Trump Surrounded

I write thrillers based on my over 25 years experience on Wall Street about shady financiers, crooked lawyers and megalomaniacal CEOs who cheat on their taxes, use offshore shell corporations to hide their assets, and launder money.

Sound familiar based on current events?

  

Andrea Kudacki for the New York Times

Yesterday, Michael Cohen, President Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, did a plea bargain acknowledging guilt for campaign-finance violations, tax evasion and bank fraud, and Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was convicted of tax and bank fraud and failure to report a foreign bank account.

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

When someone is surrounded by slimeballs, it's not guilt by association, just the old adage restated Tuesday by Representative Tom Cole, a former House Republican campaign chairman: "Where there's smoke, and there's a lot of smoke, there may well be fire." And there's so much of it here that Trump is not only surrounded, but engulfed.

When the FBI stormed Cohen’s office and hotel room by surprise in April, Rudy Giuliani, former U.S. Attorney who honed his hardball tactics in bringing down many of the 1980s insider traders—decades before he became Trump's attorney—said something very telling: “Is this surprising? Yes. Is it extraordinary? No. This is the way prosecutors get information…”

Giuliani spoke from experience; he knows how prosecutors like Mueller work. They throw lines in the water where they smell something stinky, then reel them in and see who they catch. Then use those peripheral crooks to turn States’ evidence, or just get early convictions and then squeeze the convicted for cooperation in exchange for short sentences. All as part of going after their ultimate prey.

So for Robert Mueller & Co., here's the score so far. Guilty pleas from Michael Flynn,(Trump’s first national security advisor), Rick Gates (Manafort’s longtime associate), and George Papadopoulos (a Trump campaign foreign policy advisor), 32 indicted individuals, and 187 charges regarding evidence of Russian tampering with our 2016 election.

And yesterday, Cohen and Manafort. More significantly, Cohen, in the process of copping his plea, implicated the president on the record in open court in baldly specific terms. He said he made payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal to keep them from talking about affairs they had with Trump “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” and, “I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan, for the principal purpose of influencing the election” for president in 2016.

Does anybody really think this is going away?

Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, remarking upon the potential for an impeachment inquiry, allowed that, "this is getting deeper, and it's going to get more and more serious."

So where do we go from here? Or where does Mueller go?

All I can say is if I were writing this story as a novel it wouldn’t turn out well for the president. Stay tuned.

Styles in the Driver's Seat

Sometimes a pitbull just needs to take charge. 

Last winter, Styles felt that way when we drove out to Long Island for the day to go to a doctor’s office. I guess he didn’t appreciate my staying in the right lane on the Throgs Neck Bridge and getting passed like we were standing still by commuters rushing to work.

So while I was upstairs at the doc’s, he acted. I came down and saw him in the driver’s seat, paused and then decided it seemed only natural to climb in back. When I did he turned and gave me his look, like, “Where to, Poppi?”

That’s his black watch plaid coat he’s wearing. It’s his favorite; he gets excited when I pull it out, and he sticks his head into the neck opening and waits for me to wrap the Velcro strap around his chest in anticipation of a trip or a walk.

He’s less excited about his ThunderShirt. It’s an open question as to whether it will solve his jitters with thunder, but the last time he seemed antsy, I put it on him and he went right to sleep, thud, on the hardwood floor.

But forget about driving: Styles is at his take-charge best when we go for walks, particularly when we’re at the Milford house in PA. He pins his ears back and puts those muscular pitbull shoulders into it like he’s Buck in The Call of the Wild pulling a sled across the Alaskan tundra.

And in the process he’s a babe magnet. If I were younger (lots younger), I’d be picking up twenty-something girls like magic. They flock to him. “Oh, he’s so handsome, can we pet him?”

Who could say no? Not Sty. He lets them get in a few strokes to his head, then goes for the crotch with his nose, the old doggie greeting. “Oooh,” they say and giggle.

Good boy, I’m thinking. What a guy.

That's what pitbulls do; take charge and get babes.

And Styles isn't your ordinary pitbull. He's quite a character, such that I made him a character in my thriller, Spin Move, and dedicated the book to him.

Bear Claw Ate Lee Child's Lemon Pound Cake

Last weekend I had the pleasure of introducing Lee Child on stage and rubbing elbows with him (he’s a Yankees fan) as I chaperoned him for the day at our Milford Readers & Writers Festival in Milford, Pennsylvania.

