The Run (18 page)

“He’s got twelve acres in Bel Air, and he’ll do it on the lawn. It never rains in sunny California.”

“A million bucks in individual contributions? Wow.”

“And a lot of them will contribute to the party, too. There’s more: Centurion is going to give a million to the party after you’re nominated.”

“That would make them the single biggest contributor, wouldn’t it?”

“By a long shot.”

“Tell them I accept.”

“I already have. I hope you don’t mind, but I thought it was better not to hesitate.”

“You did the right thing, Tim,” Will said. “This is a great way to start the last leg of the campaign for the nomination.” He looked at Tim and Kitty. “So why do you two look so glum?”

“I guess you haven’t seen the
Washington Post
this morning,” Kitty said, handing it to him and pointing at a story below the fold:

FORMER CLIENT ACCUSES SEN. WILL LEE OF INCOMPETENCE IN APPEAL OF MURDER CONVICTION

“What the hell is this?” Will said, reading the piece.

“Larry Eugene Moody is appealing his murder conviction,” Tim said. “His grounds are that he was incompetently represented by you in his original trial.”

Will was having trouble reading the story in the moving car. “Go on,” he said. “Just how was I incompetent?”

“He says—or his new lawyer says—that you failed to depose a key witness against him, and that you offered no other witnesses to counter her testimony.”

“This would be the African-American girl who said he raped her in high school?”

“That’s the one.”

“It’s true that her testimony probably got him convicted. I thought I had it won until another witness blurted out the story about the alleged rape. Does the lawyer say how I was supposed to know she’d be called?”

“Moody says that he told you about the accusation in his first meeting with you, and that you did nothing to prepare for the witness.”

“That’s a bald-faced lie!” Will said. “Larry was convicted because he withheld that information from
me. If I’d known about the incident with the girl, I would have known how to avoid opening the door on her testimony.”

“Was there anyone else at that first meeting between you and Moody?”

“No, we were alone.”

“Too bad; it’ll be your word against
his
.”

“All right,” Kitty said, “let’s run down what we’ve got here, and figure out how to deal with it. This story is, of course, immaterial to anything in the election. I think it’s a sideshow staged by the Republicans; they’re just hoping that enough mud will stick to hurt you. What we’ve got to do is to issue a statement this morning denying the charge of incompetence and stating the basic facts in the case.”

“All right, I buy that,” Will said. “You can type it up on the airplane and release it to the traveling press on the way west.”

“After I hand that out, I think you ought to go forward in the plane and just chat with them informally about the murder case. You have nothing to hide, it’s just Moody’s desperate attempt to avoid being put to death, et cetera.”

“All right. I can do that, but I have to avoid saying that Larry was guilty, though, God knows, he was. It wouldn’t be ethical for a lawyer who represented someone in a murder trial to talk about his client’s guilt while his case is under appeal.”

“You might point that out to the press.”

“I certainly will.”

Tim spoke up. “I think it’s interesting that, if Republicans are involved in this, they’re out to get you even before the convention. That indicates to me that they’d rather run against George Kiel than you.”

“A backhanded compliment, if I ever heard one,” Will replied. Then something popped into his mind.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “You said that the fund-raiser in L.A. is going to be hosted by Vance Calder and his
costar?
”

“That’s right,” Tim said.

“And who is his costar?”

“Gosh, I forgot to ask,” Tim replied.

“As soon as they’re awake in L.A., call and find out.”

“Okay; I’ll call Regenstein back at nine their time.”

Kitty was looking sharply at Will. “What is it?” she asked.

“I think I might know who the costar is,” Will replied.

“Who?” Kitty and Tim asked simultaneously.

“It might very well be Charlene Joiner.”

It took a moment for the penny to drop; then both their mouths dropped open. “Oh, shit,” Kitty said.

“Charlene called me over the holidays and asked me to handle an appeal for Larry Moody. I refused.”

“What else did she want?” Kitty asked.

“That was about it.”

“
About
it? Come on, Will, what else?”

“That was it, really,” Will said. He was not about to mention that Charlene had suggested they get together.

“This is not good,” Tim said.

