Supreme Courtship (7 page)

The two men knew—and loathed—each other. Graydon referred to Mitchell (in private) as “a jumped-up mediocrity.” Dexter referred to Graydon (in public) as “an insufferable, overpaid egomaniac.” Both points of view had some merit.

The phone call was like a meeting on the plain of battle when representatives of the about-to-clash armies came forward to offer terms and bribes by which carnage might be averted.

“So,” Graydon Clenndennynn said, “
habemus papam
.” He enjoyed lording his knowledge of arcana over Mitchell.

Mitchell said, “I didn’t go to boarding school, Graydon. Try it in English.”

“It’s what they say at the Vatican when they’ve elected a new pope,” Graydon said, yawning from jet leg. “It appears we have a nominee. This is the obligatory courtesy call.”

“All right.” Dexter took a pencil and poised it above a legal pad, an old habit from his prosecuting days. “Shoot.”

“I’m going to say something to you, without prejudice,” Clenndennynn said. “Agreed?”

“All right,” Mitchell said, suddenly curious.

“You will most likely deduce that this name did not originate with me.”

You old fox,
Dexter thought.

“That said,” Clenndennynn continued, “I have given the President my word that I will do everything I can to move the nomination forward. And that is my intention.”

“All right, Graydon. I get it. You’re behind it one thousand percent. Is it Runningwater?”

“No. Cartwright.”

Dexter Mitchell’s mind raced. Wasn’t there a Cartwright on the Sixth Circuit . . . ?

“Judge Pepper Cartwright,” Graydon said.

“Did you say Pepper Cartwright?”

“Yes.”

“Pepper Cartwright.”

“Yes.”

“The
TV judge
?”

“The same.”

Dexter Mitchell leaned forward over his desk and massaged his forehead, still tender from that morning’s injection of live botulinum cells. “What the hell, Graydon? Is this your idea of a joke?”

“Far from it. It is the President’s view, and I must say I agree with him, that the last two nominations devolved into grotesque spectacles, thanks to you. So now he’s trying another tack. You have to give him credit. It’s out of the box, as they say. Are you familiar with the expression?”

“Those hearings were full and fair. It’s not my fault if—”

“Let’s dispense with the folderol, shall we? He sent you two men, two lions of the bar. Men of distinction, ability, probity. Reputations you could eat off. You turned it into a reprise of the Salem witch trials.”

In moments of stress, Dexter Mitchell had a tendency to laugh unpleasantly. It came out as a high-pitched staccato burst, a sort of cackle. One observer likened it to the sound geese make when being force-fed. He had done it once or twice during the presidential debates, causing some in the audience to wonder if they really wanted to hear four years of it in the White House.

“That’s just—
aack!—
absurd!”

“Please. It was unseemly.” Unseemliness was the worst sort of crime to Graydon Clenndennynn, worthy of the death penalty.

“I’m sorry you and the President feel that way. I happen to disagree. Let me point out that—”

Clenndennynn was not about submit to a marathon Dexter Mitchell harangue. “Have you seen her television show?” he said.

“What? No,” Dexter lied.

“Maybe you should. Everyone else in America seems to. She’s very popular, I gather. A tall, cool drink of tequila. Yes. From Texas, too. Her grandfather was a sheriff.”

“I don’t care if she’s descended from Sam Houston. This is unacceptable. It’s an insult. A travesty. This is—”

“Unacceptable?” said Clenndennynn in his woodiest voice. “Unacceptable? To
whom
?”

“To the United States Senate!”

“Well, before you go speaking for the entire United States Senate, you might spend five minutes thinking about how the country is going to react. We happen to think it will go for her in rather a big way. Look up her ratings if you don’t believe me. So, there we are. Courtesy call concluded. Good day, Senator. Always good talking with you.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I get it. This is some kind of vendetta?”

“Oh, please, Senator. Let me point out a very basic fact to you about the man you and your distinguished colleagues like to call Don Veto. Donald Vanderdamp isn’t Sicilian. He’s from Ohio. He’s a nice, really not terribly complicated man from—I can never pronounce it—Wapakoneta. Two boys grow up in Wapakoneta. One was good in math and became the first man to walk on the moon.
^*
The other was president of the student council and became President of the United States. My idea of diversity. But if you prefer to think of it as a vendetta, why not? Adds a bit of garlic to the stew.”

