CHAPTER 1Of Marble and Giants
EIGHTEEN YEARS EARLIER, JULY 2000
The halls of the Capitol Building are empty this morning. The clinks of the liquor bottles in the hand truck I’m pushing are the only sound. I love being alone here, marveling at marble columns propping up carved ceilings. Under the massive dome of the Rotunda, paintings tell the mythology of early America. In Statuary Hall, I nod to a bronze statue of Huey Long, an assassinated senator who some consider a hero, others a criminal, and then enter a wood-paneled corridor. Spiral staircases of iron and marble materialize out of dark corners.
I maneuver the bottles past unmarked doors that lead to the hideaway offices of Senators Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, and Ted Kennedy. Senators steal away to these coveted havens to host meetings they’d rather not have eyeballed by reporters or to nap after marathon debates. The booze is heavy, and I’m out of breath when I reach Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s hideaway. Vodka soda sweat leaks through my cheap, white collared shirt. We interns were out late at Politiki bar last night.
I let myself in and head for the brass bar cart. Fifths of whiskey, gin, scotch, and Tio Pepe sherry, Moynihan’s favorite, get loaded in and lined up. When I’m finished, I sit on a leather couch dyed the same dark mahogany as the regal desk and spark up a Camel. Moynihan is a fellow smoker. His hideaway reeks of tobacco.
The hundred or so hideaways in the Capitol are passed down through handshake deals. Seniority rules, and sitting on the Finance Committee doesn’t hurt. Junior senators fight over windowless basement rooms the size of utility closets and furnished with cots. Moynihan has earned a view of Pennsylvania Avenue and space for ten people to sip cocktails. Standing under an oil painting, I pull back the cream-colored curtains and take it all in. I imagine the senator from New York in here, lighting up, pouring a tumbler of Tio Pepe, and telling stories about the presidents he has advised.
Sitting in the private office of a Senate demigod still doesn’t feel real. I’m a twenty-year-old college dropout whose only credentials are a job at a Mexican restaurant and a cocaine problem. The rest of my intern class are the kids of campaign donors and New York City’s financial glitterati. My dad is a pastor in the other Washington. He preaches to a congregation in Olympia.
Six months ago, I was a sophomore at the University of Pittsburgh on a debate scholarship. Debate is about speed. Being able to talk fast was the prerequisite for entry. On weekends, I traveled to universities around the nation to argue about what policies would lead to nuclear war. Rapid-fire reading of news clippings scored points in a round. So did biting insults lodged at your opponent in an attempt to trap them in a rhetorical mishap. You won by manipulating the news and calling it “evidence” to advance your argument. I won a lot.
My grades were nearly perfect until I started working nights as a cook at Mad Mex. The waiters survived on a diet of wings and cocaine. One night, one of them noticed that I seemed a bit down and he offered me a pick-me-up from his bag. It worked. For fifteen minutes. Three months later, I was failing five out of five courses. I don’t believe I attended one.
The week before finals, I called my older brother in a panic. He jumped on a plane to Pittsburgh. We debated my options. I tried to advance the argument for my brother taking my finals. It was raining when we went to the registrar’s office and filled out the forms. The first Elwood to drop out of college.
My parents collected me at SeaTac airport. I deplaned drunk on whiskey and clutching a plush toy of Opus the Penguin, from Berkeley Breathed’s comic strip. My father shook his head and made me see a shrink. I snowballed my way through the sessions. Left out the cocaine use. The shrink informed me that I was suffering from “situational depression.”
“Since you are removed from the situation,” she explained. “The problem must be resolved.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
It didn’t. And the depression didn’t lift. A childhood friend, who I’ll call Preston, worried that I had no prospects after dropping out of school, threw me a lifeline. His college classmate Eric, a trust fund kid, worked in Washington, DC, as Senator Moynihan’s aide. If he liked me, Eric could get me an internship on the Hill.
I called Eric, and he told me to meet him the next Tuesday, at 10 p.m., at 1823 M Street. “Northwest M Street, the one near the White House,” he said. “Do you have a fake ID?”
