The Dirty Secret Read online

  Royal laughed and slapped Dave on the back. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that, Hoss. Woody Allen once said ‘Ninety percent of success is just showing up.’ But personally, I’d say the key is finding that delicate balance between being gutsy enough to take risks when opportunity knocks and being smart enough to know when it’s time to be scared.”

  Dave smiled and nodded, but said nothing. Staring into the fire, he took a swig of his beer and subconsciously placed the half-empty bottle back down on the table.

  Royal looked at his confidant studiously. “So tell me, Dave: Once this election is over, are you finally going to buckle down and find yourself a good woman?”

  Dave kept staring at the logs. Wayward pinpoints of brilliant white light flickered and arced away from the fire as logs crackled and popped in the heat. The air was saturated with the smell of burning pine logs mixed with the sweet, pungent aroma of the Cohibas.

  “You know,” Dave began. “I think I’m in a pretty good place right now. I’ve accepted the fact that marrying Krista was a piss-poor decision, and getting divorced was the best thing for me under the circumstances.”

  “Especially before you had any kids,” Royal interjected.

  Dave turned his face to the governor. “No doubt. But ‘finding a good woman’ isn’t at the top of my priority list right now. Don’t get me wrong: I’d be thrilled if it happened. But when it comes to women, I’ve spent most of my life trying to jam square pegs into a triangular hole, and I figure the best thing I can do is to just let things ride for a while.

  “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be,” he continued. “As hokey as it might sound, I really do believe God has a plan for me. Maybe next year, I’ll fall head over in heels in love with some amazing woman who will birth me a big-headed kid destined to cure cancer. But I could just as easily get flattened by an eighteen-wheeler tomorrow.”

  Dave paused long enough to take another drink of Yuengling. “Who knows? I don’t have a crystal ball. All I can say for sure is I’m damn tired of bashing my skull against square pegs. But if God ever gets around to introducing me to a woman who’s really right for me – you know, the kind I can get along with, be myself with, laugh with and grow old with. Well … If He ever decides to do that for me, I’m ready for it.”

  Royal eyed his friend closely, blowing two smoke rings toward the fire as he mulled it over. “Fair enough. Lord knows you’ve had enough bad women in your life over the 15 years I’ve known you. It’s a wonder you don’t have a big square hole in your forehead.” He raised his bottle. “Here’s hoping The Man Upstairs sends you a triangular peg soon.”

  Relieved that their discussion of his love life had ended, Dave clinked bottles with the politician. “I’ll definitely drink to that.”

  CHAPTER 27

  PLEASANTS COUNTY, WEST VIRGINIA

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 5:40 P.M.

  “No fair!” the dark-haired boy squealed, thrashing his legs around wildly. His neck was twisted at an odd angle as he pawed at his incapacitated left shoulder.

  Sprawled on the plush gray carpet, Jack was smiling but panting as he struggled to fight a two-front war with his sons. He had inflicted a “Vulcan nerve pinch” on his oldest son while restraining his youngest son with his legs in a scissors grip.

  “Quit your belly-aching, Logan,” Jack said. “You’re eight years old. You should know better than let me get a ‘Spock Lock’ on you!”

  Jack’s gloating was rudely interrupted by an excruciating blast of pain from his inner thigh. He screamed and opened his legs, thereby releasing the red-headed boy who moments ago seemed safely ensconced. “How many times do I have to tell you, Brandon? No biting!”

  The freckle-faced youngster slithered out-of-reach and smiled up at him triumphantly. If he feels any guilt or remorse for fighting dirty, he sure doesn’t look like it, Jack thought.

  The click-clack sound of high heels making contact with ceramic tile approached from the kitchen. Jack looked up and saw Tabatha standing in the doorway, scowling and holding a phone to her ear. “Knock it off! Can’t you see I’m on the phone here?”

  Jack clamped down on his rising anger. Half out of breath, he took in two lungfuls of air and counted to three. Relinquishing his hard-won grip on Logan’s nerve, he patted the boy on the back and sat up Indian-style in the floor. “Sorry, honey. We got a little carried away and I didn’t know you had a call.”

