Supreme Courtship (31 page)
“Well, yes, it could. Judges and attorneys are proscribed—prohibited—from discussing a case outside of court. The term for it is ex parte discussion. While it’s obvious—at least I would think—that Justice Cartwright hasn’t come to the hospital to discuss
Mitchell v. Vanderdamp
with Clenndennynn, there is so much tension surrounding this case that her presence here could play into the hands of those who have been insisting that she recuse herself. So the short answer to your question would be, yes, it could be a complicating factor in an already hypercomplicated matter.”
Crispus closed his eyes and shook his head. Less than a minute later, his phone rang. It was the CJ.
“Jesus Christ, Crispus.”
“She’s your girlfriend, Dec, not mine.”
“Does she have any idea . . .”
“Declan. Why don’t you just breathe into a bag and calm down. She didn’t go down there to get his views on
Coleman v. Miller
, for God’s sake. She cares for the old goat.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Well, it’s going to have to be ‘the point.’ Look, he’s probably not even going to regain consciousness, so it’s moot.”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t.”
“A fine sentiment.”
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“Steady hand on the tiller, Declan. Steady hand. Dec? Hello?”
P
EPPER HAD REACHED THE ICU
when her cell phone began twittering. She pulled it out and flipped it open when an intercepting nurse said, “You need to turn that off, ma’am.” She looked ready to pluck it out of Pepper’s hand before it could compromise life-sustaining telemetry.
JUSTICE’S CELL CALL FINISHES OFF GRAYDON CLENNDENNYNN— MURDER CHARGES BROUGHT
Pepper looked at the phone as she was pressing the
OFF
button and saw
DEC
.
She paused, then did a
180
and walked briskly to an area where cell phones were not considered lethal weapons.
“I’m at the hospital—”
“I
know
you’re at the hospital,” he said. “It’s on TV. You need to not be at the hospital.”
“Dec, for Pete’s sake, I didn’t come here to discuss the damn case with him.”
“I don’t care. I want you to leave the hospital now, Pep.”
People were staring at her. She said in a whisper, “He doesn’t have family. I’m just going to hold his hand is all.”
“No, no, no. That is not your role, Justice Cartwright. Now leave. And make sure everyone
sees
you leaving. I want to watch you leave on TV. Tell the reporters you didn’t talk to him, you just came to . . . talk to the doctors and see how he was doing.”
“Jesus, Dec. I don’t want him to die alone.”
“You’re not a hospice worker. You’re a Supreme Court justice.”
“And you’re a supreme jerk.” She pressed
END
and turned back to the ICU. Normally, visitors were not admitted, but apparently they made exceptions for the Supreme Court.
S
HE’D BEEN BY HIS BED
for a half hour, sitting, hovering, pacing. She counted the machines he was hooked up to and stopped at nine. From her conversations with the chief of cardiology, the head of the unit, and the head of the hospital, he was being well looked after, Mr. Clenndennynn. She grasped that the end was near for the old man. She pulled a rolling stool up to the bed and, finding a part of his hand that didn’t have an IV or O
2
saturation sensor attached, held it.
She whispered to him, “Don’t you dare leave me alone with this mess you got me into.”
Suddenly, behind her there was a commotion and she became aware of men in suits with earpieces. She heard someone saying to her, in commanding terms, “Ma’am?” She looked up. There were several men, all large, grave-looking. One was saying to her, “Ma’am? You need to vacate the room.”
She ignored him and turned back to Clenndennynn.
“
Ma’am
.”
She heard her name being uttered, murmurs, then no more barking at her. A few moments later there was another commotion, louder, the room filled. She looked up and there was the President. He looked stricken and his eyes were red. Hayden Cork was there, too, looking pale and drawn. She stood. She and the President stared at each other awkwardly and then embraced. The imminence of death forces intimacy. Even Hayden Cork, who gave the impression of someone who’d gone unhugged even by his own mother, embraced her.
The President’s arrival at the hospital was duly reported. At the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Hardwether, watching on TV, muttered, “Oh,
great
.”
Graydon Clenndennynn died at
5:42
p.m. that afternoon. He regained consciousness briefly. He opened his eyes, took in Pepper, the President of the United States, the White House Chief of Staff, and smiled as if satisfied by this bedside concentration of eminence.
