Sweat Page 15

  The eleven o’clock evening news opened with the crowd outside the Hart Senate Building. In his office, the senator’s eyes were still glued to the screen. The crowd outside, which had surged to over two hundred thanks to calls from Kazu Ito’s father to every Asian organization in the D.C. phone book, had dwindled to fewer than twenty. Most of the AWARE group was now back at the hotel in L’Enfant Plaza, strategizing their plan for tomorrow. The group knew that protesting at night defeated the purpose. There was no traffic to block, no passers-by to incite.

  The news crews finished their last clips for the night and were closing up shop. In the confines of his foxhole, Senator Day pulled himself together with a cup of coffee and a wet towel across his face. He put his shoes on, first trying the left shoe on his right foot, and then making the switch.

  He turned off his office lights, teasing the final remains of AWARE protesters and news crews who had been watching his office from the ground like a crowd waiting for a jumper on a ledge. Senator Day, hat on his head, strolled to the elevators on the opposite side of the building, body swaying down the long corridor. A lone senate page passed and gave his best “Good night, Senator,” salutation, before stifling a laugh. The senator didn’t acknowledge the snicker. He was making his first attempt to move past the day’s misadventure. The longer he dwelled on it, the longer it would be news. You don’t make it to the Senate without thick skin, a silver tongue, spells of temporary amnesia, and multiple personalities.

  Senator Day rode the elevator to the basement and walked to the underground sidewalk that ran like a maze throughout the Capitol complex and its surrounding buildings. The senator eyed the small train that ran parallel to the underground walkway, a toy used to shuttle voting senators to the Capitol in comfort. The train was serious business when it was in use, but parked in the hall without any passengers it looked like an enlarged version of a child’s amusement park ride. It was not a perk limited to the Senate; the House had its own choo-choo too, bought and maintained with taxpayers’ money, of course.

  The senator took three underground tunnels and exited a small door on the north side of the Capitol Building. He stepped into the empty street and hailed a cab. Twenty minutes later, he paid his tab in the alley that ran behind his Georgetown home and walked across the backyard and into his house.

  The honorable senator sat completely motionless on the foot of the bed, his wife asleep with her head under the pillow. He held his own head in his hands. The image he spent his life trying to portray now dangerously teetering on the cliff of disaster—a cliff named Wei Ling. The years of education, proper upbringing, and the sacrifice of the family lineage that came before him climaxed in one thought that the senator said aloud. “Fuck.”

  It was the best he could do.

  For the first time since his car had broken down in South Central L.A., the senator was scared. But politics were on his side. He was from Massachusetts, historically one of the friendliest states to morally questionable acts by their governing representatives. His mind raced between desperation and hope, ego and humility. His life was on the line—his wife, his job, his ambition. “Nice job, John,” the senator said to himself. “Two and a half decades of hard work, thrown out the window on a third-world sweatshop skank.” ***

  The goateed man with a penchant for positive camera angles and the lion’s share of a recently cashed fifteen-thousand-dollar paycheck, chatted with the off-duty stewardess at Club Iota in Arlington. A local acoustic husband-and-wife team was packing up their guitars after an early weeknight show that had the bar half-full. The bartender cleaned glasses and hit the remote control for the small TV in the corner of the enclosed drink-mixing workspace. With the TV news in one ear, the man with the goatee tried his best to impress the stewardess, his goal to say whatever it took to get her down the street and into the bedroom of his new condo.

  With the stewardess playing coy, the cameraman looked at the news on the TV and spoke involuntarily. “Look at this asshole.”

  “Who?” the stewardess asked.

  “Senator Day. I filmed a documentary for him last month.” So what if it wasn’t a full-fledged documentary. No one was there to call bullshit on him.

  The stewardess warmed up considerably and put her hand on the cameraman’s knee. They both watched the story and the bartender turned up the sound.

  The cameraman chuckled.

  “What are you laughing at?” the stewardess asked, her arm moving to his shoulder.

  “It’s just fitting. You have Senator Day defending himself against an Asian Rights Group a month after going to Asia to film a documentary on Human Rights and Overseas Labor.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “Honey, that’s between me, him, and the rest of the poor souls at the Ritz he kept up all night.”

  The cameraman asked for the check and pointed to the stewardess to indicate he was covering her bill as well. “You want to see a copy of the documentary? I live right down the street. I have the whole thing on DVD,” he said getting off his stool.

  “Okay. But just the documentary. Nothing else.”

  “Of course,” the cameraman replied, the muscles in the corner of his mouth fighting to suppress a smile.

  Chapter 17

  The ride from Logan Airport to Boston’s North End was a manageable twenty minutes. Before “The Big Dig,” a construction project aimed at putting the city’s freeways underground, the city was a rush-hour maze with no way out. But with the completion of the most expensive engineering project ever undertaken by man, Boston had once again become a charming big city. The streets were less crowded, the air was cleaner, the city quieter. Sure, Beantown was one major underground accident away from a total transportation hose-up, but for now the Big Dig was finally showing results after years of budget overruns and broken promises. The senator looked at the skyline of Boston, deep in thought. Home. It has its advantages.

