The List (41 page)

I was there to play canasta. What did he think I was doing? I was a reporter, he was
an editor.

“I need an editor,” I said as he let me into the foyer. There was a big wooden staircase
in front of me and to my left a formal living room with cream-colored walls.

“I’m sure you have one,” said Upton. His straight blond hair was pushed back and looked
like it needed to be washed.

“I need a more seasoned editor,” I said. “I have a story I think you might be interested
in.”

He pointed to the living room. He took a wooden captain’s chair, and I sat down on
the white high-back sofa.

“What’s the story? It’s got to be pretty good if you’re showing up at my door late
at night.”

“Senator Hoyt Stanton is having an affair with a young woman, and she happens to be
your employee.”

He looked at me suspiciously.

“Jesus! It’s not me,” I said. “It’s not! I’m disgusted that you would even think that.”

He opened his mouth to spout out some excuse, but then he thought against it and pressed
his lips together.

A woman in a bathrobe walked halfway down the stairs. “Is everything all right, Mark?”
she asked, putting her reading glasses on her head. She looked so sweet and calm,
nothing like her husband.

“It’s nothing, nothing,” he said, barely looking at her. “This is . . . uh, Adrienne.
Just one of my reporters. Needs help with something. Go to bed now, don’t worry. We’ll
be at this for a while.” He waved her off. “I imagine we will be a while?” he asked
me.

“Yes, that’s a pretty good assumption,” I said. I opened my laptop and opened the
article I had finished on the plane. Then I
opened the most incriminating photo next to it. “I don’t exactly know how to say this,
so, I’ll just let you read what I wrote. And there are a few photos, too.”

I turned the laptop around and gave it to him.

I thought he might react calmly, like a seasoned newspaperman, but instead he screamed.
“Are you fucking kidding me? . . . That’s the fucking . . . that’s Hoyt Stanton.”

“It is. And that’s Olivia Campo.”

He held the laptop closer to his face and stared at the photo.

“I don’t want to know how you got this picture. Do I?”

“Probably not.”

“But you took it? This is your photo?”

“It is,” I confirmed, sitting nervously on my hands.

“And you have more than this?”

I told him I had dozens more. And an article, which he then read.

“You’re just coming back from Arizona now?” he asked. “This conversation you had,
with this woman, this source . . . ”

“Victoria Zajac.”

“Right. That conversation happened today. All that in Arizona happened this weekend.”

“Yes, this weekend. I just landed an hour ago.”

“But you’ve had the pictures for . . . ”

“Months. Since February.”

“And you didn’t come to me? No one? Does Hardy know about this, anyone?”

“I just told him tonight, and he sent me here. No one else at the paper knows. I wasn’t
certain I wanted to go forward with it.”

“And now you are? Because I’m sure you can guess that I would like to.”

“Yes,” I answered without hesitating. “Now I’m sure I want to go forward.”

He went to the kitchen to make coffee, and maybe to calm down. Then he came back and
read the story again.

“No one worked with you on this? No one from the Style section?”

“No,” I repeated. “I just told Hardy an hour ago. He was the one who suggested I talk
to you. But when I was reporting, I just didn’t trust anyone. And I wasn’t sure I
wanted to write it. But I guess I changed my mind.”

“I’m glad you did,” said Upton, clicking through the photos I had opened for him.
After a moment he looked up and said, “To be honest with you, I don’t read the Style
section.”

“Maybe you should start,” I suggested.

Upton got on the phone and called Cushing. He explained the story, said I was sitting
with him, and sent my piece over to Cushing to read.

I stood up from the couch and looked at the framed pictures of Upton’s family. The
ones I had stared at during his party. It seemed like years ago.

“Do you remember when you told me that I should move into D.C. and out of Middleburg
if I cared about my career?” I asked Upton when he came back with the coffee. I was
too tired to ask him for sugar.

“No. I don’t.”

“Well, you did,” I assured him. “And I didn’t listen.”

“Thank God. Are you going to stay there now?”

“Sure, why not. The nightlife is fascinating.”

He sat back down in the wooden chair and picked up my laptop.

“You took these photos in Middleburg, right?” he asked. “But you weren’t breaking
and entering or anything. You were staying there.”

