Miranda's War (17 page)

“Did you know she's a manic-depressive?”

“I didn't,” he said.

“And a long history with Xanax and Prozac.”

“I've always found her to be tactless, especially when the heat is on.”

She nodded and wondered where he was going, what he knew.

“Arnold, what do you think of him?” he asked about Elise's new husband.

“Made his first fortune investing with Mort Zuckerman, and lost it in the tech bubble.”

“Mort has no use for him.”

“You know Zuckerman?”

He nodded.

“We've made a couple of fortunes together, a true gambler.”

“I'd like to talk to him about what I'm doing. He might know how to monetize my ideas.”

“You could talk to me about that.”

“I already have, and you responded. Now I want to talk to him.”

“I could make that happen.”

He leaned back and sipped his wine. She waited for him to elaborate but he was waiting for her, so she began. “We're getting an appraisal.”

“Which will come in at 13.2,” he said.

“Why are you overpaying?”

“I'm not. I'm buying more than the property.”

“What else comes with it?”

“I can't tell you my long-term plans, Miranda. We make a deal. The town can put in all the protections it wants to preserve it. But what I do with it after that is my business. And I am a businessman. That property is going to make me a lot more than $14 million in the next ten years.”

“I don't see how. You can't demolish the mansion and build luxury condos.”

“I think you're talking out of school. I want to see that term sheet. And you want my $14 million very badly. You practically brought on World War III to get here. And now that you won that war, you're not turning back.”

“It's 14.5.”

“You've got the point five. Now what have I got?”

His voice was deep and silky, appealing enough that she said as little as possible so he could guide the conversation.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Ann Cronin-Reynolds had done what the Governor and his political people had asked. She was running TV and radio spots attacking Rokeby, and one of the lines of attack was his support for snob zoning. She had a double-digit lead in every poll of the small primary electorate. As far as she was concerned it was over. Rokeby wasn't even campaigning outside of small events in very big houses. Such was not the formula for victory. She glided through the final weekend at a reasonable pace of appearances at shopping malls. The people mostly knew her and were happy to shake her hand. Hundreds of men wanted to be photographed with her, which she took to be a good sign. Young women were still asking for her autograph, reporters showed up often outside her headquarters, which was busy with volunteers. They all wanted to talk strategy for the general election in November. She maintained a coy, faux-humble posture about anything post-primary while thinking about it practically non-stop.

Yet she was privately concerned about the big early voting numbers from those six snob-zoning towns. Four thousand people had already voted in the Republican primary there and only seven hundred in Framingham, which was five times the size. The rest of the district was also sleeping up to election day. Her model showed her beating him in every other community by two or three to one. He had something bubbling in those six towns—and that was it. She and her pollster could not see any way those towns could overcome her lead in the other twenty-seven unless turnout in the twenty-seven were severely depressed, as if there were no contest at all.

“You could go into Lincoln, right into Miranda Dalton's hometown and tell people there is no zoning bill—it's not even coming up for a vote,” said Bill, the whiz-kid aide.

“And then they start questioning me, well is it introduced? And I say yes, but nothing happens until we hold hearings, and there are no hearings scheduled. And they say that's coming. And I say no it's not. And they say you can't guarantee that. And I say don't worry, I'll stop it. And then word gets out to the rest of the district that I'm taking a stand in favor of the 1%. And I'm finished in the general. No thank you.”

“I'm scared, Ann. These are big numbers from these towns.”

“I've won four elections and never had much luck with early voting, and I'm not planning on it this time. Move on.”

“Get out our vote on Tuesday,” he said softly.

“I know.”

“Then do it, and stop talking about their vote.”

Bill went over his get-out-the-vote operation, the lists of names on his computer and the hundred people each captain was supposed to get to vote. On a computer screen, it was doable. But this was his first campaign, and from what he could see, the entire thing was like a Facebook page. Hundreds of people united by their affection for Ann Cronin-Reynolds. But there was no plan for actually getting them to vote, to get involved, to give money. There was no debate with Rokeby. He'd never actually talked to a Rokeby voter. That was the problem he faced. It was an invisible opposition, giving them no real target to attack, no gaffes to exploit. It was just those people out there in those quiet towns that the campaign basically ignored. Bill preferred that electorate to his at the moment. Those people had a reason to vote.

But Stephen preferred Cronin-Reynolds's electorate to his. He campaigned from 7:00 to 9:00 each night at small cocktail parties, collected checks, discussed the markets and moved on. There were no real questions. He gave no interviews, and made no appearances outside his towns. He no longer believed Miranda's turnout model would work. There was just no real evidence this was a Congressional campaign.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Miranda had her term sheet from town counsel. All aesthetic changes had to be approved by the Commission, the width of the access road, barely enough for one car, could not be changed, only twenty cars per day could access the property, and New England Properties had to agree to binding arbitration over any dispute.

“I can't agree to these terms,” Zenni said, as they sat in the conversation nook of his office after lunch. “You didn't tell me this was coming. Binding arbitration. Who's the arbiter?”

“There's room for negotiation, Tony. I'm the Chairman.”

“How much room have you got? They're dictating these terms because they want to tank the deal. It's retribution for beating them.”

“I can see that, Tony. I've committed a grave sin by winning a big public fight. Lincoln doesn't want it to happen again. Ever. So I'm going to just negotiate the best deal that I can and let the Commission take it or leave it.”

“What if your colleagues and the town counsel say no?”

“They won't. Because deep in their timid souls they want the $14.5 million and want to use it to buy that land on Route 2. They know we made a mistake in downzoning that land. They want Lincoln preserved as much as possible. They know someone has to lead this battle and that someone is me. But they won't ever say this in public unless they are forced, which they were.”

