Oppo

by Tom Rosenstiel

  “You already told him I wasn’t around. We haven’t talked. You aren’t sure when you can find me.”

  Sedaka smiled back.

  She had read somewhere that presidential campaigns are dangerous for the people in them because they’re make-believe. You talk as if you were president, imagine you are, and it almost begins to feel like you might be. But you’re not.

  She worried Gil was already beginning to play make-believe.

  “Don’t get too cute with Traynor’s people,” she said. “It’s okay for us to consider this. But we both know the answer is going to be no.”

  Sedaka’s expression told her that was all he wanted to hear.

  A few months earlier, serious people had asked Upton herself to run for president. She’d said no. She wasn’t ruling it out forever, she told them, but she didn’t think she knew enough yet and couldn’t look voters in the eye and claim she was the best-prepared person in America to lead the country. Not yet. Maybe someday.

  Sedaka had told her he felt all the more loyal to her because of that. Who in Washington anymore, he said, or anywhere else if they had a national reputation, seemed to think they needed to wait and learn more about governing before they could run for president?

  She looked at him now, his face excited by what they’d agreed to. It wasn’t much, simply stalling for time. But she was grateful she had this one person she could trust. That was rare enough. She didn’t have many people in her life.

  “Okay, then,” she said, getting up. “I’ve got a meeting.” Then, turning, she almost added, “But be careful, Gil.” But she didn’t say it. Just turned and walked away.

  Three

  Sedaka sipped his coffee and lost himself in the possibilities.

  Then his private cell began to vibrate again, this time no dancing.

  “Sedaka.”

  “Gil, it’s Bobby Means. How you doin’?”

  “Bobby. I’m great. How’s the campaign?”

  “Awesome. Grueling. Fantastic.”

  Sedaka laughed. He liked Bobby Means. Bobby Means was smart and clever and a good old boy from South Carolina, like Sedaka.

  Bobby Means was the chief campaign strategist for Dick Bakke.

  “Gil, I wanted to broach something with you. ’Cause we’ve been friends a long time,” Bobby Means said.

  Means had a mouthful-of-marbles South Carolina accent that came and went as circumstances required. It was thick as warm molasses now.

  “I know Dick and Wendy have had their political differences,” Means said.

  That was an understatement on a massive scale.

  “But you got to agree they are two of the smartest people in the Senate.”

  That much was true, too, far as it went. Bakke had clerked for the Supreme Court—which was even more impressive because he’d gone to a law school that was barely accredited. Upton, an army veteran and former JAG attorney, was widely considered the sharpest member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

  “And bein’ smart is a good thing in a political leader, don’t you think, Gil?”

  “On balance, yes, I’d say much preferred to the alternative.”

  They shared a staffer’s laugh, one fueled by the privilege of seeing United States senators up close and at their most befuddled.

  Aside from both being smart, however, the differences between Wendy Upton and Richard Bakke were pretty epic. They represented wings of the Republican Party so far apart the bird could barely fly.

  Bakke wanted to pull the GOP further to the right and tear down much of its philosophical orthodoxy. He also thought Upton an insufferable prig, overrated by the liberal press.

  For her part, Upton thought Bakke was a dangerous and unscrupulous man who’d destroy the party and put Democrats in ascendance for a generation.

  Not that she ever had, or would, say such a thing out loud.

  So yeah, they had had their differences.

  “Gil, I’m calling, buddy, just to feel you out on something. Just exploring.”

  What. The. Hell, Sedaka thought. Is this really happening again?

  “Okaaaay, Bobby,” Sedaka said slowly.

  “I want to know how Senator Upton might feel about being considered for the number-two spot on a Bakke ticket.”

  Sedaka felt a thin band of sweat suddenly appear down his back. Two calls in an hour about being vice president? One from each party? He glanced back to the entrance of the coffee bar, hoping Wendy might still be there lingering. There was no way she was going to believe this.

  He paused a second. “I’ll talk to her,” he said. His voice sounded oddly deep, as if he were a boy trying to sound like a man.

