Mounting Fears

54

BARBARA ORTEGA LEFT HER NEW OFFICE AT THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT A LITTLE after six and drove toward home. She stopped at a supermarket on the way and stocked up on groceries for her new house, and as she was waiting her turn at the checkout counter a headline in a tabloid newspaper on the rack next to her caught her eye.

Barbara wanted to read the newspaper then and there, but she tossed it onto her pile of groceries and checked out. Once at home, she made herself wait until the groceries were put away before she opened the paper and read the text of the article.

"VICE PRESIDENT MARTIN STANTON, who has long had a reputation with the ladies, has been raising eyebrows among the press and staff on his campaign plane, and rumors are circulating about his relationship with his traveling campaign manager, Elizabeth Wharton. The lovely Liz, who is at least fifteen years younger than her boss, has been quartered nightly in several cities in a room adjacent to the veep's suite, with a connecting door, and room-service deliveries to their separate rooms seem to have been coordinated.

"Vice President Stanton, until recently governor of California, has been rumored to have had regular liaisons with at least two California women over the past few years, and is in the middle of what some say is a contentious divorce from his wife of many years. Has Marty been seeking solace in the arms of the nearest beautiful woman?"

BARBARA PUT DOWN the paper, dug her secret cell phone out of her purse, sat down on the living room sofa, and called her lover. The phone rang a number of times before it was answered.

"Yes?" Stanton said.

"I think you know who this is," Barbara said.

"Yes?"

"Have you seen this rotten… paper?"

"What are you talking about?"

Barbara picked up the paper. "The National Inquisitor."

"I don't know…"

"According to this vile rag, you are fucking your campaign manager, somebody named Elizabeth. Is that true?"

"I, ah, can't really talk right now," Stanton said. "Can I call you back?"

"I just want you to deny it," Barbara said, seething. "Will you deny it right now?"

"I'm afraid I'll have to call you back, and what with my schedule, it might be a couple of days before I can do that," he replied.

"Don't bother, you son of a bitch," she said. "Don't bother ever to call me again. I've torn my life apart for you, Marty Stanton. I've moved across the country, bought a house, found a new job-all just to be near you-and this is how you treat me?"

"I'll have to say good-bye for now," Stanton said, then hung up.

Barbara threw the cell phone at the opposite wall as hard as she could, shattering it.

THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Gene stopped at the Georgetown house, collected the tape from the recorder, inserted a new one, then drove to the offices of the National Inquisitor. He put the tape in the envelope, wrote Nelson Pickett's name on it and left it at the reception desk.

The envelope was sent to the Inquisitor's mail room, and shortly before the office closed, it was left on Pickett's desk. He returned from the men's room to find the envelope there. The cassette had no name on it, just the date and time of collection.

Pickett took a small tape player from his desk drawer, inserted the cassette, and pressed the play button. Then he listened, with increasing interest, as he heard the conversation between Barbara Ortega and the vice president of the United States. Before he had finished he was on his way to the office of William Gaynes.

He burst into Gaynes's office to find him on the phone. Gaynes pointed at his sofa and put a finger to his lips. Pickett waited impatiently while Gaynes continued his conversation. Finally, he hung up the phone. "What?" he said to Pickett.

"Running that story in yesterday's edition did the trick," he said. "Listen." He played the tape.

Gaynes waited until it was finished before he said a word. "Brilliant!" he said, finally. "She actually used his name!"

"And he didn't deny it," Pickett said. "Do you realize what effect this could have on the national election?"

"I don't give a flying fuck what effect it has on the election," Gaynes said, "I'm Australian. All I care about is circulation."

"Well, before you make a decision to run this story, let me explain something to you about this woman. She is the head of the Criminal Division of the United States Justice Department. Do you understand what that means?"

"All right, tell me," Gaynes said.

"It means that all the United States attorneys report to her on criminal matters."

"So?"

"Making this recording is a criminal matter-it's against the law. Do you see where I'm heading here?"

"I think I get the picture," Gaynes said. "If we run it, we get busted by the feds."

"That's exactly right."

"So we can't run it."

"Not as such. We can't even allude to this conversation, because if we do, Ortega will immediately know that we could only have gotten it by taping her phone conversations. Not only would we be charged with illegal wiretapping, but she would have her house swept for bugs in a flash, and no more telephone tapes."

"So how are we going to handle this?" Gaynes asked.

"The story that ran yesterday, which was just supposition, set her off and made her get indiscreet on the phone. We need more stuff about Stanton and Wharton, stuff we can back up. If we can get that, then Ortega might get even madder, and who knows where that could lead. We've got a couple of weeks before the election, so let me put more people on Stanton and Wharton, and more people on Stanton and Ortega when they were in Sacramento, and we'll see what we come up with. If we can get something more concrete we can name Ortega and blow the lid off the whole thing."

"Well, get your ass on it!" Gaynes said. "Spend whatever you have to!"