Private Politics (The Easy Part) (9 page)

“The money laundering. Most people would have snapped those binders shut, closed their browsers, not asked any more questions. Not drawn attention to themselves. I’m not surprised you didn’t ignore it, but I want to know why.”

She turned his question around in her head for a long minute. “Reading is...it’s the least. It’s the smallest piece of identity you can help someone else with. You teach someone to read and you give her the world.”

Liam’s head fell back against the couch and he stretched out so he was almost lying down. Through heavily lidded eyes he watched her and accepted this. Then his brow creased. “But why us? Why should that be our mission?”

“I never asked you to make it your mission. It’s
my
mission. Unless you mean something about colonialism, about how this is my white-savior complex.”

He laughed. “I do mean that at some level.”

She pulled her feet up onto to the couch and rested her chin on her knees. “If it helps, we only work where we’re invited. Where we have a partner on the ground who does most of the heavy lifting. I see us...YWR...mostly as a conduit. I raise the money, the program officers find and vet the programs and we track efficiency and make adjustments. We’re a delivery system for aid, but we only send it where it’s wanted.”

“But don’t you wonder what values you’re delivering? Reading is complicated. Fraught. Cultural. Why not malaria nets or vaccines?”

“Because those are value-free?”

He shrugged. “I agree with you. I’m just trying to understand you. Everyone here who’s passionate, really passionate, has a reason why this cause is her cause and not that one.”

“Ah.” She’d confessed a lot to him already tonight. More than she’d told Margot. As much as she’d told Millie. But one more admission wouldn’t make a difference.

“Reading meant a lot to me,” she said. “When I was a kid. Books were always there. Books don’t forget your birthday. Books don’t talk endlessly about your older sister. Books don’t disappoint you. I mean, generally. I can definitely think of some series that didn’t end how I wanted to them to.”

Liam hadn’t moved, but she could feel his attitude toward her shifting. His attention waking up. His empathy clicking into gear.

Before he could do something truly infuriating, like pitying her, she added, “I know I’m not the typical bookish girl with the chunky glasses and the musty copy of Percy Shelley on my bedside table. And I’m not bookish. Not really. I’m a goat. A grazer. Not a serious reader. I don’t even expect the girls to feel about books the way I do. That’s between me and the books. I just...I just think they should have a chance for that. If they want it. And I mean the voting and the jobs and the political empowerment that come along with reading too, yes, absolutely. But also the books. For their own sake.” That didn’t feel like quite enough, so she added, “You know.”

It was the worst sales pitch she’d ever given. She received Liam’s question on a regular basis. She normally managed a polished, adult, impersonal but still persuasive answer. He disrupted her concentration. He disrupted her.

He finally answered softly, “Yeah.”

They sat in silence for a long time. The room suddenly seemed dimmer and the couch enormous compared to earlier. She felt very alone and exposed, which she knew was silly.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For?”

“Sharing your passion with me.”

“You never need to be thanked for sharing your passions.”

“I just go around spilling them all over the place,” he teased.

“No. Because you trust people enough to share. You’re open. It’s a gift.”

“Generally an unwanted one.”

He laughed and made up the couch while she threw away the trash before he got ready to, as he put it, “turn in.” As he relinquished his bedroom and bathroom to her, she tried one last time.

“Are you certain I can’t convince you to take the bed?”

“Absolutely. You’ve already changed the sheets. Let’s not waste the effort.”

The moment after that statement, when she should have ducked into his room and closed the door, passed. She almost waved at it, knowing that by missing the opportunity, she was introducing another awkward pause to their relationship.

And on cue, there they were, staring with wicked intent. It was as if they enjoyed it, sharing these moments of lingering potential.

Not wanting to think too hard about why but unwilling to end it, she tried to look at the floor and come up with an excuse to go inside. Instead, what she ended up doing was studying him. He’d changed into a T-shirt and shorts and smelled of soap and toothpaste. His hair was damp from washing his face and a bit was falling in his eyes. He looked domestic. Intimate. Comfy.

And she wanted him.

“Thanks. For letting me stay here,” she said, trying to ignore the thought and finding it sticky.

“Thanks for agreeing.”