  “Glad to hear it, Gil. Now, I’m serious, hear? I think this could be really something. I do. I believe Wendy and Dick would bring out the best in each other—because of their differences, not despite them. They’d make each other better. They might make each other great.”

  All melted butter and sugar, Bobby Means.

  “So talk to her, Gil. I mean soon. Like this morning. And get back to me, hear? We’d looove to announce somethin’ ’fore next Tuesday.”

  Next Tuesday was the first Super Tuesday primary of the campaign—eight states.

  “Don’t keep me waitin’, Gil. Bye-bye.”

  When he put the phone down, Sedaka’s heart felt like a pinball ricocheting off his organs.

  A few minutes ago he was trying to figure out how to leak the dalliance with Traynor to benefit Wendy. Now, making that dalliance public seemed a hundred times more dangerous. Especially if Traynor’s camp were to leak it. A few minutes ago he was trying to figure out how to stall for more time. Now, time seemed like a ticking bomb. A few minutes ago he was trying to contemplate how to maximize the upside to Traynor’s offer. Now he couldn’t quite fathom what was upside and what was disaster.

  There was an old saying in politics: every crisis is an opportunity. If that were so, then every opportunity also had to be a crisis.

  Day Two

  Tuesday

  February 25

  Four

  The Capitol Building

  Washington, D.C.

  Of course it “leaked.”

  The hint of “overtures” to Wendy Upton was buried in a piece the next day in the Washington Tribune. It was one of those stories journalists generously called “think pieces” that were really just a grab bag of rumors and ruminations. The reporter, a national correspondent named Gary Gold, had tossed in a list of names being bandied about as possible VP candidates, but he mercifully hadn’t included, or didn’t know, any details. “Among those being vetted,” he’d written, followed by a small list of names that included Upton’s. “So strong is the electoral appeal of the maverick Arizona Republican,” Gold had thrown in, “her name comes up in conversations in both parties.”

  That was it.

  By itself the reference had done no harm. Nor had it made much of an impression. There were no calls afterward from curious reporters seeking comment, or from enthused friends offering encouragement. Whatever tip Gold had, in other words, apparently it wasn’t something circulating widely around town. For now, the two secret approaches to Upton were still secret.

  The night before, Sedaka had also gotten a call at home from Michael Woo, the state archivist back in Phoenix.

  “There are people here,” Woo had reported, as if he were shocked someone had walked into the state archives at all, “poking into the senator’s records.”

  So she was being vetted. By whom, Sedaka wondered. Traynor’s people or Bakke’s? Wood hadn’t known who they were. They’d registered only their names, no affiliation. Most vetters were lawyers, who don’t reveal their clients. But Sedaka hadn’t been able to match the names Wood gave him to any law firms.

  The next morning and part of the afternoon passed quietly, full of meetings and calls. Upton and Sedaka weren’t able to sit down and talk more about the two offers or how to respond. But they had to figure out something. Two offers—from
competing parties—meant the chances of more details leaking out about them were doubled. And if more did leak, they would have to manage the messaging about them even more carefully.

  They finally had a chance for a serious conversation that afternoon. They found it in her Capitol “hideaway” office, the small space inside the Capitol Building given to each senator where they could have some privacy.

  “I think you’ve been avoiding me,” Sedaka said when he wandered in.

  “We’re stalling for time,” she said. “Remember?”

  He sat down and didn’t say a word. He just gave her a look, half amused, half terrified: So what you gonna do now?

  Then the phone rang. Sedaka picked it up—insulation for the boss in case it was someone she wanted to avoid. The surprised voice on the other end, expecting to hear the senator herself, was Jerry Farmer, Upton’s campaign finance chairman and their biggest fund-raiser.

  He must have called Upton’s main office, and the switchboard put him through. “She there?” Farmer said. His voice sounded coiled up.

  Sedaka handed the phone to Upton, but she picked up the extension instead and pointed for Sedaka to stay on the line.

  “Wendy, I’m calling because I just got what I consider a meaningful phone call, and I need to convey a message to you.”

