Solomon & Lord Drop Anchor (27 page)

Ten years ago, hell five years ago, he would
have relished the sexual tension, the flirtatiousness that is a
constant companion in the workplace. But there was a difference
between a university faculty and the Supreme Court. The chief
justice, bless his scurrilous heart, was right about that. The
tabloids would love to have another scandal as juicy as the
President and the intern.

Truitt was determined to be polite but brief
with Ms. Lisa Fremont, then dismiss her and continue the search for
the female equivalent of Jerry Klein.

“Let’s go into my office and talk,” he said.
“If you’re up for it, Elly makes a potent 
café Cubano
.
Any that’s left over, we send to Cape Canaveral for the booster
rockets.”

“Sissy,” Elly called at him.

“I’d love some,” Lisa said. “I missed my
morning coffee.”

It was the first lie she would tell that day,
but by no means the last.

* * *

Sitting primly with legs crossed in an
antique chair more handsome than comfortable, Lisa sized up Sam
Truitt’s office. It had that messy, genius-at-work look. Trial
transcripts, pleadings binders, the official records of a hundred
cases covered the mahogany desk, a brown leather sofa, and portions
of the plush blue and gold carpet. Somewhere on that desk or on a
wooden cart nearby, Lisa knew, would be the consolidated cases
of 
Laubach et al. v. Atlantica Airlines
. There would be
copies of the pleadings, the summary judgment dismissing the cases,
the one-sentence affirmance in the Eleventh Circuit Court of
Appeals, the plaintiffs’ petition for certiorari, and the Supreme
Court’s four-to-four decision—prior to Truitt’s confirmation—to
hear the case. Although it would take five of the nine justices to
overturn the summary judgment, under the Court’s time-honored Rule
of Four, a majority had not been necessary to grant review.

Lisa had already read the file, courtesy of
Max’s lawyers. She knew the facts. She knew the law. All she did
not know was how to convince anyone—much less the humane and
sensitive Sam Truitt—to close the courthouse door to nearly three
hundred grieving families. But that would have to come later.
First, she had to get the job, and she was beginning to feel the
butterflies. She tried to chase a recurring thought—that she didn’t
really belong here. That all the higher education, and the fine
clothes and the superficial gloss that came from flying first class
and staying in penthouse suites couldn’t hide who she really was.
Draping a streetwalker in mink didn’t make her a duchess.

All this time, I thought I’d come so far,
but have I? Why do I feel like the same scared kid who ran away
from home?

She feared that Sam Truitt would see right
through the facade, that she would be humiliated and never get the
job. For a moment, Lisa felt lightheaded and thought she might
faint. Then she sipped the demitasse of Cuban coffee, waiting for
the caffeine to surge into her veins. As she half-listened to the
justice explain the law clerk’s duties—all of which she knew—she
forced herself to calm down and concentrate.

Max is counting on me, and I can’t fail
him.

She studied the chambers, looking for clues
to Sam Truitt, the man. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered one
wall. The books contained every decision of every federal court
since the founding of the Republic. The latest edition of the
United States Code, the federal statutes, were there, too, as were
the tens of thousands of regulations of federal agencies. A
computer at the desk was linked to databases that could research in
seconds what would have taken days or weeks in earlier times. In
the corner, half-a-dozen cardboard boxes remained to be
unpacked.

A mahogany stand-up reading desk stood
against one wall. An American flag with gold fringes was lodged on
a pole in the corner. A framed black-and-white photo of a football
team, the players and coaches sitting on bleachers, rested on an
oak credenza, as did a partially deflated ball. Antique books with
cracked golden bindings were displayed behind glass, and a portrait
of Chief Justice John Jay hung over the fireplace mantel.

Truitt went on for a while about the pool
memos the clerks prepare to help the Court to determine whether to
review lower court cases. With little enthusiasm, he mentioned the
importance of writing objective bench memos for him, fairly
summarizing each party’s position, and listing similar cases that
may have been omitted from the briefs. It was a mechanical speech
he seemed to have given before.

