House Revenge (2 page)

3

Mahoney asked Maggie to send in the next citizen, but he also told her to call Sean Callahan. “Tell Sean I want to see him this evening, have a drink over at the Copley about six or seven.”

The next citizen was an old woman who was wearing her Sunday go-to-Mass clothes, including a feathered blue bonnet and white gloves. She brought a plate of chocolate chip cookies she'd baked herself, and they were good. She surprised Mahoney when she said she wanted to talk about how Comcast had a monopoly on Internet service in Boston and kept jacking up their rates and forcing people to bundle services to get a decent price. She said the Internet ought to be a public utility like sewer and water, and that poor people—because of that demon Comcast—had to go to a library to get online to look for a job or apply for one. She wanted to know why Mahoney didn't give that wimp who ran the FCC a kick in the pants, a guy who, according to her, was basically on Comcast's payroll.

Mahoney pointed out that the FCC had just blocked a merger between Comcast and Time Warner to prevent Comcast from dominating the market but the old lady said that didn't do a damn thing for cities like Boston where Comcast
already
had a monopoly. Mahoney knew she was right but he was thinking he'd just as soon not piss off Comcast, who contributed to him—and maybe to everyone else in Congress. He was trying to come up with a way to blame this one on the Republicans, too, but at that moment, Maggie stuck her head into his office and said, “Sorry to interrupt, Congressman, but Mr. Callahan said tonight isn't convenient for him and asked if he could meet with you some other time.”

“Not
convenient
for him?” Mahoney said. “Why, that arrogant little . . .”

He'd been about to say “prick,” but stopped himself as the old lady was still in the room. If Mahoney needed to meet with the president of the United States, and if the president was in town, he'd make time for Mahoney. Yet here was this punk, Callahan, who thought that because he was now worth a few hundred million, he could blow Mahoney off.

“You call him back and tell him that if he doesn't meet with me tonight, he'll hear at my press conference tomorrow how I'm gonna shut down his project on Delaney Street.”

“Yes, sir,” Maggie said.

“Now what were you saying, Mrs. Waters?” Mahoney said to the Internet crusader.

A couple minutes later, Maggie came back and said, “Mr. Callahan will meet you this evening at the Copley at six.”

“That's better,” Mahoney said, and reached for another cookie.

The Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel was constructed in 1912 and is across the street from Copley Square. A block away is historic Trinity Church, founded in 1733, and a place where generations of Episcopalians have knelt and prayed. A bit farther to the west is the Old South Church with its magnificent bell tower. It seemed as if the first thing the old New Englanders did when they stepped off the boat was to build a church; Mahoney would have built a tavern with an adjoining bordello.

To enter the grand hotel you pass under a large red awning and between two stern-looking seven-foot lions made of stone and painted gold. The lobby is as big as a football field but instead of AstroTurf, the floor is covered with thick blue-and-red Oriental carpets. Hanging from a twenty-one-foot ceiling is a chandelier that might have come from the set of
The Phantom of the Opera
. Mahoney thought it was the most impressive-looking hotel lobby in the city.

The OAK Long Bar, just off the lobby, has brown leather high-back stools in front of a bar that wraps around a kitchen so you can watch the chefs prepare your meal if you're so inclined. There are also comfortable cloth chairs—some red, some white—in front of small marble-topped tables, which was where Mahoney was seated: in a red chair, drinking Wild Turkey, and growing increasingly annoyed at Sean Callahan, who was now twenty-five minutes late for their meeting.

At six thirty Callahan arrived, pretending to be breathless from sprinting to their appointment. “I'm so sorry I'm late, John,” he said. “Damn traffic in this town gets worse every year.”

Bullshit
. Mahoney knew that Callahan's office was a ten-minute walk away on Exeter Street. But instead of saying how he didn't appreciate Callahan deliberately keeping him waiting, he said, “That's okay. I just got here myself, two minutes ago.”
And fuck you
.

Sean Callahan was forty-seven and looked as if he might have descended from a Beacon Hill, Boston Brahmin clan. He was six foot two, had a longish nose, thinning dark hair with just a sprinkling of gray, and thin lips best suited for expressing disapproval. His face was unlined due to the skills of a top-notch cosmetic surgeon, and he appeared to be in terrific shape thanks to tennis, a personal trainer—and a very young new wife. He was dressed casually: dark blue sport jacket, tan slacks, a blue cotton shirt with his initials monogrammed over the pocket but no tie—sort of a preppy, rich kid look, similar to what the Harvard interns in Mahoney's Boston office wore. But Mahoney knew that Callahan wasn't a Brahmin and hadn't attended Harvard; he'd been raised in Charlestown, had gone to a community college, and it had probably taken him half his life to eradicate his boyhood accent.

