Spin
A new tale from the pages of The River City Blade
By Hugh Lessig

We are standing at a phone booth -- we being myself and Kate Runyan. She has called me from the newsroom on the pretense of an emergency. The phone booth stands one block away from the Madison Apartments, where she has a place on the second floor.
She is chain-smoking those little cigars. Kate has always liked cigars. She is not one of those yuppified Johnny-come-lately, cigar-puffing females who go to the gym and drink wine coolers. It is only one of the things I like about her.
She casts a nervous eye toward her building. Three cop cars are out front. Kate is looking at me.
"There is a body in my trunk," she says.
I accept this fact with a nod.
"I found it 10 minutes ago. In the parking garage. I open the trunk and there he is. Shot through the eye. I'm staring at the body and a Pizza Hut delivery guy walks by. He sees it. I run. God dammit Smith, I should have ...."
I put a hand on her shoulder and she stops talking. A cop sees us, and he begins to walk towards us. Kate lights another cigar. The cop looks hinky.
"From your reaction," I say, "I gather you are not responsible and you don't know the body."
Kate smiles. I happen to know she has personally killed three people. Two of them the cops know about. All three deserved it. Old stories.
"No and yes," she says. "I didn't pull the trigger but I know who it is. Maybe I should tell the story from the beginning."
The cop is half a block away, moving slowly. He has missile-locked us. If we start walking away, he yells and it's over.
"Quick like a bunny," I say.
I turn so I can see the cop's reflection in the phone booth. Kate takes a deep breath.
"I'm working for Bob Marks. He's a candidate for -- "
"Congress. I know. Mainstream liberal, at least by Virginia standards. High school civics teacher. Married, 42 years old. Wife runs a real estate business. She's got the money. He's never run for political office. A little raw on the stump."
"Is this my story or yours?"
"It will be mine before it's over. But go ahead."
She gives me a look and continues. "Marks, as you say, is a mainstream liberal. Among other things, he favors specific rights for gay and lesbians. He favors the registration of same-sex couples, and would allow the unemployed partner to get the same health benefits as the employed spouse . . . "
"Jesus, Kate. You sound like a flack."
She sucks on her cigar and continues. "Marks, as I'm sure you know, is running against Benjamin Franklin Cunningham -- well known conservative, closet racist and gay-basher -- "
"Who hasn't got a chance in that liberal district," I finish.
"Yes. And since my candidate supports gay rights, and Cunningham would like to deport all the queers, I figure this is a wedge issue for the campaign."
"A wedge issue. That's good." The reflection of the cop gets bigger.
"I start digging up dirt on Cunningham -- maybe I find ties to conservative hate groups like the Klan or the Skinheads, and we nail him, yes? Well, to make a long story short, I come across the name of Herbert Brookingham."
The name sounds familiar, but I can't interrupt fast enough.
"Brookingham directs a group called Americans for Simple Justice -- one of those right-of-Rush Limbaugh factions that basically doesn't want anyone except white, hetereosexual Anglo-Saxons running the country."
"And Brookingham has ties to your opponent, Benjanmin Franklin --"
"Hah! You think you know everything." Kate's eyes grow wide with triumph. "Brookingham has ties to my guy. At first, I didn't know where I remembered the name. Then it came to me. Marks was writing an e-mail to Brookingham several days ago. When I looked over his shoulder, he jumped, like I startled him. I thought nothing of it at the time, because I didn't know Brookingham was Mister Obnoxious Conservative. But after I found his name on the Internet, I went back and retrieved the trashed e-mail from the hard drive. You know what it said?"
"Are we on the record here?"
"No. It said: 'Mr. Brookingam: Keep strong in the faith. The agenda will be fullfilled. Your brother, Bob.' That's our sweet-talking liberal? Who wants to be known as Mr. Inclusive, Mr. Diversity? I think not."
The cop is maybe 20 feet away. He is checking his notebook, probably for a description of Kate. I ask, " What did you do with the e-mail?"
"I leaked it to the opposing campaign. I met with a man who is the head flack for Cunningham." When I throw her a hurtful puppy dog look, she adds: "I was thinking of you next, Smith. But I was so pissed off, I figured what the hell. Maybe I wasn't thinking straight."
I take a deep breath and rewind my brain tape. "OK. You're working for Mister Liberal. You find he has ties to Obnoxious Conservative, which means he's a lying son of a bitch. You leak said evidence to Mister Conservative Opponent while conveniently forgetting about Mister Newspaperman, and Mister Conservative Flack now has the goods."
"And the flak" says Kate, " is dead in my trunk."
"OK."
She gives me a sharp look. "What do you mean by that?"
"I mean . . . OK. Did you save an extra hard copy of the e-mail? Is it on disk? Anything?"
"The computers at the campaign HQ mysteriously crashed yesterday . . . " She stops and looks past me. A heavy cop hand rests gently on my shoulder, and a heavy cop voice asks me for indentification.
"Picasso Smith Jr.," I say without looking back. "I'm a reporter for The River City Blade."

