Getting the Dirt
(A Tommy Duncan story)In Washington D.C., a city steeped in shadowy secrets, press secretary Bethany Keener plays the game better than most—until a whisper from a frightened assistant puts her too close to the flame. The president she serves doesn’t play by the rules, and the lies he spins are as dangerous as they are deadly. Now, Bethany must navigate a web of deceit, power and threats, all while keeping her own mask firmly in place. In D.C., nothing stays buried for long—but some truths can kill.
When Tommy Duncan, in his second term as president, chose Bethany Keener as his press secretary, no one was surprised. She had the right look for the job: blond, blue-eyed and bosomy. As her last name suggested, she was “keen” once she sank her beautiful white teeth into an issue – any issue whether it be about diplomacy, commerce, diet or politics. Unlike many girls her age – Bethany was only twenty-eight – she brimmed with confidence and perhaps this had to do with the fact that she came from a wealthy family. Her father, Joseph (Big Joe) Keener had owned a chain of sandwich shops that had proliferated all over Texas and become a household word, as in “I’ll meet you for lunch at Big Joe’s.” There was a Big Joe’s in every town and stripmall and secretly, although she enjoyed access to her father’s money and the trust he had set up for her, Bethany was embarrassed that her fortune emanated from such a lowly thing as a sandwich. Better that it had come from banking or a hedge fund or a conglomeration of powerful businesses – something that spoke of brain power and class.
Big Joe was anything but classy. In college he’d been a mediocre student and if he hadn’t hooked up with a guy in his dorm who’d had the idea of producing big gooey sandwiches for stoners as a side hustle, he’d have ended up working in his own father’s upholstery business. Which would have been a dead end.
But Big Joe was gregarious and could talk a big game. He knew how to hype his sandwiches, and he knew, once he’d begun accumulating wealth, that he had to get Bethany, his only child, out of Texas. The city of Austin, where Bethany had grown up, was okay, but he wanted her polished, all rough edges, such as her slight twang, smoothed over so she would appear as if she had the class he himself lacked. Against her wishes, he sent her to Ethel Walker’s in Connecticut, and there, after a few short weeks, she became one of the most popular girls in her class. She learned quickly how to dress like a boarding school girl and wore white sneakers, folk-embroidered dresses, bold-patterned colors though she often reverted to her idea of ivy league – pastel sweaters and a-lined skirts. In clothing, at least, she liked simplicity, the fastidious, buttoned-down look of what she considered eternally low-key and fashionable.
That was the uniform she adhered to and she would stick to it for many years to come.
For business reasons, her father, who was still a bit of a stoner, became a staunch Republican. Bethany followed suit. In her opinion Democrats were dimwits, while Republicans were better at PR and held true raw power.
And that was what Bethany wanted: power – a desire she conveniently hid beneath good manners and what seemed like an accommodating manner.
She was friendly to everyone, although an inner monologue that chanted, “Wow, that girl’s ugly,” or “Look at that girl’s pizza pie zit face,” or “Why didn’t that girl’s mother teach her to wax her upper lip?” ran constantly through her brain. Sometimes she was scared of her own cutting thoughts, that she would lose control and say them aloud.
In college she studied politics and international relations, and her father encouraged her to find a job in Washington D.C. where she could wield her vast intelligence and her gift of speaking cogently and spontaneously on just about any subject. Through one of his contacts, Big Joe was able to get her placed as an intern in the White House press corps and from there she climbed up until she was finally chosen by Tommy Duncan to be his spokesperson. And in that position she flourished, although she certainly had to step on a lot of people’s toes to gain a foothold.
Suddenly she became President Duncan’s closest ally, with unlimited access to his office and inner circle. Without doubt, she was one of his most trusted advisers and inevitably he turned to her whenever he needed a fresh viewpoint on his thoughts and policies. And she had no hesitation in giving him honest (and sometimes contrary) answers.
But here’s how the game really worked. Before hiring Bethany as his press secretary, Duncan instructed one of his minions to get all the dirt on her he could possibly find. The results couldn’t have suited Duncan better. “What’s the reason you were sent to an east coast boarding school?” he asked Bethany in their initial interview.
“My father wanted to make sure I had a first class education,” she replied.
