Discretion

by Allison Leotta

  Streams of young people in khakis or sundresses flowed into the congressional office building. It was the August recess, so the junior staffers wore snappy-casual. The few members of Congress still in town would arrive later in the morning; most members were back in their home districts, with their families and constituents.

  The Capitol Police officers at the entrance to the Rayburn Building allowed the MPD officers and FBI agents—and their guns—to pass through the screeching metal detectors, but Anna and Jack had to put their bags through the X-ray machine. As Anna was wanded by an officer, she understood that the location was a power play by Lionel. Usually, AUSAs conducted witness interviews on their own turf. But Lionel didn’t have to talk to them at all. He could call the shots in terms of where they met. Walking the long gray and white marble hallway, past American and state flags designating the entrance to every representative’s office, Anna felt the power of the legislature surrounding her on all sides.

  They rode an elevator to the second floor and followed the signs to room 2136, Lionel’s suite. As the prosecution team turned a corner, they almost collided with a stanchion of reporters and photographers encamped outside the office. Jack, Anna, and the officers kept their heads down and walked silently past the shouted questions and flash photographs. At the end of the line, Detective McGee turned back and gave the cameras a broad, gummy grin.

  The team crowded into Lionel’s waiting room, where two women sat at two desks. The older one had a nameplate that said Jamiya Henderson. Anna had read some articles about Lionel and knew Jamiya was his scheduler, the person in charge of running his calendar and one of his oldest and most trusted employees. At the other desk was a pretty, young receptionist, most likely a staff assistant right out of college. Both women regarded the investigators with silent suspicion.

  As the door to the hallway closed, muffling the sounds of the press, Daniel Davenport emerged from another room. The silver-haired lawyer regarded the troops filling up the small reception area. “Good morning, Jack. You’ve made your show for the press.” He pointed toward the door. “But there’s no need for half a dozen armed men to conduct these interviews.”

  “Good morning, Daniel,” Jack said. “I’ve got four interview teams here. We’ll conduct simultaneous interviews.”

  “No.” Davenport shook his head. “I intend to be at each interview.”

  “That’s not how we’re doing it. You can obviously sit with your client while we interview him, but I can’t let you be present for the other interviews.”

  “Then we’re at an impasse.”

  Anna watched the two lawyers like a spectator at a tennis match. Physically they were well matched, both tall and imposing, although Davenport had the trim, patrician demeanor of someone who would win a regatta, while Jack, with his broad chest and shaved head, looked like he’d have the advantage in a fistfight. Davenport had put Jack in a tough spot again. The prosecutors would never get the unvarnished truth from staffers if the boss’s lawyer were sitting in the room. On the other hand, she didn’t want to lose the opportunity to interview the Congressman entirely.

  “We’re not at an impasse,” Jack said coolly. “These are voluntary interviews. The Congressman said he was going to cooperate fully with the investigation. If he’s changed his mind, so be it. He either cooperates or he doesn’t.”

  Davenport paused, then pursed his lips. “I’ll ask Congressman Lionel what he wants to do.” He went back into the adjoining room.

  When Davenport was out of earshot, the team mumbled their two cents. Some of the officers approved of Jack’s hard line; others thought it was too much of a gamble, that they should take whatever interviews they could get. Jack and McGee bent their heads together and whispered. Anna walked a slow circle around the reception area, checking out the enormous color photographs of Lionel on all the walls. He looked like a joyful, caring grandfather as he shook hands, cut ribbons, and greeted constituents. She didn’t expect to see that side of him today. She noticed all the photos had a signature at the bottom of the matting: B. Vale.

  “Are those pictures by Brett Vale, the LD?” Anna asked the scheduler.

  The older woman seemed to consider the question and decide it harmless. “Yes. He has quite an eye, don’t you think?”

  “Very impressive.”

  After fifteen minutes, Davenport returned, looking unhappy but resigned.