Callahan ordered a tonic water and lime; apparently alcohol wasn't part of his current fitness routine. “So how are Mary Pat and the girls all doing?” he asked.

They spent ten minutes chatting about nothing before Mahoney got to the point. “A little old lady named Elinore Dobbs came to see me today.”

Callahan shook his head and smiled without humor, as if chagrined. “She's a nut, John.”

“Maybe, but she tells me you've been putting the screws to her to get her out of her apartment.”

“Did Elinore tell you that I offered her two hundred grand to move? Did she tell you I found her an apartment six blocks from where she is now that's twice as nice as the one she's in?”

“No, she didn't tell me that.” Mahoney was actually shocked that Callahan had offered Elinore so much; she must be costing him a boatload. “What she told me is that you've been cutting off her heat and hot water and power, vandalizing her apartment, and stealing her mail. She told me you got two creeps named McNulty terrorizing the old folks like her who still live in the building.”

“I offered her two hundred grand, John! Two hundred!”

“Well . . .”

“Do you have any idea what it takes to put a project like Delaney Square together? To get the investment money, buy the properties, get all the permits, make all the deals with the city? I've been working on this for over seven years, and that woman is interfering with a development that's bringing new businesses to Boston, providing construction jobs for a lot of people, and, after that, jobs in all the offices and retail stores that will be there. She's also standing in the way of the city collecting millions in taxes because the people who will move into that area actually pay taxes.”

Mahoney noticed that Callahan was talking about how much good his development would do for Boston—like he was some kind of philanthropist—but he didn't bother to mention how much money he was going to make.

“Goddamnit, John! I've tried to reason with that woman but—” Callahan stopped ranting and took a breath. “What do you want, John?”

“I want you to find some way to work things out with her.”

“You're not listening to me! I've tried to work things out with her. She won't budge. She'll tell you the reason why is because she likes where she lives, that she likes going to all the places she's always gone to, that she likes to be near her friends. But do you know what, John? Most of the places she used to go to are gone already and her friends have moved away—and she
knows
that. Do you want to know the real reason she's screwing with me?”

“Yeah, what's the real reason?” Mahoney said. He already knew the reason—Elinore had told him about the stand she was taking—but he wanted to hear Callahan's spin on the issue.

“She has an agenda, a political agenda. She says guys like me—the ones who create all the jobs and pay all the taxes—are making the city unaffordable for working-class people. And that's what this is all about. It's about the one percent depriving the ninety-nine percent of affordable housing. That's the drum she's beating.”

“Well, she's got a point.”

“No! She doesn't! People with money—the ones with the brains and the drive and the education—have a right to live in decent places. Even
luxurious
places. And I have the right to build the places where they want to live. Do you want this city to become like Detroit, John? Do you want the people who create jobs and pay taxes to go someplace else? I'm sorry, but this is the way it's always been and the way it will always be. This country doesn't support communism, and everyone isn't guaranteed the same standard of living. You get the standard of living you earn. And nutcases like Elinore Dobbs, goddamnit, don't have some God-given right to stop progress.”

By the time he finished talking, Callahan's face was as red as the chair Mahoney was sitting in, but Mahoney said, “I can't be on your side on this, Sean. I'm sorry, but I can't appear to be supporting a guy as rich as you while people like Elinore are getting hurt. At least not publicly.”

“How much did Elinore Dobbs contribute to your last campaign, John? I contributed fifty grand.”

“And I appreciate that, Sean. I really do. But when I'm running for reelection every two years, I have to at least pretend that I care about people like Elinore because there are a lot more of them than there are guys like you. And the fact is, I do care about them. So I'm asking you to find a way to work it out with her, and to knock off the strong-arm shit. It may take you a little longer to finish your project but in the end, everybody wins. And tomorrow, instead of me holding a press conference where I say Sean Callahan's a bad guy and a bully, I'll say I've talked to Sean Callahan and he's a
good
guy. I'll say he had some people working for him who behaved in a bad way, and he's going to fire those guys and do right by Elinore and the rest of the tenants in that building.”

Callahan didn't say anything for a minute, as he stared into Mahoney's bloodshot blue eyes. Then he said, “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I'm not going to do right by her. I've tried to do right by her but she's screwing me over. And I've got investors relying on me to get this project completed. I've got schedules to meet and every day I'm delayed from knocking down her building is adding to my losses.”

“You mean it's cutting into your profit,” Mahoney said. “You're not going to lose money on this thing.”

Callahan didn't respond.

“Sean, I'm asking you to be reasonable here.”