Prior to the festival, when I was going over final arrangements with his associate, I noticed that Lee had requested his driver pick him up before our dinner for festival speakers and organizers, so I said I’d get him something to eat for dinner. She described Lee as the very definition of the word “chill” (he is)—content with a place to have a cigarette and a cup of black coffee—and suggested he'd be happy with a piece of lemon pound cake for the car ride home.

Manette got a chuckle out of that story and the day before the festival she saw slices of lemon pound cake as impulse purchase items on the checkout line at the grocery store. She bought one for Lee.

When I met Lee the morning of the festival at the Hotel Fauchère, we were going over the schedule for the day and I mentioned that I would arrange something for him to eat before the car picked him up. I told him the story of the lemon pound cake. He smiled and asked me to thank Manette.

After the first event I went home to walk Styles and when I looked for Lee's lemon pound cake it was gone. We call my stepson, Zac, Bear Claw, because he has a habit of wandering downstairs in the middle of the night and eating whatever is around, most times mauling it in the process and leaving a trail of crumbs and wrappers behind. In this case there was no evidence that Lee's lemon pound cake had ever existed.

I was sitting next to Lee during the next presentation at the festival and someone on stage mentioned food. I leaned over to Lee and explained to him who Bear Claw was and that he had eaten Lee’s lemon pound cake. He laughed.

I had told Manette about Bear Claw’s indiscretion before I returned to the festival, and when it came time for me to introduce Lee on stage, we were sitting in the front row, waiting to go on. Manette walked up and I introduced her. She handed Lee a paper bag and leaned over to speak to him. I heard Lee say something to her about Bear Claw and they both laughed.

After the festival, Manette told me she had given Lee a lemon meltaway cookie—the only substitute she could find at the Patisserie Fauchère. In the process she said she was a fan, too. She said Lee smiled appreciatively. Then Manette said, “Of lemon pound cake.”

Elmore Leonard's 10 Rules of Writing

Elmore Leonard, one of America’s recognized masters of thriller/suspense fiction, primarily in the crime genre, wrote a piece for a New York Times column, “Writers on Writing,” in July 2001.

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He since published it in book form as Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, which you can get here on Amazon.

Leonard got his start by scraping out a living writing short stories and westerns (one of which, Valdez is Coming, is now considered a classic of the genre). He grew up in the Detroit area, and it’s only natural that he transitioned to writing crime fiction, where he displayed an unmatched virtuosity in capturing authentic street characters and slang in his novels.

Over 20 of his stories have been made into movies or TV shows. Westerns: Hombre and Joe Kidd, starring Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood, respectively, and more recently 3:10 to Yuma starring Russell Crowe and Christian Bale. Crime: Get Shorty starring John Travolta and Gene Hackman; Out of Sight starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez; Killshot starring Mickey Rourke and Diane Lane; the FX series Justified starring Timothy Olyphant; and so on.

Leonard didn’t achieve that kind of success because he was lucky; he earned his chops the hard way, from the ground up, and as he says about his little book: “These are the rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story.”

Anyone who writes fiction, or aspires to, will benefit from the advice based on his experience.

Here it is in summary form:

1. Never open a book with weather.

2. Avoid prologues.

3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue.

4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .

5. Keep your exclamation points under control.

6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.”

7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.

8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.

9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things.

10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

I encourage you to read what he has to say about each of those rules, sparing as it is.

I keep a hardcover copy in my living room so I can read it from time to time. I find it always helps keep me on track.

Waiting for Jesse

Styles, our pitbull, has a high school friend, Jesse, who comes to play ball with him in the afternoons. Manette and I started hiring kids a few years ago from the Babysitters/Dog Walkers listing in a local newspaper. It’s worked out well, and over time we’ve had about a dozen come to the house after school a few days a week. At least that’s how it started.

For those of you who don’t know pitbulls, they’re working dogs who are incredibly energetic and athletic. They need to burn off energy or they come at you with their favorite form of working dog “work,” which in the case of Styles is balls. He’s obsessed with them. Somebody needs to throw them, play tug of war over them or say “What about that one,” and point to another to send him off to pounce on it after dropping the one in his mouth.

Styles quickly became accustomed to having captive playmates and so we needed to organize it on a daily basis. As I said earlier, we’ve had a dozen or so, but Jesse is his champion and he adores her like no other. She doesn’t talk on the phone, watch YouTubes or text with her friends; Styles gets her unqualified attention while she’s here. She strokes his head when she arrives, talks sweetly to him while they play, and blows kisses to him as she leaves.

Now it’s her job exclusively.

