by Paul Heald
James nodded and smiled at his friend. “We’ll have to promise not to name the senator and Williams or they won’t cooperate, but I could make it clear in my story that the source of the information is ‘a senior legislative staffer.’ Williams might be willing to cooperate as long as the story that gets told is untraceable to her.”
“It’s a nice trade,” Stanley said thoughtfully. “You get your story, and that story essentially immunizes us because it reveals the crux of what we know. Any action against us would blow up in the bad guys’ faces. And Randolph and Williams get a sort of immunity, too, if they believe that in return for an affidavit you won’t implicate them.
“You know,” the professor continued, “as nice as it would be to hammer the senator, it’s almost better that the corrupt legislator in your story is anonymous. Most of Congress voted for the goddamn subsidy, even after the WTO declared it illegal. Anonymity lets us tar all of Congress with the same brush. Williams might be the only one with actual knowledge of Mexican hit men, but all these fuckers were willing to sell out the whole African continent so smug bastards like Swinton can send their kids to college in new Hummers.” At that moment he decided that he would accompany them the next day. He wanted in all the way.
Melanie had been sitting quietly, pressed into the corner of their booth. When Stanley finished his diatribe, she nodded and spoke. “Does the assistant US attorney get to be anonymous too?”
James smiled. “Does she want to be?”
“I have to be.” She finished her beer. “A journalist can hide behind the confidentiality of his sources. I can’t. If you name me in your story, then I’ll be called and questioned. The senator and Williams will know that. You’ll have to promise them that I won’t be named in your story, if you want to convince them to give you an affidavit with details of the deaths of Diana and Jacob.”
“Well,” the journalist opened a pretend laptop on the table and began to air-type, “an incredibly beautiful and fearless federal prosecutor defied all odds to identify the killers.”
Stanley had never seen Melanie blush before. “Too obvious,” he added with a wink. “Everyone will know who it is.” The color in her face deepened from cheek to cheek. “You better go with a disheveled, yet determined, former-football-player-turned-prosecutor.”
“Ugh,” said James. “Sounds like a bad novel.”
“But safe,” said Melanie with a smile.
* * *
Thor and Miriam pulled an all-nighter preparing a YouTube exposé of Elbert Randolph, Cameron Swinton, Moro Zingales, Jose Morales, and their roles (as best they could guess) in the corrupt maintenance of congressional cotton subsidies, the attempted bribery of the WTO, and the deaths of Diana Cavendish, Jacob Granville, and Brenda Harvey. They felt no need to verify sources or feign journalistic integrity. The video was an indictment, a nuclear deterrent fit for intimidating powerful and dangerous people, even if much of it was rank speculation.
The video began with Thor, deadly serious and sporting his clerical collar, introducing himself and warning the audience that they were about to see proof of a wide-ranging conspiracy to divert taxpayer money into the pockets of US and Mexican corporations at the expense of some of the poorest farmers on earth. Even more shocking, he continued, was the willingness of the beneficiaries to bribe and to kill to keep the gravy train rolling. The live-action introduction was shot by Miriam on her new iPhone and uploaded onto Thor’s MacBook. The rest of the video was a mashup of photos and graphs from Stanley’s PowerPoint presentation, plus other material found on the web. The capstone pieces were the stark interviews with the Malian farmer and the Mexican factory worker. Miriam had not seen the videos before and she was still crying long after they finished playing.
By mid-morning, the finished product looked professionally polished and was ready to upload whenever necessary. Miriam had extensive experience in her job making presentations for the state insurance commissioner’s office, and she was intimately familiar with the media software Thor’s computer ran. The style and tone of their work was reminiscent of the “Stop Kony” YouTube videos that had been so effective in drawing attention to the plight of child soldiers in Africa. If all went well in Arkansas, then the world might never get to see their compelling mix of hard facts, intelligent guesswork, and acidic vitriol, but it was ready to deploy if their friends found their backs against the wall. They watched the eighteen-minute video one final time before uploading it to Google Docs.
“Holy shit,” Thor muttered to himself, “this is a defamation suit waiting to happen.”
“I don’t know,” Miriam leaned over and put her arm on the young priest’s shoulder, “you don’t actually call Senator Randolph a murderer. You just say his associates told a bunch of Mexicans to kill a US attorney, a journalist, and a professor who were investigating the prior murder of a young American couple and an English girl.”
He smiled. “Maybe we should add some speculation about the senator’s presence at Dealey Plaza in Dallas in November of 1963.”
“Now, you’re talking.” She thumped him on the back. “And his secret funding of Area 51 in Nevada!”
He sighed. “You don’t think we’ve gone too far, do you? I mean, if we have to release this, we want to be as accurate as possible.”
“We’ve synthesized the collective wisdom of some of the smartest and bravest people I know,” she replied. “If we made any mistakes, we made them in good faith.”
“And we made them to save their asses.”
“Amen.” The video file was too large to send via email, so Miriam sent a link to the Google Docs file to Melanie, James, and Stanley. Then she downloaded it to two thumb drives. “I’ll drop this one off with the editor in chief at the Chronicle and ask him to open it in case anything happens to James, and I’ll keep one myself.”
