by Ann McMan
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“Yes,” Evan said, “but not tonight. We both need sleep. And my shoulder is killing me.”
“Evan . . .”
“Don’t start.”
“Honey,” Julia tried again. “It’s not going to get better on its own. You know this.”
Evan grunted. “I don’t want to have this conversation right now.”
“Okay. We’ll add it to the agenda for our deferred maintenance discussion when I get home.”
“Nice try.” Julia could hear the sound of Evan shifting around—probably trying to get more comfortable. “Stevie comes home on Friday. I invited Tim for dinner.”
“Oh, good—on both counts.”
“I’m kind of assuming you’ll join us?”
“Kind of?” Julia asked. “Try and stop me.”
“No. Don’t think I will.” Evan yawned. “Dan and Pippi are asking about dates to kidnap Stevie over Christmas.”
“Evan . . .”
“I know, I know. Kayla.”
“You can afford to be magnanimous,” Julia pointed out. “You want Dan to be happy. And Stevie seems to enjoy spending time with them.”
“Not as much as she enjoys spending time with us,” Evan corrected.
“That may be true. But Stevie is grown up now, and we need to respect her choices—and her instincts.”
“You seriously think a sixteen-year-old is grown up?”
“When she’s your daughter, I do.”
Evan laughed. “You’re right. She ought to get hazardous duty pay.”
“No comment.”
“I miss you,” Evan said.
Julia smiled and leaned back against a mound of pillows. “I miss you, too.”
“Tell me again when you’re coming home?”
“Wednesday. Morning,” she added.
“I guess I can make it.”
“I dearly hope so. I promise to make it worth your while.”
“You dooooooo?” Evan dragged out the word to make it sound like it had five syllables.
Julia laughed. “Do you doubt me?”
“Not usually.”
“My best advice would be not to start now.”
“Noted.” Julia heard Evan yawn again.
“We should both get some sleep,” she said.
“Yeah.” Evan yawned. “I’m gonna have to hit the ground running in the morning. Dan is sending me my weight in background files.”
“Who’s the pigeon?”
“Pigeon?” Evan laughed. “Are you watching Noir Alley on TCM again?”
“Shut up.”
Evan was still chuckling. “The ‘pigeon’ is the president’s nominee for the high court.”
“Really?” Julia was impressed. “Who’d he name?”
“No one yet. But it’s going to be J. Meyer Cawley. Dan said he’s announcing it tomorrow.”
“Cawley? I thought he was off the list?”
“So did everyone,” Evan said. “Surprise.”
“Wow.” Julia was still reacting to the choice. “How much time do you have?”
“Not much. Less than two weeks.”
“So, you’ll be finished before Christmas.” Julia was grateful for that bit of good news.
“With luck. Dan said the Senate is fast-tracking the nomination. I think they want it done and dusted before the recess.”
“Why the rush?”
“I can only guess. They likely don’t want time for anyone to uncover any tidbits that might be disqualifying.”
“You mean apart from the entirety of his judicial record?”
“Yeah,” Evan said. “Apart from that.”
“It sounds like you’ll be pretty busy. Sure you’ll have time for Stevie and me?”
“The day I don’t is the day they can put me in a box and bury me.”
Julia rearranged her pillows.
She had a feeling they wouldn’t be hanging up any time soon.
Chapter Two
The face of Edwin Miller was the last thing Evan expected to see when she started sifting through the voluminous document dump Dan sent her in the morning. But there he was, standing on the perimeter of a photo that included Cawley and half a dozen other formally-dressed men—one wearing clerical vestments—and some gangly teenage boys. The boys all wore ill-fitting suits, clearly dressed up for some kind of special occasion. There were Christmas decorations visible in the background. The group stood in front of a carved stone fireplace in what looked like a library or study. There were polished shelves lined with leather-bound books, and an elaborately framed painting displayed above the fireplace. Miller was a lot younger, of course, but Evan recognized him right away.
She peered at the note someone in Dan’s office had pinned to the scan. J. Meyer Cawley, Christmas 1995. That had been ten years before Evan vetted the democrat for his successful U.S. Senate run in Pennsylvania.
And twelve years before Miller got busted for soliciting sex from a twelve-year-old boy in a Cincinnati hotel . . .
What the hell was he doing in this photo with Cawley? And where the hell was the picture taken? The photo had no other information, which surely meant Dan’s staff had no idea, either. If so, where’d they get it?
The last time Evan had heard anything about Miller, he was still doing time in Hamilton County for importuning.
He was a class act.
Which made his presence in this photo with the blue-blooded Cawley even more curious.
She sent Dan a note through her Signal app.
Where’d your staff get the 1995 photo of Cawley with the group of men in penguin suits?
Ten minutes later, he wrote back.
You don’t want to know. Suffice it to say it came through a back channel.
Back channel, her ass.
Marcus.
It had to be him. That slimeball had his crooked finger in every pile of dung.
I told you I wouldn’t work for him again, she wrote back. I meant it.
Dan’s reply was quick. You aren’t working for him. He’s not involved in this. I told you that already.
Why is he helping you? she asked.