Omigod! He’s bored. I don’t even have his
attention. He’s already dumped me in the reject pile.

“Tell me about yourself,” Truitt said,
leaning back in his leather chair and sneaking a quick look at his
wristwatch. “Skip all the legal stuff. I’ve already read your
transcripts and I’ve spoken to Judge O’Brien, who gives you a
glowing recommendation. Tell me about Lisa Fremont, the
person.”

He’s just being polite before showing me the
door.

Lisa fought the urge to speak quickly, to
cram a lifetime—and not an entirely honest one—into a minute. She
took a deep breath to relax and began at her own pace. “I grew up
in Bodega Bay, California.
^ir

He nodded and said, “
The Birds
.”

“Right. They made the Hitchcock film there,
but that was before I was born. I think of the place more
as 
The Old Man and the Sea
. My father was a
fisherman.”

She paused, just as she had rehearsed, then
watched as he nodded with approval. Tilling common ground, or
rather, fishing the same waters, the son and daughter of humble men
facing each other in the palatial Courthouse, one block from the
Capitol, with the Library of Congress and the Senate offices on
either side.

The Justice, the law clerk, and Joe DiMaggio
… all children of fishermen.

“He was a shrimper mostly,” she said. “Crabs,
too, depending on the season. For a while, he crewed on someone
else’s boat, but usually he just worked alone.”

When he worked at all When he wasn’t drunk,
sprawled across the convertible sofa with the popped springs, the
sofa he hauled onto the front porch to her everlasting shame, the
sofa where he lay, unshaven and reeking of sweat and beer and
vomit, tossing bottles at passers-by, the sofa where on a dark
night when no one heard her screams, he …

“It was a hard life,” she said. “Neither of
my parents even graduated from high school. In fact, Mom was in
tenth grade when she got pregnant with me. I knew I had to get out
of there. I left home for San Francisco and went through a series
of minimum wage jobs that convinced me of the need for higher
education.”

“I don’t recall those early jobs on your
CV.”

Let me orally refresh you.

“Just some waitressing, barmaid work, that
sort of thing. One summer, I had a job at Yosemite, clearing
trails.”

“Really,” he said, perking up, paying
attention. “I spent a summer as a park ranger at Fort
Jefferson.”

“Where’s that?” she asked, seemingly with
real interest.

He told her that the Civil War fort was in
the Dry Tortugas near Key West, but she knew that. She knew Sam
grew up in Everglades City, that his father, Charlie, had piloted a
stone crab boat and that he died of lung cancer at fifty-seven. She
knew that Sam had camped out in Ten Thousand Islands as a young boy
and fished off Shark Point. She knew he drew pictures of all the
animals he spotted—water moccasins, manatees, ospreys, and
alligators—and that he could imitate the caw of a mockingbird and
build a fire from two pieces of wood. She knew he skippered a
homemade airboat through the Everglades and built his own fishing
hideaway in the islands at age sixteen. She knew he had won two
hundred dollars in the eleventh grade for an essay about preserving
the Glades and was rewarded with a trip to Tallahassee, where his
picture was taken with the lieutenant governor.

She knew that the local Rotary Club had taken
up a collection to help him buy books for his first semester at
Wake Forest, that he worked two jobs and was a walk-on with the
football team, which never did give him a scholarship. She knew he
took a year after graduation to work with the Peace Corps in
Central America, went to law school at the University of Virginia,
and afterward spent two years with Legal Services, helping migrant
workers in Florida’s sugar cane-fields, before a short stint in
private practice and then on to Harvard to pick up an LL.M.
degree.

Lisa Fremont knew all these things because
she had read the three books and ninety-eight legal articles he had
written and seven hundred sixty-seven newspaper and magazine
articles that had mentioned his name. Thanks to the very same
software that could find every reference to the phrase “capital
punishment” in every judicial opinion over the past two hundred
years, she could find all published references to Samuel Adams
Truitt, including last August’s social columns in a Nantucket
weekly where the newly appointed justice and his wife, Constance,
enjoyed grilled lobster and sweet corn at Senator Parham’s summer
home. For the early material that wasn’t stored on a hard drive,
she had dug up copies of his high school and college yearbooks and
student newspapers. Lisa Fremont was nothing if not a great
researcher.

