Shadow of Power (7 page)

“Based purely on circumstantial evidence that places him in the hotel room at the wrong time,” I tell him.

“That’s it?”

“As far as I know.”

“I have to assume they have something to go on. Of course, I make no judgments,” he adds.

“Good. Do you mind if I take a few notes?”

“Not at all. Let me ask you,” he says. “Have you talked to your client about the possibility of a book?”

I take out a small notebook and pen from the inside pocket of my coat. “No.”

“You might want to think about getting the rights,” he says. “Depending on what happens, the level of publicity.” He’s looking at me from across the table over the top of his coffee cup. “From what I see in the papers, he doesn’t have a lot of money. It could help in defraying your fees.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You should,” he says. “And feel free to call me if you need any help.”

“You said that except for the killer you were the last person to see Mr. Scarborough alive?”

“As far as I know.”

“Do you recall arriving at Scarborough’s hotel room that morning?”

He nods.

“Did you let yourself into the room, or did Mr. Scarborough let you in?”

“I didn’t have a key. He had to let me in.”

“The door wasn’t open?”

“No.”

“Did you try it?”

“Why would I do that? It was a hotel room. They’re always locked.”

“But you didn’t push on it to find out, or turn the doorknob?”

“No. I told you.”

“And when you left the room, after your meeting with Mr. Scarborough, do you recall, did he accompany you to the door, or did you let yourself out?”

On this he ponders for a moment. “As I recall, he had finished up shaving, in the bathroom. We talked. He was tired, said he wanted to get some rest. You know, I can’t remember, but I think I let myself out.”

“Can you recall when you left, did you hear the door close behind you?”

“I don’t know. How do you remember something like that? You realize that the cops asked me the same question. Why is it important?”

“I’m sure they did.” I don’t answer his question.

“Are you sure that it latched all the way closed?”

“I didn’t check it, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did you hear it close?”

“I can’t remember. I wasn’t paying that much attention. Sometimes I check my own door when I’m staying in a hotel, but I don’t usually check anybody else’s.”

“Can you tell me what the two of you talked about, you and Scarborough in your last meeting?”

“What do authors and agents always talk about? Book sales, how his tour was going. The usual,” he says.

“As I recall, Scarborough’s book was doing pretty well at that time.”

“‘Well’ is an understatement,” says Bonguard. “It was flying off the shelves. It’s high on the bestseller list even now. I believe Terry would be astounded that the book is doing so well even after his death.”

“Perhaps
because
of the death and the controversy surrounding it?” I say.

“It’s possible. When it comes to books, controversy usually sells.”

“Was there any talk of a follow-up book?”

He smiles at me. “You saw the tape of Leno. Yes, he was preparing to write another book.”

“Based on the historic letter you mentioned during your interview with Leno?”

“That’s what he told me. You have to understand that at the time of the Leno appearance I was still trying to flog the current book. I was standing in for Terry. He was supposed to have appeared on the show the night he was killed. You can’t believe everything you hear on television,” he says.

“So you’re saying there was no letter?”

“No, I’m not saying that. It’s just that it was the last chance we were going to have to push sales. You know how it is?”

“And the letter?”

Before he can answer, the door behind me opens. It’s the secretary with a tray bearing a carafe of coffee, three cups, and accoutrements—sugar, cream, teaspoons—and two bottles of water.

He pours himself a cup of coffee—black, no sugar. I take one of the bottled waters and look at Sarah. She declines. “I’m waiting to hear about the letter,” she says.

“So you’re a history buff?” Bonguard turns the question on her.

“I like history. Better yet, I like a good mystery.”

“Well, there was a letter, at least that’s what Terry told me. He led me to believe he was holding it for a sequel. With books as with most things in life, when you’re successful, it’s always good to have a second act.”

“So he had this letter in his possession?” I make a note.

“What he said was that he had a copy. Mind you, I never saw it. Whatever he had, he was keeping it close to the vest. Now, let me ask you a question,” he says. “Did the police find such a letter when they searched Terry’s apartment? Or in the hotel room?”

