“Let me tell you how things work in Everett.”
– Josh Resnek to the mayor’s Blue Suit
By JOSH RESNEK
I don’t like eating in anymore but for the Blue Suit, I made an exception.
I picked him up outside the mansion on Abbot Street shortly before noon Tuesday.
It was so hot you could have fried an egg on the street.
Add to this, the air conditioning doesn’t work in my Honda Fit.
“Oh my God,” the Blue Suit complained.
“You’ve got to be kidding me about the air conditioning.
I’ll tell you this, Josh, the mayor’s house is central air, on all the time. You might think we live in Florida. It is soooo cold inside that house it sometimes feels like the refrigerator at an ice company,” the Blue Suit added.
We drove to Oliveira’s on Broadway.
The Blue Suit loves Brazilian food. We did the buffet.
When the Blue Suit finished piling food onto his plate, he went to the meat grilling area.
When he got to the end of the line and the girl weighed his plate, it was three pounds!
“Are you nuts?” I asked him.
“Why?” he answered.
“A three-pound plate…are you kidding me?”
“A man’s got to eat,” he said to me.
We sat down in the main dining room, which is quite lovely.
He forked grilled chicken, lamb, and rare beef into hi mouth.
I ate from a much lesser plate.
“Have you been reading the column?” I asked him.
“Are you serious? Of course, I read it. The mayor reads it, too. He gets really nasty on Wednesdays when the Leader Herald comes out,” he added.
“I know he claims to not read it,” I told the Blue Suit.
“He’s among the very first to read it,” the Blue Suit confirmed. “Yes. He does hate you, Josh.”
“I know that.”
“I wrote two stories this week for the front page. One is about the drug dealing DPW guy. The other is about sexual harassment and bullying settlement supposedly made
by the city to a young woman who worked at the Wellness Center. Something like $250,000. I got both stories from sources.”
“Can’t you do better than that, Josh?” the Blue Suit asked.
“What do you mean?” I answered.
“Have you heard of facts, Josh? Don’t you need facts to publish stories?” the Blue Suit wondered.
“Let me tell you how things work in Everett,” I said to the Blue Suit.
“The facts, as you refer to them are not revealed by Carlo and his gang. The facts are hidden. The woman who apparently got the settlement was told to keep her mouth shut to not say a word, or else. I was told this by several young men who know the woman, who the woman has confide in. She’s still afraid of Carlo, even after winning a settlement. Can you imagine? What I want to know, and this is what no one in government will tell me or anyone else, who represented the woman, who did the city hire as outside counsel? What did it cost the city? How was the settlement paid?Was the settlement paid, in fact? Is the settlement going to be paid? I talked with several people about this story before printing it. I was hoping several councilors might speak out about this. I figured councilors would answers t such questions, that they’d demand such answers to such questions. You know what they asked me? Do I have any proof? You know what I said to them? Why don’t you wait for Carlo to send out a press release giving all the details, then you’ll have the proof.”
The Blue Suit stammered a bit.
“That’s never going to happen, Josh.”
“No kidding,” I answered.
I described the follow-up to the drug dealing story printed last week in the Leader Herald.
“A lot of people talked about that story, Josh,” he said to me.
“You know what’s great about that story?” I asked the Blue Suit. “It’s 100% true. A DPW employee is dealing drugs for years out of a DPW truck and on DPW time, everyone knows this, all his fellow employees at the DPW, the head of the DPW, some councilors know it and the mayor knows it because the guy is a major supporter of his. He’s got a DeMaria for Mayor sign planted outside his property. Do you think anyone in a position of responsibility was disturbed by the story about the drug dealing DPW employee? Not really. Elected officials, HR department heads, and the mayor’s office all combined to stick their heads into the sand. Their concern was the public coming to know about drug dealing going on with their OK. Their first efforts were to denounce me and the Leader Herald but too many people knew I had the story right. I’m told by someone who knows the drug dealing DPW guy was told to cool it.”
The Blue Suit finished a chicken wing. He had already eaten a small pile of mashed potatoes, beef, and lamb.
“My God, how can you eat all of that?” I asked him.
“When you work for Carlo, you get used to overeating,” he replied.
“Yeah. You got them with the drug dealing story. You hit the nail on the head, Josh. Drove the mayor crazy. Drove the guy running Carlo’s re-election campaign crazy. Yet, nothing was done. That shows you how strong Carlo thinks he is. He believes he can do anything he wants, that voters are dummies,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“The drug dealer is still working for the DPW. You know what, Josh,” the Blue Suit had a hearty laugh. “He’s still dealing drugs!”
The Blue Suit scraped his plate.
“The story about the settlement for sexual harassment is going to drive the mayor crazy,” the Blue Suit said to me.
“That story is getting real close to his friends and his first effort is to protect his gangster friends and I’m not really sure why?”
“Maybe they have something on him,” the Blue Suit wondered.
“Maybe he is forced to protect them because protecting them is protecting himself,” he added.
Before we got up from the table I told the Blue Suit this:
“He is being chased this time by Capone and Adrien. Their candidacies are not a joke. Capone is campaigning relentlessly. Adrien, too. She does not stop. This crap talk
among Carlo’s paid gangster friends is that they can’t beat him together or by themselves. Carlo and his buddies have this wrong. Before September 7, everything dark and ugly about Carlo’s background is going to come out. I can guarantee
you this…the darkness and ugliness have no bounds. Will it matter to voters? We’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?