I swing my legs and sit up in soaked bedsheets.
‘Hello — Paul?’ A voice, a million miles away, like something through a tube, familiar. It is Harry.
‘What the hell time is it?’ I say.
‘Five-thirty,’ he tells me. ‘Sorry to get you out of bed.’
‘It’s all right. I wasn’t sleeping well. What is it?’ I’m wiping perspiration from my forehead, sleep from my eyes.
‘Have you seen the morning paper?’ he says.
‘No. Why?’
‘I think you better take a look. And do yourself a favor,’ he says. ‘Sit down before you open it.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Somebody has inserted a blade, at the sixth cervical vertebra, about eight inches in.’
‘To who?’ I ask.
‘To you, my friend. Second lead, page one, above the fold,’ he tells me. ‘ “Local Defense Attorney Linked to Postal Bombing.” ’
‘Oh, shit.’ I sit, still trying to chase visions of dread from my sleep-ravaged brain. My mind at this moment begins to swim, struggling to sort the real fears from the imagined.
‘I don’t get it,’ I say. ‘The feds already questioned me.’
‘It doesn’t say anything about that. Just that your fingerprints were found all over the place after the bombing, and that certain employees saw you talking to the dead postal worker moments before the blast. Somebody’s doing a number,’ he says.
‘I think you better get yourself together. I’ll meet you at the office.’ Harry hangs up.
I start to forage for clothes, my mind racing to assess the damage that this will do to Laurel’s case, a trial in midstream, scandal affecting her lawyer.
Then I pick up the phone and dial Mrs. Bailey. I will need coverage with Sarah. I am abusing the old lady’s good nature, but as always she is there for my daughter, more than I can say for myself. She will be over in ten minutes.
I’m in my underwear, buttoning up my pants, when I dial again. This time it is a groggy feline voice at the other end, something sultry from sleep.
‘Hello. It’s Paul. I need some help,’ I tell her.
‘What is it?’
‘Somebody’s tagged me with the bombing. In this morning’s paper.’
‘What. Who would-’
‘I don’t have time to talk. I need your help. There’s a judge who’s going to be taking a long hard look at me this morning. An explanation from some authoritative source could go a long way,’ I tell her.
‘I don’t understand,’ she says.
‘Neither do I.’
Silence on the other end. ‘Sure. Whatever I can do. Where can I meet you?’ asks Dana.
We set a time, the county courthouse, and I hang up.
For nearly two hours we assess damage while walking the floor at the office, Harry and I. As the arching light of dawn turns to day, I can see the incandescent lights as they dim on the Capitol dome five blocks away.
We reread the story, first silently, then out loud to each other, looking for nuances we may have missed. We explore the possible sources. Harry is thinking Jack. By now he would have gotten word that he is the centerpiece of my case. He is well connected with the press. But Harry hasn’t told me how Jack would get the information that my prints were found at the scene, with the wraps thrown around a pending investigation.
The staff reporter on the byline is not a name I have heard before. It is the stuff of which scandal is made. Attributions to ‘highly placed but unnamed sources close to the investigation.’ It does not say, in so many words, that I am a suspect, but in the interests of a good story buries me in a mud slide of inference and innuendo. If this were the Inquisition, they would be pouring hot lead in my ear by morning as a means of leading me to the Lord and coaxing my confession.
What makes this most baffling is that I have come clean with the FBI, hours of questioning behind closed doors. They know precisely what I was doing talking with Marcie Reed. All I can figure is some enterprising reporter who got his hands on only half of the story.
The problem as we see it, and Harry sums it up quickly, is that the jurors in Laurel’s case are not shielded from this news. It would not be covered by the court’s gag order, there being no obvious link between the bombing and Melanie’s murder. Left as it is, the jury, seeing my name coupled with the events at the post office, would not be believing much that I say in Laurel’s defense, the case of one felon pleading the cause of another.
‘He can’t mask it, but maybe he can take the tinge off. An instruction to the jury.’ Harry’s talking about Judge Woodruff. We have called four times in the last hour. He’s not yet in chambers, though by now he has no doubt read his morning paper.
‘It’s probably just a one-day story,’ I say. ‘By tomorrow it’ll be old news, off the front page, explained and corrected.’
‘You sound like the fucking founding fathers,’ says Harry. ‘An innocent’s notion of the First Amendment,’ he tells me.
This from a man who spends his life reading the newspaper.
‘Hang on to your nuts,’ he says. ‘They don’t call it the press for nothing.’
‘They got the facts wrong. They’ll fix it,’ I say.
‘Like the man said, fifteen minutes of fame,’ says Harry. ‘You get yours by flashlight up the kazoo.’
I tell him to relax. I try the judge on the phone. Now the clerk’s not answering. We can’t wait any longer, so we decide to walk the few blocks to the courthouse. We can die of anxiety there as well as here. Besides, by now Dana should be on her way over.
We drop down the elevator in the building. I step out and get my first glimpse of them. A van with a dish on top parked out front. Then two more down the block. I wonder if maybe there’s a fire in one of the high-rises. Then, as I step out onto the street, I get a microphone in the face.
‘Mr. Madriani, what can you tell us about the bombing?’
Another guy with a pen and pad. ‘Are you being charged? Are you talking to authorities?’
‘How long have you been under investigation?’
Harry is looking at me. ‘Holy shit.’
We grab the doors, step back inside, close them, and turn the lock. We’re getting a lot of glare from the strobes on the cameras bouncing off the glass of the door. A horde is now moving in.
One of the more enterprising souls is pulling on the handles, rattling the heavy door in its frame.
Harry’s got my elbow, dragging me toward a door down the hall. The way to the garage. We get in his car, and as we come up the ramp to the street there is another throng.
‘I should have put you in the fucking trunk,’ he says. ‘Hang on.’
He nearly runs some guy down who is so burdened with batteries and lights he cannot move.
‘So much for a one-day story,’ he says. ‘Any more theories?’
I look back over my shoulder out the rear window, and a few of them are running for their cars. A woman reporter with her camera crew is hoofing it down the street, figuring I am due in court and it’s only three blocks.
Harry asks me what I think Dana will do about all this.
‘I’m hoping she’ll vouch for me with Woodruff. Tell him what happened, that I was merely interviewing a client. That I’m not a suspect.’
‘You’ve been bitten by the love bug,’ he says. ‘She is probably the leaker.’
When I look over at him I see a lot of wrinkles and furrows, advice to the lovelorn from Harry. He is talking about Dana like he suspects she has lifted her leg, making me the leakee.
‘Why would she? She has nothing to gain.’
‘Birds of a feather,’ he says.
‘You mean Cassidy?’
‘I mean estrogen’s thicker than water,’ he says. ‘There are some of them who get off just tubing some poor slob.’ The ‘them’ Harry is talking about is the other half of humanity, the vast fairer sex. ‘Maybe you didn’t scratch the right itch the last time you got it on.’ Harry’s getting personal now. ‘I warned you,’ he says. ‘Two female prosecutors.’