Page 67 of Grift

“Listen, what I’m about to tell you stays between us, okay?” She looks anxious, and I nod. “When I started digging and getting the contours of this, it became clear that I couldn’t get the info we needed if I stayed to strictly legal channels. Normally, I’m against this. But in this case, given the issue at hand, I made an exception.”

I’m going to double her fee. Triple it.

“This won’t stand up in a court case, Patrick. And I will be in a hell of a lot of trouble if this gets out. Like prison trouble.” Her eyes land on my face, and she’s obviously deeply concerned.

I look her straight in the eye. “This will not get out, and this will not be going to court. I promise you, this will never land at your door.”

She sighs, looking calmer, and then pulls a folder out of a bag and slides it over to me. “Read this.”

As my eyes run over the page, it takes me awhile to make sense of it. Text massages. Emails. And then the demands, tied to the same IP address.

“Lay this out for me. Make sure I understand it.”

She bites her lip, then tilts her head back and looks at the ceiling. What she’s saying is too awful to say while looking me in the eye. “As near as I can figure, Jared had tried a few different schemes to blackmail his father first. They were only marginally successful, seriously run of the mill stuff. He sucks at crime, but is fairly talented at technology, so they never tied it back to him. At some point, Jared approached Carter with an idea: drug Jessica, get a tape of her in an apparently compromised way, and then they’d blackmail the father. Split the profits 50/50. It looks like at first Carter refused, until he didn’t. And when the actual event happened, he did more than just drug her and film her. He assaulted her while he was at it, a fact that Jared becomes aware of and doesn’t seem to ever even react to. I’m so sorry,” she says.

I’ll destroy them both.

“The tapes?”

“They’re nowhere online, not even on the dark web. The originals were stored on a server at the house where Jared and Carter both live, and those have been erased. Destroyed to a point that they can never be recovered. Only a few copies were made, and all of those seem to have gone to the Senator. In fact, the copy your father had was actually sent to the Senator originally and it looks like your father bought it from a staffer after he invested in the casino, along with some other choice dirt on Kensington.” She slides a package to me.

It’s the video. “This has never been copied, so this and whatever the Senator retained are the last copies.”

“How do I make sure that my father didn’t duplicate it? Absolutely sure,” I ask.

She looks at me with pity. But I can’t trust him, and I won’t let some loyalty driven oversight hurt my chances of ending this, once and for all. “Look, I promise you that this has never been duplicated, and maybe I had a look around the casino’s network to make sure. Absolutely sure. I might have deleted a few other things pertaining to you in the process. Your father really likes his leverage.”

I let it pass, but it stokes the coals of my anger hotter.

“Do you have any questions?”

There are a million questions, but none that she can answer. I stand up, gathering the packages and files. “Thank you so much, Lila. It’s probably better if we’re not connected for awhile, if you get my drift. And I’ll destroy these, after I show them to one person.”

Technically, to two. But she doesn’t need to know that.

She opens the laptop. “I have another meeting here in thirty. If anything comes up, let me know.”

For awhile after I leave the MIT building, I just walk, the icy air rushing past and trying to cool my burning skin. Finally, I pull out my phone and dial a number. A couple of minutes later, I’m on my way to Senator Kensington’s Boston office.

His assistant gives me a cool greeting, but shows me up to his office. “Senator, your son in law Mr. Carney to see you.”

It’s the end of the day, and the place is almost empty. “Thank you, Pamela. You can head home. I’ll be on my way out myself shortly and can lock up.”

Bastard thinks he won’t be giving me even a few minutes of his time. Pamela. That name rings a bell, and then I remember the copy of the check that my father had written that’s included in the folder of documents.

She closes the door, but Kensington gives a small shake of his head and gives a pointed look to where his assistant just left.

“Patrick,” he booms. “Just wait five minutes. I need to make a quick call.” And then he makes a mundane call to a campaign supporter, shooting the shit and agreeing to have his assistant get in touch to set up a golf date. Eventually the woman outside the office stops milling, gathers her things and leaves. The lights dim. Kensington is still on the phone, when I slip out of his office and walk the entire space. I lock both external doors, and make absolutely sure no one’s there.

Then I walk into his office. He’s loosened his tie and poured two glasses of whiskey. I throw the package with the tape on the desk.

“What is this?”

“It’s the tape.”

He goes from wary to furious. “Are you coming here and bribing me, Carney? That’s not the agreement that we had. That’s not –“

I hold up a hand. “Did you ever look into where this originated?”

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