Mr. Justice (6 page)

Kelsi froze in her tracks. Her face was flush and tense. “But there was something that
you
could’ve done
there!
Wh … what are my tax dollars paying for? He … he might
die
, you know!”

Traffic in the corridor screeched to a halt. Nurses, orderlies, and families waiting for news about loved ones all directed their attention to the beautiful young woman having a meltdown in the middle of the room.

The Secret Service agent rose from his seat in the waiting area. He walked toward Kelsi. “I did the best I could,” he said. “I screwed up. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry! Sorry!!
Sorry
doesn’t save Peter!” Kelsi collapsed into the Secret Service agent’s arms and began to sob like a little girl.

Kelsi Shelton had never called Professor McDonald “Peter” before. She knew what that meant: she loved him. She knew she shouldn’t, but she did.

Bethesda Naval Hospital was where many high-ranking government officials received medical care. The president’s widely publicized annual physical examination was always administered at Bethesda, and numerous emergency procedures had been performed on various members of Congress and a myriad of federal judges over the years. Peter McDonald was still a private citizen, but no one questioned the decision by Secret Service Agent Brian Neal to have the professor transported to the nation’s most sophisticated and secure government hospital.

Agent Neal had returned to his seat in the waiting area. He was inhaling yet another cup of stale vending machine coffee. Kelsi Shelton was asleep in the chair next to him. Her head had somehow managed to end up resting on his powerful shoulder.

An orderly dropped a tray of surgical instruments. They clattered to the floor like milk bottles during a carnival game. The noise startled Kelsi back to consciousness. She blushed when she realized where her head had been resting during her nap.

“Sorry,” she said.

Agent Neal smiled. “Don’t worry about it.” He took a sip of coffee. “You don’t know my name, do you?”

“Yes, I do.” Kelsi tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She flinched when her fingers brushed against the cut on her cheek. She had hit the sidewalk face first when the gun had fired.

“What is it?”

“B … Bill N … Nelson.”

Agent Neal smiled again. “
Wrong
, Ms. Shelton. But thanks for playing. Hey, at least you got the initials right.”

“Brian Neal!” Kelsi said. “Your name is Brian Neal!”

“Right. I didn’t think you knew.”

“I’m not a complete bitch, you know. It’s just that I’ve been really busy working on Professor McDonald’s confirmation. I’m a nice person. Really, I am. Just ask my mother… . ”

They shared a nervous laugh.

Agent Neal said, “I know you are. Besides, it’s a testament to my skills as an agent if I blended into the background. It’s
good
that you had a hard time remembering my name. It’s
good
that most women do. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.”

They laughed again. Then the surgeon who had operated on Peter McDonald marched in their direction.

CHAPTER 18

Four television sets were adding to the taxpayers’ electric bill in Senator Alexandra Burton’s elegant suite in the southwest corner of the Dirksen Congressional Center. U.S. senators, being political animals, felt compelled to stay in constant touch with the nation’s leading media outlets. If a senator was allocated only one television, the argument went, he or she might miss a breaking news story being uncovered by one of the networks his or her TV wasn’t tuned in to. On this particular afternoon, however, all the networks were covering the same event: the president’s news conference on the status of Professor Peter McDonald.

Charles Jackson, the first African American president of the United States, was born for the television age. His eyes were the color of Swiss chocolate, his cheekbones looked as if they had been sculpted from Italian marble, and his smile glistened like that of a model from a Crest Whitestrips commercial. He bore a striking resemblance to a young Sidney Poitier, which helped explain why he had captured an unprecedented seventy-five percent of the female vote in the most recent presidential election. President Jackson wasn’t trading on his looks this time, though. He was trying to reassure a nation in shock.

“This morning brought tragic news to the people of the United States,” the president began. “An assassination attempt on the life of Professor Peter McDonald occurred outside the Hilton Hotel here in Washington at approximately 8:45
A
.
M
.
As the American people are well aware, I’ve nominated Professor McDonald for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. I’m proud to have done so, for Professor McDonald is without question one of the nation’s most brilliant legal minds. And as the American people also know, Professor McDonald suffered the devastating loss of his beloved wife and daughter nine months ago. He was strong enough to recover from that terrible tragedy, and with God’s help and the prayers of the American people, he’ll be strong enough to recover from this one too. I’ll have more to say when I hear more from the fine doctors and nurses at Bethesda Naval Hospital. But until I do, please pray for Professor McDonald, and please pray for our great country. May God bless Peter McDonald, and may God bless America.”

