If Madam Would Prefer...
The infamous DC madam, Deborah Jane Palfrey, is dead. The official word is that it looks like suicide, although they’ll be looking into it. Can’t afford to leap to any conclusions when dealing with someone possessing secrets so dangerous to so many of the rich and powerful, although I’m sure it will turn out to be suicide. Palfrey’s station in life has deteriorated considerably: public exposure, a prison sentence, her business dismantled, her reputation for keeping her clients’ anonymity ruined (whether or not it was her fault). Some accounts say she vowed to kill herself before going to prison, others that she declared no intent to kill herself and a suspicion that others would have her done in. Reports of either kind of claim might be true; if both are, it suggest a disturbed mind. And some people commit suicide even without something to be depressed about. As deliciously Ludlum-esque as a murder arranged by some powerful Washington insider to tie off one last loose end would be, it doesn’t seem very likely, if only because bringing the name back into the news is more dangerous than letting it sink into dim memory. Grand, showy conspiracies like that don’t happen.
But smaller, equally ugly conspiracies do. What Hannah Arendt termed “the banality of evil,” referring to the dry, clerkish way the Jews were marked for mass murder by Nazi leaders, settles like heavy dust wherever power operates, and where good, vigorous sweepings are quietly disposed of. I’m very interested in what is about to happen to Palfrey’s list of clients. She may have kept that list private, out of a misplaced sense of honor or decency, a belief that exposing the Johns wouldn’t be proper. Or she may have fully intended to stick to her claim to “bring every last one of [the records] in if necessary” for her legal defense. But whoever inherits that figurative “little black book” may not feel bound by the same code of honor at all.
Whoever gets that list might consider it a golden opportunity for some very, very cautious blackmail. Or maybe, if it goes to a colleague, it could become a chance to round up business for her own swanky house of ill repute. But it might go to a relative, someone who, rightly or wrongly, feels just a bit of resentment towards some very heavy hitters who slipped into the background and left Palfrey to her fate, and decides to publish the list in revenge. It’s even conceivable that the inheritor might publicize the list out of simple civic devotion, letting us see how the men we’ve elected are serving. Or it could disappear into some dusty file as “evidence,” if all the copies can be tracked down.
Evidence of nothing in particular, just…“evidence.” The material equivalent of a “person of interest,” only more liable to disappear down the rabbit hole.
Palfrey’s name will be all over the headlines for a day or two. If something particularly shady comes up, the story may linger a bit longer. It will remain indefinitely, like the smell of a rodent dead in some inaccessible corner, on conspiracy theory blogs. Don’t watch for her name; she’s dead and gone. Watch for news on what happened to the list of clients’ names.