Supreme Courtship (28 page)

Pepper slumped into the hard wooden back of the booth. After a moment or two she said, “What are you going to do with this?”

“Well, ma’am, I thought I’d ask you that.”

“Who knows about this?”

“As of this moment, you and I.”

“Aren’t you required to share this?”

Agent Lodato smiled. “Yes, ma’am. However, you being a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, I thought it would be permissible to exercise initiative. They like it when we do that. Up to a point. I appreciate that it comes at what seems to be shaping up as a challenging time for everyone at the Court. So,” he slid the two pieces of paper toward Pepper, “that being the case, I thought I’d present this to
Courtroom Six.
” He stood. “I always liked the way Judge Cartwright handled things. To be honest, I’m not so sure about Justice Cartwright, especially after that
Swayle
vote
. . . .
” He let out a little whistle of amazement. “But I thought I’d take a chance on her. Thank you for your time, ma’am.”

I
F
B
LYSTER
F
ORKMORGAN
had imagined that he would be contending against the other gods of the bar in the rarified atmosphere at the summits of Olympus, he now found himself instead tramping about hip-deep in sheep turd and mud at its base. It was not exactly what Dexter Mitchell’s plangent phone call to him at four a.m. on Election Night had promised.

His client sat across from him, crossing and uncrossing his legs, nervous, sweating, pallid.

“I never explicitly told her,” Dexter jibbered, “at least I’m virtually sure I never . . . in so many words . . . Hell, I can’t remember everything I said to everyone . . . every promise made to every group
. . . .
”

Forkmorgan stared through lidded eyes, a falcon watching a mole scrabbling across a field below.

He poured ice water into a cut crystal glass and handed it to Dexter, who took it and drank, as if more out of obedience than thirst.

“Campaigns,” Forkmorgan ventured soothingly, “are promiserich environments. The relevant question here is—did you in fact tell Ms. Alvilar that you were going to leave your wife and marry her?”

“No. No, no. No. Well . . .
aack.
” Dexter sighed. “Maybe . . . I don’t . . . in the middle of . . . I . . . Look, you say things in the middle of . . . It just comes . . . out
. . . .
It doesn’t necessarily
mean
anything
. . . .
”

To recap, then: you told your TV wife, probably during sexual intercourse in the midst of a presidential campaign, that you would divorce your actual wife in order to marry her and make her First Lady of the United States.

“Well,” Forkmorgan said, “these things happen.”

“Yes. Yes, they do. Yes,” Dexter said. “She’s, of course,
Latina. . . .
”

Forkmorgan raised one eyebrow questioningly.

“Emotionally they’re, you know, all over the place.
Voluble
.”

Forkmorgan nodded. “They lack our Anglo-Saxon sense of reticence and decorum?”

Dexter frowned. “Something like that,” he said uncertainly. “I explained to her, I said, ‘Look, Ramona, for God’s sake . . . now is not the time to worry about that. Let’s take it step by step, okay?’ What am I supposed to do—announce in the middle of a Supreme Court case that I’m tossing Terry over the side?”

“And how did she respond to that argument?”

“By going totally fucking bat-shit. By threatening to go public.” Dexter shook his head at the iniquity of it all. “That’s when she told me she had me on tape.”

Blyster Forkmorgan’s eyes widened. “
Does
she have you on tape?”

“
I
don’t know,” Dexter said. “I was in the middle of a
campaign
, for God’s sake.”

“Yes,” Forkmorgan said, “I can see your mind might have been on . . . other things. Well, let’s ascertain whether such a tape exists.” He made a note on a pad. “Now, as to your wife. How do things stand with her at this point?”

Dexter sighed manfully once more at the unjustness of female wiles. “Terry? Well, now
she’s
gone bat-shit. On the other hand, she’s not some jalapeño like Ramona. She’s bat-shit, but logical. She understands that there’s no point in grabbing the wheel of this bus and driving it off the cliff.”

“Have you told her that you are
not
going to divorce her in order to marry Ms. Alvilar?”

“In so many words.”

“Tell me the actual words you used.”

“I told her, ‘Don’t worry about it. We need to stick together here. Team Mitchell.
Team Mitchell
.’”

