The Means

by Douglas Brunt

  His wife emerges through the line of reporters and cameramen, and her knees pump to lift her the few steps up and into his arms. Her smile matches his and they kiss. The cameras catch the moment, then the questions start.

  “Mr. Pauley, were you surprised at how quickly the jury returned a verdict?”

  “No. Over the course of the trial we made it very clear my clients are innocent. Fortunately, the jury was paying attention. They did their job.”

  “What did your clients say to you when they heard they are free to go?”

  “They said thank you and God bless you. I wished them luck now that they have their lives back.”

  “What will your clients do now?”

  “They’ll probably talk to an anchor at one of your networks. You should pay them well for that. Then they’ll go back to their families, to school, to their lives.”

  Tom Pauley thinks it is gracious of the Reverend Don Whiskers to give him the initial time with media alone. It isn’t Reverend Don’s usual method but Tom and Don have become friends over the previous few months, at first out of necessity, then genuine mutual respect. Don knows what a caricature he’s made of himself but he’s a genius in his way and he gets results.

  Terence and Todd Darby had been picked up by police in downtown Durham, two miles from a home invasion, rape, and quadruple homicide. In the shoddiest law enforcement work since the Duke lacrosse rape case, the state charged the sixteen- and eighteen-year-old brothers with the crime.

  When inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case first emerged, the Durham DA managed to keep it out of the media, but Tom Pauley heard about it and took the case pro bono. With his reputation came local media. Within twenty-four hours of his taking the case, Tom’s office had a call from the Reverend Don who had just landed at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport.

  Watching the reverend at work was impressive. He didn’t just fly in, get in front of a camera and wing it. He met with the family, the lawyers, the local politicians and made sure there was good camera footage of everything for the media to access. He determined what was the essence of the offense to the black community and articulated it in a way that could be repeated in a sound bite. He called his contacts in national media outlets, the Black Panthers, religious organizations, civil rights organizations. All of this was done in stepwise fashion like following a baking recipe. The people around Reverend Don know his system and go about their work quietly. He’s the only one making noise.

  The reverend’s work was all to the benefit of Tom’s clients, so Tom cooperated with him. The evening of Don’s arrival in Durham, stories about the case ran on GEAR, CNN, UBS-24, and Headline News. The following morning, Mornings and Sunrise America. Nancy Grace devoted all or some of her show to the case for seven straight weeks. Reverend Don has his critics, but he knows how to bring a national spotlight to the issues he cares about.

  “What’s next for you, Mr. Pauley?”

  “I’m going back to being a private citizen. No more peanut gallery lawyers critiquing my work on the evening news.” He says this with a smile. He’s had a decent relationship with the peanut gallery and given them access when it advanced his cause, and all the news coverage hasn’t bothered Tom. He knows it’s part of the job on a high-profile case, and his job he takes seriously. Himself he does not, and it helps to be humble in his business. Sometimes he needs to act like a hard-ass but for him it is only an act. When he was eight years old, his middle-class family went through a trauma that pushed them into poverty. Specific memories are mostly faded but the period formed his approach to life. As long as his family is safe and provided for, there isn’t much that can rile or scare him. He’s irreverent. Everyone has irreverent thoughts, but not everyone expresses them. For Tom, as long as it’s away from the courtroom, it’s fair game. He already has an arm around his wife’s shoulders and he pulls her in tighter. “Alison and I are going to have dinner together tonight. We have a five-year-old boy, Patrick, and a three-year-old girl, Olivia. I haven’t seen as much of them as I would like lately, so I’m going to focus on family time.” He looks at his wife. “What’s that train set we just got for the kids?”

  “Thomas the Tank Engine.”

  “Right. We’re going to play with Thomas. And I think I saw a box for a Barbie Hybrid Cadillac.”

  The media laugh and Reverend Don appears at Tom’s side. He gives Tom and Alison a hug, then takes several steps to the side away from them. He wants the cameras to have a clear solo shot. The shift in media focus is immediate, like a torpedo acquiring a new target.

  The reverend speaks. “I have just prayed with the Darby family. We prayed for the victims and their relatives. We prayed for this community. We prayed for God’s healing hand to come down and touch our lives, that a lesson can be learned here today.”

  Tom thinks how different it is to listen to Don over lunch and to listen to him now. It’s the same rhetoric, but here he performs it. Don would have made a hell of a litigator. “Let’s slip out of here,” says Tom to his wife. “I have a meeting at the Washington Duke and Donnie looks like he can go another thirty minutes.”

  With minor fanfare, Tom and Alison get to her BMW sedan where they kiss again and Tom opens the door for her. Alison drives home and Tom walks to his Chevy Suburban to drive to his meeting.

  It’s a brand-new car and enormous. It gets ten miles to the gallon in city driving, thinks Tom. Money isn’t a problem, though. Tom doesn’t get paid in the Darby case, but he’ll make out okay from all the good press. He started a general litigation practice, and he rarely does criminal defense. He’s usually suing someone for millions.