I shake my head. “Not according to their notes and the list of items they seized.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” he says, “but I assume that if they found it, a letter like this, it is something they would have to disclose to you?”

“Assuming they knew its significance, yes.”

“And by now they would know its significance?” he asks.

Bonguard may not be a lawyer, but he knows the rules of the road when it comes to discovery. I nod. “By now they would know.”

Harry and I have nailed the state’s feet to the floor over the issue of any missing letters. If they are holding back, it would have dire consequences for their case at trial, creating prosecutorial misconduct that even if they can get a conviction could bury them on appeal.

It is now clear why Bonguard has agreed to talk to me. He wants to know where the letter is.

“And I suppose they didn’t find it on your client when they arrested him?” he asks.

“No.”

“One point for your side.” He settles back in his chair again and runs one hand through his blond hair while he thinks.

“If all he had was a copy, wouldn’t that be problematic, assuming he tried to publish based on it?” I ask.

“You mean authentication?” says Bonguard.

I nod.

“That’s true. A publisher could be taking a real chance going forward with a book unless the letter could be established as authentic.”

“And without the original there’s no way to analyze the paper and ink.”

“Right. And as you know, handwriting can be copied, and it’s hard to be sure sometimes, experts all disagreeing,” he says. “Before you know it, people are crying fraud and the author is looking at jail time.”

A few years earlier, it was all over the media and in the press. An antiquarian dealer claimed that he had discovered multiple volumes of Hitler’s handwritten diaries, all of which were scrupulously maintained, a veritable storehouse of the dictator’s most intimate thoughts during the war. It was a treasure trove, except for one little thing: The entire collection was a modern forgery.

“So a copy would be useless for purposes of publication?”

“In point of fact,” he says. “But political wacko though he may have been, Terry was nobody’s fool, especially when it came to money. He may have been an avowed socialist at heart, but when it came to book sales, he was a capitalist through and through. What he said was that he
knew where the original letter was. What’s more, he knew someone who could get it for him.”

“Did he say who?”

Bonguard shakes his head. “I asked him, but he wasn’t talking.”

“Do you have any idea who it might be?”

“Only guesses.”

“Would you like to share them?”

Bonguard gives me a face, a little shrug of the shoulder. Now that he knows neither I nor the cops have the letter, he is becoming more reticent. I move on.

“Scarborough makes no reference to the letter in
Perpetual Slaves
?” Both Harry and I have scoured Scarborough’s book from cover to cover and found no reference to any secret letter.

“No. It was a conscious decision not to include it in this book,” says Bonguard. What is more interesting here is what Bonguard doesn’t say. He doesn’t tell me what he told the cops, that the so-called J letter was the impetus, the driving force that caused Scarborough to write
Perpetual Slaves
in the first place. Why? For the moment I leave it alone. I don’t ask him.

“Could it be that whoever had the original of the letter didn’t want to release it to him?” I ask.

“Could be,” says Bonguard. “Or it could be, knowing Terry, that he wanted to fan the flames of discontent with
Perpetual Slaves
and throw more fuel onto the fire later with the letter. That would be his style. And the letter wasn’t necessary to the sales of
Perpetual Slaves
. He had roused the masses with the revelation that the language of slavery remained in the Constitution. For Terry that was the first blow. I got the sense the letter was the clincher. According to Terry, the letter would have blown the top off of things.”

“Do you know who wrote the letter, the original author?”

“Not with certainty. As I say, I never saw it.”

“Do you know when it was supposed to have been written?”

“Terry never said, though he referred to it cryptically on a few occasions.”

“Cryptically?”

“Alphabetically,” says Bonguard. “He called it the ‘J letter.’”

“J?”

“You can form your own conclusions. If you work from a list of the politically prominent at the time that the framers crafted the Constitution, your list becomes very short fairly quickly.”

“Jefferson?” I ask.

