The Hearing (38 page)

In the ambulance with Gus and Michelle, Samantha could not stop crying. As they raced through traffic, the ambulance pursued
by reporters and TV vans, she sobbed, “You’re going to lose now. After everything. Carl’s dead and—” Her head fell back onto
the gurney.

Michelle held her hand and looked at Gus, who was squatting beside the gurney, holding on.

Gus said, “It’s all right, Samantha. It’s all right. Everything’s all right.”

Samantha lifted her head, eyes red, face soaked with tears.

“It’s
not
all right. What’s going to happen now? What’s going to happen?”

“Samantha, nothing’s going to happen. Everything’s—”

The ambulance stopped, the back doors swung open, hands reached in for the gurney.

The George Washington University Hospital emergency room—not since the shooting of President Reagan had it achieved such notoriety—filled
with correspondents and cameras, and every politician in the city marveled at the stroke of luck, or genius, that had handed
this prize to the White House.

Warren Gier, in John Harrington’s office watching the televised pandemonium as Samantha was wheeled into the hospital on a
gurney, almost wept. “She’s even better sick than she was healthy.”

Freedom Federation staffers gathered with him sank deeper into sorrow as they saw their cause collapse beneath the weight
of this live television drama.

Helen wasn’t with them. Out of the hospital two days after the explosion, she had introduced herself to Esther Falco, who
had arrived from Montgomery with her two children. Helen installed them in her apartment, trying to do what she could to relieve
their grief. She told Esther about her own husband, killed in a café in Algiers, and about the similarities she had seen between
him and Carl. Together, they mourned them both.

Gier said, “To lose like this. Television’s supposed to be
our
thing. And the little bitch isn’t even hurt. What’s she doing in an ambulance? They did this on
purpose.
This whole thing is
orchestrated”

He watched the screen, riveted, obsessed. The gurney disappeared through a double door marked
EMERGENCY.

“These guys are really milking it.”

Photographers pushed toward the door, blocked by men in white coats.

Gier could hardly speak.

“Brilliant.”

He breathed the word, shaking his head.

“Brilliant. Just brilliant.”

Across the room, as far as he could get from Gier, sat a rumpled Isaac Jasper, obscured behind a newspaper. When the action
became interesting, he raised his eyes, observed over the top of the page, then dropped his eyes back to the paper. He was
reading the comics.

Larry Young took a break in the piano bar of London’s Renaissance Park Hotel and walked into the lobby. He was sweltering,
and he wanted a beer. He seldom drank, usually spent his breaks in his room, but tonight he had a craving for a beer. He went
to the Cock and Crown Pub, a small, smoky bar at the far end of the lobby, sat at a table near the cash register, and told
the waitress he’d like a Heineken.

As she walked away, he glanced at the TV over the cash register. The screen showed an ambulance and police cars with flashing
red lights. He hated TV, rarely watched it, and was glad the sound was off. He had other things to think about. For the past
six weeks he’d been practicing every day with a professional chamber orchestra. His hotel contract was up at the end of the
month, and the orchestra had asked him to join them on a world tour. It was his first opportunity in years to return full
time to the serious music that had once been his life.

He loosened his tie and watched the ambulance pull up to a hospital emergency entrance. The picture shifted to another camera,
a close-up of the ambulance’s back door.
Someone jostled the cameraman, and the image shook. The ambulance doors swung open. Cameramen and reporters pushed and shoved.
A gurney with an IV bottle swept past. A face, eyes closed, flashed across the screen.

Larry leaped to the cash register. “Turn it up!”

The bartender, ringing up a sale, spun toward him.

“Turn it up! Turn it up!”

Men in white coats blocked the camera at a door marked
emergency.

The bartender picked up a remote, touched a button.

“… since collapsing in the hearing room, but we cannot be certain at this moment exactly what—Robert do you have something
for us? Let’s go to Robert Allman at the Senate hearing room.”

The picture remained the same, but the voice changed.

“Yes, John, we’ve just been told that the moment Samantha was asked if she had killed a man, the paramedics were already positioned
outside a side door of the hearing room. Whether this means that there was some expectation of her reaction, we can’t—”

Larry was out the door, headed for his room and a telephone.

In the hospital they gave her an injection, took blood and urine samples.

