Conspiracy Read online

  Others in the firm viewed Harrison as eccentric and minimized their contact with him. But not Taylor. Not only did he often work with her on projects that Fujimura funneled to her, but he was responsible for her coming as a partner to the firm. After hearing about her work at the Kyoto global-warming conference from some of his energy clients, Harrison had flown to Japan and made Taylor an offer that was too good to turn down and return to her job as Senator Boyd's chief of staff after the Kyoto conference ended. It wasn't the money that did it. He had told her in his usual blunt manner, "I have clients who want to build power plants that don't burn fossil fuels, but can't because of permitting and other environmental issues. If you believe in the cause, come with us and help them get the job done. If you don't, then stop pontificating about it."

  The phone conversation ended. He stuck the plastic cigarette in his mouth, sat down behind his desk, put up his feet, and looked at her. There were no greetings. It was the gruff Harrison's way of saying, "What do you want?"

  Sitting in front of his desk as usual, Taylor noticed the holes in the soles of his shoes. He was in need of a haircut, but she knew that would be cured soon, because Doris scheduled them for him every four to six weeks in order to ensure that he maintained a good image for his clients.

  "I received an e-mail from Fujimura," Taylor said, speaking rapidly, which she always did with the restless Harrison to keep his attention. "He has another transaction for us. Any chance you can take charge?"

  "How big and what's the timing?"

  "I'll know tomorrow. I'm having breakfast with him."

  "For you, anything, my beleaguered friend."

  "Do I look or sound that bad?"

  "Both."

  Without asking, Doris brought in two large mugs filled with black coffee and handed one to each of them. This man does not need caffeine, Taylor thought.

  Harrison took a gulp of coffee. "How's the campaign going?"

  "Don't ask. I've got big troubles."

  "You want to talk about it?"

  She sighed. "I suppose so."

  "That bad?"

  "Wait till you hear."

  She had no hesitation talking to Harrison. From the time she had hooked up with Senator Boyd for the campaign, she regularly sought the lawyer's advice. He had been an informal mentor since he had lured her to the firm, and he had never betrayed a confidence. Besides, it was Harrison who had persuaded Don Blank, the managing partner, to keep Taylor on with half pay during the campaign.

  She reported to Harrison what Cooper had told her in the park yesterday.

  In typical Harrison fashion, he cut her off in the middle of a sentence. "You're right. You do have trouble. Big trouble."

  "What do you make of it?"

  "Can I be brutally honest?"

  "Could you be any other way?"

  A faint smile appeared on his face. "My guess is that somewhere along the way of an otherwise illustrious career, your marvelous senator may have committed a transgression, either big or small. Probably in California. But at any rate, somebody found out what Boyd did, and they're threatening to disclose it."

  "Where does Dawson of the LA. Times fit in?"

  "Boyd's transgression probably took place in Napa Valley. They're manipulating Dawson to turn up the pressure on Boyd. It's easy to use the press that way."

  "Why do you assume the senator did something wrong?"

  "Good point. But it doesn't matter if he's guilty or not. If the mere fact of this investigation is disclosed now, he'll never get elected. Enough people will believe there must be something to it."

  "The ultimate dirty trick by McDermott and his stooges, like Pug Thompson." She was raising her voice in anger. "More damaging than stealing documents from the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Watergate, like the—"

  "Which backfired on Nixon."

  "But not until after he was reelected."

  "Let's take it one step at a time. First we have to find out if there really is an investigation. Dawson's source could be passing misinformation."

  "Agreed. Any ideas?"

  "How well do you know Jim Doerr?"

  "Barely. I met him twice at bar dinners and once at a benefit for the Washington Symphony."

  "You want me to talk to him for you?"

  She was delighted. "I'd love it."

  "I know him from the Metropolitan Club. He owes me because I asked clients to make calls for him when he was trying to be A.G."

  After Harrison arranged a lunch meeting with Doerr, he turned back to Taylor. "I want to tell you something as a friend."

  She tensed up. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"

  "Probably not. A couple of members of the management committee came to see me yesterday. They said that your billable hours are way below what they expected under the fifty-percent arrangement."

  "What'd you say?"

  "I tried to defend you, but law firms aren't kind and gentle places these days. You know that."

  * * *

  Waiting for Harrison to return from lunch, Taylor sat at her desk trying to read the briefs in the Jeffersonville Power case that had been filed with the Mississippi Supreme Court. The case was scheduled for argument in Jackson in December after the election.

  But she couldn't concentrate. The news Coop had given her yesterday was disquieting, and the charge was wrong. It had to be wrong. She had known the senator for so many years. He would never have committed a crime.

  She well remembered the first time she had met him. It was at a hearing in Napa, California. She was a young lawyer in the governor's energy office, assigned to travel around the state and take testimony from industrial and consumer groups about what should be done to create a fair and reasonable system for energy use and supply. He was the spokesman for the California Wine Growers and Vintners Association, which wanted to ensure that its energy needs were being supplied at a reasonable cost.

