David let the words bounce around his head for a while. “That’s a pretty aggressive strategy,” he said. “It’s a little putting on a Speedo to go out and kick a hornet’s nest.”
“Imagery that I neither want nor need,” Cantrell said. “From where I sit — and remember, I’m the coward among us — a passive approach largely guarantees you a grave or a jail cell. If the hornets are going to sting you anyway, why not make a game of it?”
“Pretty damn high stakes,” David thought aloud. Then, to Cantrelclass="underline" “This is the First Lady we’re talking about. This could have tentacles that reach to the White House. I’m just one guy. I don’t have any White House sources. I don’t have a single layer of protection.”
Cantrell put a hand on David’s shoulder. “It’s your life, son. You’ve got to live it the way you want. Do you own a gun?”
“A gun! Who the hell am I going to shoot?”
“Yourself, I’d think,” Cantrell said. “If it comes to that. Die or live. Run or live. Hide or live. Go to prison or live. Each is the opposite of living, as far as I’m concerned. It’s just a matter of choosing your method.”
Suddenly this entire meeting felt like a terrible mistake. David felt his world collapsing into a dark, dense void. Cantrell was right, of course. Not about the suicide — he’d never be able to do that — but about the need to be aggressive.
“Are you sure you don’t want to come along for the ride?” David asked.
“I’ve never been surer of anything in my life. And I’m sorry it’s that way.” As he looked down at his feet, the slate-gray sky gave up a few flakes of snow. Not enough to accumulate, but more than enough to start snarling traffic in Washington.
“I guess that’s it, then,” David said. “Thank you, Grayson.”
“Billy Zanger,” Cantrell said.
“Excuse me?”
“Billy Zanger. He’s a deputy assistant press secretary at the White House. Maybe a deputy deputy. He’s junior, but he was appointed by President Darmond. You might even be older than he. He’s a child. No offense.”
David was well beyond being sensitive to insult. “What about him?”
“He’s a source,” Cantrell said. “He’s an unnamed knowledgeable insider. If you need to sweat someone, he’s the one.”
David pulled up short. “Why would he help me? He doesn’t know me from Adam.”
Grayson shrugged. “It’s what confidential sources do. They talk.”
“Only when they trust you.”
Grayson donned the condescending smile that suited him so well. “David, my boy, there are only three reasons why sources talk to reporters, and none of them are rooted in trust.” He counted them off with his fingers, starting off with his thumb. “One: They leak information that their bosses want them to leak — the policy statement that comes with full deniability. Two: They realize that their careers aren’t going the way they want them to, and they see opportunity in betrayal. The common denominator there is the advancement of their own careers. We journalists are merely their vectors.”
David felt anger brewing in his gut. “Wow, you really are the cynic, aren’t you?”
“I prefer the term ‘realist.’ And we listen to them for the same reason. Their betrayals give us the stories that make our careers. And as a class, I have to say that we reporters are not all that incentivized to determine whether the underlying facts behind the leaks are truth or fiction. The fact that an important person said it is itself newsworthy.”
David shook his head, a rattling motion to make the loose pieces fall into place. “Why are we having this conversation?”
“Because you asked about motivation, and you made a speech about getting the facts right. You’re wading into deep, deep waters, and I wanted you to know how much different the rules of the game are from what you think they are.”
“Because I’m naïve.”
“I was going to say idealistic, but naïve works, too. This is Washington, David. There are no legitimate high horses to mount, and all houses are made of glass. Never forget that. Leave the speech making and the lofty phrases to the politicians. They deliver them better, and no one believes them anyway.”
“What does this have to do with this Zaney guy?”
“It’s Zanger. William Henry Zanger of Concordia, Kansas, via Northwestern University. He lives in Lake Ridge, Virginia, with his public school teacher wife, Barbie, and baby daughter, Hope. Lake Ridge isn’t quite the end of the world, but you can see it from there.”
“This is important?”
“Damned straight it’s important. Billy still owes eighty-seven thousand dollars to Northwestern for his English literature degree. On top of that, they’ve got a two hundred ten thousand dollar mortgage on their tiny little townhouse. That’s almost three hundred thousand dollars in debt to be paid for from combined incomes of under a hundred-fifty-K a year. Do the math.”
“How’d he qualify for that kind of mortgage in this kind of market?” Even as he asked the question, he realized that he’d locked on to the wrong detail.
Cantrell saw it, too, and laughed. “Lending institutions have done very well by currying favor with this administration. But this brings us to the third and most powerful motivation to talk to a reporter.”
David saw it, but was horrified. “Money?”
“Money.”
“You pay sources? That’s unethical.”
This time, Cantrell’s laugh was pure derision. “Now you’re definitely being naïve.”
“The Washington Enquirer, the city’s leading newspaper, allows you to buy information from sources?”
“Of course they don’t allow it. But they also don’t look all that carefully into the ‘miscellaneous’ category on expense reports.” He used finger quotes.
“And Charlie Baroli knows you’re doing it?”
A shrug. “I can’t say that we’ve ever discussed it, but yeah, there’ve been winks along the way. It’s how the system works.”
“But if you’re buying information, how can you ever trust what you get?”
“How can you not? If the information is good, the buyer keeps coming back. If it’s not, then the game ends quickly. Simple supply and demand.”
David felt sick.
“Come on, David. Don’t look so devastated. Our relationship to politicians is equal parts symbiotic and parasitic. Neither can flourish without the other. Keeping the pump primed is good for business.”
David wanted to move on. “So you have this symbiotic parasitic relationship with Billy Zanger. How does that help me?”
“That’s the beautiful part, the part that gives us scribes the upper hand when all is said and done. One could argue that by buying information, we violate some universal ethical code. Clearly, that’s what you think. But when they accept the money, they break the law. That fact — and the fact that we can expose them for what they are — gives us ownership rights.”
David wasn’t sure that he understood.
“I can trade him,” Cantrell said.
David felt his jaw drop open.
Cantrell laughed again. David was getting tired of that sound. “It’s the dirtiest of businesses, isn’t it?” He clapped David on the shoulder. “Anyway, he’s yours if you want him. Believe it or not, his address is in the book.”
Cantrell offered his hand. “Good luck, David. I’ve got to get back to resting on my laurels.”
David shook, and felt oddly ashamed for doing so.
CHAPTER NINE
“All of her enemies are accounted for,” Venice said. It was just shy of 10:00 A.M. “Everyone in the database who is identified as a subject of the FBI investigation is still in prison, due largely to the testimony delivered by Yelena Poltanov. What’s your next theory?”