Who the fuck knows? Dan wrote back. And frankly, I don’t really care. I’m on my way to Capitol Hill right now, so get back to me later if you have any more questions.
She sat staring at the photo for another minute. She recalled that Miller hailed from a blue-collar family of steelworkers. He went to law school at Villanova on a scholarship, and worked for two years in the Cambria County DA’s office before serving one term as mayor of Johnstown. It was a short hop from that gig to the State House in Harrisburg, followed quickly—thanks to Marcus—by a quantum leap up to the greener pastures of the U.S. Senate.
Evan went to her computer and pulled up the background report she’d prepared on Miller back in 2005. It didn’t take her long to find the connection. Miller had clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit before getting hired by the DA’s office back home. She logged into her LexisNexis account and discovered that he’d served as one of Cawley’s law clerks from 1994 to 1996.
Bingo.
It didn’t necessarily follow that this connection meant anything—but if it wasn’t significant, why would that buzzard Marcus have bothered to pass this teaser along to Dan? That asshole did nothing by accident. And Miller’s ability to snag a plum clerkship like that was puzzling, too. She had pulled his academic records from Villanova. He was hardly a top-tier student—and Villanova grads weren’t exactly in the same league as the ready pool of candidates from Yale, Harvard or Stanford where federal judges usually went shopping for clerks.
She picked up her cell phone and punched in a familiar number. The call rolled immediately to his answering machine.
“This is Rush,” a husky voice growled. “Leave your name and number and I’ll call you back.”
“Ben? It’s Evan. I’ve got a job and I need your help—today. Call me back.”
Before she could disc
onnect, Ben’s voice appeared on the line. “What’s up?”
“You call screening?” she asked.
“Hell, yeah. My ex has been dogging the shit outta me for tuition money.”
“Which one?” Evan asked.
“They’re both bitches.” Ben had two ex-wives, and two of his three daughters were still in college—one at Drexel and one at Dickinson. “But this time it’s the fat-assed blonde who flits around on the six-figure, hybrid broomstick.”
“How is Carla?”
“She’s a cunt, just like the last time you asked about her.” He coughed and cleared his throat. Evan could tell he was smoking again.
“You know, Ben . . . you could just date these women.”
“Fuck you. And fuck her. What’s the job?”
She’d obviously caught him at the right time. It was clear he needed the money.
“I’m doing some oppo research for the DNC,” she told him. “I’ve got a lead, and I need you to follow up on it for me. Fast.”
“Okay.” Evan could hear him rustling some papers. “Shoot.”
“Name’s Edwin Miller. M-I-L-L-E-R. He’s a former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania. Last known whereabouts was River City Correctional Center in Cincinnati.”
“Say what?”
Evan elaborated. “He was busted in a Cincinnati hotel for soliciting sex from a minor. That was back in 2008.”
“Jesus Christ.” She could hear Ben firing up a smoke. “Where do they fucking find these guys? Creeps R Us?”
“Sometimes you wonder.”
“So?” Ben asked. “You just want to know where he is?”
“Right. And how I can contact him.”
“Contact him? What the fuck for?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Okay,” Ben said. “I’ll get Ping on it. That’ll be a shit-ton faster than me trying to run his ass down.”
“Ping” was a cyber expert who was a staple in Ben’s pantry of oddballs. For years, Evan had assumed—wrongly—that Ping was a fifteen-year-old Asian kid who amused himself by hacking into his parents’ Tesla and jacking up the algorithms.
Not so much.
Ping ended up being Ben’s landlady—a savvy, seventy-four-year-old grandmother who lived in the apartment downstairs. Her name was Ruby Byrd. She hailed from Macon, Georgia—and, apart from being a cyber brainiac, she also made fabulous Hoppin’ John.
“Lemme get going on this,” Ben said. “Ping’ll be back from church by nine.” He laughed. “She’s one of your people. I’ll call you back later.”
He hung up. Evan sat staring at the phone.
Who the hell are ‘my people’?
◊ ◊ ◊
Maya was annoyed.
This job stank.
And not in the usual ways these jobs were prone to stink.
No.
This one was especially malodorous. Ironic, considering her client.
But nothing unusual there.
She checked her watch. Three more minutes.
This wait was interminable. And ridiculous. Who still used pay phones? It was absurd. The things were relics. It was even more ridiculous to have to lurk about this kiosk in 30th Street Station, waiting on the sodded call. It’d already been long enough to read the same article in a discarded copy of Business Week four times. There wasn’t enough stomach or inclination on the planet to induce another read. Who cared about Costco’s decision to open its own damn chicken farm in Eastern Nebraska?
Two more minutes.
An obese man wearing an ill-fitting suit and smelling vaguely like urine and stale tobacco walked past—again. One more trip past this bench, asshole, and I’ll send you sprawling.
Irksome pervert. He was just like uncle Omer.
Her silver pen resumed its staccato tap-tap-tap against an open notepad.
Finally, her watch alarm beeped.
Showtime.
The pay phone rang twice before she answered it.
“This is Maya.”
◊ ◊ ◊
Evan had been speed-reading back issues of The Washington Post and The New York Times for nearly two hours, trying to reacquaint herself with every contentious tidbit that had emerged about Cawley during his last round of confirmation hearings back in 1992.