She slept.

At 7:30 that night the phone by the bed rang and Gus picked it up.

“Judge Parham?”

“Yes.”

“This is Fred Knight at Blossom, sir.” Knight and a small security detail were camping out in the rubble of Blossom,
which had lost half its roof and most of the front wall. “We have a phone call for you from Larry Young in London. I wasn’t
sure you’d want to take it right now, but he’s very insistent. Should I patch it over, or—”

“Yes, definitely. I’ll take it.”

“Just a second, please.”

“Hello?”

“Larry? This is Gus.”

“What’s happening? How is Samantha? What’s going on?”

He was talking fast, distressed, angry. Gus glanced at Michelle.

“Samantha’s fine, Larry. We—”

“I saw her on TV, in an ambulance. It said something about she killed a man. I told Carl, but I didn’t think you guys would
give it to people to ask her on TV. What’s happening? Why isn’t—”

“Larry, calm down. Let me explain. I thought Phil Rothman had been talking to you.”

“What happened?”

“She was testifying at the hearing and someone asked her if she had killed someone. She—”

“Why did they ask her that? How did they know? Who told them? What—”

“Larry, let me finish. The chairman of the committee asked her if she had killed a man and—well, obviously it was very upsetting.
She fainted. People thought that for her welfare, to be sure she was okay, she ought to go to the hospital and get checked.
So that’s where she is, and she’s sleeping and all the tests say she’s fine.”

A long pause. Gus could hear Larry breathing.

“Larry—”

“I want to talk to Samantha.”

“She’s asleep. She’s been sedated. I don’t think the doctors would want us to wake her up.”

“No, I don’t want you to do that. Don’t wake her.”

“Michelle’s here. Do you want to talk to Michelle?”

“I don’t want to talk to anyone. I want to talk to Samantha. When will Samantha be awake?”

“I don’t know. Probably not before the morning.”

Gus could almost hear the turmoil in Larry’s brain. He said, “What are you going to do? Are you coming over?”

“I don’t know. I have to think. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I want to talk to her. I’ll call back.”

He hung up.

Michelle said, “What did he say?”

Gus told her. “He’s very upset. Maybe he’ll call back. If not, I’ll call him, see what—I don’t know. See what his plans are.”

Gus and Michelle stayed with Samantha overnight, and through Tuesday and Tuesday night, resting on cots beside the bed. Tuesday
morning, the day after Samantha’s testimony, the Judiciary Committee voted 9-5 to confirm Gus’s nomination.

At seven o’clock Wednesday morning Samantha awoke. In a few hours the full Senate would vote. There had been no further word
from Larry.

Michelle said, “How’d you sleep?”

“Wow. I feel really strange.” Heavily sedated, she had done almost nothing but sleep since Monday night.

Michelle sat on the edge of Samantha’s bed and held her hand.

Samantha glanced around, her eyes watery and dazed.

“Where are we, anyway?”

“We’re in the hospital,” Gus said, standing by the bed, “but you’re okay.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember.”

She looked at Gus, her eyes clearing. “Did they vote yet?”

“The Senate votes today.”

“I guess it doesn’t matter. They don’t even have to vote now, right?”

Gus said, “Oh, they’ll vote. And we’ll win.”

Samantha looked at Michelle.

“I want to go home.”

“We’ll leave soon, honey. They just want you to rest.”

“I’ve
been
resting. I just woke up.”

The phone rang.

Gus picked it up.

He glanced uneasily at Michelle, then at Samantha.

“Samantha, it’s Larry.”

She beamed and reached for the phone. Then she pulled her hand back.

“What can I tell him?”

Michelle said, “Tell him the truth.”

Gus gave her the phone, and he and Michelle left the room.

Twenty minutes later, when they cracked the door and looked in, she was off the phone. Her eyes were red and tears streaked
her cheeks.

Michelle said, “What happened, honey?”

“Nothing. He said he’s worried about me, how am I, how long will I be in the hospital. He asked me if I still like it here
being with you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said I loved it with you. I do love it with you.”

She wiped her eyes and didn’t speak. Michelle said, “How is he?”

“Oh, great. He’s really excited. He’s got a new job. He’s going to stop playing in bars and nightclubs.”

