The Big Lie

by James Grippando

“I understand.”

  “Well, let me make sure I understand,” said the judge. “You want to put five men on the witness stand to say that they engaged in sexual relations with Ms. Holmes. They will deny that the relationship had any impact on any legislative votes. Ms. Holmes will deny that she traded sex for their legislative votes. And then you want me to infer the exact opposite. Do I have that right?”

  “I think it’s a reasonable inference,” said Barrow. “Especially with respect to the three Democrats. Why else would a Democrat vote with the NRA to kill proposed legislation that Ms. Holmes was lobbying against? It’s a quid pro quo.”

  The judge paused to consider the nuance. “I guess there’s a kernel of plausibility to that argument. What do you say, Mr. Swyteck?”

  “Judge, even Bernie Sanders voted against the Brady Bill. You can’t generalize about Democrats on gun control. But even if you could, there’s no reason to make this a public spectacle. My client will stipulate that she dated four of these men.”

  “She had sex with them,” said Barrow.

  “You’re making her sound like a prostitute,” said Jack.

  “If the shoe fits . . .”

  “Please, Ms. Barrow,” the judge said.

  Jack took a breath. “Your Honor, my client was in her twenties at the time. She dated several men over a period of five years. Four of these relationships became intimate.”

  “She had sex with state legislators and powerful members of legislative staff while she was lobbying for votes,” said Barrow.

  “That’s false,” said Jack. “At the time, she was working as a researcher. She was employed by a lobbying firm, but she wasn’t lobbying anybody.”

  “That’s splitting hairs,” said Barrow.

  “What about the fifth witness?” the judge asked. “Who is that?”

  “Mr. Scoville,” said Jack.

  The judge did a double take. “The former chair of Senate appropriations?”

  “Yes,” said Barrow.

  “My client denies any relationship with him whatever,” said Jack.

  The judge jotted a few notes on his yellow pad. “So you’re willing to stipulate as to four witnesses—”

  “That’s not good enough,” said the attorney general. “We are entitled to call all five witnesses live. We want—”

  “You want to publicly embarrass a woman from Pensacola who is a respected member of the First Baptist Church.” Jack didn’t like playing that card, but when in Rome . . .

  “Stop,” the judge said. “Both of you. Here’s what we’re going to do. Ms. Barrow, you can call one witness live—Mr. Scoville. As to the remaining witnesses, the court will accept Mr. Swyteck’s stipulation. They will not testify.”

  “That’s highly prejudicial to the state’s case,” said Barrow.

  “That’s my ruling,” said the judge. “See y’all at ten o’clock. Main courtroom.”

  Chapter 24

  “The state of Florida calls Roger Scoville,” said the attorney general.

  The double doors in the rear of the courtroom opened, all eyes following the witness as he proceeded down the center aisle to swear the oath.

  “I feel sick,” Charlotte whispered.

  Jack got it. This wasn’t a jury trial, but had it been, the jurors would have looked at Scoville, looked at Charlotte, and asked themselves the same question: Why on earth would she sleep with him . . . other than to buy his vote?

  “I do,” said Scoville, affirming his sworn obligation to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but.

  Scoville settled into the chair, which took some maneuvering. His pear-shaped body spread even wider when he sat, which had been at the anatomical root of the press’s beloved “Bootygate,” a punster’s handle for the government investigation into Scoville’s “medical reason” for flying first class at taxpayers’ expense while he was a legislator. He’d survived Bootygate Phase I. Rumors of a Bootygate Phase II—with “booty” taking its urban slang meaning—ended after Scoville announced that he would not run for reelection.

  The attorney general approached the witness and began in a conversational tone, eliciting Scoville’s description of a lifelong career in Florida politics. Distinguished himself in law school as editor in chief of the law review. Elected four times to the State House and twice to the Senate from central Florida, endorsed each time by the Tampa Tribune as “a powerful independent voice among Republicans.” Served as chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

  “Your most recent position was what?” asked Barrow.

  “I was chairman of the Florida Republican Party. I resigned after the midterm elections.”

  “Have you always been a Republican?”

  “I was a registered Republican for twenty-nine years. I resigned from the party when I resigned as chairman.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t consider Malcolm MacLeod a true Republican. At least not by Florida standards. To be clear: I didn’t resign with the intention of supporting a Democrat.”

  The attorney general flipped the page on the notebook with more flair than necessary, as if to announce that the real testimony was about to begin.

  “Mr. Scoville, in your decades of experience in Tallahassee, did you ever hear the term ‘closer.’”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “What is a closer?”

  “A closer is one of the oldest tools in the lobbying profession.”

  “Let’s break that down a little. A closer is a person who works in the private sector, right?”

  “Yes. Someone who works for a lobbying firm. It’s usually a very attractive woman. Though it can also be an attractive man, depending on who the target is.”

  “What do you mean by ‘target’?”

  “A target is a state legislator.”

  “Are all legislators a target?”

  “No. Lobbyists target specific legislators who they believe can be persuaded to vote the way the lobbyist wants them to vote. A lobbyist might work on that target the entire legislative session.”

  “Does a closer have any role in that process?”

