Damage Control: A Novel Read online

  Faraday ignored them all.

  “Tyler, please get me Joe Gunderson of the New York Times L.A. Bureau,” he said, “if he’s not holding already. Tell him he’s got an exclusive interview with Simon and Henry Paxton tonight at ten.”

  Faraday’s voice assumed the professorial tone I knew so well. “The New York Times always gets first crack,” he said. “Even in the Internet Age, the Times still sets the political agenda and the TV news shows follow their lead.”

  A glazed, serene look beamed out of his eyes now, and I thought the stress might have finally pushed my boss over the edge.

  “Fred Sentier and the Enquirer have made a big mistake,” he continued. “They jumped the proverbial gun and got their facts wrong. This is going to backfire and make them even less credible than usual. It’s also going to make every news outlet in the country leery of going with a Paxton story that hasn’t been vetted and confirmed by multiple sources.

  “Maggie, call Lambert and tell him there’s been a change of plans and Mr. Sentier is a dangerous loose cannon who’s not allowed into the building. We’ll fax over a photo. Sam, I want you to go through that piece-of-shit article with a microscope and write a point-by-point rebuttal for Lambert. And get me a list of every Sentier story where the Post ran a correction, amplification, or retraction. Maggie, once we get this under control, I want to you write an affidavit describing how he misrepresented himself and pulled a gun on you. We are going to submit this joker to the Wheel of Pain. Not even the Enquirer is going to hire him after we’re through. Fletch, did your associate get photos of Sentier brandishing his gun?”

  Fletch nodded.

  I could only sit there in amazement. They might have sent me out to Pershing Square like a canary in a coal mine, but they’d reverse-engineered the entire thing, anticipating everything that might go wrong.

  I swallowed. “So what are we going to tell the New York Times?”

  Faraday’s face split into a wolfish grin and he hooked his thumbs into his suspenders.

  “The Paxton boys are going to tell them the truth.”

  11

  The law offices of Lambert, Truesdale, Black & McGilvary were in Century City, on land that had once housed a Hollywood movie studio. Lambert’s thirty-seventh-floor office overlooked the Century Plaza Hotel, a midcentury monument to concrete that preservationists wanted to declare a city landmark.

  By nine forty-five, I sat in a large conference room with Tyler and the senator’s people, while Fletch set up lights and fiddled with his video camera.

  Saunders had his laptop out, working. Suddenly, he gave a loud “ha.”

  “What?” said Bernstein, hurrying over.

  “Look at this. The senator’s gained 20,005 new Twitter followers since this thing broke yesterday. And 9,579 more since the Enquirer story went live. That’s fantastic, even if half of them turn out to be journalists.”

  “It’s about getting his name out there,” Bernstein said sagely. “Brand recognition.”

  “You’ll get one hundred thousand more after the New York Times story breaks,” I said. “Be giving Ashton Kutcher a run for his money soon.”

  “Who?” said Bernstein.

  “That actor married to Demi Moore. He’s the Twitter gold standard, with two million followers.”

  Faraday looked on, arms crossed, foot tapping. “If you all are finished gossiping, perhaps you could listen up.

  “As soon as the New York Times interview is done,” he said, “we’re throwing the entire interview up on SupportSenatorPaxton.com.”

  Paxton’s men looked puzzled.

  “That’s a new one on me,” I admitted.

  “It was launched earlier today by a group of ‘concerned citizens,’ ” Faraday said, winking. “The senator and his brother need to be able to speak directly to the public, no filters. What you read in the papers and see on TV is a highly compressed and edited product. Sentences can be spliced together to create new meanings. Questions can be dubbed in afterward to make the subject seem shifty or evasive. You lose context. You lose control. And we don’t like that.”

  “Many Americans no longer see the press as a good thing,” Tyler said, “but as a bully with a skewed agenda that needs a public thrashing.”

  “You should know,” I said. “You used to be one.”

