Supreme Courtship (2 page)
“Perhaps we should be the—pardon the expression—judges of that,” Senator Mitchell just as coolly replied. After a few more questions he had grudgingly elicited that Judge Burrows had indeed dated Ms. Such-and-Such back then; further, that at one point she thought she might have become pregnant.
Again the room hushed.
“Judge Burrows,” he said, “and I really do hate having to ask these questions, but it is my job . . . is it true that you tried to talk Ms. Sinclair out of having an abortion?”
No, Judge Burrows replied. Not at all. But he had offered to do the honorable thing and marry her and raise the child. And then it turned out that she wasn’t pregnant after all.
The next day Senator Mitchell announced that he could not, in good conscience, vote to approve someone so “maniacally” opposed to a woman’s right to choose, as enshrined in
Roe v. Wade
.
And so ended Judge Burrows’s brief Supreme Court career.
That afternoon the normally placid-faced President Donald P. Vanderdamp strode to the helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House looking, as one reporter commented, “like he was ready to bite the head off a live chicken.” He did not throw the crowd his customary wave. Even the presidential golden retriever, Dwight, a friendly, pattable hound, looked eager to sink his fangs into the nearest shin.
M
ORE THAN SEVERAL HISTORIANS
of the Vanderdamp presidency have speculated that the events that followed might very well not have taken place if the President had not chanced to turn on the television late that Friday night at Camp David, the presidential retreat. But turn it on he did. Rarely has channel-surfing been so consequential.
In an oral history on deposit at the Vanderdamp Presidential Library in Wapakoneta, Ohio, President Vanderdamp relates that he was simply trying to find the Bowling Channel that night. He was not a guileful person, so there is no reason not to believe him. Apart from the news shows and the bowling, he was not a big watcher of television, preferring crossword puzzles and murder mysteries. He claims never to have watched
Courtroom Six
before or ever to have heard of it, though it was one of TV’s top ten–rated shows.
At any rate, that Friday night found the President at his retreat in the Cactoctin Mountains, alone in bed with a bowl of Graeter’s black raspberry chip ice cream—an Ohioan delicacy—and the faithful hound, Dwight. The First Lady was being honored for raising awareness of a disease at a dinner in New York. Fuming over the Burrows fiasco while clicking his way through the cable channels in search of a decent bowling tournament, the President happened upon
Courtroom Six
. The rest is, as they say, history.
The episode he came upon was the one involving the ex-wife who, seeking revenge on her ex-husband for what she considered an inequitable distribution of assets, had snuck into his wine cellar while he was away and opened hundreds of bottles of prized Bordeaux wines—by hand, one by one—replacing the wine with diet grape juice; then recorking and resealing them. It’s one of
Courtroom Six
’s more well-known cases. As the wife is being sworn in by the clerk, she raises a hand ostentatiously encased in an orthopedic brace.
“May I ask,” Judge Cartwright, presiding, asks, “what’s the deal with the hand?”
“Carpal tunnel, Your Honor.”
Judge Cartwright, barely suppressing a grin, says, “The jury will disregard the defendant’s remark.”
“Objection,” says the prosecutor. “Grounds, Your Honor?”
“I don’t know.” Judge Cartwright shrugs. “But I’ll think of something.”
President Vanderdamp’s finger, poised on the channel button to keep on flicking, stayed. He found himself, along with millions of other Americans, entertained and captivated. He watched the entire show. He found himself quite taken by the charm and sassy style—to say nothing of the good looks—of Judge Pepper Cartwright.
“Pepper?”
the President said aloud to himself, musing. “What sort of name is that for a judge?”
Dwight lifted his head off the pillow next to the President’s and cocked an ear in hopes of discerning syllabic similarity between the words being spoken and “biscuit.”
President Vanderdamp was not an imperious—much less imperial—president, one to summon the staff at late hours with urgent requests. When he walked Dwight on the White House grounds, he cleaned up after him himself. He had once ordered a (richly deserved) B-
2
bomb strike in the middle of night, mainly because he did not want to disturb his elderly secretary of defense, who had just had another prostate operation and needed his sleep.
