“Very,” he said, his brain working hard by now. The entire office had been laboring around the clock, trying to keep ahead of the post-Irene demands and complaints-mostly aimed at bureaucratic red tape and slow action in general-but there’d been nothing demanding of such CIA-style twitchiness.
“Do you know of Harold LeMieur?”
“Sure,” he said immediately, caught unaware twice over. “Catamount Industrial. Lots of money. Likes to play kingmaker with people we don’t like.”
“Let’s start with that,” Gail suggested. “Tell me how he operates.”
Perkins frowned-the closed door and dead cell phone making less and less sense. This was Wikipedia-level information. “Pretty straightforward. He’s out front with his beliefs, and backs his kind of candidates by paying either directly or through a PAC. By definition, he’s not much of an influence in Vermont, since even our right-wingers see him as an extremist. There were a couple of folks a few years back who approached him for money, when the Take Back Vermont movement was gaining yardage, and he was happy to oblige. But that was about it. He doesn’t care about us, anyhow. Plays for bigger stakes, like governorships or congressional races in the rest of the country, and the occasional presidential hopeful. I always got the feeling that ever since he left Vermont, he’s been happy to not even think about us.”
“Does he have people here?” she asked.
“Sure. Sheldon Scott. Runs a lobbying firm in town for conservative causes. He and LeMieur go back to the beginning. I think they grew up together, somewhere in Franklin County, so Harold makes sure Sheldon’s well cared for. LeMieur’s big on loyalty-blood brother stuff. He has an inner circle like Howard Hughes used to have, and Sheldon’s near the top.”
Gail nodded. This, in part, was why she had Rob Perkins as her CoS, as the jargon had it. He knew everyone. “Can you get to him?” she asked.
“As in…” He left the implication dangling.
She smiled without humor. “No. I don’t do underhanded, as you very well know. I meant, can you arrange to have a private conversation with the man?”
“Sheldon?” Perkins asked, once again pondering the reasons for her paranoia. “Sure,” he said. “We know each other. I can walk into his office. I wouldn’t recommend it, though-not given that you’re my boss now. Too many tongues would start wagging.”
Gail hesitated, glancing out the window, and Perkins recognized that she was about to broach the Big Subject. He liked Gail Zigman, which was why he’d accepted her job offer. But he hadn’t voted for her in the primary. She’d struck him as too much the populist, an idealist who thought a democracy could actually be run by the people, for the people, instead of by bureaucrats, politicians, and moneyed special interests. Perkins was a practical, practiced swimmer of political waters. He’d worked for other governors and had grown used to the bad taste that resulted from making accommodations with the wrong people for the right reasons. When Zigman had approached him to be her Chief of Staff, he initially rejected the notion.
But then he’d rethought his prejudice. Was it so unbelievable that a neophyte like her could govern a state? Especially one as predisposed to such a fantasy as Vermont? She had won the election by openly defying the guardians of the status quo, including the state’s three Washington, D.C., delegates, who’d made only a grudging show of support after the primary. Succeeding against that opposition alone had been unprecedented.
In the end, Rob had said yes, if only to be part of what his heart and mind imagined would be a short-lived experiment-despite his hopes that it last far longer.
Those reservations made Rob Perkins perhaps the most effective of Gail’s allies-the thoughtful, cautious supporter, versus one of her ardent, damn-the-torpedoes fans.
Gail sat back in her chair and looked at him with a grim expression. “Let me ask you something before I go on,” she said.
“Shoot.”
“How’re we doing? Honestly, with no smoke and flattery.”
He smiled, given his ruminations. “About fifty-fifty,” he answered her. “You’re getting high marks for being everywhere at once. That’s good. They like seeing you with mud on your shoes, in the middle of the night, lending a hand. Dropping the borrowed National Guard helicopter was a good move. People were grousing about that. What’s pulling us down now is that we’re playing second fiddle to the U.S. government-represented by FEMA, fairly or not-and, to a lesser extent, organizations like the Guard, the Red Cross, and the Salvation Army. Compared to them, we’re looking ineffectual, even with most legislators rallying behind you. As usual, it’s things like road and bridge repairs that’re catching the media’s eye, and there, it sort of hangs on the political leanings of the editor. Some of them are giving you credit; others aren’t. And most of that goes back to how you won the election. There are a bunch of professional backroom people with their noses out of joint because of you.”
“How might I have handled this crisis better?” she asked.
He waggled his head back and forth, thinking of how best to present his thoughts. He wasn’t beholden to her, and that was his value. They each knew that. But he also wasn’t in the business of discussing fantasies.
“You personally?” he finally answered. “I don’t think you could have. Others would have gone first to the fat cats, in Vermont and outside, for money and political muscle. They also would’ve enlisted our two senators and the congressman for their clout. But that’s not your style, and you don’t have access to those people. I mean, Vermont’s DC-Three will do their thing, but not for you. They have to run again, too. And when they begin to bring in the money, you’re not going to be invited to the press conferences. It’ll be carefully done. It won’t be a direct slap in the face. But you won’t be in the photo ops. You dissed them pretty harshly when you ran.”
To his surprise, his words seemed to be making her feel better. She nodded slowly and said, “I may have come up with a solution for most of that.”
He didn’t bother hiding his surprise, which made her smile and quickly add, “It’s early yet. That’s why I asked to see you and why all the secrecy. A mouse squeaks in the statehouse basement at eleven fifty-nine, it’s all the talk at lunch. We all know that. But I’ve been approached with a proposal that might address your concerns, without my administration having to lower its standards in the process.”
Perkins didn’t like her almost prideful choice of words, but was caught by their implication.
“Who approached you?” he asked, recalling how the conversation had begun. “Not LeMieur?”
“Indirectly,” she told him. “Through Susan Raffner.”
“Raffner?” he asked, more startled still. He knew of Raffner’s importance to Gail, but approaching a governor with a quiet deal through a state senator was a new curveball to him.
And not one he liked. It was too odd, too irregular even for these rebels. Plus, LeMieur was the antithesis of a rebel. Why would he have chosen such a line of communication?
Gail appeared unconcerned. “Yes,” she said. “Susan came by my place last night. Said she’d been asked to be a conduit by LeMieur, who’d obviously done his homework about how best to reach me. Turns out he’s getting sentimental in his old age, and wants to do something for the state that gave him his start. In condensed form, he wants to use his billions to set up a parallel FEMA in the state, supported by the legislature and me, to directly address the very hiccups you were telling me about when we started this conversation. It would not be competition. From what Susan told me, it would be more like supplemental insurance.”
She removed a single sheet of paper from her desk and slid it over to him. “I wrote down what she told me, so that you could think about it and so I wouldn’t forget anything. You’ll see that I didn’t use names in that document, nor did I sign it. I’ve told you enough that you can fill in the blanks.”
He held it up. “I can keep this?”