My job? To give the Gov the happy news, you know like happy hour, by 6:30 the day is shot, the sun sinks down, and the Coronas and loaded potato skins at Joey's Pub around the corner from the State House are half price. I tell him what he wants to hear to split his airbrushed mug into a grin and tug at his belt that's too tight. No matter how minor, whether it's a poll from some college rag or praise from the president of a 4-H Club in a one traffic-light town no one can finger on a map, that's what I reach for.

"The whole mishegas," I told the press in the hallway the other day, "is a groundless conspiracy cooked up by the DA's partisan punks. When the time comes, we will crush them in court."

The funny thing is, the more counts that are lodged against my Boss, the higher my monthly retainer as Chief Advisor. A year ago, a cool $18k. This year, already double that to $38k. Maybe it's to keep my mouth zipped as a potential witness slash co-conspirator, but I only see green. The Feds tapped my calls to the Mansion the same day that the subpoenaed records mysteriously vanished. Gee, what a coincidence.

So what if there was a quote unquote "flurry" of phone calls from my cell to the Gov the day the boxes of docs went missing. We talk dozens of times a day about anything and everything: where to grab lunch, what time his kid's baseball game starts, how to get tickets to the "Wicked" tour for a dairy lobbyist. All the DA's got is printout of calls and times, that's all. We coulda been talking about the heat wave for chrissakes.

And when the FBI wanted to have a sit down with someone from our legal team, give me credit for tapping a newbie that morning, a grad last spring with zero knowledge. Then the DA runs to the judge and complains our rep knew nothing about the location of any documents. Ha!

I'm the Happy News Guy who got the Gov back in the hunt. Everyone had given him up for dead but me. I saw promise. I saw that ineffable effing glow of electability. All I had to do was make him come to Jesus. It was me who love-bombed him with polling data, who got him those gigs at chicken-wing Kiwanis and Elks. And when we hit rough water, when the first rumors of the Gov's strange late-night behavior made the rounds, I made sure we hired the best legal minds money could buy.

Instead of jerking us around, the DA should go after the irresponsible media that broadcast grainy footage of someone or something roaming the backyard of the Mansion. There is absolutely no evidence tying it to the Governor or his family. The whole episode is a distraction from the real issues, like the fact that the other side is trying to steal the next election. We have reports on irregularities from a half dozen counties downstate that we are looking into. Go investigate those instead of 911 calls about howling around midnight. Come on!

Do I have a criminal record? Who doesn't! So some tough guys thought they'd score some easy money by getting in my face at O'Casey's down by the water. I'd rather settle than drag a nothing-burger assault through the courts. And the other alleged altercation over a parking space only got worse when a cop showed up and tried to field test me. I can tightrope a straight line while counting backwards by sevens with my eyes closed, for chrissakes.

The whole system's rigged. That's why you have to play tough, get down in the mud and get your hands dirty. When Individual One texted me the day before the votes were gonna be certified, asking if we were good, if our guys were ready to meet in the Capitol and vote on their own slate, I replied with one word: Boom.

My job #1? Keep my Boss in power. #2? Keep him happy, even if it means shoveling him good news from some other planet. You want to dig into my email and text traffic? Have at it. The DA certainly has. How would you feel to get a knock on your door at 4 am with the Feds trampling your lawn and a SWAT team aiming a bazooka at your front door, your wife and two kids upstairs, Mommy dragging them down in their jammies into the glare of headlights. I handed over my two cellphones, my laptop, my PC, everything, and they still ransacked the drawers in the kitchen and study. It looked like a tornado hit. I thought they were going to slice open the sofa cushions for drugs.

The one thing I can't control is the Gov's proclivities. Where does he go in the middle of the night? God knows. I've tried to hunt him down with a xenon flashlight and my two beagles, but they turned tail at the edge of the park. There was a rank scent like a rug left out in the rain. Even the full moon was no help, casting the scrubby meadow in high relief. Whatever was out there didn't want to be found. My best guess is the Gov has a rendezvous with the devil, but that's his business.

Before all this? My life is a blank. I actually can't remember, as if it's all been wiped clean. There was some work for a CEO who made a half-assed run for senator, who later called me toxic, totally useless. Screw him. My real life started with the Gov.