  Those poor saps from the top law schools who go to big New York firms, thinks Tom. They slave the decades away. Being partner at a big firm sounds fine but in the best years they make a million or two. Nobody gets silly rich that way. The only way to make big money as a lawyer is to be a plaintiffs’ attorney. A good one. Win a hundred-million-dollar lawsuit, earn thirty percent, lather-rinse-repeat. John Edwards got very rich doing that.

  Tom didn’t get into law for that reason, though. He got into law for cases just like Terence and Todd Darby. He was just very effective, though, and now at forty-three is making as much as the partners in the fancy firms. In a few years he’ll be making more. He had started out with Davis Polk in New York for the first seven years of his career, so he appreciates how much better he has it now.

  * * *

  The Washington Duke is one of the nicest hotels in Durham and is on the edge of the Duke University campus. As long as it isn’t a reunion weekend there are usually rooms available but the place always does a nice business because it has a great golf course, a good restaurant and bar.

  Tom has a meeting scheduled with Benson Hill, who is affiliated with the Republican Party of North Carolina. He’s a bundler. He rounds up money from wealthy North Carolinians to contribute to Republican presidential candidates and he also helps the state GOP candidates.

  Tom thinks his numerous TV appearances with the left-leaning Reverend Whiskers would throw people off the scent, but it’s easy enough to see with a web search that he’s contributed money to the GOP presidential candidate in each of the last four elections. Benson wants my money, he thinks, but these kinds of connections can’t hurt.

  Tom pulls onto Cameron Boulevard. The Duke campus is on his right and he makes a left into the parking lot of the inn. “Jesus,” Tom says out loud. If this guy picked the Washington Duke, he must be a Duke fan.

  People in North Carolina support either Duke basketball or UNC basketball. Everyone’s a fan and everyone takes a side. Eighty percent of the state are for UNC. Tom went to undergrad and law school at UNC, so he’s more than a casual fan. Tom has friends who are Duke fans, but he can’t stand to be near them during the season. All those asinine cheers and fight songs.

  Tom steers around the circular drive up to the front of t
he inn and valets the car. He walks through the lobby which he thinks is full of too much Duke crap, then into the Bull Durham Lounge.

  On the left is a long bar made of dark wood. To the right are windows overlooking the golf course. The far wall is mostly a massive fireplace that is not lit. The carpet is dark blue and throughout the room are small round bar tables with bowls of nuts and leather chairs that are wide and look heavy.

  A burly, balding man who looks like a drinker gets up from a chair by the fire. He moves with athleticism as though his gut is something he just carries around for exercise.

  He makes for Tom Pauley and starts his handshake from behind his ear, something Tom noticed Obama always used to do that he found annoying and dramatic. The man swings his hand around like throwing a football and clasps where Tom has simply put his hand out.

  He seems like the kind of guy who greets all his friends by slapping their backs and calling them old sons of bitches. He says, “Benson Hill. How the hell are you? Your mug looks just like it does on TV. A pleasure to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you, Benson.” Tom decides he likes him already. He likes people who are characters, people who put themselves out there.

  “Congratulations on the Darby case. Big win.”

  “Thank you. Sometimes the system works.”

  “Good for you. Good for you. Drink?”

  “Gin and tonic.”

  “Good man, good man.”

  Benson orders with a waiter and they drag two leather chairs closer together by the fire.

  “You really poured yourself into their defense. All pro bono.”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a real servant of the people.”

  “It feels good to do good.” Tom toasts the air and drinks. “Somebody said that.”

  “Right. Tom, I’ll tell you a bit about me, then I’d like to learn a bit more about you. Is that okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know who I am?”

  “You’re with the Republican Party of North Carolina.”

  “Correct.”

  “Exactly what is the Republican Party of North Carolina? Besides just you.”

  “It’s not even me, really. I’m just a rich guy. Full-time, permanent staff in an off-election year? Maybe four people. The chairman and a few people answering phones. It’s just a place to receive fund-raising. In election years it balloons to twenty full-timers or so. We’re like a traveling circus. After the show we fold up tents and everyone disperses.”

  “I see.”

  “My day job though is dry cleaning. I have thirty locations throughout the Research Triangle Park area. This is the last bastion of non-­Korean dry cleaners on the planet.” He laughs and his belly moves like a kid shifting in a sleeping bag. “Dry cleaning is a very scalable business. Any businessman trying to grow is going to be Republican.”

  Tom nods. He lines up mostly with the Republican platform on economic issues but he’s never been very political and doesn’t like talking about it, certainly not out of the home.

  “So tell me about yourself, Tom. Why did you get into the law?”

  This is surprising to Tom. It feels like an interview but it isn’t. It’s a stranger asking personal questions. His face doesn’t show that he’s annoyed because Tom’s gift is that it takes much more than this to annoy him. He rolls with it and decides to answer and Benson thinks they’re having a nice conversation. “My uncle is the whole reason. Thirty-five years ago he was wrongly convicted of murder. It nearly bankrupted my family in every way possible, money being the least significant.” Tom pauses, not for effect but just to gather his thoughts. Everything about him is sincere and understated. “It’s a powerless feeling to know in your heart and your head what is right but not be able to get there. Not be able to make anyone else see it even though it’s in plain sight to you.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “He was cleared twelve years later by DNA evidence.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Yes, thank God. He could still be in there, but for twelve years it was no picnic.”

