No Way to Treat a First Lady (18 page)

"I wondered if this was going to happen," said Boyce.

Beth's head rested on his chest. "You knew it would."

They were in bed in a tangle of sheets. Outside, beyond two sets of doors, stood silently fuming Secret Service agents. It was a Friday night, no court tomorrow, and Boyce's war room was quiet.

"How did you get them?" Boyce asked, feeling under the sheets for the silky-furry object. He held it aloft for inspection.

"Aren't they
hideous?
I called a friend in L.A. and had her buy them. Don't worry. She's discreet. It's not the sort of thing I wanted to have reported that I put on my American Express. So now the question is finally resolved."

"Not quite. We know what you look like in crotchless mink panties now. We still don't know what you would have looked like in them back in law school."

"Even more ridiculous than I look in them now."

"I can't believe you wore them in court today. What if you'd had some medical emergency and they'd taken you to the hospital and put you on the table and you're wearing
these?
What a headline!"

Beth snuggled against him. "You were really good."

"You weren't so bad yourself."

"In
court.
Don't flatter yourself."

"Oh. And how was I just now?"

"Mm, adequate."

"Your bill just went up by a million dollars."

"You were amazing. Godlike."

"Ten percent off."

"Just like old times."

It was strange, making love to a once familiar partner after a quarter century. Boyce turned over metaphors in his contented mind. Was it like drinking wine long cellared and ripened? Or was it more like entering a garden in which the vines had matured into—

"The media's saying it's over," Beth said.

"The media isn't the jury. But you heard Vlonko. I don't think I've ever seen him happier."

"Vlonko," said Beth. "Diviner of minds."

"He said jurors six, seven, ten and thirteen were actually nodding when I crossed Birnam."

"Is thirteen the—"

"Homosexual pediatric neurosurgeon of German extraction. You just don't
get
more no-nonsense than that. And
he
was nodding." Boyce sighed happily. "I don't want to jinx it—the gods are watching 24/7—but I
think
we might have this thing nailed. I think they're going to acquit. You never know, but I think you're going to be okay."

Beth reached for her cigarettes and lit one. "I want my life back after this," she said. "Not the old life. My own."

"You're young."

"Ish."

"Sexy."

"Ish."

"Smart."

"How smart was I, to get into this?"

"You were smart enough to hire a good lawyer."

Beth sat up on one elbow and turned to him. She was beaming with excitement. "Boyce, I want to take the stand."

"Huh?"

"I want to testify."

"Is that a cigarette or a joint you're smoking? Are you nuts?"

"No, I want to take the stand."

"I'm not even going to go into that."

"Why?"

"Because it's such an insane notion that it's not even in the realm of thinkability. This was not a particularly easy case. You may have noticed? Just because we're ahead, don't get crazy ideas."

"You've been brilliant. I'm the first to admit that. I know you've worked your heart out on this. But people still think I did it. You heard what they said on TV tonight."

"Who cares what the public thinks? Get yourself a PR guy. Whatsisname, Naylor, the one who does Babette's PR. He could make Saddam Hussein out to be Santa Claus."

"Thank you. That was truly sensitive."

Change the subject, quick!

"I gotta have water. These hotel rooms. My mouth is like the Mojave."

Boyce went in search of water. His mind was reeling.
Astounding. Twenty-five years in politics turns you into a
—
politician. She's barely off the hook on a murder rap and already she's planning her comeback.
What was she thinking? Well, she wasn't thinking, just like twenty-five years ago when she married War God. The minibar. It would have water. Cool, expensive water from some spring in Finland or Wales, so pure you could wash your contact lens in it.

Boyce got back into bed with an eight-ounce bottle of water that cost $9. He snuggled up against her. Her body was less pliant and responsive than a minute ago.

"Your cross-examinations of the staff," she said, her back to him, "made me out to be a total bitch. Lady Bethmac."

"So what, if it helps you get off a murder rap?"