The space between them was lit by the lamps on his nightstand and in the corner of the living room. It was good lighting for him, though she’d come to wonder if that were always true. How she’d ever found him nondescript was now beyond comprehension. He wouldn’t ever be handsome. He wouldn’t ever be debonair. He wouldn’t ever be sophisticated. But he was mighty cute. For once, couldn’t she give cute a chance?

Nope, she couldn’t. She needed to figure out what Geri and Ryan were up at to YWR and extricate herself from his apartment soon before observing those things and acting on them converged. Because how awful would she be if she slept with him knowing how he felt and knowing she didn’t reciprocate?

Really awful.

She took a deep breath and said the first thing that came to mind to end the moment. “Well, goodnight.”

Having uttered the words that released her from his gaze, she closed the door with a
click
and got ready for bed. All night long, she tossed and turned, imagining she could hear his breathing in the living room, but knowing that was insane.

Yes, she couldn’t get out of here fast enough.

Chapter Nine

The best part about being the boss was hiring whomever he wanted. Of his employees, only one had been trained as a journalist. The rest were politics-obsessed, like himself, and had ended up working for Poindexter through happenstance.

It was a decent strategy, though. They had hundreds of thousands of hits a month from tens of thousands of unique users. If things kept up, he would be adding more staff soon. It was a fast-paced, competitive world, but he felt as if at any moment, it might all come crumbling apart. Someone new might burst onto the scene and they’d be yesterday’s fad. Trying to downplay his concerns, he’d invited them to a staff lunch at Tortilla Coast, a cheap Mexican place a few blocks from Congress and the Supreme Court.

Amy, Neil and Sunitha were debating the merits of Lana Del Rey—”talentless Amy Winehouse knockoff” versus “nonthreatening pop star” versus “the musical equivalent of cotton candy”—but Liam had other things in mind.

Angling his body to get a measure of privacy, he asked Doug, “Where are we at on the Ryan Scott story?”

“As Deep Throat taught me, I’m following the money,” Doug said, scooping up salsa with a chip.

As confusing as DC could seem to outsiders, following the green river was the easiest, albeit dirtiest, way to figure out how the city worked. Unlike most of the sources they worked with, it almost never lied.

That was pretty much the extent of his journalistic tricks, however. Liam had started blogging in the late nineties, the Wild West days of the Internet when the idea that anyone would ever be able to monetize anything outside of AOL had seemed laughable. He shouldn’t have underestimated the capacity of business to exploit every opportunity to profit. Within a few years, the corporatization of blogging had begun.

In his deepest recesses, he suspected he wasn’t all that good at what he did, that he had simply been in the right place at the right time. By the time he graduated from college, print institutions had realized they needed actual web presences rather than merely publishing their regular content online. So they’d stumbled over each other trying to snatch up the more prominent bloggers, one of which had been him.

“Where’s the money leading?” he asked Doug.

“From what I can tell about his activities on the Hill, and obviously I’ve just done some low-key asking around, he’s mostly been working the Foreign Affairs Committee. In order to mask the source of the money he’s moving through YWR, it’s got to be coming from a source that wants something the committees can give.”

Liam nodded. Doug’s logic made sense. “But who wants something from them and can’t lobby directly?”

Every business and organization in America lobbied. Every college, every church, every cause had a presence in DC. If not a permanent office and full-time staff, than a firm somewhere on retainer. You’d be stupid not to. Influence made the world go ’round and it could be yours for the right price. So who had money to spare but the inability to make the system work for them?

“Or can’t lobby any
more
?” Doug asked. “Maybe it’s someone who has maxed out their official lobbying expenditures. They run the money through YWR, Ryan does double-duty with the committee and everyone’s happy.”

This made absolute sense, but what made him nervous was the threat on her bed. Liam asked, “Have you learned anything more about Scott personally? Does he seem dangerous, unpredictable?”

Liam had told Doug and the rest of the Poindexter staff about what had happened with Alyse. First, because it indicated they were on the right track with their inquiry and second, because it was possible that whoever had threatened her might turn his attention to them.

“He’s a lobbyist. It’s his job to be likable. I haven’t heard anything that doesn’t fit, but that doesn’t tell us anything.” Doug ate another chip. “Is it possible she’s overreacting?”

“No.”

He knew that the guy didn’t mean anything by it. Doug didn’t know Alyse; he was raising every possibility, which was his job. But even setting aside his personal investment in the case, Liam thought it was obvious she wasn’t.

