“I… what? ”
“Just what I said. I’m responsible for you during your time here.”
“Explain that, please.”
“The firm’s management committee recognizes there could be cultural and educational issues for an Army attorney in our ranks. It’s my role to smooth them out.”
“Meaning what, precisely?” Actually, I knew what it meant.
“Listen, Drummond-”
“My name’s Sean.”
“All right. Let me-”
“And I can call you Sally, right?”
“If that’s important to you. Look, Drummond, you’re obviously incompetent-”
“Please have a seat,” I interrupted. I pointed at the opposite couch. I smiled. “Let’s start over. I’m Sean and you’re Sally. You’re not my mentor or my baby-sitter-you’re my colleague. We should treat each other respectfully, like friends even, and-”
Another figure had appeared in the doorway, who said, “Good morning, Major.” He cracked a faint smile and added, “I’m Cy Berger. .. one of the senior partners around here.”
I actually knew that.
In a city packed with recognizable faces, Seymour, aka “Cy,” Berger had one of the better known. He’d been a two-term congressman and two-term senator who ruled the Hill before this embarrassing thing with a Senate page-actually, it was a flock of Senate pages, other senators’ wives, and assorted other ladies- had toppled him. Such was the scope of Cy’s political skill and influence, in fact, that he was known as the King of the Hill before one and then hordes of tearful women came out of the woodwork to testify that Cy had messed around in their panties. I recalled a few televised hearings, news of covered-up paternity suits, a second divorce from a cuckolded bride, and, finally, Senator Berger at a press conference announcing he was dropping out of his reelection race to “pursue private affairs.”
He might’ve worded it a bit differently, if you ask me.
In any case, Washington is a weird town with a different cultural take on political disgrace and professional ruin. So Cy did the
D. C. thing: He retreated into a powerful law firm where he earned ten times his Senate salary and after Jay Leno ran out of jokes about him, progressed into a sort of senior statesman, doing the Sunday morning talk-show circuit, backslapping his former colleagues for favors, and his private life became his private life once more.
But understand that Washington loves nothing more than a splashy political scandal, and for those two months Cy Berger had been it, the talk of the town.
The King of the Hill was retagged the Cock of the Walk, and the big joke making the rounds concerned this farmer who paid a fortune for a barnyard cock named Cy, a bird reputed to have miraculous prowess and endurance. The farmer brought Cy to his farm, placed him in the barnyard, and watched him go to work. He was astonished-Cy was not only tireless, he was indiscriminate.
He schtupped all 300 hens before lunch, then ran into the cow pasture, nailed 400 head of cattle, and had just leaped into the pig-pen when the farmer got tired of watching. But the next morning, when the farmer returned to the barnyard, to his dismay he found his prized cock on its back, legs stiffly pointed skyward, apparently dead from exhaustion. A flock of buzzards was circling overhead. Furious about being cheated, the farmer began loudly cursing, until Cy cracked an eye and whispered, “Hey, shut up, would ya. I’ve almost got the buzzards sucked in.”
Back to the situation, however. I said, “Good morning, Senator.”
“Drop the Senator shit. Cy’s fine.” Never seen him face-to-face, Cy was taller than I expected, heavyset, with a florid, ravaged face, salt-and-pepper hair, and a thick nose, migrating toward a bulbous nose. He was not handsome, not even attractive, almost ugly, actually. Yet something in his pheromones exuded the essence of power, and in Washington, this is the ticket to the goodies.
“May I come in?” he asked me.
I nodded.
He looked at Miss Weston, smiled warmly, and said to her, “Good morning, Sally. How are you today?”
“Fine, Cy. Thank you for asking.”
Back to me. He asked, “Did I interrupt something?”
“Miss Westin was just explaining that she’s my minder.”
“And do you have a problem with that?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose I would.” He contemplated this and me, then said, “I’m the partner assigned to oversee the legal work you two will be doing. I’m also the one who persuaded the firm to participate in this Army program.”
So this was the guy. Naturally, I asked, “Why?”
“I thought it would be good for the firm’s image.”
“I’m not even good for my own image.”
He chuckled. “I’m sure you’ll have a lot to offer us.”
Wrong. But Cy casually picked a piece of lint off his trousers and mentioned to Miss Westin, “Sally, do me a favor and go inform Hal that Major Drummond’s here.” He explained for my benefit, “Hal Merriweather. He handles our personnel issues and has a tendency to be territorial and temperamental.”
It was slickly done, but experience gives you a certain sense for these things. And in fact, the instant she was gone, he closed the door, leaned against it, and examined me from head to toe. “Sean, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, Sean… We’re going to have to make a few adjustments here. Harry Bronson just spoke to me. And poor Sally looks fit to be tied.”
I was not expected to respond to this, and I didn’t. After a moment he went on, “See this office?” It was obvious I saw the office, so he continued, “Jimmy Barber was the best associate we’d seen in years. Yale Law, head of his class, law review, our top pick that year. He was fast-tracked to make partner in six years. Anyway, last summer one of those 60 Minutes knockoffs slammed a cabinet secretary, how he’d taken free flights from a political donor who’d also paid his kid’s college bills and the rent for his mistress’s condominium.”
“The one with-”
“Yeah… same guy. In fact, I talked him into launching a libel suit. And I persuaded the management committee to assign it to Jimmy, as a final test, if you will, before partnership. Jimmy began with a thorough search through the cabinet officer’s financial records. He found receipts for the airfares and the tuition payments for their son. The mistress turned out to be a Peruvian girl the man’s wife sponsored for citizenship and was helping with her rent. His wife even signed the checks. So tell me, Sean, would you work it that way with a mistress?”
“Would you?”
That impertinent question just slipped through my lips. He stared at me for a long moment. But this guy had obviously been dispatched to administer a bureaucratic spanking, and he was my new boss, and attitude adjustment works best when it’s a two-way street. He was the authority figure and I was the wiseass, and somewhere in between we had to find a workable middle ground. I did add, however, “The question was theoretical of course.”
He laughed. “Well, I’ll be damned.” Then he observed, “No, I signed the checks myself. Waste of effort, though. My wives found out about my affairs on the evening news.”
“I’ll bet that was annoying.”
“Yes… it really was.” He then said, “But back to Jimmy, it turned out the network got its whole story from an ex-con. It further turned out that in his previous life, the cabinet member was the district attorney who got the source ten years without parole. More incriminating still, the network never verified the details, never even offered the cabinet member a chance to refute it.”
“So you had a strong case.”
“It did appear that way, yes.”
He then studied the carpet pattern a moment, as though it was too painful to continue. But of course he did continue, saying, “Fields, Jason, and Morgantheau handled the defense with Silas Jackler, their top gun. You’re probably aware, the hard part with libel of a public figure is the requirement to prove malicious intent. After weeks of footwork, Jimmy told us he’d located an inside source who participated in the production and said he was present when a junior editor asked his bosses if they shouldn’t at least verify the story. He was told to shut up. In fact, Jimmy’s source overheard one senior editor boast that he’d already bagged one congressman and wanted a new scalp to hang off his bedpost. Malicious intent, right?”