Bonus Scene: Testimony
Prompted by my own thoughts. Flynn testifies at trial for the second time and gets attacked from a new source.
Chapter Notes: I really meant to write the unfilled prompts first, and I promise I will get to them. If I ever don't want to take a particular prompt, I'll tell the prompter privately as soon as it is made. But this idea inspired me first, and I think that for an ad hoc collection of one-shots, you should just go with your inspiration.
I am posting a content warning for it, though not for any of the usual reasons. This sequence, more than just about anything else for this AU, is blatantly, harshly political in nature. And the specific type of politics that it primarily goes after may make some people uncomfortable. I obviously don't know anything about the ideology of most of my readers, because it's not my business, but I do know the political demographics of the millennial generation, and that ideology—even more so than in the "Anniversary" piece—is what gets caustically satirized here. I'd apologize for any discomfort, but to be honest, I'm not sorry. I don't think any ideology is above criticism, disagreement, or even brutal satire.
Rated T.
Finally, because of a naming choice I made very early in the writing of Bad Influence (I used the surnames of two highly corrupt politicians from well-known YA series), I have OCs in this chapter that are blatantly inspired by one of said YA series. No infringement against J. K. Rowling's work is meant.
It was the summer after the baby's birth, and the young family had been enjoying the pleasant days and late afternoons. Flynn had a contract with his publisher to write a young adult novel, and he would frequently take his laptop into the park and write while Rapunzel let little Kate play. It was not a rewrite of the same story that he had worked on as a teenager, but a new idea that had occurred to him over the past several months.
At home, his work was not nearly as time-intensive as the writing of Tarnished Crown had been. Then, he had sat at his computer desk for hours to pore over his notes, videoconference with the publishing people, and bang out the book itself. There had been a deadline, though. The book had needed to come out while the event was still somewhat topical. This book was, well, a different story.
And yet Flynn could not quite feel that Crowngate was entirely behind him. The convictions of the lobbyists and businessmen had taken place about a year and a half ago now, but the former members of Congress who had accepted the bribes—Snow and Fudge of New York State—had not yet been convicted. The court case had begun; it began a few months ago, and Flynn followed it with an almost guilty compulsion. So far, the federal prosecutors had relied upon the evidence that he had given them for the first set of trials, but he had not been summoned to court to testify. He was sure that testimony against these two was part of the deal he had made back when he first came forward, and he wondered why they were waiting.
When he came back from the mailbox one morning with a very official-looking letter from the court, he was not surprised. This is finally it, he thought with some relief as he read the summons. Finally, at last, this can be buried.
Flynn knew he didn't need to check the blogs, and for a long time, he had not done so. He had always had a poor opinion of the media, and it had not changed one iota with his entry in the world of publishing... but political blogs were somehow worse. They were not even attempts at proper journalism, he thought, but rather, sociopolitical propaganda and activism disguised as news. They existed to reinforce the ideology of their target audience. Flynn already knew that his viewpoint was currently not deemed "pure" enough for its natural partisan home, and being shoved out of the circles that had an acknowledged, respected place for people like him eight years earlier also made him bitter. The idea of self-righteous grassroots types promoting ideological groupthink and making the purging problem even worse was abhorrent.
But for some irrational reason—rather like a drug addiction, he thought grimly—he still started reading these things again. He started with those that tended to align with the party that used to admit people like him.
"Case proves that neither representatives nor Justice Department answers to the people"
"Corrupt government prosecutors using evidence from a slimy Washington K Street insider"
"Job creator businessmen jailed while a DC parasite walks and make$ bank. Always special treatment for cooperating with the bully state..."
"Snow was a sleazy, corrupt RINO and grifter"
"Why did it take so long to try them? Government incompetence and wastefulness"
Flynn felt his lip curl in disgust at the snippets from the blogs. It appeared that these blowhards were not even on the same page about just what the supposed problem was. But then, they have never had a consistent plan, just rabble-rousing. He began looking at what the other side had to say about the case.
"Case demonstrates that no one answers to We the People..."
"Fudge was a friend to us who made one misjudgment (that they all make)..."
"Show trial: The establishment is making a public example of a progressive hero"
"Why we shouldn't defend Fudge"
"Is the verdict a foregone conclusion?"