Kate gets hauled in for questioning. I know a detective sergeant working the scene, and he lets me go after I say "lawyer" three times in the same sentence. We're a fairly new paper in town, but still, they know where to find me.
The Marks spin gets very good, very fast. A fax hits the newsroom around 4:30 p.m., a few hours after the discovery of the body and just in time to provide a fresh lead for the six o'clock news, which had been humping the story all day.
The press release expresses "profound regret for the loss of life." It says candidate Marks will remember his opponent in his prayers. Then it gets to the meat:

"Mr. Marks has been informed that Kate Runyan, a private detective, has been questioned in the case. While it is true that Runyan worked on the fringes of the Marks campaign, she was recently fired because she wanted the campaign to turn in a negative direction.
Said Marks: "I do not tolerate negative campaigning, nor will I associate with people who do. While Ms. Runyan was, at best, a 'hanger on' and did not do significant work for me, I felt it best she leave the campaign because of her destructive thoughts. I can only speculate as to what role she played in the murder of Jeff Scanlon, my opponent's chief of staff, and I will not engage in speculation."
I ball up the release and toss it against a wall. It is promptly retrieved by our cop reporter who is doing the main bar, a standard 20-incher with quotes from all sides. One of our feature writers is digging up stuff for a profile of the dear, dead Scanlon, and they want me to do a political piece on how this will affect the race.
I have until 10:30 p.m. to file. I walk into my editor's office and close the door. My editor's name is Aesop Farnsworth. He's too old o be a managing editor, and he works too hard. But he can spell and he can think. He came from our sister paper, The Frisco Foil, and in the six months we've been on the streets, he's granted me enough overtime that I' m starting to like him.
I tell him everything. He stares at the window for a few seconds. He scribbles on a tablet. He throws the pencil at the wall and swears.
"Four things," he says.
I get my notebook. We have done this drill before.
"Thing one: Kate Runyan must talk on the record about the e-mail. It's her motive for seeing this Scanlon guy. We need access to her.
"Thing two: Since the e-mail no longer exists, we must find new evidence that links our good liberal Marks to this Brookingham. It makes Runyan sound more credible. We need to find these whaddycallems, The Simple Americans for Truth."
"Americans for Simple Justice, boss."
He ignores me. He is on a roll. "Thing three: Your deadline, Mr. Smith, is 10:30 p.m."
He takes a breath. I stop writing.
"Thing four: Don't forget thing three."
I look at my list. Kate may talk through her lawyer. But the hardest thing to do -- at least on deadline -- will be to link Marks and the conservative group. I tell this to my boss, and he smiles. Then he leans across the desk.
"Smith, think of the three little words that get you all excited."
"One. More. Beer."
"No. Follow the money."
I think for a moment. "You mean campaign contributions? He wouldn't be that stupid . . . "
"Follow the money."

Thing five: Never underestimate the stupidity of someone running for office. I return to my desk and fire up a laptop which has a database of all congressional campaign finance reports submitted to the Federal Election Commission.
By law, all contributions above $200 must be listed separately.
Herbert Brookingham gave Bob Marks $250.
That is it.
Nothing for Americans for Simple Justice Inc.
Nothing for any group that sands to the right of the Chamber of Commerce.
Records show Brooks has raised $312,000 so far, and the campaign is entering the final month. He is expected to raise at least $500,000 before all is said and done -- a decent warchest, but not outlandish for a closely contested congressional race.
A $250 contribution is not enough to explain why Marks signs an e-mail as "your brother, Bob." It gouges a hole in Runyan's story. It makes Runyan look like she flew all wild.
I look at the Brookingham contribution again. He lists his occupation as "self-employed accountant," and his address as a post office box in Fort Worth, Texas.
There could be other contributors who belong to Americans For Simple Justice, but without a membership roster, I can't match them to the contributors on this list. Or, they could have given Marks less than $250. Those contributions are not listed seperately -- they just go into a big pot called "unitemized contribituions."
Just for fun, I take the post office box listed by Brookingham and do a search for other contributors with the same address. The computer begins to chug. I watch the beachball rolling around on the screen. It is munching on something big. If I had a nickel for every . . .
Bingo.
The screen fills with type.
More than a dozen contributions. More than two dozen. All from the same post office box, but all different names.
The names mean nothing to me until I start searching. Lexus-Nexis will give you most major newspapers, and some of these guys have been mentioned in stories.
Dallas Times, September 1999: Contributor Ethan Evans is described as "the regional head of the White Posse, a supremacist group." He is quoted after a militant rally.
Boise Plainsman, March 1998: Contributor Harold Wallace belongs to John Brown's Body, survivalists who are based in Michigan. He was arrested for firearms violations.
And on and on. Well-known arch conservatives giving money to Marks, all funneled through the same post office box.
That implies organization. That implies coordination. Brookingham
funneling massive support from the far right.
I tell my boss. He tells me to hang a lead on it.
I buzz the pager for Kate's attorney, and he calls me back right away. No, Kate has not been charged. She did a decent job accounting for her whereabouts, and besides, the cops like her. But they don't like the fact that she ran, that she was found lurking around the murder scene, and that she's killed two people before.
"It's three," I tell the lawyer.
"Don't bring that up," he says.
I tell him to meet me at Kate's apartment. He says she's not there -- she got a room at the Landmark to hide from the media. The lawyer's name is hard to pronounced -- Tee-true, or something to that effect. It's French, but he's all right. He says he'll be there in five.