  Tabatha said nothing but the message in her smoldering eyes came across loud and clear: Keep those kids quiet and don’t bother me!

  At that moment, a loud beep echoed from the office. “Okay, boys,” Jack said. “Let’s take a break while your mom’s on the phone. Go clean up your rooms before dinner is ready.”

  “Oh, man!” Brandon complained. “Just when we had you right where we wanted you!”

  Jack chuckled. “In your dreams, bucko. Scoot! We’ll finish this match later.”

  The boys glumly trudged away. Tabatha shot Jack one last cold look before turning back into the kitchen. “I’m back,” she said into the phone. “I just had to lay down the law a little bit.”

  Just as Jack thought his anger would boil over, two little arms wrapped around his neck. Peeking over his shoulder, his mischievous younger son was pretending to put him in a sleeper hold. “We’re not finished with you yet, old man!”

  Jack couldn’t help but laugh. He knew which of his two sons would give him ulcers later in life. “Oh, yeah? Well, we’ll just see about that.”

  As the boys ascended the stairs to half-heartedly clean their rooms, Jack tried to ignore his aching joints and rose from the floor. He headed into the office, sat down at the computer and clicked on the new email:

  From: [email protected]

  To: [email protected]

  Date: Tues, 18 Nov 5:41 pm

  Dear Mr. McCallen,

  I’ve relayed your response up the chain of command. I expect they will want you to provide us with some additional information about MR’s operations to help us do our due diligence. I’ll let you know when I hear more.

  I apologize for not getting back to you sooner, but I’ve been out of the office and tied up in meetings most of the week. I just started working here last week and I’m trying hard to bring myself up to speed on things. Here is a link to Petromica’s press release announcing my hiring.

  I’ll be in touch. As always, if you need to reach me, feel free to call me on my cell.

  Sincerely,

  Alex Beria

  Executive VP, Mergers & Acquisitions

  Petromica, LLC

  Jack clicked on the link, opening a press release dated November 12 indicating Petromica was pleased to announce Alex Beria had accepted a position with its mergers & acquisitions department. “Mr. Beria brings a wealth of experience to the table, having previously held leadership positions with several Fortune 500 companies. He will primarily work at the firm’s new headquarters for North American operations located in Reston, Virginia, as we seek to expand our corporate footprint into new regions.”

  A small glamour-style photo depicting the company’s new hire was included in the release. His face was positioned so that the right side of his head was most prominently featured, and Jack was immediately taken aback by the jarring whiteness of his toothy smile. His eyes looked to be blue, but the picture was small. He had high cheekbones, a strong jawline and his blond hair was cut short and neatly trimmed.

  After reviewing the press release once more, Jack fired out a short response to Beria and forwarded it to Rikki, along with the simple note, “FYI.”

  The clock on Jack’s computer showed it was almost six. Shocked the boys weren’t hungry yet, he leapt up and headed for the kitchen, hoping Tabatha had whipped something together for dinner.

  Much to his chagrin, his wife was sitting on the couch in the living room, still gabbing on her cell phone. Gingerly approaching her, he mouthed, “What’s for dinner?”

  Tabatha scowled and tilted the ph
one away from her mouth. “Can’t you see I’m busy here? Your hands aren’t broken. Fix it yourself.”

  Jack felt the sudden urge to rip the phone out of her hands and punch her in the face. But remembering his two sons were upstairs helped him resist that impulse. Gritting his teeth, he stormed into the kitchen and tore open the refrigerator door, looking for something he could quickly heat up to feed the family.

  As his eyes scanned the fridge shelves, his mind tried to ascertain why he would continue living like this, never knowing with which of his wife’s personalities he would have to deal from one day to the next.

  CHAPTER 28

  McLEAN, VIRGINIA

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 6:45 P.M.