Flynn rolled his eyes. Apparently they weren't on the same page either, given that dueling bloggers were arguing for or against the defense of "their" representative in the case. He had a chuckle about the similarity of some of their populist complaints to those of their grassroots opposite number. They're more alike than either would dare admit, he thought smugly.
But at least the political blogs that he looked at did not have any headlines that immediately grabbed at him to click against his better judgment. He was accustomed to people who railed against him for his corrupt days, and it rarely raised his ire anymore for that dead horse to be beaten.
Flynn headed into a small room just off the main lobby where the condo residents' mailboxes were set up. He got the mail out—there was a large envelope with what seemed to be a piece of cardboard inside, he noticed absently—and headed up to the top floor with it. Rapunzel was in the living room, reading a book as the baby slept. She smiled at him. He smiled back and went into his office.
For the most part, the mail was junk—the usual flyers and offers, plus a couple of letters from fans of Tarnished Crown who had gotten hold of his home address. He came to the big envelope, which he noticed was marked for a lack of return address. Frowning, he carefully opened it and slid out a pair of cardboard sheets. Sandwiched between them was a full-page photograph.
Flynn sucked in his breath hard. The picture was a candid shot of him, but it was not recent. He was seated at a private room in a fancy bar, lounging sans jacket on a big leather seat with a drink in hand. Flashes of other people—a sleeve cuff and hand, the back of someone's head—were in the background. Perched on the arm of the chair was a lithe woman with short blonde hair and not a lot of clothing. She had one hand on his shoulder, and she was grinning and winking out at the camera. He looked too drunk to notice that his picture was being taken.
Flynn instantly shoved the photograph back into the envelope and the envelope into a desk drawer. He glanced back at the office door. It was open, but Rapunzel was still in the living room. She hadn't seen the picture. He breathed a sigh of relief.
When was this taken? he screamed in thought. And who might have taken it? He closed his eyes and tried to remember this party. There had been scores of them during the five years that he had worked at the Crown Group, but this particular bar was in Washington, he recalled. The firm had rented this private room several times, always for parties with the politicians, since the Wall Street clients wanted the parties they threw to be in New York. This picture could have been taken at any of the DC events by anyone who was present. All he really knew for sure was that it could not have been mailed by any of his former colleagues, because they were all currently in prison.
He wondered for half a second why it was sent before realizing that the reason was probably intimidation. Someone did not want him to testify. The idea angered him, and at once he vowed that he would not let this get to him. He would not even let Rapunzel know about it, since a picture of him with a DC escort—or, perhaps, young employee of one of the politicians, since he could not recall exactly who she was—would undoubtedly upset her, and the implications of an anonymously mailed, potentially embarrassing photo would trouble her even more.
"Anatomy of a Witch Hunt."
Flynn gazed upon the opinion piece, which had been written by somebody named Percival Wallace and posted in a blog that officially was non-partisan but de facto was very much so. Snarky and condescending in its overall tone, the piece was a full-throated defense of Fudge and a sneering, insinuating attack on anyone the author viewed as a detractor. That included not just the bloggers who were offering what the author deemed well-intentioned but misguided friendly fire, but also—and far more significantly, in the writer's opinion—the Kings. Rapunzel's grandparents.
The fact is, Wallace wrote, Everard King represented a wing of the party that sought for years to stifle the progressive wing to which Rep. Fudge belonged. When they were both in the House, King and Fudge frequently locked horns. King, representing a western state, came from a more hands-off, libertarian outlook. I will not waste bytes detailing the flaws in this naïve, unrealistic, but temptingly romantic form of "classical liberalism," but I will point out that not once was Fudge suspected of corruption until the series of bills he co-sponsored with Snow. King was in the Senate by then, focused like a laser on corruption, but the timid, "moderate" wing of the party was still applying pressure to the more forward-thinking such as Fudge. "Teaming up in a bipartisan way to ease restrictions on trading in the market!" (One need not imagine the collective DC establishment boner at the news.)
The fact is, Fudge made a mistake, and we should not defend that mistake. But we know that behaviors are socially conditioned and the idea of absolute "personal responsibility" is another myth treasured by that aforementioned wing of the party. Fudge made his mistake because of pressure from people like King. This is beyond dispute. And now, federal prosecutors who wouldn't jail any Wall Streeters over the economic destruction of a few years ago, the Kings, and their very own "bipartisan" ally (and family member by marriage) have ruined a man who would have been a force for progress.
