"For us this was kind of upsetting news, you know? But for him it was all in a day's work, like he's conducting an experiment. "Okay, let's see how these two take it when I hand the sentence down, tell them there's no hope." I suppose in his line of work, has to do this every day, gets to be routine. But my God, it hurts like hell when you're the people it's bein' done to then it's not routine at all.
"I got the same feeling listening to Pooler. I think he was making it sound worsen it is. I realize this isn't gonna be fun, something we'll really enjoy, fucking romp in a meadow or something, but he sure didn't go out of his way to make it sound better.
"He said they call it the Public Corruption Unit," Merrion said. "Said it didn't exist when he was in the US Attorney's office, twenty-odd years ago. I guess this's some new drill they dreamed up recently.
Almost smacking his lips, the son of a bitch; I think he envies the bastards. "Gee, that looks like fun; wish wed thought of it." Guys like him're like dogs that've killed once and had that first taste of blood: they never get over it. You know they'll kill again."
"But then, of course," Pooler said to Merrion, 'then there were only a dozen or so of us assistants; now there's about seven times that many.
And there wasn't any western division of the District of Massachusetts, no federal court or satellite US Attorney's office out here. So things do change. There're more of them now with time on their hands, looking for something to do. They're bound to be more aggressive. To us older hands some of the things they propose to do seem a little far-fetched at first blush, but they've been making them stick.
"Essentially the unit operates on the same principle as the old Organized Crime Strike Forces: target prosecution. They identify subjects they think're corrupt, state and local officials, and then they study their official acts to see if they can find a way to apply federal criminal statutes. They've used the racketeering statutes, which were enacted to go after the Mafia, to go after people paying and accepting kickbacks on state contracts. They've charged mail fraud against people falsely claiming they can't work in order to get state and municipal disability pensions. Hard to argue with; they mail in the false statements of injury and get their checks by mail. The wire fraud statutes've been used to get people who picked up a phone to promise a bribe to a local plumbing inspector, just across town, and nailed the inspector for taking the call and taking the money. And of course they've been using the criminal tax-evasion statutes ever since the Thirties, when some frustrated genius said: "Well damnit all, if we can't prove Capone had people murdered, as he did, let's get him for tax evasion."
"That looks like the approach they're going to take with our friend Hilliard," Pooler said, his expression a mixture of amusement and contempt. To Hilliard, Merrion said: "I dunno whether he was sneering at the federal fuckers or at us."
Pooler shrugged. "Not that Danny's quite as big a trophy as Al Capone was, but he had a lot of power in his day, and he made himself conspicuous with his not-so-private life, so a lot of people know him.
They still recognize his name. Get a grand jury to indict him and you're guaranteed a headline. Drop enough broad hints around before you go for the indictment, which is what they're doing now, you build up suspense; anticipation fed by rumor makes the headlines even bigger."
"Danny's always paid his taxes," Merrion said. "So've I; we both have.
Danny never took a bribe. Once when something I said made him think that I might do that, he as much as told me that if I had goin' on-the-take in mind, he wouldn't put me in a job. I eased his mind on that.
"Now, have I ever done a favor for a guy, given breaks to people who'd done things they shouldn't do? Sure, of course I have, and so has Danny: many favors. And gotten many in return. Sometimes a guy's bought me a drink after I've helped him out. Once or twice I've been out somewhere having dinner with a lady friend, and when it's come time for the check I find out I'm not getting one — someone I know but didn't see spotted us when we came in; on his way out told the maitre d', give our check to him. That's happened to Danny too, more times'n me. Not because he's crooked; because he knows more people. Friends of his picking up a check or giving him tickets to the ballgame? Sure, small stuff like that, of course we've done it.
"But never have we taken money, not once. That was always out of the question. Now are you telling me we're guilty of something? A federal offense? I don't believe it."
Pooler sighed. "Amby," he said, 'you and I've always had trouble talking. We just can't seem to communicate. You refuse to hear what I'm trying to tell you, and what you say to me's unresponsive.
"What you choose to believe is irrelevant, hear me? Put it aside; it doesn't matter. The feds've picked up on you two. My guess is what got their attention, made them think you might be worth going after, is that you and Danny, especially Danny, have lived very well on your earnings. Danny's real estate holdings for example: a state legislator, lawyer who never practiced, managed to acquire a ten-room house in Bell Woods where his ex lives; a three-bedroom cottage in West Chop; and a three-bedroom townhouse condo in Wisdom House. He drives a Mercedes. All the while living a lavish lifestyle of which the Grey Hills membership is not the only but certainly a prime example. Quite an accomplishment, considering that until about ten years ago his reported income never exceeded fifty thousand dollars a year.
"They have suspicious minds. When they see a politician who's pulled off something like that, the first thing they think is that he did it by taking kickbacks from state contractors who disguised them as campaign contributions, and converted the campaign funds to pay his personal expenses.
"They realize he and his now-ex-wife had the house in Holyoke, and he inherited his parents' property, their house in Holyoke and the camp on Lake Sunapee, all of which he sold. The feds say if you combine the proceeds of selling off those three properties, that accounts for the big house and land worth upwards of four hundred thousand by now, all of it debt-free in Bell Woods.
"Okay, but now what? That exhausts all the capital they concede he came by honestly. Where did he get the twenty-six-thousand-dollar down-payment on the house on the Vineyard? That was over twenty years ago. He was a legislator, making about forty grand a year. As far as the IRS knows, at least; that's all his tax-returns show.
"He's only bought two cars in that period. But they were both Mercedes, very costly automobiles. When he bought the first one he was still in the legislature. It cost him about a year's pay; so what did he live on?
"And that still leaves him to account for the fifteen thousand he somehow found to be put down on the townhouse, while he was going through a very costly divorce, buying the second Mercedes, and financing his scandalous high life. The feds maybe can't prove he did any singing, but they've got all the evidence of wine and women they could possibly want.
"They think the only way he could possibly have done all that was by taking payoffs from people who then got big contracts from the state, as several of his biggest contributors did. Contracts to install electrical systems in state buildings: his late generous backer Carl Kuiper's electrical company up in Deerfield did just under sixteen million bucks of that work during the last nine years that Danny was chairman of Ways and Means. During that same period: nine-point' three-million in state printing contracts to Haskell Sanderson's printing plant in Greenfield. An average of nine-hundred' and-eleven-thousand dollars a year in rent for state office space in western Massachusetts: to real estate holding companies owned or controlled by the Carnes family."