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can take it further, talk to some of these men, go up to New York and see this lady, but . . .”
    “No, I’ll tell you what I want you to do. I want you to go see Paul Morelli.”
    “You’re kidding,” DeMarco said.
    “No. I may owe Dick Finley—he was a big help to me when I first came to this town—but I owe it to the
country
to let Paul know what’s going on.” Mahoney finished his coffee and said, “Morelli’s the bestthing to happen to the party since FDR—or me—and he’s gonna be the next president of the United States. He’s a good guy—maybe a great guy—so he needs to know that some reporter was trying to dig up dirt on him. And if Terry Finley really was killed, which I doubt, he needs to know that too. So I want you to go talk to him and tell him what you’ve learned. I’ll call him and get you in. Now I got a plane to catch.”

Chapter 6
    DeMarco’s illusions had been mangled so often by politicians that he thought he should qualify for handicapped parking—but he had to admit that he was pretty impressed with Paul Morelli.
    Morelli hailed from a blue-collar family, the youngest of five children. He attended college on a poor-boy scholarship and according to legend, obtained his law degree studying twelve hours a day and doing charitable work in the time remaining. He apparently never slept. Ambitious, brilliant, and charismatic, he took to politics as baby eagles take to the air and became one of the youngest occupants of Gracie Mansion. And as mayor of New York, he was a grand success: crime dipped; no ugly scandals marred his term; labor unions refrained from untimely, crippling strikes. Then off to the Senate he flew, and the Senate, all the commentators concurred, was but a pit stop on his race to the Oval Office.
    Certainly the way he looked wasn’t a hindrance. He was a youthful forty-seven, his hair was a curly black crown streaked with just the right amount of gray, and he had a profile that plastic surgeons could use for a template. He was also tall and perfectly proportioned, and if he tired of politics he could model swimwear. But even his critics had to admit that he was more than a pretty face. He was a dazzling strategist, the consummate negotiator, and one of the most eloquent speakers to ever choke a microphone. And the things he spoke of, the causes he championed,the battles he fought were always so . . .
right
. The last Democrat with such magnetism had been a man named Kennedy.
    When DeMarco rang his doorbell that evening, Morelli answered the door himself. He was dressed casually: an NYU sweatshirt, soft-looking beige slacks, and loafers. The sleeves of the sweatshirt were pulled up on his forearms, exposing strong wrists matted with coarse, dark hair. DeMarco felt stiff and overdressed in his suit and tie.
    Morelli led DeMarco to a comfortable den, commenting on the warm autumn weather as they walked. Already in the den was a man that Morelli introduced as his chief of staff, Abe Burrows. Burrows sat in one of the two chairs in front of Morelli’s desk and had a stack of paper in his lap that was six inches high. He nodded at DeMarco but didn’t rise to shake his hand.
    Unlike Paul Morelli, Burrows wasn’t physically impressive. He was short and overweight, his gut spilling softly over his belt. He had fleshy lips, a lumpy potato of a nose, and thin sandy hair that was styled in a curly Afro in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that he was going bald.
    “Abe and I were just going over a few things,” Morelli said with a tired smile. “There just isn’t enough time during the day and I’m going out of town tomorrow.”
    Morelli pointed DeMarco to the chair next to Burrows then took a seat in the high-backed chair behind his desk. Even dressed in a sweatshirt, Morelli looked like a man who belonged behind a big desk, giving orders, and DeMarco couldn’t help but feel inadequate. Here was a guy just a few years older than him, yet while Joe DeMarco was a GS-13