Flynn shook his head in disgust. Blogging had certainly reached a new low if guilt-by-association, a persecution complex, and vague insinuations passed as a legitimate, respectable theory. The piece even contradicted itself, he thought disgustedly. King was "focused like a laser on corruption" but implicitly had been out to get this one member of the House? "We should not defend that mistake" followed by a defense and excuse for the mistake? Flynn also had to wonder just what "mistake" Wallace even meant—accepting bribes, or co-authoring bills he didn't like? It almost seemed to be the latter. Perhaps bribery and corruption would be perfectly okay if they involved approved sources.
Flynn glanced at the picture of the writer, a suit-clad character with a conceited expression on his weaselly hipster-bespectacled face. The face triggered a memory. He was sure he had seen this guy before. He clicked on the biographical link, but no pertinent information came out. It seemed that he was now working at the issue advocacy group that put out this blog. That meant nothing to Flynn, and the piece had annoyed him too much for him to want to continue. It was late anyway, and he could think of much better ways to spend his time. He put the computer to sleep, and left the office to join Rapunzel in the bedroom.
Two weeks later...
Flynn wiped off his sweaty brow as he left the courtroom for the last time. Rapunzel was waiting anxiously for him. She did not look like herself, Flynn thought with some dismay. Though she could and did wear a suit when necessary, she generally didn't look as if she were going to a funeral, dressed in black with a tiny hint of dark gray lace peeking out from her blazer jacket, her hair sprayed down in a helmet, and a dour, utterly mirthless expression on her face. It was the demeanor more than the clothing that caused the effect, Flynn thought.
"What's the matter?" he asked as he took her arm.
"Nothing," she said. "I just wish it would end. Really end, as in the verdicts coming in."
He ruffled her hair, messing it up a bit and making it look more like it usually did. "It will soon." I hope, he added to himself in thought.
Pascal and Max had been keeping the baby while Rapunzel was watching the end of the court session, so it took a while to retrieve their child, end the visit with their friends, and leave the main city. When they got back to the Fairfax condo building, she sat down in the living room and let Kate crawl on the floor. Meanwhile, he went into his office and pored over the assortment of photos and envelopes that had shown up in the mail over the past two weeks.
–And it was by now an assortment. Two days after the leather chair photo had come in, another picture had arrived, followed by three more in succession. All were mailed separately, and none of the envelopes contained a return address. The postmark was always the same and always from Washington, so whoever was sending them was either local—which he considered most likely—or was staying in the city for a while.
Each successive photo was more eyebrow-raising than the last. The second one showed him seated in a chair, chugging wine while a woman held the bottle and tipped it right over his mouth. The third depicted him grabbing the waist of the same blonde woman from the first photo, who was now dressed in office-type clothing. This led Flynn to think that she must have been a volunteer or intern for somebody. The fourth showed the senior partner in the Crown Group holding a small mirror in one hand and draping the heavy, woolen-suited other arm around him, as he slumped with a devastated look on his face. He looked younger in this picture than in the others, and this, he realized, was the aftermath of his first drug high. He did remember that. It was not a pleasant memory at all, unlike his vague memories of the events where he had been photographed with girls. He felt guilty that the latter evoked anything at all in him but shame, but he had enjoyed himself, and he couldn't just rewrite that. At least it had all been before he met Rapunzel and he had no inclination to do it again.
And then there was the fifth photo. That was the one that he least wanted Rapunzel to ever see. Somehow, he thought, the photographer had managed to get a shot of him with every vice shown in the previous photographs all in the same frame. It was at a New Year's Eve party; balloons and confetti were scattered around and a banner hung overhead bearing a date from five and a half years ago. He was seated on a backless dark red leather cushion with not one, but two women leaning on him. His arms were around both women at once, and his hands were grabbing at very inappropriate places. One woman held a half-empty bottle of high-priced champagne to her mouth. The other had a dusty mirror a foot or so away from his face. Unlike the other photographs, he was looking at the camera for this one, but he could easily understand why he had very little memory of it. In the photo, he was clearly drunk and high at once, glaring out with a cocky, utterly self-assured look on his face.
