The Big Lie

by James Grippando

  “Hungry?” asked Jack, as he laid out the cartons on the table.

  Charlotte made a face, which Jack took to mean that, like most clients facing a court proceeding in the morning, she’d lost her appetite. She turned on the television.

  “You should try not to watch the news,” said Jack.

  Charlotte either didn’t hear him or pretended not to. One of the cable stations was replaying a snippet from a Democratic senator’s “controversial interview” earlier in the day.

  “I applaud Charlotte Holmes for breaking with all those Aunt Toms out there,” said the senator, standing before a green-screen image of the Golden Gate Bridge.

  “Aunt Toms?” asked the interviewer. “I’ve heard of Uncle Toms.”

  “Aunt Toms are to twenty-first-century women what Uncle Toms were to nineteenth-century slaves. They’re the ones who know in their heart that President MacLeod isn’t good for women. But their lives are way too cushy to worry about all the other women in this country who work real jobs for unequal pay.”

  Charlotte turned it off. Jack had seen her angry before, but this was an anger of a different sort.

  “You okay?” asked Jack.

  “My mother never had a paying job in her life,” said Charlotte. “But she raised five daughters, kept our family from falling to pieces, and worked harder than any senator ever worked. I guarantee you she would have voted for Malcolm MacLeod over Senator Stahl if she were still alive. That doesn’t make her an ‘Aunt Tom.’”

  If the senator from California was trying to move another wavering Republican elector into Senator Stahl’s camp, her “Aunt Tom” speech wasn’t doing the candidate any favors.

  “Why do they keep saying things that make it impossible for any other elector to follow my lead? I swear, if a Republican gave a Democrat a ninety-yard head start in the hundred-yard dash, the Democrat would somehow make a wrong turn in the last ten yards and find a way to lose.”

  The party that never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity was how Jack’s father had once put it. “Charlotte, if you’re having second thoughts about this fight, there are other options.”

  “Like what?”

  “You could simply resign as an elector and say you can’t in good conscience vote for MacLeod.”

  “This isn’t a protest vote. I want it to matter. But why do it if MacLeod is going to win anyway?”

  “I think you’re the only one who can answer that,” said Jack.

  Charlotte groaned, as if her head were about to explode, and went to the kitchen. She returned a minute later with her cell phone—not the disposable prepaid that Theo had given her, but her own cell, the one she’d left in Tallahassee to avoid being followed to Miami. She powered it on, and the phone chimed over and over again with a string of missed text messages. Jack watched her scrolling through them. Then she stopped, her expression tightening with concern.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Jack.

  She handed him the cell, and Jack read the text message: “A promise is a promise.”

  Jack checked the sender’s number and did a double take. “It’s from Theo.”

  “What? Is this your friend’s idea of a joke?”

  Jack called Theo on his cell and put him on speaker so Charlotte could hear. “Theo, did you send any text messages to Charlotte—to her real phone, I mean, not the disposable.”

  “I don’t even know her real cell number,” said Theo.

  “Then someone pirated your number and sent one to Charlotte.”

  “Shit. How?”

  Jack thought about it. “Is your cell number on the Cy’s Place Web site?”

  “Yeah,” said Theo. “Who uses a landline anymore?”

  “There are spoof apps you can download to display any number you want to the person you’re calling. It’s the same technology that robo-callers use to display a different number every time they call so you can’t block their calls. Except in this case the caller didn’t use a random number. He took yours from the bar’s Web site.”

  “Why use my number to text Charlotte?”

  “It’s the stalker mentality. Could be his way of telling Charlotte that he knows she was in Miami this weekend, and he knows who she was staying with.”

  Jack’s words gave everyone something to think about. Then Charlotte spoke.

  “Do you think it’s the same person who threw the gun magazine through my window?”

  “I don’t. I’m no criminal profiler, but I have a pretty good sense of when the m.o. fits and when it doesn’t. Scratching letters on a gun magazine and hurling it through your kitchen window strikes me as the work of a dumbass who thinks he’s clever. The spoof app shows some level of tech savvy. It’s—”

  “Scarier?”

  “I don’t know if that’s the right word.”

  “‘A promise is a promise’ means I swore an oath to vote for MacLeod. Why send that text, unless you want me to know that breaking my promise will have consequences?”

  “I agree. It’s a threat.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Call the police,” said Jack.

  “For what?” she said, scoffing. “They already know about the guy in the camo jacket. I told them in the ER. What did they do? Nothing. All they cared about was charging me with a crime for possession of armor-piercing ammunition.”

  “There are plenty of good cops at FDLE. My gut tells me that this text message and the broken window are unrelated, but FDLE has the professionals who can construct an actual psychological profile.”

  “Wonderful. A profile might narrow down the list of suspects from sixty-five million to—oh, I don’t know, six million?”

  “It’s a start.”

  “You said it yourself: it’s a threat. That’s all the profiling I need.”

  Theo’s voice came over the speaker. “Y’all want me to fly up there for a couple days? If nothing else, Jack, it might make your wife feel better.”

