The senator took three underground tunnels and exited a small door on the north side of the Capitol Building. He stepped into the empty street and hailed a cab. Twenty minutes later, he paid his tab in the alley that ran behind his Georgetown home and walked across the backyard and into his house.
The honorable senator sat completely motionless on the foot of the bed, his wife asleep with her head under the pillow. He held his own head in his hands. The image he spent his life trying to portray now dangerously teetering on the cliff of disaster—a cliff named Wei Ling. The years of education, proper upbringing, and the sacrifice of the family lineage that came before him climaxed in one thought that the senator said aloud. “Fuck.”
It was the best he could do.
For the first time since his car had broken down in South Central L.A., the senator was scared. But politics were on his side. He was from Massachusetts, historically one of the friendliest states to morally questionable acts by their governing representatives. His mind raced between desperation and hope, ego and humility. His life was on the line—his wife, his job, his ambition. “Nice job, John,” the senator said to himself. “Two and a half decades of hard work, thrown out the window on a third-world sweatshop skank.” ***
The goateed man with a penchant for positive camera angles and the lion’s share of a recently cashed fifteen-thousand-dollar paycheck, chatted with the off-duty stewardess at Club Iota in Arlington. A local acoustic husband-and-wife team was packing up their guitars after an early weeknight show that had the bar half-full. The bartender cleaned glasses and hit the remote control for the small TV in the corner of the enclosed drink-mixing workspace. With the TV news in one ear, the man with the goatee tried his best to impress the stewardess, his goal to say whatever it took to get her down the street and into the bedroom of his new condo.
With the stewardess playing coy, the cameraman looked at the news on the TV and spoke involuntarily. “Look at this asshole.”
“Who?” the stewardess asked.
“Senator Day. I filmed a documentary for him last month.” So what if it wasn’t a full-fledged documentary. No one was there to call bullshit on him.
The stewardess warmed up considerably and put her hand on the cameraman’s knee. They both watched the story and the bartender turned up the sound.
The cameraman chuckled.
“What are you laughing at?” the stewardess asked, her arm moving to his shoulder.
“It’s just fitting. You have Senator Day defending himself against an Asian Rights Group a month after going to Asia to film a documentary on Human Rights and Overseas Labor.”
“Why is that funny?”
“Honey, that’s between me, him, and the rest of the poor souls at the Ritz he kept up all night.”
The cameraman asked for the check and pointed to the stewardess to indicate he was covering her bill as well. “You want to see a copy of the documentary? I live right down the street. I have the whole thing on DVD,” he said getting off his stool.
“Okay. But just the documentary. Nothing else.”
“Of course,” the cameraman replied, the muscles in the corner of his mouth fighting to suppress a smile.
Chapter 17
The ride from Logan Airport to Boston’s North End was a manageable twenty minutes. Before “The Big Dig,” a construction project aimed at putting the city’s freeways underground, the city was a rush-hour maze with no way out. But with the completion of the most expensive engineering project ever undertaken by man, Boston had once again become a charming big city. The streets were less crowded, the air was cleaner, the city quieter. Sure, Beantown was one major underground accident away from a total transportation hose-up, but for now the Big Dig was finally showing results after years of budget overruns and broken promises. The senator looked at the skyline of Boston, deep in thought. Home. It has its advantages.
A few blocks northeast of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market lies the North End, Boston’s version of Little Italy. In a city dominated by Irish immigrants, the Italians, backed with guns and pasta, had made their niche. Small Italian shops lined Hanover Street and pockmarked the surrounding neighborhoods. Mom and Pop establishments sold everything from cannoli to ice cream, pasta to seafood, wine to cheese. English was optional, and you got a discount if the owner knew your family or liked your face. Two blocks away, the North Church marked the edge of the cultural enclave and the beginning of Paul Revere’s famous “the British are coming” gallop through Boston and the history books.
As the senator drove past the statue of Paul Revere, he thought about the luxury of having advanced warning. He needed a Paul Revere. Someone to tell him when he was being ambushed. One if by land, two if by sea, three if you are being blackmailed by an unscrupulous sweatshop owner.
The Gelodini family had occupied the corner of Hanover and Prince Streets since the first barrel of tea was thrown overboard into Boston Harbor to protest British-imposed taxes. The Gelodinis came to the country carrying a few suitcases of clothes and a proud lineage of carpenters and bricklayers. Hard workers with big appetites to go with even bigger personalities. The love of food and the propensity for engaging conversation was the impetus for a change to the Gelodinis’s chosen profession. For four generations the hammers and spades had been gathering dust as antiques in the attic, the family tools replaced with spatulas and pasta makers.
Michael Gelodini, a short Italian with a harsh Sicilian-rooted Bostonian accent, gave the senator a firm handshake and led him down a narrow hall and up a flight of stairs to a private dining room in the back of the restaurant.
”Your guest is waiting,” said the current patriarch of the Gelodini family.
“Thank you,” the senator replied.
“I will be taking care of you personally, Senator. Shall I get you a bottle of wine?”
“Please. A decent red.”
“We have a nice 1999 Chianti Classico.”
“Perfect.”
The senator entered the room and Michael Gelodini disappeared. The senator’s guest was seated at one end of table, facing the door. It was a habit that had kept him alive on more than one occasion. Some lessons are learned the hard way, and the scar across the middle of the guest’s neck illustrated the point.
“Senator.”
“DiMarco, I assume,” the senator replied.
“Yes. And that is the first and last time you will address me by name.” His dark soulless eyes combined with his black hair and the scar on his neck to give the impression that the inside of the man matched the intimidating exterior.
Neither man moved to extend the other a handshake. The senator, eyeing a man he would only meet once, pulled out a chair and sat down, sitting diagonally across the table from his guest.
“Nice restaurant. I don’t make it to the North End much. I’m from Southie,” DiMarco said proudly.
“An Italian from Southie.”
“There are plenty of true bloods in Southie. Somebody has to keep tabs on the Irish. You know we have Italian restaurants in Southie, too. Good ones.”
The senator smiled. He liked people from Boston. “This place is discreet without being dangerous, physically or politically. I’m a United States Senator. I can’t risk being seen getting out of a car in Southie or Jamaica Plain or Roxbury. Here, if someone happens to see me, no one will think twice.”