After one late-night strategy session, we all crashed in the Hilton on couches, pizza boxes splayed open beside us. A siren woke me up, and I felt a pang at the base of my neck. I touched it with my fingers and there was a smear of blood. A spider I thought. I looked over and the Boss was gone, the door was ajar. There was a bad smell like sweat and spoiled meat. From the pepperoni and sausage slices hanging there limply? I gathered up the pizza boxes and tossed them in the hall. Ugh. I felt nauseous. Moonlight streamed in through the curtains across the staff strewn here and there. They looked dead.

After I graduated from Georgetown, I worked on a variety of projects with my partners. Were we flim-flam guys, like some disgruntled investors alleged? Nothing was ever proven in a court of law. We settled each claim out of court, whether it was the cancer institute or theme park. I promised connections, meet-and-greets, personal cells, nothing more. If they wanted a taste of what I could do, I sent them clips from my talk show phone-ins.

My whole life I've followed one ethos: it's not about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. I learned that from "Rocky" and from being a high school tackle in Ohio. Even though my family moved to Cleveland from Moscow when I was 11, in my senior yearbook I was named "most likely to be famous."

The next morning at the Hilton I checked myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked fine, normal, like always. The usual rings under my eyes, my hair a mess. I slapped cold water on my face and started to shave. The razor dragged, the hairs were coarser, tougher. I felt the flap of my right ear and it was prickly with bristles, the same on my left. I shook out the razor in the sink and skimmed the flesh of each ear, drawing a little blood that sprinkled the basin. Crap. I wadded up some tissue and pressed it to the wounds. My throat felt raw. I bent over the sink and hacked.

Am I an idiot? That's what some hangers-on in the Governor's orbit have called me. "He's an idiot; he can't keep his client or himself out of trouble." Once they even put that in an email and sent it to everyone in the DA's office. I should sue them for defamation. If I'm an idiot, I'm a useful one. I work day and night for the Gov, doing any dirty business so he can keep his hands clean. I'm the guy in the shadows, the one you see hurrying out the other door, the one who's hunched over his desk with the lights off as the cleaning crew's Hoover thrums down the hallway carpet.

I would take a bullet for the Boss, no question. I'm like his wartime consigliere, poring over maps in a tent before dawn. The Gov jokes that I'm his psychiatrist because I know him better than he knows himself. True that. I spend more time with him than his wife, holed up at their bungalow in LA working on her perfume line. I'm the one who noticed his voice had deepened. It wasn't the freakin' mics at the debate! It was me who saw the first creep of hair down his knuckles, how the spray tan soaked into his skin to make his neck look like leather. I pulled aside makeup and told them to fix it. They couldn't do anything with his molars, which had grown sharper, except tell him not to smile so wide.

My default? No comment. You want to rake through my past, my supposed bad actions? No comment. Was I deployed to downstate 36 hours after November 4 to challenge the results? No comment. I went on a podcast to warn that the AG's job would be on the line if he refused to go after the Secretary of State. Nine months later I'm still calling for the vote to be decertified. Did I have a hand in the Secretary getting primaried by a denier? No comment.

I'm the Boss's emotional support animal. I'm the Happy News Guy. I love, love telling the Boss what he wants to hear. It makes my skin tingle. I love watching his pupils dilate and he cheeks flush like a first kiss. We're stuck together like Mutt and Jeff and everyone knows it. You gotta go through me.

In the indictments, I go by many names. Individual 3 and Individual B. In one federal case, I appear as Person 5. In another, my email traffic matches up with Co-Conspirator 6. I play a supporting role, a cameo. If the Boss is Hamlet, I'm Rosencrantz or the other guy. But put me on TV and there's no fiercer attack dog. I practically foam at the mouth with righteous indignation. You want the truth, get somebody else.

On a hunch a couple days ago I parked on the shoulder on Route 37 and stumbled down a ravine tangled with vines. I could hear unearthly yelping in the distance, down by the shore, by more than one creature. I found a boardwalk through the dunes and got my footing. Up ahead was a ridge overlooking the beach. I got down on all fours and crawled to the edge, worried what I might see. The wailing was louder now, a chorus of strangled cries. I peeked over. Down where the ocean was lapping at the sand, under the big disc of moon, a pack of wolves bared their white throats to the night, their teeth glinting. They were in a circle like a primitive ritual, their bushy tails pounding the ground. In the middle lay a carcass torn and bloody, and they took turns snapping at the entrails. I thought I recognized the largest beast, hunkered down with his head skewed sideways.

I heard harsh breathing and looked around at the dunes. The clumps of beach grass were darkened with the humps of wolves on their haunches, a whole assembly focused on what was happening at the ocean's edge. Their snouts quivered, their tongues hung out in anticipation.