“I was. I paid for it out of pocket. It’s a nice hotel. You should go there sometime.”

He actually chuckled. Then he put the computer on the coffee table and said Olivia’s
name. “You know how we regard her at the paper,” he said. “I am honestly shocked.”

I bet he was.

“That’s a hell of a life, though. Her childhood. I wonder if anyone had any idea.”

“From what I’ve learned about her, I don’t think so.”

“And you think they talked about all this foster care stuff? That bill?”

“I think they did, yes,” I replied. “I think she was drawn to him because she wanted
answers about her family, maybe even revenge. But I think his work on foster care
surprised her, perhaps softened her. Maybe even led her to this.” I opened the picture
of the two of them at the window, the one I was always going back to.

He asked me if I had the photos backed up and then clicked them closed. Staring at
all that flesh, that intimacy was getting awkward.

“You know she’s in Jakarta right now. With the president.”

I did know that. I had seen the pool report she filed when they landed there.

“I need to tell her we’re going to run this. I need to give her a chance to read it
and dispute anything if she takes issue with any of your facts. If it were anyone
else but an employee . . . ”

“So we wait until she comes back.”

Upton clasped his hands together and rested his forearms on his knees. His gold wedding
ring was thick and outdated.

“No. I don’t think so. I think Cushing will agree. We run it Wednesday. Today is Monday,
right?” He looked at his watch.
It was 12:23 in the morning and too late to get it in Tuesday’s paper.

“We edit it tonight, you and me. Get it to print shape. I run it by everyone I have
to run it by at the paper tomorrow. That’s really just Cushing, our legal counsel—to
make sure we don’t have a privacy issue with you surreptitiously taking pictures—and
a few others. It won’t leak, I promise you that. And then when it’s about to print,
we run it by Olivia in Jakarta. She could warn Stanton, though. That’s my worry. I
don’t want him to have time to put a media response team in place. So we put it online
first. Immediately. As soon as Olivia responds, it goes live.”

They were going to blindside her with this while she was in Jakarta with POTUS? Was
she even going to be able to get back on the plane home, or would her contract be
terminated while she was doing her job stalking the president in Indonesia? I had
played various scenarios out in my head countless times. In each, I had imagined Upton
meeting with Olivia before printing anything. I was even pretty sure that he was going
to make me sit down with her in a barren, soundproof room, with maybe a hidden camera
or two, and slowly go over the details. I had plenty of Xanax at home, ready if it
ever came to that. But this? I felt terrible. I, we, couldn’t do that to her when
she was alone in a foreign country.

But as I listened to Upton on the phone, I understood that it was quite obviously
out of my hands now. Even if I wanted to push the delete button on everything I’d
done, I couldn’t. It was no longer my story, it was a
Capitolist
story and they were going to take it as far as they could. I had just happened to
write it.

I slept on Upton’s couch that night, dozing on and off while he asked me questions
about the piece. My hair was sticky from the July heat and Upton’s air-conditioning
was barely puttering
anything out. He got me a fan, took a few calls from Cushing, even put me on the phone.
Cushing congratulated my work, my initiative, over and over again. It was the first
time I had ever spoken to him.

 • • • 

Tuesday morning I drove in with Upton and he dropped me in front of the tall steel
and glass building and drove to the side of the building, down into the parking garage.

Only Upton, Cushing, Hardy, and three other senior editors knew about my piece. Upton
told me to spend Tuesday just like I would any other day. I was to write my short
Style pieces, smile with my friends, and pretend all was right with the world. When
the office started to empty out, usually around 9
P.M.
, he would call Olivia and we would get the story online.

“How is your sister?” Isabelle asked me when I sat down at my desk.

“Did you have the morning off to take care of her?” said Libby. “I haven’t seen a
byline from you yet.”

Oh God. Of course. This was the first morning since my first day that I hadn’t written
four pieces before 11
A.M.
I was going to have to keep up my terrible lie.

“Payton is doing much better,” I said, smiling at both of them. “You’re so sweet to
ask. It was nothing. She just cracked a few ribs. I was in the hospital with her so
I did have to take the morning off. And Hardy actually let me.”

They both told me how sorry they were and I cursed myself for lying. When Julia and
Alison came back to the
List
office after reporting on the Hill all morning, they also asked after Payton. Why
did the Style girls have to be so kind and concerned?