Thor thanked her and kissed her without making too big a deal of it. In the course of the night, their work had knitted them into an “us” in a way that sex, no matter how satisfying, could never accomplish. There was no doubt that making the video with Miriam had been worth missing several meetings at St. James. They were taking a chance together. They were both helping the good guys. Screw the altar guild.
After Miriam left, Thor brewed another pot of coffee and planned the rest of his day. He had resolved not to sleep until he had executed his plan to obfuscate the identity of the body now in the hands of the North Carolina authorities. If his anonymous phone calls and emails to the media and law-enforcement authorities did the trick, then rumors of a mysterious plot by Middle Eastern extremists to blow up western North Carolina dams or to poison local drinking water would soon be on the evening news. The dark-skinned man with the smashed face found in the mountains had obviously been plotting against America’s most treasured freedoms.
* * *
“I still see a couple of problems,” Stanley said, a nasal midwestern twang making an unexpected appearance.
James and Melanie had left the steak house with him and were walking through several acres of asphalt parking lot back to their hotel. It was a clear night, but light from the expressway, hotels, and restaurants obscured all heavenly bodies except a thin sliver of moon hanging low and yellow in the sky. The two men walked protectively on either side of her.
“First,” the professor continued, “what if Williams doesn’t know where the bodies are? Even if she ordered Jacob killed, that doesn’t mean that she knows where they’re buried. I doubt she did the dirty work herself, not with Zingales probably having a ready supply of thugs at his disposal.”
James thought for a moment. “She’s going to have to ask, I suppose.”
“But what excuse does she have for asking? Why would she need to know? Just asking the question will probably raise all kinds of alarm bells with the Mexican connection.” Stanley held out his arm as Melanie teetered on a narrow grassy area separating two parking lots. She grabbed his wrist and cursed as her heels sunk into the soft soil.
�
�Even if she’s willing to tell what she knows,” Stanley added, “she might not be willing to ask where Diana and Jacob were taken.”
“We’ve got to have that information.” James stopped as they approached the hotel lobby.
A minivan pulled up, and a family emptied out and trouped into their hotel. A little girl in a baseball cap and a superhero backpack trailed behind her siblings, struggling to pull a small plastic suitcase.
“We need to give her a plausible lie to tell,” Melanie suggested. “What she needs to say to Zingales or whomever is that the feds captured the guy who was following us and he’s ready to sing like a bird. That’s why he’s dropped off the face of the earth and he’s not returning anyone’s phone calls. Williams needs the location of the bodies right away so that they can be moved before he confesses and rats out everyone in the chain of command.”
“That’s not bad,” James said.
“People are always happier to share information when they think you’re trying to solve their problems.”
“She’ll have everyone shitting pickles,” Stanley said, “if they think the Mexican dude who was chasing us is in custody.”
They entered the lobby and took the elevators to their two rooms on the eighth floor.
“One other problem,” Stanley said as the doors parted and they started walking down the hallway. “What if Randolph and Williams just deny everything? They are politicians, after all. The Big Lie will come naturally to them.”
Melanie stopped in front of her door. “Don’t worry about that.” She gave them both a broad smile. “I’ve got a plan so clever you could pin a tale on it and call it a weasel.”
The two men looked confused.
“Black Adder? Rowan Atkinson? No?” She shook her head and stepped forward, kissing Stanley on one cheek and James on the other before zipping her key card into the lock and disappearing with a wave over her shoulder.
The men shrugged and headed into their room, each wondering whether her lips had lingered just a little longer on the face of the other man.
XXXII.
WEEVILS
Melanie, James, and Stanley arrived at Senator Randolph’s office at precisely two o’clock. An hour before the meeting, Stanley had passed through security and walked around the building, carefully looking for any sign that a trap had been laid. He spent time in the lobby of each of the four floors, sitting and reading a book, listening to conversations, and watching for any unusual influx of US marshals or trim gray-suited men who might be FBI. He even entered Randolph’s office and asked the intern sitting behind the reception desk for campaign literature. While the young man briefly disappeared to fetch the requested materials, Stanley took a quick look around but saw nothing unusual. He wasn’t surprised. Sharon Williams really had no clear idea what they were up to. Any conspiratorial reaction from her or the senator would likely come after the meeting, not before.
The intern was expecting them and led the three down the hall to Williams’s office, not the senator’s inner sanctum. James shot a questioning glance at Melanie, but she looked unconcerned as they entered and found the senator and his chief of staff sitting at a coffee table. Both of them seemed surprised to see three people ushered into the room, and Williams told the intern to drag an extra chair from the corner and set it by the table. James and Stanley sat on a small sofa facing the senator and his aide, while Melanie stood by the new chair. Neither of their hosts got up or offered any of the usual politicking and hand-clasping pleasantries. Williams was overtly hostile and suspicious, the senator a mixture of curious and annoyed.
Melanie ignored Williams, glided over to the senator and extended her hand. “I’m Melanie Wilkerson, assistant US attorney for the Northern District of Georgia, and let me introduce my companions: James Murphy, investigative reporter for the Clarkeston Chronicle, and Stanley Hopkins, associate professor of sociology at Belle Meade College, Los Angeles, California.”