Well, he thought wryly as he gazed upon the photo, I still do that.
All of the pictures, he had determined, were taken at Washington venues. The New York clients were not present in any of them. In inspecting them closely, he had recognized a couple of people who he remembered as staff for Rep. Fudge. None of the pictures contained anyone from Snow's old office, which he supposed was not overly surprising, given that the two Congressmen were from different parties. It did narrow down the list of possible photographers, but it could not bring him any closer to determining the actual culprit. He wondered if there even were records of the invitees to these parties.
If the mailer's purpose had been intimidation, as Flynn was absolutely sure was the case, the photographs had failed, possibly even backfiring. He had grown increasingly determined to point the finger at both ex-Congressmen when he went to court.
Flynn put the photos into their drawer, closed it, and tried to focus on his novel.
Something had happened. Flynn had just stepped out to pick up a couple of groceries and check the mail—even though no new photographs had shown up after he had testified for the last time, he always did this himself now rather than risk her getting an unpleasant surprise—and when he unlocked the front door to the condo and stepped into the living room, Rapunzel snapped her head up, an absolutely livid glare piercing across the room.
Instantly he feared the worst, but he had to ask. Bracing himself, he set down the bag of nonperishable items and quirked a brow at her. "What's the matter?" he asked.
She was practically seething with anger—and, he noticed, seemed to be close to tears, though she was trying to hold that back. "You have to ask?" she snarled. "This had better be an act, Flynn." She stormed into the office—Flynn's heart sank—and emerged with a stack of horribly familiar envelopes. She threw them down on the couch and glared at him as the corner of one of the photos slipped out. "You know what these are, I'm sure! So what is your explanation? I'm waiting." Crossing the room, she grabbed up her old yellow blanket that was draped over the sectional couch and sat down in a chair, clutching the blanket for comfort. Tears were about to fall from her eyes, and she was breathing heavily.
She heaved a deep breath, calming her emotions a bit, and gazed up at him again. "Why did you keep these things in your top drawer, right on top of everything else, where you could easily pull them out and look at them?" She scowled. "Nostalgia for the old days, before you had a wife and kid to tie you down?" she asked sarcastically.
"No! I didn't even keep them at all."
"Obviously you kept them, since they're here," she said tartly.
"I didn't keep them for three to eight years. Look at the postmarks! They came recently."
"Who sent them, then, and why? Because you asked for them?"
"No, I did not ask for them, and I honestly don't know who sent them."
She glared. "So you acted like—like that—so often that you really don't know who saw it?"
He felt defensive at this. "Rapunzel, honestly, what did you expect? I was trying to pick you up the night I met you, and you knew perfectly well how I acted before I met you."
She sucked in her breath hard and let it out fast, trying to calm down but not succeeding. "I did not expect there to be photographs of it. I can't unsee those images, Flynn."
"Okay, fair enough, but none of those pictures are more than PG-13."
"They are pictures of my husband with other women all over him, and drugs, and alcohol, at a bunch of wild parties! I didn't want to see that!"
"I didn't either!" he exclaimed. "I didn't want to be reminded of it! These things started showing up in the mail right when it was announced that I was going to testify in court."
"But Flynn..." Her lower lip trembled. "It's not just the content. I did know, even though I didn't think of it. It's the lying too."
"I didn't lie—"
"You hid them. You didn't tell me somebody was mailing them."
"I hid them because I didn't want you to see them, but I kept them around as evidence."
"Evidence. So if you think there is a crime, why not get the cops involved?"
"There's no crime," he said. "They are pictures of me, and these are public venues. Whoever took them was also present. They were mailed to my address without comment. No crime. But I do want to try to figure out who is sending them. I think whoever it was sent them to intimidate me into not accusing the ex-Congressmen. Somebody who didn't want me to testify and maybe wants me to worry that they're holding on to something even more lurid that they might post online."
"Is that a possibility?" she asked evenly, eyebrows narrowed.
He stared back. "I bloody well hope not. I did have some self-respect and dignity, and I never did anything more than 'PG-13' in public. You're not going to see any deleted tweets of my junk turn up, for example," he said.
