Chapter Fourteen
Rebecca sat in the so-called waiting room, a tangled mess of old magazines and faded furniture, and she could hear him doing his thing. Tom was on the phone laughing, talking loudly, telling a wild story, pacing and waving his arms around like a crazy person. As he hung up the phone, she heard him say, “See ya, Senator.”
She had seen this guy at work, and he was the master.
Several years earlier, Rebecca was on the board of directors of a non-profit environmental advocacy group, and she tried to help them take on a well-connected gas company that wanted to build a pipeline through both a sensitive wetlands area and a pine forest that would disrupt or destroy the habitat of some woodpeckers. Rebecca helped her group develop a sophisticated strategy, with effective messag
