The First Affair (24 page)

I felt the mattress sink and squeezed my eyes open to see Scott sitting beside me. He lowered his voice. “Jamie, just go in the next room and let us record a couple of quick conversations. You don’t owe these assholes anything.”

But the idea that I could make Greg feel the way I now felt about Paul was untenable. I shook my head no, wiping my face on the back of my arm.

“What now?” An agent addressed Scott.

“We wait.”

“I need some air. Please.”

“Agent Cuellar here can escort you to the hallway.”

“The hallway?” I repeated stupidly.

“You’re free to walk up and down, think about our offer. You only have a few hours left to save yourself.”

I stood as Agent Cuellar unbolted the door and I followed him into the hall, which was measurably cooler than the room. He rested against the ivory wallpaper and checked his email while I moved toward the window at the end, the square of sunlight, wondering if it unlocked, wondering if I had it in me to jump.

I didn’t.

The elevator opened and I whipped around. A woman in sweatpants pushed a stroller with a small cloth sheep clipped to its shade. The bellboy wheeled ahead, a car seat piled atop her luggage. Agent Cuellar watched me. Could I say something to her? Ask her to call Greg? To warn him?

She looked up and caught my eye for a brief second—I smiled. Her child started to whimper and she went to soothe him. We’d made contact. I could smuggle a pen into the bathroom, write a note on the toilet paper, then use another walk to slip it under her door—

“Jamie?” Following Agent Cuellar’s outstretched arm, I reentered, hit by the oppressive fug, like the air in a locker room. I took the seat by the desk.

“Well?” Scott asked, pulling up a seat across from me.

“I need to call my friends.”

“That’s a new one,” he scoffed, twisting in his chair to share a laugh with the agents. “You want to Facebook this?”

“I was supposed to be getting into New York now,” I answered, trying to keep my voice steady. “They’re waiting for me on the platform. And I’m not there.” Surely by this hour, Lewis’s assistant would realize I hadn’t called in that I’d arrived. They had to be looking for me.

His smile dropped. “Send them a text.” He picked up my phone. “Tell me who, and what to say.”

I gave him Rachelle’s number as my mind spun, trying to invent a code, something that could mean
warn the President.
“Sorry, unexpected delay, missed my train,” I dictated.

Scott shook his head, redacting me. “ ‘Missed my train.’ ”

My head throbbed. Rachelle would have to know that the only reason I wouldn’t get on that train was that something had stopped me. And she would have to think it weird that I didn’t elaborate. He hit Send, and the incongruous sound, like a tiny happy ball getting squeezed through a happy tube, confirmed the message’s enviable departure. Would she get my intention?

He turned the phone off. “Anyone else hungry?” he asked. While we waited for their room service, the agents asked me small-talk questions. Were they bored—or trying to disarm me? Did they think that if we chatted about the Chicago Blackhawks’ season, I’d follow them blindly next door?

I picked at the food while they shoveled in burgers. I slipped a pen off the desk and played with it for an hour until no one noticed it anymore. I asked to use the bathroom. With trembling hands, I scribbled a note for the woman across the hall on a shower cap box I quickly unfolded. It was barely legible, but still I offered to wheel the cart back out so I could slip it under her door.

Scott looked at the clock. He said sure. “Don’t make a run for it,” he chuckled. “Anyone you talk to becomes legally involved.”

Picturing the little swinging sheep, the small life it belonged to being dragged into this, I rolled the cart onto the red and gold carpeting—and reentered the room, the cardboard still in my pocket.

How much longer could they hold me? Not through tomorrow, could they? Greg’s deposition was scheduled for nine. I thought for sure I’d be able to get a message to him by then. I had to. Rachelle would help me. Scott’s phone rang and he took it into the hall. “Now they
want
her to call someone?! . . . Right, right, fuck. No, not Whitborn, I’ll think of someone. . . . I don’t know!” he shouted. “No, I explained it all
very
clearly. She seems to fucking want to go to jail, I don’t know what to fucking tell you!”

“I can call someone?” I asked when he returned.

“No.”

“But I thought—”

“No.”