  First name, Upton thought. This isn’t formal. And Farmer sounded truly stressed.

  “Hello to you, too, Jerry. A call from whom?”

  “A friend, calling on behalf of another friend. But it’s the message that’s important, Wendy. Not who it came from.”

  Everything about this registered alarm.

  “You can convey the message, Jerry,” Upton said. She used the tone she had perfected years ago as an army prosecutor. Cool and a little scary. “But you will need to tell me who the message is from.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Farmer said. “The person who called me was just conveying the message for someone else. Whom, by the way, he didn’t name. The man who called me, Wendy, was just a messenger.”

  Upton looked at Sedaka.

  “What was the message, Jerry?”

  She swept a legal pad and a pen from her desk and started to take shorthand, a skill she had taught herself in college.

  “The message, Senator, was this,” Farmer said unsteadily. “If you accept the offer to run as vice president, there are people who know something about you, which they are prepared to use to destroy you. Even drive you from the Senate. And out of public life entirely.” Farmer took a breath but it wasn’t long enough for Upton to interrupt. “Now, Wendy, I don’t know any more than that. But that’s what they said.”

  Upton felt a cold sensation down her neck, like the day her parents died.

  “What was the message exactly?” she asked.

  “That was the message,” the money bundler said. “Word for word. ‘If you accept the offer to run as vice president,’” he repeated, clearly reading now, “‘there are people who know something about you, which they are prepared to use to destroy you. Even drive you from the Senate. And out of public life entirely.’ I was told to write it down. And the man who called me had written it down, as he had been instructed to do. Then he read it to me and told me to write it down. That was the message.”

  Farmer quickly added: “Are you considering the vice presidency?”

  She ignored the question. A glance at Sedaka. “Destroy me with what?”

  “I have no idea, Wendy.”

  “And you didn’t ask, Jerry?”

  She had always found Farmer a little too eager to please, a little too transparent.

  And life on Capitol Hill was dominated now by money in ways that had become grotesque and outsized. She spent countless hours dialing for dollars and attending fund-raisers, as did all her colleagues. Money was also how the leadership kept party members in line. The Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker compiled millions in super PACs and doled it out to members in tough races. Big donors loved to give to the leadership PACs: it meant you only had to convince a few people to bend to your will, not each member.

  The system had become, in every sense of the term, pay to play. But it was the payers who controlled it.

  “Wendy, the man who called me is a friend. And an admirer of yours. Someone who has given you and the party a lot of money. But he was just a messenger. He didn’t know. He didn’t ask.”

  “Is that what he told you?” She made the question sound like an accusation.

  “Yes, that’s what he said. And I didn’t ask any questions. Christ, Wendy, I’m also calling as your friend. As someone who doesn’t want to see you harmed. I didn’t ask what the threat was. And I frankly don’t want to know. I don’t want to be any more a part of this than I have to.”

  “Should I thank you for that, Jerry?”

  “What do you want me to say, Wendy? That I interrogated the man? Well, I didn’t.” Apparently, the self pity in his voice even sounded unpersuasive to Farmer, for he now began to explain himself. “I didn’t ask who the message came from. And he wasn’t going to tell me. But the person who called me is a serious man. And he wouldn’t have called me unless he had to—unless this was coming from serious people.”

  There was pause, and then he added, “Wendy, don’t blame me for this. For whatever it is.”

  Farmer made it sound as though Upton had embroiled him in some scandal of her making.

  “Wow, Jerry, thanks so much for being such a great friend. Just do me one more favor, if it isn’t too much of an inconvenience. If he calls again, try asking some follow-up questions. I’d sure appreciate it.” She hung up before he could respond.

  There are people who know something about you, which they are prepared to use to destroy you.

  What did that mean? Who? Destroy her with what? Upton felt everything shift, like a tectonic plate undergoing a change in pressure.

  She glanced at Sedaka. Then she looked out the small window at the view of the Mall, the view she so loved. It was a glistening winter day, sunny and crisp, which at the moment seemed to taunt her.

