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It was humid and almost a hundred degrees outside, the day John Mahoney met Elinore Dobbs—but Mahoney was feeling about as mellow as a man can feel.

On the way to his district office on Boylston Street, he’d stopped for a massage at an establishment he visited occasionally when he was in Boston. The masseuses were all tiny Vietnamese women and reminded him of bar girls he’d enjoyed in Saigon when he was a marine, a lad of just seventeen, fighting in a war he didn’t understand. The masseuse he had that day was a lovely lady named Kim with coal-black hair and sparkling black eyes and breasts the size of apples. She started out with his back, pummeled and rubbed tight muscles, making him moan with pain and pleasure, then her soft lips brushed his ear and whispered that he should turn over.

Then it was off to lunch at L’Espalier, also in the Back Bay, also on Boylston Street. L’Espalier was one of the most—if not the most—­expensive French restaurants in Boston. Mahoney had lunch in the Crystal Room, a room bordered on three sides by bottles of wine resting in striking steel and glass cases. The tables were covered with ­linens whiter than fresh-fallen snow—and certainly whiter than John ­Mahoney’s soul.

Mahoney had L’Espalier’s signature Maine lobster bisque with garlic flan for an appetizer, followed by Amish chicken, roasted with herbed cannoli, rum raisins, and pine nuts. This fine repast was preceded by a tumbler of A. H. Hirsch Reserve, one of the priciest bourbons sold in America. With his lunch, he had a bottle of Chardonnay that he guessed went for over a hundred bucks a bottle. He had to guess the cost of the wine, of course, because he didn’t pay for a thing. L’Espalier’s owner comped him, as he always did, Mahoney being who he was: the senior congressman from Boston, a former Speaker of the House and currently the House Minority Leader—arguably the most powerful Democrat on Capitol Hill, and a man sensitive to the needs of his friends in the restaurant business.

At three p.m., he finally sauntered into his district office. He was supposed to have been there at two. The lobby was crowded with about twenty people, ordinary citizens—and John Mahoney’s constituents. Sitting behind a desk overflowing with correspondence was a stout woman with unruly gray hair and a noticeable mustache. Her name was Maggie Dolan and she’d worked for Mahoney for years. She ran the office, was intimately involved in Mahoney’s ongoing reelection efforts, and acted as boss and den mother to three or four summer interns. Maggie glared at Mahoney, letting him know she wasn’t the least bit happy that he was late and that she’d been forced to deal with all the whiners.

Also present was one behemoth, a guy with a shaved head who would have fit right in on the New England Patriots’ offensive line. He wore a navy-blue blazer, never-press gray slacks, a blue button-down shirt, and a blue-and-green-striped clip-on tie. He was security. He wasn’t armed, except for a can of Mace, but was so damn big it looked as if it would take a bazooka to knock him down. He was present in case any of Mahoney’s constituents violently disapproved of the way he represented them.

“Hey, how’s it going,” Mahoney said to the citizens. “Sorry I’m late. I had to take a call from the president, some flap going on with Iran. I’ll be with you all in a minute, and I’m looking forward to talking to you.”

Mahoney was five foot eleven, broad across the back and butt; he had a big hard gut that swelled his shirt. His hair was snow white—it had been that color since his forties—and he had bright blue eyes and handsome features. When he turned on the charm, people were charmed. The folks he’d kept waiting for an hour instantly forgave him now that they understood he’d been assisting the president in a matter of national security. Had they known he’d been getting his nob polished, they might have been less forgiving.

Mahoney stepped through a door and walked back to his office. On the way he passed the space where the interns sat, two boys, two girls, all about twenty or so, all Harvard undergrads. Mahoney was sure they had IQs that went off the chart but he had no idea what they were doing on his behalf; Maggie Dolan gave them their assignments.

He stuck his head into the interns’ office and said, “Hey, guys, how’s it going?”

The interns leapt to their feet like Mahoney was an admiral and somebody had called out: Officer on deck!