Trying to keep the edge out of his voice, he said, “Even if somehow she’s misinterpreting the conversation with her boss, you have the threat on her bed. In all the years I’ve been writing about politics, that’s never happened to me.”

They received hate email on an almost daily basis, generally from people of every possible political persuasion, but Liam had never had it appear at his house.

“Fair enough,” Doug said. “So it’s someone who isn’t worried about money, wants something from Foreign Affairs and will threaten anyone with any information about it.” He ticked the traits off on his fingers.

Unfortunately, any number of possibilities remained.

“And she’s staying in your apartment,” Sunitha said. Evidently the Lana Del Rey well had run dry.

Liam proceeded carefully. “For a few days.”

“Uh-huh.” All of his employees were staring at him with identical expressions of amusement and skepticism.

“That’s it! I’m on the couch. She’s only there until we figure this out.” Which was totally reasonable and logical. Unlike his sense that he could feel her moving in his bed from thirty feet away all night long.

“I don’t know.” Doug shook his head. “Lots of people want things from Foreign Affairs. It could take weeks to figure it out.”

“Years even,” Amy put in.

Neil said, “I met her once at Lone Star. I can assure you this is a serious hardship for Liam. He may have to give himself hazard pay for witness protection.”

At this, they dropped any semblance of seriousness and laughed openly at him. He had no authority with them whatsoever.

Liam pinched the bridge of his nose. “You know I can fire all of you at will. Think of it—struggling to find a new job with the journalism market being what it is. Is giving me crap really worth it?”

In unison, Amy and Sunitha shouted, “Yes!” and Doug punched him lightly on the shoulder.

Yup, absolutely no authority at all.

Trying to get order and, you know, his dignity back, he asked, “How have our advertising revenues been?”

Amy nodded, sobering a bit. “Things are fine, Liam. We’re up year-to-year.”

“By how much?”

“Two and a half percent.”

He knew he should be pleased. It was growth after all, but being a blogger was like being a shark. If you weren’t moving forward, you were dying.

“What can we do to get more page views?”

He hated the question. Hated that he worried about it. Hated that it drove their business model, but bills were bills. He’d love to move out of the second tier of blogs into the forefront of the industry, but that goal continued to elude them.

“More provocative coverage, more original reporting,” Doug answered.

“You need to give up some control,” Neil said with a shrug. “You’re involved at every level, and that’s great, but it slows us down a bit.”

This was an ongoing point of contention. For years he’d resisted. As his stress level increased, Liam was increasingly ready to consider alternatives to his own very hands-on process.

“Send me that memo again, the one about the alternative editorial stuff,” Liam instructed.

“Will do, boss.”

Too bad the title gave him heartburn.

* * *

Late on Tuesday afternoon, Alyse crossed in front of the conference room again to confirm no one was in there with Fred and that no one was watching her. Geri had been holed up in her office all day, so Alyse hadn’t had the chance to feel her out vis-à-vis the note. She felt strongly that Geri hadn’t been involved, at least not directly, but before she could tackle that situation, she needed to do some investigating of Fred’s investigating.

Before she lost her nerve, she pulled the door to the conference room open and slipped inside.

“I wanted to check and make sure everything is in order?” she asked with what she hoped was a confident smile. A smile that said,
I’m not up to anything
.

“Um, yes,” Fred said, barely looking up from his computer. He signaled to the stack of papers Geri had delivered the day before. “I have all the letters I need.” One way or another, Alyse had to figure out what was in them.

There was a pretty decent chance that there was nothing in them, nothing to all of this at all. Perhaps—a fading, ephemeral perhaps but one she wanted to cling to nonetheless—nothing was going on. Maybe Geri had been weird because Geri was weird. Maybe Ryan had been paranoid because Ryan was paranoid. Maybe the threat on her bed was a joke or a misunderstanding or a mistake.

Maybe.

More likely, Geri and Ryan were so convinced their plan was working that they had delivered the documents Alyse had seen last week to Fred without hesitating.

But what if she hadn’t? Alyse still had copies of the originals, which were now hiding in the bottom of a filing cabinet in Liam’s closet. Somehow, she had to convince Fred to look through the stuff on the conference table, all without Geri noticing. Piece of cake.

