The First Councel

by Brad Meltzer

  Right.

  Like a little kid playing jacks, I scoop up Nora’s tube, grip it in my fist, and with a short prayer, shove it deep down in my pants pocket, praying this isn’t the moment I’ll forever look back on with regret.

  A quick stop in the men’s room sends the rest of Nora’s Special K down the sink before I finally head back to my office. For the next hour, my eyes are glued to my small TV. Hartson’s schmoozing must’ve worked-Stulberg’s opening ran over by a solid two minutes, giving Nora just enough time to change into a new dress and put some blush on her cheeks.

  As expected, most of the questions go to the President, but Stulberg’s no dummy. America loves the family-which is why the sixth question goes to Nora. And the seventh. And the tenth. And the eleventh. And the twelfth. With each one, I hold my breath. But whatever she’s asked, whether it’s about her indecisive post-graduation plans, or what it’s like moving back into the White House, Nora takes it in. Sometimes she stutters, sometimes she tucks her hair behind her ear, but for every answer, she’s all poise and smiles-never an argument. She even gets in a joke about being called the First Freeloader, a subtle moment of humility that’ll have the Sunday talk show pundits gushing over themselves with praise.

  At nine o’clock it’s over, and I’m honestly amazed. Somehow, as always, Nora pulled it off-which means any minute now, someone’s going to…

  “What kind of medal do I get?” Trey asks as my office door swings open. “Purple Heart? Medal of Honor? Red Badge of Courage?”

  “What’s the one for when you take it in the gut?”

  “Purple Heart’s for when you’re wounded.”

  “Then that’s the one you get.”

  “Fine. Thank you. You get one too.” Reaching my sofa, Trey collapses in it. We’re both deathly silent. Neither of us has to say a word.

  Eventually, though, I give in. “Did the First Lady say anything to you?”

  Trey shakes his head. “Like it never happened.”

  “What about Nora?”

  “She mouthed a thank you on the way out.” Sitting up straight, he adds, “Let me tell you something, my friend-that girl is Queen of the Psychos, know what I’m saying?”

  “I don’t want to get into it.”

  “Why? You’re suddenly so busy?”

  There’s a loud knock on my door.

  I glance over at Trey. “Who is it?” I call out.

  The door opens and a familiar figure steps inside. My mouth goes dry.

  Reading my expression, Trey looks over his shoulder. “Hey, Pam,” he says nonchalantly.

  “Nice job on the interview,” she replies. “They’re still celebrating in the Dip Room. Even Hartson looked relaxed.”

  Trey can’t help but beam. My eyes stay locked on Pam. I can read it in her smile. She has no idea what we’ve seen. Or what we know.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” she replies. “Meanwhile, did you see the online poll NBC did with the Herald? After the interview, they asked one hundred fifth-graders if they wanted to be Nora Hartson. Nineteen said yes because they could get away with whatever they wanted. Eighty-one said no because it wasn’t worth the headache. And they say our education policy is having no effect? Please-eighty-one of them are Einsteins.”

  Avoiding a response, I keep it calm. “Trey, don’t you have to get Mrs. Hartson off to that fund-raiser?”

  “No.” He’s hoping to stay and watch the show.

  I give him a look. “Don’t you have a hobby or something you’re supposed to be working on?”

  “Hobby?” he asks with a laugh. “I work here.”

  I tighten the look.

  “Fine, fine, I’m out of your way.” Heading to the door, he adds, “Nice seeing you, Pam.”

  Cat’s out of the bag. She knows something’s up. “What was that about?” she asks.

  I wait for Trey to shut the door. With a slam, he’s gone. Here we go.

  CHAPTER 28

  What’s going on?” Pam asks, standing in front of my desk.

  I’m not sure where to begin. “Are you… Have you ever… ”

  “Spit it out, Michael.”

  “Have you been listening in on my phone line?”

  She drops her briefcase, letting it sag to the floor. “Excuse me?”

  “Tell me the truth, Pam-have you been listening in?”

  Unlike Nora, Pam doesn’t detonate. Instead, she’s confused. “How could I possibly listen in?”

  “I heard your phone-I saw how it works.”

  “What’re you… What phone?”

  “The phone in the anteroom!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I push myself away from my desk and storm through the anteroom, into Pam’s office. Picking up the phone, I dial my extension. Two phones ring simultaneously. The one in my office and the one on the anteroom’s small desk. “They’re the same lines!” I shout. “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you had the ringer turned off?”

  “Michael, I swear on my life, if those lines are the same, I never knew it. You’ve seen me when I sit out there-it’s just to use the phone.”

  “That’s my point.”

  “Wait a minute,” she says, finally getting annoyed. “You think I was faking those conversations? That that was some secret ploy to fool you?”

  “You tell me. You’re the one who was on the line.”

  “On the…? I can’t believe you, Michael. After all we’ve… Who fed you this one? Was it Nora?”

  “Don’t bring her into this.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do. Regardless of what you saw with Simon, the world’s not out to get you. You know how our system runs here-it’s still the federal government. Maybe the lines got crossed when they did the repair.”