He stood up cautiously and shook her hand before motioning for her to sit down. He scrutinized the two men on the sofa but offered no formal greeting. “Are you here on official business?” Randolph’s eyes narrowed. “If so, I’d like to get Hank Woodard over from the US attorney’s office here in Little Rock.”
“That won’t be necessary,” she replied with a shake of her head. “At present,” she explained, “but only at present, my superiors have no clue that I’m here.”
“I see.” He paused. “Or rather, I don’t quite see.” Randolph was tall and slim, still athletic despite his sixty-five years, with thinning salt-and-pepper hair. His accent was broad and palpable, but distinct from Melanie’s cultured Georgia lilt, with hints of Missouri and southern Illinois rather than the deepest South. He waited for Melanie to clarify her intentions.
“If you and Ms. Williams are willing to answer a few questions for us and perhaps do us a little favor, none of my colleagues in the Justice Department need ever know that we paid you a visit.”
The senator took a moment to respond. He appeared to struggle briefly with his self-control before adopting a genteel and polite tone. “Ms. Wilkerson, you’re going to have to provide a few more details before we can help you. Sharon indicated to me that this was an emergency.” He looked at his watch. “I’m supposed to be on a plane to Washington right now.”
“Oh, I think you’ll find this worth your time.” Melanie stood up and walked behind her chair, putting two hands on the top and using it as a makeshift podium. “I think the best place to start is four nights ago, when the three of us were assaulted by a young Mexican man with a gun. To make a long story short, he tried to kill us but failed.
“You might wonder,” she gestured to James and Stanley with her left hand, “why someone would attempt to shoot three upstanding citizens, and you might wonder why we want to talk to you about it.”
Stanley watched the senator carefully as she spoke. They had decided that during Melanie’s disquisition he would watch Randolph and James would watch Williams, on the theory that their reactions might provide some clue of their complicity in the conspiracy to cover up the murders of Diana and Jacob. So far, the senator appeared intensely curious, interested but not personally threatened by her story.
“We believe,” she continued, “that this Mexican fellow had orders to shut us up because we’ve been investigating the disappearance and presumed murder of two young Americans: Diana Cavendish and Jacob Granville.” Randolph held a poker face. “They were killed because they uncovered an attempt to bribe a WTO judge to rule for the United States in a case involving billions of dollars of congressional cotton subsidies paid to people like your friend Cameron Swinton.”
Randolph started to object, but Melanie cut him off. “You are familiar with the cotton case, aren’t you, Senator?”
“I certainly am,” he roared. “It’s one of the most egregious attacks on this nation’s sovereignty that I’ve ever seen.” His face reddened. “Congress helps out ailing American farmers, and then some communists in Geneva try to tell us we can’t do it. No goddamn bureaucrat in Switzerland is going to tell the American government what to do.”
Stanley’s instinct was to cut in and argue the merits of the case and point out that the US generally benefited greatly from WTO positions, but Melanie remained calm and serene, her message on track.
“Then you can easily understand why some cotton grower in the US, or some Mexican textile firm buying cheap American cotton, might want to influence the decision.”
“Maybe in the land of total theory,” he conceded brusquely, “but I don’t know anything about any bribe.”
“And we have no proof that you do, Senator,” Melanie replied, with a tight smile and a nod at his chief of staff, “but someone in your office certainly knows about it.”
“What?” Williams said.
“I’ll not stand for you slandering my aides,” Randolph interjected and started to stand up.
“Senator, give me a moment before you decide whether I’m off base.�
�� Melanie, still poised and focused, motioned down and continued. Years of manipulating judges and juries had prepared her to deal with this small, but important, audience.
“We do have substantial evidence that an attempt to buy a WTO panelist was made, and we have substantial evidence that a photographer named Granville discovered the bribe.”
Stanley suddenly thought of Elisa, alone and vulnerable in Geneva, unaware that her story was being discussed half a world away.
“Unfortunately,” Melanie continued, “the people behind the bribe discovered that he was a journalist preparing to write up the whole story. He and his girlfriend, Diana Cavendish, were then kidnapped and killed in Clarkeston, Georgia, shortly after Granville arrived back from Switzerland. The killers also eliminated his connection at the WTO, an English woman who initially leaked the bribery story to Granville.” She nodded at James. “Mr. Murphy here covered the Cavendish case for his newspaper and has been working on it for five years. He knows more than anyone else about her disappearance.”
This was James’s cue to take over. “I discovered new evidence in the case a couple of weeks ago and took it to Ms. Wilkerson. We started asking questions, following up leads and making some serious headway, when all hell broke loose. My house was burglarized, a tracking device was planted in Melanie’s car, and three days ago, an attempt was made on our lives.”
“This is all quite disturbing,” the senator cut in and scowled, “assuming it’s true. But I’m afraid I still don’t understand why you’re all here.” He looked directly at Stanley and furrowed his brow. “Especially this fellow who’s trying to stare a hole through me. What’s his story?”
“I’m a sociologist,” Stanley said with a grin. “I’m just here to watch you all interact.”