The Art Of The Next Best
The Art Of The Next Best
Book Four and a Half of The New Pioneers
by Deborah Nam-Krane
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
NEXT BEST
Jack Donnelly had listened to the man across
from him for the last ten minutes. He answered the questions
without nervousness, but Jack knew that he wasn't getting the whole
story. And one thing he had learned was that the less he knew going
into something, the likelier he was to have that something blow up
in his face later.
Jack folded his arms across his broad chest.
"Let's be straight, okay? On paper you're overqualified, and your
references are excellent. So tell me why you'd rather slog away for
me when you could safely stay in academia. And don't BS me about
how unsafe your university is right now, because politics is always
going to be more unstable than anything else. Even in this
city."
Martin Shepard smiled at Jack from across the
table. He put his hands on the table as if to show that he didn't
have anything dangerous with him. "I voted for you in the last
election."
Jack leaned forward. "Why?"
"It was time for a change."
Jack scoffed. "Come on, we both know I wasn't
the ‘change candidate’."
Martin grinned. "I voted for that guy too,
but he didn't make it past the primary."
Jack laughed. “What do you have against
Cervino? You came here for college, so it's not that you were
screwed by the public schools. Cervino's been good to people in the
South End and Back Bay, and as far as I could find out you're not
connected to any of the developers he's tangled with. So, again,
why?"
Everything on Martin's face relaxed except
for his eyes. They were sharp and focused. "I don't like the way
the man does business."
"I'm serious, I'm not running for mayor
again."
"But you are running for an At-Large Council
seat, and that’s the job you really liked.” Jack lifted his chin
but said nothing. “And even if you're not made president again your
voice holds sway."
"I didn't stop Angelo every time he brought
something before us."
"That would have been impossible. But you
didn't mind embarrassing him when you had to. And you're going to
support his opponent in the next race."
"You know this for a fact? Because- no joke-
I don’t know who’s running yet. Besides, I'm one of the lucky ones:
Cervino beat me and made me take my medicine, but he didn't ruin me
and run me out of town." They both knew whom he was talking about
but neither said his name.
Martin leaned forward. "Because even Angelo
Cervino has his limits. And you can’t wait to remind him of
that.”
Jack grinned and stuck out his hand. "Welcome
aboard."
Martin shook his hand. “Thank you very
much.”
~~~
Three months before, Mitchell Graham was
watching the Red Sox at Martin’s house. Neither was much of a
baseball fan, but Mitch’s wife Emily was hosting a Girls Night In
with Martin's young fiancee Jessie Bartolome, their good friends
Zainab Hendrickson and Miranda Abbot and, of course, their favorite
girlfriend, his young daughter Hellie.
Mitch had arrived before Richard, Michael,
Vijay and Jordan (Carlos was boycotting the game out of loyalty to
the Yankees) and Martin was on his second beer. "Son of a bitch!"
Martin repeated over and over, and that was the nicest thing he had
to say. "In one week I've found enough that I don't know why a
federal grand jury hasn't at least indicted him. What do you think
I'm going to find in a month? I knew Cervino couldn’t be the saint
everyone thinks he is, but I didn't think he’d shaken hands with
the devil so many times."
Mitch's hand froze mid-air as he was passing
Martin his next beer. "
The
devil?"
"The one and only," Martin said as he grabbed
the bottle.
Mitch groaned. "Oh man. Promise me you are
not going to mention Alex Sheldon in front of Richard or Michael
tonight."
Martin scoffed. "If I'm not going to talk
about it with Jessie, why would I talk about it with them? Just
keep me well-hydrated tonight."
~~~
"Tell me about David Hwang," Martin asked
when he met Zainab for coffee a week after the Sox game.
Zainab smiled and sighed. "A nice, smart guy
who could have done a lot of things."
"One of the few people who wasn't a total
scumbag from SGC?"
Martin never understood why Zainab's face
flushed a little bit every time someone brought up the University's
Student Government Council. "Yes," she said after a moment. "He
liked hard work, and he did it well. He was elected president for a
reason."
"And he was working for Lucy for a while,
right?"
"Yeah, but don't ask me to explain that
relationship." Lucy was Zainab's mother-in-law and Jessie's aunt
and guardian. “Distant parent” was an understatement. She kept
firmer boundaries than anyone else Martin knew, but the few times
she had mentioned David Hwang it had been evident that she felt the
kind of affection for him that most people reserved for a child who
had won their respect as an adult. If Richard and Jessie had had a
closer relationship with Lucy they might have been resentful; as it
was, they were pleasantly surprised that she could form normal
relationships.
"It seemed like he did what he was expected
to."
"And if you work for her, you're expected to
be phenomenal." She smiled again. "I was more impressed by what he
did as a community organizer. That car sharing program was a great
idea and it's still helping a lot of people."
Martin laughed. "And the fact that it shamed
a lot of other people didn't hurt either."
Zainab snickered. “He had my vote after that,
for sure.” She pursed her lips. "Why are you so interested in
David? Weren’t you guys in the same department?"