  “And maybe it’s been like that all along.”

  “Stop saying that!”

  “Then tell me the truth.”

  “I already have, dammit!”

  “So that’s it? The lines were separate, and when they made the last repair, they crossed yours into mine?”

  “I don’t know what else you want me to say! I didn’t know!”

  “And you never listened in?”

  “Never! Not once!”

  Watching her get riled doesn’t make it any easier. “Then I can take you at your word?”

  She takes a few steps toward me. “Michael, this is me.”

  “Answer the question.”

  She still can’t believe it. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” she insists. “Ever.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I swear.”

  She asked for this one. I look her straight in the eye and smack her with it. “Then why didn’t you tell me Caroline had your file?”

  Pam stops dead in her tracks. She’s too smart to come any closer.

  “C’mon, Pam, you’re a bigshot now-where’s your bigshot answer?”

  Refusing to reply, she clenches her jaw in silence.

  “I asked you a question.”

  Still nothing.

  “Did you hear what I said, Pam? I asked y-”

  “How’d you find out she had it?” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Tell me who told you.”

  “It doesn’t matter who told me, I-”

  “I want to know!” she demands. “It was Nora, wasn’t it? She’s always butting-”

  “Nora had nothing to do with it. And even if she did, it doesn’t change the facts. Now why did Caroline have your file?”

  She walks across the anteroom and rests against the small table that houses the fax machine. Leaning forward, she holds her side like she has a stomachache. It’s a vertical fetal position.

  “I knew it was her,” she says. “I knew it.”

  “Knew it was who?”

  “Caroline. She was the one with the access. I just didn’t want to believe it.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s in the file?”

  “Nothing’s in the file.
That’s not how she worked.”

  “Pam, stop being cryptic and tell me what the hell she did.”

  “I’m assuming she picked apart the fine print. That’s what she was good at. I mean, it’s not like your file says ‘Son pulled strings for retarded father.’ She probably just noticed that all your dad’s residences were group homes. A little legwork later, she had everything she needed.”

  “So what was in your fine print?”

  “You have to understand, it was right when I first started. I was still… ”

  “Tell me what you did,” I insist.

  Pausing, she takes her knuckle and lightly knocks it a few times against her cheek. Penance. “Do you promise you won’t tell anyone?”

  “Pam… ”

  She knows me better than that. Eventually, she asks, “Do you remember what Caroline was working on when I got here?”

  I think about it for a second and shake my head.

  “Here’s a hint-when Blake announced his resignation… ”

  “… Kuttler was nominated. She was filling Blake’s seat on the Supreme Court.”

  “That’s the one,” Pam says. “And you know how it is when a Justice gives up his seat. Every lawyer worth his pinstripes starts thinking he’s pretty. So when Senior Staff started working on the list of nominees, it fell to us to check them out. Around the same time, I got smacked with my first law school loan bill. With ninety thousand dollars in loans, that’s over a thousand dollars every month. Add that to the first and last months’ rent on the apartment I had just moved into, plus security deposit, plus car payments, plus insurance, plus credit card debt, plus the fact that it takes a month before you get your first paycheck-I was here a total of nine days and I was already sinking hard. Suddenly, I’m contacted by a Washington Post reporter named Inez Cotigliano.”

  “That’s the woman who-”

  “I know who she is, Michael. She was my next-door neighbor during my senior year of college.”

  “So you’re the one who-”

  “I never told her about you. I swear on my mother’s life. We had one dance and that was it. Believe me, that was more than enough.”

  I cross my arms. “I’m listening.”

  “Anyway, as I was vetting all the potential Court nominees, Inez, like every hungry reporter in the city, was trying to find out who was on the short list.”

  “Pam, don’t tell me you-”

  “She offered me five thousand dollars for confirmation that Kuttler was the front-runner. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d be fine once the paychecks started flowing, but that was three weeks away.” As she tells the story, she refuses to face me.

  “So the Post fronted the cash?”

  “The Post? They’d never let that happen. It was all out of Inez’s own pocket-she was dying to make it big. Her dad’s some Connecticut trust-fund guy. Family has the patent on aspirin or something ridiculous like that.”

  “That was confidential information.”

  “Michael, she showed up on the worst day of my life. And if it makes you feel any better, I was so wracked with guilt, I eventually paid her back the money. Took me almost a year to do it.”

  “She still had the infor-” I cut myself short. It’s so easy to judge; just grab the gavel. The only catch is, I know what it’s like to get my fingers pounded. “Must’ve been a big day for Inez.”

  “Her first front-page story-below the fold, but on A1-‘Hartson Down to Three; Kuttler Leading Pack.’ It didn’t matter, though. The Herald beat her to the punch. They ran a similar story the same day, which I guess means I wasn’t the only one leaking.”

  “That’s pure rationalization and you know it.”

  “I never gave her anything concrete; I just told her the front-runner.”

  “So what happened? Caroline found out?”