“Well, there are going to be a thousand people there. Maybe it’ll be all right.”

“You don’t understand,” Tim said.

“Understand what?”

“There’s more to the news story about Moody’s appeal.” He picked up the
Post
, turned to an inside page, held it to the light, and read. “Moody’s lawyer also charged that Will Lee had a sexual relationship with Moody’s girlfriend during the trial, in which she was an important witness in establishing Moody’s alibi.
The girlfriend, Charlene Joiner, is now one of Hollywood’s rising stars.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Will said.

“I agree,” Kitty chimed in. “I thought we had killed that particular snake in your first senatorial campaign, but it’s back.”

“Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” Tim said.

“
What are you talking about?”
Kitty demanded.

“I wasn’t all that active in that campaign,” Tim said, “but as I recall, there was a school of thought that the, ah, incident with Charlene Joiner may have actually
helped
in the campaign.”

“That was before Bill Clinton,” Kitty said.

“Oh,” Tim replied, “there is that.”

“Yes,” Will agreed, “there is that.”

30

Senator Frederick Wallace strolled down a Capitol hallway toward his hideaway office, the best in the Senate. Seniority had its privileges. He nodded to many passersby, spoke to a few, and kept his trademark half smile fixed to his face. He let himself into the room and immediately stepped on something made of paper. He closed the door, held on to the doorknob for support, and reached down for the envelope on the floor. Freddie Wallace had a considerable gut, and he did not like bending over.

Wallace walked across the room to his big easy chair, tossed the envelope onto the coffee table beside it, opened a cabinet, and poured himself a shot of neat bourbon. It was not yet ten o’clock in the morning, but he always started the day with a shot of this very fine, private stock bourbon that a Kentucky friend supplied him with. It was something he had learned as a very young man from Harry Truman.

Truman had knocked his back, though, like medi
cine, and Wallace was far too appreciative of the skills of Kentucky distillers to rush the experience. He sipped at the bourbon, then picked up the envelope that someone had shoved under his door. It bore only his name, the Capitol room number, the zip code, and the admonition that the contents were personal and confidential. It bore an Atlanta postmark.

Wallace got a fat finger under the flap and tore open the envelope. Inside he found a single sheet of paper, no letterhead or return address. The page had been composed very neatly on what was obviously a manual typewriter, an uncommon instrument these days. He read:

Dear Freddie,

I hope you don’t mind if I call you that. Although we’ve met only a few times, always in passing, I feel that I know you well. We have much in common: We are both old, wise in the ways of the world and, particularly, in the ways of politics, and we are both very crafty human beings, not to say sneaky.

We are also both in possession of some extremely sensitive knowledge regarding the recent health of an influential person. I trust I will not have to allude further to the person for you to know whom I mean; I would not like to do that in a written communication.

I know you well enough to feel certain that you will, under what you deem the proper circumstances, use this information against another person who shares this knowledge with you and me. I don’t want you to do this, Freddie, for my own reasons, so I am taking this opportunity to let you know that, should you allow your worst nature to come to the forefront, I am going to
take it upon myself to make your golden years very difficult. I can do this, because I have documentary evidence of a part of your life that, if made known, could destroy your credibility in the Senate and make your marriage a perfect hell.

I am sure you know that I refer to the black woman with whom you have enjoyed a carnal relationship for more than twenty years, and who has borne you two sons. I am prepared, if necessary, to have her name and address released to the yellowest of the media, along with the names and university addresses of her children. They will all look fine on television.

If you can keep me happy, then I’m sure you can live out your tenure in the Senate and the remainder of your life, secure in the secrecy with which you have so carefully acted these many years. I should tell you, however, that although I would prefer not to muddy the clear waters of your life, it would not cause me the slightest regret to do so. In fact, if I should choose to confide in a certain magazine publisher, I might walk away with a million dollars, which, at my time of life, I could certainly use.

