Sinner (27 page)

But then, who did she think she was? Miss Polyester Pantsuit?

Billy looked just as causal, dressed in jeans and a black polo shirt. His dark reddish hair was as ever, neatly ordered over his ears, the perfect gentleman. But too young to be anything more than an intern in this town.

Listen to you, Darcy, the Capitol is practically under siege and you're
thinking about what you're wearing. This thing is getting to you.

As it turned out, Kinnard didn't take them to the White House proper, but into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, just across the street from the White House's West Wing, and then into a back door that led into a basement.

Other than the guards, there was no indication that they had entered the halls of power in the world's most powerful nation. The protest was too far away to disturb the quiet, and she imagined that the staff had mostly stayed away this morning because of it.

“Watch your step.”

They walked down a flight of steps into a dim white hall that needed a fresh coat of paint to cover the chips along the borders. Large framed photographs lined the walls, mostly old black-and-white images of people and buildings.

“This way.”Kinnard led them down a second hall toward a white door with an old brass handle. “Don't let the lack of elegance fool you; more work gets done behind doors like this than you might realize.”He smiled and twisted the knob.

They entered a large office, plainly decorated with several large paintings, a colonial-era wood desk, and a round conference table to one side. The attorney general, Lyndsay Nadeau, and Annie Ruling, the White House chief of staff, were both on their cell phones in different corners. They each glanced up and moved toward the conference table.

“Just keep a lid on their names,”Annie was saying.“Promise me at least that much. Thank you, Charles.”

She pocketed her phone and crossed to Billy and Darcy. Shook their hands. “Thank you for accommodating us on such short notice. As you can see, the world is falling down around our ears out there.”

The attorney general offered her wizened smile. “Darcy. Billy.”

Kinnard joined them at the table.

“Here we are,” Darcy said.

“Here we are.”

“Ben Manning . . .” She didn't know what do say.

“Tragic,” Annie said. Her face was pale with concern. “It's gotten way out of hand.”

“Why Manning?” Billy asked.

“Maybe you can tell us that, Billy.When we get to the bottom of this.”

They looked at each other in silence. Both were out on a limb, Darcy thought. They all were.

“You're doing an end run?” Darcy said.

First Annie, then Lyndsay took off their glasses.“Let's just say we want to bring you in. No hidden agendas on our part.We need your complete confidence. No glasses.”

Billy looked from one to the other. “All of us?”

“If you don't mind.”Kinnard tapped his temple.“I have just a few sensitive details I can't expose.”

“As do we all, Brian. Okay, all of us but the company man. Read our minds, speak carefully, do what you have to do. We aren't interested in playing any games. No more cloak-and-dagger among the four of us.”

Billy pulled off his glasses and stared into their eyes for a moment.He set the shades on the table. “Fair enough. Go ahead, Darcy.”

His was the more ominous power in some ways. Particularly in the town of a thousand secrets. Darcy bared her eyes.

The attorney general's light blue eyes smiled. “I hope you realize the significance of this gesture, Billy. You could walk out of this room with more classified information than even the president is privy to. And you will. But that only puts you in the crosshairs of more scopes than you can count.We will depend on each other. I for your confidence, you for my protection.”

“I get it, ma'am. Really, I do.”

“And we respectfully ask that you hear us out without any attempt to persuade, Darcy,”Annie said.“None of us, not even you, knows just how long the effects of your persuasion last, but we have no interest in being at your whim, even for a few hours.”

There was a veiled threat in there somewhere, Darcy thought. “You wouldn't do what's not in you to do. But I won't betray your trust, you have my word.”

“Good. Lyndsay?”

The attorney general stood and walked around the table, arms crossed. Eyes on the walls. “You're probably wondering why the rest of our so-called council isn't here. Washington is all about arguing. Posturing. Frankly, knowing what we do about some of the others, we don't have the time to argue. Need I say more?”

“No,” Darcy said.

“Good.” Lyndsay faced Billy. “The only way to deal with hatred is to contain it through discipline.What do you tell a naughty child who has screamed at his sister over a toy? Used to be they would get a smack.Now we say, ‘If you can't play nice, you can't play at all.' Put them in a time out. In this country we call that prison.”

“What she's saying,”Billy said, “is that the time has come to expose the hypocrisy of certain so-called freedoms and force adults to follow the same rules they impose on their own children.”

Lyndsay smiled. “And what else am I thinking?”

“That you can't stop people from hating. But you can limit the freedom they have to express that hatred, just like we do with our children.”

“And?”

“We're facing this crisis today because the children have been allowed to scream at each other for far too long. Everyone knows that screaming children eventually turn to sticks and stones. The only way to keep the sticks and stones on the ground is to end the screaming.”

Her breathing thickened. “Bravo.My, that's a stunning gift you have.”

“Thank you.”

Won't you just listen to them,
Darcy thought.
So taken with Billy
.

“And the solution is a constitutional amendment that would limit certain kinds of free speech,” Darcy said. “Doesn't take a mind reader to guess that.”

“That's right,”Annie said.“Our current hate-crime laws only affect sentencing in racially motivated events. These laws used to be adequate for localized bigotry, but they don't and can't expand the definition of
what
those crimes are. Especially at the federal level. Our only option is to make certain kinds of
spoken
hate crimes illegal, punishable by law. And for that, we need to amend the Constitution.”

The attorney general's eyes were on Billy again. “You know why we have to do this now?”