“Indeed I do.”
“Bring it. You’ll need it in DC,” Eric said. “Your official interview will be on the Hill the next day. But this one is more important. I vet the interns for the staff.”
My parents bought me a suit at the mall, and I flew to Washington. Résumé in hand, I cabbed it to a redbrick building with blacked-out windows on M Street. My fake ID fooled the bouncer. Inside, Ice Cube’s “You Can Do It” played as a dancer sprayed Windex on the pole before taking off her underwear. A topless woman asked if I wanted some singles.
Eric wasn’t hard to spot. He was the only other guy wearing a suit in the strip club on a Tuesday night. He chugged a Bud Light at a table with a clear view of the stage. I handed him my résumé. He gave it to a dancer in a neon-yellow G-string.
“Relax,” he said, sliding me a beer. “You met me at Camelot on a Tuesday night. You passed the test.”
* * *
In Moynihan’s hideaway, I kill my cigarette and flush it down the toilet. I lock up, push the empty hand truck past Minority Leader Tom Daschle’s office, and ride an elevator down to the basement. I flash my badge to a guard, cut through the crypt under the Rotunda, and head into the Capitol Hill Tunnels. I love these underground passageways, that feeling of special access.
I walk the pedestrian pathway alongside a miniature subway trolley modeled after the Disney World Monorail. A group of congressional aides are taking the two-minute ride, briefcases on their laps. To my right, I spot Sen. Fred Thompson.
“Good afternoon, Senator,” I say. “Die Hard Two was on TNT last night.”
“Was it really?” he replies in the deep southern drawl that was so out of place when he played a New York district attorney on NBC’s Law & Order. “Walk me back to my office.”
On the twenty-minute trip to the Hart Building, Thompson asks whether I think DC or Hollywood is the more terrifying place. I argue in favor of Hollywood. The Capitol doesn’t frighten me. Just the opposite. From the moment I set foot in DC, I knew I was home. The Hill is a real-world version of debate team. Everyone talks fast, and there are winners, losers, and nukes. Last week, I had a drink with Sen. Russ Feingold, who told me stories of working with John McCain and Carl Levin on trying to pass campaign finance reform. I’ve gone from bussing tables at a Mexican restaurant in Pittsburgh to rubbing elbows with senators. I never want to leave.
I weave through redbrick-walled tunnels back toward Moynihan’s staff office in the Russell Building. Discarded and broken office furniture lines the bowels of the Capitol Hill office buildings. I pass the Senate barbershop, where I recently got a bad haircut sitting next to Majority Leader Lott. A quick elevator ride up from the basement takes me to Russell’s fourth floor, where I drop off the hand truck and head down a flight of stairs to a private parking lot.
Two interns are already out here smoking. The senior senator from Michigan Carl Levin’s beaten-up blue Oldsmobile sticks out among the rows of luxury sedans. I smoke another Camel and watch Kit Bond of Missouri climb out of a black town car. Kay Bailey Hutchison struts by, followed by her “purse boys,” two young, attractive male aides who carry her luxury bags around Capitol Hill. When senators bum a smoke before hustling to their next meeting, I feel like a young Henry Hill parking cars for Paulie’s crew in Goodfellas.
It’s almost four o’clock. In this town, the most important hour is happy hour. I head back out into the muggy city, down First Street, passing the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress, where 3,700 boxes of Moynihan’s personal papers have been kept for posterity. It’s the largest one-man collection in the library, Moynihan’s legislative director recently told me over whiskey and Cokes at the Capitol Lounge.
At Pennsylvania Avenue, a helicopter buzzes across the sky. The pilot shadows a motorcade of black SUVs careening downtown, lights flashing and sirens blaring. When the street clears, I duck into the Hawk ’n’ Dove. I nurse a vodka soda, holding a good table with a view of the TVs, tuned to CNN. Just like the hideaway office system, this place runs on dibs. Soon the bar will be teaming with staffers from both sides of the aisle. They will drink, party, date, and sometimes put together bipartisan legislation. Tables are valuable currency. As an intern, I take it as my sacred duty to make sure the staff doesn’t have to stand at the bar.