  “I’ll bet. Well, that’s a noble reason to enter the law. I like that.” Benson’s body language is celebratory and inappropriate.

  What an odd thing to say, thinks Tom. One drink with this clown will be enough.

  Benson picks up on the sentiment and makes a lasso motion with his right hand to signal the waiter for another round. “Tom, I know you’ve given some money to the GOP in the past. Do you mind if I ask you a couple more questions?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Position questions. In confidence.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Okay, let’s start there. Gun control.”

  “I duck hunt from time to time. I’m okay with guns but I certainly don’t think people need a grenade launcher in their closets either.”

  “You hunt. That’s good. Let’s stay with social issues. Abortion?”

  This guy is getting offensive. “I’m the son of two liberal Democrats. I grew up pro-choice. Once I had kids I became pro-life, but I can see both sides.”

  “Death penalty?”

  “Against it.”

  “Are you on the record as having that position?”

  “What’s going on here?” Tom runs a hand through his hair.

  Benson looks at the hairline Tom has exposed and studies it. “That looks like it has plenty of years left on it.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Male pattern is easier to deal with than receding hair from the front, but you look okay.”

  This crosses even Tom’s line. “Benson, this is the strangest meeting I’ve ever had. I’ve had some strange ones. I think I’ll show myself out. Take care of yourself.” Tom puts his hands on the armrests with his elbows up to push out of the chair.

  “Hang on a second, Mr. Pauley. I’m sorry. No more beating around the bush.”

  Tom stops but his hands and elbows are still in position. The waiter returns and delivers the two drinks. Everyone is silent until the waiter is back out of earshot.

  “My GOP colleagues and I have watched your trial with great interest. We’ve also asked around about you. We’ve learned about as much as we can about you without actually contacting you.”

  “This isn’t making our conversation less strange.”

  Benson decides he needs a moment to organize his pitch. “Tell you what. I’m going to do two things. First, I’m going to go to the bathroom. Second, I’m going to give you my thoughts on a plan.”

  “There’s something synonymous about those.”

  Benson stands and smiles at Tom. “You’re some kind of card, aren’t you.” He walks to the restroom. Tom works on his drink for a few minutes until Benson returns with his sales pitch ready.

  Benson sits and picks up his drink again. “I’ll get to the point. We want you to run for governor. On the Republican ticket. You’d have our support.”

  Tom brings his hands together to have a place to rest his chin. “I’m not a politician. I’m barely political.”

  “After John Edwards, the Democrats are still very vulnerable in North Carolina. We have a real chance to take the governor’s mansion. If we have the right candidate.”

  Most of Tom’s brain function is digesting this information and only a small part is formulating responses, so his mannerisms seem detached and sedated. “Why me?”

  “Because you can win.”

  “I don’t know anything about running a campaign.”

  “You don’t have to. I do. The party does. You’re a natural. You get out, give speeches, get on TV, do debates. We’ll build the organization, raise the money, get out the vote. You just be you. We do the rest.”

  Tom looks into the fireplace, trying to find a starting point to evaluate what he’s hearing.

  “To
m, North Carolina isn’t so blue as people think. Historically it was as blue a state as there is. The Dems were black people plus the unions. In the seventies when all the manufacturing jobs went overseas, North Carolina got wiped out and so did the unions. In the nineties, the New South started. Banking and technology took off, places like Research Triangle Park. The Dems here now are still black people and unions, but now it’s public unions. The teachers and municipal workers. Demographics are different and the Dems aren’t so strong.”

  Tom’s mind is catching up with the conversation and his voice regains authority. “Look, all of that’s fine, but this is a career decision. A life decision. It’s never been something I wanted.”

  “What we’re offering you is an opportunity of a lifetime. Here’s the timeline. In December, you declare, and I’ll make sure you have about eight million bucks you can announce with it. That should scare people off and make for an easier primary. Primary vote is May. By then, I’ll have another six million for you, plus a lot of the eight will still be there. If you’re looking good, which you will be, in late summer the national Republican Governors Association will drop a few million more your way. They want this state. That’s almost twenty million for your campaign, and that matters. There are three major media markets here—Charlotte, Raleigh, and the coastal area around Wilmington. But a hell of a lot of this state is rural. You can’t reach it with ads on cable and the Internet hasn’t changed everything here. You need to buy broadcast advertising and that’s what’s expensive. At twenty million, you’re likely to have double the funding of everyone else. And you’ll have organization. You’ll have a chief of staff, campaign director, communications director, press secretary, maybe three spokespeople, finance director. You’ll have a director of advance to scout out all your event locations and do setup for you. You’re going to have early money. Early money is key to getting office space and infrastructure. You need to be built out ahead of time to be able to accept the volunteer help when it comes. We’re going to do this right for you, Tom.”