Now she maintained eye contact as Sam Truitt
spun his personal history with the enthusiasm of a man who loves
life and doesn’t mind talking about it.

At least I’ve got his attention. Now, be
appealing but not seductive, smart but not arrogant.

After telling his abbreviated version of his
trip from Everglades City to the Supreme Court, with various stops
en route, Truitt said, “I appreciate the fact you’ve had some real
jobs. I confess to having a bias against people who were groomed
from infancy to become lawyers. It’s a great asset to have some
life experiences.”

Does erotic dancing count? You wouldn’t
believe what I used to do with my “great asset.”

“Do you have any underlying legal or moral
philosophy?” he asked, and she was caught off guard. She knew that
he’d written with admiration of the humanism of Jean Calvin, whose
teachings provided the bedrock for the protection of individual
liberties. She could memorize and take tests and research the law,
but …

What do I believe?

It was the same question that plagued her
last night. Though she wished it were otherwise, she didn’t believe
the slogans on the pediments. At best she had an ideology that came
from listening to Max Wanaker’s theory of enlightened
self-interest.

Do unto others before they do unto you.

“I’m not sure I have a clear, discernible
philosophy,” she said, sounding lame, hating her answer, knowing it
disappointed him.

“If you were a judge,” he asked, giving her a
second chance, “what moral and ethical framework would you bring to
the courtroom?”

She bought time by finishing her Cuban
coffee, feeling the caffeine rush. She needed to wing it, to spin
bullshit into gold. Wasn’t that a large measure of lawyering? She’d
won moot court at Stanford by keeping her poise and cleverly
answering the unexpected question, but just now, she lost her
concentration. Her mind flashed back to Max and the way he looked
last night, how desperate he seemed about the case.

“
This is more important than you
know.”

Why? And why wouldn’t he tell her more? Sure,
the case was important. Jesus, nearly three hundred people had
died. Damage claims could exceed half a billion dollars. But that’s
why every airline carries massive amounts of insurance. Other than
a quick spurt of adverse publicity from a megabucks verdict if
Atlantica lost the case, what was the crisis?

Regaining her focus, Lisa was aware of
Justice Truitt staring at her, waiting for her answer. “I’d just
call them the way I saw them,” she said, using the sports cliché,
falling deeper into the pit she had dug. The look on his face told
her he was dissatisfied.

“Let’s try it this way,” he said, patiently.
“What’s your view of Calvinism?”

She forced herself to focus. That she could
be sitting here, in this majestic building, being asked to judge
the work of a sixteenth-century French theologian struck her as
both quaint and oddly moving. Sam Truitt, a man whose own words
would be studied and critiqued by scholars a century from now,
actually sought her opinion.

And I have none.

Oh, she could recite Calvin’s belief in the
ultimate power of the moral law. She could ace any test on Aquinas
or Aristotle, Bacon or Bentham. She was smart with what Max
derisively called “book learning.”

But beneath it, she had no core, no body of
beliefs that shaped her. She was an empty vessel, and realizing it,
she suddenly felt chilled and frighteningly alone.

The justice waited for her reply. The easiest
course would be to agree with his well-known written work. But she
knew that he hated bootlickers. She needed to get back on track,
back to the job she had promised Max she would do.

Oh Max, what have you gotten me into? I
can’t hack it here.

Struggling to control her emotions, she
pushed away the anxiety and the dread. “You probably don’t agree,”
she said, haltingly, “but I’ve never thought that there is a
natural law arising independent of governments. I take the view
that all moral obligations are artificially realized, imposed by
governments.”

“Aha!” he said, rising to the challenge, and
in fact rising out of his chair and beginning to pace in front of
the credenza. “You’re with Hobbes! You’re a bloody Royalist.”

“He was more realistic than Calvin,” she
said. “Hobbes understood that moral obligations require laws, not
the goodwill of men. It’s the sovereign that sets the rules, not
our own consciences.”