At five o’clock, Moynihan’s staff trickles into Hawk ’n’ Dove in ascending order of the food chain. Legislative correspondents arrive first, along with the rest of the interns. An hour later, the legislative assistants claim their seats. Then come the legislative director and, finally, around seven, Moynihan’s chief of staff. His blue suit is rumpled, and he looks exhausted. In his hand is today’s “clip sheet,” a binder compiling daily press filings that mention our boss. The interns create it each morning by cutting apart the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the hyper-local weeklies and meticulously underlining Moynihan’s name.
“Thanks for holding down the fort, Phil,” the chief of staff says. “Look at this. Hillary Clinton is going to walk into Moynihan’s seat. Rick Lazio doesn’t stand a chance.”
I’ve landed in Moynihan’s office just in time. He’s about to retire after twenty-four years in the Senate. The alumni list from his office reads like a who’s who of Washington, DC—and they help each other out. I spent the rest of the summer helping them out by following the legislative director’s instructions: “Do anything we ask. And do it with a smile. Even if it’s not part of your job. Even if it’s weird.” I take his words to heart. Moynihan’s staff takes a shine to me because I volunteer to huff cartloads of Tio Pepe and get menial intern tasks done at my restaurant pace.
There are two ways to go about a career here: get in deeper or get out. I know one thing: I’m never leaving Washington. But a college dropout’s trajectory is limited; I need a degree. Before my internship ends, I apply to George Washington University. I draft my own letter of recommendation, and Moynihan’s chief of staff, for whom I’ve held tables all summer at half the bars in town, signs it. “Motivated and gifted with his words, Phil Elwood will make a valuable addition to your storied university.”
* * *
I wake up in a holding cell. Two cops yank me into an interrogation room and slam me with the accusation that I drunkenly crashed through a window at GWU’s Gelman Library. I can’t remember last night, but my throbbing head and the cuts on my body indicate that the police are telling the truth. I’m frog-marched into a sheriff’s van and handcuffed to the floor.
I stand in front of a judge, who tells me he knows I’m very sorry for what I’ve done and that I will never do it again. He slaps me on the wrist with twenty hours of community service. Later, I hear that Moynihan’s office made a call. A few days after I get home from central booking, a thin letter arrives from George Washington. I am no longer welcome on campus.
I’m certain I’ll be excommunicated from DC. I’ll have to return to Olympia. My parents will once again watch their son emerge at the Arrivals gate holding his plush toy Opus the Penguin, like a deadbeat Sisyphus. Instead, I’m promoted. Moynihan’s office makes one call, and I’m hired as a legislative correspondent for the senior senator from Michigan, Carl Levin. The happy hours continue. It’s amazing I get anything done with all the booze. Toward the end of my first year, the chief of staff hauls me into his office.
“I strongly suggest you get a college degree,” he says. “George Washington is off the table, clearly. What about Georgetown?”
Given my high school C average, Georgetown should be off the table, too. But it turns out Levin has considerable influence with the university. One letter from the senator and I’m accepted as a transfer student. I realize this is how the world works, or at least how this world does. It is not a meritocracy.
* * *
In the basement office of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, staffers drop off crates of documents. “Go through these. Look for anything suspicious,” they instruct. They leave to fetch more boxes. Levin is leading an inquiry into the malfeasance of Enron’s board of directors. Enron’s spectacular implosion has been a lead story on CNN for months. Now Levin is making it his mission to codify the company’s wrongdoing into the national record.
I drink coffee with a team of lawyers who haven’t seen the light of day in weeks and sift through thousands of pages of emails with a highlighter. Most of the material is banal talk about steakhouse lunches and corporate retreats. Every few pages, I notice the obscene dollar amounts of Enron’s transactions. Villains get paid in numbers with extra zeros.
On the day of the Enron hearings, I go watch the fireworks at the Hart Building. A homeless man stands at the front of a long line stretching down Constitution Avenue. I watch a sharky-looking guy in a jet-black suit hand the homeless man a ten-dollar bill and slide into his place. Lobbyists have probably been pulling this trick since the Grant administration. I flash my staff ID and follow the lobbyist past security and into the Senate hearing room, where I stand against the back wall.