“No! That’s not the real reason!” Duncan’s famous bristly blond eyebrows instantly tented into a frown of contempt.
Bethany was flustered, not a normal feeling for her. “Well, it’s the truth,” she said. “My dad didn’t want me staying in Texas.”
“But that’s not the real reason,” Duncan repeated.
“Well, it's the only reason I know,” Bethany declared, squaring her shoulders for emphasis.
“Then either you're lying or you have a very short memory.”
“My past is exemplary,” Bethany announced firmly.
Duncan drilled his steely blue eyes into her and snickered. “Don’t play me for a fool,” he said. “Or I will personally and permanently show you the door.”
Bethany emitted a tiny, almost inaudible hiccup which was the only sign she ever gave of being uncomfortable. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Okay, well then let me set you straight. You were thrown out of your posh day school for stealing items from another student’s locker. Your father managed to bury that story so no one ever knew about it. But I found out.” He continued to drill his eyes into her. “I always find out.”
Bethany, in her powder blue cashmere sweater that clung tight to her chest, experienced a sharp tug of anxiety. It was true. When she was a girl she’d taken delight in slipping her fingers into the front panel of some other girl’s backpack and stealing a lipstick or expensive pen or filmy scarf. She’d helped herself to all sorts of things, and always there was an exultant rush of pleasure and excitement, as if she’d achieved a major accomplishment. She’d loved that feeling.
“Now let me be clear,” Duncan said. “While I don’t like thieves or liars, there’s a certain use for people with a past like yours. And that is that you will do exactly as I say at all times or I’ll make sure your sad story goes public. Do you understand?”
Bethany, seated in a chair across from the president in the Oval Office, felt the color drain from her cheeks. “Yes,” she whispered.
“And you will swear fealty to me no matter what I do.”
“Yes,” she murmured again.
“Good. Then we’re in agreement and we don’t have to revisit this subject.”
Bethany felt as if she’d been thrown into a forest with howling wolves circling around her. Although Duncan never brought up the subject again, she was constantly aware of his knowing the truth about her and it made her feel weak and powerless. She didn’t like it that he – or anyone – had the upper hand.
She tried not to let herself dwell on this. On a personal level, she got along very well with the president. He had bad mood swings, but would stop himself in the middle of a tirade and turn to her. “Do you think I’m wrong?” he would ask.
“No, of course not,” she’d say. “But I think you should always focus on staying consistent and not give out too many messages at one time.”
“You think I don’t do that?”
“Well …” She thought for a minute. “Not always.”
“You are my sounding board, Bethie.” (Only very close friends called her “Bethie.” ) His eyes roamed hungrily over her breasts. “I want you to know I always consult you before anyone else.”
That was the biggest compliment she would ever receive from him. But still she was very careful to remain on guard in any dealings she had with Duncan. The best thing she could do, she reasoned, was to get her own dirt on the president. That would be a necessity if she wanted to keep things equal between them.
She had her own plush office, and her assistant, a blond-haired girl named Jessica Dobbs, worked at a desk just outside the door.
“What do you really think of President Duncan?” Bethany asked her one day, just around the time Duncan was beginning to fire civil servants (or what he called “the deep state”) en masse. She kept her voice cautiously low.
“Ohhh, I think he’s wonderful,” oozed Jessica.
But Bethany noticed a flush rising up her assistant’s neck. “”Really?” she asked. “You really think that?”
“Well yes, of course,” Jessica said. “The country loves him. That’s the main thing.”
“Do you ever think maybe he has too much power?”
Jessica stared at her, shocked.
“Just saying,” said Bethany, who knew she was possibly opening a can of worms.
But she also knew she could handle Jessica, whom she’d personally recruited from a list of possible contenders. Jessica herself had secrets to hide, a blowjob she’d administered to a lobbyist in order to climb the ranks. All Bethany had to do was remind Jessica of that humbling act.
“You’re aware that I know certain things about you,” Bethany said in a sugar sweet tone that masked any hint of malice.
“Um … I’m not sure what you mean,” Jessica said, her plain, prairie girl face turning very red.
“I think you do,” Bethany said. “A certain intimate act you performed on that sleazy guy affiliated with the oil and gas lobby. What was his name? Oh yes, I remember: Bobby Wallace whose body sagged like a flat tire. He wasn’t a good looking man.”