Alexandra Rutledge Burton—direct descendent of John Rutledge, the first governor of South Carolina and a signatory of the U.S. Constitution—sat back in her chair. That’ll be
me
giving that speech one day, she said to herself. That’ll be
me
speaking from the Oval Office. She rocked forward and punched her intercom button. “Tell Jeff Oates I need to see him right away,” she told her secretary.

Jeffrey Oates stepped into the senator’s office.

Burton said, “Why are you wet?”

After a brief silence, Oates said, “I … I walked to work this morning.” He patted his head dry with a clump of paper towels that he had retrieved from the break room.

“From Georgetown? That’s four or five miles from the Capitol.”

Oates stayed silent.

Burton said, “Close the door.”

Oates did. He returned to the spot in front of the senator’s desk where he so often stood waiting for the day’s instructions.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.” Oates pitched the paper towels into the wastebasket next to the senator’s desk.

Burton smiled and shook her head. “You’ve got a lotta guts. No one can deny that.” She sat back in her chair.

“I wanted to show you that what happened in Charlottesville was just bad luck.” Oates brushed his hands through his hair. It was still wet, albeit not as wet as when he had first entered the senator’s office. “I wanted to show you that I could do the job … that I can do
any
job.”

Both Oates and Burton knew that Oates was talking about
the
job—White House chief of staff. Oates always talked about that job. He was obsessed with it. Almost as obsessed as Burton was about becoming president… .

“Do you think you killed him this time?” the senator asked next.

“Yeah.”

CHAPTER 19

The parking lot of the Waffle House at exit 39 off of Interstate 26 in Charleston, South Carolina, was jammed with aging sedans and rusty pickups. All were American made. It was tantamount to treason in the blue-collar haunts of the old Confederacy to drive a foreign car.

Earl Smith spun his Ford flatbed onto the concrete island next to the restaurant’s fifty-foot-tall highway sign. He switched off the ignition, dropped his keys into his pocket, and snapped the door shut with a firm elbow.

He would need to be careful, he said to himself as he headed toward the entrance. It looked as if a lot of the guys from the tire plant were inside. He recognized their vehicles.

He and Cat were always careful. They were never seen in public together, and he had certainly never visited her at work after they had started sleeping together. The startled look on her face when he pushed open the door testified to that fact. Apparently, there really was a first time for everything.

But Cat Wilson was a pro. She regained her composure before anyone knew she had lost it.

“Hey, if it ain’t old Earl,” a middle-aged man called out from the booth closest to the door. The man was wearing a Taylor Tires cap, a grease-stained sweatshirt, and a pair of Wrangler jeans. He made Brett Favre seem well groomed by comparison. “I didn’t think you worked the graveyard no more.” He stubbed out his cigarette on the soiled plate in front of him.

“Hey, Dex,” Smith said to the man. “How ya doin’?”

“Aces, Earl. Frickin’ aces.”

Smith grabbed a stool at the far end of the counter.

Another coworker who was seated on the stool next to the one that Smith had selected leaned in and said, “Back on the graveyard, huh?” He soaked up the egg yolk on his plate with a piece of whole wheat toast.

Smith said, “Nah. Just hungry’s all.”

“But don’t you live clear across town?” The man had moved on to his grits. He shoveled a spoonful into his mouth. “There’s dozens of places to eat closer than this dive.”

Smith smiled. “I know. But I like the hash browns here. Speaking of which,” he said, shifting his attention from his seatmate to his soul mate, “could I get a number five, girlie?”

Cat glanced up from the cash register. “Sure.” There wasn’t a hint in her voice that she knew Smith, let alone that she was sleeping with him.

The guy seated next to Smith elbowed Smith in the ribs. “Make sure you get some brown sugar with that.” He cackled and then inhaled another spoonful of grits.