  “Good idea,” said Jack. “All three of us will stay at the hotel.”

  “I’m not going to a hotel,” said Charlotte.

  “I’ll pay for it,” said Jack.

  “It’s not about the money. I refuse to be run out of my own house.” She went to the closet where she kept her pistol.

  “Charlotte, do not take this into your own hands,” said Jack.

  “Choosing to protect myself does not make me a vigilante.”

  Jack was in no mood for a gunfight. “We really need to be smart about this,” he said, and then he dialed the police.

  Senator Stahl waved to the media as he exited the Biltmore Hotel.

  His wife had told him to be out of the house by Friday, and he’d met the deadline. He’d taken only a suitcase with him, and despite every effort not to make national news out of the fact that he was moving out, the media had followed him every inch of the way from his Coral Gables residence to the most historic hotel south of the Palm Beach Breakers. The Biltmore’s classic Mediterranean style set the architectural tone for the “City Beautiful” for almost a century. The stories were equally enduring, some preserved in the “ghost tour” popular with tourists. The hotel’s most famous “resident” was Thomas “Fats” Walsh, Al Capone’s bodyguard, shot to death in the gambling suite on the “lucky” thirteenth floor. Some said his ghost still prowled the Biltmore’s hallways.

  Senator Stahl felt as if a few ghosts were following him all the way to his car.

  “Senator, are you concerned that only one Republican elector is supporting you so far?”

  “Not at all concerned. They will come.” He smiled and waved as he got into his car. He always smiled. Even when he was lying.

  Charlotte Holmes’s announced defection should have started an avalanche. The senator had won by five million votes, yet MacLeod had somehow managed to convince all but one Republican elector and a good part of the country that his Democratic opponent was nothing but a “sore loser.” Early in his first term MacLeod had once bragged that he
could literally walk into an orphanage and rob the Sisters of Charity at gunpoint and not lose a single supporter. Democrats laughed, but as it turned out, no truer words had ever been spoken—at least not from the president’s lips. How could anyone say the things MacLeod said and not only survive but thrive politically? “Press the meat.” “Hashtag ‘Sodom and Goliath.’”

  What an ass.

  Stahl waved again to reporters as he drove his car out of the parking lot. He hoped they would follow, and a quick check in the rearview mirror confirmed that they had. He wasn’t going far, but he drove slowly, careful not to lose a single journalist. He checked the mirror again and smiled. Coverage would be robust. He wanted coverage, far and wide.

  The Stahl residence was less than five minutes from the hotel. He pulled into the driveway but took his time getting out of the car, allowing the media time to set up and position their camera crews. When he felt the moment was right, he climbed out of the car and walked not toward the house but directly to the lights and cameras at the end of his driveway. His intention was to keep the message short and powerful.

  “As you all know, my wife, Gwen, and our daughter, Rachel, returned from Singapore on Friday. I’m happy to tell you that I’ll be staying in my own house tonight. With my family. Thank you all very much.”

  His announcement elicited a flurry of questions, but the senator answered none of them. He turned away from the cameras and walked toward the house, smiling, inside and out.

  Chapter 23

  The courthouse elevator opened. Jack and Charlotte stepped into the commotion. Jack’s gaze cut right through the crowd and fixed on the five men seated on a long oak bench in the hallway.

  The third-floor lobby was packed with journalists and spectators who’d arrived too late for a seat inside Judge Martin’s courtroom. But it was those five men—dressed in business suits and seated in contemplative silence, despite the swirl of pre-hearing excitement around them—who caught Jack’s attention. They seemed to be sizing Jack up, the way ballplayers studied the opposing team’s pitcher from their dugout. Jack had seen that look before. Witnesses for the government. They were taking stock of the lawyer who would cross-examine them.

  “This is not good,” Charlotte whispered, as she and Jack forged a path toward the courtroom entrance doors. It was a crack in her composure, and the hearing had not even started.

  Jack and Charlotte had left the hotel before eight o’clock. Theo had walked with them. In his dark suit and sunglasses, he looked like a former NFL defensive end turned Secret Service agent—with an attitude. The walk to the courthouse should have taken five minutes. It took thirty-five. The number of demonstrators in the courtyard had doubled since Friday, but Jack’s assessment was that his client was doing just fine—until she laid eyes on those five men in the lobby.

  Jack made a quick detour, pulled Charlotte into the empty jury room, and closed the door. It was just the two of them standing at the end of a long rectangular table with twelve chairs.

  “Do you know those men waiting outside the courtroom?” Jack asked.

  “You could say that.”

  “Don’t be coy. Who are they?”

  “Two of them were state senators. The other three worked for legislators.” She gave Jack their names and districts.

  “Are either of the state senators still in office?”

  “No. Florida has term limits.”

  “Why do you think they’re here?”

  “One of the former senators I dealt with professionally. The other four were personal.”

  “When you say ‘personal’—”

  “More than just friends,” she said, which was clear enough, but she clarified anyway. “I was ‘with’ them.”

  “Were any of them married when you were with them?”