"Well, I hope you would have been smarter and classier than that," she blurted out in spite of herself. A grin formed on her face.
He smirked, but it didn't last. "Unfortunately, it is possible there are more candid shots of me drunk or high that I didn't know were taken." He closed his eyes and grimaced. "I just hope they don't surface online now in retaliation."
She moved forward and pressed lightly, hesitantly against him. He wrapped his arms around her and felt hers encircle his waist. "I'm sorry you saw them," he said gently. "I really am."
"It's all right," she said in a small voice. "I understand now that it's not what I thought." She hugged him again. "It has been tough to see all the ugly commentary about the case... to read the stuff that's been put up about you, and about my grandfather. There was this one piece a couple of weeks ago that made the worst insinuations about him."
"You read that too?" he said, dismayed. "'Anatomy of a Witch Hunt'?"
"I think that was its title, yeah." She gazed at him with those wide eyes. "I've learned that it's not just 'your' old crowd that is capable of corruption. These people are just the same, if not worse, and they don't even act courteous."
"That is absolutely true," he agreed. "And that article was horrendous."
"I assume it was probably somebody like that who sent the pictures."
"That's pretty much what I think too. They were all taken in DC, and the Wall Street people were never there. They also don't contain anyone who was associated with Snow. I think it just about had to be one of Fudge's old people." He squeezed her. "I'm just glad they haven't gone after you. You aren't guilty of anything, even the apparent 'crime' of being a Washington fixture. I hope it means that they at least have that modicum of decency."
A few days later...
"Look at this!" Flynn roared, pointing at the article on his screen. "Just look at it!"
Warily Rapunzel edged over to his desk and peered at the screen. The article, posted in the same blog as the last piece, was titled "Taken for a Ride?" and subtitled "When is a whistle-blower... not?" She instantly realized that the title was meant to be a snarky play on Flynn's name and prepared herself to get angry.
Flynn got up, heaving breaths. "I need a drink," he said. He stormed out of the office.
Rapunzel sat down in his chair and began to read the article. The author, she noticed, was Percival Wallace again. It was, as she had expected, a smear job against Flynn, bringing up the same skepticism about his motivations that had surfaced—unfortunately, she thought unhappily, even in Max's mind, and my own as well when I first met him—when he came forward to spill about what his former firm had been doing. She could readily understand why it made him angry, but it did not explain why he had been that angry—
And yet, despite the myriad of reasons to be suspicious of Rider's motives, he actually enlisted former Senator King and his family on his side. For a DC insider admittedly guilty of corruption—the very issue that Rider's new patron crusaded against while in office—to have enlisted such an ally is quite a coup. The fact that King was arguably driven from office by health problems stemming from the Crowngate case further perplexes. Rider is partially responsible for the end of King's career, and this fact cannot be lost on the former Senator—but evidently, it has been counteracted by other facts.
Rapunzel felt her blood pressure rising as she read this paragraph. Things started to make a bit more sense now...
As we now know, in a stunt equal to any tawdry plot twist on "House of Cards," Rider knocked up the Senator's long-lost granddaughter so that he could insinuate himself into King's family. And yes, let's dispense with the naïve idea that Rider did not know who she was. Whether she knew or not, her parentage was not exactly some dark secret to be uncovered only in a DNA test, but public record for anyone who thought to look. This is a brilliant, eminently professional, scheming K Streeter, let's remember. I have anonymous sources that verify his presence at high-rolling DC parties with alcohol flowing and the proverbial "hookers and blow," attesting that he would hardly have been a virgin lad straight out of the Smoky Mountains with no clue how to use a condom. So why didn't such a careful planner practice safe sex with his then-girlfriend? DC's newly anointed Millennial power couple have acknowledged a plane trip to the Alaska gravesite of Mrs. Forrest-Rider's parents. Might he not have done his research after that and decided that this was a catch too good to let go?
Of course, by accepting this theory, we also must accept the implied consequences—namely, that his in-laws are now fully aware and accepting for reasons of their own. This is easier to believe than it ought to be. As I have written before, King had a long record of being against Rep. Fudge during their days in the House, and it is perfectly comprehensible that, after believing that he had no living descendants, the old lion would happily look to a newly discovered grandson-in-law to carry on the legacy. (A prediction: Rider will change his party affiliation and run for office in Virginia's 11th District, with the full backing of the King machine.)
