Sometimes, my retribution comes in minor, irritating ways. A car gets towed—repeatedly—or the target is suddenly inundated with subscriptions to magazines of questionable content.
At work. Or at their parents’ house.
Or, in one notable occasion, at the guy’s church, because he was one of their trustees and had a desk in the office there.
Little things like that.
Sometimes, I make the subject’s life difficult by absolutely blowing it out of the water in ways that cannot be swept under the rug. I’ve done that a few times. Those times don’t always make the news, or even the gossip circles.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t manufacture the crises that rip their world from its moorings and cast them adrift. I don’t apply false evidence and frame them. I simply utilize the existing fractures they’ve already created all on their own and leverage them to my advantage in a multitude of creatively fun ways.
Hence why I said I am a great believer in the power of information over titles and offices.
Like the congressman from Idaho who’s now sitting in a federal prison for possession of child porn and soliciting a minor for sex. I didn’t plant the evidence on his computer, or participate in the sting that brought him down. I simply kept my ear to the ground and stored away all the years of rumors of him liking his girls very young over his thirty-year career.
Somehow, his wife apparently didn’t know about it, either. Which I find hard to believe, but we’re all ostriches sticking our heads in the sand about something.
When he—once again—tried to sabotage a bill my congressman was working on by tacking amendments onto it and refusing to let it pass through clean, meaning it would then fuck up the version Liam was working on in the Senate and delay its passage through conference committee, I simply applied all the accumulated knowledge I had of that Idaho congressman and passed word, via another contact of mine, to local law enforcement.
They are the ones who put together the sting and caught him, investigated him, charged him, and prosecuted him. I had nothing to do with that.
But it sure got him out of office fast, so he was no longer a pain inmyass.
Or Liam’s.
Let me clarify that the gentleman (to use the term loosely) from Idaho would brag to his cronies every time he slowed passage of a bill by doing that. It was a game to him. He didn’t give a shit that he was hurting his own constituents in the process, he just wanted to jam up the works.
It was time for him to go.
It was a bonus that his wife also divorced him and took everything.
A double bonus that it was too late for someone to run for his office and the governor had to appoint someone. A governor who was more liberal than the last one, and who appointed a more moderate and reasonable member of the GOP to take the seat for the remainder of the term.
The cherry on top of that particular cake was the fact that the gentleman from Idaho was yet another rabid “family values” kind of asshole who always voted against any bill that might help someone who wasn’t a white, cishet Evangelical Christian. An obstructionist just so he could brag that he wasn’t beholden to the “DC machine,” whatever the fuck that means.
Everyone’s beholden to someone. Especially in DC.
My latest inroads in the information game come from a certain large religious organization that claims not to be an organization. I have absolutely no fucking intention of Liam or myself getting involved with The Family. We’ve both been approached numerous times about it.
Thank you, next.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want to know more about who is in it, or what their future intentions are. Because how a particular person acts and how they joined could also mean leverage is being applied against them.
Meaning I might have some digging of my own to do to apply counter-leverage at a later time.
Information.
Little bits and pieces here and there, just laying around like puzzle pieces awaiting someone’s attention to fit them all together.
Ward, however, is the perfect spy to send into that particular lion’s den. He’d be welcomed with open arms. A married straight guy from the South who is friends with a senator they’ve hustled for years to hook? They’d come in their slacks to have him as a member, even if he is in the minority party.
Ward would also give Liam and me plenty of cover to dip in and out of events without being full-fledged members ourselves. Allowing me even more opportunities to gather intel.
I know Liam wouldn’t be too happy if I informed him of my pet Judas goat’s new mission, but he doesn’t get a say in it. Because I’ve got a congressman from Indiana who’s been a pain in my ass lately, and he’s a member. They sometimes confess all sorts of things to each other in their meetings and mentoring sessions. They might put on a good front to the rest of the world as being nothing more than a prayer group, but that’s bullshit and everyone knows it.
The only thing better would be having a source placed in one of the AA meetings that take place on the Hill. I haven’t managed that yet, but only because the person I was trying to leverage into that role got busted for DUI and thrown in jail.
No, that was not my fault.