  “Very well,” he said. “But the Congressman can only spare an hour. I hope you’ll understand that he is taking time out of a very busy day to help you.”

  Jack had won this round. Now came the hard part.

  24

  In some ways, Lionel’s office suite was less impressive than the chambers of judges in the local courthouse. In addition to the reception area, it held only three rooms. The Congressman and his Chief of Staff had their own offices; the rest of his staffers shared a bullpen-like office. Anna and Jack needed a moment to figure out the logistics for simultaneous interviews in the limited space.

  They weren’t interviewing all of Lionel’s employees. Several had gone home for the August recess. Malik Jones, the press secretary, was on vacation in New Zealand. Terrance Williams, the campaign manager, was out working on the campaign. But even with the skeleton staff left, they didn’t have enough space for everyone.

  They decided Jack, Samantha, and an MPD officer would take the Congressman into his office. Anna, McGee, and an FBI agent would interview the LD in the emptied-out bullpen. Teams of one MPD officer and one FBI agent would interview the Chief of Staff in his own office, and the lower-level staffers in the reception area. The rest of Lionel’s staff would wait in a committee room next door. Anna was reminded of something a law professor once told her: 80 percent of practicing law was logistics.

  “Good luck,” Anna whispered to Jack.

  He nodded wordlessly and turned to instruct the team. He was in the zone.

  Emmett Lionel sat behind an enormous wooden desk, scowling down at his hands. Jack’s eyes skimmed the office as he and his team walked in. Behind the desk was a large window overlooking the Capitol and a credenza holding photos of Lionel with his wife, children, and grandchildren. Flanking the window were glass-fronted china cabinets showcasing political souvenirs. A side table held a computer that was turned off. Across the room sat a black leather couch, a small conference table, and a six-foot-tall wooden sculpture of intricately carved African animals. Photos of the Congressman in action hung on the walls, interspersed with plaques and certificates. It was the office of a man who’d spent his life doling out and collecting political favors.

  When Lionel’s eyes landed on Jack, his face morphed into pure fury. He stood up from his chair and jabbed his index finger at Jack. “I am not talking to that man!”

  Jack sighed. Hadn’t they just been through this? “You agreed to be interviewed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, sir. I’m the Assistant U.S. Attorney handling this case.”

  “I demanded an independent prosecutor!”

  “Shall I call off the interview?” Jack said.

  “This is a sham!” Lionel glared at Jack. “You want me hanged so your friend Youngblood can have my seat.”

  “Let me assure you, Congressman, that my only goal is to follow the evidence. A woman fell from your balcony. It’s my job to investigate it.” Jack could hardly believe the man’s self-righteousness. A woman had been killed, and Lionel was acting like he was the target of a trumped-up political smear campaign. But Jack kept his tone mild. “We appreciate your ‘cooperation.’”

  “I am cooperating! But you have an army of lawyers here. Give me someone else.”

  “With all due respect, sir, you don’t get to choose who asks the questions. You can choose to answer them or not.”

  The Congressman looked to Davenport, who just shook his head, as if to say, “You chose this course.”

  Lionel sank resignedly into his chair. “Fine.”

  Davenport introduced a young associate, who sat on the couc
h. Jack, Samantha, and the MPD officer sat in guest chairs before Lionel’s desk. Davenport pulled up a chair and sat next to Lionel, as if he could protect his client through sheer proximity.

  Lionel’s Chief of Staff, Stanley Potter, answered Agent Quisenberry’s questions but with little detail. His hands patted his round belly as he said he couldn’t remember the answers to many of the questions. He ate a king-size Snickers bar between answers, dropping chocolate crumbs on his shirt. His lawyer sat silently next to him, seemingly content with his client’s say-nothing tap dance. After a few minutes, Quisenberry concluded that Potter believed his boss was guilty and needed cover.

  Potter claimed that all the staffers had access to the Congressman’s hideaway. The keys were kept in the scheduler’s desk, and the drawers were never locked. He claimed not to recognize a photograph of Caroline and never to have heard of the Congressman using escorts.