  Senator Wilson’s formal dining room was silent as the eight people in attendance waited for someone to take the lead. Although that prerogative belonged to the Senator, Luke Vincent (and everyone else) knew she preferred to ask questions, listen to her advisors’ opinions and formulate her own thoughts before asserting control of such meetings.

  “Let’s get the lawyer on the phone,” the campaign chairman said, asserting de facto control over the discussion. Several people around the oval mahogany table nodded, including Wilson. Thus, the meeting began.

  A black phone sat at the center of the table. The campaign chairman sat directly across the table from Vincent and Bowen, and he activated the speakerphone and dialed the number.

  Two rings later, a woman picked up the line. “Hello?”

  “Susan!” the campaign chairman chirped. “We’re all here. How are you doing?”

  “I’m well,” Susan Mathis, the campaign’s lead attorney in West Virginia, replied. “Still irritated about how things went in Williamson yesterday, but I’m sure we all are.”

  “Well that’s what we want to discuss. To see what we can do to turn things around there.”

  “Are we out of luck in the other close states?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” the campaign chairman answered. “Our only hope of winning the election now is to find a way to win West Virginia.”

  Mathis paused. “I understand. So what do you need from me?”

  “Susan, Tyson Vasquez is here with us. You know he’s been overseeing our activities in West Virginia, so I’ll let him take over. Tyson?”

  Vasquez was one of Wilson’s closest advisors. A former congressman from California, Vincent knew the man had made a fortune in the private sector after leaving office by working for a telecom company whose initiatives he had supported while in Congress. His dark complexion and thick mane of coal black hair reflected his Hispanic heritage. Although relatively short at five-feet-seven, he was phenomenally photogenic, having been named to one popular magazine’s Most Beautiful Americans list three years running.

  Vasquez scooted closer to the table and leaned toward the speakerphone. “Hey, Susan, this is Tyson here. Can you hear me?”

  “Hi, Tyson. I can hear you just fine.”

  “Good. As you know, we filed recount requests with every other county in the state. Those requests were filed within 48 hours after the counties’ canvasses ended, as required by statute, and you need to file one in Mingo County no later than noon tomorrow.”

  “We’ve already turned it in. We didn’t want to take any chances with it.”

  Vasquez raised his bottled water and took a drink. “Excellent. We don’t want to make the same mistakes Al Gore made in Florida back in 2000.”

  “What do you mean?” Mathis asked.

  Vasquez glanced over at the short, bespectacled man with a receding gray hair line who was sitting to his left. “I’ll let Evan Rothman explain it. He’s a professor at Georgetown’s law school and our general counsel. He’s also the guy who’ll argue this case in front of the Supreme Court if it ends up there.”

  Rothman cleared his throat. “Good evening, Susan. We requested recounts in every county in the state because we want to follow Bush v. Gore as closely as possible. There were two main reasons why the Supreme Court overturned Florida’s recount procedures in 2000:

  “First, the Court felt there wasn’t any uniformity in Florida’s recount procedures, which varied widely from county-to-county, and that raised the possibility some citizens’ votes were being treated differently than others in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

  “Secondly, the Court bluntly noted that individual American citizens do not have a constitutional right to vote in presidential elections. Under Article Two, Section One of the Constitution, it’s the individual states that are empowered to appoint the ‘Electors’ whose ballots actually determine who wins the presidential election.”

  “The Electoral College,” Mathis interjected.

  “Precisely. The Electors meet in their individual states on the first Monday following the second Wednesday in December to cast ballots for the offices of President and Vice-President. In Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court said the Florida recounts could not be wrapped up in time for the state’s Electors to cast ballots in the Electoral College. Or, more specifically, no later than six days before the Electoral College was scheduled to convene that year.”

  “I remember that,” Mathis said. “It had something to do with a ‘safe harbor’ provision in federal law.”

  “Yes,” Rothman replied. “That would be Title Three, Section Five of the U.S. Code. The Safe Harbor Provision notes that although the constitution vests each individual state with the authority to determine how its votes in the Electoral College will be cast, the states must make that determination no later than six days before the Electoral College meets. If a state’s election procedures aren’t completed by that deadline, the state runs the risk of losing its right to cast ballots in the Electoral College altogether.”