  A few blocks northeast of Faneuil Hall and Quincy Market lies the North End, Boston’s version of Little Italy. In a city dominated by Irish immigrants, the Italians, backed with guns and pasta, had made their niche. Small Italian shops lined Hanover Street and pockmarked the surrounding neighborhoods. Mom and Pop establishments sold everything from cannoli to ice cream, pasta to seafood, wine to cheese. English was optional, and you got a discount if the owner knew your family or liked your face. Two blocks away, the North Church marked the edge of the cultural enclave and the beginning of Paul Revere’s famous “the British are coming” gallop through Boston and the history books.

  As the senator drove past the statue of Paul Revere, he thought about the luxury of having advanced warning. He needed a Paul Revere. Someone to tell him when he was being ambushed. One if by land, two if by sea, three if you are being blackmailed by an unscrupulous sweatshop owner.

  The Gelodini family had occupied the corner of Hanover and Prince Streets since the first barrel of tea was thrown overboard into Boston Harbor to protest British-imposed taxes. The Gelodinis came to the country carrying a few suitcases of clothes and a proud lineage of carpenters and bricklayers. Hard workers with big appetites to go with even bigger personalities. The love of food and the propensity for engaging conversation was the impetus for a change to the Gelodinis’s chosen profession. For four generations the hammers and spades had been gathering dust as antiques in the attic, the family tools replaced with spatulas and pasta makers.

  Michael Gelodini, a short Italian with a harsh Sicilian-rooted Bostonian accent, gave the senator a firm handshake and led him down a narrow hall and up a flight of stairs to a private dining room in the back of the restaurant.

  ”Your guest is waiting,” said the current patriarch of the Gelodini family.

  “Thank you,” the senator replied.

  “I will be taking care of you personally, Senator. Shall I get you a bottle of wine?”

  “Please. A decent red.”

  “We have a nice 1999 Chianti Classico.”

  “Perfect.”<
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  The senator entered the room and Michael Gelodini disappeared. The senator’s guest was seated at one end of table, facing the door. It was a habit that had kept him alive on more than one occasion. Some lessons are learned the hard way, and the scar across the middle of the guest’s neck illustrated the point.

  “Senator.”

  “DiMarco, I assume,” the senator replied.

  “Yes. And that is the first and last time you will address me by name.” His dark soulless eyes combined with his black hair and the scar on his neck to give the impression that the inside of the man matched the intimidating exterior.

  Neither man moved to extend the other a handshake. The senator, eyeing a man he would only meet once, pulled out a chair and sat down, sitting diagonally across the table from his guest.

  “Nice restaurant. I don’t make it to the North End much. I’m from Southie,” DiMarco said proudly.

  “An Italian from Southie.”

  “There are plenty of true bloods in Southie. Somebody has to keep tabs on the Irish. You know we have Italian restaurants in Southie, too. Good ones.”

  The senator smiled. He liked people from Boston. “This place is discreet without being dangerous, physically or politically. I’m a United States Senator. I can’t risk being seen getting out of a car in Southie or Jamaica Plain or Roxbury. Here, if someone happens to see me, no one will think twice.”

  “Whatever. You’re picking up the check.”

  Finding DiMarco had taken the senator exactly one phone call to his father. Edward Day III had provided his son, through DNA, with the brains, the looks, and the inherent instinct to survive at all costs. He shared his son’s ambition. He wanted nothing more than to be the father of the President. If his son would only learn how to use a condom.

  “Where can I find the individuals in question?” DiMarco asked over a steaming plate of mussels on the table.

  “Saipan.”

  “Just where the hell is that?”

  The senator gave DiMarco a brief geography lesson. Vincent DiMarco listened and nodded.

  “You have pictures of these acquaintances of yours?”

  “No,” the senator lied. He sure as hell wasn’t about to hand over the pictures he did have.

  DiMarco, dark eyes staring at the senator, thought for a moment. “One hundred thousand before I start. Another one hundred thousand when the job is done. Plus fifty thousand for expenses.” He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. “I deal in cash, and I don’t start until I receive the first payment. This is the address where you can deliver the money. There is a door on the second floor in the back. Someone will answer. Here is a phone number where you can reach me. Don’t use my name. I am the only one who will answer at that number, so you don’t have to go asking for me. If I don’t answer, don’t leave a message. If I need to contact you, I will do so from a public phone or I will use an untraceable prepaid phone.”

  “Agreed,” the senator answered. “It will take me a couple of days to get the cash.”

  “Fine. Like I said, I will be waiting. Once I receive the payment, I will start. When I finish, I will contact you and you will deliver the second payment to another address I will identify later.”

  “Fine.”

  “Now what can you tell me about your acquaintances?”

  The senator liked the sound of the word “acquaintance.” “My first acquaintance is a man by the name of Lee Chang, owner of a sweatshop operating under the name Chang Industries. My second acquaintance is a girl named Wei Ling who works at the sweatshop.” The senator pointed to an address from a corner of his old itinerary to the island. “Here’s the address of the sweatshop—it should be easy to find. Saipan is not a big island.”

