The First Affair (23 page)

“I thought you said the Chief of Staff.”

“No, I’m sure it was her.” I lifted the glass, but the smell made my empty stomach lurch. “I’m supposed to stay clearheaded.” I placed it back on the table.

“Overrated.” Above him was the dust outline of a departed picture, the portrait lamp casting his face in long shadows. “Water, then.”

“Please.”

He turned back in the doorway. “You know you can’t sign that thing. It’s a lie.” He went to the kitchen, taking with him the pretense of complexity and leaving me with the truth. I texted Rachelle that he had helped me, that I didn’t think I could do it.

I pulled off my parka, my knee knocking the table and sloshing the scotch. Looking around, I saw a Kleenex box on the nearby desk. Reaching for it, I realized that amidst the scribbled notes and circled calendars, I was staring at a timeline of my life the last few months. The date I arrived at the DOHS. When I saw Greg on Halloween. When he dumped me—oh God.

“Here.” Paul appeared, putting the glass in front of my face.

“I thought you were subpoenaed about Brianne,” I said, stepping back, my voice shaking. “That was years ago.”

He saw what I was staring at. “Your phone keeps buzzing like some relentless bug.”

“Hello?” I fumbled for it.

“Please hold for Mr. Franklin.”

“Oh, I can’t—”

“Jamie.”

“Sorry, can I call you back in a few—”

“No,” Lewis commanded. “You need to call Wallace Whitborn. Your direct manager is on the goddamn witness list.”

“I know—I’m sorry—”

“He’s already being deposed. Out of all the witnesses, Brianne’s lawyers called him first. Does this man know?”

Paul’s eyes bored into me.

“Yes.”

Lewis hung up.

Rachelle’s text came through.
“GET OUT NOW.”

I pushed around him for my jacket. “You’re right,” I said quickly, barely any air under my words. “I shouldn’t have come. I shouldn’t have ever talked to you.” I darted to the door.

“You’d better remember that I didn’t ask for any of this. I was just
doing my job, trying to scrape my life back together.” He was right behind me as I fumbled with the lock. “And then
you
dragged me back into this heaping fuck-mess, you know that, right? I was just trying to be a decent fucking guy!”

He lunged forward and I ran out to the street. I ran for two blocks before I realized he wasn’t following me.

• • •

Rachelle was waiting in my lobby, shaking with worry. I fell into her arms. “I’m going to help you pack and then,” she said into my hair, before pulling back, “we’re going to get really drunk, you’re going to sign that affidavit, and this will be over.”

“I can’t.”

“It’s the only way to protect yourself and finish this. And you’ll
get
Greg.”

“I won’t—”

“You’ll get his gratitude and keep his love. Paul’s looking out for Paul. Wallace Whitborn isn’t. Trust me, Jamie.” I wanted everything she said to be true.

In the morning we wrenched ourselves apart. She swore she would join me in New York—soon—and we’d live a life so much cooler than anything Lena and I had ever imagined. Rachelle would settle for nothing less than every day being an adventure. As I scurried around the apartment to gather the last of my things, my cell rang and I let it go to voicemail. “Hey, James, it’s Mike. I
really
need to talk to you. It’s urgent. Call me back. Please. At work. Let me give you the number.” I erased it.

I loaded my three cartons onto the brass cart for the UPS pickup, courtesy of Lewis Franklin’s corporate account, and closed the door on Gail’s apartment for what I thought was the last time. I had no idea what I was supposed to do when I arrived in Manhattan, but at this point I was ready to walk there. Just as I was stepping into the Metro, a number I didn’t recognize came up on my phone, and after a moment’s hesitation, I answered it.

“It’s Paul.”

“Hi.” I stopped.

“We need to talk.”

“Why?”

“They’re closing in on everything. I don’t know when we’ll be able to talk again.”

“I’m leaving.”

“Meet me first.”

“That’s my other line,” I lied. “I’ll call you right back. At this number?”

“Yes. It’s a pay phone. Hurry.”

I texted Rachelle.

“Shitshitshit,”
she wrote back.
“Tell him he has to backtrack with Brianne’s lawyers and he’s an asshole if he doesn’t. Make sure you drop off your affidavit first. Go somewhere loud. At the station.”