Callahan stood up. “Go to hell, Congressman. And when you come around next time with your hand out for a contribution, I'll tell you the same thing. And I'm going to talk to my friends and tell them that John Mahoney is a man who'll take your money then screw you to make himself look good. So go to hell. You need guys like me a lot more than I need you. I'm going to help your opponent in the next election beat you, and when I do, he'll show some gratitude.”

Callahan spun on his heels and left.

Sean was furious as he left the Copley, so mad he could barely see. Delaney Square was the most complicated development he'd ever taken on and now, on top of everything else, he had that hypocrite Mahoney meddling in it. But in the time it took for him to walk back to his office on Exeter, he realized that he shouldn't have lost his temper with Mahoney. He certainly shouldn't have said what he did. He could have been more diplomatic. He could have even lied and said that he'd try harder to come to some agreement with Dobbs. Then he thought:
Screw it
. Like he'd told Mahoney, Mahoney needed him a lot more than he needed Mahoney. And there was a larger problem: the people who'd invested in Delaney Square were not the kind of people he could afford to disappoint. He needed that old bitch out of that building and out of his way now.

Mahoney ordered another drink after Callahan left. He was steaming.

What he was really pissed about, more than anything else, was the lack of respect.
Go to hell?
Who did Callahan think he was talking to?

But more and more these days, rich guys like Callahan didn't even
pretend
they were impressed by politicians. Not anymore. These guys knew their money controlled politics, not the people who held public office.

Just the other day, Mahoney had watched a Senate hearing on television. The Senate Banking Committee had summoned a couple of Wall Street bankers down to D.C. to grill them on some outrageous, risky thing they'd done that resulted in about ten thousand ordinary people losing all the money they'd socked away for retirement. But those bankers, surrounded by a platoon of lawyers in pin-striped suits, weren't the least bit intimidated. In fact, they sat there
smirking
. They knew they weren't going to jail. They didn't break the law—they just bent it a little—and a bunch of senators, half of them in the banking industry's pocket, wouldn't do a damn thing to stop them.

Well, Mahoney was sick of the disrespect—and the guy that was going to find out how much power he still had was Sean Callahan. Normally, he'd be worried about the threat Callahan had made, about how he'd rally his fellow developers to contribute to his opponent, but this time . . . This was no longer about Elinore Dobbs. This was about an arrogant punk with money who needed to be taught a lesson, the lesson being that you didn't tell John Mahoney to go to hell.

4

Mahoney called Maggie Dolan, who was still toiling away in his district office, and told her not to let the interns leave. He said he was coming back and wanted a briefing on all the things they'd learned. He also told Maggie to call the
Globe
and the TV stations and tell them that he'd be making a speech at ten a.m. tomorrow—in time for it to be on the twelve o'clock news—down there on Delaney Street, right outside Elinore's building, with Elinore by his side.

And that's what he did.

John Mahoney had always had the ability to give a rousing speech and he usually did it off the cuff because he was too lazy to prepare a speech and practice it. And the next morning he stood next to Elinore and ripped Sean Callahan a new asshole. He said people like Elinore had rights, and developers like Callahan couldn't be allowed to violate those rights just so they could get richer. He described Callahan's harassment campaign against Elinore, cutting off her power and water, trying to force her to move. He said he'd be talking to city officials, like the mayor, to find out why he was allowing Callahan to treat people this way. And the speech worked—at least in the sense that Mahoney came across as a man who cared about the plight of all those like Elinore Dobbs.

The following day, a spokesman for Callahan read a statement to the media saying that Mahoney was grossly exaggerating Elinore's situation, and Mr. Callahan
deeply
resented the implication that he'd done anything illegal. If any vandalism had occurred in Elinore's building, it had been perpetrated by the criminal element who currently lived in the neighborhood—the sort of people who would migrate elsewhere when Mr. Callahan's project was complete.

The spokesman said that, sure, there'd been a few maintenance problems in Elinore's building. It was an old building, and since most of the tenants had moved out, there was less rent money coming in to pay for maintenance. But there wasn't any sort of ongoing harassment campaign against an old woman. That was ludicrous. Things just break and it takes time to fix them.

The spokesman also said that Mr. Callahan had done everything humanly possible to relocate Elinore and her fellow tenants. He'd made very generous offers to buy out their leases and relocate them to apartments much nicer than the ones on Delaney Street. In fact, Ms. Dobbs had been offered two hundred thousand dollars to relocate. For Christ's sake, how much more generous could Mr. Callahan be?