  Expecting a contentious session with Boyd—which was what she had encountered when other industry representatives appeared and tore into the governor's policy, which they viewed as favoring consumers who had more votes—Taylor was pleasantly surprised. Boyd was polite and mild mannered. He answered all of her questions in a forthright manner, taking a broad view that all interests in the state had to be satisfied, not merely those of his association. He didn't surrender his own position, but without being patronizing he tried to educate her, to persuade her why he was right, always looking squarely at her. In his words, she found principle, not merely self-interest.

  She finished the hearing at noon and was loading her briefcase and documents in the trunk of a rental car when she saw Boyd approaching across a dusty parking lot. It was a bright and sunny March day. He was wearing sunglasses and walking with a self-confident stride. For the first time it struck her how handsome he was. She was no longer the state's lawyer.

  "Listen, Miss Ferrari," he said in a soft, polite voice.

  "You can call me Taylor."

  "Okay, Taylor then. I'd like to take you on a little tour around the valley this afternoon and let you know what our business is really about."

  He had snowed her with his bright red Lamborghini and lunch at Auberge de Soleil, accompanied by bottles of white and red wine from Mill Valley, followed by a tour of the large chateau that he lived in on the property. Sally was off in San Francisco for the day, buying for her antiques shop, he explained as they stopped in front of the master bedroom. He draped his arm around her shoulder, leaving no doubt about what he had in mind. She found him more attractive and charismatic than any man she had ever met. He was perfect, but for one fact: He was married. When she pulled away, he didn't press her.

  After that day she didn't see him again until he was in his first term in Congress. She was on the staff of the House committee that handled environmental legislation, and he was a committee member. From the start he made an impression on people for his visionary positions. After he was reelected he offered her a job as his chief of staff.
She was tired of being pushed around by more senior staff members, so she accepted.

  "Great," he said. "You'll be a real asset for a young congressman with higher ambitions."

  She smiled. "And what higher ambitions might the young congressman have?"

  "There's a small white house at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I'd like to live in it one day."

  "My, what a modest fellow."

  "My dad used to tell me that if you never shake the tree, you don't get any apples. He also hired the best young wine-maker he could find when he began Mill Valley."

  "I don't crush grapes."

  "But you can help me crush Republican congressmen who are trying to bury me before I get started."

  She laughed.

  "So you accept the job offer?"

  She paused to think. Working for him, she might be able to do something significant and make a difference. "The answer's yes, as long as you stick with your agenda. If the idealism goes, I go."

  The idealism never went, but she had become restless, which was why she took Harrison's job offer at the law firm.

  Charles had never hit on her again after that day in Napa. Nor had he done anything illegal; she was certain of it. Someone was trying to smear him.

  Taylor tried to concentrate on the Mississippi briefs. She was confident that on the merits she should win the appeal, and the injunction halting construction should be lifted. What was making her nervous were the rumors she had been hearing that one of the local officials against the project was a close friend of the chief justice of the state supreme court. She would have to do a good enough job, she reasoned, that they couldn't decide against her even if they wanted to.

  Taylor picked up a pen and began outlining her oral argument. When she was almost finished, the telephone rang. It was Doris. "He just got back from lunch."

  Less than a minute later Taylor was in Harrison's office. "Well?" she asked nervously.

  He pulled the plastic cigarette out of his mouth. "Bottom line," he said sounding sympathetic, "is that there is an investigation under way on Senator Boyd."

  She was seething. "That's absurd and unfair."

  "Well, that may be, but it's being handled by an assistant U.S. attorney by the name of C. J. Cady. I can't help you there. I don't know Cady."

  "I do. We've gone head-to-head twice in environmental criminal cases."

  "And?"

  "I think I finally have a good break. We got along. I always found him to be professional, decent, and fair. Not a zealot like some of those guys." She had once kidded Cady about being too polite and preppy for the current legal world inhabited by sharks, but she was aware that he could be as tough as he had to be. She also knew that beneath that good-looking face, friendly smile, and wavy brown hair was a sharp legal mind and a determination to get at the truth. Knowing her enemy would be an advantage.

  "Doerr wouldn't tell me anything about the substance or status of the investigation."

  "Why not?"

  "He swore up and down that he has no idea."

  "Oh, c'mon."

  "Actually, I believe him, but it doesn't matter for our purposes. We still have Cady to deal with."

  "We? I'm delighted that you want to join me in the engine room of the Titanic."

  "That's what friends are for. Anyhow, maybe we can still head this thing off."

  "Who do you think's doing this to the senator and why?"

  "That's a harder question. The obvious choice is Hugh McDermott and the Republican crowd. Hugh has some lovely fellows working for him, like that psychopath Pug Thompson." Harrison shrugged his shoulders. "On the other hand, you've got Boyd advocating your nuclear-power approach. Those people will do anything, as you and I know." He paused. "And God only knows what other groups you've managed to alienate."