He agreed to meet me there.

• • •

As I walked through the glass doors, I spotted Paul waiting next to a window display of sherbet-colored socks. He looked even more wretched, if that was possible. Unshaven, unslept, his hands shoved deep into his trench pockets. We walked toward the restaurant.

“I have a battering headache, so I’ll be quick,” he said. “You need to get your own lawyer. Stop doing everything he tells you or tells you through others.”

“Paul, I signed it. I just dropped it off. I’m getting on a train.”

“Fuck.”

“Paul, I thought you were my friend. Please, I’m begging you to help me. Please.
Please.
”

“I’m
trying
to help you.”

“I’ve sworn there was no relationship! Promise your testimony won’t contradict me.” I grabbed him, seeking confirmation. “Please, Paul,
please.
”

But he suddenly looked like a faded copy of himself, peering over my shoulder as if the building were crumbling behind me. I turned, following his gaze to two men in dark suits walking briskly toward us.

“Jamie McAlister?”

“Paul?” I attempted to ask, but nothing came out.

“We’re with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. You need to come with us now.”

“Paul?”

His eyes drifted closed and my legs gave way as if the skeletal support were being ripped from them.

I was on my own.

Part III

Chapter Ten

February 5

You think you know what’s next. This is the part where my story—where
I
—became public. It’s possible, if you own a TV or laptop or tablet, that you’ve regrettably heard me speak in my own words about my time with Greg, about everything that led up to that moment. But I have never, officially or unofficially, spoken about what was done to me. So you don’t know.

• • •

As the elevator lifted me inside the Phoenix Park Hotel, my senses penetrated the static that had descended while I was escorted out of the train station and across the street. My first thought was that I had gotten away from Paul. These agents were here at Greg’s request; they weren’t FBI but Secret Service, and this was their cover. Lewis sent them to make sure I boarded safely. When I obviously couldn’t, they changed plans. I was being harbored. “Is he upstairs?”

One agent exchanged a glance with the other. Of course they couldn’t say anything. “This way, ma’am.”

Halfway down the corridor, the door to Room 1608 opened. I walked in ahead, assuming the agents would stop at the door and that Greg would be waiting to pull me protectively against him. Instead, I found five suited men squeezed around two pristine queen-sized beds, their expressions making it sickeningly clear—this was not a rescue mission.

I spun back, but the agent barring the door lifted his blazer to show me his gun. I realized my chest was puffing in rapid bursts.

“Ben, grab her a paper bag.”

I fell in the desk chair, waving it away. Instead I dropped my head between my knees, letting the rushing sound in my ears, like dialysis, drown out the room for a second. The door opened and closed again. “Ms. McAlister.” I squinted up at a man in a different cut of suit, a hard cast to his face suggesting his day, and maybe his life, wasn’t going how he wanted. “I’m Scott Riddick, legal deputy for the Office of Independent Counsel. We’ve been sanctioned by the U.S. Attorney General to investigate crimes committed in relation to the Brianne Rice case. You’re in severe trouble, Jamie.”

I moistened my mouth enough to speak. “Crimes?”

“We are prepared to charge you with perjury, obstruction of justice, subornation of perjury, witness tampering, and conspiracy, which adds up to twenty-seven years in jail.”

Heat blew up from my gut. Whether or not he loved me and left her, whether or not we were meant to be, I was going to miss it—marriage, children, all of it. I couldn’t even repeat the charges. I knew I needed someone there, someone to protect me, to understand what was happening—to protect me. “Aren’t we going in to your office?” I didn’t know the term—station? Bureau?

“Not yet,” he answered. “Not if we don’t have to. It’s up to you.” I couldn’t grasp how our location was up to me. “This is time sensitive.”

“Why?” I mustered.

But he just stared, leaving me to try to fill it in—my brain thrashing like snakes dropped into setting cement—because I’m leaving? Because—I gripped the bottom of my chair—

Because Greg was scheduled to file his deposition the next day. There was no way for him to know that Paul’s testimony contradicted ours.