There were quite a few to get through. J. Meyer Cawley had served on the staff of the White House Counsel’s Office during the Bush 41 administration. There had been, however, a dearth of documents to prove what everyone later suspected: that Cawley had had more than a passing role in brainstorming the hail of blanket pardons distributed by outgoing President George H.W. Bush to all of his former cronies implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. Bush claimed executive privilege, and none of the confirming paperwork ever saw the light of day.
In retrospect, a smoking gun in hand wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The Republican Party managed to take control of both houses of Congress in the 1994 midterm elections, and any lingering suspicions the Democrats had about Cawley’s ascension to the Third Circuit became meaningless.
Cawley’s personal life was about as salacious as an episode of Ozzie and Harriet. College at Georgetown. Law school at Yale, where he was a founding member of the Federalist Society. Married to the same woman for thirty-eight years. One grown daughter. A devout Roman Catholic. Membership in all the right civic organizations. Only drove American-made cars. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Nothing much there.
His campaign for the federal judiciary did seem to benefit from several hefty independent expenditures deriving from a nonconnected Political Action Committee. There was some lingering mystery about who the PAC members were, but after Cawley’s confirmation, nobody much cared anymore.
Until now.
When the campaign finance laws changed in 2010, it became legal for PAC donors to remain anonymous—and the newest campaign to back Cawley’s nomination to the high court was likely to rake in a lot of money. Evan suspected that some of the usual suspects from his last go-round in ’92 would still be on board behind the nominee. If so, getting her hands on just one of those names would probably help her run down the names of his mystery backers. And there might be some percentage in following those leads wherever they took her.
This was a perfect opportunity to call in a marker. Even the slimiest dark money groups from thirty years ago still had to file all the requisite paperwork with the Federal Elections Commission. Their members could bask in the shadows, but some poor schmoe always got tasked with signing his name on the disclosure forms.
She picked up her phone and called a familiar number.
“FEC Inspector General’s Office. This is Sandy.”
“Hi ya, hot stuff,” Evan said. “Long time no talk.”
There was a pause. “Evan?”
“Right first time. How’s it going? You still working without a boss?”
Sandy lowered her voice. “Why are you calling me here?”
“One guess.”
Sandy took a moment to reply. “What is it?”
Evan laughed. “Should I thank you for cutting to the chase?”
“I’m due a break. Let me call you back on my cell phone in five minutes.”
“Works for me.” Evan hung up.
Sandy and Evan had been classmates at Penn. They had even dated for a while—until Sandy realized that Evan was hopelessly incapable of monogamy.
Sandy’s regrettable spouse was a sometime government contractor who had an unhappy tendency to dip her fingers into other people’s cookie jars. The last time she’d been caught, she was staring down her nose at some hard time. That was until Sandy contacted Evan and begged her to step in and talk her accuser off a ledge. Lucky for Sandy, that wasn’t hard to do. It turned out Evan had a file full of creative accounting “oversights” the firm accusing Sandy’s spouse had enjoyed during its own heyday working for a client of Evan’s on Capitol Hill. She made a few calls, and Sandy’s burgeoning domestic nightmare quietly went away.
That w
as after her sticky-fingered spouse repaid the hefty stash of bogus fees she’d gleaned via some creative line-item charges.
In exactly five minutes, Evan’s phone rang. She wasn’t surprised about Sandy’s punctuality. That had been another nail in their relationship coffin. Evan had been notoriously . . . casual . . . about commitments back in those days.
Evan answered the phone.
“Look. You helped me out of a jam and I’m grateful,” Sandy said without preamble. “So, just tell me what you want and let’s get this over with.”
“That’s easy,” Evan explained. “I need a name.”
“Whose name?”
“Well, that’s the tricky part. I don’t know. There was a nonconnected PAC back in 1992 called ‘Citizens for Integrity in Government.’ They put a lot of money into several causes that were darlings of the far right—including the nomination of J. Meyer Cawley to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. I need to know who filed their paperwork with your office.”
“Are you crazy?” Sandy sounded incredulous. “You know I can’t disclose that.”
“I can think of a lot of things you can’t do, love chunks. But getting me a name isn’t one of them.”
“Fuck you.”
Evan laughed. “I’ve been hearing that a lot lately.”
Silence on the line.
“When do you need it?” Sandy asked.
“Today would be nice.”
Sandy balked at Evan’s request. “You don’t want much, do you?”
“How long could it take? Don’t you use computers in your office? Or have all these government shutdowns reduced you to storing everything on cuneiform tablets?”
“All right,” Sandy said. “I’ll call you back in an hour.”
“Thanks.”
“Evan?”
“Yeah?”
“This is the last time. I give you this name and we’re quits. Okay?”
Evan thought that was reasonable. “Sure.”
Sandy hung up.
It didn’t take her an hour. Evan’s phone rang twenty minutes later.
“That was fast.”
“Arthur Squires.” Sandy didn’t mince words.
Evan was surprised she had found the information so fast. “Got a business name to go with that?” She grabbed a pad and pencil.
