The Blue Suit Speaks
By JOSH RESNEK
The mayor’s Blue Suit and I talked earlier this week.
We covered a lot of ground. He began with a great story about how the mayor gets his clothes cleaning done for nothing with the cleaner he uses.
The best part of the story is how the mayor made the transition from where he was receiving his cleaning at a discount price to another cleaner who he goaded into doing it for nothing.
The Blue Suit told me the story word for word.
“I won’t say what cleaner he uses but the mayor gets his cleaning done for free,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“You know how he is. He wants everything for nothing. I grimace each time he fills up with gasoline at a local business and drives off without paying. At least he should give the attendant a tip. That’s not in him,” the Blue Suit added.
When we began talking many months back, the Blue Suit and I used to meet at a well – known cleaner in the city. But the mayor stopped using that cleaner when he went from demanding a discount to demanding that it be done for free.
That cleaner refused to do the mayor’s cleaning for free. He told him to leave the store.
“Fine,” the mayor said, the Blue Suit told me.
“I’ll get it done elsewhere where they’ll do it because I’m the mayor,” added the mayor, according to the Blue Suit.
“Good riddance,” the former cleaner told the mayor.
“Can this be true, the mayor acting like that?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“Every word, Josh. I swear on my suit jacket’s silk lining.”
“Let me tell you this, Josh,” he said to me after a moment of silence.
“I think I know why the mayor is continuing to pay his criminal lawyer a huge sum of money from month to month from his campaign account. I believe I heard him say he’s got a problem. I couldn’t make out who he was talking with – but I know
I heard him say that he has a problem.”
“Oh yeah. What’s the problem?” I asked.
“It’s actually two problems,” the Blue Suit said.
“He was talking with the criminal attorney about the Suffolk Downs lawsuit against Encore. That’s a $1 billion lawsuit that has the potential to turn upside down the mayor’s world. In that lawsuit, he is alleged to have accepted a bribe to make the Encore land deal work for Wynn Corporation for the old Monsanto site,” the Blue Suit told me.
“But isn’t that old news – ancient news?” I asked. “That supposedly happened like 8 years ago,” I added.
“It might have happened 8 years ago, but it is now being discussed by lawyers in the First Circuit of the Federal Court. It is not ancient history to those federal judges lis- tening to the lawyer’s arguments.”
“I guess you’re right on that one,” I said to the Blue Suit.
“Are you OK?” I asked the Blue Suit. He seemed a bit bothered, somewhat out of it, like an athlete that had suf- fered an injury.
“I feel like crap,” he answered. “The mayor wore me several days in a row. I’m really not wearing well for him these days. Why he doesn’t buy another suit is beyond me. I can’t take his abuse much longer. He doesn’t treat me like a suit. He treats me like a rag. He tosses me around. He wears me over and over until I am like a dirty rag that house cleaners would use to polish the toilets in his man- sion. I can’t stand it.”
“Just calm down now,” I told the Blue Suit.
“OK. What’s the mayor’s second problem?” I asked. “Gerly Adrien’s $65,000 campaign account balance is driving him crazy. I’ve never seen him so upset, so filled with hate and contempt. He was in a rage when he found out last week. He has remained in a rage,” the Blue Suit said.
“What’s bothering him?” I asked.
“Wow, Josh. That’s a loaded a question!” He exclaimed. “What’s bothering him about her campaign account balance you ask?”
“Everything and I mean everything,” the Blue Suit said. “First off, he hates Gerly Adrien. He tells nearly everyone he has contact with that she means nothing to him. But he knows deep down that someone like her with that kind of money in the bank early on in an election year is very likely to be a problem – and quite possibly – a big one.
“You have to understand, Josh. The mayor doesn’t think he can lose. But he knows he could lose if Gerly lined up everything the right way and ran a strong campaign. He doesn’t think she’s going to run but he worries that she might run. He can’t imagine a Black, first time councilor at large challenging his position. That she’s a woman complicates this mess even further. To him, Gerly is a big mouth, white-hating Black woman who refuses to treat him with respect.”
We both shared a good laugh about that.
“Can you imagine him being upset that Gerly doesn’t treat him with respect? That’s too funny. But then, he hates women like Gerly Adrien. He wishes she’d disappear. I know better,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“What do you mean, you know better?” I asked.
“He knows she isn’t disappearing. He knows she’s a danger to him with $65,000 in the bank. He is especially concerned the $65,000 will grow to $100,000. At that point, she’s a real candidate for mayor, the mayor believes.”
“What about Fred Capone?” I asked the Blue Suit.
“The mayor and his buddies consider him another Robert Van Campen. They don’t believe he has the voter base, campaign funding, or the kind of grit and anger a candidate will need to face him in a battle. They frankly don’t believe Capone is serious about running.”
“Let’s go back to Adrien,” the Blue Suit suggested.
“The mayor won’t be able to harangue her the way he can attack Capone in a one on one. That’s why Adrien is such a dangerous potential candidate. The mayor knows he’ll have to act civilized with her, that he can’t punch her in the stomach, call her out or berate her. The Everett voting public that helped her top the ticket won’t stand
for such behavior. Capone, he’s another thing entirely. He knows Capone is going to take the high road. He’ll be able to attack Capone and pour gasoline on him and run the negative campaign he is so good at running. He expects Capone will grin and bear it believing that his quiet, reserved, lawyer’s persona will sink Capone,” the Blue Suit explained.
“Does he think he can win if Capone and Adrien both run?” I asked.
“That’s got him spooked, Josh,” the Blue Suit answered. “A real primary is not to his advantage,” he added.
“And you, Josh, doing your investigative reporting in the paper from week to week isn’t going to help him, either.” “Let’s shake on that,” I said with a broad smile.
We touched elbows instead.