  “Tyler was a very good journalist,” Faraday said, “which makes him an even better crisis consultant. It’s like prosecutors who switch to criminal defense. They understand the other side.”

  Changing the topic, he asked, “Maggie, you have those quotes?”

  I handed him a press release with statements from religious and political leaders, praising Senator Henry Paxton’s visionary leadership and integrity. I’d been on the phone half the evening tracking them down.

  The phone buzzed. It was security. The New York Times reporter was on his way up with a videographer. Paxton’s lawyer walked in and sat down.

  It was showtime.

  Faraday greeted Joe Gunderson warmly, asking about his wife and new baby. Tall, lean, and bespectacled, with a receding hairline and a neatly trimmed beard, Gunderson wore formal black-tie attire and had clearly been summoned away from another event. He answered politely while fending off Faraday’s overtures of friendship.

  “I want you to look around and see how many other journalists I invited,” Faraday said, segueing smoothly into business. “That’s right.” He beamed. “You’re getting a world exclusive. And that’s because I know you and I trust you to tell the truth, and because you work for the best damn paper, not only in America, but in the entire world. The New York Times is the paper of record and we wanted to go right to the top to explain things and debunk that Enquirer hit piece as a pack of lies.”

  Joe Gunderson adjusted his bullshit filter. But he also looked pleased. Praise for his paper meant reflected glory for him.

  “The story plus video of tonight’s interview will go up on the Times’ website tonight,” he said.

  “The entire video?” Faraday said in mock surprise.

  “They edit it down.”

  “I see.” Faraday caught my eye.

  I went to get Simon Paxton and his wife, who were waiting in another room. Simon’s wife, Sally, was a pretty woman with shoulder-length blond hair and good skin, but her face had a glazed, emptied-out look.

  Gunderson looked them over and his face fell.

  “What’s this?” he said, suspicious. “The deal was a sit-down with the senator.”

  “The senator’s brother and political adviser, Simon Paxton, has something to say first.”

  The interview began.

  Simon Paxton started out stiff but got smoother as it went on. Off to the side, Samantha George looked relieved. She’d coached him for two hours, shooting videotape so they could work on inflection and facial expression.

  Now Simon even choked up as he admitted the affair on camera, glancing at his wife, whose mouth gave a sorrowful twitch. He and his wife loved each other and were entering counseling to repair this rift in their marriage. He declined to answer speculative questions, citing his lawyer’s advice, and asked that the affair be treated as a private matter.

  When the senator strolled in for his inquisition, he appeared focused and alert, like he’d spent the afternoon at a mental spa.

  “Looking good,” I whispered to Bernstein.

  “It’s some ninja skill he’s got,” the senator’s man muttered. “When everyone on the plane wakes up with rumpled clothes and their hair standing up, his suit is immaculate and he’s perfectly groomed. I’ve seen him at Indian reservations in the desert where it’s 125 degrees and everyone’s coated in sweat and dust. He looks like he’s walking around some exclusive country club . . . one that allows women, Catholics, and people of color, of course.”

  Senator Paxton conveyed such a sympathetic mixture of bewilderment, sorrow, and outrage that even I felt like misting up. When it was over, he shook Gunderson’s hand and told the reporter he fol
lowed his byline in the Times and found his stories incisive and well written.

  12

  Twenty minutes later, I sat with Faraday, the Paxton brothers, and Harvey Lambert. Sally Paxton had locked herself in the bathroom, where nose-blowing sounds could be heard. “I think it went well,” Faraday said.

  Simon Paxton rubbed his eyes. “We’ll know when the story goes up.”

  “The National Enquirer, on the other hand, is going to be out for blood. They will stake out your houses, your office, your hangouts. They may try to bribe your housekeeper, your gardener, your wives’ hairdressers. They will comb public records, including the quarterly expense reports you file with the federal government. They will look for anything to use against you. You cannot give them any ammunition. Everything you do has got to be strictly aboveboard.”

  “That goes without saying,” the senator said.

  “Well, I’m saying it.”

