Chapter 30: Capital Capital

Decisions often simplify other decisions. Mine certainly did. Once I decided to let myself be seduced by the Republicans, my driving objective was to find a competent person to run the Concord office. Morgan Robertson was ideal if I could get her to take the job. In this, I had an advantage and a handicap.

The handicap was that I was not going to offer the money others might. The advantage was that Morgan clearly thought my star was rising. She might want to hitch her cart to my horse. Lacking anything concrete, my gut said she was making me an offer, contingent on me finding suitable compensation. In this case, money was low on the list, but I could not ignore it.

Fortunately, I could find out what New Hampshire was paying her. That would be the baseline. Everything else would stack on top of it. For example, I could give her a 5% slice of FDC. That would leave me with 60%. Another carrot would be freedom to take speaking engagements and the contacts to acquire them. As a sitting Senator, her hands were largely tied.

Still, the biggest selling point would be my future. Morgan wanted to be involved, but only if I was headed up. With that in mind, I returned some calls. None of them were decision makers, but they were somewhere in the ranks. Word would work its way up the food chain. The call came from an attorney, no surprise, that Donald Erkfurt wished to meet with me.

Mr. Erkfurt was a former prosecutor for the City of Manchester. He had moved on to a series of law firms, all of which represented one political entity or another. After ten years as a lobbyist/campaign worker, he graduated to running mayoral campaigns in Manchester, Nashua and Concord. He managed Donna Lee's most recent election. At a guess, he was delegated to give me the sniff test. More investigative vetting would surely be done behind the scene.

We met for drinks at the local artisan brewer, the Barley Malt Pub. One point in his favor. It was the most authentic Irish style pub I had yet seen in New Hampshire. Sean would love it. To make the evening short, I had ale poached fish and a pint of red ale. Mr. Erkfurt had fish and chips, with at least five pints of stout. Our table was observed from at least two others, possibly more.

The low-light came when the waiter brought a bar tab for all but one of Mr. Erkfurt's beers. There had been a discussion about what to do about his drinking on duty, so I saw the showdown coming. This gave me the opportunity to watch the other tables. The most obvious pair were laughing at Mr. Erkfurt's reaction. At another table, the man facing me leaned back with a big grin. The other man was deep in a cell phone conversation. Coincidentally a man on the far side of the room was also in a deep conversation. Hmmm.

I thanked Mr. Erkfurt for his time and rose to leave. Sure enough, both cell phones went down together. I walked across the room to the third table. I said, "Thank you for an excellent meal. Perhaps we can talk face to face next time."

Turning to the door, I caught three shocked expressions. By far the most shocked was Mr. Erkfurt, who turned ashen. While I was exiting the parking lot, a boy came running out of the restaurant. He gave me a business card and went back inside. The card was for a local car dealer. On the back was a number. I drove home, changed clothes and brewed tea before calling it.

The short version was that I passed the audition, not that this made things easier. The next day was a constant reminder that I am easy to spot. Everywhere I went, I was followed. Where I passed, heads turned and conversations stopped. It was both flattering and annoying. When I arrived at the office, Howard Cockerham came in, asking what I had said last night. It seemed I had pushed the latest school shooting off the top of the gossip list. I told him to shut the door and pull up a chair.

Once settled, I said, "Howard, I came to Concord to make some changes. It has been very clear that more gets done when I am in house. I do not intend to be 'in house' permanently, so I will be putting someone in my place, meaning over everyone else. That someone will not be you."

I watched him closely. In my opinion, he expected exactly this conversation. He tried to work up wounded indignation, but his relief was palpable. I waited for his expression to settle down, then continued, "I appreciate all your hard work. I think the next manager will appreciate it as well. You have many skills and admirable qualities, but I do not think being the boss is one of them. If it is any consolation, I am going to try recruiting a veteran Concord insider. He or she will need your help."

It says something of Howard that his reply was, "Morgan Robertson?" There was approval in his attitude.

I said, "She's my first choice. Be aware that I intend to give her a lot of rope. If she wants to take speaking engagements, write a book or take up bridge, she can. All I will care about is building from our base. Also, I may be..."

He broke in, " ... running for Congress. You do make things interesting." There was a definite twinkle with that quip. I told him to go back to work.

An hour later I had much the same conversation with Morgan Robertson. All that was left was detail work. I spent most of the summer tracking down issues. The September session of the Court was a goldmine of business. I was an interesting new face, but Morgan Robertson was well known and respected. Nothing was official before October 1st. By then Morgan was essentially running the New Business side of the office. On October 15th, I went back to Nashua semi-permanently. Things had changed there as well. After two days, I decided to visit Cloudrest.

Lest one misunderstand, I still spent at least one day a week in Concord and another in Boston. That said, I wanted to focus on my coming race, not on the renovations to Cloudrest. For that, I took a break. In hindsight, I should have let my people know in advance.

PBS had finished their project. This Old House had proven a difficult partner. While they supplied expert workers, I supplied the materials. Since I was paying, I wanted input on which materials they would use. They thought this was unreasonable.

Basically, they wanted to use cutting edge building supplies. I wanted the to use materials suitable for the original construction. We compromised. They used solid wood beams and boards, but were allowed to redesign the big fireplace and construct a wood drying kiln.

During the planning, we took to calling it the Woodshop, which would be our first use for the space. The following year, main house projects would need a sheltered place to build frames and fabricate pieces. From that basic understanding much discussion arose. Power, for example.

I went along with the show on this one. All electric power was generated on site and would be for some time. The show wanted to showcase alternate methods. Instead of electricity, compressed air powered the shop tools. This came from a diesel compressor and 500-gallon air tank. There was a whole show dedicated to running the high-pressure lines throughout the building. More importantly, it worked. Almost all the necessary woodworking tools were available in a compressed air version.

One section of the building was rigged with racks for cured wood storage. That all looked very lumber yardish, but normal. So did the big fireplace, though it was almost anything but normal. Sure it had fire dogs and a screen, for normal use. If you looked more closely, over the flames were heat exchange pipes. These were for the drying kiln on the other side of the wall. From the outside, it looked like a shed, built lean-to style against the stone wall. In this, I sidestepped the show a bit.

You could also see pipes leading to the roof. George (my brother) assured me the rooftop solar collectors were state-of-the-art. Evidently it was much easier to get solar heat than solar electric power, though we did both. Solar electric current ran the ventilation fans. The whole rig used cutting edge temperature controls and safety cutoffs. It was so efficient at heating the kiln, that the fireplace would only be needed during winter, if then.

Nearby was a small stone building, the new smithy. I had to look twice, because it had not been there before. Though it was not for This Old House, the same crew did the work. It was planned as a three part special on PBS, possibly leading to a new program.

Everyone knew I had affiliations with the Amish. This smithy was designed so that an 18th-century blacksmith would be at home. A portion of the stream was diverted to fill a large cistern. The smith needed a ready source of water, but the main reason was a water-powered forge fan. It was a very Amish solution.

This all sounds rather static, but it was nothing of the sort. When I arrived at the hilltop, there were three different construction crews working, plus another work crew clearing trees from paths. Every work crew had an integrated camera crew. It was all coordinated from the main house, in fact from same room I used in the spring. During the summer, the room had acquired electrical power and glass in the windows.