  "The answer is plenty of them, including most of the special-interest groups in this town. The antiabortion crowd, the gun lobby, and the radical right, to name only a few. We knew that we'd make lots of enemies by presenting a program to take the government away from special interests and return it to the people. We were prepared to—"

  "That's my point. There's no way to determine who's behind it at this time." He stopped to think for a minute. "Have you told Boyd what Cooper reported to you yesterday?"

  "Not yet. The senator's in the Midwest. I didn't want to do it by phone."

  "My advice is that you get to Boyd ASAP. Repeat to him what Cooper said and make him tell you everything that might be a problem from his Napa days. You're better off knowing what you're dealing with right now before it's public."

  "I'm going to be with the senator Saturday in St. Michaels. I'll talk to him then."

  "It's a mistake to wait two days. These things move fast when they start rolling."

  She considered his advice. "Let me think about it. I want to do it the right way so I don't upset the senator and destroy the momentum he has going in the campaign."

  Harrison shrugged. "That's your call. Now I'm going to tell you something you won't like to hear."

  Taylor looked at him apprehensively. "What's that?"

  "How well did you know Boyd when he was back in Napa?"

  "Not well. We met once. He was a witness for the wine producers when I was with the state in an electric power proceeding."

  "Did you ever hear of anything that might be a problem?"

  She shook her head.

  "Any business problems before he went into politics?"

  "Nothing I've ever heard about, and I traveled with him extensively in Napa during each of his campaigns after I joined his staff."

  "You like the senator a lot. Don't you?"

  Taylor's face reddened. "We're not having an affair, if that's what you mean."

  "Actually, it wasn't. All I'm saying is that if you like the man and you ever find out that what he did was bad, embarrassing, or even criminal, you should encourage him to withdraw from the race, rather than getting dragged through the mud."

  "You can't be serious."

  "I wish I weren't. Remember Abe Fortas?"

  "He wasn't running for president."

  "The principle's the same. I'm telling you this as a friend. For a man to lose the presidency is one thing. To get destroyed in the process is another. It's called cutting your losses. You give up the office to save the man."

  "But the senator didn't do anything wrong."

  "You wanted advice. I'm giving it to you straight."

  "You're making me sorry I came in to see you."

  "What can I tell you? People play hardball in this town."

  * * *

  He answered his own phone: "Cady here."

  "C.J., it's Taylor Ferrari." There was a long pause. "You still there?" she asked.

  "A voice from my past," he said in a guarded tone. "I should never have let your client off with a five-hundred-thousand-dollar penalty."

  "Of course, you could have gone to trial and lost. Speaking of which, congratulations on your Russian gangster case."

  "Thanks. What's up?"

  "I'd like to talk to you this afternoon."

  Cady was flabbergasted. He knew from the newspapers that she was Senator Boyd's campaign manager. She must have found out about his investigation. The matter had just gone from strange to bizarre.

  "Sure. Come at three o'clock," Cady said.

  * * *

  Walking into Cady's office, Taylor remembered once again how striking he was. He was handsome not because of looks but because of the force of his convictions. Adopting a light tone, she pointed to the picture of a rustic mountain cabin in the woods and said, "Now that the Russian case has ended, I figured you'd be out in Mendocino playing tennis and hiking."

  "Yeah, well, I've got one or two things to wrap up here," he said. "Once I'm through with them, that's where I'll be. I don't imagine you've spent much time rafting at your place in Aspen either this fall."

  His words set off a pang of longing. She'd love to be in a raft on the Colorado right now, with the s
pray flying off the water, her weary body aching and the sun beating down on her in a gorge between red-rock walls.

  "Which reminds me," he added, "last spring when we were wrapping up the Warden case, you and I talked about doing some rafting together in West Virginia."

  She smiled. "That was before the election took over my life."

  He didn't respond. She had opened the topic. The ball was in her court.

  "Listen, C.J.," she said, beginning tentatively. "I appreciate your agreeing to see me. I want to talk to you about your investigation of Senator Boyd."

  "What investigation?" he replied, deadpan.

  "The one you're conducting."

  "Sorry, I can't respond to that. We never talk about ongoing investigations." His voice was polite but professional. "We never even confirm or deny that an investigation is under way. It's Justice Department policy. You know that."

  She took a deep breath. "This isn't an ordinary case. The presidential election is at stake. Whoever got this ball rolling did it for political purposes, to knock the senator out of the race and to get Webster reelected."

  Cady raised his eyebrows. "What makes you think there's an investigation?"

  "I have a source in the media. I can't say more than that."

  Cady locked eyes with her. "Listen, you're a sophisticated lawyer. Even if there is an investigation, which I won't confirm, I can't talk about it. That shouldn't surprise you. So I'm wondering why you wanted to see me."

  "If you tell me the subject of your investigation, I think I'll be able to satisfy you that there's no factual basis for you to proceed."

  Cady sucked in a deep breath and blew it out with a whoosh. He was sympathetic. So far this whole business had the smell of fish that had been dead for three days. A mysterious file in the dead of the night. Leaks to the press. It wasn't fair to stonewall her completely. "All I'll tell you is that it concerns Senator Boyd's first election to Congress. I'm being generous in saying that much."