Trusting that you understand me clearly, I remain

Yours most sincerely
Jonah

Senator Wallace knocked back the jigger of bourbon, then spoke aloud a string of very bad words. He had not lived this long and done this well to be brought down by a common blackmailer. He had to acknowledge to himself, however, that he, by his love
of this dark woman, had made himself highly black-mailable. He had known, of course, that it would all come out eventually, but he had planned to be comfortably dead by that time, and the hell with the aftermath. He knew very well that his wife would immediately and noisily divorce him if she should learn of his liaison, and, since their marriage, he had depended upon her large fortune to keep him in the style to which he had long ago become accustomed. He was not about to give that up, so he had to move fast.

First, he dialed the private office number of the syndicated conservative political columnist Hogan Parks.

“Yeah?”

“You know who this is?”

“Sure. How are you?”

“Mildly agitated,” Wallace replied.

“About what?”

“Have you used the information I gave you?”

“I’m writing the column as we speak.”

“Stop writing it.”

“What’s the matter, Freddie? Getting cold feet?”

“Goddammit, don’t you use my name on the telephone!”

“Sorry about that; what’s got into you?”

Wallace was not about to give an honest answer to that question. “It has come to my attention that I may have been misled.”

“
What?
You would give me that kind of information when it might not be true?”

At the time, I believed it to be entirely true; now I’m not quite so sure.”

“Even after his performance at dinner the other evening?”

“I may have misinterpreted that.”

There was a moment’s silence, then Parks spoke. “I think I’m inclined to write the column anyway.”

“You can’t do that,” Wallace said.

“I think I might enjoy the fuss it will make,” Parks said. “I don’t have to use his name, or even identify his exact illness. Enough people in this town can connect the dots. And when it comes out that a certain other person had knowledge of the illness, it could change a very important outcome.”

“Let me be very clear about this, Hogan,” Wallace said. “If you run so much as a hint of this story before I say so, then by this time next week, you will no longer have a column. You will, in fact, have become the Matt Drudge of print journalism, with all the accolades that such a position enjoys. Do you understand me?”

“I believe I understand that you are threatening me,” Parks replied coldly.

“Then you understand me very well,” Wallace said. “You may consider what I have said a promise, as well as a threat. And I have the means with which to deliver on that promise. You know that, don’t you?”

“You would do that to me?”

“Only if you insist on doing it to yourself.”

“One mistake,” Parks muttered, half to himself. “One mistake in a lifetime.”

“That’s all it takes, my friend,” Wallace said, and hung up.

Wallace took a telephone book from a table drawer, looked up the private office number of a deputy director of the FBI, and dialed.

“Yes?”

“This is Freddie Wallace.”

“Good morning, Senator; what can I do for you?”

“You can send an agent over to my hideaway office
to collect a document. I want it analyzed immediately, in every possible way; I want to know who wrote it and where it came from.”

“I’ll have a man there in under half an hour.”

“Thank you, and no official record is to be kept of this work, do you understand?”

“Completely, Senator.”

Wallace hung up, took a razor blade from a drawer, and excised all references to his name and his black paramour, then dropped the remainder of the letter and its envelope into a larger envelope.

He flicked his cigar lighter, touched the flame to the excised paper, and watched it crumble in his ashtray. Then he stirred the ashes with a pencil until they were powder.

Near the end of the day, back in his hideaway office, Wallace received a phone call from his FBI contact.

“Senator,” the man said, “I have carried out your instructions with regard to the document you sent me.”

“And what have you found?”

The letter was typed by an expert typist on an Olympia Reporter portable typewriter manufactured between 1956 and 1971. It is the sort of machine that was popular with journalists in the field, before the advent of laptop computers. Analysis of the signature, Jonah, indicates that it was signed by a male of sixty years of age or older, and the syntax and use of the language indicates a seventy percent probability that the writer was Caucasian and well educated. There were no fingerprints on either the letter or the envelope, except yours. No DNA residue was found on the envelope flap, so it was moistened without licking. There is, however, DNA residue on the stamp, indicating to us that the letter was stamped and mailed by a person
different from the writer. It was mailed from a sub–post office on the west side of Atlanta, near a residential area popular with employees of the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. Finally, the paper on which the letter was written meets the specifications and bears the watermark of stationery purchased in large quantities by the federal government for use by many branches, including the prison service.