“That's a little more convoluted. One, the country needs a serious change to throw it off balance. A thundering shot across the bow to snap it out of all this racial idiocy. Martial law would likely inflame the country. Most protesters don't have the stomach for prison. Shut them down by making inflammatory racial remarks a prosecutable crime, and most of them would go home, unlikely to return.”

“And the other reason?”

“The country's already reeling. Radical action like this is more easily digested in times of crisis.”

“That's right.”

It all made sense to Darcy. “When you say ‘certain kinds of speech,' you mean racial slurs,” Darcy said.

“And inflammatory expressions of faith.”

So there it was. They were out to muzzle the religious as much as racial bigots. Considering how many citizens hated the faithful, it was only a matter of time. And that time was now. All things considered, it was a reasonable course of action, Darcy thought.

“Okay.When do we start?”

Kinnard spoke from his seat. “You do understand, Darcy, that what Annie and Lyndsay are suggesting constitutes a change of staggering pro-portions to the very fabric of this country.”

“Of course she does,”Billy said.“But the fact is,we've already discussed this, and we happen to be in agreement. Certain kinds of religious and racial speech should be subject to boundaries.”

She and Billy hadn't so much discussed the particulars as they'd agreed to capitalize on something precisely like this.

“You realize that the opposition will be staggering,” Kinnard said.

“Which is why Billy and I are here,” Darcy said.

They fell silent.

“So. How do we go about this amending the Constitution thing?”

“Okay.” Annie seemed skeptical that they'd been so easily convinced, but her small smile didn't say she was disappointed. “For starters, we do it quickly. I mean very quickly. And that,my friends, is where you come in.”

“Quickly for two reasons,” the attorney general interjected. “This crisis may be the only means we have to accomplish our objective;we also believe swiftness is the best way to end this crisis.Half a week, while the U.S. economy is still on level ground.”

“Three days?” Billy said. “Both the House and the Senate have to repeal the applicable portions of the First Amendment with a two-thirds majority. And it has to then be ratified by three quarters of the states. That's a lot of representatives, a lot of senators, a lot of governors, and the president. Not to mention the inevitable judicial block at the Supreme Court. Laws typically take months, even years, and that's not even taking the enactment and enforcement into account. It's impossible.”

Lyndsay confirmed the process. “And that's just repealing the amendment itself. We need a federal law that gives us the teeth to enforce the amendment.”

“So you're thinking five days.”

Annie held up her hand. “Please, this reading of the minds is cute, but for the rest of us, maybe we could revert to straight dialogue? Billy?”

“Okay.Why don't you just lay it all out in layman's terms so we can all understand, Lyndsay.”

Was that a dig at Annie? Darcy glanced at him and winked.

The attorney general took her seat and pulled out a red folder. “Okay, from the start, then.”

ERECTING THE framework for their carefully calculated plan took more than an hour with several interruptions for updates on the crisis surrounding the Capitol. The protesters, as they were now being called, had been mostly dispersed, but four smaller riots had broken out in California, Alabama, and Missouri again. The president had activated a nationwide order for National Guard units to respond at the first signs of any violence in any city, but the order did nothing to silence the war drums.

Darcy was surprised to see Annie Ruling pull out a pack of cigarettes and ask if they minded her smoking. The stress, she said. Legislators had all but banned smoking in the United States ten years earlier. But the fact that Annie smoked to relieve stress only endeared her to Darcy more.

And she was a smart one. The plan she and the attorney general laid out (assuming it was them and not Kinnard who'd engineered it) might be completely unthinkable without Billy and her to grease the wheels, but with them, the plan just might succeed.

They
needed
Billy and Darcy. The whole notion didn't merely energize Darcy, it thrilled her. Isn't this why she had this gift, to change history? Not to calm gangsters and seduce Billy, although that wasn't a bad thing. She hadn't asked for the power, unless you held a thirteen-year-old responsible for an impulsive decision to scratch a note in a book.

Fate had given her the power to be used for the good of all. And by
all
she meant herself as well.

Darcy looked at the notepaper strewn over the table, listing names and flowcharting the multipronged approach. She noticed that her fingers were trembling and she pulled them off the table.

Lying before them on a white sheet of paper were two versions of the First Amendment as adopted as part of the United States Bill of Rights, inspired by Thomas Jefferson and drafted by James Madison in 1791. At the top of the page, the original.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,
and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And below it, the amendment as proposed.

Amendment I (Amended)

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of the
press; or abridging the freedom of any speech that does not publicly
defame, slander, or libel another person's race, national origin, or religion;
or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition
the government for a redress of grievances
.

The only material change was the addition of the clause that removed defamation, slander, or libel in the context of race and religion as a form of protected speech.

The media's rights were still protected; so long as they didn't slander anyone's race or religion.

Religions were still protected, so long as they didn't preach inflammatory accusations against other ideologies or the faiths of their neighbors.

The right to assemble was still protected.

Honestly, the huge amount of effort required to make such a small, long overdue change struck Darcy as a bit ridiculous. The ACLU would have a cow, naturally, as would most religious institutions, fearing the erosion of their rights to rail against whomever they wished to rail. But in the end, they would bow to the winds of change, just as so many other Western nations already had.

“So that's it, then?” Billy said. “What do you say, Darcy? You've been quiet for the last ten minutes.”

She cleared her throat.“Me? You know what I'm thinking, Billy.”

“But do they?”

She looked at them. “I'm thinking we're going to change history.”

Annie smiled. Then spoke carefully. “Tell us how, Darcy.”

“You need convincing?”