Photo by philliefan99.

Since Sulaimon Brown appears to have no intention of abiding by Councilmember Mary Cheh’s subpoena to testify in front of the Council about his claims that the Gray campaign paid him and gave him a job, we’re left to hope that other people can piece together the gaps in the story. For example: on this morning’s “The Politics Program” with Mark Plotkin, Mayor Vince Gray was finally able to recall the subject of a 14-minute phone call he had with Brown on July 15.

After consulting records from that day, Gray said Friday the July conversation was most likely in reference to a WPFW radio debate earlier that morning with the mayoral candidates, from which Brown was excluded.

“He asked me if I would call him later that day, which I did,” Gray said. “I don’t remember the conversation, but I think there was a discussion about some candidates were included and some candidates were not included.”

Earlier, Gray told Post reporter Nikita Stewart that he couldn’t recall even having taking the call from Brown:

Cellphone records show several phone calls between Brown and numbers belonging to Gray and Green in July. On July 15, Brown called Gray’s number at 6:45 p.m. for a call that lasted three minutes. Another call went out to Green at 6:48 p.m. In three back-to-back calls, they appeared to talk for 19 minutes. At 9:57 p.m., Brown received a call from Gray’s cellphone number, and they appeared to talk for 14 minutes.

Gray said Saturday that he didn’t remember the phone call. “I honestly don’t have a clue what that was about,” he said. “I don’t know if I had any other conversations with him other than when I saw him at forums.”

14 minutes is a pretty long time for a politician who was in the middle of a fiery campaign to spend on the phone — so it’s a little hard to swallow that the entire conversation was about Brown’s displeasure about not being invited to appear on a radio debate, as Gray stated. But until Brown takes an oath, this is, unfortunately, what we’ve got to work with.

You can listen to Plotkin’s entire interview with Gray here.