Astor, Bogart in “Maltese Falcon”
Of all the twists and turns that the Chris Christie scandals have taken, I never would have imagined that the story would begin to look like a hard boiled detective thriller, complete with a femme fatale. Like The Maltese Falcon, for instance.
That, at any rate, is what the law firm hired by the governor of New Jersey to investigate the George Washington Bridge lane closings wants us to think. According to their report, the cause of Fort Lee’s four-day traffic nightmare was the bruised love sensibilities of one Bridget Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff.
Apparently Kelly, distraught over the end of a love affair with Christie’s former campaign manager Bill Stepien, chose to unleash her fury upon Fort Lee commuters. As a result, a good and honorable man (i.e., Christie) had his presidential aspirations jeopardized.
Of course the report, written by people with Christie connections, doesn’t talk about his political goals. But it does exonerate Christie in every possible way and even imagines defenses he could use if further evidence against him emerges. The sexual speculation may be a preemptive strike against anything Kelly might say (so her lawyer contends), and there appears to be a similar preemptive strike against her co-conspirator David Wildstein. Many skeptics are taking note of the following run-on sentence in the report:
Wildstein even suggested he mentioned the traffic issue in Fort Lee to the Governor at a public event during the lane realignment—a reference that the Governor does not recall and, even if actually made, would not have registered with the Governor in any event because he knew nothing about this decision in advance and would not have considered another traffic issue at one of the bridges or tunnels to be memorable.
Oh, so Christie told the investigators that he can’t remember what would be the most damning piece of evidence? Well, that settles it. New York Times columnist Gail Collins unleashes her characteristic sarcasm upon the report’s depiction of the governor:
The governor was, indeed, portrayed in a light of near-beatific proportions. He had absolutely no role in the most infamous traffic jam since Woodstock. He was too good, and too busy doing other things, like comforting the victims of a fire — an act of mercy he felt driven to perform even though he had to cancel “a planned trip to Florida with his wife for her birthday.”
Amy Davidson of the New Yorker is also a doubter:
How has Chris Christie “carried himself”? In a way that supports any story he wants to tell, apparently. There is a good man in the governor’s office of New Jersey—the lawyers whom he hired figured that out, after spending a million dollars in taxpayer money on an internal investigation into the decision to choke the town of Fort Lee with traffic. Their report clears Christie of blame entirely; while they’re at it, the lawyers say that Christie didn’t go after political opponents, didn’t encourage or create a culture that encouraged such actions, and was an all-around beacon of bipartisanship.
Kelly, on the other hand, seems tailor-made for the villainess. Her “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” e-mail, sent to Wildstein, will go down in American political lore. The report concludes that she went rogue and it comes up with only one possible reason for her having done so. Here’s Collins again:
[T]he investigators’ description of her behavior was unusually — personal. They noted that Kelly had been dating Christie’s political adviser, Bill Stepien. And they suggested that she might have thrown herself into the bridge plot during a breakup funk. (“Events in Kelly’s personal life may have had some bearing on her subjective motivations and state of mind.”)
Then when Christie (ever truthful, ever brave) “demanded straight answers from his senior staff,” the report says Kelly “panicked.” Perhaps this was because she was “habitually concerned about how she was perceived by the Governor,” something which is, of course, extremely unusual for people working in a state capitol.
You may recall how, in his two-hour press conference last January, Christie appeared chastened as he (in the opinion of many) threw Kelly and Wildstein under the bus. He used the word “sad” 16 times. Here’s a sampling:
“I’m sad. I’m sad. That’s the predominant emotion I feel right now is sadness – sadness that I was betrayed by a member of my staff, sadness that I had people who I entrusted with important jobs who acted completely inappropriately, sad that that’s led the people of New Jersey to have less confidence in the people that I’ve selected,” Christie said. “The emotion that I’ve been displaying in private is sad.”