  “No,” she said firmly, and then she got angry. “Is that what this hearing is going to be about? Every man I’ve slept with since moving to Tallahassee?”

  “Apparently that’s what the attorney general has in mind.”

  “You have to stop this. The fact that I’m not a virgin has nothing to do with my ‘fitness’ to be an elector.”

  Jack checked the time. The hearing was still twenty minutes away. “You wait here. I’m going to take this up with the judge in his chambers and see if I can shut this down before Paulette Barrow turns this hearing into an X-rated circus.”

  He reached for the doorknob, then stopped. “Just to be clear, when you said you were with four of them, you didn’t mean all at the same—”

  “Jack, no!”

  “Sorry,” he said. “A lawyer has to ask.”

  Senator Stahl was standing in his foyer. The double entrance doors were mostly glass—half an inch thick—but the privacy wall and nine-foot hedge in front of the Stahl residence blocked his view of the street. He checked the display screen on the wall. Security cameras around the house and its perimeter transmitted a refreshed image every few seconds. He waited for the street view to cycle around and liked what he saw. Media vans galore.

  “Time to go,” he shouted down the hallway.

  “I need a minute,” his wife fired back from the bedroom.

  Timing was key. His campaign had put out the word: photo-op at 9:00 a.m.

  The senator pressed the open button on the control panel. The wrought-iron gate at the end of the brick driveway swung open, which set the media in motion. Though no one crossed the invisible line and entered private property, a wall of excited journalists formed on the easement outside the pair of coral-rock entrance columns.

  “We need to go now,” he shouted again.

  Mother and daughter emerged from the bedroom and hurried down the hallway. Rachel was dressed in her school uniform: red polo shirt, white tennis shoes, and blue shorts.

  “Love those colors,” he said, and then he gave his daughter a kiss on the forehead. “You look perfectly patriotic, honey.”

  There was no kiss between husband and wife.

  “Ready, I guess,” Gwen said.

  The senator opened the door. His wife and daughter stepped out and stopped on the front stoop, standing side by side. The senator followed and closed the door. Then he took his place at Rachel’s side. It was mother, daughter, father, in that order, with Rachel dressed in the colors of the American flag—all facing the media. The senator could barely contain his excitement.

  “Now,” he whispered.

  Rachel clasped a hand of each parent.

  “Hold it,” said the senator, meaning the pose.

  Cameras clicked at the end of the driveway, as dozens of photojournalists caught the money shot. The senator gave them all the time they needed, but after a minute or so, Rachel’s hand was shaking in his, so he didn’t push it any longer.

  “Walk,” he whispered.

  Hand in hand, they headed down the walkway to the car in the driveway. The senator opened the rear door on the passenger side. His daughter climbed in, and her mother checked to make sure she was properly buckled. The senator closed the door and opened the front door for his wife.

  And then they kissed.

  It was brief but long enough to make sure the photographers got it. Gwen got into the car, and the senator closed the door for her. He walked around the back of the car, closer to the media, to the driver’s side.

  “Senator, are you and Mrs. Stahl back together?” a reporter shouted. Others fired questions to the same effect.

  The senator smiled, as he climbed into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and started the engine.

  “Look happy,” he said.

  He put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway, the entire Stahl family waving, as the senator’s nine-year-old daughter made the most conspicuous return to elementary school in Florida history.

  Jack sat across from the attorney general and her team of government lawyers. They were on opposite sides of a rectangular table that projected forward from Judge Martin’s desk, lawyers and jurist in a T-shaped arrangement in the p
rivacy of the judge’s chambers. No media or spectators were present, but the judge wore his robe as in a court proceeding. A work of art that resembled something Jack and Andie might hang from their refrigerator was taped to the bookcase behind him: best grandpa, it read.

  Jack was pleased to see the skeptical look on Judge Martin’s face.

  “I realize this is uncharted territory,” said the judge, “trying to ascertain whether an elector is morally fit to serve as a member of the Electoral College. And I understand that ‘fitness’ can mean different things to different people. But I have not even the slightest interest in hearing the details of Ms. Holmes’s love life.”

  “It’s completely irrelevant,” said Jack.

  “Wrong,” said the attorney general. “Ms. Holmes was a gun lobbyist. Two of these witnesses were state senators. The other three worked as the right-hand man to a state rep.”

  “So?”

  “Trading sex for votes is wrong, and it bears directly on Ms. Holmes’s fitness to serve as a member of the Electoral College. If she is willing to prostitute herself to gain votes as a lobbyist, what is she willing to take from someone else in exchange for changing her vote in the Electoral College?”

  “Judge, there is no evidence that my client traded sex for votes,” said Jack.

  “Not yet,” said Barrow. “The witnesses haven’t testified.”

  The judge again looked skeptical. “Ms. Barrow, are you telling me with a straight face that each of these witnesses is going to take the stand and admit under oath that he traded votes for sexual favors—that he committed a felony?”

  The attorney general squirmed. “I didn’t say that.”

  “I didn’t think so. Because if they admitted such things, I would order them cuffed on the spot and hauled off to the stockade.”