Cat Wilson placed Earl Smith’s order on the counter in front of him. The number five was Smith’s favorite: two eggs over easy, two link sausages, a double side of hash browns, and two of the Waffle House’s eponymic waffles.

Again, not a hint of recognition came from the waitress. “Enjoy” was all she said. She returned to the cash register.

The guy seated next to Smith nudged him again and said, “I know I would.” He was leering at Cat’s fabulous ass. It put Beyonce’s to shame.

Smith didn’t say a word. He couldn’t take his eyes off Cat, though. He never could.

The guy seated next to him picked up on it. “I didn’t think the Klan got hot for nigger women.” Food crumbs dotted the guy’s whiskered face.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Hey. Mellow out, Earl. I’m just messin’ with ya.” The guy spun on his stool and announced to his coworkers scattered around the diner, “Earl here don’t like it when you say he’s got the hots for the nigger waitress.”

“I said shut the fuck up!” Smith sprang from his stool. He grabbed the guy by the collar and shook him like a bottle of ketchup.

The guy broke free from Smith’s grip and lurched to his feet. He was a full six inches taller than Smith, which suggested that Smith was thinking with his heart rather than his head at the moment. “You stickin’ up for niggers now, Earl?” The guy shoved Smith hard into the counter.

Smith stumbled back a bit but quickly regained his balance. His eyes danced around the room. He counted four klansmen in attendance. He reminded himself that he needed to be careful. Even grand dragons had been killed for less than what he was being accused of. He said, “Of course I ain’t stickin’ up for no nigger. Niggers ain’t nuthin’ but trash.”

The klansmen who were present said, “Akia. Kigy.”

Smith nodded to each of them. His eyes met Cat’s.

Her eyes weren’t locked on his for long, but it was long enough to let Smith know how hurt she was.

CHAPTER 20

Billy Joe Collier tossed his lunch pail and thermos onto the table in the break room. He was halfway through his shift at the Taylor Tires plant on the west side of Charleston. He snatched the copy of the
Charleston Post and Courier
that one of his coworkers had left behind. He couldn’t read well, but the pictures told the story: gruesome front-page photographs of the black man and white woman he had murdered for simply being in love. Most of the black man’s face was gone, smashed with a golf club like a discarded jack-o’-lantern. The white woman hadn’t fared much better.

Collier smiled. He always got a kick out of seeing the results of his handiwork. He snapped open his lunch pail and pulled out a bologna and cheese sandwich. He unscrewed the lid on his thermos and poured a cup of Dr. Pepper. He settled in to read the story. He was careful not to spill food or soda on it. He planned on adding it to his scrapbook.

The racism of men like Billy Joe Collier was crude. Its most overpowering element was the conviction that blacks and whites were utterly distinct. A person
was
a black or a white, just as a truck was a truck and a pencil was a pencil. Race was an absolute category and the presumed characteristics of a member of the racial group were taken as God-given and unalterable. Blacks, diehard klansmen such as Collier believed, were people who did not want to work, who gained money through bullying or cheating, who robbed, and who were violent. Blacks wanted to hurt whites … to steal jobs from white males, to rape white females.

It was this latter issue of race mixing that upset Collier the most. He had recently been told by one of his brothers in the Charleston den about a new scientific discovery. A scientist had found out that certain substances in semen could be transmitted into the blood supply of a man’s sexual partner and create long-lasting effects. The scientist reported that a white woman who had sex even one time with a black man might well find herself permanently altered as a result: she herself might change in her features and she might well find herself
three years later
giving birth to a black child.

So, Collier said to himself as he took another look at the newspaper photographs, he had done the white woman a favor by killing her. The rape was for him.

CHAPTER 21

President Charles Jackson’s eyes were locked on a squirrel trying to pry an acorn loose from underneath one of the White House’s famous rosebushes. The squirrel was scratching the dirt around the bush like a bulldozer reconfiguring the foundation of a dilapidated house. The president admired the squirrel’s persistence; the acorn was as large as the squirrel’s head and yet the squirrel “refused to give up on the dream,” as the president’s teenage son liked to say.