“And you got hurt.”
“Yep.”
“Tough,” Wade said.
Jesse nodded.
“What about Walton Weeks?” he said.
“Walton’s a libertarian,” Wade said. “That probably brings him more in line with the right than the left. But basically he believed that government which governs least governs best. He believed in what he called the Eleventh Commandment.”
“Leave everyone else the hell alone,” Jesse said.
“Yeah. Guy like Walton Weeks,” Wade said, “it often depends on who’s ox he’s goring, you know? When he was 7 6
H I G H P R O F I L E
hammering the tax-and-spend big-government liberals, the conservatives loved him and the liberals hated him. Now we seem to have spend-and-no-tax big-government conservatives in power, and he’s been hammering them, and now they are hating him. Maybe worse, because they feel betrayed.”
“You agree with him?” Jesse said.
“Currently I’ve tended to. But the problem with Walton is that he puts principle ahead of results.”
“Like?”
“Civil rights,” Wade said. “He believed completely in integration but felt the government should not impose it.”
“And you disagree,” Jesse said.
“A lot of us disagree. You think integration would have happened without government imposition?”
“No,” Jesse said.
“Then you disagree with Walton, too.”
“Not enough to kill him,” Jesse said.
“You think he was killed for political reasons?” Wade said.
“Just rattling all the doorknobs,” Jesse said. “I heard he was a womanizer.”
Wade grinned.
“He was married several times,” Wade said. “Me too. Depends on your perspective. You, ah, interact with a lot of women and you could be a womanizer, or you could just be very popular.”
Jesse tried not to think about Jenn.
“Walton interacted,” Jesse said.
7 7
R O B E R T B . P A R K E R
“Often. It was an open secret in the industry,” Wade said.
“Not that there was anything especially hypocritical about it. It’s not like you preach against drugs and you’re a junkie, or you preach celibacy and there’s nudies of you on the Web.”
“So there could be a jealous husband,” Jesse said.
