Harry Bosch doesn’t believe in coincidences. I am becoming a disciple.
My latest casual reading has been several books by Michael Connelley. He has a series about LAPD Detective Bosch and another about an attorney who drives around in old Lincolns. They both are complicated, almost dark characters. They seem to never get the girl but they always figure out whodunnit. If there’s one constant for Harry, it is not accepting anything that happens as coincidental.
So was it a coincidence that as I was wrapping up last Saturday’s column about a stack of old newspapers that had been left at the office, I went back to double check something and a headline caught my eye: “Mrs. William Borah gets $207,000 From Safety Box”?
It seems that Mrs. Borah’s husband, a U.S. Senator from Idaho, had died unexpectedly. She wasn’t sure if she had enough money for a funeral. The couple had lived modestly in a Washington, D.C. apartment and had a home in Idaho; he had always handled the couple’s finances. She was aware that they had a joint-custody safe deposit box where she found $207,000 in $1,000 bills. This was in 1940. According to Mrs. Google, that equals about $4.4 million today.
The coincidence? In the news Friday evening was the indictment of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez (D, New Jersey) on bribery charges. He seems to have assisted getting favorable treatment for some Egyptian businessmen in dealing with the federal government who coincidentally had hired his wife who coincidentally didn’t really do anything. The couple also had several gold bars in their home that were coincidentally close in serial numbers to other gold bars owned by one of those businessmen.
If you’re following this story at all, you will know that Menendez beat a series of very similar bribery charges in unrelated circumstances just a few years ago due to a hung jury. He had argued that he was only doing what a senator does — assisting his constituents through the maze of government bureaucracy. It is only a coincidence that they make substantial campaign contributions and in this case gave his wife a cushy job and/or bought her a car and/or dropped off a few gold bars from time to time.
Perhaps what bothers me most about this is the prospect that Menendez will walk free again. His claim that he’s only getting things done in Washington the way things get done in Washington seems to be coming more generally accepted as the way things get done in Washington.
Witness, coincidentally(?), another story from this past week: Dana Bash interviewed California Gov. Gavin Newsom on CNN. He asked Newsom about the propriety of President Biden who, at a minimum, allowed his son — and now, we read, brothers — to peddle the family name quite profitably. Newsom’s response: That’s hardly unique.
“I don’t know enough about the details of that,” he told Bash. “I mean, I’ve seen a little of that. If that’s the new criteria, there are a lot of folks in a lot of industries, not just in politics, where people have family members and relationships and they’re trying to parlay and get a little influence and benefit in that respect. That’s hardly unique. I don’t love that any more than you love it or other people, I imagine, love that.”
So we don’t have to love how Washington works. The question is: Do we just accept it and live with it?
This reminds me of the tale of Dennis Hastert. First elected to Congress in 1987 when he was a high school teacher and coach, he rose to become Speaker of the House. He retired in 2007. His annual salary never exceeded $165,000. However, he was able to afford a $1 million payment in an unsuccessful attempt to keep some unsavory information hidden.
People are elected to Congress and, coincidentally, get rich.
Speaking of coincidences, Menendez’s new wife, Nadine Arslanian, is a native of the Middle-East. According to a New York Times report, the three co-indicted Egyptian businessmen were — an amazing coincidence — friends of hers before she met the senator in an IHOP in New Jersey in 2019. She wasn’t working when she began dating Menendez but, coincidentally, started an international consulting company, Strategic International Business Consultants, shortly after, in June 2019.
By the way, Nadine is about 15 years younger than the senator and has … or is, shall we say, buxom. Sorry, I just can’t help but notice these things, which I don’t think are coincidental. Neither would Harry Bosch.
miller@news-banner.com
