Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Two

Quaid Rafferty was a believer.

Growing up as a member of the storied Gallagher clan, he believed every kid in his school should enjoy vacations like he, his siblings, and cousins did. Age eight, for the first day of Pembrooke Hill Academy's spring break, Quaid invited all six grade levels to the family compound for hot dogs and stickball. "My parents won't care. They are pro-people." He believed it would be the funnest time anyone had all year.

It was.

After debate titles and Yale and stints as city councilman and deputy secretary of state, Quaid—then 34—believed he could become governor of Massachusetts.

He did.

When misinterpreted texts to a (unbeknown to him) prostitute spurred the legislature to nearly impeach him, Quaid believed he could rise above. He believed he could forge a second chance and achieve many of the reforms the unfortunate scandal had made impossible to achieve.

He won reelection by six points. Before the tulips outside the state house next bloomed, he'd humanized both the criminal justice and mental health bureaucracies.

Three years later, Quaid ran afoul of Draktor Industrial. Draktor's plan to bring Pennsylvanian natural gas to the Northeast relied heavily on The Berkshires, Franklin County, and high-tech pipeline technology with no safety record. Quaid—along with the residents of these regions—believed it should not be built. He rallied the required support to block the project.

Weeks before the vote, emails soliciting the services of a well-known madam were discovered on Quaid's personal computer. Between the texting incident, his enduring bachelorhood, and the tabloids' knack for snapping him and bikini-clad companions on faraway beaches with tall-stemmed drinks, his guilt was a fait accompli.

This time, impeachment was unanimous. He served ten months in jail, emerging disgraced. Toxic to the Gallagher brand. Unwelcome anywhere cameras might be present—which is to say, everywhere.

Many would have downshifted. Started a family in some suburban hamlet where gossip would be minimal, where children could be raised without thinking their father a degenerate.

Quaid believed life had more in store for him. Loads more.

He believed he could make a third chance.

He legally changed his last name to Rafferty—the clan didn't want him, fine—and bent ears across his vast network of contacts. He needed a partner. He could not achieve vengeance on his own: Draktor was too powerful.

Various moguls and financiers listened. They thought he was nuts. Draktor Industrial had annual revenues surpassing the GDP of Ireland. Yeah, people figured they were crooked. So what? You couldn't do anything about it.

But Quaid believed you could.

Finally, a sitting member of the House Arms Services committee put him onto Durwood Oak Jones. "Now he's wound tight," she warned. "But he's out of work too. Old warhorse. He might be convinced to help you."

Seven years on, Quaid and Durwood were the premier small-force private-arms operators in the Western world.