Murder on K Street - Margaret Truman [24]
But his time in Hollywood wasn’t wasted. It was there that he’d learned a valuable lesson: Networking was everything. Who you knew paid bigger dividends than what you knew. The problem with applying that philosophy in Hollywood, he reasoned, was that once you met the right person, you still had to deliver a workable script. Better, he decided, was to be in a position where you were paid simply for bringing people together, without the need to deliver anything after that.
Who needs what? And who can deliver it?
He’d forged friendships with people in Washington, D.C., and made a series of visits to them. Their tales of how lobbying had made countless millionaires of former government employees intrigued the ambitious Marshalk. Business needed access to politicians to head off legislation that would be injurious to their companies, or to encourage laws favorable to their bottom line. Politicians needed money to win elections and to sustain their power bases. It was as simple as that. He picked up stakes in California and headed east. He never looked back. Washington was where he belonged, a place ripe for the picking for someone with his savvy.
The Marshalk Group was born.
Not that Rick Marshalk was the first to discover that becoming a lobbyist in Washington, D.C., could make a man rich. Influence peddling in the nation’s capital had been alive and well for centuries, dating back to when President Washington traveled to Suter’s Tavern in Georgetown to negotiate with local landowners the purchase of the properties on which the new “seat of empire” would stand. A century or two later, there were plenty of rich lobbyists in town. When Marshalk arrived, men—and some women—who knew their way around and were skilled at funneling money from clients into the political coffers of elected officials were ubiquitous. But he decided that he could, and would, do it better than they did. History proved him right. The Marshalk Group grew quickly and now occupied a preeminent position on K Street, which was why Betzcon Pharmaceuticals sat with Rick Marshalk and his colleagues that day in the red-and-gold town house.
“It should be obvious, Rick, that we’ve pretty much decided to go with Marshalk as our Washington lobbyists,” Betzcon’s VP said. “There are still a few loose ends to be tied up, which we can do here today.”
“Need I say that you’ve made the right choice?” Marshalk said, laughing. “There’s never been a more important time in our history for a company like Betzcon to have its voice heard in the halls of Congress and in the Oval Office. We know four or five months in advance of every bit of legislation that’s apt to be introduced. Our intelligence is the best in town. And of course, the access we have to the right people is no secret. We’ll put all of our resources to work for you to ensure that upcoming legislation not only doesn’t hurt the company, but actually enhances your future growth and profitability. For example, we know that certain legislators in the House and Senate are considering introducing bills that could have a devastating effect on your pricing of Aorstat. We managed to head off in the Senate the previous attempt to force the Health and Human Services secretary to negotiate drug prices for the Medicare prescription drug plan. The House passed it, but through our efforts, primarily for your industry’s trade associations, it stalled in the Senate. Now they’re back on the case. This time, it will take an even bigger effort on our part to see that the bill never reaches the president’s desk. We’re poised to do that, but it will take every ounce of influence we have, to say nothing of money, to accomplish that goal.”
“It’s nonsense,” said one of the Betzcon executives. “Screwing around with the free market is just plain wrong. It’s—”
“Un-American,” Marshalk said. “You’re damn well right it is, and