Free Close Relations by Susan Isaacs Page A

Floria did not die? And not even so close a friend of the Merkins as Jerry Morrissey, a friend who came to dinner every single Thursday night, would dream that sweet Bernice, Bernice of a thousand fund-raisers, would bundle up a tote bag full of family papers and trot down to Foley Square in Manhattan and share with the Chief of the Criminal Division of the United States Attorney’s Office the secret that had been hers and Bernard’s—that for five years the Attorney General of the State of New York had forgotten to report his outside income, which amounted to about $100,000 per annum. And even an ace forecaster like Jerry Morrissey couldn’t have predicted that, eleven months later, Bernard’s attorneys would be working on his appeal from conviction while Bernice got her divorce in Mexico and Floria went to law school in Brooklyn.
    And Jerry Morrissey was out of a job.
    “Well.” Jerry confronted Paterno. “Just what are you saying?”
    “Why are you so angry? I’m not trying to undercut you or anything. But you haven’t had
recent
upstate experience.”
    Jerry was not out of a job for long. As Merkin began his trip down the tubes, Jerry waved him a saddened bon voyage and cast about for a new politician. After just a few weeks of floundering, he joined Paterno, recognizing in him two key qualities: promise and need.
    William Paterno, on the verge of running for the Presidency of New York’s City Council, had great potential. He was bright, ambitious, and popular. He was also in trouble because, until he hired Jerry, his advisers’ vision did not extend beyond his assembly district in Little Neck, Queens. His lawyer pals and his clubhouse cronies knew Bill had the stuff, but they didn’t know how to package and transport it over the 59th Street Bridge to Manhattan.
    But Jerry Morrissey knew. For years he had lived behind his blazing blue eyes, observing, calculating, registering the moves of the wrinkled, the pockmarked and birthmarked, the plain; watching as they schemed and sneaked and screamed and whispered. Jerry had grown from a mere employee, a paid adviser, into an artist, a creator. He knew, and he stepped in, taking William Paterno’s life and shaping it, giving it form and a purposeful design.
    By that election night eight years before, Paterno was no longer viewed as just another shrewd pol. He was special. Jerry had exploited Paterno’s extraordinary capacity for work, giving him position papers, reports, articles to study, until Paterno became the city’s greatest expert on sewage conversion, expense budgeting, and public education. Jerry had manipulated Paterno’s instinctive, politically dangerous tendency to say whatever was on his mind into a reputation for amazing honesty: in East Harlem, they called Paterno “el honorable.” And Jerry had channeled Paterno’s huffy self-righteousness into a career as a labor negotiator: no one could talk down the municipal unions on behalf of the city as well as a puffed-up Paterno.
    “Don’t jerk me off, Bill. I mean it.”
    “I’m not.” Paterno thrust out his lower lip, offended.
    “All right. Then just what do you want?”
    “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
    “Good.”
    “I was just wondering. You know. Whether if we picked up a little extra help, if it would help any.”
    “Help helps, Bill.”
    “Yes. Right. I mean, maybe one of Gresham’s people. I mean, they know upstate like—well, like you know the Bronx. I mean, some of them have really been way up there, visited those people. Do you know they make cheddar cheese up there?”
    “Who did you have in mind?”
    “What? Oh, I don’t know.”
    Jerry leaned back in his chair, forcing himself to look casual, putting too much weight on his weak lower back. “Just any old Gresham aide? You don’t have anyone in mind?”
    “Maybe—urn”—Paterno gazed up at the ceiling, trying to appear thoughtful—“maybe someone like Lyle LoBello.”
    My fists clenched in protest. Eileen, beside