If this is accurate, then Rider's young wife is to be deeply pitied. One cannot help but wonder if her choice would have been different if she'd had access to women's health services and any form of health insurance other than the beneficence of a millionaire boyfriend. However, this is sadly often the case with political wives, used as trophies, photo-ops, and connections by patriarchal, hyper-privileged men. Should we really hold up as heroes a person and a family capable of such manipulation? The aforementioned TV show is fiction... isn't it?
"What?" Rapunzel shouted, storming up. Her blood was pounding in her head. She whirled around and found herself facing Flynn, who stood in the doorway drinking Chambord on ice.
"You got there, I take it?" he bit off.
"Oh, I got there, all right! What is wrong with this person?" she roared. "How did this even get published? This is the nastiest, most personally insulting pile of speculative crap I have seen in ages! And I guess he's implying he thinks I shouldn't have had the baby? I know this is an opinion blog, but is nothing off-limits?"
"For people like this, nope." He glared at the computer. "They clearly have no decency."
"This is libel, isn't it?" Rapunzel exclaimed. "This idiot accusing you of—well, you saw it."
"I'm a public figure." He went over to the computer and sat down, putting his drink on a coaster on the desk. "But no, obviously, nothing at all is off-limits to these people. 'The personal is political,' they say—and by that they mean that every damn thing you do, every product you buy, every food you eat, every decision you make, has to be made with regard to whether it benefits the 'cause.' That's how these people think. So of course for somebody like that, it couldn't possibly just be that I fell in love with you and we got carried away like people often do." He breathed heavily and sipped his liqueur.
"I hope he isn't in a relationship, since that's how he sees it. That says a lot more about this guy than about you."
"It sure does," he agreed.
She stared at the article for another moment. "Oh," she said sardonically, "oh yeah, I guess this punk is convinced that you want to run for the House—"
"Not a snowball's chance in hell," he said, but a smirk was forming on his face. "I didn't even have that interest at the height of it all. That actually would have made me laugh—if not for the rest of the piece."
She scowled. "Who is this guy anyway?" She sat down at the desk again and clicked on the biography. She scanned it for a moment. "Oh, well, that does explain it."
"What explains it?" Flynn moved over to the desk. "The last article this douche wrote didn't have much of a bio... oh."
"Percival Wallace is also a former speechwriter for Rep. Fudge," the biography now said.
The same thought seemed to occur to both of them at once. They snapped their heads up and met each other's eyes. "Do you think he could have sent them?" Rapunzel asked breathlessly. She gazed at the article again. "I mean, look at this—'high-rolling DC parties'—and the, um, type of stuff that's in the pictures. He claims it's anonymous sources, but that might just mean himself."
"Yep, it definitely could be." He looked at the screen as well. "Either him or someone else from that office that he's in close cahoots with." He looked again. "You know, I have had a wicked idea. His e-mail address is right there. I may just invite the punk to coffee for a talk."
Rapunzel smothered a grin. "Oh, Flynn, don't threaten him. A guy like that would—"
"I don't intend to threaten anyone! Intimidate, though, that's another matter." He smirked. "The photos were mailed anonymously. It wouldn't take too much to intimidate a coward."
In the end, both Rapunzel and Flynn decided to join Percival Wallace for coffee, because in his rather pretentious and defensive reply e-mail, the writer insisted on having the meeting with his colleague, Marguerite Scrivner, who had been the Congressman's social media director. Flynn definitely remembered who that was, and the memories were not fond ones. An acid-tongued blonde-from-a-bottle who, at the time, had an omnipresent BlackBerry (and now, Flynn guessed, probably always carried a tablet), "Rita" Scrivner had to have been included to raise the stakes.
They had wrangled about the venue. In his initial e-mail, Flynn had invited Wallace not to a casual coffee, but to a formal lunch in a posh downtown DC restaurant. He had a pretty good guess that Wallace would balk at the idea of patronizing an expensive restaurant known to cater to the "one percenter" crowd, and he was correct. After Flynn turned down Wallace's counter-suggestion of an organic fair trade coffee shop in Eastern Market with occasional live folk guitar, they settled on the very place Flynn had intended from the start, the coffee shop a block or two off K Street where he had spent some mornings last year waiting for Rapunzel to leave work. Its clientele was the serious professional set. Flynn was pleased, both because he had gotten what he wanted and because he knew that Wallace was likely dissatisfied.