• • •

At sunset, someone turned on a lamp. More hours passed. It felt like when I was young, when Erica and I shared a room and our parents would discover evidence of her poorly concealed delinquency well past bedtime—a crudely glued vase, or missing money—and, unable to contain themselves, they’d throw open our door and start screaming at her. I’d lie beneath the covers, trying to breathe like I was sleeping. I’d focus on my sleep breathing until I wasn’t there anymore.

“Agent Riddick is expecting me.” The voice in the hall was firm, authoritative. The wrong voice. The door unlocked.

“Hi,” I said, inhaling the word.

“Hi.”

“What’re you doing here?” I asked.

“I was instructed to call your parents,” Agent Riddick answered for her.

“And they sent me.” Erica turned to Scott, with the same steely confidence she’d used against Dad. “What’s going on?”

Riddick rubbed his stubbling face, trying to wake himself up. “Your sister is facing twenty-seven years if she doesn’t cooperate with our investigation into crimes committed by the President of the United States in conjunction with the Brianne Rice case.”

Erica didn’t ask what it had to do with me. She set her camel-hair coat and bag on the bed. I’d never seen her in a suit before. “So you’re arresting her?”

“We’re giving her an opportunity.” Riddick slipped his thumbs into his waistband, his elbows widening the space he took up in the room.

“Have you spoken to a lawyer?” she asked me.

“This is time sensitive,” Riddick repeated. “If Jamie cooperates, we will mitigate her sentence.”

“Her charges, you mean.” Erica squinted. “Mitigating her sentence isn’t up to you.”

“Right.”

I could tell that she’d picked up on something, something I was too overwhelmed to see. “What do you want Jamie to do?” she asked.

“Allow us to record her talking to the President and a few other people.”

Erica looked me fully in the face and I shook my head.

“Criminal charges
will
be filed,” he pushed. “She
has
to do this.”

“Okay,” Erica answered evenly. “Then we’ll call our lawyer, so you can repeat your promise to someone other than us.”

Riddick smiled. “You want it in writing?”

“Um, actually, yes, we do.”

We could see it on his face, in the ripple that went around the beds, like when they replay candidates’ gaffes during a campaign. “I don’t have a typewriter.”

“Or, I’m presuming, a gramophone.” Erica pressed her advantage. “Handwrite it.”

Riddick looked unsure of himself for the first time in almost twelve hours.

“We’re calling our lawyer.” Erica pulled out her phone, twisting
away from them. “I got her name from Peter—she’s big-time,” she said under her breath to me as it rang. I braced for Riddick to jump on her for talking to Peter, but he weirdly didn’t. “She’s expecting to hear from me tonight—Elaine?” she said on speaker.

“Yes.”

“It’s Erica McAlister. I’m here with my sister and—” She held the phone out. Riddick introduced himself and took her through the charges. They started going back and forth about my legal options, Erica holding the phone out like a tape recorder.
Oh.
I was so stupid. I realized how Paul had done it. As easy as keeping the voice memo running on his iPhone.

“If she cooperates, Ms. Schiller, we’re prepared to offer transactional immunity.”

“I see,” Elaine mused. “That’s interesting.”

“As I explained to Ms. McAlister,” Riddick continued with increased urgency, “this is time sensitive. I’m sure you’ll advise your client we’re being generous.”

“Thank you, Mr. Riddick. Erica, please take me off speaker.” Erica lifted the phone to her ear and I stepped close enough to listen while Riddick exchanged tense looks with the agents. “Leave.”

“What?” I asked Elaine.

“You haven’t been charged with anything yet and he’s not authorized to offer immunity. Just walk out. I’m on the next train and I’ll meet you first thing tomorrow morning. Who was representing you for the affidavit?”

“Wallace Whitborn.”

“Okay. Don’t talk to anyone tonight.” She hung up.

Erica put the phone back in her purse. “We’re leaving.”

“Ms. McAlister—”

“We’re leaving.” Taking hold of my arm, she grabbed her things and moved me toward the exit. In the hallway she jammed her finger into the Down button as I fully expected a hand to land on my shoulder—to get thrown against the wall and cuffed.

But they let us get on. And they let the door close.

The hotel’s doorman got us a taxi, just as if we were any other guests. He asked if we’d enjoyed our stay.

We got in, he shut our door, and we pulled into the street.

And somehow I didn’t crumple. Or ask questions. Because I didn’t know if he was a real cab driver.