Following that conference, I compared him to Rabbit at the end of the Winnie-the-Pooh story “Tigger Is Unbounced”:
This Christie was, to paraphrase A. A. Milne in House at Pooh Corner, “a Humble Christie, a Sad Christie, a Melancholy Christie, a Small and Sorry Christie.”
On Friday, by contrast, Christie appeared to have his mojo back. A dangerous woman had threatened to take him down but now he was back to his old contentious self. Here he is dressing down a reporter for asking him why he didn’t ask Bridget Kelly for her side of the story before firing her last January:
I don’t know if you can’t take notes or you’re not listening. For you to characterize my last answer as ‘I didn’t want to ask her because I didn’t want to know’ is so awful that it’s beneath the job you hold.
Christie is following the pattern of the hero in those hard boiled detective stories. Under the spell of the femme fatale, the man appears weak and unsure. In order to regain his masculinity, he must resort to dramatic measures. Sometimes, as in Double Indemnity, he even shoots the woman.
In The Maltese Falcon we have another Irish Bridget, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, who has hired Spade to find a statue of immense value. He falls in love with her and she uses the love to her advantage, twisting him around her little finger. Note how tangled he gets, how unsure he is of his footing, while trying to get the truth from her. Then imagine that he is Christie in a staff meeting with his own Bridget:
He turned to face her. The two vertical lines above his nose were deep clefts between red wales. “I don’t give a damn about your honesty,” he told her, trying to make herself speak calmly. “I don’t care what kind of tricks you’re up to, what your secrets are, but I’ve got to have something to show that you know what you’re doing.”
“I do know. Please believe that I do, and that it’s all for the best, and—”
“Show me,” he ordered. “I’m willing to help you. I’ve done what I could so far. If necessary I’ll go ahead blindfolded, but I can’t do it without more confidence in you than I’ve got now. You’ve got to convince me that you know what it’s all about, that you’re not simply fiddling around by guess and by God, hoping it’ll come out all right somehow in the end.”
Spade thinks he can become a man again only by cold-bloodedly turning Brigid over to the authorities:
“I’m gong to send you over. The chances are you’ll get off with life. That means you’ll be out again in twenty years. You’re an angel. I’ll wait for you.” He cleared his throat. “If they hang you I’ll always remember you.”
Will Christie always remember Bridget if she goes to jail? Will he, like Spade, emerge from this drama with more or less clean hands?
Or will the public see him more as Gutman, a.k.a. the Fat Man, who wheels and deals behind the scenes? Christie certainly has the girth to play Hammett’s other antagonist, who cheerfully casts off his associates when they get between him and the falcon. Here he is cutting his bodyguard loose when he decides he needs a fall guy:
The boy looked at Gutman.
Gutman smiled benignly at him and said: “Well, Wilmer, I’m sorry indeed to lose you, and I want you to know that I couldn’t be any fonder of you if you were my own son; but—well, by Gad!—if you lose a son it’s possible to get another–and there’s only one Maltese falcon.”
If more Kellys and Wildsteins cause problems for Christie, will he throw them over as well. After all, if one loses an associate, one can always get another. But there’s only one presidency.
We don’t yet know how the story is going to end. It’s important to remember that the femme fatale in this case hasn’t yet been neutralized. Sure, Christie has had the field free to beat up on Kelly since January since she has been holding her tongue. Word is that she is angling for immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony. What will she say if she starts talking?
Will she, for instance, report the Christie instructed his subordinates to put the squeeze on local politicians for their endorsements, even though he may have left the details up to them? Will she have anything to say about Christie using Hurricane Sandy money as a slush fund? Or that Christie’s appointees in the Port Authority, particularly the Authority chairman David Samson, used their positions there to set up sweet real estate deals for their clients?
The report relies on the Congreve portrayal of hell having no fury like a woman scorned. If it has any accuracy on this account, then Christie may have a lot to worry about. After all, he’s scorning Bridget Kelly plenty.
What if he discovers that he’s dealing, not with Brigid O’Shaughnessy, but with Medea? Does he really want to be in Jason’s shoes?