She turned to face him. "What good does it do me if I get off and everyone still thinks I did it? And that I'm the Joan Crawford of First Ladies?"

"What good does it do you if you
get off?
Apart from not spending the rest of your life in federal prison? Or the death penalty? That's a hard one. I'll have to think about that."

"I need some kind of life after this."

"Boy, you're an easy one to please."

"If I take the stand, I can show them that I not only didn't do it, but that I'm not the First Bitch."

"Listen to me: A jury is probably about to acquit you of murder. Trust me, that is
the
major goal here. It is the
only
goal. Look, acquittal means you didn't do it."

"No, it doesn't. It just means that I got off. I'll be the O. J. Simpson of First Ladies. What am I supposed to do, hang out on public golf courses looking for the real killers?"

"It beats working in the prison laundry for the next forty years. To say nothing of lethal injection."

"What if I want to continue in public life? What if I want to run for public office myself? The Senate."

Boyce stared in the semidark, a pointless dramatic gesture.

"Beth, I know this has been very stressful for you."

"Will you please not speak to me like I'm a mental patient?"

"I won't if you don't act like one. Look, it's not true what F. Scott Fitzgerald said about American lives not having second acts. Look at Charles Manson—he's got his own Web site. You can do whatever you want after this. My God, the product endorsements alone will be enough to—pay my bill!"

"I have no intention," Beth said icily, "of becoming a product endorser. That's a line of work for overweight British royals and oversexed White House interns."

"How
are
you planning to pay my bill? I suppose we could work something out." He nibbled her ear. "Take it out in trade."

"Stop. According to a study by the American Bar Association, three-quarters of the public thinks that a defendant who doesn't take the stand is either guilty or hiding something."

"For once I agree with three-quarters of the American public. Do you know how many times I've allowed a client to testify in a criminal case? Twice. One was a seventy-eight-year-old Mafia boss in advanced stages of emphysema. I put
him
on the stand so the jury could listen to him wheeze. They felt so sorry for him, they let him go die at home. The second was a Catholic cardinal who'd been accused of unholy communion with an altar boy. Now it was twenty years later and the altar boy had a heroin problem, a crack cocaine problem, and a drinking problem, along with three other unpleasant diseases. So he'd decided to extort from his former parish monsignor, who was now a leading prince of the American church. In this particular case, the cardinal happened to be innocent. A rarity, I know, an actually innocent client. I should have had him stuffed. At any rate, I put him on the stand because how often is it you have an innocent client who dresses in scarlet robes and wears a cross the size of a tire iron around his neck?"

"And?"

"They found him guilty. And you want to take the stand."

Beth stubbed out her cigarette. "All those years with Ken, all those horrible years, I sucked it up, turned the other cheek, looked the other way, worked my ass off. I'm in my forties, I have no money, no visible means of support, other than endorsing antiques you can kill your husband with. I'm a widow—do not interrupt me, please—and everyone thinks I'm an assassin who offed a war hero with a spittoon. This is
not fair.
And I will
not accept it.
And I will
not
walk out of that courtroom into a life of people pointing at me in airports as some historical freak, afraid of turning on the television because Jay Leno and Letterman might be
doing
me in their monologues because nothing else sensational happened that day. Frankly, doing laundry in prison for forty years—or getting hooked up to the death drip—doesn't look half-bad by comparison. If I'd wanted to get off on technicalities, I'd have hired Alan Crudman or Plato Cacheris or some other hotshot. I hired
you
because I need to
win.
Not not-lose. Win. You said I should walk in that first day and look like I'd come to accept their apology? Well, that's how I plan to walk out, like I've accepted
their
apology and now I'm ready to accept the world's."

Boyce considered. "I think we should prepare a statement announcing that you plan to devote the rest of your life to searching for the real killers."

Beth slugged him with the pillow. Hard.

"I'm beginning," said Boyce, "to see how you got that nickname."