  “Took her less than a week,” Pam says. “Flipping through my file, Caroline probably spotted the connection. Inez Cotigliano. College neighbor. New reporter. As soon as she found it, she could’ve fired me, but that’s her MO-keep the people with the problems around and cash in on their secrets. Next thing I know, I’m stuck in the web.”

  “What’d she do?”

  For the first time since we started talking, Pam looks up at me. Her eyes are wide with the fear of judgment.

  “What’d she do?” I repeat.

  “Four days after the story ran, I got an anonymous note asking me to pay ten thousand dollars. Two payments. Six months apart.” Looking wobbly, she takes a seat. “I didn’t sleep for days. Every time I closed my eyes, I’m telling you, I can still see it: Everything I worked for-dangling right there in front of me. It got so bad, I started coughing up blood. But in the end… there was no way around it… I couldn’t afford to start from scratch.” Shading her eyes with her hands, she rubs the top of her forehead in slow, tense circles. “I left the money in an Amtrak locker in Union Station.”

  “I thought you didn’t have any-”

  “Sold my car, went delinquent on my loans, and maxed out the cash advances on every credit card I could find. Better to have bad credit than no career.”

  She says something else, but I’m not listening. A swell of rage crashes against the base of my skull. Even my toes clench for this one.

  “What?” she asks, reading the anger on my face.

  “You knew,” I growl. “You knew the whole time she was the blackmailer!”

  “That’s not-”

  “You sent me right to her! When I came in that first day, I asked you if Caroline could be trusted. You said yes! What the hell were you thinking?”

  “Michael, calm down.”

  “Why? So you can talk through your teeth some more? Or serve me back up to Inez? You lied to me, Pam! You lied about the phone, you lied about the file, and you lied about Caroline! Think about it for once-if I hadn’t gone to see her that day, none of this-” Once again, I cut myself off and take a careful look at Pam. Cocking my head, I watch the prism shift. She knows what’s running through my brain.

  “Hold on a second,” she interrupts. “You don’t think I…?”

  “You telling me I’m wrong?”

  “Michael, are you nuts? I didn’t kill her!”

  “You said it, not me.”

  “I’d never hurt her! Never!” she insists. “I swear-I thought she was my friend!”

  “Really? So do all your friends blackmail you for large sums of cash? Because if that’s the case, I could use a few extra grand. Small bills, of course.”

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Call me whatever you want-at least I’m not squeezing you for hush money. I mean, if that’s a friend, I’d hate to see your enemies.”

  “I didn’t have any enemies. Not until now.”

  “What about-”

  “Don’t you get it, Michael? Have you even been listening? All I got was a note and a location. I never knew who it was.”

  “But you knew Caroline had access to the files.”

  “That didn’t matter-she’s my-” She stops. “She was like family.”

  It takes me a second to process the information. “So you never suspected her?”

  “I suspected you before I suspected her.”

  I’m not sure how to deal with that one.

  “Besides,” Pam continues, “you don’t need FBI files to find out Inez and I went to school together. I figured someone else put two and two together, then did the research on their own.”

  “Well, didn’t you think it was odd when Caroline showed up dead with thirty grand in her safe and all our files on her desk? I mean, if you’re looking for a blackmailer… ”

  “I swear to you, that’s the first I ever thought of it. It wasn’t until that moment that I even raised an eyebrow.”

  “Raised an eyebrow? It’s a damn DNA print-all she’s missing is blood on her fingertips and a forehead tattoo that says ‘Will Victimize for Cash’!”

  “Don’t make a joke of this!”

  “Then s
top acting stupid! Once Caroline was killed, you knew she was the blackmailer. I’ve been chasing my tail all this time, and you never gave me a clue! Not once!”

  “You already knew, Michael.”

  “I didn’t-”

  “You did!” she shouts with newfound rage. “You said it that night we had Thai food. You wondered whether Simon was being blackmailed.”

  “And you could’ve told me the answer. Yes! He probably was! Just like me! Instead, you left me to rot!”

  “How dare you say that? I’ve been by your side since the moment this thing started!”

  “Then why didn’t you tell me about what happened with Inez?”

  “Because I didn’t want you to know!” she yells, her voice booming through the office. “There! Is that what you want? I was mortified when it happened-sick to my stomach. Then, as if the act alone weren’t bad enough, Caroline took my worst moment and humiliated me with it. You of all people should understand-dirty laundry’s better kept in the closet.”

  “It still doesn’t-”

  “That’s the only thing I hid from you, Michael. My own personal black eye. Everything else, I told the truth. And if you didn’t guess blackmail on your own, I would’ve pushed you there myself.”

  “You still sicced Inez on me.”

  “You don’t believe that for a second.”

  She’s right. I was bluffing to see her reaction. Near as I can tell, she passes. “So you’ve never spoken to Inez about this?”

  “She called me the day after it happened. I told her even less than I told the FBI. Trust me, if I wanted to screw you over, I would’ve done the easiest thing of all.”

  “And what’s that?”

  She looks me dead in the eye. “I would’ve told them about you. And the money. And Nora. I could’ve made at least twenty grand on that one.” There it is. Guerrilla honesty. If it weren’t so disconcerting, I’d probably laugh.