XX
"Mr. President?"
"Josh." Jed put his glasses aside and sat up expectantly.
The Deputy Chief of Staff entered the room with extreme caution, eyes darting in all directions nervously. He looked as if he was fully expecting to be assaulted by something small, furry and dangerous the second he let his guard down.
"The cat is not going to leap out at you, Josh," he said patiently. "It's upstairs."
"Maybe that's what it wants us to think," Josh countered, unconvinced. Jed nodded for him to take a seat, and he perched on the edge of it, perhaps so he could keep a wary eye on his surroundings. Jed gave him a look.
"I'm assuming you braved the kitten's den for a reason?" he asked dryly.
The younger man found his focus. "Uh, yes sir." He leaned forward. "I had an idea that I wanted to run by you before I set anything in motion."
"About Hoynes?" he assumed, but Josh shook his head.
"No, actually, although obviously, we've been- I mean, if you want, I can- we have some thoughts on-"
"Okay." He had no desire to see Josh twisting in the wind over what was obviously a fairly uncomfortable subject for him, and waved the line of questioning away. "Tell me about your idea."
He pushed a hand back through his dishevelled hair. "Well. It actually concerns Charlie..."
"Danny." She expertly hooked him out of the swarm of reporters leaving the pressroom and pulled him aside. Nobody paid much attention; sometimes, having a slightly more friendly relationship with one of your journalists than etiquette dictated had its up side.
"What's up, CJ?" he asked alertly. After the first few days of getting reacquainted where the lines were blurred, they'd quickly settled back into the old routine. It still made her vaguely wistful at times to contemplate the uncrossable line their jobs placed between them, but she was glad to have him back
And there were times, like now, when it really didn't hurt to have a friendly Pulitzer prize-winner with a sense of integrity in your press room. "I have something for you."
"Great. What is it?"
"Not here."
He followed her willingly enough, but grew increasingly puzzled as they passed her office without ducking inside.
"CJ, where are we-?"
"This way."
She led him through another door into a conference room... where Leo McGarry was waiting for them. He pulled off his glasses, and smiled thinly. "Hi, Danny."
"Hi," Danny said slowly. He took the chair that had clearly been left open for him, glancing up as CJ closed the door. "What's this about?"
Leo pulled his chair closer to the table. "We have something for you. We're gonna ask you to bear with us on this, and in return, you're gonna get the exclusive interview that every reporter in Washington is about to be howling for once this goes public."
Danny narrowed his eyes at him. "I'm listening."
"Mr. Vice President?" Janine buzzed in. "Senator Bridges."
John smiled coldly and sat back in his chair. "Thank you, Janine. Send him in."
He was the one who'd done the summoning, but Bridges sauntered in like he was master of the house. He was twenty years the Vice President's senior, one of those brawny, craggy-faced men who got greyer and more lined but never seemed much older. It was a matter of pride for him when he was in his home state to be seen striding around farms and construction sites, connecting with the man in the street and not shying away from manual labour. He mined much of his support from loud, angry sermonizing about how those soft types sitting in their offices in Washington wouldn't know an honest day's work if they climbed out of their fancy sports cars and fell over it.
He dropped casually into the seat he should have waited for an invitation to take. "I got your call. What's on your mind, John?" he drawled lazily. The deliberate lack of formality grated, intentional disrespect behind a facade of down-to-earth lack of pretension.
John knew he was being baited, but he also knew making an issue of it only served to make him look petty and narcissistic. He ignored the implied slight to his position. "Glad you could make the time, Joe," he said, matching the tone.
"Well, I figured you boys down here could use all the help you can get. Seems like the vote-hustling business isn't going so well, now is it?" He smirked knowingly.
John held his gaze. "Something you'd know nothing about, of course?"
He shrugged easily. "Hey, I can't be responsible if somebody in your party had a sudden change of heart. Guess somebody suddenly decided to follow their conscience."
"Much like with the technology bill last year?" he said dryly.
Bridges' gaze grew suddenly sharper. "Well now, I wouldn't know what you mean by that."
Time to cut the small talk. "I spoke to Selena."
Bridges raised his eyebrows. "From what I heard, you two were doing more than talking," he said nastily.
"You seem to hear a lot," he noted. "How does the word 'blackmail' sound to you?"
The Senator's demeanour had grown noticeably cooler. "It seems to me like the kind of word you'd be in no position to bandy about."
He had to smile. "No? Because it's one you could be hearing pretty often in the very near future."
"You're bluffing," Bridges said confidently.
He raised a single pointed eyebrow. "Am I?"
"You wouldn't let this get out. I have the power to torpedo your career, and you know it."
John folded his arms and leaned back. "Well, somebody better tell that to Leo McGarry. Because he is right at this moment setting up an interview with the Washington Post to take this public. Right now, nobody's saying anything about blackmail. But if we hear so much as a single word from you - if you so much as stop to whisper it to one of your Republican buddies in the back room - we'll be more than happy to go on the record with our side of the story."
Bridges went very satisfactorily bug-eyed. "You'll be finished in Washington once this gets out!" he spluttered.
"Maybe." He shrugged. "But if the blackmail allegations come out, I think we have to ask ourselves... which one of us has the most to lose?" There would be moral outrage indeed when the news of his ill-advised affair came out, but if the blackmail attempt was revealed, it was Bridges who would be facing the criminal charges.
The Senator recovered some of his composure. "I don't need to say a word," he snarled. "You think you'll have a single hope of running for president once the public find out you've been sleeping around on government time?"
He really didn't... but to be honest, he was beginning to think he was past caring. All the same, he pasted on a casual smile. "Funny... I do believe that's the exact same thing they said about President Bartlet running for reelection."
Bridges leaned close to him. "He might have built his own scandal, but he didn't sleep with it," he hissed.
"Well, I guess we'll just have to see." John stood up, knowing that however else he might stack up unfavourably against the sitting president, one thing he did have was a more intimidating full height to draw himself up to. Bridges scrambled to his feet, unhappy being looked down on.
"It's your funeral, Mr. Vice President," he said acidly.
"Yours too, if you even think about tying the media leak or the failure of the technology bill to my name, or Selena McGann's," he warned coldly. "And make no mistake, if you and your friends in the Senate start making noise about having me forcibly removed from office, it will come out."
"Oh, you care about the little lady too?" Bridges wondered. "How touching."
"You've made yourself some dangerous enemies in this, Senator," John told him, ignoring the jibe.
"And you don't have nearly so many friends as you think you do," Bridges countered. "You think anybody's going to stand by you when it all hits the fan? You think the people are going to rally round? They don't love you, John. Bartlet might be a wishy-washy, liberal, elitist sorry excuse for a president, but they love him, and they don't love you. You're a politician to the bone, and nobody loves politicians."
"And it's men like you who are the reason why," he noted coldly. Bridges wasn't done ranting.
"They won't stand by you, Mr. Vice President. You're a nobody. You think they'll forgive and forget? That doesn't happen for men like you. The Bartlets of the world can wash away their sins, but nobody makes second chances for politicians like you. You're finished."
"Maybe so," he conceded softly. He locked eyes with the older man. "But right now, I still have a job. And while I still do, I serve the people of the United States of America, and I answer to them, not to you." He strode over to the door, and held it open pointedly. "Have a nice day."