Kate opens the door when I knock. Her foot blocks the doorway. She puts her hand on my chest and gently pushes me away.
Her eyes say: Get out of here.
We don't work fast enough. One man appears over her shoulder. He smiles easily. He makes a joke about how "the media have shown up" and he invites me in.
"You know, I just realized I left my headlights on," I say.
I turn to leave and there is a man behind me. He has the same, easy smile. He has a tight, hard stare.
We walk into the room.
Besides Kate and myself, the three men are Thug One, Thug Two, and Kate's lawyer. Kate is standing and smoking. The lawyer grips the armrests of the chair. The thugs are wearing blazers and slacks and bad shoes. Each one keeps his left hand in his pocket. The thugs look nervous. They look like they don't want to be here -- that they don't know what to do next. The hand-in-the-pocket thing is a little too obvious, a little too Edward G.
I sit on the edge of the bed.
"Well," I say cheerfully. "How 'bout them Sharks?"
Thug One sits down next to me. He rests a calloused hand on my knee. It reminds me of the cop's hand on my shoulder. He speaks slowly and carefully.
"We know why you are here, Mr. Smith. We listened as Mr. Tee-true explained the results of your research to Ms. Runyan. You work very fast, Mr. Smith. Most impressive."
I turn to Kate, and she says: "They followed me to the hotel. When I opened the door, they forced themselves in. They hid in the bathroom when Robert arrived. They have guns."
I force myself to breathe evenly. Robert The Lawyer looks ready to vomit. The desk phone has no cord. The blinds are drawn. They intend to do it here and walk out. A Kate Runyan suicide? Now it will have to be murder-suicide. It will be complicated. They were not expecting me and the lawyer. They're thinking things through. It hits me: They're amatuers. They don't have a plan.
Not that I have a plan.
"Queer lovers," one of the thugs mumbles.
"Excuse me?" I ask.
"Her." He points to Kate. "She's a queer lover. Probably got her own bull diesel at home."
"You have something against gays?" I ask.
"They make my skin crawl. You know what AIDS stands for? Adios, infected di----"
"I heard that one. You hate gay people that much, huh?"
The thugs smile. You can almost hear their chest hairs stand on end. One says to me: "AIDS is a cure, not a disease."
I remember hearing that once before. It was at the 1988 Republican Convention in New Orleans. I was in the designated protest area -- a local park, not far from the Superdome. A mousey guy held a sign with that very slogan, and he was a harassing a local Gay and Lesbian Alliance Group that was planning a rally.
Finally, one of the women confronted him. He screamed at her: "AIDS is a cure! Not a disease!" and she just laughed, like she knew what she had to do. And she did. And it worked.
I figure it might work for me.
I turn to the thug sitting next to me on the bed and kiss him full on the mouth. With tongue.
"Sonofabitch!"
He acts like someone poured acid down his throat. He covers his mouth with both hands and runs into the bathroom, screaming something about how he's going to kill me. The other thug bursts out laughing. Kate acts like she's going to do something, but the unkissed thug recovers and pulls out his gun -- a little .25 caliber, from the looks of it.
"Jesus, mister," he says. "That was good. I hope it's worth dying for."
But he is not watching Robert Tee-tro -- whose name, I later find out from reading my own story -- is spelled Tetrault. He ends up getting the credit, thanks to the pepper foam he always keeps in his pocket, and yes, he did say "Die, you scum!" before spraying the thug, but everyone thought I made that up, and Mr. Tetrault himself probably regretted saying it.
The thug in the bathroom locked himself inside after Kate got his partner's gun. When the cops came, he shot himself in the head, which was appropriate, I guess.
I phoned in my story to Mr. Farnsworth, who could be counted on to do a half-decent rewrite. Kate and I stayed away from the camera crews while Mr. Tetrault did enough talking for everyone.
Now the cops are getting ready to leave. Kate and I are sitting on the bed. I see one end of her mouth tilt into a smile.
"What?" I ask.
"You're not -- "
"No," I say. "I'm not -- not that there's anything wrong with that."
She laughs at the old Seinfeld joke. "My lawyer wanted to know."
"Oh. Geez." I look at Kate and say: "Are you -- ?"
At that moment, a detective sergeant comes up and tells us we can clear out. Kate hops up from the bed and smooths her skirt.
"Maybe," she says.
"Maybe what?"
"Maybe one of these days you'll find out, Smith."