing to allow such a man as William Preston to ascend to the governorship without the truth being shared with the good people of New Jersey.
The SUV sits, engine off and ticking quietly as it cools. No one moves inside, except for Preston, who raises his left hand briefly to turn off the radio. No one says a thing for a very long thirty seconds.
“Senator,” Benning at last says quietly, “what do you want to do? Should I call inside and cancel? We can just drive away.”
“To where?” Preston says, staring vacantly out the vehicle’s windshield. “Wherever we go, we’re going to end up in the same place.” He runs his hand through his hair one final time, pushes the door open, and steps out of the SUV, smiling and waving enthusiastically to the small crowd that has gathered to greet him at the studio’s front door.