Washington Deceased by Michael Bowen Page A

were peach-painted cinderblock. One bed, one wardrobe, one table and one chair, all made of cheap wood. A small television and a clock radio sat on the table near a current Almanac of American Politics and a U.S. Statistical Abstract. The front section of yesterday’s Washington Post lay beside the chair. A deck of cards rested on top of the radio. On the walls Gardner had taped a handful of framed mementoes from the career that his greed had blasted: a black-and-white picture of Gardner looking over President Reagan’s shoulder while the President signed a bill; a certificate from the National Rifle Association congratulating him on qualifying as a Marksman (Handgun); a yellowed scrap of newsprint with the headline, Gardner Upsets Prescott. There were no other books, no chessboard, not even a pad and pen.
    â€œWell,” Michaelson said, clasping his hands behind his back and turning toward Gardner. “Why don’t you tell me what it is you think I might be able to help you with?”
    Gardner sat down on the bed and put both hands behind him to brace himself.
    â€œDid Wendy give you the broad outlines?” he asked.
    â€œYes. She said that the U.S. Attorney from your state is threatening to try to block your parole unless you give him information that you don’t have. He won’t tell you what the information is, except for a broad hint that it relates in some way to sugar and alleged corruption.”
    â€œThat’s it in a nutshell.”
    â€œDo you have any idea what he was talking about?”
    â€œNone. And I don’t think he does either.”
    â€œWhat do you think he was doing?” Michaelson asked.
    â€œFishing.”
    â€œHe must’ve had some hint that there was something to catch.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Gardner agreed. “He must have. But I don’t have the first notion of what it could be.”
    â€œYou were on the Western Hemisphere Trade Subcommittee, which if I remember correctly does deal with sugar import quotas every year.”
    â€œYou’re damn right I was. I had a soft drink bottling plant and a major candy company in my state. If I’d let those crackers from Louisiana have their way every year, there wouldn’t be any sugar imports, the price of sugar would go through the roof, and seventeen thousand registered voters would be very upset with me. I had to pay attention to what went on on that subcommittee.”
    â€œJust so. Was it really that bad—setting the import quotas, I mean?”
    â€œIt was as bad as you could possibly imagine,” Gardner assured him. “An annual bloodletting. A regular Washington orgy of hustling and lobbying and logrolling.”
    â€œDid you see any evidence of outright corruption—bribery, that kind of thing—in the process?”
    Gardner stood up abruptly and folded his arms across his chest. He looked away from Michaelson, expelling his breath in a long sigh. He walked over to the table and leaned against it.
    â€œLet me tell you a story,” he said.
    â€œAll right.”
    â€œThe year before my last election, the lobbyist for the National Association of Nursing Professionals made an appointment and came to see me. She asked me if I was familiar with Carepac. That was her association’s political action committee. I said that I was.”
    â€œYes?” Michaelson prompted.
    â€œThen she asked me what my position was on a bill that would reduce federal aid to hospitals that filled administrative positions with nurses who came from diploma schools instead of limiting them to nurses who’d gotten bachelor’s degrees from four-year schools.”
    â€œI take it that this question was pregnant with implication.”
    â€œThat’s putting it mildly. I didn’t give a tinker’s dam whether that bill passed or failed or never came to a vote. On my list of twenty things to worry about, it was around fifty-third. The