Jessica, who was in her early thirties, not that much older than Bethany, remained silent.
“Sooo,” said Bethany. “This is what I want you to do. First, know that I hand picked you for this job. You are my friend and aly and I will always have your back.”
Jessica continued to stare at her: a mouse hypnotized by a snake.
“I need you to keep your eyes and ears open. Any rumors or gossip about the president need to come straight to me. If you hear he’s done anything dubious, I’m the first person you tell. Otherwise …” she trailed off, a little smile on her lips as she studied her assistant.
“I understand,” said Jessica.
“Good girl.”
Half a year earlier, in her personal life, Bethany had decided she should choose a husband and settle down. There were two or three possibilities, but she didn’t really like any of them. In fact, if she were truthful, she’d admit that she considered most men beneath her. Even her father, Big Joe, was a bit of a fool in her estimation – always going on and on about what a great country the US was … as long as the government provided tax breaks to the wealthy ruling class. In the end, Bethany decided on a man thirty-seven years older than she was. A younger one would have bored her with endless mansplaining. An older one, susceptible to her youth and cunning, would be easier to handle.
And so she chose Kurt Connelly, a sixty-five-year-old insurance executive who would allow her to do anything she wanted as long as she paraded around in sexy underwear a few times a month and bent over perpendicularly so he could see into her butt crack. She figured a little bit of show and tell was worth it as long as the marriage brought her camouflage in all her other actions. If asked, she would say she was very happy with her life, but if she really thought about it, she knew this wasn’t true. She felt constantly as if there were silent forces lurking on all sides, that one wrong word or comment could send her life into a spiral that would destroy everything she’d so meticulously planned – a big voice in politics, admiration from her peers, an unending role of influence that could have an impact on how the government was run. She was determined to tie down all these elements so she could be assured, for the time being at least, of a calm and contented future.
She was aware that Tommy Duncan, despite all her seeming enthusiasm for him, was not a good leader. He had the attention span of a flea and thought of himself as a saviour, the only person in existence who could fix the world’s problems. In reality, he was an empty suit filled with nothing but anger and grievance. He couldn’t even read properly because of his dyslexia. But for some reason the public loved him – his wiggy hair, his hefty weight, his juvenile nicknames for all perceived opponents. For the life of her, Bethany couldn’t understand what it was the country saw in him; the real Tommy Duncan was a mean, uneducated bully. Perhaps people just wanted a flame throwing president who would break all norms and set new, questionable standards. Perhaps this was all just a weird form of entertainment that held the country in trance.
Six weeks into Bethany’s new job as press secretary, her assistant, Jessica, knocked softly on her office door. “Do you have a minute?” she asked.
“Yes, of course.”
Jessica looked around the room and hesitated. “Perhaps we should talk someplace more private.”
“There’s no place that’s really private in this whole goddamn city,” Bethany said.
“Then I’m gonna write a note to you right now. Please destroy it as soon as you’ve read it.”
It took Jessica a moment to write the note, which she folded and left on Bethany’s desk.
As soon as the door was closed, Bethany unfolded the note and read:
“The president is considering a deal with a foreign leader but only if a lot of money changes hands.”
That sent Bethany scurrying out of her office. “Which foreign leader?” she whispered.
Jessica wrote the name down on a piece of paper.
Putin.
“How do you know this?” mouthed Bethany.
Jessica twitched her shoulders. On a yellow pad she wrote: “We need to talk outside the building.”
“Okay, my house seven-thirty this evening,” Bethany wrote back. “You can drop off remaining work then.”
Out of caution, Jessica stuffed the notes into her handbag to destroy later. Putting them in the shredder might have proven dangerous.
Bethany’s husband, Kurt, was out of town, having traveled to London for a series of meetings. She had the house to herself for the meeting with her assistant that night.
“What if it’s bugged?” Jessica whispered into Bethany’s ear as they stood in the hallway.
“Wow, you’re really paranoid!” Bethany exclaimed. But she agreed, even though it was wintry, to talk outside in the back garden.
The two women stood side by side in the shadow of the house, both in heavy overcoats. “So tell me,” Bethany murmured, her breath smoking in the frigid air.