Forkmorgan nodded. “And did she give you reason to understand that she is in fact
on
Team Mitchell?”

Dexter shrugged. “Well, she was running kind of hot when we last spoke. But she wants to be First Lady, so she’s not likely to do anything to screw that up.”

“No,” Forkmorgan said. “That would appear to be more on Ms. Alvilar’s agenda.”

“I was thinking,” Dexter said, sounding suddenly the politician, “we could offer Ramona a nice ambassadorship. Somewhere warm, Spanish-speaking. She’d be a hero down there. A queen. The Hispanics loved it when she disagreed with me about mining the border
. . . .
”

Forkmorgan shook his head. “No, I think we’ve made enough promises to Ms. Alvilar for the time being. Not to mention it would be illegal.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it was a perfect solution,” Dexter sniffed.

CHAPTER 29

D
ear me, dear heavens, dear . . .
dear
,” Crispus said heavily after Pepper had recounted Agent Lodato’s discovery. His eyeballs flickered side to side. “Why do you bring this fifty-five-gallon drumful of squirming worms to
me
?”

“Who else am I going to tell?” Pepper said.

“Who else? Who
else
? How about your boyfriend, for one? The Chief Justice. He’s the one who called down the thunder in the first place. Why don’t you tell him? Why is this my business? Re-
cu-use
me.”

“I can’t tell him,” Pepper said.

“Why not?”

“He might
do
something about it. Something . . . injudicious.”

“Whereas I’m just going to rub my fevered brow and ululate?”

“Look, Crispy, help me out here. What do I do?”

“Well, I wouldn’t be hitting any more
SEND
buttons.”

“Thank you. That’s so helpful.”

“Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” Crispus frowned and drummed his fingers on the surface of his desk. “What would Hammurabi do?”

“Cut off everyone’s head, and call it a day. Is
that
your advice?”

“Let’s just call it option B for now.” He looked at her with what decoded for Pepper as a mixture of regret and rebuke. This made her, for the first time, think back on Mike Haro’s awkward moment in her chambers, when he’d extended a tentative invitation to come on down to his wine cellar. It came rushing in on her in one, unwelcome wave, that whatever other talents she possessed, men was not one of them. Had she not, after all, accepted a marriage proposal prompted by the launch of a TV show? She stared back at Crispus, thinking,
Not you, too?
He was saying something to her.

“This seems as good a time as any to ask you, was it the best possible judgment, leaping into the sleeping bag with the Chief?”

“I didn’t ‘leap’ into a sleeping bag with him. But okay. I stipulate maybe ‘judgment’ isn’t the right word, either. Look, Crispy, these things happen.”

“ ‘These things happen’ is, perhaps,” Crispus said, “the biggest intellectual and philosophical cop-out since Pontius Pilate washed his hands.”

“But practical, you have to admit.”

“Oh—urrr.”

“What was that?”

“
That
was a groan. They happen. Well,” he sighed, “the Rubicon appears to have been crossed. And peed into.”

“Stipulated.”

“What would the Chief be likely to do if he found out about this unfortunate information? Leaving aside your computer skills, it doesn’t appear to speak well of Brother Haro. On the other hand, he was under the understandable impression that you had petulantly instructed him to kiss your
behind
, which he doubtlessly viewed as poor recompense for having gone to the trouble of finding justification for your—may I say—deplorable vote in
Peester
.”

“I don’t give a church mouse fart about that. I understand why he was so pissed off. I don’t think justices ought to be leaking all over each other, but I understand why he did it. Over and out. It’s where we go from here. Chiefy’ll go nuclear if he finds out what the FBI found out. He takes that kind of thing very seriously. He’s an ethics wonk.”

Crispus considered. “Well, I imagine the first thing he’ll do is confront Brother Haro.” He held up the incriminating pieces of paper and said, “I must say, I would dearly love to watch him try to explain
these
away. Thing is, he’s so damn smart, he probably could. All right, so you present these to the Chief, the Chief goes through the ceiling like a helicopter, confronts the Last Samurai, and all this while a very large freight train is approaching our station.” He looked at Pepper. “You have to ask yourself: is this, as your Mr. Shakespeare would say, a consummation devoutly to be wished?”