“Well,” Dexter said, “you can tell Don Veto that he’s going to wake up with a horse head in his bed.”

“Threats, Senator? Well, if that’s how you want to play it, what about that pathetic call you made on him in the Oval Office, begging to be appointed to the Court. He hasn’t told anyone about that. Up to now.”

“For the record, I did not ‘beg.’ I gave him six perfectly compelling reasons why I would be a reasonable, logical choice for the Court.”

“He fell asleep after number three. Good-bye, Senator. See you on the field of honor.”

CHAPTER 7

H
ow did it go with Mitchell?”

The President and Clenndennynn were watching television in the family quarters upstairs at the White House. Pepper’s nomination was leading the news.

“He’s going to chop off a horse’s head and have it put in your bed.”

“Good,” the President said. He was absorbed in the TV, which was playing that morning’s Oval Office announcement. “Gosh, she’s attractive.”

“Yes,” Graydon said like an old water buffalo commenting on a butterfly that had just alit on its horn. “Quite attractive.”

“She’s going to do just fine. You watch.”

“I’ll be doing more than watching. I called Felten, Risko, and Bristz,” Graydon said. (Other senators on the Judiciary Committee.) “I can’t say they were pleased, though Bristz seemed amused. I think they’re all a bit embarrassed over Cooney and Burrows.”

“Darn well should be. This town has become more toxic than a waste dump. Eighteen more months to go. I count the days.”

“You manage to make the presidency sound like a penitentiary. You’ll be the first president since Johnson not to seek reelection. You know what they’ll say.”

“I don’t care what they say.”

“I know. But you might try. This midwestern imperturbability can be overdone.”

On the TV screen, the President and Pepper were sitting side by side on the fauteuils in front of the fireplace, cameras snapping away, a boom mike hovering like a bat above them.

“Mr. President, do you watch
Courtroom Six
?”

“Never miss it,” the President said. “My favorite show. After
Bowling with the Stars
.”

“Judge Cartwright, are you qualified to sit on the Supreme Court?”

“I doubt I’m qualified to be a clerk at the Supreme Court.”

The reporters laughed.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“What I’m told.”

“Judge Cartwright, is it true you’re planning to continue with your show while the nomination process goes forward?”

“If you were in my position, would you quit your day job?”

More laughter.

Vanderdamp chuckled and slapped Graydon on the knee. “That’s my girl. You tell ’em, Pepper. Oh, this is going to be rich. Rich, Graydon.”

“Rich indeed.”

They watched. The President said on TV, “Judge Cartwright may not be a traditional Supreme Court nominee, but I believe that, given the atmosphere in this city, and perhaps in the country as a whole, she is just what these times call for. She knows the country and the country knows her. She’s a hands-on, commonsense, workaday judge. Calls them as she sees them. And I call on the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate to approve her. Without delay.”

“Nice touch, that, ‘without delay,’ ” Graydon murmured. “A little final flick of the cape in the bull’s face.”

“Yes,” President Vanderdamp smiled, “I thought you’d like that.”

A
WAR ROOM OF SORTS
was arranged at the Retropolitan Club, a few blocks from the White House, where Graydon Clenndennynn and Hayden Cork could prepare Pepper for the hearings.

Tables had been arranged to approximate the Senate Judiciary Committee dais. A name card in front of Hayden Cork’s place indicated he had the role of Senator Mitchell. Other senators were played by various White House and Justice Department people, as well as by a few seasoned proxies Graydon brought in. He himself sat aloof, serene, off to the side wearing his most eminently gray expression, in a leather armchair that looked like it had borne the weight of establishmentarians going back to the New Deal.

Pepper arrived, took in the surroundings, and said, “I was looking for the Cartwright event. This looks more like a Nuremberg trial.”

Hayden nodded curtly and opened an enormous loose-leaf binder stamped
CARTWRIGHT / CONFIDENTIAL
.

“All that, about me?” Pepper said. “Didn’t think I’d been alive long enough to leave a paper trail that thick.”

“Judge Cartwright,” Hayden began in a plummy voice, “what makes you think you’re qualified to sit on the Supreme Court?”

