Bruce Romano sat silently at the table, his brown eyes tracing the pattern on the white table cloth, the swirls of cotton edging around the bottom of his glass. He had picked an out of the way restaurant in an out of the way suburb, away from The Loop. No one came to Glen Ellyn except the retirees and suburban families who called it home. He looked like any other businessman who might have stopped in for a quick cocktail before going home to his wife and kids in their perfect white house with their perfect manicured lawn. At a time like this, he half-heartedly wished he was that man. His cell phone rang him out of his revery and he answered.
"Romano."
On the other end of the line was the voice of Frank Simmons, gruff and to the point.
"It's done. We're on our way."
Closing his eyes, Bruce nodded.
"Fine, I'll be here."
With that, he snapped his phone shut and reached for his drink. As the liquid smoothed its way down the back of his throat, he tried not to think of what he had done. Or rather, he tried not to think of what he had ordered other people to do. His boss had left him no choice and this was his chance to prove his loyalty. When he accepted the job of running Julian Cesario's campaign for mayor, he knew that the business of politics was often a dirty job, especially in the Republican party and especially in Chicago. For as many years as he knew, the Democrats had held on to the city with an almost unheard of power. They had labor heavily backing them and they had money pumped in from not only the city elite who were cut sweet deals from the city and state legislature, but also from the national party. The Daley dynasty was legendary and breaking it required more than mere politics.
Actually, what it required was money and lots of it. Romano's job was to secure the funding necessary to wrest power from the Democrats and there was a whole lot of support from the RNC for doing that. Republicans desperately wanted Illinois and the only way they could ever get that was to win Chicago, the rest of the state was essentially Midwestern conservative. If they could secure a Republican mayor, they might have a chance. Of course, Bruce knew all of this, having worked for both parties for the last ten years of his thirty-five year old life. And of course, he had been told the grand plan for Julian's assault on the city.
"Another scotch, sir?"
The waiter interrupted his thoughts and he nodded as he downed the last of the amber liquid, sucking an ice cube before letting it fall back into the glass. From his pocket, he pulled out a clean white envelope and once again looked inside at the photos it contained. Cesario had slid it across the table to him earlier that day and pushed him to where he was now. The photos were in black and white, taken from across the room it appeared. In them, Romano stood smiling, talking to a young woman, her face pleasantly attentive and she smiled at him. Next to her stood a young man, well-built and dark, his rugged features not unlike Bruce's. It was his brother, Mark, and they were at the wedding of a friend of the family's. Such an innocuous event really, Romano hadn't given it a second thought. But it wasn't until later that he found out that Mark's date for the night had been a young FBI agent and it wasn't until after Julian had handed him a second envelope containing a dossier on her that he realized what a mistake he had made.
*****
"So, what is it you do, Bruce?"
The young woman had smiled and asked him as she sipped her wine. Her face had seemed so open that night, he felt himself respond.
"Oh, nothing interesting, just politics."
With a laugh, the blond looked over at his brother and smiled as she spoke.
"Mark, please don't tell me your brother is a Republican."
Mark Romano was a young lawyer, fresh out of Northwestern's law school. He worked in intellectual property law and was considered a rising star at Goldman, Richardson, and Town. With his dark looks and blue eyes, he was an attractive man who had played football in high school and still retained the muscular build of a defensive cornerback. He had met his current date at one of those yuppy bars in downtown Chicago, the kind where people who worked in the Loop went for happy hours every night. She had told him she never went to those places before, but her friends at work had dragged her there after she had been moping for months. Mark had been intrigued by her work with the FBI and equally attracted by her beauty. This was only their third date but he was hoping to see more of Mariel Potidean.
"Hey, what's so bad about Republicans, other than their politics?"
Mark replied as he elbowed Bruce, giving him a good natured chuckle. His date laughed as they stood during the reception. The music was just beginning and people were headed toward the dance floor to watch the bride and groom begin the time-honored tradition of leading the first dance. Bruce smiled over at the blonde and nodded his head.
"Just you wait, there will be a Republican mayor in Chicago next year. Julian Cesario is going all the way and I'm going to make sure of it."
The young FBI agent looked at him and smiled, nodding her head, before the band got louder and their conversation was drowned out by cheers and drums, signaling the removal of the bride's garter belt. Bruce looked at her for a while longer before turning his attention away and towards the dance floor.
*****
Now, as he recalled the brief encounter, Bruce Romano wished he had skipped that wedding and never met Mariel Potidean. Fate had somehow thrown this at him and it had given rise to what his boss had referred to as a minor setback. In the words of Julian, "any tactical error this late in the battle is unacceptable." While it was true that there was only the slimmest of probabilities that Mariel Potidean would ever learn of the connection, the possibility existed. And it was this possibility that Julian had ordered Bruce to eliminate.
The workings of the political machine was something that Julian Cesario had understood instinctively and it was something that Bruce also knew. One of Romano's responsibilities was not only securing funding for Julian's run for mayor, but also making sure that all funding was legitimate. Of course, 'legitimate' was a slippery road for politicians and Bruce had found that out the hard way. Throughout the course of his tenure as campaign director, he had created legitimacy out of thin air for some of the funding that flowed into their coffers. Republicans had alliances with groups that sometimes operated under the radar of the public eye. Aside from the conservative coalitions that gave them money hand over fist in an attempt to skirt the separation of church and state, other groups doled out money in an effort to influence policy.
Romano pulled out his Palm Pilot and touched the screen several times. Scanning the small spreadsheet, he worked out in his head how much his latest legitimacy effort had paid out to Julian's campaign. He would never forget the day he found out that 10 million dollars was in jeopardy. It had started out like any other day last fall, meetings from 8 am until midnight. His life was this campaign and securing funding was his primary responsibility in those days. He had just received a call from the head of Miami's Republican party and had been alerted about a possible breach in security.
In order to secure large amounts of money, Bruce and his associates had established several mechanisms for national donations that would circumvent campaign finance laws. There were a number of banks worldwide that would accept wire transfers and redocument those deposits into smaller amounts before passing them off to banks in the US. The national Republican committees would then transfer these smaller amounts to the various state and local campaigns under legitimate donors or corporations that existed in name only. For international donations which are forbidden under law, the same system operated, however under much more secrecy and security.
"Mr. Romano."
Bruce looked up as Simmons approached his table with another man. They were dressed in long overcoats against the weather. Romano motioned for them to sit before he spoke. He hated this part.
"Do you have it?"
Simmons nodded as he sat down at the table, pulling out an envelope from his pocket. He pushed it across the table and waited as Bruce opened it. Inside, a thin stack of Polaroid pictures stared back at Romano, telling a complete and successful story.
"Were there any complications?"
Bruce looked back down at the pictures and then at the two men. He had a policy of not telling Julian about difficulties with the campaign until after he solved them, especially if it would potentially cost them the election. If any of the activities Bruce had supervised got out, it would bring down Julian Cesario and probably launch a federal investigation into the Republican party.
Everything hinged on whether or not the "security breach" had been eliminated. Julian would be pleased, but Romano wasn't too sure how he felt about it. Sometimes he felt like he was too far into things to ever remove himself. If Julian wasn't so convincing and so powerful, he might have backed out when he first learned how things really operated in the party.
"No, everything went according to plan."
Closing the envelope and putting it in his jacket pocket, Romano reached for his drink and downed the rest of the liquid, feeling the burn this time. With a nod of his head, he spoke softly.
"Finally."