  “She can. If it gets to the end of the closing weeks of the legislative session and the deal hasn’t closed, so to speak.”

  “What does the closer do?”

  He smiled, then quickly caught himself and resumed his courtroom expression. “Generally a closer will hang out in bars where legislators go to have a drink in the evening. Strike up a conversation. They might flirt a little.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That depends on the closer. And the target.”

  “Have you ever heard of closers offering sexual favors?”

  Jack saw where this was leading and objected. “Your Honor, rumors about what some unidentified closer might have said to an unidentified state legislator are clearly hearsay.”

  “Sustained.”

  “Let me ask it this way,” said Barrow. “Has a closer ever offered you sexual favors in exchange for your vote on a piece of proposed legislation?”

  “Objection.”

  “Ms. Barrow, stop beating around the bush,” the judge said. “Ask the question that matters.”

  “Sorry,” she said, but she really wasn’t sorry at all. She stepped away from the podium and pointed at Jack’s client. “Did the defendant, Ms. Holmes, ever offer you sexual favors in exchange for your vote as a state legislator?”

  Jack wanted to object, but the judge had already labeled it “the question that matters.”

  “She most certainly did,” said Scoville.

  “Did you accept her offer?”

  “Of course not. That would be criminal.”

  The attorney general returned to the podium. “At this time, the state of Florida would ask to include in the record a stipulation that Ms. Holmes had sexual relations with the following state senators and legislative staff while she was employed by a registered lobbyist.”

  Jack could almost hear the journalists behind him scratchi
ng down the names as the attorney general announced each name. He rose, not at all liking the way this was playing out.

  “Judge, so the record is clear, there is no stipulation that my client’s personal relationship with any of these men had any impact on any legislative vote. In fact, Ms. Holmes vehemently denies that she ever offered anything, sexual favors or otherwise, to anyone in exchange for votes.”

  “Noted,” said the judge. “The stipulation is accepted with those qualifications. Anything else, Ms. Barrow?”

  “No, Your Honor,” she said, smug as could be. “The state of Florida requires nothing further of this witness.”

  Judge Martin glanced at the clock in the back of the courtroom. “Let’s break. I know it’s not exactly lunchtime, but I’m here to tell you that Super-Alpha-Omega-Prostate doesn’t do the trick for me, so I gotta go. Literally. We’ll resume with cross-examination at one-thirty,” he said, ending it with a bang of his gavel. All rose, and as the judge disappeared into his chambers, the noise level in the courtroom approached that of a rock concert.

  “Scoville is a liar,” said Charlotte.

  It was one of those rare attorney-client communications that Jack didn’t care if the journalists on the other side of the rail overheard. But he could see in her eyes that Charlotte wasn’t up for a walk back to the hotel and a media gauntlet.

  “This way,” he said, and they scooted out a side exit to the empty jury room. Jack closed the door, but several reporters were hanging in the hallway right outside. Jack took his client to the far end of the table by the whiteboard so that no one could eavesdrop.

  “He’s lying,” Charlotte said again, her voice quaking.

  “Okay,” said Jack in a calming tone. “We get to take our shot on cross-examination. Let’s walk through this. I want you to tell me everything he said that’s false.”

  “Two big ones,” she said. “First, I never offered any sexual favor to that pig.”

  “Did you ever flirt with him?”

  “No way.”

  “Ever say anything that could be construed as . . . suggestive?”

  “There’s nothing. I could barely stand to be in the same room with him. Second—”

  There was a knock on the door. Jack was inclined to ignore it, until the man announced who he was from the other side of the door: “It’s Officer Frank Dalton.”

  With threats against his client escalating, Jack had formally requested that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement provide security for Charlotte. The FDLE’s Capitol Police Division was the security detail for the executive and legislative branches. Dalton had promised to run Jack’s request up the chain of command, all the way to the director of Capitol Police and the FDLE commissioner, if necessary. Jack took it as a good sign that Dalton had come in person to deliver the response. Jack invited him in and closed the door, silencing a barrage of questions from journalists in the hallway.

  “Did you get an answer?” asked Jack.

  “I did. I’m afraid the answer is no.” He said “no” like a cow, a long moo with an “n.”

  “You can’t offer her anything? No protection at all?”

  “Ms. Holmes is one of twenty-nine electors in Florida. FDLE doesn’t have the budget or the manpower to protect twenty-nine people, twenty-four-seven, from now till December fourteenth.”

  “We’re not asking you to protect twenty-nine electors,” said Jack. “We’re asking you to protect the one who’s been threatened.”

  The officer sighed. “They’ve all been threatened, Mr. Swyteck.”

  Charlotte sat up with concern. “They have?”

  “Yep,” said Dalton. “I can’t give you details. But you got nutjobs on both sides of this dogfight, from alt-right to antifa, and everything in between.”

  “So there’s nothing you can do to help me?” asked Charlotte.

  “Have you tried the FBI?” he asked.

  “My wife’s an agent in the Miami field office,” said Jack. “I asked, and she saw no basis for the FBI to get involved. I agree.”

  “Yeah,” the officer said with a shrug, stretching out the “yeeeeah” almost as long as his opening “noooooo.” Then he rose, as if his work were done, and shook hands with them. “Good luck to you, Ms. Holmes.”