At Gail’s building the doorman welcomed us, registering alarm when he saw my swollen face. But he didn’t say anything. Had he always worked there? It wasn’t until the elevator closed that I finally spoke, “I have to warn Greg.”

“What?”

“He’s testifying tomorrow.” I whispered furtively. “He needs to know—they’ll catch him in the lie. I have to go to Jean’s house.”

“You’re not going
anywhere
,” she whispered back. “They could be sitting across the street waiting to arrest you.”

“I have to do
something
.”

We turned on only the overhead in the vestibule, didn’t even take off our coats. Erica led me to the bathroom, where she twisted on the sinks and showers. We huddled on the bath mat over her cell phone. “Hello?”

“Elaine, sorry, did we wake you?” Erica sounded smaller—whatever she’d drawn upon to get me out of that hotel room was rapidly diminishing.

“I’m already en route. Where are you calling from?”

“Gail Robinson’s apartment.”

“I see.”

“Is it not safe?” Erica asked.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Where should we go?” I asked.

“It isn’t advisable to make any sudden moves right now. I just got off the phone with Whitborn. They knew your affidavit was left with him this morning, but affidavits aren’t filed until five p.m.”

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“To catch you the FBI and the Office of the Independent Counsel had to wait for Whitborn to file your false statement. If you’d spoken with him today, he’d never have filed it, and they’d have nothing to hang over you now—”

Erica interrupted her. “I just can’t follow this. What does a civil lawsuit against the President have to do with the FBI or the OIC?”

“It shouldn’t. We’re in Narnia right now. Someone tipped them off about you, and gave them enough information that they could go to the Attorney General and make you getting a job in exchange for silence a government investigation.”
A government investigation.

“Elaine, I need to get a message to Greg tonight.”

“No,” her voice cut down the line. “You don’t. And that is the end of what’s discussed about this case on the phone—or in that apartment. Are we clear?”

“Yes,” we answered, our foreheads almost touching.

“You are both under legal quarantine.”

“Both? What does that mean?” Erica asked.

“An-y-one you speak to—and I don’t just mean your parents; your boyfriends, friends, colleagues, the fucking barista at Starbucks—can be subpoenaed. And that will cost them each around two hundred thousand dollars in legal bills.”

Erica swallowed. “What should we be prepared this is going to cost?”

“Five hundred thousand if I can keep it from going to trial. Two million or more if I can’t. And Erica, you should expect to be subpoenaed by end of day tomorrow at the latest.”

“We can’t talk to our parents?” I asked, as if I could bear to. My face burned like I was in a sandstorm.

“Not until you have immunity. Look, we’re not out of the woods yet. We haven’t even
entered
the fucking woods. Try to get some sleep.”

“Thank you, Elaine,” I mustered, because I realized Erica had started trembling. I disconnected the call as she slipped to the tile.

“I can’t see,” she said, gripping my hand. “Get me to the couch.”

I turned off the faucets, opened the door, and walked her to the living room.

“Fill a bowl with ice,” she whispered as she folded onto the cushions. “Put a washcloth on my forehead.”

I slid her head onto my lap and placed the terry cloth across her pulsing temples. In the lone light from the vestibule, her skin was the bluish white of skim milk. “Colder,” she whispered when she needed me to re-wet the cloth. I watched the stars disappear over the Capitol.

So passed the first night.

Chapter Eleven

February 6

With the sun rising aggressively at my back the next morning, I squinted as it banked off the mirror lining Gail’s bar, gauging whether I should dump the bottles before Erica awoke. But I could never afford to restock it. Even the decanters housed irreplaceable vintages. And what would I do with the empty bottles? Were they going through my trash? My stomach found an extra millimeter to constrict as Erica’s phone rang with Elaine’s number. I jumped to answer before it roused her.

“Did you sleep?” she asked abruptly.

“Not really,” I said quietly as I stepped into the kitchen. Eyeing the light fixture for signs of a camera, I placed a shielding hand over my mouth.

“Any public spaces in your building where we can meet?”

“There’s a gym on the roof.”

“That’ll work.”

“What happens next?” Lena’s words had been frantically repeating in my mind—
that’s the government government—these are the people who can drop you down a well.
“How do I stay out of jail?”