“Did we win?” he whispered. Poignant, as last words go, but in this instance, far from ideal. Pepper was trying to formulate some answer when the old man closed his eyes.
CARTWRIGHT DEATHBED VISIT TO CLENNDENNYNN CASTS PALL OVER CASE AMID CALLS FOR RECUSAL
I
t was one of the milder headlines of the days following.
The burial at Arlington took on the aspect of a state occasion. In attendance were the President, the entire cabinet (minus the obligatory nonattendee in case of sneak nuclear attack), and—Declan had insisted—all nine justices of the Supreme Court.
Dexter Mitchell was in conspicuous attendance. One TV commentator whispered that it reminded him of the funeral scene in
The Godfather.
Would Blyster Forkmorgan approach Hayden Cork as taps was sounding to arrange “a meet on neutral turf”?
Pepper had not spoken with Declan since Graydon’s death. It would be more accurate to say that Declan had not spoken to her. Crispus acted as go-between.
With the clock ticking toward Inauguration Day, there was no time for a cease-fire between the Mitchell and Vanderdamp camps. A replacement for Graydon Clenndennynn was engaged, Philip “Flip” Soyer, a much-garlanded appellate lawyer who had once practiced law with Graydon, a former Solicitor General universally acknowledged to be a Matterhorn of probity. His only public statement was to say that he saw no need to file a new brief and would endeavor to pick up where Mr. Clenndennynn had left off.
Team Mitchell also issued bland statements, meanwhile maneuvering furiously in the dark. Graydon Clenndennynn’s body was still on its way to Gawler’s Funeral Home on Wisconsin Avenue when Blyster Forkmorgan filed a motion for delay. He did this banking on Vanderdamp’s sense of orderliness; as the days went by, the mounting chaos, anathema to his Ohio soul, might impel him to throw up his hands and resign, taking VP Schmidtz down with him in the higher interests of the nation. Forkmorgan also subpoenaed a) President Vanderdamp, b) Hayden Cork, c) Justice Pepper Cartwright, d) the Secret Service agents present at Graydon’s deathbed, and e) the entire staff of the Intensive Care Unit, with the objective of finding out—as he put it—“the full extent of the ex parte discussions pertaining to
Mitchell v. Vanderdamp
.” Hearing of this, President Vanderdamp said to Hayden, “Could you look up in the Constitution whether I’m allowed to order summary executions?”
At the press conference announcing these developments, Blyster Forkmorgan asserted that, regrettable as it might seem, these measures were essential, “given Justice Cartwright’s continued refusal to recuse herself in the matter of
Mitchell v. Vanderdamp
.” Here his straightforward object was to impute as much bias to Pepper as he could. And it worked. According to almost daily polls,
80
percent expected Justice Cartwright to vote for Vanderdamp. Mitchell’s apparatchiks seized on this and dispatched their agents to appear on various TV shows to issue strident demands for her impeachment.
Meanwhile, Forkmorgan continued, “It is critical that discovery go forward so as to ascertain the extent and substance of the inappropriate discussions that were held between defendant and judge.” The President was in no sense technically a “defendant,” but the word had a nice criminal ring to it.
Adding gasoline to the flames, an ICU nurse who’d witnessed the embraces between Pepper and the President and his Chief of Staff revealed them to a reporter. It was—Pepper, the President, and Hayden silently and separately reflected—probably a matter of time before someone got hold of Graydon’s last words, and retailed those.
T
HERE WAS A CHILL
in the justices’ conference room air just short of visible breath-vapor.
Pepper, as the juniormost justice, closed the door and stood ready to serve coffee, if asked. Normally, Silvio delighted in making her undertake this menial office, but not today. As Pepper took her seat, she passed Declan’s, and caught a faint whiff of mintiness.
Oh, dear
, she thought, but then who could blame him? She could use a stiff one herself.
The CJ began with a few anodyne housekeeping notes. At length he seemed to take a deep breath and said, “I thought it might be appropriate, before we dive in, to ask if anyone had any . . . general comments.”
No one spoke. Most justices stared at the table, as if a good movie were playing on its surface.