“Well, you know how Duncan likes … buxom girls?”
“You mean girls with big tits?”
“Exactly.” Jessica removed a vape from her coat pocket and took a quick puff. “Recently he signalled me to come into his office to take a few notes. That’s not my job, so I figured he just wanted to look at my body. He was at the tail end of a conversation and I overheard a few words as I entered the room. He didn’t even bother to lower his voice. “‘You give me what I want and we’ll make a deal.’”
“‘Kyiv has to go,’ the person at the other end said. I immediately recognized Putin’s voice and was shocked. No translator, no apparatus to record the call, no one else in the room. Duncan hung up fast and kind of glared at me. I wanted to get the fuck out of there but he made me sit down and go over some scheduling. Oh god, the way those cold eyes stared at me. When he finally let me go, I felt as if I’d been sodomized. My whole body was shaking and I knew he was aware of that and taking pleasure in it.” She shuddered and her speech, coming through numb lips, was jerky.
Bethany patted her on the shoulder and said, “Let’s go inside and have a drink. We can talk of pleasanter things.”
About half an hour later, when Bethany opened the front door for Jessica to leave, she noticed a sleek black car parked at the curb a few feet behind Jessica’s Audi. That’s a government car, she thought to herself. “Wow, they’re pretty brazen.”
She watched, slightly horrified, as Jessica climbed into her car and started the engine. When Jessica took off, so, a moment later, did the black sedan. Bethany felt her stomach lurch. She quickly closed the door and leaned against the foyer wall, trembling. What to do now? she wondered. She would have poured herself another small glass of bourbon, but wanted to keep her brain clear. Instead, she paced the living room and thought about Jessica. She was a good girl, a hard worker, smart and efficient and always ready to take Bethany’s instructions. She wasn’t exactly a pretty girl, but she had a gorgeous body and there were rumors that she’d started a new relationship with a man who worked in the private sector – a teacher who was in line to become the principal of a high school in Maryland. From the beginning (even despite the little bit of blackmail), there was something about Jessica that had made Bethany feel calm and safe, but she didn’t feel calm now … she felt awful. Probably I’m imagining things, she told herself. Probably things are just fine. But Bethany was an extremely level-headed person and knew she could trust her own instincts. If she sensed a situation was “off,” it most likely was.
The next day, Jessica didn’t appear at work.
When Bethany asked about her, no one seemed to know, although there was mention of Jessica having called in sick. Bethany checked her phone and saw no messages from her assistant, which was odd: Jessica always checked in with her and had seemed perfectly fine the night before. She put in a call to Jessica. No answer. Twisting her shoulder length hair into a tight ponytail, she began to pace her office, just as she had paced her living room floor the previous evening. Something was definitely wrong here. She was tempted to say she herself didn’t feel well so she could go home and figure out what the hell was going on.
That night, at her personal computer, Bethany typed in her assistant’s email, and was surprised to see that nothing came up. She tried to text her, but again nothing came up. Growing desperate, she googled Jessica Dobbs … but no mention at all. It was as if the girl had been erased.
Bethany kicked off her shoes and began, once again, to pace the room. Eventually she decided that the most expedient course of action would be to track down Jessica’s new boyfriend. What was his name? She racked her brain. Brian Thomas, that was it, not a memorable name. She googled “Brian Thomas, high school teacher, Maryland.” The information popped right up. He was forty-one years old, divorced, a mathematics teacher who’d earned his degree in education at Ohio State University. She found his phone number and called him. “I’m sorry to inconvenience you,” she said, “but I’m Jessica Dobbs’ boss and I’ve been trying to reach her all day without success. Do you know where she is?”
There was a sigh at the other end. “Join the club,” Brian Thomas said.
“You’ve been trying to reach her, too?”
“Yes. We were supposed to have a date tonight and she ghosted me.”
“Has she ever done that before?”
Brian laughed grimly. “Never. This is off the record, but we’re pretty hot and heavy and not hearing from her is weird.”
“Maybe call her parents?” Bethany suggested.
“I’ve done that. They don’t know where she is either.”
There was a silence. Then Bethany said: “Better take care of yourself. I don’t have a good feeling about this.”
“You're scaring me,” the boyfriend said.