“Ms. McAlister, I am giving you an opportunity.” Agent Riddick leaned on the edge of the desk, close enough for me to grab his legs. “I’m trying to be helpful. If you
want
to be helped, you can follow my colleagues into the next room, where they’ll take a statement regarding the nature of your relationship with the President. You will tell the
whole
truth. Then, once they’re satisfied you’ve cooperated, you’ll make some phone calls for corroboration, which we’ll record. To Jean
Hargrove, Lewis Franklin, and the President.” You know how when someone suggests something—“Do you want to have lunch?”—you automatically envision it—the restaurant, what you’ll order, or what you’ll wear? But I was blank, the words conjuring nothing.

“I’ve filed my affidavit with Wallace Whitborn.” I struggled to fill my voice above a whisper. “That’s my statement in its entirety.”

Scott nodded to one of his agents, who passed over an iPad. Scott touched the screen.

“Was Brianne the first?”
I heard my own voice.
“She’s not going to tell. Am I just another—am I that stupid?”

“You’re not stupid.”
It was Paul.
“No, you’re not just another. Not that I know of. Not for years as far as I’ve heard, not since Brianne.”

“So.” Scott turned it off while I sucked in my lips against what was coming. “Anything you’d like to add?”

I lunged for the wastepaper basket. Stomach empty, I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

“Okay, then, Ms. McAlister,” Scott resumed as one of the agents removed the basket. “If you cooperate
immediately,
I can reduce your sentence from twenty-seven years to five.”

Immediately.
More thrashing snakes. More cement. “Can I call my lawyer?”

“We don’t want this discussed over the phone.”

“Could I take a cab there? If you came with me?”

He looked to one of the other officers. Something passed between them. “Our concern is that he’ll contact Lewis Franklin.”

“I—I’m confused. I thought you just said you wanted me to call Lewis Franklin.”

“That would be a very different kind of conversation. One in which you ask him to corroborate certain statements.”

“What statements?” I grasped for information.

“Did Lewis Franklin offer to get you a job in exchange for lying under oath?”

“No! That’s not at all what—is
that
why I’m here?” There was no answer. “I have to speak with Wallace Whitborn.”

“Wallace Whitborn can’t help you because he’s a civil lawyer.” (He wasn’t. He had over twenty years of criminal law experience. But
there was no way for me to know that Agent Riddick had been told to lie to me.)

My mind raced. “Could he recommend someone?”

“If you called right now asking him the name of a criminal specialist, that would make him suspicious.” He tilted his head. “You might lose your window to cooperate.”

The room was rapidly overheating with the seven of us crammed in. I felt light-headed. “Can I call his partner? Maybe he could recommend someone? I don’t have to say who I am.”

“We’d prefer it if you didn’t call anybody.”

No one knew where I was.

I glanced at the clock and realized it had been over an hour. “Can I use the bathroom?”

“Empty your pockets.”

“What?” I scanned the impassive faces.

“Give us your phone.” I thought of the texts to Rachelle, the emails, the internet searches—for homeopathic bladder infection remedies, lingerie flash sales, Greg’s childhood, Brianne. Every little thing that I’d hit a button on in the last few months. How any moment of insecurity or longing was recorded there and could be—“We’re not going to turn it on—we don’t have a warrant. We just need you to leave it on the desk.” One of the agents stepped into the bathroom, we heard a snap, a cracking, and he walked out with the wall phone. I took in the crude plaster scar on the wallpaper before locking the door and immediately sliding to the stone. People describe leaving their bodies and it always sounded to me like a floating, but this was a draining. I seeped out through the floor. Gone.

I could hear the room’s door open and Scott talking to someone in the hall. I saw the reflection of the Phoenix Park matches on the vanity.
Could I start a fire? Would they leave me locked in with it?
Which makes no sense, I know, but I was that afraid.

After a few minutes there was a knock. “Ms. McAlister!”

“Coming,” I said weakly, managing to pull myself up. When I opened the door Scott was standing with his arms crossed, popping a new idea to the forefront of my mind. “My mom will be worried. I’m moving to New York today.”

“We know.”

“I should be on the train right now. I would have called her when we pulled out.”

“You don’t need your mommy,” he said cuttingly.

I hadn’t called her that in years, but hearing the word, I began sobbing and sunk on the bed, past trying to handle this well, let alone to impress or endear. I don’t know how long they let me cry.