  Faraday looked around belligerently.

  “Maggie,” he said, startling me. “Let’s see that statement you just drafted.”

  He read it, then recapped it to the room.

  Senator Paxton was calling for an official investigation after his brother Simon had confirmed the relationship with Mortimer. The senator was dismayed and concerned. He’d banned Simon Paxton from his office and dropped him as an adviser. Simon had never been on staff. The Enquirer story was false and the senator was demanding an immediate retraction. Simon and his wife would seek couples’ counseling.

  “Both interviews with the New York Times can be viewed in their entirety at SupportSenatorPaxton.com,” Faraday said, his voice growing hearty. “The senator and his brother urge all interested parties to watch it and decide for themselves. Senator Paxton and Simon Paxton are cooperating fully with the police in the investigation into Mortimer’s death and ask for privacy during this difficult time.”

  I saw nods from around the table. But Faraday raised his head, frowning.

  “What is this ‘privacy’ bullshit? There’s nothing private about it. Take that line out.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  Faraday wanted the Paxton brothers to hammer home the same points to the national media in the morning. He needed them available for at least two hours.

  “There’s something I wanted to run past you,” my boss said. “It’s a little unorthodox, but it could bring us some positive coverage. The setup goes like this:

  “Senator, early tomorrow morning, you find yourself driving along Mulholland, just north of Coldwater. Maybe you went up there to clear your head after all that’s happened. A stranded motorist flags you down and you give him a ride to the nearest gas station. At some point he realizes his Good Samaritan is none other than U.S. Senator Paxton, his elected representative. He’s blown away. He’s so grateful he notifies the media. They ask us to corroborate and after checking with you, we confirm it.”

  A look of distaste crept across Henry Paxton’s face.

  Simon looked intrigued.

  “You want us to cruise up and down the canyons looking for a stranded motorist to rescue?” he said.

  “That could take awhile,” Lambert pointed out. “And why wouldn’t the motorist call nine one one?”

  Faraday leaned forward.

  “Because his cell phone ran out of juice.”

  “You’re gonna plant the guy,” Simon Paxton said hoarsely.

  The senator looked like he’d swallowed a scorpion.

  “Look,” said Faraday. “This is Hollywood, and it’s all theater.”

  “There are a dozen ways this could go wrong,” Harvey Lambert said.

  Faraday leaned back. “We’ve got reliable people.” He grinned. “Who’s more likely to have their piece-a-crap car break down than an unemployed actor?”

  “No,” said the senator.

  “Henry,” said his brother, “let’s talk about this.”

  “Or how about this,” Faraday offered. “You’re having lunch on the Malibu pier when a suicidal man jumps off. He can’t swim. He’s drowning. You dive in and save him.”

  “Absolutely not,” snapped the senator.

  “Let’s revisit this in a few days,” Simon Paxton said, shooting Faraday a look of apology.

  I regarded my boss with new wariness.

  If he was willing to stage such a spectacle, what else would he do?

  The Paxton entourage left. Faraday gathered his files. I knew he was headed back to the office to brief Thomas Blair. It was a nightly ritual, this pilgrimage up to the twentieth floor. Faraday tried to hide it, but we all knew it made him nervous and jumpy. Now he rustled papers with an annoyed air.

  “Samantha will monitor the political blogs all night and brief me if anything else breaks. Keep your phones on. I want everyone in the office by five thirty. Samantha, come here, please.”

  Samantha walked over, sipping from a mug of steaming coffee. Faraday reached into his briefcase and pulled out a small amber container with a white plastic top.

  “Give me your hand.”

  He tapped something into her palm. “Don’t take more than one every four hours.”

  Samantha left.

  “None for the rest of you. Tomorrow’s going to be brutal and you need to sleep. In the morning, Simon Paxton is going to sit down with the LAPD and get a few things off his chest.”

  * * *

  I rode back to the office with Fletch, who told me that a Blair psychologist would play the tape back in slo-mo, analyzing the senator and Simon Paxton’s faces and movements for sincerity and honesty. Then they’d coach the two on their next appearances.

