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from Decline of Fishes
by Peter Anastas
Excerpt from Decline of Fishes
Lori
Lori Lambert believed that everyone had a secret. Once you discovered it, you possessed the key to their character. The forty two-year-old Gloucester Daily Times reporter reflected on this as she sat in the back row of the City Hall auditorium listening to the deliberations of the City Council’s planning and development subcommittee. Their voices seemed to waver in the airless room. Outside it was humid, the light dimming into darkness. Inside, you could barely hear the amplified responses, two men and one woman, as they discussed the orders that had been remanded to them by the council for recommendation or public hearing.
Lori had been drawn to the meeting not so much by an item she’d noticed on the agenda—a cryptic note about a state grant to enable waterfront construction—as by an old instinct. It was on hot early summer nights like this one, when most people were home with their families or watching the kids play Little League ball, that committee members were most likely to pull a fast one—passing an enabling order or voting for the full council to support a project before the citizens had any idea of its implications. At least that’s what councilwoman Joyce Benson’s habit from long acquaintance had been.
Lori looked at her pit-bull face, she watched her stubby fingers pulling at the pages of the motions in front of her. She listened to her gruff voice that didn’t speak in the local accent, the broad A’s, the R’s flatly pronounced. Benson sounded more like a farmer than a fisherman. She came from the Midwest, where she and her husband had met in the military. That said it all. The woman had a bulldog tenacity about her that could only have been enabled by military experience. Unlike Lori, Benson had always seemed to welcome authority, identifying with it, and ultimately living by its rigidities while imposing them on others. After all, how many ex-army types end up in politics?
It had been different for Lori. Working her way up from archivist to reporter in a newsroom dominated by men, she’d emerged from those struggles a hardened strategist, a tough infighter; and she didn’t mind applying what she’d learned to the daily business of contending with government, especially here in Gloucester, where those who attained what modicum of power they’d earned owed it to someone whose agenda was generally opportunistic. The city had an elected mayor; but it was governed equally by a shadow cabinet of powerful vested interests—bankers, building contractors, business executives, and the lawyers who represented them, profiting from the sweetheart deals they struck with developers and city officials.
Lori reflected on this as she listened to the muffled discussion in front of her. She was glad that “Big Bill” Francoeur chaired the sub-committee. Not only did Franceour, a disabled former fisherman and populist if there ever was one, act as a perfect foil to Benson; he also went out of his way to put her in her place. This stance had incurred the wrath of Benson’s many supporters—those, admittedly, whose idea of the city’s future was to encourage as much development as possible, no matter what the consequences to the city’s character or natural beauty. Their response was to use every means at their disposal to discredit the outspoken councilor, whose popularity was legendary, and who came from a ward whose citizens wouldn’t think of replacing him.
The only way Francoeur would relinquish his seat, Lori knew, was if he died; and the dangerous fact was that he suffered from angina, a condition that had caused numerous hospitalizations, the insertion of a pacemaker, and pleas from doctors to terminate his political career. But politics—whether it took the form of hugging elders in the ward or a fiery advocacy on behalf of the fishing industry that characterized Francoeur’s tenure on the council—was, in effect, what kept the hefty councilor alive. Politics was his lifeblood.
“Here come the suits.”
As Francoeur spoke, as much to himself as to the sparse audience, Lori glanced quickly to her left to see three men enter the hall. They were indeed dressed in suits, in contrast to Francoeur, whose large torso was draped in a blue and yellow Hawaiian sport shirt, or those in the audience, like Lori, who wore T-shirts on such a hot night.
Setting their briefcases down, all three men took seats in the front row to the right, near the podium, where those who addressed the council were requested to speak. The room was nearly empty; but, as Lori turned to check out who might be in attendance, she noticed, in the darkened corner under the balcony overhang, the unmistakably wiry figure of a man whose head was covered with gray and white curls. What was Frank Acciaio doing here? she wondered. Something must be up.
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