On the appointed day, all three members of the family ended up going. Flynn had been concerned that Rapunzel would find a six-month-old baby to be troublesome, but she was used to it. "Besides," she said in a fierce tone as she strapped Kate into her stroller, "I want that smarmy punk to take a good look at her after what he said."
They carefully pulled into a parking garage nearby, got out, and walked the short walk to the coffee shop. It was tucked into part of the lowest level of an office building. When they went inside, they quickly got their coffees and scanned the subtly lit, classy shop for their guests.
It did not take long to find them. Both Wallace and Scrivner stuck out like a pair of sore thumbs, between the matching heavy glasses they wore and the distinct expressions on their faces that were a mix of derision for everyone around them and vague guilt about being in this place. Scrivner, Flynn noticed, did have a tablet, as he did himself.
Rapunzel and Flynn sat down at the table, greeted the pair, sipped their coffees, and regarded their companions with satisfaction. Wallace was staring at his beverage as if he expected something to jump out of it and attack him. Scrivner was sipping hers tentatively.
"It's not poison, you know," Flynn said. "I'm not sure if it's sustainably farmed or not, but you've already bought it now."
Wallace glared, but he did sip the beverage. "Well," he said, setting the cup down on the table, "what exactly did you want to discuss? I assume you're unhappy with my reporting and think you're entitled to pressure me into retracting."
"What you did isn't 'reporting,'" Flynn growled. "What you did is shilling for your former boss and making up speculative crap about the motives of everyone who you think brought him down."
Wallace sneered. "What do you dispute, precisely?"
"Hmm, let me see," Flynn said sarcastically. "I could start with the claim that I knew about Rapunzel's background and deliberately knocked her up to get into her family. Or I could bring up the baseless allegations that her grandfather was out to get your old boss because of a difference in political philosophy and an intra-party struggle. But actually, I think the worst of all was the insinuation directed at her, a person who didn't even have anything to do with the case—the insinuation that she might have wanted to get rid of the baby but I forced her to carry it by holding the purse strings." He glared and leaned across the table menacingly. "I would like to believe that you felt a particle of shame after writing that, but I doubt it. Now's your chance to prove me wrong, though. Here she is, and Kate is in her lap. You gonna defend that comment to her face?"
Wallace and Scrivner did, for a fraction of a second, look uncomfortable about that memory, but it did not last long. Wallace instantly took on a defensive visage as he peered back at Flynn. "I think that it was a perfectly defensible thing to throw out as a possibility," he said superciliously. "She was literally just out of college, twenty-one years old, from a troubled home, no insurance, and wholly dependent on you for basic needs."
Flynn stared at the bespectacled writer in astonishment for a second. "Wow," he said, blinking. "You actually did. Do you not understand that you don't extrapolate from general cases—or what your narrative tells you is a general case—to individual situations? Do you truly not get that?" He shook his head.
"How can you look at people this way?" Rapunzel asked. "How can you look at a person and only think of the categories they fall into?" She sighed sadly and sipped her coffee.
Flynn spoke up again before Wallace or Scrivner could comment. "We've heard all we need to, and since you clearly won't acknowledge—or can't see—that any of it was out of line, I want a one-time guest column to tell my point of view. An unedited column," he added pointedly.
"You know, I could actually do that... it isn't uncommon... but I'm not sure I want to commit to an unedited column without knowing what you would write," Wallace said pompously.
Flynn rolled his eyes. "Get over yourself. I mean either post as-is or post nothing at all. And I've already told you what I would want to correct: your allegations about my relationship with her and your conspiracy theory about her grandfather and your old boss." He paused for a second. "I wouldn't mention the photographs you sent; don't worry about that."
Wallace and Scrivner both choked and started coughing. Flynn sat back in his chair, gazing smugly upon them as they cleared their throats.
Scrivner was the first one to become able to speak again. Her face now red from either embarrassment or partial asphyxiation, she stared across the table at Flynn. "I sent them, actually."
