Guilty Minds

3

Which one?”

Parnell took a sip of coffee, put it down, and drew a breath. “Jeremiah Claflin.”

He wasn’t just a Supreme Court justice, he was the chief justice. I didn’t show any reaction.

“Now you understand the sensitivity.”

I nodded.

My mental image of Claflin was of a man in his midfifties, one of the younger justices on the court. Pleasant-looking in a square-jawed way. He was fit. The first thing he did upon being named chief justice was order a renovation of the court’s run-down gym.

So unlike some of his more geriatric colleagues on the high court, you could actually imagine him having a sex life. But would anyone believe he’d hired a prostitute?

Yeah, probably.

He was a regular churchgoer. The news media would salivate over a story like this. We all love seeing the mighty topple, but a lot of people find it particularly gratifying to have someone famous and morally upstanding exposed as a hypocrite and brought low.

“How long have you known Slander Sheet was investigating the chief justice?”

“Only since yesterday. The reporter had been calling his office for a week or two. Eventually they bounced her over to the court’s public affairs office, which did what it usually does.”

“Stonewalled.”

He nodded, took another sip of coffee. He leaned back in his chair. “Yesterday she e-mailed this long list of very specific questions and said the story was going up whether he returned her calls or not. The chief justice called me in a panic.”

“What kind of questions?”

Parnell pulled a couple of pages from a brown file folder and handed them to me. “This is a copy they FedExed me yesterday.”

The first page was headed HUNSECKER MEDIA in an elegant font like it was Vogue. It was a letter to Chief Justice Claflin, cc’ing Gideon Parnell.

“Hunsecker Media?”

“Publishers of Slander Sheet.”

I quickly skimmed the questions.

“The reporter’s name is Mandy Seeger,” I said. “Why is that name familiar?”

“She used to be at The Washington Post.”

“That’s right.” Seeger was a hotshot investigative reporter who’d won a Pulitzer Prize for some big series of articles about... something, I didn’t remember, some government scandal. What the hell was she doing working at Slander Sheet? “Her byline on the piece is going to give it instant credibility.”

“One of the reasons I’m taking this seriously.”

I continued scanning the letter and the attached list of questions. “This looks pretty damning.”

“It’s an elaborate setup.”

“Hold on. It says the justice’s... meetings with the escort were paid for by Tom Wyden.” I knew the name. Wyden was a well-known casino magnate, the CEO of Wyden Desert Resorts in Las Vegas.

Parnell shook his head in apparent disgust. “Wyden recently had a big case decided in his favor by the Supreme Court. If this story were true, it would be an impeachable offense. But it’s completely bogus.”

“Do they even know each other, Claflin and Wyden?”

Parnell nodded. “Yes. Not well, but they know each other.”

“This is looking worse and worse. You say you made a deal with Slander Sheet. What kind of deal?”

“I told them I’d give her an interview if she gave me forty-eight hours.”

I groaned. “A mistake. You just effectively confirmed the story.”

“Not at all.”

“Why else would one of the most powerful attorneys in Washington bother to call some low-rent gossip website, if he wasn’t worried they were onto something?”

Parnell looked at me for a few seconds, a glint of amusement in his eyes. “I’m not known for leaving fingerprints. I told her I would be happy to speak with her, but the justice would not.”

“So now she can report that the chief justice’s attorney, Washington insider Gideon Parnell, denied the account. Which is another way of saying ‘the allegations are obviously true or else one of the heaviest hitters in Washington wouldn’t have taken time out of his busy schedule to try to make it go away.’ You just gave the story the street cred Slander Sheet wanted.”

“Wrong,” he said patiently. “First of all, as I told you and as I told her, I am not the justice’s attorney. I’m just a friend. Second, I made it clear that my condition for speaking with her was that our talk be off the record, including the fact of any conversation. They agreed not to run the story until the reporter had spoken with me.”

I nodded. “So basically you bought yourself some time.”

“Until she meets with me, they’re not going to run the story.”

“And when’s this meeting?”

He looked at his watch, a gold bezel with a big white face on a brown crocodile strap. It looked expensive. “Tomorrow at five P.M.”

“Nowhere near enough time. I’d need a minimum of two weeks, and that’s if we get lucky.”

“Get lucky faster.”

“Sure. No problem.”

“That’s all the time we have, Nick. I was surprised they agreed to hold off as long as they did.”

“I’m going to need to talk to the chief justice. In person.”

“I doubt he’ll agree to it, but let me ask him.”

“One more question.”

He inclined his head.

“How many other firms turned you down before you had Malkin call me?”

“No one turned me down.”

“I was your first choice? Somehow I don’t believe that.”

“Of course not. I don’t know you. I had to make some inquiries about you first.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m in Boston, and this is a DC case. You could get anyone you want in DC, without having to pay travel. Including the obvious choice.”

He knew I meant Jay Stoddard, my former boss, whose firm was the best known in the private intelligence business, a man who’d got his start working for Richard Nixon. Stoddard had recruited me from Defense intelligence and taught me the tricks of the trade. I learned a lot from him — a bleak education — until we had a falling out and I quit to start my own firm.

He heaved a sigh. “Jay has too many close ties to powerful interests in Washington. Whereas you’re an outsider.”

“Is that a polite way of saying I’ve made some enemies?”

He shrugged. “It is what it is.” One of those annoying catch phrases that seem to have caught on like herpes. “Everyone in DC is in bed with someone. And this feels like some kind of inside job. An attack like this doesn’t come out of nowhere. Someone went to a lot of trouble to put this thing together, and I can’t take a chance with the local talent.”

“Let’s be clear about something. You want more than information. You want me to do certain things in ways you can’t be associated with. Correct?”

“I want you to do whatever it takes to kill this story. I want you to strangle the baby in its cradle. And yes, you’re absolutely right, no one must ever know that you’re working for me.”

“And why is that so important?”

A long, long pause. “Candidly, the senior partners in this law firm are deathly afraid of Slander Sheet. No one wants to be fed into that wood chipper.”

“I appreciate the honesty. The chief justice is going to have to be just as open with me.”

“I’ll see if he agrees to meet. He can be prickly. He’s very private.”

“One more thing. If I find out the story’s true, I’m off the job. I’m not interested in helping cover something up. If that’s what you want, I’m not the right guy for this.”

He smiled. “Oh, I know that well. I believe the phrase Jay Stoddard used to describe you was ‘loose cannon.’ He made it eminently clear that you’re not controllable.”

“I have a feeling he put it more colorfully than that.”

He gave a low, rumbling chuckle, glancing at his watch. “I have a meeting with the Boston partners, and I want to reach the chief justice before that. I’ll let you know what he says. Let me have your cell phone number.”

I gave it to him. “The sooner the better,” I said.