Pepper stared. She took the two pieces of paper, folded them, and slowly tore them into small pieces which she dropped into a wastebasket.

“For a moment there,” Crispus said, “I thought you were going to make origami.”

“Oh, shut up,” she said, walking to the door.

“It’s been most eventful here since you arrived,” he said. “A strange energy seems to have descended upon our little temple and taken roost amid the pediments. You’re not by any chance a witch, are you? A succubus, perhaps, sent by the Evil One to bring about the End of Days?”

Pepper shrugged. “I wouldn’t rule it out at this point.”

Thirty seconds, Mr. President.”

“Thank you.” For once, the President did not do his vocal exercises.

“Ten seconds . . .”

“Good evening. I . . .”

No further words issued from the presidential orifice. The pause continued, elongated, as everyone in the Oval Office, even the Secret Service agents, exchanged fraught glances. Given the tumult of the preceding days, anything was possible: a nervous breakdown, a stroke . . . ? A technician nervously examined the teleprompter. No malfunction was evident.

Seven seconds went by—an eternity when a U.S. president is going completely blank in front of a live TV audience estimated at a billion people worldwide. The lapse would quickly come to be called Seven Seconds in November.
^*

“. . .”

The President’s eyes were looking distantly off to the side, not at the teleprompter.

Hayden Cork, standing off to one side, looked on in something like frozen horror. He wondered, should he summon Dr. Hughes, the presidential physician?

Bringing eternity to a close, the President smiled gently and said, “Let me start over. This is one heck of a situation we find ourselves in, isn’t it?”

At this moment, Hayden Cork realized,
God in heaven—he’s improvising.

“And I accept my share of the blame for it,” the President was saying, words not found on the teleprompter.

Graydon Clenndennynn nudged Hayden:
What on earth is he doing?

Hayden gave an exhausted shrug that seemed to say:
I don’t know. I have no idea. But I’m going to kill myself after this, so it really doesn’t matter.

“After the Congress passed this term limit amendment,” the President said, “I got angry and decided to run, on the principle that I didn’t think it was right to alter the U.S. Constitution just for petty political revenge. I thought a point needed to be made. I did not expect to win. But . . . now, here we are. For whatever reason, you elected me to a second term.

“At the same time, thirty-eight state legislatures ratified the amendment—with, I must say, impressive speed. That amendment, now having the force of law, bars me from taking office for a second term.

“And so we find ourselves in . . . a very American sort of situation. Darned if you do. Darned if you don’t. The question is, where do we go from here? Where . . .
do
we go from here?

“Now, in the last few days, I have consulted with a lot of very smart people. Constitutional scholars, experts, professors, former attorney generals—you name ’em, I’ve probably heard from them. About the only thing they agree on is that it’s all scr—it’s a confused situation. So the question is how to
un
confuse it. At this point we need a little clarity. Clarity. As much clarity as we can lay our hands on.

“Now, the only other thing that all these wise folks agreed was that at this point, it probably makes sense to turn to the institution that was, in some ways, invented for just these situations
. . . .
”

Pepper, watching on TV, closed her eyes.

The President sighed. “The Supreme Court. It wouldn’t be the first time that the highest Court got involved in deciding a presidential election. So it’s not as though we haven’t been there before.

“But I know, I know, somehow it doesn’t seem a satisfactory way to deal with it . . . asking nine people to decide, when more than a hundred forty million of you took the trouble to vote.

“So,” the President continued, “my inclination was to resign. To resign the office of President, and go home to . . . Ohio,” he said longingly, “and to turn it over to Vice President Schmidtz, who would, constitutionally, become President. That, at any rate,
was
my plan.

“But as it turns out, that would not necessarily solve the problem. Because when this proposal was made to Senator Mitchell, his representatives indicated that it was not a satisfactory solution. I imagine you will be hearing from him directly, but I think it is fair to summarize his position as follows: he feels that the presidency ought to be his. By default.

“And so the situation remains unresolved. Or at least not solved by my saying good-bye and going home.