Free House Odds by Mike Lawson

gardening.

11
    Preston Whitman was a lobbyist, a very good one, and his job was to convince politicians to vote the way his clients wanted. And Whitman’s clients paid his outrageous fees primarily for one thing: his ability to gain access to those in power. Access was everything. Once Whitman had slithered through a legislator’s door, he had a small arsenal with which to persuade: a pledge to contribute generously to the lawmaker’s next campaign; a position on a board after the pol retired; a special deal on an Aspen condo. He also had at his disposal think tanks staffed with experts—generals and geniuses and ex–cabinet members—and they could develop a viable, well-reasoned argument for any position. They could demonstrate why it was acceptable—hell, even patriotic—to sell flammable pajamas for toddlers if that’s what Whitman’s clients sold.
    And that’s why Ted Allen had hired Preston Whitman. He’d paid the man a hundred thousand dollars to get something done in Congress, but so far the lobbyist had failed to deliver. Whitman had warned him in advance that he couldn’t promise to accomplish what Ted wanted, but Ted didn’t care. In Ted’s world, if you give a guy a hundred Gs, you expect to see results. And Al wasn’t happy either. Al thought Ted had used the money to bribe a congressman; Al approved of a bribe because he could understand a bribe. What he couldn’t understand was paying a lobbyist to influence several congressmen in a legal—or mostly legal—manner. Al was a dinosaur, but one with a heavy tail and very big teeth.
    Ted had been working on the project for over three years and had spent over a million dollars of Al’s money on it, including Whitman’s fee. If he pulled it off, Al would think that the sun rose and set with him—and fuck McGruder. But if he didn’t pull it off . . . well, he didn’t know what the consequences would be, but he knew they wouldn’t be good. Maybe fatally not good. You could just never tell with Al.
    The project. Atlantic City currently had a convention center that was less than fifteen years old, but the place was already falling apart. And separate from the existing convention center were bus and railroad terminals that brought the suckers in from New York and Philly and D.C. Ted had managed to convince the right people that AC needed a new convention center, and it should include terminals for trains and buses and the terminals should be connected to a retail mall like Union Station in D.C. To get support for the project, he’d bribed a few folks and blackmailed others, but mostly he’d just sold the idea—just the way any legitimate businessman would do. He’d convinced the city council guys and the mayor and state representatives that a new convention center was good for AC, good for the people, good for jobs and taxes.
    The hardest guy to convince had been Al—convincing him that he’d have to invest a little money to make a lot of money. McGruder, of course, had been against him every step of the way, telling Al that he’d just be pouring money down the drain. But in the end Ted won. Yep, he lined up all the ducks, and it hadn’t been easy.
    The project benefited Al’s operation in multiple ways. The site for the new structure would require two lots that Ted had acquired, and they’d pay Al ten times what he’d paid for the lots. The work itself would go to a certain construction company—they had an absolute lock on that—and Al would get a big kickback from the company. The construction company would also be forced to use union labor, and Al had his fingers in two of the biggest unions—carpenters and electricians—and he’d get a percentage of the money collected for dues and pensions. And it didn’t end there. Al was a legitimate partner in a cement factory located outside Trenton, and Ted made sure that the ground rules specified using products made in Jersey if they were available—and it was going to take a lot of