  Potter recalled the events of Sunday night. “The Congressman and I had a dinner meeting at the Monocle with people involved in the redevelopment of the Anacostia River. I was staffing the Congressman, but he didn’t need me; he knows all about the issue. My job was really just to get him out of there in time to stop by the stakeholders’ meeting back at the Capitol.”

  “What’s a stakeholders’ meeting?”

  “Generally, it’s a meeting hosted by organizations with an interest in a bill. A chance for them to check in with the members, and the members to show their faces and get credit. In this case, it was basically a cocktail reception. Food and drinks. To butter them up, really. The energy bill came out of the conference committee on Friday, and the vote was Monday. You heard about that, right? Most contentious issue this session. No one was happy about the timing of when that conference report dropped. It was the last day of the session—August recess was supposed to start last Friday. Everyone had vacations planned, and that made the session drag out over the weekend. Any proposed bill has to be posted on the Internet for three days before there’s a vote. So the House just stayed in session over the weekend to do a bunch of uncontroversial suspension votes and wrap things up while they waited for Monday so they could vote and get out of there.”

  Potter seemed much more relaxed—and informative—prattling on about congressional procedures than talking about the dicier subject of his boss’s extracurricular activities. Quisenberry steered him back on track. “So what time did you leave the Monocle?”

  “Um. I broke him free about six-forty-five, and we headed back to the Capitol. We got to the stakeholders’ meeting around seven-fifteen. The Congressman was there, eating and drinking, the whole time. Next thing I knew, the police were calling.”

  Agent Quisenberry cocked his head. “In the middle of a party, you know where one man is the whole time?”

  “He’s the boss. Part of my job is to keep him moving and to interrupt whenever someone is monopolizing him.”

  “So you were by his side the whole time?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “You know there are video cameras throughout the Capitol, right?”

  Potter shifted his paunch. “Of course.”

  “Because when we get the video, we’ll be able to see exactly when either of you left the party.”

  If they got the video, Quisenberry thought. He knew Davenport might be able to keep it away from the prosecutors forever. But the threat was getting to Potter.

  “Maybe we did get separated for a while,” Potter said, blinking rapidly. “I couldn’t say for sure.”

  Anna had done her research before coming here. Brett Vale had worked his way up the Hill hierarchy, never staying with any one politician for longer than a few years. He’d been a Staff Assistant, then a Legislative Correspondent, then a Legislative Assistant, to Congressmen from Tennessee, Ohio, Nevada, and Illinois, before Lionel hired him as Legislative Director. He was a reputed whiz at combing through the fine print of proposed bills. As LD, he was one of Lionel’s more trusted aides, though not his wingman. Anna thought that might make Vale the most likely both to know something and to be willing to talk about it. By contrast, Chief of Staff Potter had served with the Congressman for over twenty years. With so much invested in Lionel’s career, Potter was likely to keep his boss’s secrets.

  Anna walked into the bullpen with MPD Detective McGee and FBI Agent Wanda Fields behind her. The big office was crammed with six desks. Stacks of papers, binders, and newspapers seemed to be everywhere. A large flat-screen TV hung on one wall. It was muted but turned on, split into four screens: CNN, MSNBC, FOX, and C-SPAN.

  Vale’s desk was the single smooth, clean surface in the entire room. Anna wondered if the paper chaos everywhere else bothered him.

  He stood up from his desk, unfolding his long, lean body when Anna walked in. He wore another perfectly pressed gray suit that matched his silver hair. He was apparently too high up the food chain for snappy-casual. Standing with him was his lawyer, a puffy-eyed Englishman named John Singleton. On Vale’s desk was a single legal pad with a long, handwritten list of bullet points in a neat cursive script. When he saw Anna looking at the pad, he flipped it over.

  As they shook hands, his pale blue eyes traveled down her body and back up, lingering on her legs a little too long. She wished she’d worn her usual pantsuit.