  “Thanks. I guess,” said Charlotte.

  Dalton stepped out, triggering another burst of questions from the journalists in the hallway, which ended with the closing of the door. Jack and Charlotte looked at each other.

  “At least we have Theo,” said Charlotte, only half-serious.

  “There is that,” said Jack. He went back to the table and checked his notepad, seeing where they’d left off before the officer’s arrival. “So. Scoville lied when he said you offered him sexual favors.”

  “Flat-out lied,” she said.

  “Okay. Tell me what the second lie was.”

  “It’s kind of more what he didn’t say than what he said.”

  Jack wasn’t sure what she meant. “All right. Tell me what he didn’t say.”

  Chapter 25

  Jack and Charlotte returned to the courtroom early, the bailiff having evicted them from the jury room for use in a criminal case. The attorney general and her team had yet to return from lunch, so Jack and his client were alone in Judge Martin’s courtroom, seated at the defense table.

  Various files and three-ring binders were arranged in front of Jack, exactly as he’d left things before the lunch break. Jack would attack Scoville’s lies on cross-examination, and he wanted a fresh notepad to outline his key points. He reached toward his trial bag on the floor and stopped. Resting at the end of the table, beside one of his binders, was something he didn’t recognize. It was a report of some kind. The word confidential jumped out at him. Below it: florida department of law enforcement, public corruption division, executive investigation.

  Jack stared at the cover page for a moment, the wheels turning in his head. It had struck him as strange that FDLE Officer Dalton had come to the courthouse in person to deliver the bad news that the Capitol Police could not provide protection for his client. Why not just a phone call to tell him “Noooo”? Jack couldn’t help suspecting that Dalton’s unnecessary visit was somehow connected to the magical appearance of the FDLE investigative report. For the life of him, however, Jack couldn’t understand why Dalton would drop confidential information in his lap.

  “Do you know how this got here?” he asked Charlotte.

  She glanced at the cover page and shook her head.

  Jack picked up the report, which was several dozen pages in length. Beneath it was a one-page letter on FDLE letterhead. It was addressed to the Office of the Attorney General. Unlike the report, the letter was not marked confidential, so Jack went ahead and read it, albeit to himself:

  Dear General Barrow:

  Enclosed please find the Department’s final report into the alleged sexual misconduct of Florida State Senator Roger Scoville.

  “Holy shit,” said Jack, like a reflex.

  “What is it?” asked Charlotte.

  “Wait here,” he said, as he rose from the table. Then he walked toward chambers, “confidential” report in hand.

  President MacLeod sped through the second-floor residence like a racewalker, arms pumping but absolutely no bounce in his hips, as he hurried past the Truman Balcony and his shortcut to the master suite.

  “Breathe,” he told himself with each measured step. “Just breathe.”

  MacLeod had kept his composure as long as possible during a lunch meeting with the president of Chile in the Blue Room, the oval-shaped parlor on the first floor of the Executive Mansion. Communicating through translators was tedious enough under normal circumstances. It was anything but “normal” the way the president had excused himself every five minutes to get up from the table to use the restroom. The kitchen staff called it “First Lady’s Revenge.” Mrs. MacLeod put up with her husband’s blatant infidelities of all sorts, from the wives of his own White House staff to
campaign workers who were barely old enough to vote. But when the president pushed her too far—say, a personal friend of the First Lady—principles of proportionality called for nothing less than laxative-spiked lemonade.

  MacLeod rushed into the master bathroom, dropped his pants, and planted himself on the commode, rocking back and forth to deal with the abdominal pain.

  “Are you all right, Mr. President?” His chief of staff was on the other side of the closed bathroom door.

  “I’m fine,” he said, grunting.

  “Your radio phone-in is thirty seconds to air.”

  Another groan. Watching the supposed reunion of the Stahl family earlier that morning had sent MacLeod into orbit. His press secretary had lined up a series of phone interviews with the top talk-radio shows to provide alternative facts.

  “I’ll do it from in here,” said the president. He shuffled across the floor, his trousers still around his ankles, and opened the door a crack. His chief of staff handed him a headset. MacLeod closed the door, put on the headset, and then shuffled back to the toilet. The talk-radio producer was speaking into his ear. “On the air in five, four, three—”

  The president flushed but remained on the toilet, just in case this episode of First Lady’s Revenge had an Act II. The show’s host welcomed several million listeners and introduced her “very special guest,” going straight to the question of the day:

  “Mr. President, what do you make of that display the Democrats put on at the Stahl residence this morning?”

  MacLeod bit his lower lip, fighting through the cramps. “A total political stunt to make Republican electors feel more comfortable about changing their vote to Senator Stahl.”

  “And what about that kiss?”

  “Can you say ‘awkward’? I don’t know if Stahl was trying to convince us that he loves his wife or likes women, but he failed on both counts, if you ask me.”

  The host laughed like a lackey, then turned serious. “To your point, Mr. President, I had one of my interns here at the studio do some research. If Senator Stahl is able to hijack the Electoral College, it turns out that he would not be this nation’s first gay president.”