  “I thought both of them maintained good eye contact,” I said.

  “Some of it is almost subliminal,” Fletch said. “Looking to the right when you speak can suggest deception. A mouth tilted to one side can signal contempt. Some guilty people nod their head, almost imperceptibly as they deny involvement.”

  “I bet none of that works with true sociopaths,” I said.

  Fletch was silent.

  I thought about how Faraday had warned the Paxtons that their bushes would be crawling with reporters and photographers from the National Enquirer. Reporters would also fan out to Valencia.

  “I’m glad Faraday sewed up Emily’s parents,” I said to Fletch. “And the media can’t exactly camp out at Emily’s apartment and shout questions each time she comes or goes. In some perverse way, the senator and his brother might be in a lot more trouble if Emily were still alive.”

  “If she were alive, there would be no story,” said Fletch.

  Because Emily would have kept her mouth shut about the affair.

  But what if Emily had gotten tired of keeping her mouth shut? What if she’d threatened to go public, and someone had decided to get rid of her instead? And now it had backfired, all because of some elderly waiter out in Riverside County?

  The thought made my skin crawl.

  “Fletch,” I said. “You know how Faraday tells us not to discuss sensitive matters over the phone or online?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does Blair eavesdrop electronically on us at work? Sometimes I get the creepiest feeling.”

  “If they do, they’re perfectly entitled. The law says anything you do on company time is fair game. So I wouldn’t browse, say, perfume sites for an hour or anything.”

  I flushed with alarm. So it was true.

  Fletch gave me a sly look. “You got something to hide?”

  The previous week, I’d called Mom from work to talk about reports and scheme about how we’d spend my next bonus. That would tell them how desperate I was and give them leverage against me. It made me vulnerable.

  “What exactly do you do, Fletch?”

  “I’m just a tech guy.”

  * * *

  “Earlyn and I are out back, hon,” Mom called from the porch when I let myself in after midnight. “And there’s fresh lemonade.”

  Through the picture window, I saw Earlyn in the wicker chair, dressed in her
usual overalls. Mom sat hunched on the porch swing, wearing a scoop-neck shirt and pedal pushers. A scarf held her hair back, which had grown in curly as a lamb’s after the chemo.

  I poured a glass of lemonade, piled my plate with fried chicken, and joined them. Below us stretched L.A., blinking in jeweled lights. The air was acrid and smoky from fires burning out of control in the Angeles National Forest. But that didn’t disguise the cigarettes that Mom and Earlyn had hastily put out.

  I’d asked them not to smoke in the house, but the back porch was just as bad because the odor clung to the cushions and eaves and seeped in through my bedroom window. So they acted like guilty teenagers and stubbed them out when they heard my car approach.

  Like I can’t smell it.

  Maybe that’s why I wore so much perfume these days.

  Mom denied she smokes, but I found the telltale butts when I was sweeping up the fine white ash from the fires. You’d think that having survived cancer, she’d know better. You’d also think that Earlyn—a responsible adult—wouldn’t encourage her. Instead, they were engaged in a conspiracy to put one over on me, the dutiful daughter. Sometimes I wondered who the mom was. There were times when I wanted to stick them in separate rooms and give them a time-out.

  It outraged me to be put in the position of the enforcer, the nagger, the beggar. Please, Mom, I wanted to say, don’t kill yourself. But the only words that came out of my mouth lately were angry, scolding ones. So I changed the subject.

  “Where’s Virgil the Widower?”

  “He went home early.”

  “Scratch Virgil the Widower,” I said, starting my second piece of chicken. It was bad to eat so much late at night, but I was starved and it was delicious.

  Earlyn was studying a brochure for an Elderhostel trip to Catalina Island that Mom had signed up for. She’d be gone two whole days and I felt the delirious anticipation of an adolescent left alone for the weekend who planned a blow-out party.

  But I only looked forward to having my house to myself.