Speaking of generosity, the PR flack said, just look at Mr. Callahan's record, how he and his wife contributed more than two million dollars last year to organizations like Big Brothers, the Boys and Girls Clubs, the YMCA, and Habitat for Humanity. Yeah, the spokesman concluded, Sean Callahan was a
good
guy and he resented a powerful congressman, for purely political purposes, saying he was otherwise. And by the way, the spokesman said, Mr. Callahan's project was providing jobs for a whole lot of working folks and, if anything, Elinore Dobbs was taking a paycheck out of those workers' pockets.

In short, Callahan's spokesman sent a message to John Mahoney. The message was:
Go fuck yourself.

And Mahoney responded accordingly. He called the police commissioner and told him if he wanted any more of those federal antiterrorism funds, he'd better get off his fat ass and protect Elinore Dobbs. Mahoney wanted big guys with nightsticks patrolling the neighborhood. He wanted these McNulty clowns who were intimidating the old folks leaned on and leaned on hard.

He called the secretary of the Treasury and said he wanted Sean Callahan's crooked development company audited. The secretary informed him that the last director of the IRS had been forced to resign for auditing Republicans to make the Democrats happy. Mahoney's response was that this wasn't about partisan politics; in fact, the guy he wanted audited was a registered Democrat. The secretary said, “Man, I don't know,” to which Mahoney said that maybe it was time to review the secretary's last trip to Jamaica, the one where he'd flown in a government plane, accompanied by a secretary that everyone knew was his mistress, and then spent the whole time playing golf and hide-the-pickle in his hotel room. “You're right, Congressman,” the secretary said. “A man like Callahan who would push an old lady around is very likely to be defrauding the government out of its rightful share.”

Mahoney's called the chairman of the SEC, saying he wanted Callahan investigated for insider trading. He didn't know if Callahan was guilty of this particular crime but suspected a man with his money and connections might be. Mahoney, in fact, had been guilty of insider trading many times but as a member of Congress, and despite recent changes to a vaguely worded law called the STOCK Act, he could get away with it. But Callahan couldn't. So unless the chairman of the SEC wanted to be dragged in front of a House committee to explain why his commission was so damn useless . . .

He contacted the director of the FBI next, and told him that he wanted the bureau to investigate Elinore's claim that Callahan's people had stolen her mail. Stealing mail was, after all, a federal crime. The head of the bureau languidly said, “Not my job, Congressman. You need to talk to the Postal Inspection Service.” Mahoney had never dealt with the Postal Inspection Service in his life. He looked them up on the Internet and found that, yep, they were the guys who investigated if your mail got stolen. They also investigated mailbox destruction, letter bombs, identity theft, lottery fraud, and a whole bunch of other stuff. They had over a thousand inspectors, seventeen field offices, and even had their own forensic laboratory. No wonder the price of stamps kept going up. But when Mahoney learned that the postal service's top cop had started off his career as a mail carrier in Mississippi, he “imaged” a guy with a wandering eye, in those shorts mailmen wear, one of those white safari hats on his head—and decided not to bother.

Lastly, Mahoney called the mayor of Boston and the city councilman representing Elinore's neighborhood. He told them one thing he wanted done immediately was to have the right people inspect Callahan's project looking for building and safety code violations. He wanted inspectors crawling over Callahan's development like red-hot ants. He also wanted to know why the civil suits Elinore and other tenants had filed to stop Callahan's terrorist tactics hadn't prevailed. He screamed at the mayor, “You tell the useless son of a bitch who's supposed to keep Callahan from breaking the housing laws to do his goddamn job!”

The mayor and the councilman said they'd do what they could but their response was noticeably lukewarm. It was apparent to Mahoney that those two jackals were in Callahan's pocket, either getting a kickback from him or a promise to contribute to their next campaign—and Mahoney couldn't help but wonder if the mayor might actually be thinking about running against him.

Two days after meeting with Elinore Dobbs, a disgruntled Mahoney sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair at Logan Airport waiting for his plane to D.C. to board. On one hand, he felt good that he'd done the right thing by siding with Elinore against Callahan. Maybe his reason for siding with her had more to do with pride than anything else—but he'd done the right thing. On the other hand, he had this queasy feeling in his stomach that his next run for the seat he'd held for more than three decades might not be so easy.

The other thing was, in spite of all the bureaucrats he'd leaned on, Mahoney knew that eventually Callahan was going to win and Elinore was going to lose. There was no way she could hold out for three more years against Callahan. He also knew that after a couple of weeks the media would become bored with the story, if they weren't bored already. So he needed to do more. He needed to find some way to keep the heat on Callahan, and what he really needed was to find some legal way to stop him from harassing Elinore. Then he thought:
Who says it has to be legal?

He called Mavis, his secretary in D.C. “Track down that lazy bastard DeMarco. He's probably playing golf. Tell him I want him in my office tomorrow, and to pack a bag. He's going to Boston.”