“What’s he going to do?”

“He’s playing with a chamber orchestra. They’re going on a tour around the world. It’s like a new life.”

Michelle glanced at Gus. “What did you say?”

“I said I thought it was great.”

“Will he be coming here?”

“He said if I wanted he’d come and get me. But how can he do that? He’s in this orchestra and they’re going around the world.
I don’t want him to get me. I want to stay here.”

“What else did he say?”

“He said Doreen got the name of his hotel from a reporter. She called him and said she wanted us both back, me and him, and
if he agreed, the court would have to give me back to them.”

Michelle’s eyes filled with anger.

“She told him she had a deal with a newspaper and to write a book and maybe a movie, but it’d look better if we were all back
together, so if he came back she’d give him some of the money.”

Michelle’s mouth was open.

Gus said, “What did Larry tell her?”

“He told her to forget it, she wasn’t going to get me or him. He said what did I want to do. If I wanted, he’d find some way
to take care of me, someplace I could stay and go to school while he was on tour, or he could quit the or
chestra, not travel all the time, change jobs. But I know he can’t do that. And anyway …”

They waited. After a minute, Michelle said, “And anyway?”

“And anyway, I don’t want—I just want to stay here.”

An hour later breakfast arrived. When she had finished eating, Samantha said, “When are they going to vote?”

Gus said, “Mr. Rothman will call us.”

Someone had put a TV at the nurses’ station. Gus could hear it faintly. Rothman had urged him to watch the vote at the White
House. “The President will be there. Watch it with him. Or I’ll come to the hospital and watch it there with you and Michelle.”

Gus didn’t want to watch it with anyone, didn’t want any White House people hanging around the hospital.

“Just call me, Phil. Tell me how it all comes out.”

Phil didn’t have to. Gus heard a cheer from the hallway. He glanced at Michelle. She said, “Go see.”

By the time he got there, it was all but over. The Vice President looked down at a paper, looked up, leaned into his microphone,
and said, “Yeas, fifty-six. Nays, forty-four. The nomination of Augustus Parham of Alabama to be an associate justice of the
U.S. Supreme Court is hereby confirmed.”

Nurses, doctors, orderlies turned toward Gus, smiling and laughing, and began to applaud.

He said, “Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for taking such good care of Samantha.”

He walked back toward the room. Something, perhaps the doctors and nurses, the medical surroundings, drew him suddenly into
a distant memory. He was driving past the
clinic on Bakersfield Boulevard, caught in the violence of a demonstration and despairing at the loss of his child. If someone
had told him then that the day would come, in this life, when he would be with that child, he would not have believed it.
And yet here he was, with Samantha. He felt a sudden warmth, gripped the hand rail along the wall, and closed his eyes. His
body filled with an intense, luxurious heat, the heat of the love of a Father for his Son. He wanted it never to stop. It
was a joy so overwhelmingly intense that—

“Judge Parham? Are you all right?”

He opened his eyes. It was a young nurse, pretty, grinning.

“Yes, thank you, I’m fine.”

“You’re red.”

“Really?”

“You look sunburned.”

“I’m fine.”

He knew what it was like to have lost a child, and to have that child handed back. And he knew that it was not just the child
who had been restored. For the first time in thirteen years, Gus felt forgiven, cleansed, and free.

“Yes, thanks. I’m fine.”

“Well, anyway, congratulations.”

He smiled at her. “Thanks.”

He felt hands on his back, turned, and saw Michelle and Samantha. For two minutes the three of them stood there, hugging,
eyes closed, an island in the stream of doctors and nurses hurrying past them in the hall.

From the bestselling author of
The Underground Empire, Panic in Needle Park
, and
Report to the Commissioner
comes a novel as electrifying and timely as today’s national headlines, a story of ambitious scope, high suspense, and heartrending
poignancy.

THE HEARING

Judge Gus Parham is Alabama’s favorite son, a man with a soaring career and a perfect marriage. To sweeten perfection, he
has just been nominated to the United States Supreme Court by his old friend, the nation’s President. But Gus has an enemy
no man has ever successfully crossed: Ernesto Vicaro, an organized crime leader who, thanks to Gus’s courage and resolve,
is an inmate of America’s prison system.