Guilty Minds

He was British, graduated from Cambridge University, in England, and after college worked at Private Eye magazine for a few years. Then he moved to New York and started a few Internet ventures that made him reasonably rich. He’d started Slander Sheet in his Tribeca apartment, with a friend of his from Cambridge, but they’d had a falling out.

Slander Sheet gradually caught on, then he spun off Slander Sheet LA, for Hollywood gossip, and then Slander Sheet DC, for political gossip. Pretty soon he had an online gossip network. Slander Sheet seemed to publish items about almost anyone. The only people off limits, as Slander Sheet targets, were his friends (mostly journalists), and his college classmates. Actually, he didn’t seem to have many friends. “He’s the kind of guy even his friends don’t like,” someone told me. Two adjectives I heard about him repeatedly were “odious” and “loathsome.”

A couple of years ago, he’d sold Slander Sheet, but no one was sure who he sold it to. The sale was handled in great secrecy. Gunn remained editor in chief. He split his time among LA, New York, and Washington.

I showed up at the Slander Sheet offices in the old bread factory right on time, but Gunn kept me waiting. One of his minions, a white guy in his midtwenties with dreadlocks, explained that Julian had been doing interviews all day, with TV and radio and publications all around the world. He’d be with me as soon as he could get off the phone.

Gunn didn’t have an office. He worked at one of the long tables just like all his employees. Presumably he wanted to make a point about how democratic Slander Sheet was. So I was shown to a glassed-in conference room and seated at another long table.

After twenty minutes, Julian Gunn showed up, accompanied by an attractive but dour blond woman in a pink suit he introduced as his general counsel. Gunn was a small man with an oversized head, an acne-ravaged face, and receding pale-blond hair. He was wearing dark jeans and a shiny dark blue striped shirt.

“So sorry to keep you waiting,” he announced. “It’s a crazy day. We’ve never had such traffic. It’s mad. We’re up to almost ten million page views on the Claflin story.”

“Wow,” I said without enthusiasm.

Turning to his general counsel, he said, “We’re approaching the all-time record for page views-those photos of Kim Kardashian’s butt, in Paper magazine. Those got eleven million.”

He sat at the head of the table, his general counsel to his right. I sat on his left.

“So your name is Nicholas Heller, and you’re here to talk about our Jeremiah Claflin story, is that right?”

I nodded.

“I take it the great Gideon Parnell is too busy to make it here himself?”

I smiled. “You’ll have to settle for me.”

“So, Mr. Heller.” He opened his hands, palms up. “Have at us.”

“Have you set a sale price yet?”

“Excuse me?” He gave me a slow blink. He reminded me of a lizard, or of a frog about to flick out its tongue and catch a fly.

“On your little hacienda in the D.R. See, I figure you can get two point five million for it. You’ll need all of that and more.”

He looked puzzled, as I expected him to be. He’d recently bought a house on the beach in the Dominican Republic, but not many people knew about it.

“I thought you were here to talk about Jeremiah Claflin.”

“Exactly. Because if you don’t take down that fraudulent story by four o’clock this afternoon, and issue an abject apology on your home page, you’re going to be hit with a massive lawsuit that’s going to shut down Slander Sheet and wipe you out personally. You’re going to need to sell every asset you can.”

“Oh, please. Sue me.” He fluttered his fingers in the air. “Get in line. I’ve lost track of how many lawsuits we’ve been threatened with.” He turned to his general counsel. “We must get ten legal threats a week, right, Emily?”

“At least,” she said.

He turned back to me. “I know who you are, Nicholas Heller. Mandy Seeger did some checking. You dropped out of Yale to enlist in the Special Forces, in Iraq and Afghanistan and all those godforsaken places. Who knows what you were up to? I’m sure if we do a little digging, we’ll find some My Lai in your past. Some raped Iraqi woman, some bayoneted Afghan boy, maybe. And my goodness, your old man was that scoundrel Victor Heller. Who’s currently serving twenty-eight years in prison.” He shook his head. “I don’t imagine your clients would appreciate the sordid truth about your background coming out. Anyway, if you’re here on Gideon Parnell’s behalf, I assume you’re here to lodge a complaint.” He interlaced his fingers and steepled them. “Well, then. Lodge away. You have a problem with Mandy’s reporting?”

“Mandy Seeger is a top-notch reporter, but she got taken in by a clever hoax. Jeremiah Claflin never had a relationship with a call girl, period. Full stop.”

“Of course not,” Gunn said with a smirk.