That’s Styles in the photo at left, waiting for Jesse at the front door.

I call him Mr. Clairvoyant, because he knows when it’s approaching 3:00 pm and he starts his vigil. Since Jesse recently got her driver’s license, she generally pulls into the driveway, opens the electric gate with the remote we gave her and comes in the back door. When Styles hears the gate opening he starts yelping and crying like he hasn’t seen her in weeks. The yard is fenced in because of the pool, so when Jesse pulls to a stop in the back we let him out to take a victory lap around the yard and greet her as she’s getting out of her car. On days we aren’t home because of appointments, she lets herself in with the key we gave her.

That’s her setup in the other photo at left. She prefers Earl Grey tea with sugar and cream and we usually leave her a cookie for herself and a treat to give Styles.

We know that eventually, like Nikki, Tina, Nico, Megan and the others before her, Jesse will get a job at the mall or go off to college. 

I have no idea what we’ll do when that happens, because Styles will be inconsolable. Maybe, like Manette says, we should just adopt her.

Old Friends are the Best Friends

My birthday was yesterday and I got a call with birthday wishes from George, one of my friends from our kindergarten days back in Mt. Tabor, the tiny town in New Jersey where we grew up. He calls me every year, and in the days before smart phone calendars I sometimes didn’t set a reminder anyplace and missed calling him back on his birthday exactly two months after mine in January. I don’t miss anymore. Our other joined-at-the-hip-since-kindergarten friend, Bob, has a birthday in March, and George and I talked about Bob, as well as other things.

Other things included reminiscences about the old days, of course, but after a bit of that we just settled into what old friends usually do: chatting about what’s going on in our lives like it was only a week ago, or less, that we last talked. It always strikes me with old friends that you don’t have to lament how long it’s been since you’ve contacted each other, or either of you feel bad about it, or even one of you give the other a hard time because of it. (I have some friends that get all bitchy if too much time passes without a word, who blame me for it, even though they hadn’t picked up the phone or emailed either. Old friends don’t do that.) With old friends you pick up like you’ve never left. You slide back in together like you’re sitting in George’s room listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band for the first time, or smoking your first joint behind the church again, or gaping once more at Playboys that Bob found in the woods off the fourth fairway on the golf course.

What was going on with George most recently was the evening concert he produces for Children’s Day, the town celebration of children in Mt. Tabor—morning Olympics, an afternoon parade with costumes and floats, a midway with arcade games and food, an evening parade with all the local fire trucks and an evening concert and fireworks—on the first Saturday of August every year; the fact that the bands were supposed to be somebody I didn’t remember opening for Arlo Guthrie, but the town elders decided that even though the first Saturday of August this year was the 1^st of the month, that for the first time in 140-something years they had to invoke some rule that Children’s Day was on the first Saturday after the first full week of August, so it fell on August 8^th, and Arlo Guthrie wasn’t available, so it was Badfinger (the last one still alive backed by other musicians) opening for Peter Noone featuring Herman’s Hermits instead; that Finn, local Tabor kid who made it big in real estate and finances the concert each year, couldn’t even make it on the 8^th.

Then after mentioning Badfinger we went into a long digression about Harry Nilsson (he made a hit out of Badfinger’s song, Without You), me saying that I could never find Nilsson’s version of I Like New York in June that ran with the closing credits of the movie The Kingfisher on any of his albums, so I had to buy the soundtrack of the movie for that one song. We talked for a while about all of Nilsson’s albums, trying to figure out if I Like New York in June was on one of them and finally gave up. I resolved to order the CD for A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night because I haven’t heard it in years: I only have it on vinyl and have no idea where my turntable might be.

What was going on for me was that Manette and Zac were out of town so I had birthday dinner with Jack and Cindy, my in-laws, and of course Styles, our wonderdog pitbull; that I’ve finished my latest novel and am waiting for my editor to free up to work with him on it; that I’m working on another Sasha Del Mira story; that we closed up the pool and the fountain a little early this year; that our taxes on our New Jersey house went up yet again and as much as I love it I’m thinking of arranging to have a plane crash on it some day we aren't there because it’s worth more dead than alive (replacement cost insurance vs. market value); and that I would take responsibility for contacting Bob to set up an annual hard date for the three of us to get together instead of calling each other randomly and not having it happen for months.

I have a pillow in the den of our home in Milford that I got from my old friends, Jimmy and Charle, that has, “Old Friends are the Best Friends” embroidered into it. So true. If I don’t see George first, I’m looking forward to talking to him on his birthday.