Before the Fall(21)

“Sure you do,” Bill said. “Well, we’re drinking one night. This is maybe a year ago. And we’re talking about Moskewitz, you remember the congressman who liked smelling black girls’ feet? Well, Namor is laughing and he says wouldn’t it be great if we had those phone calls on tape? Broadcast gold, right? A Jewish congressman telling some black chick how he wants to smell her feet? And so I say, yes, that would be good. And whatever, we order couple more seven-and-sevens and Namor says, You know…”

Bill paused for dramatic effect. He couldn’t help it. It was in his nature to perform.

“…You know…it’s not hard. This is Namor. In fact, he says, it’s a f*cking cinch. Because everything goes through a server. Everyone has email, cell phones. They’ve got voice mail passwords and text messaging user names. And that shit is all accessible. It’s crackable. Hell, if you know somebody’s phone number you can just clone their phone, so every time they get a call…”

“No,” said David, feeling a hot flush climb up his spine from his *.

“Whatever,” said Bill. “It’s two guys in a bar at one in the morning. It’s just bullshit cocksmanship. But then he said, pick a name. Somebody whose phone calls you want to hear. So I say, Obama. And he says, That’s the White House. Not possible. Pick somebody else. Lower down. So I say, Kellerman—you know, that piece-of-shit liberal reactionary on CNN. And he says Done.”

David found himself in his chair, though he couldn’t remember sitting. And Krista was looking at him like, It gets worse.

“Bill,” said David, shaking his head, his hands up. “Stop. I can’t hear this. You should be talking to a lawyer.”

“That’s what I told him,” said Krista.

Cunningham waved them off like they were a couple of Pakistani orphans at an Islamabad bazaar.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said. “Picked a name. And who cares anyway? We’re two drunks at a bar. So I go home, forget about the whole thing. A week later, Namor comes to the office. He wants to show me something. So we go into my office and he takes out a Zip drive, puts it in my computer. It’s got all these audio files on it. Fucking Kellerman, right? Talking to his mother, his dry cleaner. But also to his producer about cutting some bits from a story to make it skew a different way.”

David felt a moment of vertigo.

“Is that how you…” he said.

“Shit yes. We found the original footage and ran the piece. You loved that story.”

David was standing again, fists clenched.

“When I thought it was journalism,” he said. “Not…”

Bill laughed, shaking his head with wonder at his own inventiveness.

“I gotta play these tapes for you. It’s classic.”

David came around the desk.

“Stop talking.”

“Where are you going?” Bill asked.

“Don’t say another f*cking word to anyone,” David told him, “either of you,” and walked out of his office.

Lydia was at her desk.

“I’ve got Sellers on line two,” she said.

David didn’t stop, didn’t turn. He walked through rows of cubicles, sweat dripping down his sides. This could be the end of them. He knew it in his bones, didn’t even have to hear the rest of the story.

“Move,” he yelled at a group of crew cuts in short-sleeved shirts. They scattered like rabbits.

Mind racing, David reached the elevator bank, pushed the button, then, without waiting, kicked open the door to the stairs, went down a floor. He stalked the halls like a spree killer with an assault rifle, found Liebling in the conference room, sitting with sixteen other lawyers.

“Out,” said David. “Everybody.”

They scrambled, these nameless suits with their law degrees, the door hitting the last one on the heels. Sitting there, Don Liebling had a bemused look on his face. He was their in-house counsel, mid-fifties and Pilates fit.

“Jesus, Bateman,” he said.

David paced.

“Cunningham,” was all he could say for a moment.

“Shit,” said Liebling. “What did that wet dick do now?”

“I only heard some of it,” David said. “I cut him off before I could become an accessory after the fact.”

Liebling frowned.

“Tell me there isn’t a dead hooker in a hotel room somewhere.”

“I wish,” David said. “A dead hooker would be easy compared to this.”

Looking up, he saw an airplane high above the Empire State Building. For a moment his need to be on it, going somewhere, anywhere, was overwhelming. He dropped into a leather chair, ran his hand through his hair.

“The f*cktard tapped Kellerman’s phone. Probably others. I got the feeling he was going to start listing victims, like a serial killer, so I left.”

Liebling smoothed his tie.

“When you say tapped his phone…”

“He has a guy. Some intel consultant who said he could get Bill access to anybody’s email or phone.”

“Jesus.”

David leaned back in the chair and looked up at the ceiling.

“You have to talk to him.”

Liebling nodded.

“He needs his own lawyer,” he said. “I think he uses Franken. I’ll call.”