Martin shrugged. “Probably, but he was taking
all the hard Honors classes before I decided to get serious.” He
smiled. "But I still voted for the man when he ran for councilor
and mayor. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so bitter after an
election.”
“Don’t get me started,” Zainab said after she
sipped her latte. “He was
thisclose
, and instead we got Jack
Donnelly, whom the Globe basically endorsed as Cervino Two. There
are some things I will never understand.”
“Mmm,” Martin vocalized. “So tell me how
married life’s treating you and Richard so far?”
~~~
For a little while, David Hwang had looked
like the golden boy of Boston politics. While serving as President
of the University’s student body he had also pitched an idea to
Lucy Bartolome Hendrickson, the most powerful member of the
University’s board, to give comprehensive assistance to students
and their families from elementary school through the end of high
school. The students that made it through would be granted a full
scholarship to the University. Lucy knew a little something about
long term investments; if someone like her thought it was a good
idea, it wouldn’t be long before other universities followed
suit.
But that kind of change was going to take a
while, and David had seen a lot of low-hanging fruit that could be
picked in the meantime. He joined a community development
organization in Dorchester and within three months found himself on
the front page of the
Boston Globe
for the innovative car
sharing program he’d worked out with Quick Wheels—and the way the
Department of Transportation had been put on the defensive for
their shoddy service to Mattapan and the outer parts of Dorchester
and Roxbury. David was being whispered about as a potential
candidate for the City Council in the blogosphere within days...and
then just as abruptly the coverage stopped. Martin could have sworn
that he had seen David leaving the building that housed Lucy’s
office that week and looking as if he’d just missed having his head
handed to him.
Jessie had snorted when Martin mentioned it.
“Should I call him and give him tips on how to blow off her
BS?”
“Babe, if you can’t get that across to
Richard, I don’t think Hwang stands a chance.”
Jessie shrugged. “Everyone has to learn
sometime how to tell people to screw.”
Those words echoed in Martin’s mind a few
years later as he came across Alex Sheldon’s name while he was
doing research for his thesis. Jessie had had to put on that hard
shell of armor way too early, and it was Alex Sheldon’s fault.
Michael Abbot had almost raped Jessie when
she was fifteen, but by the time Martin had met Michael, he had
already forgiven him. It wasn’t Michael’s fault that he had been
raised by the man who might as well have killed his parents, and it
wasn’t his fault that he spent every waking breath knowing that. It
wasn’t hard for Martin to see how that could twist someone. Michael
had shown remorse by putting himself in the line of fire to protect
Jessie (and Miranda), and he’d been working for two years before
that to get better. Now he went to AA and therapy regularly, and he
was a devoted husband and father. Martin could see that he was a
good man who had made mistakes, and it was a crime that he should
have had to have suffered as much as he had as a child.
(It also didn’t hurt that Michael knew about
his confrontation with Detective Robert Teague, the scumbag who’d
seduced Jessie while running the most incompetent investigation
imaginable into her mother’s murder. Martin forgave Michael, but he
knew how to set him straight if the need arose.)
Martin had not forgiven Alex Sheldon. It
hadn’t been enough to cause the deaths of four people and then
blackmail Lucy for most of her adult life; he’d also controlled and
damaged their children.
But maybe he thought he was doing the right
thing...
“For God’s sake, would you go to sleep
already?” Jessie murmured as Martin tossed and turned.
Martin was grateful to stop hearing his own
thoughts. “Or we could do something else if we’re both up,” he
whispered in her ear.
“There’s my smart guy,” Jessie said as she
giggled and rolled over.
Martin hadn’t thought he’d be researching
Alex Sheldon, but he recognized the name of one of his holding
companies when he was researching the beginnings of the
gentrification of the South End in the early 1990s. He dug back
further and found the story of the leveraged buyout of the factory
in Mattapan in the late 1980s. It was one of Sheldon’s early
successes—and it had meant the loss of hundreds of jobs.
Then there was another factory that had been
emptied out less than five years after one of his “investments”.
The building was still there on Washington Street, sitting there
like a dried out husk and reminding people of what it used to be.
The South End, in the perversity it liked to dress as nostalgia,
kept it there as part of its charade about keeping some of the
character of what the city used to be. “If they could declare it a
landmark, they would,” Martin muttered to himself.
Much had been made about the difference
between Cervino and his predecessor Fletcher, and Cervino had added
to that with his flourishes about “cleaning house”. But what had
always struck Martin once he’d moved to Boston was that Cervino was
the guy who could make things run on time. If he thought it was
important- or if you could get his attention and persuade him that
it was- he could make it go.
In many ways, a smart politician resembled a
smart business person; if it worked, there was no point in breaking
it. Alex Sheldon had worked, at least by a certain definition of
“work”.
It occurred to Martin as he pored over the
documents, microfiche and old magazine articles that he could
simply ask Richard, Miranda or Michael (especially Michael), but it
wasn’t worth opening old wounds. Michael could give him access to
better information than he’d ever find in a library, but Michael
would have given him an answer without facts. Martin needed his
facts before he had his answer.