“In two years and four months? Enough. I think the Chinese would consider his vote on even two major bills a thousand percent return on their investment.”
She’s right: the scale of this crime is staggering. It’s hubris on the part of the Poker Club, but to Buckman and Donnelly and the rest, the potential payoff must have seemed worth the risk. “And the Chinese government?” I ask. “Were they involved with this? Or was it just Azure Dragon Paper?”
Nadine laughs softly. “That’s like asking me if Putin knew his oligarch buddies were involved in election tampering. You think some Shanghai businessman would risk espionage against the U.S. without the sanction of his government? You get a bullet in the back of the neck for that in China.”
“All this is detailed in Sally’s cache?”
“Painstakingly. Her recordings of the Poker Club meetings contain several discussions about it, and her documentary evidence verifies it beyond doubt.”
Though I’m sitting, I feel dizzy, as though I’ve been whisked a thousand feet into the air. “This is bigger than . . . almost anything I can think of. Selling a U.S. Senate seat to a foreign power?”
Nadine has an almost beatific smile on her face. “If you think about it, U.S. Senate seats have been sold for a long time. Candidates have to spend millions to even have a chance at winning one. The Citizens United decision worsened the problem exponentially. And once a senator’s in office, lobbyists pay millions to get their votes. How big a leap was it, really, to start selling votes directly?”
“It’s not the first time, is it?” I realize. “Governor Rod Blagojevich tried to sell the seat vacated by Barack Obama. Went to jail for it. Fourteen years. Did you ever hear the FBI tape of what he said about that seat?”
She shakes her head.
“‘I’ve got this thing and it’s fucking golden. I’m just not giving it up for fucking nothing.’”
“He’d have been right at home in the Bienville Poker Club. At least Buckman and his crew are trying to help the city as well as themselves.”
Despite my earlier indignation over Nadine’s lack of trust, I can’t help but fantasize what breaking a story of this magnitude would mean to my career. It’s like being the only reporter with the Pentagon Papers story, or Watergate. I feel an irrational fear that I’ll be killed before I can write it up and get it out to the world. Or maybe that’s not so irrational—
“This crime is actually ancient history,” Nadine informs me. “The Romans had a specific law to deal with bribery of senators for their votes. Lex Acilia repetundarum. But our situation gets into ambitus, as well—all the illegal crap the Poker Club did to get Sumner appointed to that seat. All twelve members pulled every string they could reach to put his butt in that chair.”
“Where is the cache now?” I ask.
“A safety-deposit box.”
My fear ratchets up three notches. “Not here in Bienville!”
Nadine smiles. “Not a chance. I’ll bet there’s not a safety-deposit box in this town that Claude Buckman couldn’t get opened one way or another. No, it’s in Monroe, Louisiana, in a bank with no ties to the Buckman empire.”
Monroe is seventy miles across the river. “Okay, good thinking. How long have you had the cache?”
“Eleven days.”
We’ve come to the point where things are going to get personal. But before I can ask my first question about Sally’s motive, Nadine says, “What did they do to you in the jail? Come on. I see petechiae under your eyes.”
I might as well tell her. “Officer Obie and a black-hooded buddy waterboarded me.”
“Shit, they didn’t.”
“And Beau Holland was asking the questions.”
Nadine’s eyes narrow, but I can see hatred burning in them. “It’s guys like Beau Holland who make me want to use the cache to blow the Poker Club to hell and gone, no matter what it costs the town. How bad was the waterboarding?”
If I were in her place, I’d probably ask the same absurd question. “Worse than it sounds. The name sounds vaguely related to wakeboarding. They need to rebrand that little technique.”
She lifts a finger to her mouth and shakes her head. “I should have gotten you out of there faster.”
“You did fine. I survived.”
We both jump when her iPhone rings. She checks the screen, then answers and puts the phone in speaker mode.
“It’s me,” she says.
“Sorry it took so long,” Tim Hayden says. “I drove out toward Marsh—toward his house—and a police car followed me. It peeled off at the county line, and a sheriff’s deputy picked me up. When I turned back toward town, he stopped me. Searched my car, made me open my trunk. He was furious not to find anybody hiding in back. As if Marshall would fit in that shoebox.”
“But he let you go?”
“After he made two cell phone calls. Are you guys okay?”
“Yes. You get home. And thanks. I owe you a big one.”
“Glad to help. Even though I don’t know exactly what this is about, I feel like I just stuck it to the Man.”
“You did, Tim,” I tell him. “In a big way. Adam would be proud.”
“Then I’m glad.”
After Nadine hangs up, we regard each other over the worn table.
“What now?” she asks.
“We’ve come to the heart of it. Sally’s motive. What you know about her plan, and her death.”
She looks anything but pleased at this prospect. “You have to meet the Poker Club at eight a.m. You look wiped out. Are you sure you want to go into that now? You could grab some sleep on that couch.” She points at a broken-backed relic against the far wall.
“I’m too wired to sleep. And I need to know the rest.”
“I know. I’m not avoiding. But I don’t think you realize how exhausted you are. You need to be on top of your game when you face Buckman. The future of this town’s on the line. Not to mention our lives.”
My mind goes to Ben Tate and the Terrell brothers, who are working to produce an edition of the paper that—if everything goes well—will hit the unsuspecting Poker Club like a laser-guided bomb. “Have you been out to the fishing camp?”
Nadine nods. “I took them a bunch of stuff from Walmart. Rubbing alcohol, small paintbrushes. Aaron Terrell texted me a long list.”
“How about we make a run out there? Talk on the way.”
She sits back in her chair, clearly surprised by my suggestion. “Do you think it’s safe?”
“If we can get across town to Cemetery Road without trouble, we should be all right. Besides, what can they really do to us?”
“Cave in our heads and dump us in the river?”
She hasn’t forgotten Buck. “No. For all they know, if we die, the cache automatically hits the internet. They just let me out of jail, didn’t they?”
She doesn’t look convinced. “They didn’t have control of both of us. And just because Buckman says he’s willing to cut another deal doesn’t mean some other guys in that club wouldn’t kill us if they got the chance. Man, I wish I had set up something like that. An insurance policy.”