“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?”
“Took her less than a week,” Pam says. “Flipping through my file, Caroline probably spotted the connection. Inez Cotigliano. College neighbor. New reporter. As soon as she found it, she could’ve fired me, but that’s her MO-keep the people with the problems around and cash in on their secrets. Next thing I know, I’m stuck in the web.”
“What’d she do?”
For the first time since we started talking, Pam looks up at me. Her eyes are wide with the fear of judgment.
“What’d she do?” I repeat.
“Four days after the story ran, I got an anonymous note asking me to pay ten thousand dollars. Two payments. Six months apart.” Looking wobbly, she takes a seat. “I didn’t sleep for days. Every time I closed my eyes, I’m telling you, I can still see it: Everything I worked for-dangling right there in front of me. It got so bad, I started coughing up blood. But in the end… there was no way around it… I couldn’t afford to start from scratch.” Shading her eyes with her hands, she rubs the top of her forehead in slow, tense circles. “I left the money in an Amtrak locker in Union Station.”
“I thought you didn’t have any-”
“Sold my car, went delinquent on my loans, and maxed out the cash advances on every credit card I could find. Better to have bad credit than no career.”
She says something else, but I’m not listening. A swell of rage crashes against the base of my skull. Even my toes clench for this one.
“What?” she asks, reading the anger on my face.
“You knew,” I growl. “You knew the whole time she was the blackmailer!”
“That’s not-”
“You sent me right to her! When I came in that first day, I asked you if Caroline could be trusted. You said yes! What the hell were you thinking?”
“Michael, calm down.”
“Why? So you can talk through your teeth some more? Or serve me back up to Inez? You lied to me, Pam! You lied about the phone, you lied about the file, and you lied about Caroline! Think about it for once-if I hadn’t gone to see her that day, none of this-” Once again, I cut myself off and take a careful look at Pam. Cocking my head, I watch the prism shift. She knows what’s running through my brain.
“Hold on a second,” she interrupts. “You don’t think I…?”
“You telling me I’m wrong?”
“Michael, are you nuts? I didn’t kill her!”
“You said it, not me.”
“I’d never hurt her! Never!” she insists. “I swear-I thought she was my friend!”
“Really? So do all your friends blackmail you for large sums of cash? Because if that’s the case, I could use a few extra grand. Small bills, of course.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Call me whatever you want-at least I’m not squeezing you for hush money. I mean, if that’s a friend, I’d hate to see your enemies.”
“I didn’t have any enemies. Not until now.”
“What about-”
“Don’t you get it, Michael? Have you even been listening? All I got was a note and a location. I never knew who it was.”
“But you knew Caroline had access to the files.”
“That didn’t matter-she’s my-” She stops. “She was like family.”
It takes me a second to process the information. “So you never suspected her?”
“I suspected you before I suspected her.”
I’m not sure how to deal with that one.
“Besides,” Pam continues, “you don’t need FBI files to find out Inez and I went to school together. I figured someone else put two and two together, then did the research on their own.”
“Well, didn’t you think it was odd when Caroline showed up dead with thirty grand in her safe and all our files on her desk? I mean, if you’re looking for a blackmailer… ”
“I swear to you, that’s the first I ever thought of it. It wasn’t until that moment that I even raised an eyebrow.”
“Raised an eyebrow? It’s a damn DNA print-all she’s missing is blood on her fingertips and a forehead tattoo that says ‘Will Victimize for Cash’!”
“Don’t make a joke of this!”
“Then stop acting stupid! Once Caroline was killed, you knew she was the blackmailer. I’ve been chasing my tail all this time, and you never gave me a clue! Not once!”
“You already knew, Michael.”
“I didn’t-”
“You did!” she shouts with newfound rage. “You said it that night we had Thai food. You wondered whether Simon was being blackmailed.”