“I think maybe we ought . . . at least . . .” Mo Gotbaum said slowly as if each word were being drawn up by bucket one by one from a deep well, “. . .
discuss
the matter of recusal.”
The statement hovered in the air for a moment or two. He added, in a cheery tone of voice, “I stipulate it’s an entirely personal decision. I’m not for a minute suggesting compulsion. But all things being equal it might make sense at least for us all to . . . discuss it as an issue . . . qua issue.”
“Anyone see the piece in
Legal Times
?” Silvio ventured.
This brought a palpably awkward silence, for they had all indeed read the article by the Dean of Fordham Law—Pepper’s own alma mater. (Oh, dear.) It was entitled “Recusal Now, or Impeachment Later?”
Pepper said, “
I
read it.”
“Oh?” Silvio said, uncharacteristically reticent. “Ah. Well . . .”
Excruciating silence. Pepper said to Declan, “Chief, may I say something?”
“Of course.”
“First,” she said, “I want to apologize to all of you. I did what I did because I felt I had to be there. As to the hugs, anyone here who’s been at a deathbed knows that just . . . happens. It wasn’t any celebration among plotters.”
“But this wasn’t just any deathbed,” Justice Haro sniffed.
“I’m aware of that, Mike,” Pepper said. “There’s something else you should all know. Just before he expired, Mr. Clenndennynn said, “ ‘Did we win?’ ”
Justices stared. No one spoke. Finally, Paige Plympton said, “Did anyone make a
reply
to Mr. Clenndennynn?”
“I was trying to figure out something to say when he died.”
There was a rumble, a low rumble that at first sounded like bronchitic lungs gasping for air, but which shortly revealed itself as—laughter. It was coming from Crispus, from very deep within him, as magma from an erupting volcano. His shoulders shook, his eyes teared, his hands gripped the edge of the conference table.
“I . . . aha . . . ahaaaa . . . sorry, sorry. It’s not in the least . . .
haaaa-haaa-haaaaaa
. It’s just too . . .
haaaaaa
.” Ruthless stared at him with pursed lips, like a church lady confronting a bishop who had just farted in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Crispus gave a few final shudders, dabbed his eyes. “I’m sorry. Sorry,” he said. “It’s just . . .” This was followed by another few eruptions. After which he said, “Sorry. Sorry.”
There was silence and the ticking of the grandfather clock.
“I think—” the Chief Justice said.
“If I might?” Pepper said.
Declan waved her on.
“I know it’s my decision whether to recuse myself, and I thank Mo for pointing that out. There was no ex parte discussion. But under the circumstances, I’m going to let you all decide whether I should have a vote in
Mitchell
.” She stood. “I’ll abide by whatever your decision is.”
“No. No,” Declan said, bringing his hand down on the table with an angry thump. “That’s is not how we do things.”
“You got a better idea?”
“It’s your decision. Don’t ask us to make it for you. Take responsibility. It’s your conscience. Your integrity. Don’t ask for a proxy vote on it.”
Pepper was formulating a response to this outburst when Justice Haro said, in a lowered but distinctly audible voice, “Is ‘integrity’ applicable here?”
Pepper wheeled. “You know, Mike,” she said in a measured tone, “there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to you for a while now. Kiss my ass.”
To everyone’s knowledge, it was the first time in history those three words had been uttered in the justices’ conference room. No one moved. The Chief Justice stared at Pepper with icy contempt.
“I’ll be in my chambers,” Pepper said, gathering up her papers. “Let me know how the vote goes.”
P
EPPER BURIED HERSELF
in mind-numbing minutiae, redrafting an overdue opinion, poring over footnotes, even paying bills, until she’d managed to put herself into a sort of zombielike state. When finally she looked up at the clock she saw that nearly two hours had gone by. It was taking them a long time to vote. Or did the delay portend some graver development? Were they drafting a petition asking her to resign? Articles of impeachment? No, she recalled from Introductory Con Law—
that
was up to the Congress.
Eventually there was a knock on her door. She looked up, expecting Crispus on some lugubrious ambassadorial mission—
For what it’s worth, darlin’ child, I took your side, but they all felt it would be best if you did the decent thing and resigned. . . .
But no, it was Declan, looking either drunk or like someone had smacked him across the face.
“You look like shit,” Pepper said.
He sat in a chair facing her.