Sedona Law 4 by Dave Daren (ready to read books TXT) 📕

moral questions from an industry perspective. I knew that I had a very pivotal responsibility in shaping the future of our industry. I had a role toward ushering in a new age of media in a way that protected the rights of the media, and the rights of information, and the way it was gathered and protected for the new millennium. We were at a precipice with the future of media and information, and history would forever judge us on the way we handled it. So, with my team of lawyers and several board members, we drafted a bill, called the ‘The Free Speech Act for the New Millennium’.”

“Was John Malone in that consortium?” I asked.

“He was,” Marvin said. “We also had a D.C. senator that said he would sponsor the bill. So John actually led the team on the bill, and gave it to our senator, who said it was too aggressive, and he couldn’t sponsor it. And every other legislator we had relationships with, and we knew many, both in Tucson and in Washington, either disagreed with the bill, because they didn’t fully understand it, or they wouldn’t touch it, because they said we were jumping too quickly into an ongoing culture war.”

“And without a legislator to back it, the bill was dead,” I concluded.

“Exactly,” he said. “So I created a legislator.”

“Malone,” I said.

Marvin nodded. “I engineered his campaign on the sole premise that he’d push the bill through. Unfortunately, it was harder than we all thought. He got into the legislator’s circle and forgot who got him there. Now, SB 1110 is finally on the floor, but it’s taken him four terms, and he’s made so many bipartisan compromises along the way, it isn’t a fraction of the original bill. As it stands, the bill’s a joke, honestly. But, there are a couple of provisions that we still need, so we keep it alive.”

“Then it sounds like Malone hasn’t lived up to his expectations, then?” I observed.

“He’s marginally useful,” he said. “So, I keep him around. But, this business with Judith Klein...” He shook his head and took another sip of scotch. I was surprised he’d talked so openly about it.

“It’s a colossal failure,” he said. “There are loose ends all over the state from his dealings with her. And I’ve had to bail him out of jams so many times.”

“So, he gets caught in some misdeed,” I said, “and you cover it up by either silencing the press, or paying someone off.”

“That’s the gist of it,” he said.

“And what about Olivia?” I asked.

As open as Marvin was being, I figured I should just straight up ask what I wanted to know. One of the first things he ever said to me, was that he valued directness.

“Olivia,” he said, “was supposed to be a... gentleman’s indiscretion.”

He nodded to Vicki, “Pardon.”

She smiled politely. “And now?”

“Now,” he said, as he fingered the rim of his glass. “I believe she will be his greatest downfall.”

“How so?” Vicki asked.

“The press knows about her,” he said. “And I don’t think I could stop them. I’m not even sure I would want to anyway.”

“Why not?” Vicki probed.

“Because,” he said. “When your maintenance out lives your usefulness, it means your time has come.”

“Did he screw you over in some way?” Vicki asked.

He laughed. “I like the way you think, but I won’t answer that.”

“So, to sum it all up, Malone is a crooked senator that got too reckless with a call girl,” I concluded.

“Right,” he answered.

“Why was he at the PAH that night?” I asked.

“The performance was arranged at the behest of Julianna,” he said. “But the senator attended the event to meet with Olivia.”

“He was waiting for her to come out from backstage,” Vicki concluded.

Marvin sighed. “He arranged a rendezvous with her and paid Judith for the guarantee. According to Malone, she was supposed to sneak backstage and make sure she made it to his vehicle.”

“And then what happened?” I asked.

“As with many things involving Malone,” he chuckled, “it didn’t go to plan.”

“So backstage there was Malone, Judith, and Olivia… this trio of indiscretion, as you put it,” I said. “But how does Beowulf get killed?”

“That,” he said, “is as much as I know. Beyond that, I would like to know as much as you.”

I turned to Vicki. “You have anything else?”

“No,” she shook her head.

“Thank you, Marvin,” I rose. “You’ve been very helpful.”

Marvin and Vicki rose as well, and we all shook hands again.

“Anytime,” he said. “And I do hope the business with Jerry Steele didn’t cause you too much trouble.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think it was up long enough. Matt Chelmi took it down pretty quickly.”

He smiled curiously. “Glad to hear that.”

He showed us back to the elevator and as soon as the doors were closed, I turned to Vicki.

“Did you get the impression that he arranged that with Jerry Steele?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “The way he said it. But why would he do that?”

I laughed heartily as the elevator doors opened back into the lobby. “The same reason he had us meet him here,” I said. “To show us his power.”

“We were investigating him,” she figured out, “and he knew it. So, he wanted to send us a message.”

“But he did it with a shitty video,” I began to realize, “because he didn’t actually want to bring us down. He just wanted to scare us.”

“So he’s got something to hide,” she said.

“Whatever it is,” I said, “it has to do with whatever made him talk to us about Malone.”

“Which may not even be related to this case,” she said.

“That makes more sense,” I said. “He’s got skeletons he doesn’t want us to find.”

“So,” she concluded, “the