“If you make a purchase and sale agreement with me and the Commission won't sign it, I'll never deal with you again. Nobody will buy that property.”

“I went all the way out there for this deal, and for what? So my colleagues can kill it and get rid of me? This was crazy.”

“I've never seen anything like this, and I've been doing difficult real estate deals for thirty years.”

She wanted to cry and confide much more in him. But instead she walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and looked down at the beautiful harbor.

“The more things change, the more we need to hang on to our past. That harbor was filthy when I first moved to Boston. Now the whole area is green and clean. The expressway is gone. But then we've got all these nouveau Tinkertoy skyscrapers.”

“I built some of them.”

“I know. Capitalism can be ugly, Tony. It needs to be managed. And Lincoln and capitalism just don't mix. They don't want you to make any real money on this deal. Academics think profit is crass, and sometimes I have to admit they're right.”

“The professors think money should be inherited, not made,” he added and laughed.

“My husband's grandfather was apparently the crassest capitalist you can imagine. He sold cannonballs to the government during the Spanish-American War at a huge profit. The Dalton fortune was doubled by a war profiteer. And the original fortune was made by one Cyrus Dalton, who killed hundreds of Penobscot Indians and took their land in Bristol County. We don't talk about that in our house. Archer would prefer the boys not even know. They're supposed to have an enlightened noblesse oblige attitude, which translates into this superior anti-capitalist sneering at people like you.”

“But they want my $14 million.”

“Sort of. You see what I'm going through to close this deal.”

“Will they let me convert the estate into six luxury condos like I did at the Fisher Estate in Brookline? Of course not. I could triple my money in two years if they did. So I'll start with this corporate events venue. If I rent it out enough times a season, it'll pay for itself. But there's no real money in this deal unless they let me convert it to residential or office condos, which I'm betting they'll do in a few years.”

“They won't. The word ‘luxury' rubs everyone the wrong way. It's like acrylic.”

“So I won't use that word. I'll call it historic living in historic Lincoln and use an eighteenth-century Tudor theme. But I'll get it done.”

“And now that I know your plan I'm supposed to tell my fellow commissioners.”

“If you do, the deal's off.”

“Why did you tell me?”

“Because we're kindred spirits. I respect what you're doing. And if you're still there in a few years, you might talk some sense into them just like you are right now.”

She looked back out the window and thought of Ted just a few floors below and then the oath she took when Karl swore her in. She was about to violate it.

“Let's talk about that twenty-cars-a-day rule, Mr. Zenni. I think it makes a lot of sense. We don't want Lincoln to look like Brookline.”

She took her seat next to his desk, and he gazed back down at his copy of the documents.

“How are we supposed to have big corporate events with only twenty cars?”

“You shuttle people over in vans from Route 2.”

“Then you need to widen the access road,” he countered.

They negotiated for the next two hours.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Miranda set up a computer at Stephen's campaign office with a special router to receive real-time vote totals from the six snob-zoning towns and Framingham. They could then monitor the turnout through the day in their base and Cronin-Reynolds's. It was a cloudy day with possible thunderstorms, which she hoped would hit in the late afternoon and depress turnout. Nothing would deter their people from turning out. That she was sure of.

Miranda was on the phone with her caterer at 5:00 a.m. to monitor the fresh coffee distribution. By 6:00 there was a food truck outside the polling stations at all six of their towns with urns of free Starbucks coffee, tea, croissants and stacks of
The Wall Street Journal
. At 6:30 there were lines to vote in each town. Julia reported from the Weston Town Hall that it looked like a stream of tan trench coats for as far as she could see. The news was the same in the other five towns. But in Framingham, with its 85,000 people, the lines were short, with most voters going into the Democratic booths.

“Sure they're voting for me in our towns,” said Stephen, “but I've run the numbers fifty different ways and I can't win unless Framingham is dead all day.”

“It's dead now,” said Miranda.

“If her people aren't voting at 8:00 a.m. then something is really bizarre. I don't believe it. Anyway, Alicia and I are about to walk down and vote. I'll call you from the polling place and let you know if my town is into me.”

He and Alicia had walked the half mile to the Sherborn Town Hall, where the line of voters applauded as soon as he was in sight, for him a new experience. This was not the obligatory welcome he'd received in the small audiences he was so used to. After they'd voted he lingered by the coffee truck as people thanked him for “trying.” Nobody actually thought he could win.

“There are probably a hundred people lined up to vote,” he said to Miranda. “It wasn't like this two years ago in the presidential election when I voted at about this time.”

“I'm hearing the same thing from Carlisle, Weston, Sudbury, and I saw it myself in Lincoln. We did our job, kiddo.”

Chapter Thirty-Six

Ann Cronin-Reynolds was in a near panic. She had heard about the food trucks and had seen the tepid turnout in Framingham, Natick, Maynard and Southborough. Then there was the high turnout in Wellesley, a big affluent town without snob zoning adjacent to Sherborn.

“Get the Governor on the phone,” she snapped at her manager.

She pulled out her cell phone and called her Southborough town coordinator while she waited.

“Talk to me, Richie, what's going on?”

“Steady as she goes, Ann,” the coordinator replied nervously.

“What does that mean?”

“The poll workers are out there, people are voting and the calls will begin in an hour.”

“How many people have voted?”

“Hold on, let me see.”

He didn't have any numbers at the ready and she heard him walking, talking, shuffling papers.

“Are you there?” she said with an edge well beyond what she normally used on her subordinates.

“Yeah, I'm here,” he finally said, “and as of two minutes ago we've got a turnout of 474 in my ward.”

She looked at her clipboard. They needed a thousand votes in Southborough, and at this rate it would be difficult.