Now he reached for the presidential laptop, a computer of truly dazzling capability, and Googled Judge Pepper Cartwright and
Courtroom Six.
He stayed up well past his normal bedtime.
T
HE NEXT MORNING
at breakfast he asked the steward, “Jackson, have you ever seen a TV show called
Courtroom Six
?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What do you think of it?”
“Watch it every chance I get, sir.”
“What do you think of the judge—Judge Pepper?”
“Oh,” Jackson smiled, not servant to president, but man to man, “I like her a whole lot, sir. She’s a smart lady. She hands it out good. And she’s awful . . .”
“Go ahead, Jackson.”
Jackson grinned. “Awful easy on the eyes.”
“Thank you, Jackson.”
“Another waffle, sir? Griddle’s still hot.”
“Yes,” the President said. “I think I will. But Jackson—not a word to the First Lady.”
“Oh,
no
, sir.”
G
ood show,” said Buddy Bixby, creator and producer of
Courtroom Six
, and spouse to its star.
They were in Pepper’s dressing room, generally referred to jocularly as her “chambers,” following the taping.
“What was so awful about it?” Pepper said, removing her judicial robes, revealing a bra, pantyhose, and high heels. It was a sight to induce infarction in the most hardened of male arteries, but in a husband of six years, barely a glance.
“I said it was a good show,” Buddy said. “What am I supposed to say?”
“ ‘Good’ is what you say when you thought it was roadkill. When you really think it was good, you do that producer macho trash talk.
‘Great fucking show.’ ‘Outta the fucking ballpark
.’ ”
“It was a great fucking show. It took my fucking breath away.”
“You’re the only person I know who can say that while sounding like you’re suppressing a yawn.” Pepper yanked a Baby Wipe from the box and began removing makeup. “What’s eating you, anyway?”
“We’re getting killed against
Law & Order
.”
Pepper sighed. “We’re not getting killed against
Law & Order
. We’re doing fine.”
“We’re down a half point.” Buddy treated any dip in
Courtroom Six
’s ratings as a state of emergency. “By what definition is that ‘fine’?”
“What’s got into you? You’re more nervous than a long-tailed cat on a porchful of rocking chairs.”
“These sentences you’re handing out . . .”
“What about them?”
“You’re letting the women off kind of easy, don’t you think?”
“No. What else did you want to talk about?”
“The bitch poured $
150
,
000
worth of fine French wine down the drain! And you sentence her to six hours of
anger management therapy
?”
Pepper tossed a Baby Wipe into the wastebasket. “What did you have in mind? Lethal injection? Hanging?”
“What about making her drink the grape juice?
That
would have been something. Poetic justice. Instead of anger management therapy.” Buddy shook his head. “I’m glad you’re not in charge of the war on terror. The terrorists would be at spas having manicures.”
Pepper brushed her hair and tried to tune out her husband’s normal postshow hand-wringing and critiques. The better things went, the more he needed to worry that some calamity was imminent, a once-charming trait now a bit tedious. Buddy did care about
Courtroom Six
. It was his class act—“class” being a somewhat relative term, considering his other shows:
Jumpers
, a reality show based on security camera footage of people who jump off bridges;
G.O.
(the medical abbreviation for “grotesquely obese”); and now a show called
Yeehad
, a “comedy” about five patriotic Southerners who decide to travel to Mecca to blow up Islam’s most sacred shrine, the Q’aaba. Buddy had eight shows running. According to
Forbes
, they were earning him $
74
million a year. But
Courtroom Six
was the jewel in the crown.
“I’m just saying that there would appear to be a noticeable feminist . . .
thing
going on with these sentences you’re handing down.”
“I thought we’d had that discussion.”
“Excuse me for pointing out something the
entire world
is talking about. I’m just saying—if it
please
the court—that you’ve been letting these women off easy. But if it’s a guy, you go at him like he’s a fucking piñata.”
“Buddy, honey,” Pepper said, “the ex-husband, whose Bordeaux wine you regard like it’s holy water, was tighter than bark on a tree with the alimony and the child support. I’m not going to cry me a river on account of his ’
82
Petrus.” She sniffed. “Been me, I’d have busted the bottles over his head. One by one.”
