The First Councel

Watching her get riled doesn’t make it any easier. “Then I can take you at your word?”

She takes a few steps toward me. “Michael, this is me.”

“Answer the question.”

She still can’t believe it. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” she insists. “Ever.”

“Are you sure?”

“I swear.”

She asked for this one. I look her straight in the eye and smack her with it. “Then why didn’t you tell me Caroline had your file?”

Pam stops dead in her tracks. She’s too smart to come any closer.

“C’mon, Pam, you’re a bigshot now-where’s your bigshot answer?”

Refusing to reply, she clenches her jaw in silence.

“I asked you a question.”

Still nothing.

“Did you hear what I said, Pam? I asked y-”

“How’d you find out she had it?” Her voice is barely above a whisper. “Tell me who told you.”

“It doesn’t matter who told me, I-”

“I want to know!” she demands. “It was Nora, wasn’t it? She’s always butting-”

“Nora had nothing to do with it. And even if she did, it doesn’t change the facts. Now why did Caroline have your file?”

She walks across the anteroom and rests against the small table that houses the fax machine. Leaning forward, she holds her side like she has a stomachache. It’s a vertical fetal position.

“I knew it was her,” she says. “I knew it.”

“Knew it was who?”

“Caroline. She was the one with the access. I just didn’t want to believe it.”

“I don’t understand. What’s in the file?”

“Nothing’s in the file. That’s not how she worked.”

“Pam, stop being cryptic and tell me what the hell she did.”

“I’m assuming she picked apart the fine print. That’s what she was good at. I mean, it’s not like your file says ‘Son pulled strings for retarded father.’ She probably just noticed that all your dad’s residences were group homes. A little legwork later, she had everything she needed.”

“So what was in your fine print?”

“You have to understand, it was right when I first started. I was still… ”

“Tell me what you did,” I insist.

Pausing, she takes her knuckle and lightly knocks it a few times against her cheek. Penance. “Do you promise you won’t tell anyone?”

“Pam… ”

She knows me better than that. Eventually, she asks, “Do you remember what Caroline was working on when I got here?”

I think about it for a second and shake my head.

“Here’s a hint-when Blake announced his resignation… ”

“… Kuttler was nominated. She was filling Blake’s seat on the Supreme Court.”

“That’s the one,” Pam says. “And you know how it is when a Justice gives up his seat. Every lawyer worth his pinstripes starts thinking he’s pretty. So when Senior Staff started working on the list of nominees, it fell to us to check them out. Around the same time, I got smacked with my first law school loan bill. With ninety thousand dollars in loans, that’s over a thousand dollars every month. Add that to the first and last months’ rent on the apartment I had just moved into, plus security deposit, plus car payments, plus insurance, plus credit card debt, plus the fact that it takes a month before you get your first paycheck-I was here a total of nine days and I was already sinking hard. Suddenly, I’m contacted by a Washington Post reporter named Inez Cotigliano.”

“That’s the woman who-”

“I know who she is, Michael. She was my next-door neighbor during my senior year of college.”

“So you’re the one who-”

“I never told her about you. I swear on my mother’s life. We had one dance and that was it. Believe me, that was more than enough.”

I cross my arms. “I’m listening.”

“Anyway, as I was vetting all the potential Court nominees, Inez, like every hungry reporter in the city, was trying to find out who was on the short list.”

“Pam, don’t tell me you-”

“She offered me five thousand dollars for confirmation that Kuttler was the front-runner. I didn’t know what else to do. I’d be fine once the paychecks started flowing, but that was three weeks away.” As she tells the story, she refuses to face me.

“So the Post fronted the cash?”

“The Post? They’d never let that happen. It was all out of Inez’s own pocket-she was dying to make it big. Her dad’s some Connecticut trust-fund guy. Family has the patent on aspirin or something ridiculous like that.”

“That was confidential information.”

“Michael, she showed up on the worst day of my life. And if it makes you feel any better, I was so wracked with guilt, I eventually paid her back the money. Took me almost a year to do it.”

“She still had the infor-” I cut myself short. It’s so easy to judge; just grab the gavel. The only catch is, I know what it’s like to get my fingers pounded. “Must’ve been a big day for Inez.”

“Her first front-page story-below the fold, but on A1-‘Hartson Down to Three; Kuttler Leading Pack.’ It didn’t matter, though. The Herald beat her to the punch. They ran a similar story the same day, which I guess means I wasn’t the only one leaking.”

“That’s pure rationalization and you know it.”

“I never gave her anything concrete; I just told her the front-runner.”

“So what happened? Caroline found out?”