  “Wow,” Dick Bowen blurted. Senator Wilson and her husband both shot him disapproving looks, and he meekly raised his hand and grimaced in apology.

  “I see,” Mathis said. “So when does the deadline fall this year?”

  Rothman peered down and ran his finger along his notes. “The Electoral College ballots will be cast on Monday, December 15th. That means the deadline for state election law contests to be concluded is Tuesday, December 9th.”

  “That’s exactly three weeks from today,” Wilson observed.

  “Not a lot of time,” Rothman conceded. “So we have to make sure the procedures we follow in challenging the results in West Virginia are both uniform throughout the state and completed within the next 21 days.”

  The room was silent for about ten seconds until Susan Mathis’s voice emanated from the speakerphone. “So whatever we decide to do, we have to do it quickly.”

  “Yes,” the campaign chairman said. “And since you’re our expert on West Virginia’s election laws, can you tell us what happens now?”

  “Basically, every county’s recount must be conducted in accordance with the Secretary of State’s regulations. Tyson has assigned lawyers to work in every county courthouse during the recount just like the canvasses. If they think a county commission is not following those procedures, they will immediately call the Secretary of State’s office to rectify the situation.

  “In order to impose some sort of order on this process,” she continued. “The Secretary of State has asked all 55 counties to commence their recounts next Monday the 24th. It is possible recounts have been requested in other races on the ballot, but this process will be focused on the presidential race.”

  There was a brief pause on the lawyer’s end of the line. Vincent figured she was flipping through her papers or getting something to drink. In either event, Mathis picked up where she left off. “Each county’s recount will be conducted by teams of two people – one Democrat, one Republican – assigned by the County Clerk. Aside from two counties that still use paper ballots, the other counties all use either optical scan ballots or direct-recording electronic voting machines, which are known as ‘DRE’ machines for short.”

  “I’m familiar with optical scan ballots,” the nomine
e interrupted. “That’s where you shade in circles like on the old SAT exams. But what exactly are these DRE machines?”

  “DRE machines are computerized systems that typically use touchscreen monitors to ‘directly’ record a person’s ballot electronically,” Mathis replied. “Instead of using a computer to interpret optical scan ballots and tabulate the votes, a DRE machine cuts out the middle man by immediately processing and storing the votes on the machine’s hard drive or memory card.”

  “Ah,” Senator Wilson said, “that’s why there was such a stink about the memory cards in Mingo County. Go on.”

  “Thank you, Senator. So recognizing that 53 of West Virginia’s 55 counties use some sort of machine to tabulate their votes, the recount will essentially consist of these teams of two people hand counting the ballots in 5 percent of each county’s precincts.”

  “Optical scan ballots are one thing, but how can you hand count votes that are directly recorded onto a machine’s hard drive?” Vincent asked.

  “You can’t,” Mathis conceded. “Not exactly, anyway. The law requires touchscreen machines to be equipped with what is called a ‘voter verified paper audit trail’ or VVPAT for short. Theoretically, every button pushed on the touchscreen while the voter is standing in the booth is printed on a roll of paper inside the machine that looks like what’s used in cash registers. When one person finishes voting and presses a button on the touchscreen to submit their ballot, two things happen: One, the data reflecting that person’s ballot is imprinted on the machine’s memory card. Secondly, the VVPAT is imprinted with a heading that reads ‘End of Ballot’ before it rolls forward in preparation for the next voter to use the machine.”

  Senator Wilson’s eyebrows creased. “What if a voter presses a button to vote for one candidate and then changes their mind? Wouldn’t that mess things up?”

  “It’s not supposed to,” Mathis replied. “The VVPAT would show the voter canceled his first action. Plus the digital data isn’t imprinted to the memory card until the voter goes through the entire ballot and confirms they want to ‘drop their ballot in the box’ so to speak.”