“Or John Jay. There are a couple of others. But Jefferson would get my vote,” says Bonguard. “At the time the Constitution was being written, Jefferson was in Paris serving as American ambassador. This would account for the fact that he would be compelled to reduce any thoughts to writing. We know there was considerable correspondence between Jefferson and others back in the States at the time. We also know his position on slavery, at least his public position. He is on record as favoring abolition. Yet at the time he was one of the biggest slave owners in Virginia. You might call him ambivalent on the subject, since his words and his actions were a bit at odds. He vowed to free his slaves during his lifetime but never did. Economics, it seems, always got in the way.”

“My American history is a little rusty,” I tell him.

“He’s right, Dad,” Sarah chimes in.

“I’m not a history buff either,” says Bonguard. “But when you have a client bringing in the kind of money Terry was and he mentions a letter as a basis for another book, you tend to do a little research.”

“Any idea as to who this letter was directed to?” I ask.

“Your guess would be as good as mine. Terry never said.”

“Do you have any idea as to the monetary value of this letter?” I ask.

“Umm…” He looks at me with a dull gaze as if suddenly I’ve jumped the tracks on him. He thinks for a moment. “Assuming it’s authentic, that it’s never seen the light of day, publicly at least, I have to assume that it would be worth a good deal to collectors.”

“And how do we define ‘a good deal’ in the literary antiquities market?” I ask.

Bonguard smiles at me. “I’m certainly no expert on the value of historic correspondence. But assuming all your assumptions are correct, it would go at auction, one of a kind. And if it’s as explosive as Terry suggested, my guess is it would be worth multiple millions, perhaps. I don’t know. Given a good airing with a bestselling book as Terry was intending, that would drive the price very high.”

“So that would make whoever possessed this letter quite wealthy,” I say.

“Umm…” He sips his coffee, studying me over the brim of the cup. “I know what you’re thinking,” he says. “People have killed for less. Except for one thing. If Terry was to be believed, he only had a copy of the letter. That in itself was worthless unless it could be authenticated.”

“Maybe the killer didn’t know that,” I say.

He mulls this for a moment. “That’s possible. If you can sell it to a jury.” He smiles again.

“You have no idea how Mr. Scarborough may have gotten his copy of the letter?”

He looks at his watch. “Your dozen questions are about up,” he says. “I have a meeting in a couple of minutes. I don’t know how he got his copy of the letter. He didn’t tell me.”

“Do you have any guesses?”

“It’s only conjecture,” he says. “And don’t say that it came from here, but Terry had a girlfriend. An on-again, off-again thing. I believe it was off when he was killed, since they hadn’t seen each other in a while. The woman’s name is Trisha Scott. She’s a high-powered lawyer with one of the big firms in D.C. Terry met her when she was clerking for the Supreme Court. She was just out of law school, quite a bit younger than he was. If I had to guess as to a source for the letter, I would start there.”

“Why is that?”

“Because this whole thing, the idea of writing
Perpetual Slaves,
seems to have had its genesis about the time that Terry picked up with Scott. That and other things,” he says.

“What other things?”

“His interest in Arthur Ginnis, the justice that Scott clerked for. Do you know him?”

“I know
of
him, naturally. Never met him. Supreme Court justices and lowly trial lawyers live and operate in different legal universes,” I tell him.

“Well, Ginnis isn’t exactly the sort that I would expect to take up with Terry. I know Ginnis only slightly. I’ve met him twice. No”—he thinks for a moment—“actually, it was three times. Anyway, I was introduced to him by his wife, Margaret. She’s a lovely woman. For a while
she was a client. I met her in New York at a political function. She was publishing a fascinating cookbook. The woman has a positive flair for finding an unusual niche and marketing it.
The Favored Dishes of the High Court
—that was the name of her book. She did a sequel and went historical on the next one,
Meals from Marshall to Warren.
That one didn’t do as well.

“She actually got Justice Scalia to pose for the cover on the first one, smiling with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. Do you know Scalia?”

I shake my head again.