“Yeah, I’m scaring myself, too. If you hear anything, please call me.”
The next day, Jessica was again absent. Bethany brought up the subject with the president. “My assistant seems to have gone missing,” she said.
“So? Girls like that come and go. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“But this isn’t like her. She’s always in touch. And she’s very loyal.”
“Maybe she has her period,” Duncan said.
“That wouldn’t deter her.”
“Girls can get pretty emotional when they’re on their period. Like I said, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
But of course Bethany couldn’t stop worrying. What Jessica had told her the night before was dangerous information – exactly the kind of information she herself had been looking for to make things equal between herself and Duncan. But since she hadn’t recorded the conversation, she had no proof.
And then the next day something truly weird happened. Jessica’s information reappeared online – all exactly as it always had been. The erasure must have been a blip. But when Bethany put in a call to Jessica, there was still no answer. Sweating heavily beneath her clothes, she began to pace the carpeted floor of her office. Her stomach was acting up, and realizing she was about to be sick, she ran to the ladies room where she leaned over the toilet and vomited. This was all going to be okay, she told herself as she brushed her hair and rinsed her mouth. Jessica would reappear and things would go back to normal.
Except they didn’t.
A few hours later, the police showed up at the office with the worst news imaginable: Jessica had been in a car accident and was dead.
A cold chill immediately ran through Bethany’s body. None of this sounded right. She remembered the black car parked behind Jessica’s Audi and knew there must have been foul play. There was no other plausible reason for a “car accident.” Jessica was an extremely careful driver. Bethany had been in the car with her on several occasions and recalled being annoyed when she wouldn’t drive through a yellow or crawled through fairly empty streets well beneath the speed limit. She decided to have an open and frank discussion with the president.
He gave her a big smile as she entered his office. “Ah there you are,” he said. “I was about to tell you to get your pretty little ass in here. I have things to go over before my meeting with that stupid fool Zelensky the day after tomorrow.”
Bethany secretly cringed whenever the president made personal comments about her body or hair or clothing. The words “pretty little ass” were particularly humiliating, as if she were part of an indiscriminate group of women, the Rockettes for instance, who were interchangeable and all looked as if they had been fashioned from the same mold. But she choked back those thoughts. “And I have something important to go over with you too,” she said, sounding far braver than she actually felt.
“You go first and be pretty quick about it,” the president said. “You know better than anyone else that I’m always short on time.”
“It’s about my assistant, Jessica Dobbs –”
“We’ve already talked about her,” Duncan interrupted.
“Yes, but I don’t believe she was killed in a car accident. I believe she was murdered.”
“Why on earth would she be murdered?” Duncan exclaimed. “She’s not that important for anyone even to take notice of, just a girl who helps schedule pressers, nothing else.”
Bethany was about to bring up the conversation between Duncan and Putin that Jessica had told her about, but slammed her mouth shut. If Duncan had arranged for Jessica’s death, he could do the same to her. “You’re right,” she said quickly. “I guess I’m just feeling very emotional. I’ve never actually known someone who died and it’s really upset me.”
“Understandable,” said the president. He leaned toward her over his desk, the capillaries in his brick-red face standing out like wormy freckles. “But you listen to me, Bethie. Remember the conversation we had just before I hired you? That still stands and make no mistake about it. If you want me to broadcast your sad little story, I will, and your life here in Washington will be over.”
Bethany knew she’d been defeated.
She left his office, tail between her legs, although she tried to stand as straight and tall as possible. What could she do now?
Not a damned thing.
The only possible strategy – unless she wanted to get killed – was pretend total fealty toward a reckless president. She had to put herself, her own survival, ahead of the needs of the country. That meant going along with whatever Duncan said, no matter how stupid, until public opinion changed and he was recognized as the fool and charlatan he actually was. Until then Bethany would have to keep her head down and follow his orders. Once he was out of office she could tell the truth, but by that time her reputation would be tarnished and she’d be considered useless, no better than a battered suitcase thrown to the curb. Be smart, she told herself now. Go with the flow, but keep fastidious notes until the tide changes. Hopefully that would happen soon. Hopefully the country would wake up and take to the streets, shouting from every corner that Duncan and his cronies had to go if they wanted to avoid being gunned down like the criminals they were.