  “Well, nothing is as easy as it sounds. I’ll have to do some surveillance and pick my spot. It’ll take a week. Maybe less, maybe more.”

  “The sooner, the better.”

  “Any preference?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are a lot of ways to get injured in this world. I mean, I’ll take what I can get as far as the opportunity goes, but I try to accommodate my client’s request.”

  Senator Day looked around the empty private dining room as if he expected the FBI to come busting through the door. “I’m not sure what you are saying,” the senator answered coyly. “But if I had a choice of how I would like to die, I would prefer it be an accident.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. I think I can rule out the use of a firearm. I’m not about to fly to some foreign country with a gun in my bag.”

  “It’s not a foreign country. Saipan is a U.S. territory.”

  “Well, just the same. Taking a gun on an airplane, even a gun with a proper license, is not in our best interest.” DiMarco didn’t bother telling the senator that he preferred knives. They did the job, left fewer clues if you took the weapon with you, and they were silent. Every musician has their favorite instrument and DiMarco’s were stainless steel, heavily weighted, razor sharp blades made by an old codger in Toledo, Spain.

  The senator nodded and said nothing.

  Mr. Gelodini entered with a fresh basket of bread and filled the senator’s wine glass. Vincent DiMarco stood and straightened his jacket.

  “Michael, my guest can’t stay for dinner. Would you please see him out?”

  “Certainly, sir. Will the senator still be dining with us this evening?”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Very well.”

  Michael Gelodini led Vincent DiMarco through the kitchen and out the side door to an alley beside the restaurant. The metal door shut and darkness surrounded DiMarco like a comfortable jacket. With quarter of a million dollars on his income horizon, DiMarco looked down the alley in both directions. To the left he could see the lights of Hanover Street silhouetting patrons as they shuffled down the sidewalk. DiMarco turned away from the light and vanished into the night.

  Chapter 18

  Marilyn opened her eyes as the morning sun peaked through a crack in the curtains. For the third night in a row, she had spent more time staring at the dark ceiling than she had at the back of her eyelids. The fax that had poured into the office earlier in the week had forced her to reflect on the last twenty years of her life, something she had managed to avoid through self-therapy and good old-fashioned medication. Admitting that she was the cause of Jake’s parent’s divorce, combined with the plight of a seamstress named Wei Ling, sent her tail-spinning into a level of depression she hadn’t visited in years. She rolled over, got out of bed in her nightgown, and downed two Valium and a Zoloft with her morning espresso.

  An hour later, she grabbed a seat on the crowded Metro and cautiously circled job possibilities from the employment page, looking over her shoulder as she rode the subway six stops on the red line. At the office, she made travel plans, took phone calls, and shifted around a never-ending carousel of meetings and appointments, dinners, and lunches. She brewed coffee for her boss as soon as she knew he was on the floor and served it with one spoonful of real sugar, stirred well. But for the first time in her life, she was looking at other job alternatives, scanning the opportunities available to a forty-five-year-old secretary with no educational background.

  Reeling from guilt, she asked Jake to lunch—an offer which he politely declined. Marilyn’s third offer to buy him a drink after work was finally, grudgingly, accepted. She didn’t want to leave anything unsaid. She didn’t want Jake to have any questions about the past. He was going to be burdened for life by the truth she had already spilled. She was going to apologize again, try to explain the unexplainable, and act like an adult for once in her life, even if it killed her.

  Jake got out of a late evening meeting, a conference call with an Indonesian firm looking to import a new generator for an offshore, wind-power venture. He had prolonged the meeting as long as he could by peppering the international team with an inordinate number of questions. In the back of his mind, he hoped Marilyn wouldn’t be waiting w
hen he finished. Luck wasn’t on his side.

  The waiter led Jake and Marilyn to a two-seater booth in a shaded corner of The Dark Room, an appropriately named hole in the basement of an old office building five blocks from Winthrop Enterprises.

  The waiter gave the young man and the older woman the usual look. Boy toys for the city’s wealthy and lonely wives were an old sport, and a few establishments in Georgetown survived on such clientele alone.

  Marilyn grabbed the red menu with the gold edge and flipped to the cocktails. Jake, uncomfortable, looked around the bar.

  “Your friend Al is a little out there.”

  “He can help.”

  “He said he would, but not without giving me the first degree.”

  “He is a very smart man. Don’t let the mental breakdown fool you.”

  “Did you know the guy used to work in intelligence?”

  “I know he worked for the government.”

  “And my father?”

  “You need to ask Al about that. I wasn’t involved.”

  “What’s his story?

  “It’s a long one.”

  “I don’t have to be anywhere for a couple of hours,” Jake responded, kinder than he needed to be.

  “He lost his wife and son a few years back.”

  “How?”

  “Remember the Air Egypt flight that crashed off the coast of Nantucket twenty-five minutes after take-off?”

  “Sure I remember. They suspect the pilot nose-dived the plane into the sea intentionally.”