Levin strides up to the dais in a baggy suit, the last of his hair combed over a sun-spotted scalp. In 2013, BuzzFeed News will publish a list of the “23 Most Important Comb-overs of Congress.” Levin will come in second place. A man of the people. He’s the hardest-working member of his staff. I watch, rapt, as he rakes Herbert Winokur Jr., Enron’s Finance Committee chair, over the coals about a half-billion-dollar loan.
“Now, when you met with my staff, did you also tell my staff you did not have much recollection of that transaction?” Levin asks, peering down his glasses, pushed far down the bridge of his nose.
“Yes, sir.”
“Now that you have refreshed your recollections. Enron was borrowing a half a billion dollars from Citibank, but it did not show up on the balance sheet of Enron as debt but rather as preferred shares, which looked more like equity than debt. It was a loan disguised as equity in order to avoid showing debt on the books.”
“Sir, I believe it was accounted for as a consolidated subsidiary with a—”
Levin cuts him off. “Was it shown as a loan?”
“It was shown as—the entity was consolidated and the $500 million of Citibank was a minority interest.”
“But was it shown as a loan?”
Levin’s got him dead to rights. I watch Winokur break. “No, sir.”
An exchange worthy of a headline. I spot a gaggle of reporters taking notes at the side of the chamber. As in a debate, they’ve got their evidence. Now they’ll print it in tomorrow’s paper. And some college debater will use the article as evidence in a round where the topic is “fiscal regulation.” It’s codified into the record. The truth, as far as anyone is concerned.
I’m fascinated by this bloodbath, particularly by the criminals on the witness stand. Who helps them? Who prepped them for this massacre? Whoever it was, they aren’t good enough at their job. Where’s the consistent messaging? Why weren’t they expecting these questions? Why aren’t they repeating the same five lines over and over and over? Why are they just giving easy sound bites to the senator and the media?
I realize I’m probably the only person in the world who has this reaction to the Enron scandal.
* * *
I lean out into K Street, hailing a cab. It’s the first week of summer. School is out. I’ve been barhopping with Hill staffers. A yellow cab pulls up, and I attempt to hop over a Jersey barrier. My foot catches the edge. I spin as I fall to the curb.
I can’t walk. I crawl into the cab’s backseat and tell the driver to take me to the nearest trauma center. When we arrive at George Washington University’s ER, nurses put me in a wheelchair. Three hours later, a tech looks at my X-ray, says, “Oh shit,” and starts to run out of the room. I grab his arm. Make him show me the image. The ball of my hip is floating, completely separated from my femur.
I wake up sucking oxygen from a tube. My mother is sitting in a chair next to the bed. My mother lives on the other side of the country, so I figure something is probably wrong. I don’t remember anything after looking at the X-ray.
I’m on crutches for a month. Then I graduate to a cane. For the rest of my life, I’ll walk with a slight limp. And the three titanium screws in my hip will ache when the temperature dips below forty degrees. A few months later, I skydive out of an airplane for the first time. At a checkup, I inform my surgeon that he must have done some good work. He is not pleased.
* * *
My parents fly in for Georgetown’s graduation ceremony. They seem relieved that I made it to the finish line. Levin writes yet another letter, and I’m accepted into the London School of Economics. I live in a flat in Notting Hill, attending lectures on trade wars with the kids of prime ministers and international diplomats.
One day, I’m walking on campus when I pass a balding young man with hard eyes flanked by massive bodyguards. I’ve heard about Saif Gaddafi. The students whisper that he’s a dictator’s son. I’ve heard we share a weed dealer.
In a few years, he’ll be one of my clients. Long after I’ve been on his family’s payroll, the world will find out that Saif allegedly bought his PhD in philosophy from LSE with millions of pounds in bribes. Howard Davies, the distinguished institution’s director, whose signature is on my diploma, will resign, disgraced.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Copyright © 2024 by Phil Elwood