“Congressman!” they all cried in unison.

“Thanks for being here,” Mahoney said. “Keep up the good work.” Whatever the hell it was.

He finally reached his office. He took off his suit jacket and hung it on a wooden coat tree, loosened his tie, rolled up his sleeves, and took a seat behind a large mahogany desk. The desk was old, battered and scarred, as was all the other furniture in the room. Mahoney didn’t want anything fancy in the office; he didn’t want the citizens to think he was squandering their hard-earned tax dollars.

On the wall behind the desk were photos of Mahoney posing with various luminaries: presidents, movie stars, and athletes who played for the Sox, the Celtics, the Bruins, and the Patriots. One picture showed him standing on the Great Wall of China next to his wife, Mary Pat, and their three daughters. The women in the photo all looked wonderful; Mahoney’s family was good-looking and incredibly photogenic. Mahoney, however, looked pale and his smile seemed off center. He appeared to be ill, which he had been that day. The night before the photo was taken he’d stuffed his face with every delicacy the Chinese cooked while drinking about two gallons of Tsingtao beer—and when the sun started to beat down on his head the next day, he’d upchucked everything he’d eaten. He figured he was probably the highest-ranking American politician to ever throw up on the Great Wall of China.

He picked up the phone, punched a button to speak to Maggie, and said, “Send the first one in. Oh, and have one of the kids bring me a Coke. I’m gonna need the caffeine to stay awake.”

At least once a month, Mahoney would fly up to Boston from D.C., where he’d attend fund-raisers, make speeches, and try to get on local talk shows. Most important, he’d meet with his big-money donors and see what he needed to do to keep them happy. As Mahoney ran for office every two years, he was constantly scheming and groveling to keep the campaign money rolling in. But about every fourth month, he’d do what he was doing today. He called it Open House.

Mahoney didn’t care at all for the town hall meeting format used by some politicians. He’d tried it once and hadn’t liked the unruly, disgruntled crowd that gathered—yelling out questions, booing his responses—not to mention the Republican-planted hecklers trying to shove political sticks in his eye. Then there were the reporters writing down every word, taking things out of context, pointing out every inconsistency with things he’d previously said. So instead he held Open House, where he could meet with his constituents one-on-one—without the media jackals ­present—and listen to their problems. He did this partly to give the impression he cared—which he actually did—about the ordinary slobs who voted for him. He’d take the temperature on how they were feeling about certain issues, listen to them bitch, and assure them that he was fighting for them body and soul down there in Washington. The other purpose of Open House was that he was always looking for something that would play well in the press, something to remind the voters that the man they’d elected was really on their side, and not on the side of the people who contributed vast sums of money to him.

Politics was a cynical game. But what can you do?

Most of the people who showed up for Open House were old folks, which was understandable as Mahoney held it on an afternoon, during the week, when everyone else was usually working. The first old guy wanted to bitch about his property taxes, which kept going up and were killing him as he was on a fixed income. Mahoney could have said that property taxes were a local issue and he should be tossing eggs at the mayor and not at him—but he didn’t. Instead he told the old coot that he was meeting with the mayor and the city council that night (he wasn’t), and he would give them a piece of his mind.

The next old guy, who was about the size of your average jockey, complained that Social Security cost of living increases weren’t keeping up with the cost of living. So what else was new? But here was an issue that Mahoney could handle. First, he blamed everything on the Republicans, then he picked up the phone and said to Maggie: “Have one of the kids bring in a copy of the speech I gave at the Knights of Columbus over in Charlestown a couple months ago.”

Two minutes later one of the interns, one of the girls, ran into the office with a copy of the speech. Mahoney couldn’t help but notice that the young lady had an outstanding rack on her. He handed the little guy the copy of the speech and said, “Read that, Mr. Compton. You’ll see that I’m on top of the issue, that I’m all over the bastards.”

The third person who entered his office was Elinore Dobbs.