“I told you,” said Julia. “It’s safer to ride an elephant than it is a horse. It’s
amazing your sister didn’t lose her head.”

“It’s just horseback riding, not the Reign of Terror,” I assured her.

All day, I tried to keep my banter light and fun.

Hardy walked by my desk on his way to an editors meeting and said, “You. You’re back.
Good.”

With the other Style girls, I left the office for our five allotted lunch minutes,
emailed about keeping the page moving, and rolled my eyes when Tucker Cliff sprinted
by, screaming into his cell phone about Newt Gingrich’s latest poll numbers.

At 7
P.M.
, when reporters started to leave, Julia asked if I was walking down to the garage.

“I’m not,” I said. “A friend of mine is meeting me here and we’re going for a drink.”

Ah, another lie. Why not. I was a regular Stephen Glass.

“Okay,” said Julia, smiling. “I’m sure you could use one after your tough weekend.”
She leaned against my small desk, flicked a pen between her fingers, and said, “I’m
glad you’re back. I missed you. Christine Lewis and Emily Baumgarten got into this
huge fight in the bathroom over who was covering the first family’s Martha’s Vineyard
vacation. Emily actually screamed, ‘The people of Edgartown need my brain!’ and I
didn’t even get to talk about it with you. These people are insane.”

I rolled my eyes in agreement and gave her a hug goodbye. She headed down to the garage
and I sat at my desk waiting for Upton to say it was go time. I didn’t hear from him
until nine.

His message just said, “come here,” so I headed toward his large office with the thick
glass wall. Before I opened the door, he put his hand up to stop me and I noticed
he was on the phone. I sat down at his assistant’s desk and waited for him to finish
his call. He didn’t stand up, or wave his hands. He didn’t pace, as he often did in
meetings with the higher-ups. He just sat in his chair and talked on the phone for
twenty minutes.

When he finally waved me in and pointed to a black mesh chair, he said, “That was
Olivia. She has given her resignation as I recommended she should. We’ll have to add
that to the story, and then it will go live.”

I leaned back in the chair, ready to hear the long, dramatic story about how she cried
and denied everything and called me a lying whore with elephantiasis of the ego. But
Upton didn’t say another word about the call. He just motioned for me to stand up
and suggested we finish working in the back conference room.

Sitting at the large rectangular table with twenty leather armchairs around it, I
read the article quickly one last time.

SENATOR HOYT STANTON CAUGHT IN AFFAIR WITH
CAPITOLIST
REPORTER

By Adrienne Brown

Senator Hoyt Stanton, a veteran of the Senate, has been caught in a sex scandal, a
Capitolist
investigation has uncovered.

The married senator from Arizona—elected to the Senate in 1994 on a family values,
tough on immigration platform—was photographed in Middleburg, Va., engaging in several
intimate acts beginning at 2:35
A.M.
on March 24, with Olivia Campo, a senior
Capitolist
White House reporter.

After an eight-month investigation, the
Capitolist
was able to confirm that Sen. Stanton and Campo spent many nights together, over
the course of several months, at Middleburg, Va.’s Goodstone Inn in the property’s
private Bull Barn. In low season, the small house, a luxurious renovated barn with
a separate living room, is available for rent from
$715 a night. Rates in the summer can reach $1,000. The
Capitolist
has not yet determined if there was any impropriety with how Sen. Stanton paid for
the hotel.

At 12:07
A.M.
on March 24, Stanton and Campo were observed together in the living room of the Barn.
Sen. Stanton, wearing khaki slacks and a blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled
up, lit a fire in the living room’s stone fireplace and put his feet up on a coffee
table. The two then carried on an intimate conversation. At 2:35
A.M.
, they moved to the property’s bedroom, where they were unknowingly photographed through
an open window while engaging in several sexual acts. Photographs of the senator and
the reporter in the Bull Barn’s bedroom first show the two embracing in front of an
open window. They then moved to the high wooden king-size bed where they engaged in
intercourse. The photographs also capture several moments showing the emotional relationship
between the pair: the senator smoothing Campo’s red hair, holding her hands and hugging
her during an intimate conversation in front of an open bedroom window.