“Never said I was. Senator.”

“Then I’m asking you now. Are you?”

“I think I’ll leave that to you distinguished-looking folks.”

“It’s a straightforward question. Just answer straightforwardly, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Well, Senator, all I know is my phone rang one Saturday morning. It was the President of the United States. He asked me to do this. I didn’t volunteer for the job. You ask me, I think the whole thing’s nuts.”

Hayden tapped his pencil on the table. “Is that really the tone you’re planning on striking at the hearings?”

Pepper said, “I’m just a plain old girl from Plano. What you see is what you’re going to get. You want to brighten me up, you might try silver polish.”

“Why don’t we move on,” Hayden said heavily.

“You could just skip ahead to abortion. That’s all anyone cares about anyway these days. Unless you’re busting to hear my views on
Marbury v. Madison
.”

“Judge—”

“Just trying to speed things along. I know how busy you folks are.”

Hayden Cork pursed his lips and flipped to another section of his briefing book.

“Is there anything in your past that might prove embarrassing to this Committee?”

Pepper did a sweep of the faces staring at her. “Depends how easy you all embarrass.”

“Judge Cartwright,” Hayden said in a despairing voice, “this is a dress rehearsal.”

“Look here,
Senator
. You got five thousand FBI agents out there going through my garbage and waterboarding everyone I ever talked to, starting with the ob-gyn who slapped my butt on my way out of the womb. Do you really think I’d put myself through all this if I had a whole catacomb of skeletons doing the cha-cha in my closet?”

Hayden Cork’s lips had by now turned blue. He cast an exasperated glance at Graydon, who was looking on with leonine bemusement.

“But now that you mention it,” Pepper said, “there was that Saturday night in college when I got up and danced on the table without panties. That the sort of thing you’re looking for, Corky?”

Hayden blushed. A few other senators chortled.

Hayden turned to a different section of his phone book–sized dossier.

“Your husband, Buswald Bixby?”

Pepper said, in a different tone of voice, “Why don’t you just call him Buddy. Everyone does.”

“The television producer. Of your show. And others.”

“That’s right,” Pepper said, edgily.

“His show
Jumpers
. Can you describe it for us?”

“You could just look it up in
TV Guide
. Maybe one of the seventy-two people you have on staff could do it for you.”

“Seventy-six.”

“I stand corrected. Thank you.”

“My understanding is that it’s about people who throw themselves off bridges. He produces another called . . .
G.O.
About grotesquely obese people?”

“That’s right. He’s got another one in development,” Pepper said, “called
Assholes
. It’s about White House staffers.”

Graydon rose and said to Pepper, “Let’s go have a cup of something.” They left the faux senators and went and sat alone in a quiet lounge that reeked of long-ago cigar smoke and wood polish.

“You’re quite good,” Graydon said.

“Thank you,” Pepper said tightly.

“That’s why I was surprised to see you fall for that so easily.”

“Whatever.”

“Come now, Judge Cartwright. Let’s not start feeling sorry for ourselves. You’re playing in the big leagues now. This isn’t
Courtroom Seven
.”

“Six. Look, Mr. Clenndennynn—”

“Graydon.”

“Mr. Clenndennynn, I don’t see any point in acting like I’m some lion of the federal bench who’s spent the last decade writing erudite footnotes, sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. I’m just a—”

“A plain old girl from Plano. Yes, yes. But you have a point. You might as well be yourself. That’s presumably why the President asked you in the first place. Authenticity. The real America. Ah, the real America. That elusive thing . . .”

Pepper laughed.

“I amuse you?” Graydon asked.

“Not really. But I do get a kick out of the way you say
presooomably
. You’re a real aristo, aren’t you, Mr. Clenndennynn? Regular blue blood.”

“Yes,” Graydon smiled. “Very much so. So is Mr. Cork, though of a younger generation.”

“Corky?” Pepper said. “No, he’s not in your DNA league. He’s just another Ivy League needle-dick.” Pepper said, “Sorry. You went to . . .”

“Harvard.”

“I don’t think of you as a . . . that.”

“Generous of you.”

“Look, Mr. Cork made it clear as Evian water from the get-go what he thinks of me. I don’t owe him a damn thing.”