Deadlock (25 page)

A look of curiosity came to Aggie’s face. “That right?”

“We didn’t have much,” Charlene said. “We had each other. Same way you have Sarah Mae.”

“That’s all I got. That girl. I wanted better for her than this. Her daddy run out on us when she’s ten year old. You think that don’t hit a child?”

“I know it does,” Charlene said, remembering her own father. The warmth she felt in his arms, the security. That Sarah Mae was denied this hit Charlene personally. This whole matter was hitting her personally. That was why she was sitting here.

“That’s why I wanted that settlement money,” Aggie Sherman said. “Look at this place, will you?”

Charlene took a deep breath. “I talked you into going forward with the case. I told you God wanted us to do it. I made you believe you would get more money if we kept going. I did that because I wanted to win this case. I hate what happened to Sarah Mae. I wanted to win for her. But I also wanted to win for me.”

Aggie Sherman sat silently behind thin wisps of smoke.

“I got to thinking I was God’s special woman,” Charlene continued. “I guess I found out I’m not so special. I could have had help on this case, there were groups that offered, but I wanted to do it alone. I wanted to be the one who did it, who won it all, and then maybe the people who told me I’d never make a good lawyer would see me. But I failed to be a good lawyer. A good lawyer looks out for her clients first and always, and that’s why I came here tonight.”

Aggie took a puff on her cigarette and brushed some ashes off her lap. “You tried,” she said. “No one’s takin’ that away from you.”

“I’ve been on my knees asking God what to do, and all I keep hearing is that I need to be broken. I need to get myself out of the way. But I don’t need to quit, either.”

“What’s that mean?” Aggie said.

“An appeal.”

Aggie Sherman shook her head. “Can’t afford it.”

“I wouldn’t ask you to pay anything.”

“You’d do that for us?”

“Yes,” Charlene said.

Aggie Sherman looked at Charlene, long and hard. Outside, the moan of a cat sounded like a creaking door.

“I hated you,” Aggie said. “I hated that you made me want more money. And I hated you cause you’re black and we needed your help. Guess I need forgiveness, too.”

Charlene Moore had heard the word
grace
countless times in church. But she knew at that moment that she had never fully understood it. And the feeling that she had let God down, let Aggie and Sarah Mae down, gave way to a sense that, at last, God’s will might truly be done in her life. She did not know how, could not see it yet, but she trusted it would be. And she was ready for it. For maybe the first time in her life, she was really ready for God’s will to be done.

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4

Anne Deveraux could tell Senator Levering was in a foul mood. Really on edge. His drinking was not doing him any good, either, but Anne was not a nursemaid. She was a highly paid aide, and as long as he was well enough to authorize her checks, she’d let him do what he wanted with his personal life.

“This Unborn Victims Act they’re trying to get to the floor,” Levering said the instant Anne sat down. “It could be dangerous. They think they get that language in,
unborn child
, then they have ammo to go back to the Supreme Court and overturn
Roe.”

“That bill won’t pass,” Anne said. “Let’s be realistic.”

“I’m just tired of dealing with it. I’ve got some crazy minister back home on his radio show calling me a Nazi. After all I’ve done for the state! You know how that grates? I work my whole life for the rights of women and children and the poor. And this is what I get for my troubles. So, please, have some good news for me.”

A vein stood out in Levering’s forehead. Anne looked at it with fascination. It did not look healthy.

“Sorry my news isn’t better,” Anne said.

Levering rubbed his head, reached into a drawer, and pulled out the largest bottle of Bayer aspirin she had ever seen. “All right, let’s have it. Is it a report on Hollander?”

“Not exactly,” Anne said.

“What does that mean?”

“It has to do with your little tryst.”

Levering stared at her, then popped a couple of Bayer in his mouth and downed them with a glass of water.

Anne waited until his eyes returned to hers. “The cops have a witness,” she said.

Levering’s face screwed into disbelief. “Of what?”

“You and Justice Hollander doing a dance number by the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Who is this witness?”

“That’s the only good part of this. He’s a street person. But . . .”

“But what?”

“I had a little run-in with this guy.”

“Run in?”

“I sprayed mace in his face.”

Levering’s disbelief morphed into something like shock. “Let me get this straight. You sprayed a police witness, someone who says he saw me with Justice Hollander?”

“It was a total coincidence. I can’t explain it. The odds have to be astronomical. But it happened, and there’s a detective who’s got starch in his underwear over it. He questioned me; he’s probably going to want to question you next.”

The senator stood up, his face looking beefier than usual. Part of it was the stark light of the office. The other part was his obvious pique. Anne readied herself for a diatribe.