"You might want to glance at this," Boyce's secretary said a few days later, handing him the Style section of
The Washington Post,
folded over to Lloyd Grove's "Reliable Source" column. "Glance" was code for "Here is something that you are really not going to like."

The relationship between First Defendant
Beth MacMann
and superlawyer
Boyce "Shameless" Baylor
may be progressing beyond the normal lawyer-client stage. The two were an item in the 1970s when they were students at Georgetown Law, before Lady Bethmac unceremoniously dumped him for the future President. But she may have left the pilot light on. Or they could just be boning up on the next day's court proceedings, in Shameless's $7,500-a-night suite at the Jefferson Hotel.

Grove, the swine. Beth didn't dump him "unceremoniously." And the $7,500 was for three suites, not one.

His mind then turned to the larger issue.

Her Secret Service detail. Of course. They were the only ones who could have known, and they now despised them both. Well, who could blame them? He had accused them of monstrous conspiracy. Still, where was their quiet professionalism? Where was the "Secret" in Secret Service? "Pricks," he muttered.

The irony was that whatever "pilot light" Beth had kept burning for him had been blown out during their argument over her testifying. He probably should not have made the crack about how it was just about this time of morning that her late husband had "committed suicide by spittoon." Beth got out of bed, got dressed, and stormed out of the suite, back to her Cleveland Park Elba. So much for their reunion. It had been fun while it lasted, all three hours of it. This would present an interesting new challenge, not being on speaking terms with your client in the middle of a murder trial.

Warily, Boyce turned on the TV. Instant disaster. On came one of the morning shows. The two hosts were in the middle of a wink-wink fest over it, cracking art-imitating-life jokes about how maybe Beth would get a break on her legal bill. Ha ha ha.

Boyce flipped channels. Swell. There on the screen above the next two hosts was a photo of Beth and Boyce from law school, with the headline love story and a caption "Love means never having to say you're guilty."

He began to dial Beth on his cell phone, then thought it better under the circumstances to use a landline. God knows who was listening in.

"I think today," he said, "we might want to use the basement garage entrance to the courthouse."

Beth was in shock, or at least as close to shock as type A personalities allowed themselves to get.

"How did this happen?" she croaked. "Who?"

"Ask your so-called Secret Service detail."

"I did. They denied it."

"Of course they denied it."

"I believe them. But I wouldn't blame them if they had. But these guys are professionals. They don't blab to the press. Even about people who've made up cockamamie stories about how they plant evidence to incriminate First Ladies."

"For the benefit of anyone listening in to this conversation, the former First Lady is obviously hysterical and not possessed of full mental faculties."

"This has to have come from your end."

Boyce thought. "The night desk clerk. When you stormed out of here in the middle of the night. He must have tipped them."

"Give me some credit. I didn't exit through the lobby. We took the elevator to the basement garage. I guess I might as well get used to basements, since I'm going to be spending the rest of my life in them."

"We'll sort it out later. Meanwhile, if anyone asks—and they will—we were working late. It's perfectly plausible."

"On a Friday night?"

"Edward Bennett Williams worked late Friday nights when he was in trial."

"Boyce," she said, "about the other night. I've been thinking."

At least she'd come to her senses about testifying. Thank God.

"I have to take the stand."

"Beth, this is not a good time to discuss this."

"Then when would be a good time? This afternoon?"

"Look,
Vanity Fair
is going to be calling any minute asking us to pose nude in bed for next month's cover. Before we discuss whether you testify, we have some serious damage control to do."

"If you can't find a way to go along with the decision, I accept that."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that I can always add someone to the defense team who would be willing to do a direct on me."

"Team? Your
team
consists of me."

"Boyce, I'm just not negotiable on this."

Time. He needed time. Time to... what?... crush Valium in her food. That's it. Keep her drugged for the rest of trial. If she nodded off at the defense table, he'd say, You
see
what a strain this poor woman is under?