“I rest my case,” Buddy said triumphantly.
“Well, you go rest your case.
This
girl is going to go rest her tail.”
She shimmied into her jeans and lizard-skin cowboy boots. Simple white blouse, raised collar, turquoise stud earrings, suede jacket, and over-the-shoulder handbag: she looked like a woman who knew her way on a New York City sidewalk. In the handbag was a .
38
caliber Smith & Wesson LadySmith revolver, a gift from her grandfather. She was licensed to carry.
“Could I just say one thing?” Buddy said.
“No, darlin’. But I have a feeling you’re going to, anyway.”
“Do you know how many of our viewers are male?”
“No, sweetheart. I leave those details to you. I’m just a simple girl from Plano.”
“Yeah, yeah. Well, then, my little cactus bud, you might be interested to know that we’re down six percent among male viewers.”
Pepper said, “Well, damn. I guess there’s nothing left to do but throw myself off the Brooklyn Bridge. If nothing else, it’ll give you a season finale for
Jumpers
.”
Bill said pleadingly, “But—don’t you
care
?”
“I care that I’m going to be late for my mani-pedi.”
“Why have we had such success—historically speaking—among male viewers?”
“Presumably on account of my Solomonic dispensation of justice.”
“A major factor, no question. But another factor?”
Pepper was headed for the door.
“Excuse me,” Buddy said, “am I
boring
you?”
“Yes. Seriously so.”
“Then let me get right to the point.” Buddy lowered his voice, as if he were revealing a classified secret. “The sponsors are not happy.”
Pepper rolled her eyes.
“Fine,” Buddy said. “Shoot the messenger if it makes you feel better. As for Hummer and Budweiser? I would not describe them as happy campers.”
“Buddy.
Buddy
. We’re the number seven show on TV. I just do not
see
the problemo.”
“The problemo? I’ll tell you the
problemo
. The problemo is that I care-o.”
“All right,” said Pepper, slinging her bag back over her shoulder, “if it’ll get me out of here, I promise—I
swear
—next female defendant, no matter how innocent she is, that bitch is going to Guantánamo for some serious attitude adjustment.”
Buddy smiled. “Thank you, Your Honor.”
P
EPPER
C
ARTWRIGHT
and Buddy Bixby, respectively of Plano, Texas, and New Rochelle, New York, were from very different worlds but had happened to find each other seven years before in a courtroom—an actual courtroom, that is—Courtroom
6
in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Buddy was at the time a midlevel (which is to say, not high level) local TV news producer, fast approaching fifty. His career had consisted of a series of almosts. He had almost gotten footage of Squeaky Fromme attempting to shoot President Gerald Ford; had almost gotten an on-camera interview with the reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes; had almost bought Microsoft at six dollars a share; almost gotten the big job back in New York.
He’d been asked to be the speaker at his twenty-fifth college reunion, a prospect that greatly pleased him, until the class secretary, whom Buddy had cordially detested for twenty-nine years, called back a few days later blithely to say never mind, he’d just heard back from the first person he’d asked, parenthethes,
No offense, but sort of a bigger catch than you, ha-ha, so anyway, see you there, big guy.
Asshole.
Lying in bed that night, eating a giant bag of Cheetos while staring existentially at the ceiling, Buddy imagined the headstone on his grave: “Here Lies Buddy Bixby. Almost.”
One day at work, looking to fill a “soft” feature slot for the weekend program, one of the reporters mentioned there was this judge down at Superior Court: “H.O.T. Hot. Made me want to go out and commit a crime.”
Buddy went down to court to check out the judicial dish. The sign on door of Courtroom
6
announced:
JUDGE PEPPER CARTWRIGHT, PRESIDING.
He thought, Pepper Cartwright—what the hell kind of name is that? Walking in, he saw a woman in her midthirties, tall, lush brown hair, cool blue eyes, high cheekbones, and deep dimples. She smiled but had a nononsense look to her. She wore glasses, which she kept taking off and putting back on. She’d chew on the stem in a pensive gesture. She had an accent which at first he thought Southern but quickly nailed as Texan. Sassy, flippant, sexy. All that was missing was a cowboy hat.