"Oh? I suppose that makes sense. You took them too, then?"
"Of course."
"I'm only surprised that you didn't leak them to the Internet. Why didn't you?"
"That would not have furthered the purpose."
"He knew about them too, no doubt," Rapunzel put in.
"Does it matter?" Wallace replied testily.
"Well, Flynn and I believe that it does matter whether a person actually did something if they're accused."
"All right, I knew," Wallace snapped. "Is there a point to bringing this up?"
"Just to let you know that we figured it out," Flynn said with a shrug. "And that if it was meant to intimidate me into tempering what I said on the stand, it didn't work. Your old boss is going down."
Wallace and Scrivner both scowled. "Smug about that, aren't you, Rider?" Wallace said sourly. "Makes you real happy?"
"I'm pretty happy in general these days, yes," he replied. "I'm happy that my own hands are washed of it. I'm happy I'm not involved anymore. I'm happy that at least a couple of elected officials got caught."
"It was like my article said, a witch hunt!" Wallace exclaimed angrily. "King's side of the party applied pressure to Fudge and those like him, and he caved. Then they played gotcha. He never took anything from lobbyists before that."
"You are either lying or embarrassingly ignorant," Flynn said triumphantly. Rapunzel glanced at him and smiled. He had told her before they left that he had researched reported meetings and expenditures revolving around the ex-Congressman, and he had a revelation to make that he hoped would shake up the pair of "smug jerks"—if he had the chance to make it. This must be it.
Flynn smiled back at her and winked quickly before continuing. He opened up his tablet cover and pulled up a file. "Your old boss had, according to my records, dozens of meetings with representatives from the very advocacy group you two currently work for. This includes..."—Flynn scrolled down the document—"quite a few downtown lunches and dinners."
"That's the grassroots—"
"It's something of value, and the issues and messaging are influenced by the people who donate. It is lobbying. And interestingly, soon after many of these meetings, he wrote up some sort of pet-issue catchphrase-laden bill that would go absolutely nowhere, but served him and your current employer very well in racking up donations from suckers."
Wallace and Scrivner were gripping the edge of the table with stony expressions on their faces. Finally Wallace responded.
"It's not the groups' fault if the system is currently rigged against any consideration of bills like the ones you're talking about," he said tightly.
Flynn smiled wryly and shook his head. "Keep on believing that victimhood story, Wallace. It absolves your movement of its failings." He finished his coffee and glanced over at Rapunzel. She had ordered a smaller cup and was already finished with hers, and she was feeding Kate with a bottle. He pushed his chair back and stood up. "I don't pretend to be perfect... and there is a reason I'm never going back to corporate lobbying. If I ever make a return, it will be issue advocacy of some sort... but I know not to go the dishonest, hypocritical route that your crowd has. Though at this point, I am not sure if you even realize what you do. It wouldn't hurt to open your minds a bit." He stood up with Rapunzel and pushed her chair up to the table, a gesture that seemed to raise the hackles of Scrivner and Wallace. Flynn and Rapunzel ignored it.
"Oh, one last thing," he said as they turned to leave. "Don't worry about the guest column. I don't want to be printed in your group's online rag after all, and I have contacts elsewhere."
Back home, Rapunzel put Kate in her crib for an afternoon nap, and they slumped on the couch. He threw an arm around her shoulders and heaved a sigh.
"That was depressing," he muttered.
"Yeah," she agreed. She sighed along with him. "One thing stuck in my mind, though. This is the second time, I believe, that you've said you might go back to that work."
"Second?"
"Yeah, you said it at Christmas too."
"Oh, yeah," he said. "Well, what can I say? I don't want to close that door. The problem wasn't with the line of work itself, but the way that I did it."
"Yeah," she said in agreement. They lapsed into silence for a while before she spoke again. "Did you mean what you said about publishing a rebuttal in another venue?"
"I did. I can think of a couple of possibilities... and they have a much bigger audience." He shook his head. "I never thought I would have to rebut personal attacks like that, or I would've done it in the book. But this is it. The trials are over, and I think finally it can be put to rest."
She smiled at him and cuddled closer. "It really is a good feeling."
He smiled back and kissed her lightly on top of the head. "It certainly is."