Levering paced to the window, looked out at the dull Washington day, and then turned back to Anne. “How bad is this?”

A wave of relief washed over Anne. He was in damage control mode, and she was his machinery. Things were getting back to normal.

“Worst case the press picks it up, gets this guy to talk to them,” Anne said. “They play it up from some sort of sympathetic angle. Here’s a lowly street person and one of the most powerful men in the country. Then they press you to affirm or deny, you deny, and they get to your driver, or this Helen Forbes Kensington, and one of them cracks. Then you’ve got a situation where everybody knows you’re lying to the cops and the country.”

“Great,” Levering said. “For a moment I thought it was bad.”

Anne waited for instructions. She had a few ideas of her own, but wanted to get the word from the senator first. Give him a feeling of being in control.

Silence stretched on. Levering became motionless at the window, his back to Anne. He kept his hands clasped behind him, his fingers wiggling as if to indicate brain function. Then, without turning around, he said, “We’re sure he’s homeless?”

“Yeah.”

“If we went further with this, what would be the downside?”

Anne knew what he meant. Early on in their association, when they were dancing around each other, testing limits, they had come to a meeting of minds. Levering’s goal was the presidency, and no effort would be spared in his getting there. Any obstacle would be removed. The only limitation would be the downside risk.

The means for dealing with situations beyond the norm had never been explicitly stated. Anne had been the one to suggest they base their relationship on “plausible deniability.” Levering would never issue directives that could later come back to haunt him. Anne would be given a free hand, so long as Levering didn’t know the details.

What surprised Anne at the time was how easily they both had accepted the parameters.

Anne calmly replied, “The cops know this guy is a potential witness against you. On the other hand, he isn’t much of one. It’s a really weak case. I don’t think the public would buy it.”

“But there’s a chance,” Levering said. “I mean, I’ve got a little bit of a reputation in that area.”

Boy howdy. “This guy might take off, hit the road. They’re not going to hold him.”

“How do we convince a crazy homeless person to leave town?”

“I’ll handle the details.”

“Right,” he said. “I don’t want to know anything specific.”

“Of course,” Anne said. Then she added, “When you get to the White House, you will need a chief of staff.”

Levering smiled wryly at her. “You have anyone in mind?”

“Maybe.”

He nodded. “You make this little problem go away, and the job is yours.”

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5

The plane rose into fog, a gray netherworld. Millie took a deep breath and looked out the window.

In so many ways this day should have been a relief. She’d spent precious hours with her mother, seen her before she died. That wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t had her accident. And she was going back to Washington to assume the job of a lifetime — chief justice of the Supreme Court.

So why the feeling that her whole life was about to change?

She put on the earphones the flight attendant had passed out earlier and clicked the dial until she got classical music. The recording was right in the middle of Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9,
The Ode to Joy
.

She put her head back, letting the music wash over her. Then she looked outside again. Bright sunlight streamed through her window as the ascending plane topped the fog. Suddenly, there was clear sky, the bluest of blues, and soft clouds seen from above, like an angel’s playing field.

The music swelled.

Inside her something opened up. There was a flooding in, an expansion, as if she were a sail filling with wind. And it terrified her.

She put her hands on the earphones, pressing them in, making the music even louder to her ears, as if she could crowd out all thought, all sensation.

But she could not. For one brief moment of almost unendurable intensity she felt like a door was opening, and thought she might go crazy.

Whenever you put a man on the Supreme Court

he ceases to be your friend.

HARRY S. TRUMAN

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1

By mid September, Washington was buzzing again.

Anne Deveraux could feel it in the air, the way a ballplayer must feel when the new season is about to begin. Time to play hardball.

First order of business in the new season involved two games at once. One was keeping Dan Ricks, sleaze reporter, off balance. The other was using him for the essential information on Millicent Mannings Hollander. Her hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would vote on her nomination to be chief justice, was coming up. Should Hollander suddenly veer off her liberal course, she and Levering would be ready to leak embarrassing material.

So she was ready for the first pitch. But Ricks was late.

He had insisted on meeting her in the parking garage of the Marriott. He joked about it being like the scene in
All the President’s Men
, that he was Deep Throat and she was Woodward and Bernstein. But Anne was convinced it was not really a joke with Ricks. He loved this cloak-and-dagger stuff. He thought he was into big-time investigative journalism, when really he was a weasel in a coat and tie.

Anne checked her watch. 12:30. Lunchtime. That was the other absurdity about this. If he wanted to do the Deep Throat thing, why had he chosen the afternoon?