  At fifty-three, Wendy Upton could be easily mistaken for someone ten years younger. Her blond hair, the color of straw, fell to her shoulders, but most days in Washington she wore it up, a habit she had adopted in the military so it would fit under a hat. She was very fit; she ran, did triathlons, ate well. And her entire career she strove to be the most prepared person in every room. She hoped that any attention she drew to herself came slowly and was earned by knowledge she had that contributed to solving whatever problem needed to be solved—not by stunts or speeches. She distrusted people who attracted attention to themselves for the sake of the attention; Lord knows there were enough people in her trade already doing that And every workday she dressed in a suit—jacket and pencil skirt—yellow, blue, or black. Red was a cliché.

  She had worked her whole life, come from nothing, an orphan. She had fought for everything she had accomplished, risen higher than she could ever have imagined, and taken pride that it was all earned, never given. And, now, in an instant, it felt as if perhaps none of that mattered.

  Five

  Baltimore, Maryland

  Randi Brooks closed the folder from which she had been reading, glanced at her partner, and frowned at their client.

  Fabian Grimaldi was a pear-shaped man with a meticulous silver mane and an expression that suggested he was never wrong. He was wearing a handmade indigo blue suit, and his tie was the trademarked maroon of the football team he owned. From the bottom of his shirtsleeves winked diamond-encrusted cuff links bearing the words SUPER BOWL CHAMPIONS.

  Grimaldi didn’t look back at Randi Brooks. The owner of the Baltimore Wolverines instead spoke to Brooks’s male partner, a lean, cool figure, who had been silent throughout her report.

  “Do you agree?” Grimaldi asked Peter Rena.

  The quiet man just gazed back at Grimaldi but said nothing.

  Randi Brooks answered him. “Fabian, do you think I’d g
ive you a report Peter and I didn’t agree on?”

  “That’s not what I meant, Randi. I just wanted to hear Peter—”

  “He raped her, Fabian,” she said.

  But she was just repeating what she’d told him moments ago, what she’d spent forty minutes telling him, walking meticulously through the details of the evidence she, Rena, and their team had assembled.

  Grimaldi, however, was a big-picture guy. He had long ago been able to afford to hire others to master the details. He’d also stopped concentrating during Brooks’s presentation fairly early on. And it was obvious to everyone what big-picture question he wanted to answer now. He wanted to ask the two men in the room if they thought, man to man, what his star receiver had done was rape. And whether he could get away with it.

  Then again, Grimaldi hadn’t become rich enough to own an NFL franchise, a soccer team in Italy, and a venture-capital fund as well as build the second-largest box manufacturing business in the United States by being stupid.

  Though he didn’t quite admit it to himself, the two investigators also intimidated him. Peter Rena, dark, watchful, an ex–Special Forces military investigator, had an air of melancholy and quiet danger about him. His partner, Randi Brooks, was less subtle but in her own way just as unnerving. She was only about an inch shorter than Rena, who was around six feet. On legal matters, she spoke with a carbon-steel precision that was a hell of a lot different than his pant-wetting business attorneys. And when animated on other subjects, she was given to flights of creative profanity worthy of the best coaches he had ever known.

  So after being interrupted by her, he was now silent.

  Trent Fowler, the Wolverines’ general counsel, tried to rescue his boss. “You make it sound like the legal case is pretty strong against him.”

  Brooks said: “DNA. Bruises. Eyewitnesses. Contemporaneous accounts from friends of the victim, to whom, by the way, she spoke immediately afterward. They all say the same thing. Frank Verosian followed this young woman into the ladies’ room of that bar. They may have been kissing at a table a few minutes earlier. She may have gone into that bathroom with the idea of having sexual intercourse with Verosian. But at some point she changed her mind. He hit her. She screamed. Or maybe she screamed, and he hit her; that is the only point about which there is some confusion. Then he had intercourse with her against her will. She struggled against him. She verbalized her lack of consent. At that point he was committing rape. That lack of consent was overheard by third parties. It’s a strong case.”