“What are you up to now!? I will not be a party to anything illegal!”
I had to laugh at John. “Well, we don’t think it’s illegal, but it’s probably smelly as all hell. Basically, we came up with the idea of forming our own lobbying group. I mean, I write a piece of legislation and the first thing that happens is all the lobbyists in town try to water it down and get a piece of the action. So, let’s become our own lobbyists and fight for it! Fight fire with fire! The only way to do it, though, is by making our lobbying group a secret, so that nobody can claim I’m buying legislation.”
“Which is what you’re actually doing.”
“Exactly!”
“I should report you to the RNC!” he protested.
“Lawyer-client privilege,” I chided.
John made a very rude gesture at me and snorted. I wasn’t too worried. He would be much more likely to squawk if the problem was illegal rather than simply going against the national committee. “Okay, let me work on this. I’ll let you know. Don’t tell anybody other than your friend, though, because it really would smell.”
I thanked him and left, and drove over to Westminster and flew down to D.C. to get some work done. A week later he summoned me and Marty to a meeting at his office. I had Marty go over to Washington National in the morning, where Tyrell was waiting for him. He flew to the house and dropped him off, and then we drove into Hereford. I showed Marty around the offices and then we went into John’s office, where John was sitting with another man.
“Carl, Marty, This is Bob Seaver. Explain to him what you two have in mind,” started John.
I nodded and shook Seaver’s outstretched hand. He was a sort of nondescript fellow, a few years older than me, more advanced baldness, a touch heavy around the middle, kind of bland looking. “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Seaver.”
“Congressman, nice to see you, too.” He looked over at Marty, and said, “Same to you, Mr. Adrianopolis.” They shook hands as well. We all sat down and Seaver continued at that point. “I understand you want to set up a lobbying effort in Washington, but that it needs to be totally laundered and unknown. Is that correct?”
“Pretty much,” I admitted. I glanced over at Marty, who nodded back.
“All right, so once the funds are in the lobbying group and you need them to be dispersed, you then want the funds from the lobbying group to be secretly funneled to various politicians or bureaucrats?”
At that point, I looked at Marty in confusion. “Is that what we wanted?”
He shook his head. “No, that would be illegal.”
Seaver looked over at John and then back to us. “So you don’t want the activities of the lobbying group to be hidden, only the source of their funding?”
“Right. I mean, at that point it’s just one more lobbying or policy outfit. We just don’t want to trace the money back to me.”
He breathed a sigh of relief at that. “Oh, well, that’s different! You’re right, that’s fine. Hiding what they do with the money, that would be illegal. That wouldn’t be protected, either, since it would be a violation of the canons. Hiding the funding to start with, that’s no problem. Do you have any of this started yet? Do you have a name?”
I blinked at that. “No. We just thought this up. We wanted to find out if we could get away with it first. So, we can do this?”
Seaver simply waved a hand dismissively. “Just say when.”
“Huh.” I turned to Marty. “Got a name?”
Marty shrugged, too. “Something innocuous and patriotic or whatever. They’re all named American Something-or-other, Institute or Foundation or whatever. They all sound alike.”
“The American Renaissance Initiative, building America’s tomorrow, today!” I intoned solemnly. I remembered Stephen Colbert’s Super-Pac, ‘Building a better tomorrow, tomorrow!’
John chuckled and shook his head. Marty gave a wry grin, and commented, “Perfect. They all say that!”
Seaver began taking notes. “You don’t have a name or address of the head of the group yet?”
“We just thought it up. That’s next,” said Marty.
Seaver handed us both a business card. “The easiest way to handle this is for me to be the Treasurer of the organization. That way nobody knows where the money is coming from. I can handle any requests.”
That got me to thinking. I cocked my head a touch, and asked, “So you get a piece of the action for moving the money around, and then you get paid by the American Renaissance Initiative as the Treasurer? Isn’t that double dipping?”
For the first time, Seaver smiled. “I love politics, don’t you?!”
I groaned and shook my head at that. What had I gotten myself into, now!?
Marty rolled his eyes at me and shrugged. He glanced at the card and tucked it into his pocket. “I’m going to sound out a few people about running it, but we’ll probably run some of the initial paperwork through you.”
“Once you figure out the person to run it, we’ll get together and do some more paperwork. We’ll need an office, some staff, etc. I’ll stay in New York, but that won’t be an issue for this.” He and Marty talked a little about staffing and how to proceed.
Eventually, though, John called it to an end. “Okay, we don’t need to tie up Carl and me on this. You two can sort out the details on your own,” he said, pointing to Marty and Seaver. “Now, I need to talk to Carl for awhile.”
I led Marty out to the lobby and arranged for one of the security staff to drive him over to the airport, and to call ahead and let Tyrell know he was coming. Meanwhile, Bob Seaver came through and shook our hands, and he left as well. I headed back inside to see John.
“So, just who is that guy?” I asked. “Is he any good?”
“He used to work for the FBI, tracing hidden money. Then he got married and had a couple of kids, and decided he needed to actually make a few bucks. He set up shop in New York, using what he learned with the Feds.”
“You have to love free enterprise,” I quipped.
He nodded, and then stood up. “Listen, stay here. I asked the others to come in for a bit.” I stayed in my seat as John moved out of the office. He returned a couple of minutes later, with the two Jakes and Missy in tow.
“So, what’s up?” I asked when the others sat down. Jake Junior, who sat down next to me, looked as confused as I was. The others were no better.
“I’ve asked you all here for a reason.” He took a deep breath, and began coughing, which he had done in the earlier meeting as well. When he was able to continue, he said, “That’s the problem right there, in a nutshell. I’ve been coughing like that for a few months now. At first we thought it was just a cold, but when it got worse, I went to the doctor’s. I’m not going to beat around the bush. I’ve got lung cancer, and I’m dying.”
To say it was like a bomb going off in the room would be an understatement. All of us began squawking and protesting and speaking at the same time. John let us run on for a few minutes before waving us to silence. “Let me speak. I got the second opinions, I’ve seen the specialists, I’ve done all that stuff. It’s too late for me. They don’t have a cure for this. I’ve got maybe eight months to live, a year at the most if I really, really fight hard, and that would be very ugly. I talked it over with Helen. We’re going to do something we’ve always talked about but always put off until later. There is no more later. I’m retiring and we’re taking a cruise around the world. I’ll be out of here at the end of the month.”
He coughed a little more. I sat there stunned by the news. John had never smoked, and yet here he was with lung cancer! Now that I knew what to look for I could see he had lost some weight, and was looking a touch pale. Melissa was arguing with him to fight it, even as she cried, but wasn’t getting anywhere. Jake Junior looked at me and he looked as stunned as I did. Only his father looked a little more used to the idea; maybe he had a suspicion ahead of time.