The Accused Read Online Free PDF Page A

to their constituencies in their home districts—that was when the pace could be brutal.
    But the staff of Senator Jason Bell Purdy didn’t mind the long hours. What they did find irritating was their new boss’s habit of disregarding deadlines, appointments, or schedules for the sake of his own personal comfort or individual interests.
    The chief of staff, the legislative assistant, and the press secretary had been waiting since three-thirty. They knew the senator was not on the floor voting. In fact, he was out taking another long lunch. The staff meeting, which Purdy himself had set for that time, was now on hold while the staff awaited the arrival of the newest member of the United States Senate.
    For Jason Bell Purdy, schedules were something to be kept or broken depending on whim and personal desire. Such were the consequences of his upbringing as the grandson of a former Georgia governor and heir to the vast Purdy fortune, which controlled a healthy chunk of Georgia politics.
    Purdy’s chief claim to fame was his co-ownership of a professional baseball franchise, coupled with his ranking as richest man in the state.
    As the senator meandered down the halls of the Dirksen Building he tugged slightly at his starched white collar and tightly knottedred-white-and-blue tie. The formal trappings of the Senate were something he was having to get used to. If it were up to him, he would stroll into his office every day wearing a golf shirt, khakis, and canvas boating shoes.
    As he glided into his office, his staff quickly grabbed notepads, clipboards, and briefing books, and scurried in. The three staffers sat in the brown leather chairs in a semicircle around the ornate mahogany desk. Purdy slipped off his blue silk suit coat, hung it up on the brass coat rack, and then plopped into his overstuffed leather executive chair and swung both feet up on the desk.
    â€œHey, Myron,” he called glibly. “Give me the box score here.”
    The chief of staff flipped through his legal pad and began a rapid-fire recitation of the status of his Senate office.
    Purdy had upcoming meetings with several contingencies of constituents, a half dozen different lobbyists, followed by a briefing by his legislative assistant on several items of pending legislation. But he had failed to return a phone call from the chief of staff of Senator Wayne O’Brien, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and chair of the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism.
    â€œWould you like me to get Senator O’Brien’s office on the line right now?” Myron asked.
    â€œHey, let’s not rush the gun on this thing,” Purdy replied. “I have a feeling O’Brien just wants me to do some Chinese laundry for him. He’s tossing me nuts for the squirrels. I’ve been waiting for a decent leadership assignment on the Counterterrorism Subcommittee since I got here.”
    â€œSenator,” the legislative assistant said diplomatically, “your selection, as a freshman senator, to the Subcommittee on Counterterrorism is a real coup. From what I know, it certainly takes time to build ethos with the other senators. I’m sure in a short period of time that Senator O’Brien and his colleagues on our side of the aisle are going to recognize your value.”
    â€œJimmy—with all due respect—don’t patronize me, now. I’m telling the three of you that we gotta get some distinguishing assignments—we need some blue-ribbon issues to sink our teeth into. Otherwise, you boys and girls are going to end up with the shortest congressional careers of any staffers in the Beltway—when election time comes upand I get a whopping because we haven’t done anything significant during what’s left of my appointment term.”
    Linda, his press secretary, smiled and then volunteered her thoughts.
    â€œSenator, how about that Mexico incident?”
    â€œThat’s what I’m