Washington Masquerade (25 page)

They listened to the recording in stunned silence—Wallinski, Kinney, Fiona, Izzy, who worked the machine, and Chief Hodges, who had been contacted by Wallinski and Kinney.

The child had been remanded to the juvenile authorities and was in that limbo period between temporary incarceration and the appearance of lawyers, whom Judge McGrath had quickly retained.

“Her lawyers will figure out all sorts of ways to find this inadmissible,” Chief Hodges sighed. He looked toward Fiona and Izzy. “They'll put the kid away for treatment. Go figure.”

“Sons-of-bitches got it all wrong,” he said.

“Sure did,” Wallinski said. “Now comes the hard part.”

Fiona had burned a number of CDs, and Wallinski had pocketed two. They could have sent it over the Internet, but it was obvious that they were not taking any chances of leakage.

“What puzzled us is that she never told Lisa Burns why she was so angry with her,” Fiona said.

“Maybe she felt so much shame she could not bear to reveal it,” Izzy said. “Teenage girls can be relied upon to do the unexpected. Believe me, I know this from intimate experience. She directed all her pent-up anger toward Lisa Burns, who admitted to being baffled by her once-best friend's rage.”

“As if she suddenly had become a different person,” Fiona added.

“But they did cooperate on the soccer field as teammates,” Wallinski said.

“Leave it to the shrinks,” Fiona said.

They all knew that the first thing the girl's lawyers would do is to try to get the recording destroyed. For Wallinski and Kinney, this was more of a public relations problem that would be quickly taken out of their hands. Fiona knew that the recording's credibility would be challenged, and the media would continue to justify their original reportage and find ways to keep the spin going.

The story, of course, would be a lottery for the media—sex, murder, intrigue, politics, suicide. It would spawn a worldwide industry—books, movies, television. To Fiona, the idea was revolting, and she was certain that the others seated in her living room felt the same way. The exploitation of other people's misery for profit was one of Fiona's pet peeves.

“Teenagers sure are fragile,” Izzy said, undoubtedly thinking of his own children. “Not easy to accept the fact that their parents have clay feet. I guess she suddenly found her whole world torpedoed and reacted with a vengeance. She'll certainly get the sympathy vote.”

“Ours is not to reason why,” Wallinski said.

“They weren't quite as careful as they thought,” Fiona said. “It's not easy keeping secrets within a family. The slightest change sets off alarm bells, especially in this case, an only child of achieving parents. The Judge thought she was doing a great job of parenting. She hadn't noticed what knowledge of her adulterous affair was doing to her child.”

“The girl was clever and resourceful,” Wallinski said.

“Bottled it up, took out her frustrations on the daughter of the culprit whom she had decided had corrupted her mother. The effect was a disaster,” Kinney said.

“Especially for Adam Burns,” Chief Hodges mused. “The sympathy vote will go with the child. As for the victim….” He shook his head. “In the end, the victim loses relevancy, becomes a historical artifact. Way the cookie crumbles.”

“I'll leave all the psychological and philosophical factors to others,” Wallinski said. “The irony here is that we were looking at the whole episode from the outside in, instead of the inside out. The President, the media, the internal mechanisms of government and politics had nothing at all to do with it. It was a personal matter.”

He was right, of course, Fiona thought, recalling all the people whose lives were disrupted by this event, including her own.

The two men from Homeland Security stood up and put out their hands.

“Nice working with you, folks,” Wallinski said. “Great performance.”

“Great,” Kinney echoed.

Fiona accepted the compliment, but her focus was elsewhere.

“And the Judge?” she asked.

“Supreme Court is out, but she might stay as an appeals Judge, although even that is doubtful,” Wallinski said.

“Poor Phil died for nothing,” Fiona sighed.

“Afraid it's not a business for the good guys,” Kinney said.

“Not our job to criticize or second guess,” Wallinski said. “The geniuses upstairs will handle it. From the President's point of view, it's a good thing. It was a hard bone to swallow, the idea that the Administration engineered the deliberate murder of a critic. If that were the case, the streets would run with blood. The media should leave that stuff to the movies. Not that knowing the truth will change anybody's minds. People might assume that this little caper, despite the proof, was a phony.”

“Toughest thing to discover,” Chief Hodges said. There were times, Fiona had observed, when the Chief's thoughts would emerge and surface, like air from a pricked balloon, not meant to be spoken. “The goddamned truth.”

As if he was aware suddenly of his remark, Chief Hodges smiled and nodded. Fiona noted his air of satisfaction and contentment, something that Fiona believed they all felt at that moment, that sense of commonality that infuses people who know they have done good and honest work.

“Don't knock it, Chief. We need the work,” Fiona said.

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Banquet Before Dawn
Blood Ties
Cult
Empty Treasures
Flanagan's Dolls
Funny Boys
Madeline's Miracles
Mourning Glory
Natural Enemies
Private Lies
Random Hearts
Residue
Senator Love
Target Churchill
The Casanova Embrace
The David Embrace
The Henderson Equation
The Housewife Blues
The Serpent's Bite
The War of the Roses
The War of the Roses: The Children
The Womanizer
Trans-Siberian Express
Treadmill
Twilight Child
Undertow
We Are Holding the President Hostage

American Quartet
American Sextet
Death of a Washington Madame
Immaculate Deception
Senator Love
The Ties That Bind
The Witch of Watergate
Washington Masquerade

Jackson Hole: Uneasy Eden
Never Too Late For Love
New York Echoes
New York Echoes 2
The Sunset Gang

Dead in the Water
Libido
The Sunset Gang: The Musical
The War of the Roses
Windmills

Acclaimed author, playwright, poet, and essayist
Warren Adler
is best known for
The War of the Roses
, his masterpiece fictionalization of a macabre divorce adapted into the BAFTA- and Golden Globe–nominated hit film starring Danny DeVito, Michael Douglas, and Kathleen Turner. Adler's internationally acclaimed stage adaptation of the novel will premiere on Broadway in 2015–2016.

Adler has also optioned and sold film rights for a number of his works, including
Random Hearts
(starring Harrison Ford and Kristen Scott Thomas) and
The Sunset Gang
(produced by Linda Lavin for PBS's American Playhouse series starring Jerry Stiller, Uta Hagen, Harold Gould, and Doris Roberts), which garnered Doris Roberts an Emmy nomination for Best Supporting Actress in a Miniseries. In recent development are the Broadway production of
The War of the Roses
, to be produced by Jay and Cindy Gutterman,
The War of the Roses: The Children
(Grey Eagle Films and Permut Presentations), a feature film adaptation of the sequel to Adler's iconic divorce story,
Target Churchill
(Grey Eagle Films and Solution Entertainment),
Residue
(Grey Eagle Films),
Mourning Glory
, to be adapted by Karen Leigh Hopkins, and
Capitol Crimes
(Grey Eagle Films and Sennet Entertainment), a television series based on his Fiona Fitzgerald mystery series.

Adler's works have been translated into more than 25 languages, including his staged version of
The War of the Roses
, which has opened to spectacular reviews worldwide. Adler has taught creative writing seminars at New York University, and has lectured on creative writing, film and television adaptation, and electronic publishing. He lives with his wife, Sunny, a former magazine editor, in Manhattan.