  “I liked your pictures of the Congressman,” she said, hoping to build rapport. “Did you ever think of being a professional photographer?”

  “No.”

  So much for rapport. She sat across from his desk. “How long have you worked for Congressman Lionel?”

  She liked to start with simple background questions to which she already knew the answers. The witness would get comfortable, and she would get a baseline for what his truth-telling looked like.

  Vale had worked for the Congressman for two years, he said. As LD, he was responsible for advising the Congressman about legislative issues and supervising the Legislative Assistants who conducted much of the research. As he spoke to Anna, he stared at her with an unblinking gaze. She consciously stopped herself from squirming under it. She sat straighter and tried to channel Jack’s cool gravitas as she transitioned to more pointed questions.

  “Did you ever know Congressman Lionel to hire an escort?”

  Vale glanced at his lawyer. Singleton had said nothing so far and said nothing now. Vale turned back to Anna with a pleased little smile. “You’re damn right I did. Everyone knew about it.”

  “Whoa, whoa!” Singleton jolted to life, reaching forward to place a hand on his client’s arm. “Let’s talk for a minute, okay?” Turning to Anna, he said, “Would you mind excusing us?”

  Chester the intern smiled at the MPD detective but rubbed the tinted Clearasil on his neck nervously. He sat next to his assigned attorney in the now-empty reception area.

  “Have you ever gone up to the Congressman’s hideaway?” the detective asked the intern.

  “Sure! We had a Fourth of July party up there just last month.”

  “Ever go up there without the Congressman?”

  “Yeah, once in a while.” Chester blushed. “Some of the Legislative Assistants will take the key from Jamiya’s desk, bring some beers up, and drink on the balcony. You’re not going to tell the Congressman, are you?”

  “He doesn’t know?”

  “No way. He’d kill us!” Chester’s hand flew to his mouth. “That’s not what I meant.”

  Jack made no effort to start his interview of Congressman Lionel with rapport building.

  “What’s your full name, sir, and your date of birth?” Jack asked.

  “Why are you wasting my time with that?” Lionel glared at Jack. “You can get that from the Internet.”

  “I’m not interviewing the Internet.”

  “Emmett Douglas Lionel, March fourteen, 1949.”

  “How long have you had this office here in the Rayburn Building?”

  “Dammit, I’m not answering questions that you can answer on Wikipedia. You want to ask me a real question, g
o ahead.”

  “Agent Randazzo,” Jack said, “please note that the Congressman refused to answer that question.”

  Sam smiled down at her legal pad and wrote.

  “It’s his hour, Lionel,” Davenport told his client. “Let him ask what he wants.”

  Jack could feel Davenport’s frustration with his client. Lionel should answer as many innocuous questions as he could and then be able to say he’d been cooperative.

  “I’ve been the District’s Congressman for thirty-one years, and I’ve had this office the whole time.”

  “And how long have you had the hideaway?”

  “This one—two years. I had a smaller one before that.”

  Jack had learned a lot about hideaways over the last few days. Every senator and a few powerful House members had small offices within the Capitol where they could work without trekking back to their office buildings. For many years, the very existence of the hideaways was secret. They were the back rooms of proverbial backroom deals and the enablers of some infamous congressional womanizers, such as Lyndon Johnson. Each hideaway was unique, carved out of interstitial spaces in the Capitol over the centuries. Some were tiny windowless rooms in the basement; the nicest had views or balconies, like Lionel’s. All were assigned by seniority. As one of the longest-serving members of Congress, Lionel had moved into his most recent hideaway when a senator died two years ago.

  “Who has access to your hideaway besides you?” Jack asked.

  “Anyone could have access.”

  “Okay, let me put it this way. How many keys are there?”

  “Three.”

  “Who has them?”

  “Me, my Chief of Staff, and my scheduler, Jamiya. She keeps her copy in her desk, but she never locks her desk. Anyone could take it out of there.”