Read Online Grand Master by D.W. Buffa - Free Book Online Page A

are quiet, although you should have been here
last week. Vandenberg is just a mile away. Three o’clock in the
morning, they put up a rocket, and not just any rocket, a moon
shot. You ever been that close to a launch? The goddamn place
starts to rumble, you think you’re the one going up. Amazing, how
much power those things have. I wonder if they know that the guy
that made sure they always had the money they needed is living
here, right next door.”
    Morris had represented the same New York
district for nearly forty years, and if he had become a master of
Washington and its ways, he had lost none of his native city
shrewdness. Heavyset, with broad shoulders and the hands of a
mechanic, he had the garrulous manner of a seasoned, back-slapping
politician; but even when he was regaling a small crowd of whiskey
drinking cronies with some deal making story, there was always
something distant, a little held back, about the way he looked at
you. Burdick had noticed it early on, one of the first times he had
talked to the Chairman in his spacious and ornate committee office,
the way that whatever Morris was saying, he was always thinking
something else; watching you, sizing you up, putting you in a
category that would help him decide how far he could go, whether he
could trust you, and, if he could, what use you could be to
him.
    Morris looked down at his gnarled, spotted
hands, folded together on the table. A sly grin inched across his
face. “You didn’t come all the way cross country to hear me talk
about all the good I tried to do.” He raised his eyes to Burdick’s
waiting gaze. “And I’ve known you long enough to know that you
didn’t come to hear me tell you that I’m innocent and should never
have been convicted of something I didn’t do.”
    Burdick leaned back in the plastic chair and
studied Morris with a sad, friendly smile. He liked him, he always
had. Frank Morris had not always told him everything, but he had
never lied. “Were you innocent, Frank? Were you convicted of
something you didn’t do?”
    Morris looked past him, out the window to the
courtyard and the shining blue sky above. His mouth twisted down at
the corners. He blinked his eyes. “No, I wasn’t innocent. I did
what they said I did.” His eyes moved back to Burdick, but there
was now a sense of urgency in them, as if the question of his own
guilt was not the end, but only the beginning, of the story. “The
interesting thing isn’t that I did it - took money that I shouldn’t
have taken; the interesting thing is that someone found out. That
wasn’t an accident, Quentin; I was being taught a lesson, a lesson
they wanted others to learn. They wanted me, and certain others, to
know that they could destroy anyone who got out of line.”
    That same shrewd grin, but more serious this
time, creased his mouth. He scratched his chin with the tips of two
thick fingers and then, as if dismissing what he had started to
say, waved his hand to the side. “But maybe that’s the reason
you’re here. You found out something. What do you want to
know?”
    Burdick did not change expression. He looked
straight at Morris. “The Four Sisters - Is that who we’re talking
about, the people you say wanted to teach you a lesson.”
    “It’s the reason for all my trouble, and I’m
going to be the reason for theirs.”
    Burdick took out a notebook. He wrote Morris’
name across the top of the page, and then the words, ‘The Four
Sisters.’ While he was doing this, Morris stood up, stretched his
arms and then folded them across his chest. Even dressed in prison
garb, blue denim trousers and a blue denim shirt, he looked
impressive, someone in charge. When he was younger, the first time
he ran for Congress, they said he could mesmerize an audience; that
with his curly black hair and piercing blue eyes, once he started
talking no one looked away, no one thought about anything except
what they heard. From the very beginning, he had been a force to