“And do you have enough...” Alyse glanced around, trying to find a hook for distraction. “Coffee? Do you have enough coffee?”

“Oh, yes, thanks.”

“I wasn’t offering. I just wanted to make sure someone told you not to go to the place in the lobby; the coffee from there always tastes stale. No, the place across the street is better. Unless you’re partial to Starbucks or Cosi, because...”

“I’m fine.”

He’d actually done her a favor. She’d been rambling. Clearly she rambled when she was terrified. This was
so
not the kind of self-knowledge she needed.

“What about lunch? You can’t do...accountancy...things on an empty stomach.” It was nearly closing time, but Fred looked like a guy who probably worked right through the noon hour. He was probably regretting that decision right about now.

“Can you explain what this is?” Okay, so maybe he hadn’t worked through lunch. Her second attempt had been even worse than the first, and now he was pointing to something.

“Oh sure.” Alyse leaned across the table and was thrilled that she recognized the letter he was holding. It was one of the ones in Liam’s filing cabinet, except in one crucial way: rather than sporting Geri’s signature on the bottom as the one she’d seen before it, Fred’s version was signed by her.

“This here—” Fred was saying.

He didn’t need time to digest the signature. He’d already taken it in. To him, it seemed unremarkable. Unremarkable that however this shook out, she would be involved. Unremarkable that she’d have to move back to New York, because no one in DC would ever want to work with her again. Unremarkable that as much as she loved YWR and the work they did, none of it mattered because she’d helped someone launder money for nefarious purposes.

Her existential crisis would have to wait: Fred was still talking. “The dedicated account the donation was earmarked for, what is it?”

Alyse took the letter from him and read the line he’d been pointing to, “donation directed to the non-specific supporting activities account.” Okay, so she was wrong. There were two differences to the letter. And like the first alteration, this was bad, bad, bad, mostly because there wasn’t such an account.

“Oh, that,” she said. When no more words followed, Fred looked up at her and nodded for her to continue.

“You know, it’s very technical.”

“I have plenty of time.” The accountant cocked his head to the side and smiled at her. It was sort of a smile. More like a parting of lips and a flash of teeth. Like a smile lost in translation.

Wait, was Fred joking? Was he actually joking with her? Well, he was becoming an ally after all.

“We have a number of dedicated accounts,” Alyse said. She was speaking as carefully as she could, hoping that she’d be able to tell him the truth and hide what she didn’t know and didn’t want to be culpable for. “Some people want their money to go to a certain part of the world. We have some joint projects with certain organizations that received dedicated funds. Other nice people don’t mind paying for overhead expenses. This—” she glanced at the letter, “—I think...this is the new name for that account.” That was good. Noncommittal. It could even be true. Who the hell knew what this account Geri had invented did? All the suspicious money hadn’t been earmarked for anything at all originally.

“Hmph,” Fred said turning back to his computer and extending his hand so she would return the letter. “Where do you find people to fund your overhead?”

“Oh, here and there.”

Alyse stared at the table, unwilling to give up the smoking gun resting between her fingers. She needed to make a copy of it, but her mind couldn’t formulate the right story to justify doing so. Maybe there was another way.

Pitching her voice as casually as she could, she said, “Tell me, are you seeing a lot of letters with that account name?”

He nodded, but she didn’t think he was responding to her question as much as processing whatever thought was currently in his head. His focus on his work could probably be exploited.

Fred didn’t respond to her question, saying half to himself, “You told me that you wrote
some
of the receipt letters, but I haven’t seen one yet with someone else’s name on it.”

Alyse tried to swallow, but either her mouth had gone completely dry or the lump in her throat wouldn’t budge. “Well, you know I write
most
of them.”

If the letter he’d shown her had been tampered with of course others had as well. The things she had accidently discovered were only the tip of the iceberg probably. But how the hell was she going to prove it?

“Can I take a picture of this?” She dropped the letter on the table and whipped her phone out of her pocket, hoping to get her evidence before Fred whisked the letter away. “Just so I can, you know, figure out what that account is.”

She snapped three pictures, hoping that her hands weren’t shaking too hard to get a good one. Seconds later he dragged the letter away, glaring slightly. He set it back on his pile and squared the corners with a practiced tap.

“Is there anything else?” he asked pointedly.